Wednesday, August 10, 2016
In Between Talking About the Football by Gordon Legge (Polygon 1991)
Friday, August 01, 2014
Tramps, Workmates and Revolutionaries edited by H. Gustav Klaus (Journeyman Press 1993)
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Rumpole at Christmas by John Mortimer (Viking 2009)
Saturday, August 10, 2013
Bullfighting by Roddy Doyle (Viking 2011)
Thursday, August 08, 2013
The Deportees and Other Stories by Roddy Doyle (Jonathan Cape 2007)
Sunday, November 04, 2012
Jaggy Splinters by Christopher Brookmyre (Hachette Digial 2012)
The Ball
There is a variety of types of ball approved for Primary School Football. I shall describe three notable examples.
1) The plastic balloon. An extremely lightweight model, used primarily in the early part of the season and seldom after that due to having burst. Identifiable by blue pentagonal panelling and the names of that year’s Premier League sides printed all over it. Advantages: low sting factor, low burst-nose probability, cheap, discourages a long-ball game. Disadvantages: over-susceptible to influence of the wind, difficult to control, almost magnetically drawn to flat school roofs whence never to return.
2) The rough-finish Mitre. Half football, half Portuguese Man o’ War. On the verge of a ban in the European Court of Human Rights, this model is not for sale to children. Used exclusively by teachers during gym classes as a kind of aversion therapy. Made from highly durable fibre-glass, stuffed with neutron star and coated with dead jellyfish. Advantages: looks quite grown up, makes for high-scoring matches (keepers won’t even attempt to catch it). Disadvantages: scars or maims anything it touches.
3) The ‘Tube’. Genuine leather ball, identifiable by brown all-over colouring. Was once black and white, before ravages of games on concrete, but owners can never remember when. Adored by everybody, especially keepers. Advantages: feels good, easily controlled, makes a satisfying ‘whump’ noise when you kick it. Disadvantages: turns into medicine ball when wet, smells like a dead dog.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Reheated Cabbage: Tales of Chemical Degeneration by Irvine Welsh (W. W. Norton & Company 2009)
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie (Grove Press 1993)
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
When the Nines Roll Over: And Other Stories by David Benioff (Plume Books 2004)
Sunday, April 29, 2012
This Artistic Life by Barry Hines (Pomona Books 2009)
Sunday, March 25, 2012
True Believers by Joseph O'Connor (Sinclair Stevenson 1991)
I did meet one of his friends later on in the night. He saw her standing across the dance floor and beckoned her over. She mustn't have seen him. So he said he'd be back in a second and weaved through the gyrating bodies to where she was. They chatted for a few minutes, and then she came over and sat down. Shirley was a model. From Dublin too. Well, trying to make it as a model. She knew Bono really well. He was a great bloke, she said, really dead on. She'd known him and Ali for absolute yonks, and success hadn't changed them at all. 'Course, she hadn't seen them since Wembley last year. Backstage. They were working on the new album apparently. She'd heard the rough mixes and it was a total scorcher. This friend of hers played them to her. A really good friend of hers, actually, who went out with your man from The Hot House Flowers. The one with the hair. She kept forgetting his name. She said she was no good at all for Irish names. She really regretted it, actually, specially since she moved over here, but she couldn't speak a word of Irish. She let us buy her a drink each. I paid for Eddie's. Then she had to run. Early start tomorrow, had to be in the studio by eight-thirty.
'Ciao,' she said, when she went. 'Ciao, Eddie.'
from 'Last of the Mohicans'
Friday, August 12, 2011
Bad Haircut - Stories of the Seventies by Tom Perrotta (Berkley Books 1994)
It was just my luck to get Coach Bielski for driver's ed. Even when I played football, he hadn't been that crazy about me. He didn't like my attitude, the way I'd shrug when he asked me why I'd thrown a bad pass or missed a tackle. And he didn't like the way my hair stuck out from the back of my helmet or sometimes curled out the earholes. He'd tug on it at practice and say, "Cut that fucking hair, Garfunkel, or I'll cut it for you. I just got a chainsaw for my birthday." (He always called me Garfunkel, because of my hair and because he'd once seen me in the hallway, strumming someone's guitar. To Bielski, Simon and Garfunkel represented the outer limits of hippiedom.)
