Good morning from a lockdown Dublin. I'd like to wish everyone here a safe and happy 2021. I was going through some old notebooks and files last year during the idle months of April Level 5. As a writer, I tend to hoard; I have spaces jammed with half-filled notebooks, random idea pages, and newspaper and magazine clippings, so with all the unexpected free time, I decided to purge a lot of old or unused material and get it out of the house. I...

Happy New Year! It feels a bit like tempting fate, but I'm determined to be optimistic.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000qvk5/disclosure-series-3-stair... https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00cxfvh Sixty-six Rangers’ fans died and another 145 injured in the Ibrox Disaster after the New Year’s Day Old Firm game ended in a 1-1 draw. Rangers’ equaliser came at the end of a game watched by 80 000 supporters. Fans on the way out of the ground on Stairway 13 heard the crowd roaring and turned back to be met by a surge of jubilant...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p08x8kml/black-narcissus-series-1-episode-1 Gemma Arterton plays the lead role of Sister Clodagh, famously taken by Deborah Kerr (from Helensburgh). Diana Rigg, who died this year, plays a cameo of Mother Dorothea. From the safety of Darjeeling she gets to task of warning Sister Clodagh that it won’t all be peaches and cream at Mopu in the Himalayas when the snow sets in. A missionary group of brothers have...

Once Upon a Time in Iraq, BBC 2, BBC iPlayer, Narrator Andy Serkis and Director James Bluemel. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000kxwq/once-upon-a-time-in-iraq-series-1-1-war https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000l43w/once-upon-a-time-in-iraq-series-1-2-insurgency https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p08kr4ws/once-upon-a-time-in-iraq-series-1-3-fallujah https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p08kr52c/once-upon-a-time-in-iraq-series-1-...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000qrrc/the-death-of-stalin I’ve read a couple of books on Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore. I get who he is, or was. Armando Iannucci concentrates on Stalin’s death and the scramble for power among his henchmen of torturers and mass murderers. It’s played out as farce. For example, in the opening scenes Stalin, who loved music (and books) rings a studio in Moscow and tells the presenter of the radio...

Lynn + Lucy (Roxanne Scrimshaw + Nichola Burley) wasn’t the kind of film I usually watch. It seemed like Brookside transported to Harlow, Essex. Yeh, I’m snobby that way. ‘You alright? Yeh, I’m alright. You alright?’ Lynn + Lucy went to school together, best mates, forever. Lynn has been married to Paul (Shaq B Grant) for ten years and they have a daughter Lola (Tia Nelson). They got married when she was sixteen and pregnant. He’s off sick from...

Story of the Week Congratulations to Celticman, his ‘A Pile Up of Boys’ is a powerful piece of writing, delivered with a narrative voice that is as real as it is vital. Hard to believe such things happened well within living memory. https://www.abctales.com/story/celticman/pile-boys Poem of the Week This week’s choice is something slightly different from Onemorething. Certain Memories is an exploration of how we let some memories fade. https://...

When Mikael Blomkvist is holed up in cottage in the Vanger estate and can’t think he reads detective novels. I do that too. Hence The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (and the first 100 pages of The Girl Who Kicks the Hornets’ Nest ). Blomkvist namechecks Val McDermid The Mermaids Singing and some other—to me—obscure Scandinavian detective novels. In short, Blomkvist was behaving like a real person. He was behaving like me, which might have been you...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000q5z3/the-mercy Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds star in the story of serial British bungler Boris Johnson’s attempt to circumnavigate EEC regulation, buoyed by jingoistic support at home, while sending out false reports of his typical British derring-do, circling the globe far quicker than his competitors from his sinking ship anchored near the Portuguese coast. Based on a true story.