Pre-order on Amazon, Bronte’s Inferno by Ewan Lawrie

Reading is what I do. Writing, not so much. But for most folk, that’s already too much. There’s a book in everyone. They’ve got one and they’re sticking with it. So I’m in a minority. I’ve also been thinking about class. I should probably use a capital C here, Class. I was reading yesterday that less than twenty-percent of youngsters (if you’re on Facebook sorry, you’re not young) didn’t know what a ‘scab’ was. I’m the kinda guy that laughs at my own jokes, but that’s no joke.

In my head, the book about how we lost the propaganda war would so obviously have a chapter, Coal (hint, it powered the industrial revolution).I took it for granted people would know what I was talking about. Scabs wasn’t something on your knee, they were much lower than that. G for Grenfell where class and race meet in North Kensington another entry point.

The Queen (old Lizzie) gets a walk-on part. I get a walk-on part too as a Scottish Republican ‘shite’ talker. Not in history. I’m already there. Playing the back of Dr Finlay’s head as he drove away (but I can’t remember where to). And a bit-part as someone yakking in the background as Mark McManus’s Taggart. No idea what I said, but the other extra wasn’t interested either. It was £80 for hanging about, which was good money then. A lunch wagon that offered the whole gamut of gamuts. It served everything but booze. Free tastes better than salted. Like Klondike for most writers, or a life’s earnings for an afternoon’s work. Either way, we’d never had it so good. So here I was a footnote in Ewan Lawrie’s trilogy Gibbous House, At The Back of the North Wind, which has nothing to do with pub’s opening hours but does have a Foreword (do books need Forewords in the same way that in the old days the tendency was to read the Daily Record backwards, from the Sports to the so-called news stories)?

Bronte’s Inferno, a manuscript, and footnote to the history of Moffatt’s transatlantic  wanderings. Being a footnote isn’t a full-time job, in the way that being a writer is, but the pay is much the same. I wasn’t thinking of Moffat directly, but indirectly when thinking about class. Gothic encounters of the Bronte variety (like Gibbous House) need a big house, a madwoman in the attic is always a handy appliance, a ghostly encounter and symbolic fire followed by a real blaze. Hints of Dante. Can’t remember much about it, but in translation there’s a special circle of hellbound lovers of Trump, and his little Trumpian neophytes, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. The unctuous simpletons that Moffat would have dealt with and in doing so, would put on their finest regalia and become the characters he dispatches. The moron’s moron Trump is too stupid and psychopathically inclined to be anything other than fictional. Farage too unctuous to be little more than a Dickensian stereotype. But Boris Johnson does leave you with a lot of possibilities. Boris Johnson would be the perfect man to play Moffat. He has a little intelligence, no morals to hinder him and he’s a people pleaser, but only to a certain point where he can take, take, take what he thinks is his unlimited worth.

As a footnote of footnoted worthies, the fictional, ‘Jim O’Connell’ in Bronte’s Inferno I’m sure I’d get on fine with the fictional Moffat and footnote in history, Boris Johnson, in the same way I got on fine with the fictional Larry Avarice and Ewan Ruined. I wouldn’t get on with the fictional moron’s moron or Farage. I’d encourage Moffat to deal with them pronto. Read on and pre-order for less than the price of a pint of Guiness. Meet me not in the flesh.

Notes

• Marie Catherine Laveau was born on September 10, 1801, in New Orleans, Louisiana, when the city was still under Spanish colonial administration.
  • Her mother, Marguerite D’Arcantel, was a free woman of color with a rich heritage of African, European, and Native American ancestry.
  • The identity of her father remains uncertain due to inconsistent spellings in historical records. Some believe it could be Charles Laveau, the son of a white Louisiana creole and politician, while others suggest a free man of color named Charles Laveaux.
  • In 1819, Marie married Jacques Paris, a Quadroon free man of color who had fled from the Haitian Revolution. They had two daughters, Félicité and Angèle.
  • After Jacques Paris’s death, Marie entered a domestic partnership with Christophe Dominick Duminy de Glapion, a nobleman of French descent. 15 kids or more?
• Voodoo Queen and Spiritual Practitioner:
  • Marie Laveau gained fame as a Voodoo priestess, herbalist, and midwife.
  • Her powers were legendary:
    • Healing the sick: She was known for her ability to cure ailments.
    • Altruism: Marie extended charitable gifts to the poor.
    • Spiritual rites: She oversaw rituals and ceremonies, blending elements of Voodoo, Native American practices, and traditional Roman Catholicism.
  • Legacy and Mystery:
  • Marie Laveau’s name is synonymous with New Orleans Voodoo. Her grave at Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1 remains a popular pilgrimage site.

