Archive
Let-down
Just when we thought it was safe to clean the garden paving, the pressure washer goes silent on us. It’s all a lot of Bosch really!
Prophetic
By the way, on July 1, I posted the following:
‘One small distraction from the work routine. Eileen and I are bidden to the Royal Garden Party in the Palace of Holyroodhouse, tomorrow, 4pm to 6pm. It’s bound to rain.’
I was right; it did, in great big constant lumps. Her Majesty was there but like most of the 3,000, we couldn’t see her for the forest of umbrellas. However I did bump into an old colleague, Mr Sandy Sutherland. Good to see you, chum. How has ageing managed to pass you by?
QJ in the lion’s den
At the weekend I was a guest at a private function in England, and found myself at a table with some very nice people, none of whom I’d ever met before. It seems that you can’t be Scottish in England just now without the referendum question coming up. My mind has been made up since I was 17 years old, and I never apologise for my stance. Yet I was surprised to realise, if my lunch companions were an accurate reflection of the broader view down south, as I believe they are, that there is a strong feeling of disquiet about the 2014 vote, and about the fact that it’s happening at all. I’m not sure what’s behind it. They know nothing of our history or the issues, so why the negativity? Is it resentment that we should even consider leaving Westminster and resuming the full nation status that we had before the Union of the Parliaments in 1707, (one highly intelligent professional man on Saturday had never heard of that event) or is it fear of the consequences for England? One thing it is not based on, and that is any love of the Scots. One of my companions remarked . . . pleasantly I must say . . . ‘If they asked the English to vote on it we’d all say Yes’, and I don’t doubt that is the truth . . . one that will have been underlined, I suspect, by Alex Salmond waving the Saltire in the Royal Box at Wimbledon yesterday.
I was asked how I thought the referendum will turn out. I said I believe that if it was held tomorrow there would be a No vote, but that next year, I expect the position to have changed.
My resolve hasn’t been weakened by Saturday’s civilised discussion; in fact it has been strengthened. As I’m coming to see it, the majority would probably be happy to kick us out of the Union, but they don’t want us to take that decision for ourselves. I believe that the more that English sentiment is known the stronger the Yes camp will become.
The Devonport
On Friday I went back thirty years in time. That’s how long it is since I last visited a hotel called the Devonport, in an appropriately-named hamlet called Middleton One Row, just outside Darlington. Needing an overnight stop in that area, and having had some good times there, I booked us in, wondering how much it woud have changed over the years. The answer turned out to be ‘very little’. It’s under different management, but it remains a comfortable, welcoming place, with an excellent kitchen, a well-stocked bar, and a host who can’t do enough to make his clients feel at home.
Thanks, Anthony.
Quote of the day
I have made this letter longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.
Blaise Pascal
He should have been a copy editor; maybe he was. Have to say, I much prefer his descendant, Lorraine.
Your Majesty
One small distraction from the work routine. Eileen and I are bidden to the Royal Garden Party in the Palace of Holyroodhouse, tomorrow, 4pm to 6pm. It’s bound to rain.
Tea-break’s over, back on your heads.
Okay, that’s it. Birthdays over, the summer is crap so I might as well get back to work.
Big girl
That’s it, our Mia is now officially into her fourth year, and sadly, (but not for Frida who wore herself out organising it) there won’t be another party until next year. I had no idea what a piñata was until yesterday; this is one with our girl doing her best to burst it and release the sweets inside. Full marks to La Zoe, who saw that one little girl had missed out in the scramble that followed, and gave her one of hers.
Piss off, The Donald
Judge not
First that appalling Portia person from the CPS, now BBC News, which this morning referred to ‘The teacher, Jeremy Forrest’, as if it was a badge of shame. Mr Forrest is no longer a teacher, he is a prisoner, a guest of the Mountbatten-Windsor Hotel Group. Mr Forrest will never be a teacher again. So please, folks, stop using his former profession as a description.
Digressing slightly, I heard this morning that police are investigating whether he coached his victim, encouraging her to back up his defence during her testimony. I don’t see much point, since the judge who sentenced him pretty much convicted him in advance of any proof in his sentencing remarks, thereby knocking firmly on the head any possibility of a fair trial. Another stupid lawyer.
Quote of the day
‘The scariest moment is always just before you start.’
Stephen King
It’s comforting to know that I’m not the only one who feels that way.
Tres
Our Mia is three today. It seems like only yesterday . . .
Portia
I have nothing but scorn for Mr Jeremy Forrest, who will go down, I trust, for a few years for conducting an illicit, and adulterous, relationship with a fifteen year old pupil, and for absconding with her to France. However I have nothing but contempt for Ms Portia Ragnauth, of the Crown Prosecution Service, a peculiar and often inept English body, which grows more fascist by the day.
