A walk across the Meadows

Get the letters right

2012-01-27T11:44:00.003Z

I'm still enjoying my Kindle, (and Quantum is very good by the way), but I do wish they had taken more trouble over converting the text. All Greek letters seem to have been scanned as images and come out the wrong size. In a book concerning wavelengths (λ) and wave functions (ψ) this is annoying.

In which I join the electronic age

2012-01-12T20:57:00.005Z

I bought a Kindle (model 4) a bit before Christmas, and I'd like to record some impressions before it becomes too normal.

The size and weight are very good. I find it fits in the hand nicely and is comfortable to hold (and how do they get that slightly matt texture on the back?). Getting started was very easy once I got the key for my WiFi hub sorted out. In doing this, I found the on-screen keyboard to be quite hard going, but then you don't buy this to do a lot of typing, do you?

The famous e-ink screen delivers pretty well. I found it easy to read and the font is crisper than I expected. The screen is 800x600, which isn't much these days, but given its scale that is plenty. Since the power consumption of displaying a page is zero (changing page takes some tiny amount of energy) the battery life is really long between charges. I've only just recharged after its initial tankful, and I could have waited for longer.

I do find a tiny awkwardness about using the buttons to change page. Hard to say what is wrong, but I have had a few misfires and the page jumping when I didn't expect it. But a very minor point.

So what have I been reading? Well a couple of free ebooks to start with. My first was The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (and what would he have made of it?). I have now stumped up for some modest purchases and am, for example, 59% through Salt by Mark Kurlansky. It's an interesting read, which I'd recommend. It is also longer than I thought - it's a minor flaw that you can't really tell the length of an ebook, though you do form a rough idea from how quickly the percentage on the progress bar changes. So far, that's the only place that I think I miss the physicality of a book. The other area where the paper version might score is in illustrations. Salt has some, so I've been able to test this out. The Kindle allows you to zoom in on pictures, and flips the picture round if necessary to make the best use of the screen. The results are fair, I'd say. Some pictures have not been scanned at a very high resolution, and any that include a lot of mid-tone look a bit murky, as the screen only runs from light grey to dark grey. But then you don't buy this to look at pictures either.

I also have Quantum still to read, as it was dead cheap on Amazon a few days ago. The pricing does puzzle me somewhat. I reckon publishers are still a bit wary and in some cases seem to be discouraging buyers of e-books by making them a bit more expensive than paper. I think if the pricing is right, they can sell more books (i.e. it's not a zero sum game).

New Year bothy trip

2012-01-04T19:25:00.005Z

Up to about 15 years ago, most of my New Years were spent in a bothy somewhere in the Highlands. This fell away rather recently, what with people having children, moving away to jobs and suchlike. But myself and some friends decided to revisit the bothy experience this year.

We walked in to Cadderlie on Hogmanay. This is a faintly odd walk-in, starting as it does in a quarry, but soon the view looks more like Argyll, with dripping birch and alder woods. We needed the headtorches by the time we arrived to find an empty bothy. Later, two other parties arrived, also from Edinburgh, and took up residence in the other room. We joined them for the bells and some refreshment was had.

On the 1st, we mostly gathered wood for the fire. This was possibly the best day and I took some photos.

Just after taking this I walked down to the shore and saw an otter run into the loch (too fast for the camera, unfortunately). It surfaced some way out and watched me for a while. In other wildlife action, the bothy mice had chewed up a pair of Crocs.

The morning of the 2nd must have been one of the grimmest I have experienced. Mid-morning it started getting darker again, then there was a peal of thunder and it sleeted for a while. The green-grey scene outside was like a definition of the word "bleak". Later, things improved a little and we went for a walk along the loch a bit.

This looks like being the winter of the high winds, after two winters of snow and ice. On the way back, we had snow from Tyndrum to Glen Ogle, then an increasing number of fallen trees, a field full of water at Callander that was emptying over the road, and two lorries on their sides on the road just outside Stirling. This all felt very ominous, but although there had been high winds in Edinburgh too, my flat seemed to be in one piece.