Her daughter, Marie Laveau II, followed in her footsteps, practicing rootwork, conjure, and various spiritual traditions.

Angel Heart.

1. Jane Eyre’s Journey:
   1. Jane Eyre, the novel’s protagonist, embarks on her own infernal journey—a quest for identity, love, and self-discovery.
   1. Her trials mirror Dante’s descent into the depths of hell.
2. Gothic Elements:
   1. Both Jane Eyre and Dante’s Inferno share Gothic elements:
      1. Gibbous House.
      1. Haunting secrets.
      1. Dark passions and murder.
3. Love and Redemption:
   1. Jane’s love for Mr. Rochester mirrors Dante’s devotion to Beatrice.
   1. Redemption through love.
4. Orphaned Heroines:
   1. Miss Pardoner, Jane Eyre and Dante’s Beatrice both grapple with loss and orphanhood.
   1. Resilience feeds the fire.
5. Supernatural Encounters:
   1. Jane’s visions (like ghostly laughter and faraway voices) echo Dante’s encounters with spirits.
   1. Both traverse realms beyond the mundane.
6. Symbolic Fire:
   1. Bertha Mason, locked in the attic, embodies fire and madness.
   1. Dante’s hellfire finds resonance in the Tory Party (hopefully).
7. Moral Dilemmas:
   1. Jane’s choices—to marry Rochester despite his secrets, her secrets and him being a burnt out, blind Tory—mirror Dante’s ethical dilemmas.
   1. Both confront complex moral landscapes.Transcendence and Redemption:Jane’s spiritual awakening parallels Dante’s ascent toward light.

Redemption awaits beyond suffering.

“Brontë’s Inferno” on Amazon now.

Traces, BBC 1 Scotland, BBC iPlayer, based on an idea by Val McDermid, written by Amelia Bullmore, director Rebecca Gatward.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p08zhgmb/traces-series-1-episode-1

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p08zhgs6/traces-series-1-episode-2

‘You’re unbelievably beautiful, you are.’ Daniel (Martin Compston) tells Emma Hedges (Molly Windsor).

It must be dispiriting for a young actor thinking if any series is set in Scotland, I must have a chance, but only if Martin Compston is busy and doesn’t want the part.

She’s got baggage. He’s got baggage. Every character has more baggage than Buckaroo. (I’ve got baggage. Did I tell you I did a forensic science course, elements of forensic science, and somebody stole my course book? I might even be a suspect here.) Molly’s a forensic student in Dundee, Tayside College. Her mum went missing eleven years ago when she was seven. She was unbelievably beautiful then too. Her mum wasn’t bad either. Julie Hedges (Neve McIntosh) she turns up—blonde hair swilling about, print dress, bright colours.  And she’s laughing because she doesn’t know she’ll go missing during The Tall Ship’s Gala and her dismembered body will be discovered by a dog walker, three months later on the beach. She’s not a ghost, like in Randal and Hopkirk Deceased, because then she’d need to wear a white suit.

That’s the cold case, but it’s complicated by her boss at the lab at which she works, Professor Sarah Gordon (Laura Fraser) is also running a MOOC course in forensic science that has been viewed by over 23 000 online viewers. I might have done it. I like MOOC courses. But she’s made a bit of an error. The case study and corpse they use as analytical material matches the case of Molly’s mum, because it was based on her case. But Professor Sarah Gordon can’t admit this. Nor can she seem to avoid Molly, they bump into each other more than is humanly possible without intercourse.

She’s got something to hide. As has her colleague Professor Kathy Torrance (Jennifer Spence) who also had intercourse with an Australian backpacker, but it was sexual.

The forensic scientists are deep into murder cases at the appropriately named Secret’s Nightclub. Three bodies and the manager of the nightclub jumped off the Tay Bridge after the club burned down.

