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 advice. Get the bad guys. And avoid the mistakes—he didn’t need to spell it out. President George W. Bush (junior) and his coterie of former oil men made after 9/11 when approximately 3000 Americans died. The Peter Principle suggests that people in a hierarchy rise to a level of respective incompetence. Even with the furthest outlier, the moron’s moron, President Trump, his political instinct for self-preservation at any cost would have proven correct. Neither Abraham Lincoln nor John F. Kennedy, no current or past American President could have survived politically without filling enough body bags to appease a jingoistic public stoked up by their national media for revenge.   

President George W. Bush (senior) had in the 1990s proposed a new world order. It was just a matter of rejigging the plan. David Armstrong (2002) Drafting a Plan for Global Dominance, showed that the war on defeating terrorism, the pre-emptive strikes of threatening and attacking other countries was a return to colonialism. In the words of Colin Powell: ‘I want [the United States] to be the bully on the block’.

Luis Enrique Meja Godoy (1945-) translated by Dinah Livingstone

Revenge.

My personal revenge will be your children’s

right to schooling and to flowers.

My personal revenge will be to give you

these hand you once ill-treated

with all their tenderness intact.

Iran would be the lesson to the world after Iraq. The domino effect was in place. Like Dr Strangelove, no limits. Syria, North Korea, even China were in play since the Cold War with Russia ended. The political dividend:  ‘Go massive, sweep it all up, related or not,’ was a memorandum Donald Rumsfeld had written to other neo-Conservatives in the then Reagan administration.  Saddam Hussein was an enemy of Islamic fundamentalism but had to be categorised as a different type of Islamic fundamentalist. But the same kind of terrorist. A threat to the Western world and America in particular.

Ferreydun Tavallah (1919—85)

Wretchedness.

My soul is bored of the repetition

                of days and nights,

My heart tired, my problems unsolved;

But still that bitter, black hope,

Like a broken dagger,

                remains at my breast…

Beware of my wretchedness, beware!

I am a man who makes love

                with the corpse of his dead hope.

The Iraqi link to biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction could not hold. The link to Iran and Iraq and al-Quida and over 200 million Arabs was established in the American public mind by what George Orwell called the ‘five-minute hate’ and the logic of self-defence of American and Israeli interests. Like Martin Ford’s in The Rise of the Robots in which a rogue artificial intelligence takes over this world and other planets to produce the perfect paper clip, security can never be secure enough and calls of ever increasing resources would be needed to protect around five million Israelis.  

Pastor Martin Niemoller:

‘First they came for the Jew Palestinians

and I did not speak out –

because I was not a Jew Palestinian

Then they came for the communists

and I did not speak out-

because I was not a communist

Then they came for the Trade Unionist

and I did not speak out –

Edward W.Said was born in Jerusalem in 1935 and forced into exile 1948 from British Palestine. Covering Islam and Terrorism1997/2002, he notes the most effective propaganda was the most basic: men with beards. Mosques as a backdrop. The association between Islam and suicide bombers was, of course, men with beards coming out of Mosques. The rise of Isis in the devastation that was Iran—men with guns and beards—simplified what United Secretary of Defence termed the ‘known knowns’. All Arabs are terrorists and should be treated as such, unless they are part of an oil-rich kingdom like Qatar, who offered to act as mediators in the current conflict.

Seamus Heaney 1939—2013.  

Human being suffer,

They torture one another,

They get hurt and get hard.

No poem or play or song

Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols

Beat on their bars together.

A hunger-striker’s father

Stands in the graveyard dumb.

The police widow in veils

Faints at the funeral home.

History says, Don’t hope

On this side of the grave.

But then, once in a lifetime

The longer for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up.

And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change

On the far side of revenge

Believe it is a further shore

Is reached from here

Believe in miracles

And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:

The utter, self-revealing

Double-take of feeling

If there is fire in the mountain

Of lightening and storm

And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing

The outcry and the birth-cry

Of new life at its term.

The disposed like Said, the 750 000 who lost their homes and livelihood when Israel established its homeland, those in the West Bank and Gaza, have swelled in number. Around 2.1 potential terrorists in Gaza. Half of them women and children. 20 000 pregnant women being told to move from the North to the South of the open-air concentration camp they live in for their own safety.  

