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There’s been a really nasty outbreak of everything-ism over the Coronavirus and people’s reactions to it. A tweet from the comedy programme Have I Got News For You today was a good example: it captioned a photo of people queuing too closely outside ASDA as “natural selection in action”. The replies included lots of comments… [more]
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A fascinating piece in Mother Jones by historian Patrick Wyman. The fall of an empire—the end of a polity, a socioeconomic order, a dominant culture, or the intertwined whole—looks more like a cascading series of minor, individually unimportant failures than a dramatic ending that appears out of the blue. Carts full of olive oil failing… [more]
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Alex Andreou, writing for Politics.co.uk: I fully support Peter Hitchens and Brendan O’Neill’s inalienable right to be infected with a deadly virus. If they existed in a vacuum, I might buy myself one of those big foam fingers and cheer them on, as they march to the extinction that is the destiny of every dinosaur.… [more]
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Just because it’s the end of the world doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of stuff to laugh at. This, from the Mirror, had me in tears. Man had sex with a dolphin called Dolly for a year – and claimed she seduced him Almost every paragraph has a killer line, such as: “At first I… [more]
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BBC Teach has thousands of free videos, mapped to the curriculum, for primary and secondary schools. It’s a fantastic resource for parents that also offers advice to those of us suddenly and unexpectedly running a school in our homes. [more]
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Audible, the Amazon-owned ebook service, is offering free audio stories for children for as long as the schools are closed. It’s a pretty good selection, ranging from classics such as Winnie the Pooh and White Fang to more contemporary Audible originals. I think it’ll come in handy on a rainy day. [more]
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This is my bag. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My bag is an Animal, canvas and khaki. It was a present from my daughter nearly three years ago, a happy gift during a sad time. Since then my bag and I have been inseparable. It has felt my nervous hands… [more]
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(Update: the dolphin photos were fake news: the images are from Sardinia where our marine mammal pals are regularly spotted. But the sentiment still stands) I’ve given up trying to predict the things that make me cry these days. The latest ones were images from Italy showing the now-clear water teeming with fish and even… [more]
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Earlier this week the BBC explained what it’s going to do to help during the Coronavirus crisis. The short version: a lot. Here’s just one part of it, the education section: In the event that schools are shut down, and subject to further work and discussions with the Department for Education, devolved administrations and schools,… [more]
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There are lots of good causes hoping for your attention and your cash right now, and I’d like to mention one that’s close to my heart: The Ice Box arts and music centre in Glasgow. It’s struggling and without financial help it may not be able to re-open its doors. They’re raising money here. The… [more]
Read me in books
My debut memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was a Scotsman book of the year and Damian Barr’s Literary Salon book of the week, and it was shortlisted for the 2023 British Book Awards book of the year in the Discover category.
My latest book, Small Town Joy, is a celebration of queer influences on and queer artists in Scots music and is out now.
I’m also a contributor to the excellent anthology Fierce Salvage, which is also out now.
