Blogging as Spectacle

I am a football fan. To be more specific I support Hibs. It is not easy being a Hibs fan at the best of times. At the moment things are far from being the best of times.

Tonight Hibs got turned over by Clyde, no offense to Clyde but they are one step away from being part time fisherman / footballers that you see on the news.

At least when something like this happens at the weekend you can use head out with friends and use the magical properties associated with binge drinking to eliminate any traces of bad memories from your consciousness. Sadly tonight is a 'school night', if I turn up at work with a hangover again I will be in trouble.

I've just managed to get hold of the new Irvine Welsh book Crime.

I had never read anything of his up until last year. Last summer I managed to get through all his published novels and collections of short stories.

I grew up in Leith, where most of his books are set, we follow the same football team, Hibs, we also seem to share a very similar life.

Reading his books often feels like reading my autobiography, it feels a bit weird at times.

Many of my friends wont read his books, they are not to happy with how he portrays where we grew up. He certainly divides opinion among folk in Edinburgh.

If you grew up or live in Leith or north Edinburgh lots of the characters in his book are recognisable. Then again Grand Theft Auto was created in the same part of the world and if you pay attention while playing the game you will notice lots of the characters are based on real life Edinburgh folk.