https://www.itv.com/hub/savile-portrait-of-a-predator/10a1253a0001 https://www.abctales.com/story/celticman/jimmy-savile-and-me Ten years ago, Sir Jimmy Savile died. His funeral was an event that featured on the news. The great and the good appeared, in sombre tones, mourning our loss. People lined the streets to pay their respects. Sir Keith Stammer was Director of Public Prosecutions. Operation Yewtree was set up in London in 2012 to...

Alexander Starritt’s name can be added to the list of great Scottish writers. (He’s written another book I’ve not yet read, The Beast. ) I, initially, thought We Germans was a translation like Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front and The Road Home . The format is simple. A grandfather writing to his Scottish grandson, Callum. And his grandson replying. Oberkanonier Meissner was in the Wehrmacht. Six-foot-two and broad shouldered...

The title is like the snatched breath of an overhead conversation. It makes assumptions and asks questions of the reader. ‘Piped,’ refers to playing bagpipes. The identity of the ‘She’ refers to Queen Victoria. The narrator is Angus MacKay (1812-1859) telling the story of his life from a cell in Bethlem Hospital (Bedlam). Iain McDonald takes on the persona of Angus McKay. A factional story, fictionalising the few facts known about McKay. The...

Last week's Inspiration Point produced some wonderful work, and our Poem of the Week is one of those pieces. Jenny Skinner's 'Stone Loach' is a marvellous piece of nature writing, beautifully written and full of atmosphere: Stone Loach | ABCtales Story of the Week goes to Simon Barget's 'No. 782', which takes us to a place where we can reflect on where the time went and what it all means. It has a lot of humour, and much that pretty much all of...

I've tried multiple times over the past few days to upload a story but I keep getting the incomprehensible error message below. I've sent pleading messages via the Contact Us section of the web page but to no avail! I would really like to upload this story but may have to abandon the effort if this goes on :-( Any ideas? PDOException : SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1366 Incorrect string value: '\xF0\x9F\x98\x8A</...' for column 'body_value...

Many stories I read blend into one another. Some of them I can vaguely remember. They tend to be—by that measure—the best. I’m thinking here of George Mackay Brown, Celia , which is arguably the best short story in The Devil and the Giro , edited by Carl MacDougall. I met Carl a few times and he was great, but not great enough to get in the collection of the best of The Scottish Short Story . Bernard MacLaverty short story A Time To Dance is a...

$5K - 52 Weeks - 20 Penny Stocks One Winner!! Current Status ( -$3,365.46 ) Week - 32 Go Birds - Dallas SUCKS! ------------- (I say again) EAGLES!!! EAGLES!!! EAGLES!!!!!! --------------------------------- Very disappointing outcome last week as a winnable contest slipped through the fingers of an inexperienced coach. All will be forgiven with a quality win on Monday night against the hated, despised, despicable… Cowboys (Ssshhhkk.. Ptooo..!) In...

Happy Friday to all! As always, it's very hard to pick just one poem or story - there is always such a variety of wonderful writing to choose from. Poem of the Week, this week, is hoalarg1's Beyond Reflection. A beautiful poem, tragic too, it stays with you. A very skilfully written poem. You can read it here: https://www.abctales.com/story/hoalarg1/beyond-reflection But please have a read of these poems if you haven't already from Rhiannon,...

When you are asked to review books, a number of prompts are translated into numbers. For example, you are asked to award a mark out of ten for literary merit. I often cheat here. If I like a book, it gets nearer ten than one. After all, even the ingredients on the label of a brown sauce bottle have enough literary merit to get five. Ingenious Pain gets a ten, because his sentences sing and you can get your teeth into them. His characters have a...

$5K - 52 Weeks - 20 Penny Stocks One Winner!! Current Status ( -$3,366.54 ) Week - 30 & 31 Go Birds! ------------- E-A-G-L-E-S… EAGLES!!!!!! --------------------------------- That’s right, football is back, life is good and all is as it should be in the world. Big impressive win for the Eagles as they soundly dispatched the hapless, hopeless Falcons. Sadly however, the market missed the memo and did not follow suit. Ah well, this weekend’s...