Normally I don’t post the text of my website feedback, only my responses, but this one’s an exception:
‘I read a couple of your books last year while I was on holiday, and I was hooked! At present I’m sourcing the rest of them. You are a very talented writer, and I’m very pleased that you chose this as a career. Your books enhance an otherwise boring life of a disabled woman, Thank you.
Lily-Maie‘
I can’t speak for other authors, but sometimes this one has moments of self-doubt, when he asks himself why he doesn’t clear all these people out of his head and get on with the normal life, that his friends enjoy. Then I receive a message like the one above, and I know. Cheers, L-M.
. . . to my fellow members of what my son-in-law christened ‘The ten o’clock gang’. Won’t make it tonight, guys; I’ll be on my second airport run of the day.
I took AJ to the airport this morning, early. At half past eight I was standing in theM&S food hall at the Gyle Centre, list in one hand, basket in the other. The place was bedlam; even at that hour the shelves were emptying as fast as the staff, suits included, could restock them. As for the punters, denizens all of them of the posh end of Edinburgh, most looked ready to kill over the last pack of broccoli florets or baby carrots. If you go there, or anywhere like it, tomorrow, be afraid, be very afraid.
Maybe I am, but I find it curious that England’s notoriously shifty Crown Prosecution Service should announce that the national football captain John Terry is to face criminal charges for alleged racial abuse, the day AFTER the FA . . . a body that is at least the equal of the CPS in shiftiness . . . announced that Liverpool’s Luis Suarez had been found guilty of a similar offence during a game against Manchester United. With the Suarez decision as a background, the CPS would have been under some very hot lights if it had decided that Terry had no case to answer, or even if it had decided that it was a football matter and had kicked it back to the FA. However I can’t help wondering: if Suarez had been acquitted, would JT be facing a date with the magistrates on February 1?
As for the Suarez case itself, I’m all for racism being kicked out of football and everywhere else, and I do not agree that there has been a witch-hunt against the player, but I cannot see that it’s appropriate to set up a court with three judges who are, an English lawyer, an English club chairman and an English football manager (who is already being accused of bias towards Man U) to judge a case involving a Frenchman and a Uruguayan in which the alleged racial abusive words and phrases were uttered in South American Spanish. The process would have been much more solid if at least one of the panel members had been a respected football figure from a South American nation, other than Brazil, where Portuguese is spoken. Ossie Ardiles comes to mind immediately, or Gus Poyet, the Brighton manager, who is Uruguayan himself, with an understanding of the culture in which Suarez grew up. Hopefully this anomaly will be corrected at appeal, so that there are no lingering doubts over the fairness of the finding.
Shall I be cynical again? Although cricket’s ICC set an appalling precedent in judging and banning three Pakistani players before their cases had come before the English court, I don’t anticipate the FA proceeding against Terry before the criminal charge is resolved fully. Therefore, I wonder: what ‘live odds’ would Bet 365 offer against the case going to trial at County Court or wherever and that process, and possibly an appeal, dragging on until at least next August, by which time Euro 2012, in which England are among the favourites, will be over? Not very long, I’d imagine.
Food for thought by Kenneth Roy in today’s Scottish Review.
http://www.scottishreview.net/index.shtml
My wife and I had a similar experience a few years back, having just ‘deplaned’ as they say in the US, from an international flight at Prestwick Airport. With a few other passengers we took the train to Glasgow; our companions on the platform were four youths with attitude, and with a couple of bottles of Buckfast between them. You know the type I mean; if you don’t, hold on to your innocence for as long as you can. Objectionable in word, and potentially in deed. The train arrived after a couple of minutes and we all got on. At the next station, the Buckfast Four got off, on the orders of the conductor, who wasn’t having them necking cheap wine on his train. And quite right too.
What’s this, you ask? QJ joining the Alan Pollock Tendency? No, not at all. There is a world of difference between that of which Ken Roy complains, and which I saw for myself, and that of the young man who was assaulted by the fat bloke with the approval of another train conductor. Rightly or wrongly, that kid thought he had a point to make. Generally those who engage in anti-social behaviour do not, and should be dealt with more robustly by those in authority. If I have a criticism to make of Ken Roy’s bus driver it is that he let those yobs off with a warning.
