That Sinking Feeling (1979)

 

Northmen: A Viking Saga (2014)

 

The Slab Boys Trilogy by John Byrne (Faber and Faber 2003)

The Slab Boys (1978)

Scene

The Slab Room is a small paint-spattered room adjacent to the Design Studio at A. F. Stobo & Co., Carpet Manufacturers. It is here that the powder colour used by the designers in the preparation of the paper patter is ground and dished. The colour is kept in large cardboard drums. It is heaped onto marble slabs by the Slab Boys (apprentice designers), water and gum arabic is added, and it is ground with large palette knives till deemed fit to be dished. A window overlooks the factory sheds from where the distant hum of looms drifts up. Beneath the window is a sink. Beside the sink are stacks of small pottery dishes (some of them very dirty). There is a broom cupboard in one comer of the room. Rolls of drafting paper, rug samples, paint rags etc. litter the shelves and floor. A large poster of James Dean (unidentified) hangs on the wall. The action takes place during the morning and afternoon of a Friday in the winter of 1957.

Act One

The Slab Room. Enter George ‘Spanky’ Farrell in dust-coat, drainpipe trousers, Tony Curtis hair-do, crepe-soled shoes. He crosses to his slab and starts working. Enter Hector McKenzie, similarly attired in dustcoat. He is shorter and weedier than Spanky. He wears spectacles and carries a portable radio.

Spanky Hey, where’d you get the wireless, Heck? Never seen you with that this morning ...

Hector Had it planked down the bog . .. didn’t want ‘you-know-who ’ to see it.

Spanky Does it work? Give’s a shot... (Grabs radio.) Where’s Luxembourg?

Hector Watch it, Spanky ... you'll break it! You can’t get Luxembourg... it’s not dark enough.

Spanky Aw ... d’you need a dark wireless? I never knew that. Mebbe if we pull the aerial out a bit... (He does so. It comes away in his hand.)

Hector You swine, look what you’ve done!

Spanky Ach, that’s easy fixed ...

Hector Give us it. (Twiddles knobs. Gets Terry Dene singing ‘A White Sport Coat’.)

Spanky Good God, could you not’ve brung in a more modern wireless? That’s donkey’s out of date.

Hector I like it.

Spanky That’s ’cos you’re a tube, Hector:

Enter Phil McCann in street clothes and carrying portfolio under his arm. He sets folio down behind the door.

Morning, Phil. You’re early the day... (Consults wristwatch painted on wrist.) 'S only half-eleven.

Phil Anybody been looking for us?

Spanky Willie Curry was in ten minutes ago looking that lemon-yellow you promised, but I told him you diarrhoea and you’d take a big dish of it down to him later on.

Phil (changing into dustcoat) Who belongs to the jukebox?

Hector ’S mines...

Enter Willie Curry.

The Unrepentant Marxist by Harvey Pekar and Louis Proyect (2009)

I really was tempted to post four or five pages from this political graphic novel detailing the self-delusionary bullshit of the American Socialist Workers Party's 'Turn to industry' line from the '70s but I stopped myself. Instead, I've just confined myself to the front and back pages.

The graphic novel itself, and the background to it being penned, is available from Louis Proyect's website. Sadly, it appears it was made available because Louis was at the end of a terminal illness, and the same website carries a notice of his death and a few tributes from friends and colleagues.

Like Punk Never Happened: Culture Club and the New Pop by Dave Rimmer (Faber and Faber 1985)

This is the story of Culture Club, but it’s also the story of pop music since punk. It’s the story of how a generation of New Pop stars, a generation that had come of age during punk, absorbed its methods, learnt its lessons, but ditched its ideals — setting charts ablaze and fans screaming all over the world. It’s the story of a whole new star system, of Adam Ant, Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Wham! and many others as well as Culture Club. It’s also the story of a magazine called Smash Hits.