(From the short story, 'You Start to Live')
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Matters of Life & Death & Other Stories by Bernard MacLaverty (W. W. Norton & Company 2006)
'It was a shame about the Orrs having to leave,' said Bill.
'Yeah.'
'But it wouldn't have been wise for him to stay.'
'Why?'
'After the threat.'
'But all cops get threatened.'
'Not on pirate radio, they don't.' Ben stared at him. 'They gave out his address on Radio Free Whatever.'
'Fuck.'
'And the powers that be said it was a serious threat. A bomb threat. That's why he came round us all. He was very apologetic.'
'What do you mean - came round us all?'
'Didn't he come and tell you to put the girls in the back bedroom?'
'No.'
Bill looked confused.
'He said he went round everybody. Warned them.'
'Not me, he didn't.' Ben sipped at his drink and stared at Bill. 'Maybe he said something to Maureen.'
Ben went off in search of his wife. He took her from a conversation with three other women sitting on the floor and beckoned her out of the noise into a coat recess in the hall.
'Did Dawson tell you someone was itching to bomb him? Did he tell you to put the kids in the back bedroom?'
'No.'
Ben bit his lip.
'Why?' said Maureen.
'That's what I want to know. Why did he not warn us? He warned everybody else.'
'Jesus.'
'We're Catholics.' He threw back his head and whooped in disbelief. 'Fuckin Fenian bastards. That's what we are.'
You don't mean it was deliberate?'
'What other way is there of looking at it?'
'Not only did he not warn us,' Ben's eyes widened with realisation, 'he tried to set us up. That's what the bad parking of the car was all about. He wasn't drunk. He didn't miss. He parked his fucking car in front of my house so's we'd get it . . .'
'Jesus. And he's got kids of his own.'
(From the short story, 'A Trusted Neighbour')
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Walking Wounded by William McIlvanney (Sceptre Paperback 1989)
He looked at the litter on his desk and wondered how he had come to be manacled to these invoices, how many years he had spent transferring days from the in-tray to the out-tray. It would be some time yet before he could go home, but the thought was merely a reflex, no longer carried any deep regret. Marie would be waiting there with a detailed report of how much hoovering she had done today and what the Brussels sprouts cost. Jennifer would be doing her usual impersonation of a foundling princess who can't understand how she has come to be unloaded on such a crass family and Robert, fruit of his loins and heir to his ulcers, would be playing songs in which the lyrics only surfaced intermittently and incomprehensibly.
From the short story 'Waving'.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Bucket of Tongues by Duncan McLean (W. W Norton 1992)
Open the door and out, out and away, he doesn't mind, he doesn't care: time for a cup of tea before the next victim. Hope it's that lassie with the screaming infants ya bass. Through the waiting-room: those about to, we salute you. Somebody reading a book for fuck's sake, bad move, looks like a student: get to the back of the queue wanker, make way for the genuine article, you'll get a grant cheque in three months anyway, whadya needa giro for? Totally unjustified assumptions there, totally unfair one is being, but who can blame one? I blame society. Down the stair and out into the rain. Which has now stopped. I blame sobriety: if I could be drunk more often, or maybe all the time . . . but in this day and age thirty-seven pence purchases absolutely no alcoholic beverage of any amount or kind whatsoever, except for those wee bottles of Dutch lager well there you go my point proven, except in France or Spain of course where you can take your billycan along to the vineyard and they'll pour out the vino for you straight from the fucking tap, what a place, and no need for a roof over your head either: sleep rough without your extremities turning blue.
(from 'Loaves and Fishes, Nah')
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Near Neighbours by Gordon Legge (Jonathan Cape 1998)
Adam switched off the motor.
'Oh,' said Geordie, 'you're back again.'
'Back to listen to you and your blethers, aye.'
'By God, see if I was a younger man - I'd take my hand off your face before you could say Gazza. I've battered bigger than you, mind. Plenty bigger.'
Aye, I think I mind you telling me - hundreds of times.'
Geordie was the type as would probably be quite happy if Adam were to headbutt. He'd live off it for years. 'Aye,' he'd tell folk, 'just right in front of my face. What a mess it was and all. Blood and brains all over the shop. Never get that cleaned. That's what the polis said. Said to me, "Geordie," they said, "long as you live, and as hard as you try, you'll never get that cleaned."'
