Swearing
You may not have noticed but in this twenty one year old blog, written swear words are as rare as hens' teeth. I don't like gratuitous swearing. It jars my sensibilities and it rather irks me when I come across unnecessary swear words in other people's blogs . It's the same with fiction and film, I feel uncomfortable with swearing that is clearly there for sensational effect and/or does not seem in tune with the context. It makes me bristle. But I am not stupid. I know that many people do swear. It's part of their natural vocabulary, an element of who they are. And I have to admit that when angry, frustrated or self-flagellating in the privacy of my own home, swear words will often boil out of me like steam from hot water. I can curse with the best of them. And with all of this in mind, I have just finished reading a novel by the Glaswegian author, James Kelman. It won The Booker Prize in 1994 and its title is "How Late It Was, How Late". It has sometime...