Charles Bukowski (1920—94)

War

war, war, war,

the yellow monster

the eater of mind

and body,

war,

the indescribable,

the pleasure of

the mad,

the final argument

of

ungrown men.

Said writes of the known knowns too. Before this terror, another, earlier Palestinian terror. The good bad old days. Water, food and electricity cut off.

‘But for all its horror, Palestinian violence the response of a desperate and horribly oppressed people has been stripped of its context and the failure to see that it is a failure in humanity.’

‘…so remorseless has been the focus on the phenomenon apart, a pure, gratuitous evil that Israel, supposedly acting on behalf of pure good, has been virtuously battling in its variously appalling acts of disproportionate violence.

‘I cannot think of any other country on earth that, in full view of nightly TV audiences, has performed miracles of detailed sadism against an entire society and got away with it

In the same way, Benjamin Netanyahu, who used his office of Prime Minister of Israel to keep him out of jail (Donald Trump did not create this model) and for personal gain has to react to the killings and kidnappings to survive politically. Not only for Hamas’s incursion into the State of Israel. But also the response time of six hours in which mass murder took place. Someone else has to pay for getting it so wrong with the wall breached so easily and readiness of troops on the ground even if it ends in a world war.

Rumi (1207-73) born in Afghanistan understood.

Only Breath

There is a way between voice and presence

Where information flows.

In disciplined silence it opens

With wandering talk it closes.

Seamus Heaney 1939—2013 poetry Chorus From The Cure At Troy as a palliative from Joe Biden, added to the annual $4billion grant voted by Congress. Israel can take the dollar to pay for its nuclear weapons, fighter jets, tanks and ever increasing defence costs. It can keep building higher and higher walls. Window dressing.  

Rumi (1207-73)

Not a Christian  or Jew or Muslim, nor Hindu,

Buddhist, sufi or zen. Not any religion

Or cultural system I am not from the East

or the West, or out of the ocean or up

from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not

composed of elements at all I do not exist,

am not an entity in this world or the next

did not descend from Adam or Eve or any

origin story. My place is placeless, a trace

of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two

worlds as one and that one calls out to know,

first, last, outer, inner, only that

breath breathing human being.

Rumi knew you cannot imagine the significance of Christ’s crucifixion if good cannot triumph over evil? Emily Dickinson: That Love is all there is…Is all we know of Love’.

Hibs 0—0 Celtic.

Ex-Celt David Marshall helped create the best chances of the game with his passing, and playing from the back, but made up for it with a solid performance. Just before the end of the first-half, for example, Paulo Bernardo tried to scramble a ball into the net from a ball played into him from a mishit keeper clearance. Bernardo was blocked. Daizen Maeda should have scored from the rebound, but Marshall saved.

Callum McGregor had a shot on goal from inside the box after a terrible pass from Marshall and Jeggo slipped. A decent height for Marshall to make the save.

Bernardo had a fine turn and shot from outside the box, and started well, but fizzled out in what was a turgid and predictable first-half performance.

Hibs best chance—perhaps the best chance of the game—was a counterattack in the second half. Jordan Obita’s curling cross came from the right and fell between Scales and Carter-Vickers. Hart on his line as Boyle got a foot in front of goal but scooped it over.

Arguably substitute, James Forrest’s chance from an in swinging corner, with minutes remaining, when he smashed it off the bar was nearer, but Boyle’s was easier.

Fellow substitute Mikey Johnston had a pop on goal and looked lively (I know I’ve been saying the same thing for five years about Mikey Johnston, and it’s his first appearance since March 2022, but now we’re offered the example of Liam Scale’s revival).Luis Palma was so off the pace he should have been sitting beside me or Mikey Johnston. You’ve got to laugh when his old manager tells you if he scores in Madrid, Atletico will attempt to sign him. We’ve went from in Rodgers’ words ‘having a million’ wingers to relying on the old guard. It would have been nice to see what Rocco Vata could do.  

