Jonathan Haidt (2024) The Anxious Generation. How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.

When I was a kid, late sixties and early seventies, most of us watched the same programmes on telly . Jackanory when we were younger. Then Blue Peter . These were the kind of programmes parents would have approved. Educational and entertainment. It was part of the remit of BBC to provide for both. STV, later ITV, had Magpie . It tried to mimic Blue Peter , with the catchy tag: ‘Why Don’t You Go Outside and Do Something Far More Interesting...

Angela Carter (2006 [1979]) The Bloody Chamber And Other Stories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Carter Angela Carter died at the relatively young age of 51 in 1992. I’ve been digging up her legacy. I started with Night at the Circus . Life is wonderful and horrific. And if you scratch the surface, magic happens. Heroes are heroines. As they are in the Bloody Chamber. I didn’t find out until later it was meant to be a retelling of The Bluebeard Story. Carter’s heroines are innocents abroad, crossing the...

Clouds Sand Foam

Clouds Sand Foam The once invisible clouds now materialize. On, to a pristine deep blue sky now encroaching and threatening cloud sand floaters, imprint in consciousness with a mood that. Such omnipresence seems to move in slow motion. She reappears visibly as once seen to the unseen. Caught in a glimpse, then fades with attention, aimlessly taking new shapes and foams. How these clouds float with water in them, behind the half-quarter moon. At...

Teresa Henderson 27th September 1953—8th May 2024.

Recently, I said to Teresa that I had to keep correcting myself. It was no longer Jimmy and Teresa—Jimmy had died at the end of June 2023—it was just Teresa. A flicker of a smile, but she was quick to correct me. ‘It’ll always be Jimmy and Teresa,’ she said. ‘Always.’ I guess it is again. She’s buoyed herself up during his long illness. In and out of the chemists. Up and down Singers Road carrying messages. She’d carried him to the end. With...

Dopesick (2021), BBC 2, BBC iPlayer, produced by Danny Strong based on the book by Beth Macy, Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m001ys7b/dopesick?seriesId=m001ys7c I already knew the story of the Sackler family, having read and reviewed Patrick Reeden Keefe (2021) Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Family. https://odonnellgrunting.wordpress.com/2021/12/31/patrick-radden-keefe-2021-empire-of-pain-the-secret-history-of-the-sackler-dynasty/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sackler_family Greed has consequences. This eight-...

The Power of the Dog (2021) Screenplay written and Directed by Jane Campion, based on the novel of the same name (which I haven’t read) by Thomas Savage.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001pvtv/the-power-of-the-dog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_the_Dog_(film) Jane Campion is a Hollywood name. She might not have the leverage of say Brad Pitt or George Clooney, but mostly, when she wants to make a movie, producers find the finance and it gets made. The Power of the Dog won many plaudits on its release. I found it watchable. The sets were fabulous and everything looked and...

Please, Lock Me Away!

Can you aspire to 'coolness' at nearly 70?

Story and Poem of the Week and Inspiration Point

As always, some amazing writing on the site this week, and it's been a hard but very pleasurable task choosing the Picks. Story of the Week is from the wonderful celticman. Characters so vivid you can (quite often) smell them, and dialogue most of us would kill to be able to write. 'Sean Happens 3' is another slice of Glasgow life, and if you haven't read any of celtic's stuff before, this is a great place to start: Sean Happens 3 | ABCtales...

Angela Carter (1984 [2006] Nights at the Circus.

Angel Carter’s Nights at the Circus explodes on the page in the form of six-foot-two, eyes of blue, fourteen stone Fevvers, a feminist icon, who has wings and really can fly. Or so it seems, she’s an aerialiste that needs no high wire. The high-flying star of Colonel Kearney’s circus—a fool and his money are easily parted; never give a mug a break—courted by Royalty, The Prince of Wales, painted by Toulouse Lautrec. She’s the toast of Paris, of...

Sean Connolly (2022) On Every Tide: The Making and Remaking of the Irish World.

My mother’s maiden name was Connolly. As a child, she was sent ‘home’ to Ireland, during the Second World War, with her sister (my Auntie Phyllis) to safeguard them from German bombs and to make their Roman Catholic faith bombproof. She didn’t talk about it, certainly not to me, but there were whispers of predatory paedophilic attempts. And as outcast Irish, they were treated like cow shit. My Auntie Phyllis and my mum had a lifelong-bond based...

Pages