New genre

2011-11-09T19:15:00.004Z

I've just discovered what a supercut is. Try out this quirky history of the line "What are you doing here?" in Dr Who. All sorts of possibilities come to mind. What about all the Doctor's excuses for the Tardis not working? Or all of Servalan's rather scary smiles from Blake's 7?

Non-smart phone

2011-11-05T13:33:00.002Z

I've just done something I rarely do: buy a mobile phone. I decided that the easiest way to do this given that I have zero interest in which one to get was to go into the first shop I found and ask for their cheapest pay-as-you-go model. Which seems to have worked. Ironically, the shop had terrible reception for Vodaphone and so making the test call (or whatever it is) was really difficult.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

2011-09-19T20:39:00.003+01:00

I've still not been to the pictures much recently, but I did make an effort to see this, as I have a long and happy relationship with John Le Carre's work.

Basically: it's not at all bad, but falls down in some important ways. Firstly, I like the general look of the film: it's all a bit seedy and understated and the colours are unsaturated browns and greens. This does sometimes veer into a 70s pastiche perhaps (it looks more of its decade than the Alec Guinness version which was made in 1979). I also liked the portrayal of the Circus itself. Not sure where that huge building is that they filmed in but it has a great sense of place, of claustrophobia, and suspicion. It's a lot less cosy and more industrial than the cream-painted corridors in the old BBC version. There is more made of people listening in to phone calls, which sets the right atmosphere. The scene where Guillam has to steal a file from the library, and then gets hauled in front of the senior guys and roasted is very good. There are many other nice details, including the decision to make Percy Alleline Scottish (as he should be).

I feel one big error is the character of Ricky Tarr, who kicks the whole plot off. Ricky is a cocky little bastard who you wouldn't turn your back on, and was brilliantly played by Hywel Bennett in the 1979 version. The version here is all dewy-eyed sensitive boy who seems to have actually fallen for Irina the Russian trade delegate. As if Ricky would care, with all his other conquests.

A brief scene suggests to us that Peter Guillam is gay, which seems a pointless change to the book, in which we learn a bit about the nice female flautist he is currently seeing.

Many of Le Carre's lovely minor characters are gone: there is no Fawn, no Sam Collins (though Jerry Westerby seems to have inexplicably taken on some bits of his role), no Max ("I drive for you, shoot for you, what the hell?"). It must be hard compressing a complex novel like this into two hours of screen time, so maybe some loss is inevitable, but you can't help mourning your favourites.

And it's another film which doesn't know how to end: I was looking forward to the moment of unmasking, which is not actually shown, and to Colin Firth doing his big final number about why he did it, which is skated over very rapidly. And the end follows almost immediately. I think one of the last bits is meant to show Ann coming back to George, but I'm not sure.

Basically still worthy of your time, I think.

All change at Haymarket

2011-08-29T18:42:00.003+01:00

The news that the council have voted for Edinburgh's trams to stop at Haymarket, rather than going to St Andrew's Square is incredible, even by the fucked-up standards of this project. Can you imagine having to change there to a bus to complete your journey? More likely, nobody would use it for the journey from the airport. I certainly wouldn't. I do wonder if it's not an attempt to goad Alex Salmond into paying more for it. But he's too smart for that I think.

The concealment of information

2011-08-27T11:42:00.004+01:00

In our age of instant and easy communication it's interesting to see how terrible some organisations are at it. I renewed my house insurance recently. The company didn't send me the policy documents; they sent me an email with a link to a web site where I can log in and view the documents. This is annoying. Why should I create an account that I'll use about once a year, and will forget the password to? Well, after some grumbling, I eventually did. There was a link to my policy, which was in the form of an ASPX file. Some surfing turned up a few ideas about how to view this, but none of them worked. Why do they make it this hard? Why not use a PDF or an Office document like the rest of the planet? In the end I phoned them up and asked for a paper copy by post.

It's not just the technical fails that are annoying here. If you are buying a service, there is something reasuring about a printed document that you can hold in your hand. I feel they've just got this wrong.