Brendan Rodgers went with Bernardo—no surprise there—and the team that played so well against Atletico at home in the first-half. Obviously, we miss a player of the class of Hatate, but it was a chance for the other midfielders. There was also talk of resting players. But it was thrust upon us. Alistair Johnson didn’t want to take a breather, but he had to go off after getting smashed in the ball by a Rocky Bashiri clearance. Tony Ralston comes on after forty minutes. He gets booked soon after which is pretty standard. I like Tony Ralston. I just don’t think he’s Celtic class.

Celtic played better and looked more likely to score when the old guard was off. Palma was an easy pick for being taken off after sixty minutes.

Kyogo, when you’re searching for a goal, more unlikely. Oh was unlucky with one or two chances and at least made Marshall work. Maeda for Forrest worked too.

We know what Maeda gives us. But Forrest looked the Celtic player most likely to score.

Even David Turnbull, on for Bernardo for the final twenty minutes, had a few pops at goal. He was unlucky from his best attempt just inside the box, scooping the ball up and past Marshall but over the bar.

Forrest hit him with the ball inside the six-yard box for the last half-chance of the game. Or Turnbull hit Forrest’s thigh and he couldn’t divert it into the goal. It went past the post. It was that sort of afternoon when Celtic dominated possession as we usually do. But lacked pace and invention to do anything much with it. Very disappointing to give a shot in the arm to Rangers and not to go ten points clear. But not disastrous.  

David Sedaris (2000) Me Talk Pretty One Day

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 what he’s written. He’ll claim to have it much worse than everybody else, while worrying over the problem of being an undiscovered and unappreciated genius.

‘The Late Show’ tells how it is. First establishing tone:

‘I’m thinking of a little jacket for my clock radio. Nothing fancy or permanent, just something casual it can slip into in during the wee small hours. I’m not out to match it with curtains or disguise it to look like something it’s not. The problem is not the clock radio feels underdressed, the problem is I cannot bear to watch the numbers advance in that heartless way common to that particular model. Time doesn’t fly—it flaps, the numbers turning on a wheel that operates much like the wheel on a stretching wrack.’

That’s a meal in itself, said the exhausted Willy Loman of his cup of coffee in Death of a Salesman and equally it applies to this paragraph. Look and listen. This is who David Sedaris is.

I listen to my partner and all the women out the back discussing how bad their insomnia has been the night before. Even Francis of 1000 stories, who lives in the house facing me, wouldn’t have thought of putting a wee doily on time.

Sedaris tells the reader what he did before he thought of dressing up time. He’d a pretty conventional upbringing in taking booze and drugs and smoking dope to help him sleep. It worked a treat. Sometimes he woke up in his own bed. Other times he floor bathed.

The middle bit of the story is when he tells you all the things he gave up and why. He admits that reading is too much like work, which for a writer isn’t a good sign. But he goes with the flow, even if it’s to the bathroom after his twelfth cup of coffee or even tea. The insomniac reader gets the irony of having to get up and go to the toilet just when you’re dropping off.

Sedaris likes to indulge himself and his readers in his fantasies. This is the denouement of his story. ‘Mr Science’ has him effortlessly producing a serum in his basement laboratory that for pretty much anything you can think of. He’s got it covered but is more concerned about how his hair will look or how he will act when receiving the Nobel Prize. His rejuvenating soap cures ageing and he builds a spaceship that take him—and us—to another planet that is pretty much like Earth.

He’s not finished. ‘The Knockout’ has him effortlessly winning the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship, while retaining his ‘perfectly luminous teeth’. The media love him because he’s the great white hope and they hate blacks, but only in a media friendly way. They turn against him when he lets slip he has a boyfriend, which has Barbara Walters choking on a peanut.

‘I’ve Got a Secret’ (the last act of the denouement trilogy of this short story) could be considered that hackneyed phrase: based on true events.

Sedaris has jumped but not from spaceships but from the point of view of ‘a pretty slightly chubby White House intern’ (Monica Lewinsky) that had sex with President Clinton. This is written before the draft dodging, lying, raping, tax dodging, insurrectionist, white supremacist and moron’s moron was elected 45^th American President. Anything Sedaris tells us will already seem tame and lack irony by comparison. Read on.     