Emma goes to stay with her pal Skye Alessi (Jamie Marie Leary) while trying to digest all those secrets. Skye is her wee pal in the swirly hair moments when her mum appears. You guessed it. She’s also got secrets her mum, Izzy Alessi (Laurie Brett) doesn’t want Emma to know about. Something to do with the photo of her dad, old rocker Drew Cubbin (John Gordon Sinclair) being in bed with her mother, taken in Izzy’s house, possibly by Izzy, while her mum was married to her step-dad. He’s got something to hide. She’s got something to hide.

The lead detective in the case  DI Neil McKinven (Michael Nardone) was a junior cop when Emma’s mum was killed. But as a favour, he’s helping Professor Sarah Gordon cover up her mistake in using an ongoing case in her course material. He’s got a secret too.

So far every cast member has a secret, and some non-cast members (me), we need to know who the killers are or were, and work out if they were related cases to the person that stole my course book. Taggart would have done it in an hour. Here we’re in for the longer haul of six episodes. Nah, not for me. Too suspect.

The Bank That Almost Broke Britain, BBC 2, BBC iPlayer, narrator Blythe Duff and director Leo Burley.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bmbhzb/the-bank-that-almost-broke-britain

hubris

noun

1. excessive pride or self-confidence.

Remember Blythe Duff, the actress who played Detective Jackie Reid in Taggart whose famous catchphrase, ‘Where’s the body?’ became much parroted. Ten years on Blythe Duff is the narrator in search of the body of capitalism, the rise and fall of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and the biggest bailout in British history, around a trillion pounds, much of it going to prop up the nominally Scottish bank that was too big to fail.

Let’s put that into perspective. A trillion pounds of taxpayer’s money would build ten hospitals the size of the Queen Elizabeth  in Glasgow. It would build three new RBS headquarters in Edinburgh at Gogaburn £350 million, attended by the Queen, get you a fly past by the Red Arrows and with a nice view and corporate logos. Her Majesty did ask the difficult question, why did economists not see this coming?

And, equally, she could ask the same question now.  No one held to account. Fred Goodwin CEO of RBS kept his index-linked pension of £700 000 a year, but he did lose his knighthood. I’d love to be given that choice, knighthood or £700 000 a year public money for running up one of the biggest debts in history?

The interesting thing about this programme is Fred Goodwin was one of the bosses trust funds trusted. He was an accountant and megalomaniac bully to his workforce that slashed costs and kept buying even when the party was over. I laughed when I heard his nominal boss, Sir George Mathewson, admitted he’d lost a lot of money when Goodwin issued a new tranche of RBS shares worth…nothing now. I’ll chalk that one up for the little guy.

This is an insider account, with all the key players available, with the exception of the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who promised an end to boom and bust. The programme ends on a happy note, if you’re a banker, RBS announced earlier this year that it is, finally, in profit.

I see no profit. I see only loses. The losers have been the poorest in society. The culprits are the Laurel and Hardy of British politics Chancellor George Osborne and Prime Minister David Cameron who propagated the malicious lie that the impending collapse of the British economy wasn’t down to banks and bankers, but poor people who like Oliver Twist with a begging bowl kept demanding more. Austerity was not for the rich, but for the poor. This is Britain’s shame. And Laurel and Hardy led us into another fine mess, before disappearing back, like Fred Goodwin, into comfortable prosperity. Only the poor pay the full price of nationalised debt. Too big to fail. Too wee to matter.

Anniversary of Lily Poole.

31^st July 2016, Lily Poole finally stumbled word wearily over the finishing line and hit the paying book market. Eleven months later, I finally got a copy of the print used on the cover of Lily Poole framed and hung on the wall facing me in the cupboard in which I write (yes, I’m writing this in a cupboard, I’ve always been weird that way). The cover is perfect. A beautiful piece of smudged artwork. Look closely at the outline of the man and wee girl holding hands and above the second O, in the title, a crow is perched. I like that. It’s a difficult book to place in any one genre and that about sums is up.

I had a ready response for those that asked what the book is about and usually it was ‘it’s a ghost story without a ghost’. That sounds kinda smart and witty. Most folk that didn’t know me probably thought I was just some tosser talking shite, and most folk that did know me knew I was a tosser talking shite. The last guy to ask me what the book was about was the poet William Letford whose latest work Dirt I’d bought because I like the title. He’d never heard of me, of course, and I’d never heard of him, but one of the library staff whispered I too was a writer. Write what you know as Mark Twain supposedly said.  I liked William and told him that my book was about us, the people of Clydebank, and that’s about as near as an honest answer as I can give.