I’ve chosen to base this story round Culture Club because in many ways they were the perfect New Pop group. Only Michael Jackson was more famous than Boy George. Colour By Numbers was the nearest thing to a perfect pop album the decade has produced. ‘Karma Chameleon’ was the nearest thing to a perfect pop single: pretty and sickly, complex and singalong, meaningless and meaningful all at the same time, rising to number one in Britain, the USA and just about everywhere else where pop records arc bought.

The only other group I could have written this story around would have been Duran Duran. Then there would maybe have been more about video, less about the press and dressing-up, but the essential details would have remained the same. In 1983, at the height of the New Pop period, Duran Duran and Culture Club were deadly rivals, but only different sides of the same coin.

As a writer for Smash Hits over this period — one which saw its circulation soar with the rise of the New Pop to become the world’s biggest-selling pop magazine I was allowed unusually close access. Unlike Fleet Street or the old music weeklies, Smash Hits was generally trusted not to ‘slag people off without good reason. I talked to, interviewed, travelled with, got to know and usually liked most of the New Pop stars. In writing this book, I’m not attempting to pass judgement on them, just to make some sense out of it all. And, I hope, make some money too.

In that sense, I’m as much a part of the New Pop which is really the Old Pop now as any of them.

Get Carter (1971)

 

The April Dead by Alan Parks (Canongate Books 2021)

They turned into Old Shettleston Road, forge on the left, and Shettleston was revealed in all its glory. McCoy didn’t know if it was because of the forge but this bit of Glasgow always seemed dirty, tenements black with smoke and soot. Even the pavements looked grimy. They were firmly in the East End now, not McCoy’s normal stomping ground. Knew it a bit from his beat days. Walking up and down Shettleston Road on a Friday night wasn’t an experience he ever wanted to repeat. Could get wild here. Gangs, pubs on every second corner, gangsters defending their turf. Maybe he was just getting too soft in his old age. This was the Glasgow he started in, should be able to take what it threw at them.

Sixteen years ago today . . .

 Wow, that's a long time to go without a decent Cornish Pastie. 

Edited to add:

Just noticed I'd previously mentioned Cornish Pasties in relation to July 20th years before on the blog. I think I've got a theme going . . . 

Kick-Ass (2010)

 

Who Are Ya?: 92 Football Clubs – and Why You Shouldn’t Support Them by Kevin Day (Bloomsbury Sport 2020)

 

Chelsea

A friend of mine once became convinced his dad was having an affair after many happy years of marriage. There was no logic to this. His dad just wasn’t the type, for a start, and he was never an energetic man, but there was no shaking my mate and he went full on, with private detectives, the lot. His dad wasn’t having an affair but did see a psychiatrist because of an increasing paranoia that he was being followed.

I now know how my mate felt, because I’m beginning to suspect that my dad may, for years, have been a secret Chelsea fan. As you’ll discover, I don’t support Palace because of him, he supports them because of me. Actually, when I was a very young kid he was never that interested in football, although he quite liked QPR (which is still a fairly accurate description of a lot of QPR fans now).

He definitely wants Palace to win. One of my greatest pleasures in life is phoning him from Selhurst to tell him we’ve just won; and if we haven’t won, he will sigh and say what he always says: ‘We just can’t score a bloody goal.’ He said that after I’d told him we’d just drawn 3-3 with Liverpool.

But there are just these little signs. If we’re playing Chelsea he will say ‘let’s hope it’s a draw’, but not in a way that suggests a draw would be a good result. If Palace are on telly he will look up from his Daily Mirror if he thinks something is happening, but when he watches Chelsea he kicks every ball.

I can’t get a private detective to follow him because he lives with me, but I need to do something to reassure myself he’s still a Palace fan. I don’t want to have to kick him out. A few days ago, I was in the kitchen cooking and listening to football on the radio, when he came positively galloping in from the front room to tell me Chelsea had scored. I said, ‘I know Dad, I heard it, I’m delighted for you.’ That led to two discussions: one about whether I was being sarcastic (yep) and then one about how come I heard it on the radio before he saw it on the telly and whether there was enough of a gap to put a bet on.