Alas for the Clyde Room

2011-07-17T21:24:00.004+01:00

I went to Glasgow yesterday, mainly to see the new Transport Museum. I had a nice day out, but found the museum itself a bit disappointing. Firstly the good bits. I like the look of the building and they have secured an eye-catching contemporary look. The redevelopment of that section of the waterfront means that they had a blank canvas, and we've got something quite fresh-looking as a result. The Glen Lee has been moved downriver a little to sit outside and looks rather splendid reflected in the dark glass front. Its masts stick up over the top too, like branches of a metal tree. The Govan ferry now lands just outside and there are interesting connections with other developments along the river.

But inside, it's too small. I know I went on a busy day with lots of kids running about, but my first thought was: "How have they managed to fit everything in here?" The answer seems to be that they haven't. Like a number of other modern galleries that I've visited, the building has exciting bulges and angles, which look cool but lose a lot of space. If your main reason for having the space is to display bulky things like cars and trains, this is not good news. They have come up with some clever ideas to get round this, like the much-talked-about "wall of cars", but I am not impressed. You can only see the nearest and lowest cars clearly. The ones furthest away are poorly seen, and from below, so you can examine under the mudguards, but not on top of the bonnet. If there was viewing gallery parallel to the wall the gimmick might work--but there isn't.

Now we come to the real crusher: where is the Clyde Room? This was my favourite part of the old museum. It was a largish room where the museum's superb collection of ship models was laid out in a huge grid of glass cases. Here was the history of Clyde ship building, from pioneering steam craft and large warships to big Cunarders and container ships. And don't think that I mean some crappy amateur attempts: these were the models by professional model builders made when the ships were ordered, huge and resplendent with every plank, railing and porthole. So what have they got now? HMS Hood sits on its own. A tall display case has ship models hung at different heights. Why would you want to look at the underside of the hull? And they're not even labelled. Another display promises to be a ship "conveyor" (or something) but doesn't seem to be working. All of these break up the collection and lose all context, turning the displays into meaningless fragments. A grid of well-labelled glass cases, with perhaps a chronological order, is an excellent way of presenting information that allows you to find your own connections between things. As a piece of information design, the old Clyde Room was actually rather fine. I think Edward Tufte would have approved. I'm just getting grumpy now, so I'll stop.

Round two

2011-07-17T21:17:00.001+01:00

I moved the bird feeder even higher, but not only can the magpie still reach, he has started bringing a friend. So now there is a bird at each side tapping away.

Right then.

Bird brain

2011-07-04T17:34:00.003+01:00

A while ago, I got one of those bird feeders that is made of clear plastic and sticks onto your window. How cool it would be to watch those little guys pecking up seeds just through the glass!

Well, they ignored it for a long time and several lots of seed went mouldy. Then in the spring I got a few blue tits. Aw! Then a magpie discovered it and started hoovering up the food. Not cute at all. Raucous and aggresive in fact. I thought I had solved this by moving the feeder up the window, as the magpie would not be able to reach inside when standing on the sill, and was too big to fit inside. But the seeds kept going, with no visits from the cute birds.

I caught the magpie this morning tapping the feeder from below until a seed or two would fall out of the slots at the corners. I'm not sure if this is smart or just displays a behaviour that adapts very well to changing situations.

Voting, working

2011-05-05T20:48:00.006+01:00

My voting today was a bit damper than last year when I wrote this sunny little essay. I'm willing to share that I voted for AV. But then I am a statistician, and most people are not. Something tells me that we will not be adopting this system any time soon.

Today the company I work for was taken over. We are assured that it's only a takeover on paper and is actually a great opportunity, and that may be right. It can be so hard to tell with these things. I've been through quite a few of these big changes in a previous job and was largely the same at the end of most of them. I've consequently become quite stoic about the whole thing.

Election time again

2011-04-19T19:38:00.004+01:00

We're coming up to another election, and so it's time for a look inside my postbag again. Tonight I have two leaflets delivered together: one is from the Scottish Lib Dems, and the other is a virulent tirade against AV, from people calling themselves no2av. Oddly, the Lib Dems don't ask me to support AV in their leaflet. Why is it that the no2avites can get to use the electoral register (the letter is addressed to me personally)?

