Early evening, July 1968. I was set to propel my fifteen year old frame out the door and ankle over to Colley Road library, on Sheffield’s Parson Cross, when my steelworker dad called out to me. He often had his … Read More »
For a few years in the eighties, Aberdeen FC broke the two Glasgow teams’ dominance. How? By hiring Alex Ferguson, the best manager in the game and a worthy successor to that other Caledonian weaver of soccer magic, Bill Shankly, … Read More »
See also – Sincerely, L. Cohen Like many who owe a pleasure as unexpected as it was precious – seeing a septuagenarian Leonard Cohen in concert – to the former manager and lover who stole all his money to force … Read More »
See also, Ten Old Songs .. In a year marked by the bowing out of unusual talent, Leonard Cohen’s death is for me the most poignant. In January I wrote a post on David Bowie in a couple of hours, … Read More »
Thanks to Vaska for the Shakespeare insult link. Thanks to Caroline for the Mailer-Vidal story. At a Manhattan soiree attended by writers with egos the sizes of small planets, one Norman Mailer, displeased with a stinking review by Gore Vidal, … Read More »
Most if not all the major religions born of the neolithic revolutions – Hinduism, the Abrahamic faiths and the myths of Classical Greece – feature a Great Flood. “One hypothesis argues for a catastrophic deluge about 5600 BC from Mediterranean into Black Sea”, says … Read More »
‘Kid, next time I say “let’s go some place like Bolivia”, let’s go some place like Bolivia ..’
A villanelle has nineteen lines and just two rhyming sounds, in this case “ain” and “art”. Frank Scott’s Villanelle for Our Time was set to music by Leonard Cohen on one of his more unusual albums, Dear Heather. Years ago I heard Cohen tell BBC Front … Read More »
Today on BBC Radio 4, told from the alternating perspectives of family members where dad is laid low by clinical depression: a moving and creative exploration in prose monologue and rhyming verse. It even ends well. One of those rarities … Read More »