Speaking at the conclusion of his trial, the idiotic woman cast a slur on the entire teaching profession, by hanging the sins of one man around its neck, as she seized her fifteen minutes of fame on the courthouse steps after Forrest’s conviction. I was brought up by teachers and in my life I’ve married two of them. I’ve also observed the legal profession during my working life, so I know damn well that for every Jeremy Forrest there is at least one bent lawyer, and probably many more. The teaching profession is manifestly honourable and just as manifestly under-rewarded. The man brought shame and disgrace on himself, and the school where the affair went on undetected has questions to answer, but he is a very rare exception and that should be acknowledged.
And another
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22965155
Oh Rose Marie . . .
Soprano silenced
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22980414
RIP Big Tony.
In defence of golf
I’m on record as saying that I believe Kenneth Roy to be Scotland’s finest campaigning journalist, but even my idols have feet of clay. I am not entirely sure why he chose to found his lead article in yesterday’s Scottish Review on his vision of the evils of the game of golf, but having done so, his sense of balance seems to have deserted him. When he wrote, ‘in golf, the racist jibe goes unpunished. In golf sexism is positively rewarded’, he let himself down, and he insulted millions of people around the globe who play the game, at all levels, without a racist or sexist bone in their body.
I accept that Sergio Garcia’s ‘fried chicken’ remark was atrocious, even though it was made in response to a light-hearted question by a comedian at European pro golf’s annual hair-down dinner, and was made in his second language, English, not his first, Spanish. Sergio seems to have accepted that himself, going by the speed and apparent sincerity of his public apology. If he has been unable to do so privately, that may not be his fault. Sure, the cynics will say that he was protecting his endorsement earnings, but the warmth of his welcome at the subsequent Wentworth tournament indicated that the golfing galleries have more generosity of spirit than any of the people who write about or comment on the sport.
Far from being racist, golf has become a multiracial sport, as a glance at the world rankings will demonstrate. I cannot recollect any racist slur being directed openly at Vijay Singh, Jeev Milkha Singh, Y. E. Yang, Guan Tianlang, Ryo Ishikawa, Simon Khan, K J Choi, Jason Day, or any other male golfer. As for the female game it is so dominated by the Koreans that the thought would never occur. Apart from Garcia’s unfortunate jibe, the only other high-profile accusation of racism that I can recall in recent years was levelled against Steve Williams, Tiger Woods’ former caddy, and that also involved the Tiger. Could it be that neither remark was in anyway racially motivated but instead flowed from the simple fact that neither Williams nor Garcia like the man? Whether that is the case or not, to condemn golf and by implication its devotees as ‘racist’ on the basis of two isolated incidents is quite ridiculous.
As for the tired old saw of the men only Honourable Company . . . I have lived less than half a mile from Muirfield for over forty years and I have never been aware of a queue of potential lady members stretching along Duncur Road. When the first rejected lady decides to picket the place, I may well join her in support, but I am not polishing my shooting stick in anticipation. Kenneth, its policy may be indefensible to you, but surely you can do better than vaguely raking through the bones of the George Pottinger affair, forty years in the past. And if you must, you should do the late Gianni Manca the courtesy of spelling his name correctly.
For the record, I am a member of Gullane Golf Club, Muirfield’s nearest neighbour, which is also men only. Gullane Ladies Golf Club is a separate associate body, with shared clubhouse facilities, and everyone is quite happy with that arrangement. Like it or loathe it, golf is a game most played by men against men and by women against women, therefore it is quite natural that its club structure should have evolved to mirror that.
The HCEG is an easy target at which to aim, but pretty much impossible to hit, for one very simple reason. Its members own the course. If a majority of their wives demanded that an associate club for ladies be set up, and their husbands knew what was good for them, that might be a possible way forward, but I have heard no whisper of support for that concept.
I am not a Muirfield member, and have never wished to join, but if my wife or my daughter did, I would probably lobby on their behalf. But why should they, when they can join Gullane Ladies instead, and be part of a well-structured, open institution where ladies and gentlemen have their own distinct entities, and which is far more typical of the sport than the place along the road?
Pay up
Something momentous happens in L’Escala in mid-June; overnight it becomes very easy to find a space in the town’s car parks. Why? Because that’s the time of year when the parking meters go up and charges come into effect for the summer. It’s also the time when the locals start to leave their cars at home and walk to work, or to the beaches.
A Catalan and his money are not easily parted.
Home at last
Back in Spain, courtesy of Lufthansa via Frankfurt, the first time I have ever set foot on German soil.
A very slick modern airport, but with the most expensive shops I’ve ever seen.
On tour
With Sue and Chris, the enterprising owners of Atkinson-Pryce, Biggar, Scottish Bookseller of the Year.
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