Three days to Christmas and I’ve as much notion of shopping as fly in the air. Now, where does that come from? Daft, I’d love to fly in the air. Up, up and away from Pollok shopping centre and bloody Christmas. “Scuse me” “Scuse me”. Aw to hell with it, you’re forced to shove your way through. Nobody holds the door, nobody smiles. I can’t stop smiling. Know why? Because I wrote my own Christmas cards for the first time in my life. Because I passed exams. Me, Marie Carney. Fifty years of age and a granny! Left school at sixteen with bugger all. I’ll get a certificate in the post: an SVQ in Communications. Next I’ll pass my theory test and get my driving licence, then my Elderly Care qualification and a better job. I’ll be able to go out and look after old folk in their own houses, instead of working shifts in the home, listening to them howling and screeching all night.

God it’s roasting in here. I’ve ended up with a coat to carry, as well as everythin else. Every other year, I’ve aw this done by now. What have I to get? Scooters for Kyle and Carrick, a Little Betty Kitchen for wee Marcie, perfume for our Lorraine, hair straighteners for Emma, Boss aftershave for Jason and whisky for Drew. What kind was it again? Mclean? No...McCallan and God alone knows what for my mother. And all the food and drink for Christmas. I’ll be here all day, and it’ll be a taxi home’ cost a fortune. Just wait till I’m driving, they’ll not see me for stoor. I used to love this place but I hate it now. Look at them all, faces tripping them. And there’s not a wean in that Santa queue that looks excited. Boy, was I excited when I dropped those cards in the post box. I’d always got Alex to do them before; I was too ashamed, because my writing wasn’t pretty and I couldn’t spell. But see that Clare, the lassie that taught the course? She said I could do anything I put my mind to. And she was right. I can even spell diarrhoea. You only have to remember; it’s got two rs and a hoe in it.

Why have the Christmas songs never changed since bloody nineteen canteen? Shaking sodding Stevens and Slade. And if another bloody elf comes anywhere near me there’ll be an arse kicking party ootside the gadget shop. This place is getting right on my nerves, ruining my good mood. I’ve had it up to here. I know what I’m going to do. myself a CD of Christmas Carols. Then I’ll get the bus home, pour myself a wee celebration drink put my CD on and order all the messages online from Tesco. I might even try Sainsbury for a wee change. I’ll get the lassies, their men and the weans gift certificates from Amazon and they can pick what they like. Why did I not think of that before? Instead of suffocating in here, sweating like a pig and listening to pish music. I could even get my mother theatre tickets. Now there’s an idea! She can take her pal Betty to see Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. Or I’ll go with her myself, take her for a pre-theatre before and a couple of drinks after. Get one of that lot to take us there and pick us up. Me and ma mammy, living our lives in glorious Technicolor. Ha-ha, they’ll aw think I’m going aff ma heid. I don’t care. I’m not setting foot in Pollok shopping centre ever again. again. For the other certificate I got was my PC Passport.
And the world’s my oxter! So there!
Scuse me.

Scottish Writers' Centre at the CCA

Creative non-fiction writers' workshop with Linda Cracknell -'A fascinating excursion into new material and different forms' 7pm-Thursday18th November 2010

Causeway/Cabhsair Launch

A magazine of Irish-Scottish Writing Thursday 16th December 2010; 7-8.30pm-followed by our MIDWINTER CELEBRATION till late!

Scottish Writers' Centre News

Competition for short stories and poetry inspired by a song lyric

Competition - A Showcase for Writing Groups

The Scottish Writers' Centre in collaboration with the Let's Get Lyrical initiative between Glasgow and Edinburgh - UNESCO Cities of Music & Literature - invites submissions of short stories and poetry inspired by a song lyric for the Scottish Writers' Groups Showcase Competition.

The best six submissions will be showcased at Glasgow's Aye Write Festival in March 2011 where writers' winning entries will be read. Winning entries will also be published on The Scottish Writers' Centre website.

Writers' Groups are invited to take part in our competition by including in their schedule a session at which members talk about their favourite song lyrics and why these are important to them. The lyrics can be from any era or style of music. As part of this session, we suggest that facilitators ask members to consider lyric writing's place as poetry. After this, group members are invited to write works of fiction or poetry which refer specifically to lyrics in their title or which feature a character who is grappling with his or her own lyric writing (in musical composition), or which grapple with a situation reflected in a song lyric. To avoid copyright infringement, please don't include the lyrics of published songs in the body of stories or poems.

Facilitators should then choose one single submission in each category as the best in their group and forward these two pieces of writing - By email
or by post to: Scottish Writers' Centre, CCA, 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, G2 3JD

Deadline: 12pm on Thursday 16th December 2010

To find out about your nearest writers' group, ask in your local library or by email

This competition is open to members of Scottish writers' groups.

Submissions must be made through writing group facilitators only.

Writing group facilitators should choose the best submission in each category and send a copy of these to the Scottish Writers' Centre by the closing date, By email
or by post to: Scottish Writers' Centre, CCA, 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, G2 3JD

Submission

Submissions should be inspired by a song lyric. The lyrics of published songs should not appear in the body of the poem or story though lyrics written by a character in the story or poem may be included in the body of the story or poem.

Closing date for receipt of entries - noon on Thursday 16 December 2010

Entries must be original and not previously published or accepted for publication.

Entrants must be aged 16 or over.

Maximum of 3000 words for each story.

Maximum of 40 lines for each poem.

The title is not included in the word count or line count.

There is no fee for entering this competition. Details of judges and prizes will be announced via the Scottish Writers' Centre website before the closing date.

The work of six winners will be showcased at the Aye Write Festival in Glasgow on 5 March 2011 and posted on the Scottish Writers' Centre website for a minimum of six months.