Another Round (2020) Film 4, Screenplay by Thomas Vinterberg and Tobias Lindholm, Director Thomas Vinterberg.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/another-round

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Round_(film)

Another Round won an Oscar for The Best International Film 2021. Like most great stories the plot can be summed up in one line. Four teachers at the same school agree to get pissed every day. They call it an experiment. An aid to creativity and the better life they feel they’re missing out on.  Psychiatrist Finn Skårderud’s theory —  humans are born with blood alcohol content (BAC) deficiency of 0.05%, and that being at 0.05% makes one more creative and relaxed—is enough of a scientific justification for each of them to find his own gutter level.

Scotland used to be so full of drunks we had to export them. I used to be like this. Now I’m just boring. Living proof of Finn Skårderud’s theory.  Great fun. Have a beer, or two, while watching. I dare you.

Celtic 2—2 Atletico Madrid

Celtic take a deserved point. Kyogo scoring in four minutes, darting inside the box, after playing a clever one-two with Matt O’Riley and guiding the ball into the corner of the net. Lift off.

But in a game that ebbed and flowed, Antoine Griezmann scored from a rebound in twenty-four minutes after Joe Hart had pushed his penalty onto the post. Greg Taylor is having one of those second season syndromes. I know he’s been at Paradise a lot longer than that. But he dangled a leg inside the box and Nahuel Molina fell over it to give away the penalty.

Luis Palma thought he’d scored in the Champions League against Lazio. In 35 minutes he did score. Maeda, who was Celtic’s best player, had switched wings with Palma. He came from the left and the ball went across the box to Palma on the right, evading Kyogo. The Honduran steadied himself and blessed himself when it went in off the post. A good one-two combination.

There was still time in the first-half for the sucker punch. A dreadful ‘goal’ to lose. From a dinked free-kick (does this sound familiar?) to the left-hand side of the back post. Axel Witzel easily wins the header. Morata, who’d been anonymous, apart from a shot put into the side netting, ghosted in at the right hand post to score. But he was offside. No need for VAR, but a bit of luck and a let off. Morata kept making those runs and that’s not luck.

Celtic too had their chances, such as a Matt O’Reily hit from just outside the box. Jan Oblak made the save seem easy.

Marcos Llorente’s second-half showing was the equivalent of Maeda’s first. He made the difference and created the pass for the equaliser and also had a decent shot saved by Joe Hart.

Reo Hatate had been taken off injured just after the first goal, which is a worry in our busy match schedule. Hatate is a big player who was coming back to something like his peak.  Paulo Bernardo, who replaced him, looked tired at the start of the second-half, but it was goal- scorer Palma, who was substituted and Nat Philips brought on.

Second-half substitute Marcos Llorente was the catalyst for a second-half push for an equaliser. Taylor was booked for a foul on him. Llorente remained unfazed. He provided the cross from the left-wing from which Morata ghosted in behind Carter-Vickers to head into the net.

 Rodgers attempted to turn back Madrid’s domination by rejigging the defence and giving us an extra midfielder. Taylor pushed up to midfield where he’s more comfortable and Scales dropped into the left of a back three. Rodgers change worked to a certain extent. But so many Celtic players looked knackered he could have made three or four other changes if he had replacements of the quality of Madrid’s.

Kyogo was replaced by James Forrest with Maeda playing through the middle as we searched for a winner.

We were helped with a red card for Rodrigo De Paul. He’d been booked after twenty minutes for repeatedly claiming for a penalty in the box. With ten minutes of the ninety remaining he flicked a boot out at Paulo Bernardo after tacking him and was given another yellow.

Down to ten men, Madrid fell back and Celtic looked more likely to get the winner. We’ve been here before, of course, most recently, when searching for a winner against Lazio.  Nat Phillips won a header. Griezmann got the foul and went down with a head knock, until his own manager, Diego Simone urged him to get up. Perhaps he knew something we didn’t. Witsel almost gets his head on the end of an Atelti free kick. But we don’t concede and don’t create much with the extra man.