I genuinely worry about how enthusiastic he is for a team from an area that he has always dismissed as posh. And the area may be posh, Dad, but that is not a word you would ever have associated with the football club when I was growing up. Even now, awash with Russian billions though they are, there are still enough old-school ‘Chels’ fans to remind me of what a thoroughly well-planned exercise a trip to Stamford Bridge had to be back in the day.

About a Boy (2002)

 

Slim Jim Baxter: The Definitive Biography by Ken Gallacher (Virgin Books 2002)

 

The day following Jim Baxter's death a Scottish Cup semi-final took place at the new-look Hampden Park, now known more formally as the National Stadium, where Celtic were meeting Dundee United. At the Celtic end of the ground a banner had been draped from the stand by the Parkhead fans as they remembered, with respect, their old tormentor. It read 'Slim Jim. Simply The Best’ as the supporters even went out of their way to acknowledge the unofficial Ibrox anthem. It was a straightforward, sincere and moving message and one that Baxter — who, of course, had had little time for the sectarian divides in his adopted city of Glasgow — would have appreciated. The tribute at the semi-final, which Celtic won 3-1 on their way to a domestic 'treble', was a public recognition of his standing on that issue and an indication that his Old Firm rivals respected and honoured his views

It was also a genuine salute to one of the greatest footballers the country had produced. He was, after all, a man whose skills crossed all boundaries and whose talents were savoured by soccer connoisseurs around the world He may never have lost that distinctive singsong Fife accent even though he had been away from the coalfields which spawned him for more than forty years, but the language he spoke on the football field needed no translation.

His tragic death at the age of 61 came after years of illness and followed a shorter spell of less than three months' suffering after he had been warned by doctors that he had only a little time left to live. As a footballer his career had been one of near-constant controversy, and that was something that dogged him even when he had long stopped playing and had had an earlier brush with death seven years before.

Deadlock (1970)

 

Midnight Run (1988)

 

Jack Reacher (2012)

 

Ten Men Won The League by Stephen Murray ( CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2014)

 

INTRODUCTION

This book details the events of one of the most incredible seasons in the history of Celtic Football Club, the 1978-79 Premier Division campaign. During the summer of 1978, Celtic appointed their fifth manager, Lisbon Lion captain, Billy McNeill. The winter of 1978-79 brought extreme arctic conditions, which prevented the team from playing a league game for ten long weeks. No one was to realise it at the time, but the enforced winter break would be a major factor in Celtic's quest to win the Scottish Premier Division title.

It was a season where the league title was decided in the final game, when Celtic faced their oldest and greatest rivals, Rangers. In a classic winner takes all scenario, the drama unfolded. A victory for either team would have given them the League Championship and these two great clubs have seldom met in such dramatic fashion.

On Monday 21st May 1979, the two teams met to decide the title. Against all the odds, with Celtic reduced to ten men, 0-1 down, and only twenty five minutes remaining, they stormed back to win 4-2. This victory gave Celtic the league title, in a game which will never be forgotten. Tales of that legendary game have been proudly passed from father to son, and it is reckoned by many to be the most incredible Old Firm game ever played.

One observer was moved to describe it as, ‘the closest I ever came to a religious experience’, but frustratingly, a strike by television cameramen ensured that no quality footage was recorded for posterity. All that remains is some grainy old black and white film, produced by the amateur volunteers of the Celtic Film Club, and Celtic fans remain ever grateful for their efforts.

In addition to that pivotal match, this book also covers the other dramatic events of the season.

Afternoon Delight (2013)

 

Unexpected . . .

Loxley Robins

• Absolutely beautiful to look at.
• (For me) absolutely horrible to throw. Too smooth. I need a knurled barrel.
• All the more surprising to hit a 180 with them. Never again.

48/50