Entries must be in English or Scots, typed, single sided, with pages numbered and securely fastened with a staple. Each entry must be on a new sheet. We hope to be able to invite entries in Gaelic at a future date.

Short stories should be typed in double spacing and the word count should appear in brackets after the title on the first page. Poetry is preferred in single line spacing. Version to print
More information

(c) Copyright Scottish Writers' Centre. The Scottish Writers' Centre is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, number SC040823. scottishwriterscentre.org.uk/

I know I've said it before, but doesn't time fly! It doesn't seem like a year since I sat with my old friend Larry Butler, listening to Esther Wolfson and Sara Maitland in the Mitchell library. I didn't bump into Larry this year but I did take in some great events with other very good friends. I went to Willy Maley on Irvine Welsh on the Sunday with Pat Byrne. Billed as 'one of Scotland's leading literary commentators' Willy Maley was to provide an 'entertaining introduction' to Welsh. I'm sad to say that I didn't find the event entertaining at all. The talk resembled an academic lecture more than a book festival event. Willy Maley read from written notes, with repeated emphasis on what I assumed were bullet points. His language too, was that of the lecture theatre with references to Derrida and Kierkegaard, and terms like strident critique and specificity. He also read long passages from what, by now, had become the texts. When comparing James Kelman with Welsh, Kelman's 'individualism' became the 'enemy of socialism'. Long passages from Welsh's books were read aloud and I found the whole tone and timbre of the talk tedious in some parts and confusing in others. However, perhaps that was just me. I'm sure not everyone would agree.

Later that afternoon, I went with my friend Donal McLaughlin to hear Andrew Greig discuss and read from his new memoir 'At The Loch Of The Green Corrie'. Part memoir, part adventure and part tribute to the late Norman McCaig. Shortly before his death McCaig had asked Greig to find and fish for him at his favourite place, the Loch of the Green Corrie in the north west highlands. Andrew Greig told us of his first meeting with McCaig When he was still at school, he sent the great poet some of his poems and in return received an invitation to visit. McCaig gently told "these poems are quite like mine. Could you not do some of your own?" The packed audience listened as Andrew read passages from the book and told wryly humorous tales, including the one about travelling in the prawn lorry to London with his band mate to see a music producer and ending up as John Martin's support act. I enjoyed every minute of this event and couldn't wait to read the book. But it looks like I'll have to. It isn't out until April 1st. There were thirty advance copies on sale after the event but as the queue for signed copies snaked down a long corridor and round a couple of corners we knew we hadn't a hope of getting one. I had coffee with Chris Dolan a couple of days later and he had a revue copy. Could I get it off him? Decided that mugging him in the Atrium cafe maybe wasn't a good idea, so roll on April 1st.

I went along on my own for more memoirs on Thursday at the Granta Biography Panel with Janice Galloway, Rupert Thomson and William Fiennes, chaired by Stuart Kelly. I'd already read and enjoyed Janice Galloway's This Is Not About Me and William Fiennes The Music Room. Rupert Thomson read a beautifully moving extract from his This Party's Got To Stop which made me long to read it too. Speaking of their very different tales of life in a damp Saltcoats flat, a moated castle and a middle-class Eastbourne home, the three writers, with a great deal of humour, illuminated, in Galloway's words 'the childhood you get' no matter who you are. Rupert Thomson spoke of biography as a detective story, a digging for his past and also a love letter to his estranged brother; Janice Galloway of breaking down categories and William Fiennes spoke of squirming at the very term me-moir. All three read well and handled questions sensitively and I thought this was a truly wonderful event.

Maggie nae mates was on her own again on Saturday for Susie Orbach, but only because pat Byrne wasn't well, (Hope you're feeling better, Pat) Orbach's Fat Is A Feminist Issue, which she refers to as FIFI, was published in 1978 and became known as a pioneering work of feminist debate. Her latest, Bodies, seems likely to be the same. Orbach, author and psychotherapist was interviewed by Ann Johnston, whose almost bullying tone I found a bit off-putting. Orbach didn't seem to have the same problem, though. She eloquently spoke of the image of the body in a wide range of cultures, where it has become who we are, as opposed to how we look. Covering everything from the pressure on new mothers to return to pre pregnancy size soon after giving birth, to the food and diet industries, cosmetic surgery and the sexualisation of little girls, she was interesting, stimulating and entertaining throughout. She answered questions (some sensitive) with compassion as well as helpful information and was not afraid of using her own experiences as woman, daughter and mother. I'm sure we all left the main hall walking a little taller and straighter at the end.

I hung around in the Herald cafe till it was time for my next event, bumping into (literally) Germaine Greer on the way. Shame the tickets for her were sold out. I even hung around waiting for cancelations, but there were none to be had. However, she didn't seem to have changed at all since I last saw her in 1991. I went along to What Book Changed Your Life? which stemmed from a Scottish Book Trust campaign that asked people throughout Scotland that very question. Instead of the entire population we had Alan Bissett on Clive Barker's Weaveworld, a fantasy novel he read at the age of fourteen, in which a young boy falls through a carpet into another world. Ewan Morrison's choice was Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, read in youth and retrieved in his twenties in New York, and Sara Sheridan found T C Boyle's Water Music to be just the kind of historical fiction she wanted to write, All three were funny and interesting on their own choices and on Book Trust project.

So that was it, over for another year. I missed quite a few events I'd maybe have liked, and went to one I maybe should've given a miss but all in all I had a great time. Most of the books featured at the festival were available in the lending library, so I took a big bag with me. I had coffee with Pat, Donal and poet Brian Wittingham, hugged Alan Bisset and bumped into Germaine Greer. Did I mention that? I might even review some of the books next time.