I’d have taken a draw before the game. It feels like a fair result. I’m a fan of the dog’s chance, but we’re pretty much destined to finish bottom of the group. But with ten minutes to go with Madrid down to ten men, we could taste those three points. We haven’t won a home match in the Champions League for ten years is a concern, but on the bright side, statistically, it’s more likely to happen. I’d bet in our next home European tie against Feyenoord, who top the group. I wouldn’t bet on taking anything in Madrid. First things first. Hibs away.

A Fantastic Woman (2017) Film 4, Written by Sebastián Lelio and Gonzalo Maza and directed by Sebastián Lelio.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/a-fantastic-woman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fantastic_Woman

Marina (Daniela Vega) is A Fantastic Woman or if you’re being picky, a fantastic transgender woman. Sebastián Lelio’s Oscar-winning drama is in many ways a revenge movie.

Marina is a singer and part-time waiter who lives with her boyfriend, Orlando (Gonzalo Maza) in a smart apartment in Santiago. They have a dog, and he’s the type of older man that has bought tickets to whip her away on a surprise vacation.

Everything changes overnight. Orlando has a stroke and collapses on a stairwell, bumping his head. Marina rushes him to hospital, but he dies.

In technical jargon, this is the inciting incident. In Shakespearian tragedy usually someone dies. In King Lear he gives up his throne and in that way lies madness.

Marina’s love and lover has been taken from her. Her grief is invalidated because she is classified as neither man nor woman, but a despised thing. Without Orlando’s protection those with grievances against her vent their hatred against her. Police threatened to charge her with Orlando’s murder because of the unexplained bruising on his head. Orlando’s son wants her out of the apartment, pronto. He takes the dog away with him. Orlando’s ex-wife warns her not to turn up at the wake or funeral, because they had a daughter together, and she’s not wanted, or better still quickly forgotten. What she can do for her is return Orlando’s car.

These are some of the obstacles she must overcome on her hero’s journey.

I’ve no more idea what it feels like to be transgender than it is to be King Lear, but we’ve all experienced grief. The film teaches a bit about both. The message will be lost on some. But that’s life in right-wing hate-land.   

Hearts 1—4 Celtic

Celtic dominant from start to finish. It’s always good to hear Hearts’ fans booing their team off at half-time and scuttling down Gorgie Road well before the end. Brendan Rodger’s team was much as expected. Our midfield picks itself. Matt O’Riley has been Scottish player of the month, based on his goals and assists, he’ll be Scottish Player of the Year. Knocking back a ten million quid bid was just common sense.

He was at it again, scoring after four minutes. Luis Palma dinked the ball into him. A swivel of his hips and he knocked the ball into the far corner, leaving the Hearts goalie with no chance. A superb opening goal set the tone of the match.

 Reo Hatate before and during the international break looked to be somewhat closer to the top of his game. He’d a few lose passes in a half which Hearts rarely threatened. Kenneth Vargas committed more fouls than Hearts’ solitary first-half strike. Joe Hart put out for a corner, even though it was going past the post.

Hatate set up the second goal. O’Riley’s pass played him in behind the defence. Hatate, from near the touchline, put the ball across the goal. Maeda tapped it in. After the obligatory VAR check, the second goal was given.

But Hatate could—and should—have put Celtic on easy street at the start of the second- half. Alex Cochrane had taken a roasting from Maeda all afternoon. The full back was adjudged to have pulled Kyogo back after he turned away from him inside the box. It looked a soft penalty. Hatate’s penalty at Livingston had the virtue of creeping under the keeper. This one did not, hitting the post. Perhaps it’s a good thing Hatate is taken off penalty duties now. In closer games it might cost us. I’d give the ball to Palma at penalties.

Kyogo tried to take the ball from Hatate for the penalty (he’s missed a stack too). But he’s scored in eight of eight against Hearts. O’Riley dummied (or missed the ball) and the Japanese forward was on hand, as he invariably is, to fire home.

Lawrence Shankland hasn’t scored in ten games. He fired home in the 65^th minute to give Hearts an outside chance of taking something. Ironically, it was Maeda that played him in. He took the ball from Cochrane but his run across the Celtic box and slack pass played in Shankland. He still had lots to do, but bent the ball around Scales and in off the post.    