Ratings: Amazon keeps the score and the format of “Lily Poole” is currently ranked #320,211 in the Kindle Store (updated hourly) the highest it achieved was #11 in a subcategory.

I’m not really sure how sales work, but I do know it bores me senseless constantly trying to sell, sell, sell is like a bulimia of the soul.

None of the mainstream media showed interested, which is understandable, there’s no hook. I’m not as photogenic as a seal pub, more like a selfie of last night’s dinner (Scampi and chips, in case you’re interested in my fixation with food). I’ve not been in any soaps or been on the telly, unless you count a triumphant re-run of me playing the back of Dr Finlay’s head (see the start of a bald spot of my career on YouTube) or a non-speaking nobody that saunters past Taggart in Taggart, but everybody in Scotland has been in Taggart.  I’ve not played football for Scotland and wouldn’t even get in the woman’s team that got gubbed 7-0 by England.  I got 23 reviews on Amazon. That’s pretty good. I guess around a third were from people I know, which hints at nepotism. I got a mention in The Clydebank Post and West Dunbartonshire Council made my book novel of the week in their libraries which delighted me, and must be a high point.

I didn’t want a launch party but the gathering in The Cabin was a hoot.

A low point is Scottish Book Trust refusing to acknowledge me as a published author.

I’m nothing noteworthy and my book is one among millions of others. I’m invisible and my book fades away. That’s OK, a year in book life is 100 years in ordinary life. I’m like that wee smudged crow that doesn’t crow.

 

 

 

great Scottish writers – William McIlvanney

I was out watching the fitba yesterday, having a couple of pints and old Lawrie was trying to explain what pub he’d been in, years ago, not by telling us where it was, rather by telling us who’d once owned it and who’d given him the money to buy the pub, but he couldn’t remember that either. ‘It was a great Scottish author.’ That was the clue to unravelling the mystery.

‘William McIlvanney,’ I said.

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘A great Scottish author’.

Let me tell you a wee secret, William McIlvanney is a great Scottish author and like Spike Milligan with Hitler, I’ll explain my part in his downfall. I’m going to read Docherty again just to prove that point to myself again. If you’re Scottish and you’re of a certain age and generation you’ll remember Taggart.  You might even remember it if you’re not Scottish. And if you’re drunk and want to overdose in nostalgia Taggart is still part of STV broadcasts in the same way that Dad’s Army still pops up on BBC (too frequently). The classic line in Taggart, ‘There’s been a murder,’ was so recognisable that talk show hosts used to mouth it cast members and smile, inviting the audience to laugh at them. Taggart became a cliché, to be mocked and so Laidlaw and Scottish noir also became something to be looked down on.

You probably don’t remember me being in Taggart, but at one point in time everybody in Glasgow featured in Taggart. You may have saw me featured in a bar chatting to someone, or walking past Taggart (Mick McManus) and looking very much like me, with the wrong coat on. I did also feature in a tracking shot as the back of Dr Finley’s head. A J Cronin is another of Scotland’s writers greatly neglected.

William McIlvanney allegedly tried to sell a series to STV featuring a straight talking Glasgow detective. But they didn’t fancy the idea. The next thing Taggart appears. Ahem. Do the maths. One-word detectives, that human aphorism, with the answer to a question you don’t know, in the title. Taggart. Laidlaw. Taggart is an older dour detective inspective showing a fresh-faced new start behind the ears the ropes. There’s been a murder. No son, there’s been a theft, the stealing of a body of work from an author. Detective Inspector Laidlaw is an older, dour detective, much given to philosophising and doing what he’s got to do, even though it’s not in the handbook, but because it’s the right thing to do and there is no handbook. Just life.  His sidekick Detective Constable Harkness, a fresh-faced new start has been appointed the higher-up heid yins to keep an eye on Laidlaw, and also, incidentally to help him in the murder of Jennifer Lawson.  That line – there’s been a murder – appears in the first of McIlvanney’s Laidlaw trilogy, Laidlaw, followed by The Papers of Tony Veitch and Strange Loyalties.  Laidlaw doesn’t attempt to solve murders, he attempts to understand them and does so by wrestling to the ground Glasgow punter’s prejudices and inhumanity to humanity. Murder comes in many forms, in hopes and dreams.

