Archive
Gagging
This reads like a journo desperate to come up with a knocking line, only to realise it ain’t there.
Balance
I know some good people in California and I’m afraid I upset them by posting stuff that’s critical of their President. They voted for lower taxes and a change in the Washington culture and that’s what they’re getting. They’re concerned about immigration too, and I can understand that. They point out that human trafficking is an issue and I have no trouble accepting that. However that makes the people being trafficked victims too, and their situation is not helped by having their families torn apart.
If the administration ever had need of a single clear calm voice, it is now. I am sharing the following because it demonstrates that need.
Some of the things that Trump is doing, he was voted in to do. But in his constant attacks on any sentient journalist who disagrees with him, and by the multiplicity of voices he is allowing to defend his policies, any way they like, he is creating one of the greatest communications fuck-ups of all time.
— Read on m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5b27e1f6e4b056b2263cb3de
Hogwarts
As we stumble towards the Sortida from the European Union, an era-changing event which will take place under the supervision of a minority government that is itself significantly split on the issue and under attack from so-called democrats who choose to ignore or try to circumvent a clear majority vote, (among these I include the newly emboldened David Miliband, a man who lacked the guts to run against Gordon Brown, then pissed off to New York in a huff when his kid brother frustrated his own assumed succession) I am struck by a non-presence, a great awkward gas cloud floating around hoping that once the carnage is over it can coalesce and become a star once more.
How about that for bullshit? It’s appropriate though, for I am talking about David Cameron. Two years ago, when the electorate told him to his face that he isn’t nearly as clever as he thought, he dragged his serene and lovely wife out of Downing Street and ran the fuck away from the mess he had created, giving a very fair impression of a snivelling coward. And he’s barely been seen since. Okay, if you’re a regular attender on the grand a plate dinner circuit you may have seen him, but as far as the rest of us are concerned he has nicked Harry Potter’s Cloak of Invisibility and slytherined back to wizarding school to resit his finals.
Seriously, where the hell is he? Having made the mess by his careless concession of a referendum why isn’t he front and centre in dealing with the aftermath rather than the hopeless, sorry, hapless David Davis, under the beady eye of Professor MacGonnagall herself, who is now recognised as the worst of a bad lot?
Thinking back two years, to the day it all came down and I woke to discover to my great surprise that for once in my life I had backed the winner, I believe something firmly now that took a while to dawn on me. David Cameron’s behaviour then, in fleeing from the consequences of his action, and his subsequent silence, makes Neville Chamberlain look like Genghis fucking Khan.
Ambience
Dined at an old L’Escala favourite last night, for the second time this month. La Lluna changed hands recently but happily the new operators have maintained the style and feel of the place.
The menu has evolved; it’s adventurous and top quality. The focus is on food first, but the drinks are varied and good value too.
As for the welcome it couldn’t be friendlier. It’s slightly hidden away, but well worth seeking out.
Speedy
This place is called L’Antiquary, on Platja Riells. At the beginning of May it was a tumbledown shell, now it’s brand new and open for pizza business. Impressive.
H
Been saying it for decades to the few who would listen. An amazing number of tight games are decided very late on by a header at the back post.
My English wife and I had the pleasure of watching the game tonight with Eddie and June, who are as Scottish as me but who have lived most of their days in Engerland, all four of us cheering at the end. Yes, me too, but it won’t become a habit.
Fanning the flames
I wish I could summon up more interest in the World Cup. It’s tough being Scottish.
But my problems aren’t only with the inadequacy of a national side that couldn’t kick doors at Hallowe’en. It’s the narrowness of our vision as expressed by our written media that I find just as depressing. They focus on two clubs and little else is caught in their peripheral vision.
For example, this morning in the Herald, my newspaper of choice since The Quisling was banned from all my devices, there is a bylined piece in which the writer bemoans the ‘abject failures’ of Rangers in ‘slumping’ to third place in the Premiership or whatever the hell they call it. There are nine teams in that league who were envious of Rangers’ achievement. Chris Jack’s words are as dismissive to them as they are offensive to Aberdeen given the implication that their second place was achieved more by default than quality.
We are so narrow in our thinking that our national game has disappeared up its own fundament and unless our media refocuses and sees beyond the blue and the green, it won’t re-emerge.
This too: for generations we in Scotland have fought a losing battle against sectarianism. The attitudes expressed in this morning’s article throw more petrol on its flames.
Erosion?
Is it my imagination or has the beach in front of the Hostal Ampurias got smaller? An east wind with big waves and there might not be much left.
Long listed
Without debating this case, if the Review is correct in saying that the Crown Office is dodging its legal obligations for up to four years, to take the heat off the Scottish Justice Department, that’s scandalous. Queen Nicola needs to act.
Scottish Review: Kenneth Roy
— Read on www.scottishreview.net/KennethRoy432a.html
Charmer
Gabriel
Strap yourselves in, I am about to go off on one.
Last week I placed a significant order with an outfit called Naked Wines to be delivered to my daughter. Yesterday I received an over-enthusiastic email from Eamon, ‘wine guy’, telling me to get the glasses out because ‘Woohoo!’ Naked’s courier, Yodel, had advised them that my wine had been delivered at 15:07. It had been left ‘in a safe place’.
At 15:08, my daughter arrived home. No delivery card had been left, nada, and no sign of her birthday present. Whatever place the driver chose (the back of the house, he was told) it couldn’t have been safer, for the box is untraceable. (If there’s champagne in it and my kid can’t find it, trust me it is.)
I got on to the Yodel no-help chat line and was told by an idiot by the name of Charlton that he couldn’t talk to me as I wasn’t the consignee. I told him as loudly as you can in a line of type that I was his fucking customer, but he’d cut me off by that time.
Next I called the Naked Wines Customer Happiness Team (!) but they had buggered off home for the weekend. Yes, an online business that works half the hours of your average convenience store.
Finally my daughter managed to get through to a different idiot on the Yodel comedy line. He must have been real for he was too stupid to be a computer. He told her that she was being treated as a priority and that they would interview the driver to find out what had happened… wait for it … within 48 hours.
I am past the angry stage now. All I can do is laugh, tell the world about it and make sure I never have anything to do with any of these cowboys, ever again.
By the way, I am what is known within Naked Wines as an Angel. That means that I sub them £20 a month. This together with everyone else’s £20 goes, we the heavenly choir are told, towards supporting independent wine growers. Obviously it really goes into a big pot that gives Naked the buying power to do sweet deals then offer us Angels special ‘Angel discounts’ based on inflated list prices. It took me about a month to figure out what was going on (I’m slow) but I stayed with it anyway, to give it a trial.
I happen to know an independent wine producer. I saw her last month at a wine fair and asked if she thought I was being ripped off. She gave it some thought, maybe two seconds, and then said ‘yes’.
Even before yesterday’s ongoing debacle I had decided to hang up my wings once I had flattened my balance. Instead my £20 a month, and maybe a bit more, will go into a pot, and I’ll buy directly from my friend’s domaine, and from some of the small bodegas in Empordà.
That way I’ll be even more of an angel, Eamon ‘Wine guy’, and his pals can send ‘Woohoo!’ Emails (they actually do that) to someone else, and I really will be helping small producers rather that feeding a dodgy business plan.
King
Every so often there’s one that makes me say ‘Yes!’, and I’m not talking about Dame Emma. Long overdue.
Quintin Jardine's blog 