Meek's cutoff

2011-04-18T08:56:00.005+01:00

Last night I managed to go and see my first film at the cinema in a long time. I used to be a fairly regular film-a-week man, but I'm struggling to think of something that I've seen since the New Year, and I'm not sure what's changed.

Still, I managed to see Meek's Cutoff, which is best described as a Western that isn't. Just as well really, as I've never much liked Westerns. The film concerns three families on the Oregon trail who hire their own guide and split off from the main train. The trouble is, the guide doesn't seem to know where he is. I liked the film's studied avoidance of everything that you might expect in such a work. There is no stirring music, and the landscapes are shot at a low angle, making things feel oddly claustrophobic for a film set entirely out of doors. If the screen briefly looks as pretty as a John Ford Western, nobody on screen is bothered, because they have been walking behind the wagon all day and are covered in dust. The film gives the women a lot of screen time, often observing the main action from their point of view. They rise before dawn to light fires and cook breakfast. They watch in a group from beneath their bonnets as the men folk debate what to do next. And one shows herself very handy with a flintlock. (Military history anoraks will enjoy the scene where she fires a shot, goes through the laborious process of reloading, and fires again. )

Cutoff suffers from a couple of the irritating ticks of current films: the dialogue is often mumbled and unclear, and the ending is sudden and unconclusive. But well worth your time, I would say.

Spot on

2011-04-07T18:28:00.002+01:00

Once again, the wonderful xkcd hits the nail on the head. It's actually not bad as an explanation of Type I errors.

Depreciation

2011-03-08T21:12:00.003Z

It's a cliche of our time that computers go rapidly from awesomely advanced to piles of crap, but it is interesting to see this at first hand.

I'd been half-heartedly trying to get rid of a Dell laptop for a while, but the more I looked into the possibilities, the less it seemed to be worth. I still thought of it as rather good, but it was 7 years old, and a bit of surfing turned up that my model was actually known for its poor design and overheating. So. Not sought-after then. I thought I might still get ~£50 for it and took it to some wee shops in town, but nobody would bite. One shopkeeper suggested Cash Converters, and they came close to coughing up £20, but spotted some loose wiring and got cold feet.

So it's gone from about a grand to almost nothing in 7 years.

Let's hear it for Freecycle, where I finally got rid of it to a nice lady who just wanted to do a bit of web surfing.

Filled today

2011-03-04T18:13:00.002Z

I've just reached another life milestone: my first fillings. I've always had excellent teeth, but I suppose all that sugary crap we eat and the odd crevices that our teeth provide to catch things in must take their toll eventually. Given that I was brought up in the east end of Glasgow, it's a bit of a miracle that this didn't happen before my forties.

It was all pretty easy and painless. Ah, modern medicine! I'm so glad I don't live in a previous age.

It's probably another milestone of sorts when your dentist is younger than you.

War Nerd on Egypt

2011-02-04T16:25:00.001Z

I thought Gary Brecher, the War Nerd, had disappeared (again). But he is active again and providing this excellent post on the current troubles in Egypt. There was some quality time-wasting at work this afternoon.

Double walk

2011-01-04T13:47:00.008Z

This can be a difficult time of year to get out for a walk. A combination of short days, poor weather and public holidays can make this frustrating, but this new year I had offers of walks on two days in a row.

First up was a trip to Ben Ledi with Dave. I took a train to Stirling to find him standing behind the ticket barrier, nursing his freedom from family for a day and the remains of a MacDonalds breakfast. Ben Ledi is a classic cobweb-blower, and we encountered as big a crowd of people as I've met on a winter hill. They displayed much resourcefulness in finding ways of not falling over on the ice.

I was in the mood for taking pictures of landscape fragments, such as the odd ice on this reservoir:
And these trees picked out by the snow:
Refreshments after at the Lade Inn.

The following day Craig suggested two interesting Corbetts, Faragon Hill and Meall Tairneachan. Interesting to me anyway, as I've attempted to get to this area before from Pitlochry, with little success. Ice was another theme of this day, encasing moss and grass like super-hard jelly.

