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By Pat Kane. First published on DECEMBER 30TH, 2017
WHAT’S coming in 2018? After 2017’s experience – history in the blender, jammed at 11 – it may be best to stick to what’s officially in the calendar. Yet even on the big safe dates, this age of extremes doesn’t stop.
By Pat Kane. First published on DECEMBER 23RD, 2017
I FELL out of love with the circus early, and I remember the moment almost exactly. In the 1970s, our family – like thousands of others – made an annual winter trail from Coatbridge to the Kelvin Hall Carnival in Glasgow.
On one side of the massive space, all the neon-lit, screaming, hydraulic fun of the fair. Hit tunes, lurid graphics, space rockets spinning around: 70s modernity all over the place. On the other side, the circus. In my memory, it was the full affair: there were acrobats, clowns, jugglers, “wild” animals and their trainers.
Continue reading "PK column in The National: What does the circus say about humans and animals?" »
By Pat Kane. First published on DECEMBER 16TH, 2017
GETTING pelters on Twitter can be a sign that, as a critic, you’ve at least touched a nerve. But after my tweet that the new Paddington 2 movie was “ideologically weird”, I felt more like a brain surgeon carving his initials onto the collective neo-cortex. Abusive, were they? Heavens, I’m still clutching my pearls.
By Pat Kane. First published on DECEMBER 9TH, 2017
WHAT are the problems to which basic income is a solution? In Scotland, we’re at the start of an answer to that question, as the Scottish Government announces financial support for feasibility studies in four council areas – Fife, Edinburgh, Glasgow and North Ayrshire.
Will we be getting visits from supermoguls like Richard Branson, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, who have recently spoken up in favour of the policy? I’m sure they’ll be welcomed to the Kingdom of Fife – but I’m not sure they’d be here for the same reason.
By Pat Kane. First published on DECEMBER 2ND, 2017
THIS Sunday, get yourself to a local hill, set your smartphones for 3.47pm precisely, then hang around for about 45 minutes. With any luck (and a cloudless sky), the moon will rise into view – 14 per cent bigger, 30 per cent brighter and 16,139 miles closer than the average.
We’ve taken to calling this – after the American usage – the “supermoon”. Or you could follow the words of the novelist Marcel Proust: “The ancient unalterable splendour of a Moon, cruelly and mysteriously serene.” Either way, there it will be, unnervingly large in your skies, brushing the very tops of the electrical pylons.