Maeda and Kyogo give us an unmatchable work rate. That touch of magic and goals. Lots of goals. The other place on the wing hasn’t been nailed down. Yang had his chance in some of the bigger European matches. He came on today and had a shot on goal blocked. Forrest, in some of our more difficult matches on plastic pitches such as those at Livingston, also came on for the last twenty minutes.

Luis Palma doesn’t have their pace, but the Honduran is scoring goals and he keeps the ball better than Yang. His dink set up the first goal. He looks to have the jersey as we go into the next big European tie. And he can think himself unlucky not to have scored already in Europe. Small margins.

Iwata came on as a substitute and smashed the ball home for his first Celtic goal from inside the box after a game of ping-pong to make it four. A fairer reflection on Celtic’s dominance. But the Japanese midfielder is unlikely to be first pick any time soon. It seems likely that the team that started today will be first-picks against Atletico Madrid.

The Spaniards will be unfazed with Celtic’s pressing. Our defence needs an overhaul. Matt Philips, on loan, hasn’t added defensive solidity, but it on the bench today. He’ll be away when the loan period finishes. Gustaf Lagerbielke has come in and hit the buffers. It’s a pity we can’t send him back to Elfsborg and recoup some of our £3 million. He wasn’t in today’s squad.  Maik Nawrocki is back and it looks like him, or, fellow injury victim, Stephen Welsh will challenge Scales for a first-team spot.  Carter-Vickers is back—European clanger aside—is a big plus. Simple. We win most games with him in the team.

Greg Taylor has a poor start to the season but he looks to have picked up a little. Alistair Johnston had slipped backwards to where he was last season. But there were signs of resurgence today. Neither full backs, nor our keeper, Joe Hart have serious competition for places. But I guess you could make a case for saying the same thing about Kyogo. Although Oh was unlucky with a few strikes today. Iwata finished off his rebounded double whammy of shots.

Tynecastle can be intimidating. Not today. Parkhead can be intimidating. Let us hope so on Wednesday night. There was much to admire in Celtic’s performance. But Wednesday is the real deal. Any sloppy passing, as we know, will be severely punished. I’d put us as underdogs. But the old mantra, if we play to our capabilities, we might sneak a win. I’d take a draw. We need a new penalty taker. We need that bit of luck that has evaded us in the competition so far.  Hail, Hail.   

Unreported World, Channel 4, 19th May 2023, Unreported-world-on-demand, Kenya’s Christian Death Cult.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/unreported-world/on-demand/75517-001

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-65588273

Symeon Brown investigates how Pastor Paul Mackenzie, a former taxi driver and preacher of the coming apocalypse (who is in police custody) led to the mass murder or suicide of over 600 men, women and children and babies as young as two-months old.

Pathologist Dr Goya reports that many of the victims of the exhumed bodies in Shakahola farm, near the coastal town of Malindi, showed forensic signs of strangulation and of having been beaten. Malnourishment was a constant.

Betty Katana, who escaped, reported how adults were instructed to starve themselves to death while awaiting Jesus. Children shut inside huts without food or water. Sometimes taken out into the sun to help them die quicker and escape to heaven.

Pastor Mackenzie’s sermons of the Good News International Church are still available online. His son refuses to speak to the media. Pastor Mackenzie preaches his innocence.  

 The self-appointed messiah has many of the same traits as David Koresh and Jim Jones’ death cults. His followers find it is already too late to leave. A praetorian guard around the false prophet enforces discipline and ensures an untimely death. No apostasy. No one left alive as witnesses against the good pastor.

With over eighty percent of Kenya Christian, fellow pastors find it difficult on camera to criticise Pastor Mackenzie. His teachings on the uselessness of education, especially of women; his claims to strike down and cure AIDs and Covid with inspired prayer were standard fare; seeking medical help, even for children, showed a lack of faith in Jesus that would be punished in this life or the next. These are the fundamentals of their Christian-soundbite pathology. Listen to the teachings of Christian fundamentalist ideology in America about satanic forces—war in Zion, for example, is a good thing because it brings the end of days closer. A patriarchal worldview entwined with the hornet nests’ of traditional nationalist sentiments and religious purity. This is not a foreign dis-ease. Nor is it unique to Kenya. God needs no help. Scratch the surface of a death cult and you’ll find a narcissistic psychopath as a leader with the promise of a bright new future. Sound familiar?   