Craig provided a nip of very good whisky to keep the cold out (don't try this at home kids). So that wasn't so bad. We warmed up further at the Taybank in Dunkeld.

A day on the Ochils

2010-12-04T16:00:00.008Z

The weather again. Some of us were meant to go to a bothy for the weekend, but the exceptional cold and snow put a stop to that. Myself and a friend arranged to go a day walk in the Ochils instead.

On the way, both of us fessed up to an interest in photographing the oil refinery at Grangemouth. We found a snow-covered golf course to do this in. I'll spare you the pictures, but here is a nice one of my shadow in the snow.
We crossed the new Kincardine bridge, and drove through a foggy Clackmannanshire. All the glens on the south side of the Ochils are worth exploring, but we chose Alva Glen and followed it up to gain the open hillside. This wasn't easy, as the deep snow made crossing the burn and climbing the flank of The Nebit into a proper mountaineering exercise. When we reached more level ground, we found obvious traces of some recent avalanches.
With this in mind, we kept away from the slopes above the burn which seemed to be worst affected. The snow was deep and only just frozen on top, in some places giving about the most strenuous walking conditions you can get, where your front foot sinks in just a little, but then crashes through as you put your full weight on it. As we headed up Ben Ever we met some skiers, who were arguably having an easier time.

We were heading for Ben Cleuch (721m), which does not normally figure as a major peak. In these conditions though, it felt like quite an adventure. These rimed-up fence posts tell their own story.
There were fine views of the edge of the Highlands. Bens Lomond, Ledi, and Vorlich could be picked out among others, and the peaks on Arran just topped out the Campsies.

It was something of an impromptu day, and we had talked of descending to Castle Campbell and Dollar Glen, but time was passing and it seemed best to take the most direct way down over The Law. The light started to get even more extraordinary.
We were reminiscing on the way down about a similar winter day on Beinn Fhionnlaidh years ago where a late start also meant that we got a spectacular sunset on our way down. Sometimes things just work out.

And after descending Tillicoultry Glen, some nice people gave us a lift in their van back to the starting point.

For a parallel account of this walk, see Love of Scotland.

Back garden in the snow

2010-12-03T11:21:00.000Z

I daresay a lot of snowy pictures will have been put in blogs recently. But why should I be different? Taken recently while working from home and wishing it would just stop.
I didn't open my bedroom curtains for a few days, but when I did I saw these icicles.
There was a LOT of ice around the downpipes and gutters. Thankfully it seems to have melted without any damage.

More nature notes

2010-12-03T08:02:00.003Z

This week has been a complex pattern of snow, office closures and trying to do work on a crappy laptop at home.

On Wednesday, I was the only one in the office, and sat in glorious splendour having a conference call, and looking out at the snowy landscape. This time I saw two jays. They were more obvious against the snow, and I am getting more confident in my identifications.

Impromptu walking

2010-11-28T11:33:00.002Z

The walking group I go away with got caught out by the first of the snow this year. And it was snow of a level that we don't normally see in late November. What was supposed to be a trip to the Trossachs (I've not done Ben Venue in ages) had to be hastily rearranged. We are equal to this challenge though, and the coach took us to Hillend, from where we walked along the end of the Pentlands. Snow was still falling heavily, and our walk parallel to the Edinburgh bypass felt more like the Cairngorms. Somebody knew a way onto the Water of Leith at Colinton, so we continued into town. I've done most of this before, but it looked totally different in the snow. And I've not been since Anthony Gormley's sculptures were put in.

They look cool in the snow. I'm sure the intention was that the pieces would undergo various alterations. And they have inspired a number of other more jokey tributes.

Bird watching again

2010-11-19T17:38:00.002Z

I saw what I'm pretty sure was a waxwing today from the office window. It was foraging in an oak tree just opposite me. Assuming I'm right, the RSPB site says it's a fairly rare sighting. The name totally foxed me until I found out that it refers to the red patches on the wing that look like sealing wax.

