The Time Horse (Faux) Reviews

 The (faux) reviews keep on riding into town, hitching their horses to the rail, entering the saloon through the batwing doors to order another copy at the bar...

“I dismiss all errant reviewers! I think this is one of those books where you could start anywhere depending on your mood. I mean, how would one categorize the book’s genre? What kind of book does a person like to read? We’ll, there will be something in The Time Horse that will appeal to that person, and spur them on to read the rest of it. I like all of it. Great cover design. Great contents. A galloping good read!” Alfred E. Neuman

“The Big Green Van (in the A Time for Trotting chapter) reads like a Grimms’ Fairy Tale. A tale of captured claustrophobic kids being taken on an unknown journey, only without the trail of breadcrumbs. Loved it!” Hansel & Gretel

“Loving this wee book. Like a pint in a pub where you’re not a local, I can’t put it doon (for fear of some eejit stealing it). The book’s cover has hardly any beer stains on it. Its lavvies are clean, and supplied with an abundance of toilet paper (maybe because they’re still using Izal). Empties collected, ashtrays emptied, and sleeping patrons told to wake up on a regular basis. I Partickularly loved the Running, Shoes, & Beer piece (found in the A Time for Cantering chapter). So touched and inspired was I that I began to sing the following line from the book on the way home from the pub, “They asked me how I knew / It wis Wummin’s Shoe / Ah of coorse replied / Unlike foreign beers ye buy / This wan’s fae Milngavie.” I was lifted and I’m now enjoying finishing the book on my overnight stay at the Hillhead polis station.” The Pub Spy

“A horse a horse my kingdom for The Time Horse! Shall I compare this book to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. And did ever the golden nightingale sing so sweet a song as Glasgow Dawn?

‘Were they not great

those hours we spent

up in your Byres Road flat

discussing through the night

over a glass or two of wine

our childhood in Canada

the condition of Scotland

the meaning of life

till we noticed 

the Glasgow dawn

till we heard 

the sweet song

of the birds’

If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? Till we shuffle off this mortal coil there but remains only one Book greater than The Time Horse: Life, Laughs, Lows, & Laughter.” William Shakespeare

“Aye, yer chapter ca’d A Time for Cantering minded me o Tam’s Meg: ‘This truth fand honest Tam o’ Shanter / As he frae Ayr ae night did canter.’ I cannae help mysel. I just burst intil verse!

Aye, fair minds me o Tam gangin hame, le’in his drouthy cronies by the ingle. Maistly yon bit where Stuart and Neil are bletherin aboot yon nappy that maks ye unco happy, aye, selling ale forby: ‘Stuart McKinlay: Exemplary marketing. We could trial it with a Moody Blue sort of wistful double-vision hame-fae-the-pub crooner: Oh, Wummin’s Shoe / Tell me who Ah’m talkin’ to / Yoor like night an’ day / Annit’s hard tae shay / Which wan is yous...’

Aye, an this ploughman poet had tears gether in baith een upon reading the poem ca’d HORSE: This particular day. / This patient horse. / Uplifting my son. / My heavy heart. / Donkey me / with shouldered cross. / Ploughing our furrow / through time and space.’

Aye, a richt braw book is The Time Horse.” Robert Burns