https://www.channel4.com/programmes/la-civil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_civil How much is your daughter worth? El Puma (Juan Daniel García Treviño) gives Ciero (Arcelia Ramírez) a price she must pay to see her daughter again. To keep her alive. He also demands her ex-husband’s truck. The smiling assassin and his companion assure her it’s just business. And she’d not to contact the police, because obviously in Northern Mexico they’re on the...

The title is longer that some of the books I’ve written and pretty much covers it. Alex Tresniowski has to shape a made-for-TV-kinda testimonial, true-story genre, into a three-part traditional beginning, middle and end with a bang. He gets nationwide coverage and a documentary programme to help with his search. The SET-UP establishes a normality that suggests this is who I am. In December, Paul Joseph Fronczak is just your typical ten-year-old...

Hi everyone, this is just a quick message to let you know I'm sorry I've not been around, I'm so missing all your wonderful poetry and stories. Laid up with a really bad dose of the flu and feeling awful. Can't wait to get back to normal. Jenny.

I didn’t get this… Shakespeare’s Typewriter. I’d once stopped writing in an exam about a minor Shakespearian villain/hero because I was bored to fuck. There was and is some dispute of who was the playwright called Shakespeare. Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne. She painted her face with lead pain. But I was pretty sure typewriters weren’t invented until the nineteenth century, perhaps earlier, but not 200 years earlier. Shakespeare, whoever he...

Jacques was in state general hospital the whole of June and half of August, and following up as outpatient. He is recovering well and gradually but steadily picking up weight he is completely mobile and has been able since returning home. He does look a great deal more healthy now, sleeping well too. Jacques is Spartan allright. He was born a soldier. We get along well and my own health has been very good. He sees to shopping and meals I do my...

As the days get shorter and the nights get longer and Storm Whatever-It-Is-This-Week rages outside, it's great to have some wonderful stories and poems to read, and ABC never disappoints. Story of the Week is another of celticman's brilliant slices of life, with vivd characters and an acutely observed setting. You'll be standing in this kitchen and smelling those chips: Love Story 12 | ABCtales Poem of the Week is Di Hard's howl of anger and...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/happy-as-lazzaro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_as_Lazzaro Happy as Lazzaro won the Best Screenplay at the Cannes Festival 2018. It’s quite simple yet quite complex. Setting the scene. A proposal. A peasant farmworkerwith his workmates come to ask for the hand in marriage of young girl. Lazzaro (Adriano Tardiolo) looks on smiling. Food and drink is prepared in the traditional way. An electric lightbulb is...

Confession time... I've been writing on another writers' website. I wanted it to be art but it's turned out to be just my daily waffle. It may even contain an eff word. I'll try much harder next month.

Notes on why Celtic Supporters Fly the Palestinian Flag. Epitaph on a Tyrant W. H. Auden - 1907-1973 Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after, And the poetry he invented was easy to understand; He knew human folly like the back of his hand, And was greatly interested in armies and fleets; When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, And when he cried the little children died in the streets. President Joe Biden offered some...

The book cover has a blurb from the Guardian : ‘Like an American Alan Bennet’. You might be asking what’s the Guardian and who is Alan Bennet? Why do we need more of him, especially if you’re American and already got David Sedaris. Like most writers David Sedaris writes about himself. Like most writers he tells the same story over and over while trying to capture new readers who’ll appreciate him for his literary talent, or at least pay him for...