For anyone who’s particularly keen to get an insight into this guy’s fear and frustration and confusion and claustrophobia during the early stages of stroke recovery, please sign up for apoplectic.me Tiny Letter distributions, if you haven’t already. I’ll be covering that today.
But as Longsufferinggirlfriendoftheblogbeth likes to say
It’s OK. We live in the future. He survived.
Was anyone keeping an eye on the award of the Man Booker Prize last week? It’s, like, the World Cup for novels.
Well, that’s not quite right. Historically, the Man Booker has only been open to authors of the Commonwealth, the Republic of Ireland, or Zimbabwe. So it’s kind of more like the Commonwealth Games for novels. The 2014 prize was the first year the prize was open to authors from anywhere in the world. AS Byatt said the prize risked diluting its identity, but blog favourite A.L. Kennedy was all for it.
[Sign up here for apoplectic.me Tiny Letter distributions, and more hilarious insular nationalism] Continue reading Jazz
I’m still a wee bit of an American Stroke Bloke. In kind of the same way Martha Stewart is Scottish by sex.
And yes, it’s still weird when the cheese triangles in Subway are “cheddar” and not “American”. And I still say and think “toMAYto”. But on the other hand, I was doing a crossword the other day, and got the following clue….
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Continue reading Jacob’s Ladder
Well. We have to talk about the be-kilted elephant in the room, slumped in the corner, clasping a sticky bottle of Buckfast to his chest.
Longsufferinggirlfriendoftheblogbeth tells me that referendum questions in the States are usually comprised of statutory legalese. Below that, they’re explained in less comprehensible terms for the voter. But the choice on Scotland’s #indyref ballot paper was stark.
[Sign up for apoplectic.me alerts and extra personal reflections here.] Continue reading The Kübler-Ross Model
Today, the Edinburgh Festival will shut up shop for another year, more or less signalling the end of our first full year in Edinburgh. Fortunately, that doesn’t mean the city is pulling down the shutters. Last February, I wrote to Tiny Letter subscribers that even in the depths of January, Edinburgh maintains a wide range of treats for the arts enthusiast, and that Longsufferinggirlfriendoftheblogbeth and I had recently seen The Lanterns Of Terracotta Warriors in the quad of the University of Edinburgh’s Old College.
[You can sign up for apoplectic.me Tiny Letters here. It’s a chance to read some more personal thoughts and join the conversation. I’d love to hear from you.] Continue reading Restless Natives
In autumn of 2012, they pulled the siphons from my skull, and the spigot from my spine. I slowly started making memories again, but I was rubbish at answering the questions doctors ask patients with brain injuries.
“Who’s the President?” they would ask.
Continue reading Through A Glass, Darkly
Last year’s Edinburgh Festival marked the beginning of our settling in to Auld Reekie. The passing of twelve months means that I’m beginning to sound more like a native at Festival time.
Day 1 of my #fringefest2014. Everyone’s 12yo and/or walking dead slow, but I’m retaining the returning native joy. Joy, I tells ya!
— Ricky Brown (@ricky_ballboy) August 4, 2014
I wrote the above returning from an afternoon at Deborah Frances-White‘s Half A Can Of Worms.
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As I dragged my case up the street I could see, even from a distance, the man gather himself. Maybe it was a quicker exercise than he expected, because I was still fifteen yards away when he said — not shouting, but with an invested intensity intended to carry the message down the hill:
I’m so f—ing scared.
The people at Shelter had asked him for his phone number. And he’d given it to them, in a moment of clarity. But now he could see this would allow them to fit it all together, particularly since he’d been on trial twice. Had I ever been on trial? That’s scary, too.
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My recent trip to Brooklyn wasn’t all the insides of courtrooms and the outsides of container terminals, oh no.
One day, Mrs Friendoftheblogpaul — who knows a good walk when she sees one — suggested we take a wander through Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. Continue reading The Case Of The Peculiar Details
When I sit down for too long, my left leg gets all seized up. And being out of my regular routine these past couple of weeks has made it harder to regularly stretch my legs. I decide to go for a walk through my temporary neighbourhood.