As I consider this issue, I am reminded of an old Lanarkshire saying, applied to the likes of Peter Manuel. ‘Hangin’s too good for them. It’s a good kick up the arse they need.’
Today I was a little self-indulgent. I dug out a DVD of Bruce and the E Street Band, recorded at Hammersmith Odeon in November 1975, and played it on my 27″ iMac, with the sound through Bose headphones. Was it good? Was it ever.
. . . Alan ‘Big Man’ Pollock, I’ve had a good look at that notorious YouTube video, and I’ve read up on the incident from both sides. The victim of Mr Pollock’s gratuitous assault . . . in my humble, the conductor should be fired for agreeing to his intervention . . . may have shot his mouth off, as young people can do after a glass of ale, but if his explanation is true, and no-one has come forward to call him a liar, he may have grounds for action. As the video demonstrates the conductor wasn’t willing to listen to him, but I hope that the British Transport Police will investigate the incident fully and impartially. In the meantime I know this; if that was my 19-year-old diabetic son who’d come home with a severely battered face, and some fat bully twice his size was taking public credit for doing it, I’d be strongly tempted to find out how big he really is.
I’ve just seen a sports headline on the BBC website. Seems that Andre Ayew, of Marseille and Ghana, has been named ‘BBC African Footballer of the Year’. This took me so much by surprise that I read the whole story.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/16202312.stm
Apparently this is nothing new. The award goes all the way back to 1991, when Andre’s dad, Abede Ayew, was the first winner of the award. Great news for the Ayew family: well done lads. It looks like a very nice little trophy.
Now, can somebody in Broadcasting House, or Manchester, or wherever the hell the BBC is based these days, please explain to me why it is doing this, and also what is in it for me, and all my fellow Broadcasting Tax payers? There has to be a cost in this exercise; given the fact that for the last few years we’ve heard nothing but whining from Mark Thompson and his colleagues about being starved of resources, I would like to know how they can justify it. I do not recall reading anything lately about the BBC British Footballer of the Year; all our sports are bundled together into the increasingly embarrassing SPoTY awards with one trophy going to the public’s flavour of the year, or to any member of the Royal Family who’s ridden a horse in competition without falling off. So I repeat, what’s it all about? I’m sure that African football, which is ridiculously over-favoured by FIFA, would continue to thrive if the BBC decided to divert whatever resources it spends on this bauble to a deserving cause within the nation that funds its ridiculous extravagances.
How about the BBC Alan Pollock Award for Alternative Dispute Resolution? That would go down a treat.
I’ve just read the reports of the first day of the racism hearing against Luis Suarez of Liverpool FC, the allegations having been brought by Patrice Evra of Manchester United. We’ll have to see how it maps out, but if it’s true, as has been alleged, that in the same match, Evra said to the referee ‘You’re only booking me because I’m black,’ I find myself wondering why he isn’t on a similar charge himself.
A comment on one of my recent posts has led me to consider the question of the national anthem of a future Scotland, cut free of the Westminster parliament. When sport embraced ‘Flower of Scotland’ it did so because we were all sick and tired of ‘Scotland the Brave’, and also because it’s a damn good song, especially the bit about ‘Proud Edward’s army’. The new Scotland, though, as a nation might want to look a little further beyond its borders, so the lyric would probably not be appropriate.
So, here and now, let me initiate the second independence debate, on our choice of national tune. To kick things off I propose the obvious, that we adopt Dougie MacLean’s ‘Caledonia‘. It’s a damn nice melody, easy to sing, and the sentiments do the job perfectly. We might leave out the verse about kissing the ladies and leaving them crying, but otherwise, that’s the one for me. Any other suggestions? (By the way, Dougie has to sing it at the independence ceremony, but it would be nice if he could duet with Frankie Miller.)