Alan Radcliffe (2023) The Old Haunts.

For any of you unfamiliar with Glasgow dialect, The Old Haunts are the place you used to hang about when you were younger. Alan Radcliffe has pretty much nailed it in his debut novel. Part of the Fairlight (his publisher’s) Moderns. I’m not sure what that mean but it sounds like a good marketing gimmick. The Old Haunts speaks for itself. I’m tempted to give Alan Radcliffe the Great Scottish Writers tag I give to authors such as William McIlvanney and Janice Galloway. This short book is great but sometimes quality isn’t enough and we need more quantity.

Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee’s follow up novel To Kill a Mockingbird is an example the exception to the rule. Quantity not being good enough. Fictional was factional for Harper Lee. The blurring of place and time gives her characters authenticity.

Readers sometimes confuse the author with the narrator. The Jem of To Kill a Mockingbird being conflated with Harper Lee.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Kill_a_Mockingbird

Alan Radcliffe may or may not be Jamie. His quest is examining his past lives and what made him who he is. Away from himself, up North, Aumrie, near Loch Tay, retracing his roots with his boyfriend. Landlady, Kit Ross, a wee woman with her own jaggy past. Authors necessarily need to tap into their psyche, characters calving off like glaciers from the larger shelves. Listen to the sound of Jamie’s actor boyfriend.

‘With his rigid hair and ludicrously square jaw, Todd looked like a cartoon hero—Fred from Scooby Doo or a Disney Prince—only with glossy pubes, a sponge-like scrotum and a belly that seemed to go on forever.’

‘One Day All This Will Be Yours’, the second chapter (after the inciting incident) brings his parents into focus. His parents lived above the Purple Shop in a tenement row. The kind of shops that sold fags and milk and papers and most other things you might need. We’d the same kind of shop in the seventies over the road called Johnny Graham’s. Their work was their life. Jamie was theirs and that was enough to be going on with. Their hope was he’d make something of himself. Something they could casually throw into a conversation like my Jamie’s a doctor now.

Jamie is not like other boys because he likes other boys. He tries to work out how and when this happened. We’re in Douglas Stuart territory here of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo.  We know Jamie will get there. The hero’s journey doesn’t have to be heroic it just needs to be authentic.  Read on.

Isobel Buchanan Reilly 1954—2023 (RIP).

Brian Reilly came to the door on Saturday to tell us his mum, Bel, had died. (That’s him standing to the right) He likes to call Mary, Auntie Mary. She’s not really his aunt. But Mary’s son Alan and Robert washed like high tide through their house in Trafalgar Street, when the world was young, much the same as they washed through this house. Bel wasn’t their Auntie either. Mums knew better than God these things didn’t matter. The more Auntie Mary persisted in asking if he wanted anything, the more he resisted and says he’s alright. He was just letting us know.

Bel was the same age as Annie Lennox. The Biblical three-score years and ten (almost). But no bell tolling. No Bible. No talk of love and Bel being up there and looking down at us.  Life everlasting. No funeral service. No massive debt for the family to squabble over and divvy up for funeral directors’ payday. No set day for others to honour the dead and trade stories that can help with a sense of closure.

Brian was nipping down to Mac’s for the karaoke in the bar. I told him he was a pretty good singer. He’s also a pretty good storyteller. Just don’t jump in and piss him off with the punchline, ‘Lulu’ before he gets to it.

His mum’s cousin had toured with the Beatles in America. Using Scooby-Doo logic, if it wasn’t for that damned Lulu, Bel could have been another lulu, like every other lulu in  Glasgow.

Bel left school at fourteen or fifteen. A working-class wee girl from Partick, with no O’Levels. It would have been equally impossible to imagine anyone other than non-lulus from places other than Bearsden getting a university degree. But there Bel is in the picture with her gown and scroll. Three adult sons looking proudly on.  