The reader already knows who the killer is in Laidlaw’s first case, when the reader meets the detective. It’s the guy running away from the scene and we know he’s a poof and we know somebody is protecting him and we know why, because they love each other, or once did. But Jennifer Lawrence is not just another wee lassie that was in the wrong place at the wrong time, her da is a Glasgow hardman that lives in Drumchapel. Laidlaw has a soft spot for hardmen, he speaks their language and knows how their arcane rules work, and he knows where to find them in their natural element, Glasgow’s pubs.

Poppies was in a court behind Buchanan Street, along with a couple of abstruse businesses and an anonymous second-hand bookshop. It was the most recent example in Glasgow of a pub with adjoining disco, recent enough for Harkness not to know it. He knew The Griffin and Joanna’s in Bath Street, Waves and Spankies at Custom House Quay. The pub here, the Mavrick, was closed just now but the door to Poppies was open.

An open door is always an invitation. Laidlaw and Harkness need to find the murderer of Jennifer Lawrence before his poofter pal helps him to escape, or the Glasgow underworld help Lawrence’s dad find him first and bring the Old Testament eye for an eye vision of justice into view. The smart money is always on Laidlaw, but if you think it’s about solving a murder you’re missing the point. It’s about the writing. It’s about Laidlaw’s epigrams for living and way of seeing the world.

The Papers of Tony Veitch is a case in point. Laidlaw gets a tip off from a reporter, who talked to a porter in The Victoria Infirmary. ‘Old bloke brought in. Chin like a Brillo-pad. Smelling like a grape harvest. Just about conscious. But he kept asking for Jack Laidlaw’.

A doctor explains their predicament to Laidlaw.  ‘Having trouble with his airwaves. They had him in E. God he was filthy. Didn’t know whether to dialyse or cauterise. A walking Bubonic.’

Laidlaw does know the old bloke, he appears in his first part of the trilogy, an alky and a tout who no longer had his finger on Glasgow’s underworld pulse, because he doesn’t have a pulse. But Eck Adamson leaves Laidlaw a cryptic message. ‘The wine wasnae really wine.’

For colleagues such as Laidlaw’s nemesis Milligan it’s an open and shut case. An alky dies the world applauds, one less problem to worry about. The same wipe-your-eye principles apply, another thug, Paddy Collins, who died of stab wounds in the Victoria Infirmary at around the same time. But Paddy Collins is connected, his wife’s brother is one of the dons of the Glasgow underworld and he insists on finding the killer, before the police. Characters from the first Laidlaw novel bleed into the second. And Laidlaw applies the same detective methods, he solves crimes by osmosis. One clue lies in the deranged idealism of a potential murderer, with connections of a different kind, into Scotland’s elite society. Tony Veitch like Laidlaw has dropped out of the University of Glasgow because he believes it cannot give him the education he requires. None of these things, in isolation matter, but for McIlvanney and Laidlaw nothing ever happens in isolation.

In Strange Loyalties Laidlaw’s brother Scott is killed in a car accident. Nothing is ever an accident in Laidlaw-land. McIlvanney and Laidlaw’s strength is in documenting the social nuances between people. Here, for example, he goes to meet Scott’s father-in-law and his mother-in-law, Martin and Alice.

Their togetherness looked as cosy as an advertisement for an endowment policy…Martin had been a building contractor and a friend of many local councillors. The word was that the two aspects of his life hadn’t been always kept effectively apart…Martin was one of the smiling ruthless. Self-interest and callousness had been so effectively subsumed in his nature that they emerged as a form of politeness. He never raised his voice because he hadn’t enough self-doubt to make it necessary. He could listen calmly to opinions violently opposed to his own because he never took them seriously. He offered the conventional forms of sympathy effortlessly because there was no personal content to mean they might not fit…How long does it take to analyse a vacuum?

Alice, Martin’s wife, is beautiful enough to think the world is beautiful too, but that allows her to be empathetic, in the way that Martin is pathetic.  In Laidlaw-land the perpetrators aren’t all locked safely behind bars. They are pillars of society. Everybody is in some ways culpable and knows something, even if they don’t understand what it means. Neither does Laidlaw, but by the end of his book the reader might. That’s why McIlvanney is a great writer.