Adam replaced the seat. 'Well, want to give it a go, auld yin?'
Geordie made to get up. He adjusted his legs. He adjusted his legs like they were artificial. To all intents and purposes, they were.
(From the short story, 'Past Masters'.)
Saturday, August 07, 2010
Hieroglyphics by Anne Donovan (Canongate Books 2001)
Ma mammy thoat ah wis daft, naw, no daft exactly, no the way wee Helen fae doon the street wis. Ah mean she didnae even go tae the same school as us an she couldnae talk right an she looked at ye funny and aw the weans tried tae avoid playin wi her in the street. Ma mammy knew ah could go the messages an dae stuff roond the hoose and talk tae folk, ah wis jist daft at school subjects, the wans that that involved readin or writin oanyway. Fur a while efter she went up tae see the teacher ah got some extra lessons aff the Remmy wummin but ah hated it. She wis nice tae me at furst but then when ah couldnae dae the hings she wis geein me she began tae get a bit scunnered. A hink she thoat A wis lazy, and ah could never tell them aboot the letters diddlin aboot, and oanyway, naebdy ever asked me whit it wis like. They gave me aw these tests an heard ma readin and tellt ma ma ah hud a readin age of 6.4 an a spellin age of 5.7 and Goad knows whit else, but naebdy ever asked me whit wis gaun oan in ma heid. So ah never tellt them.
(From the short story, 'Hieroglyphics'.)
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
Now's The Time by John Harvey (Slow Dancer Press 1999)
Music has always been important for Charlie, you fancy - as background and as entertainment, as a way of easing a stressful life, papering over emptiness, and more positively, helping him to measure and assess emotion, helping him to understand. And where it had begun for him, this musical affiliation, this need? A tailoring uncle, returned from the States with a pile of chipped and scratched 78s and Charlie, in his early teens, open-minded and keen-eared, set loose amongst them. Bing Crosby. The Ink Spots. Sinatra. Dick Haymes. The Mills Brothers. Ella Fitzgerald's 'A-Tisket, A-Tasket' and 'Stone Cold Dead in the Market'. Teddy Wilson and his Orchestra with Billie Holiday (vocal refrain).
Thursday, February 25, 2010
No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July (Scribner 2007)
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Children of Albion Rovers edited by Kevin Williamson (Rebel Inc. 1996)
Gillian stepped back, put her feet together and described an area of the pavement with her hands. It was here, she said, that Carlyle saved himself from despair. He'd become a man with an emptiness where his spirit used to be. He'd lost faith in God, and belief in the Devil. He'd lost faith in love. He saw no rewards in heaven or punishments in hell. His sense of right and wrong seemed like rubbish left behind by illusions of God. It seemed that people just lived afraid of pain, and wanting pleasure. He could imagine people finding a reason for living in their work, but he had no work to show for his time on earth, He was 28 years old. Something inside him was angry but it didn't seem to have anything to do with the boredom of the universe he was stuck in. He hardly noticed other people, they were like parts in a machine to him. The world was the machine, and it didn't do him the favour of wanting him to suffer. No, because it ground him down automatically. He would have killed himself, but there was a small bit of religious teaching stuck in his brain, and anyway, he couldn't be bothered. And all the while he felt frightened. He didn't know what he was afraid of. Until he came here, to Leith Walk, and one moment he didn't know and the next moment he knew. He was frightened of death, nothing more or less, because in the end that was all there was to be afraid of. And when he knew it, he looked at death, and said: Come on, then. I'll meet you and I'll take you on. He stood there, a man still young, miserable with the grey world and his being lost in it, and he reached out over forty years ahead and shouted at death that he could see it hiding there and it might as well come out because he could look at it and still live on as a free man until the final reckoning came. And he felt so strongly and angry after that, burning up with hatred for death, and so he was alive.
John was quiet for a bit. Then he said: Let's call our first child Leith.
My surname's Walker.
Well. mine's Keith.
Come on, finish your bridie and go back to work.
John got up and stood closer to Gillian. Your hair's just like the adverts, he said. It smells like turkish delight.
(From 'The Brown Pint of Courage' by James Meek)