I’m not sure if I heard her husband Jimmy Reilly singing around the closes for pennies. I am sure I hadn’t heard Bel’s voice. They used to nip in for a drink into The Drop Inn, Trafalgar Street’s gang hut on Dumbarton Road. They had two grown-up sons then, Terry and Brian. Seven or eight years before they had another, James Thomas, the baby of the family. Her other boys away creating their own Reilly dynasties, falling out and falling in.

Everybody in the Drop Inn dressed in cowboy blue denim. Had a smoker’s cough that struck suddenly like a rattlesnake so they had something to wake up for in the morning. But Jimmy Reilly went further than most. He’d go somewhere like the Town Hall and pull out his six-gun. No survivors left with their dignity intact.

Bel dressed as an American Indian. Put on some beads. Tied her hair like Hiawatha and kept her head down. Either that or dressing like a big boobed, Dolly Parton Christmas tree, with too much tinsel. Lots of belting out Stand By Your Man or the stabbing pains of full stops and D.I.V.O.R.C.E today. No decent women in Dalmuir liked anything other than a maudlin ending to greet over on a night out tippling vodka with their pals. Always keep your tomahawk sharpened and under the pillow. Widow’s Allowance was around a tenner and that was enough for a good woman to get on with when he asked what was for tea.      

After the Second World War, post-war baby-boom, legally there was only two ways of dying. A sudden jolt and dropping dead of a heart attack, if you knew what was good for you. The longer square-go. Relatives took your arm and whispered about the BIG C as if it was cholera or contagious as tuberculosis. Whisper it, Bel had the Big C, but she’d had it before. She beat it up but it claimed her again as if often does.

She knew the score. Hard choices.  The blood nurse leaves with no blood in your arms or legs. Surgery. Chemotherapy. Radiotherapy.  A mixed bag of pain and pain relief. None of them therapeutic. Your body falls apart. Your hair falls out. Mouth ulcers. Food becomes tasteless. Anorexia. Gut rot. Incontinence. Nausea. Sickness and being unable to sleep.  Your getting better when you’re able to stop hugging the toilet pan. You will rise from the dead is the cry of no surrender.   

Isobel Buchanan was born in Glasgow the same year Colville’s Steel works in Motherwell became Ravenscraig, a nationalised industry. A steel plant that employed thousands and tens of thousands indirectly. Full employment. Nationalised B.O.A.C’s four-engine plane crashed at Prestwick Airport. Celtic were Scottish League and Scottish Cup winner. But the Buchanan family were Protestants and loyalists to the Rangers cause.

No blacks, no Catholics and no dogs were scrawled signs in rented accommodation. A no wogs sign for domestic dogs that roamed the streets unchallenged shitting on pavements, front greens and football pitches. Dyslexia didn’t exist. An unwritten law. Catholics were regarded as a different ginger breed. Dyslexic dogs couldn’t ask them what the sign meant. No Iftie’s shop for bread and milk. No Paki shops for fags. No Ramjams for Space Invaders and cans of Kestrel. No Chinkies. Unrationed prejudices fed to us as British nostalgia by our so-called betters and comedians plying the working-men’s clubs that came on after the strippers.   

Old Mother Riley a fictional and feckless Irish washerwoman and charlady played by an Irish male actor, like Mrs Brown’s Boys today was an overnight success jumping from stage to radio plays to the big screen and meant to mirror reality. 1954 was the last year of its incarnation. The first year of Bel’s life.

James Terence Reilly was no mug. An older man, he was 23. Isobel Buchanan was 16 going on 17 when they were married in 1971, the year of the Ibrox Disaster and Decimalisation. A Sunday Mail cost 9d.

A Daily Record cost 3p, when Rangers won the Cup Winners Cup in Barcelona. The Spanish police beat the shit out of them when in their V-necks and flared denim they invaded the pitch thinking it was all over. The shame in Spain didn’t register because Terence James Reilly was born. He attended Protestant schools, and grew up to support Celtic.

Brian Reilly asked me to write about his mum. I said I couldn’t because I didn’t know her. He said it didn’t matter. It does. Funeral or no funeral. Not just a ritual. Honour your mother. It’s in the Bible. Inscribed on all our hearts. To sons in her family it matters most of all. Amen.