Coffee and cardamon

2010-11-17T22:23:00.003Z

I seem to have got very domesticated recently. Last night I was baking a cake that required ground cardamon, and the best way I could find of doing this was to use my wee coffee grinder. The cake turned out nice (thanks to Dan Lepard) and the coffee that I ground and drank afterwards tasted fantastic.

It's so hard to be original though. It turns out I have stumbled across a version of Arabic gahwa.

Browsers

2010-10-15T21:00:00.004+01:00

I heard today at work that our IT department is continuing their relentless drive into the future by rolling out ....... IE 7! A quick surf reveals that this is exactly 4 years on from its release. Amazingly enough, we have been on IE 6 up to now. A lot of Web sites no longer support this, either putting up a message to this effect, or just giving you a crap version in Latin.

I wonder if they will ever replace our back-to-the-80s email system?

Another one down

2010-10-05T20:38:00.004+01:00

I was telling my work colleagues today about my mouse problem and they (both women) were rather grossed out (particularly about the blood-on-the-floor detail). On examining a trap tonight I found I had another kill. This one had also bled on the floor. Are my traps particularly gruesome?

Must stop blogging about this, you'll think I'm obsessed with killing small animals.

All day permanent red

2010-08-13T20:51:00.004+01:00

I can provide an update to my mouse problem. I bought a couple of traps and, on the advice of various people, baited them with Bounty bar. In time, the bait fell off and then disappeared. I re-baited and waited. A couple of nights ago, I heard a click and some scuffling. I was sleepy and forgot about it until this morning, when under the sprung trap I discovered a dead mouse stuck to the floor with dried blood.

Bounty is a fatal taste in this house, my little friend.

Death Ray

2010-07-20T17:57:00.003+01:00

I was pleased today to see my childhood vision of the future coming one step closer today. A laser system for shooting down aircraft has been demonstrated. A lot of my reading as a teenager was of books where people were torn apart by ravening death rays, so this is way overdue. Death rays existed before the laser, of course (the Martians in War of the Worlds had them), but that invention did give a focus to hopes of futuristic death. A pity then that the main uses of the laser turned out to be stuff like survey equipment and playing CDs.

I notice that the artist's representation can't resist the cliche of a brightly coloured beam linking the laser to its target. To be fair though, the conscientious BBC journalist did note that this is rubbish.

I bet the range is, and will remain, rather short. You just can't get round that inverse square law.

Coastal walk

2010-07-14T11:40:00.000+01:00

Thought I'd post-blog this.

Last month, I went on a nice (though damp) coastal walk from Cockburnspath to Dunbar.

The main attraction near the start was Dunglass Collegiate church, looking enigmatic in the warm July drizzle. To us now, it seems an odd use of land and resources. Is praying for your soul worth that much? The middle ages thought so.

Later, we passed Torness power station. This is a lot more interesting than it sounds, as its builders have fallen over themselves in an effort to be cuddly and inoffensive and give you information boards to look at. The sea defenses use piles of specially cast "knucklebones", which give the whole thing a futuristic air. I could see it as part of an episode of Blake's 7.

My companions didn't seem interested when I mentioned this. Different generation, I suppose.

Perhaps some future walker will find this piece of land use as inexplicable as a collegiate church.

Midsummer

2010-06-26T15:48:00.003+01:00

In a rare burst of social life, I went to a party last night, and quite enjoyed it. I walked back through Marchmont and Grange at about 3am. It wasn't really dark, more a kind of blue dusk, with blackbirds tuning up in the gardens.

Today has been an exercise in staying one step ahead of dehydration. And I can't get rid of the smell of tobacco smoke.

Sighting

2010-06-18T19:17:00.001+01:00

I saw my first iPad today, produced a little self-consciously by somebody on the 47 bus.

Timber

2010-06-05T16:43:00.003+01:00

Like the middle-aged bloke I am, I enjoyed buying some wood (sorry, timber) this morning. There's a builder's merchant conveniently round the corner, so I bore my 4.2 metres of 33x69 mm dressed timber home by hand. It's hard to explain to a non-bloke why such a transaction is so satisfying. Despite never being a tradesman, early training with my dad means that I can just about hold my own in conversations about tools and timber sizes. I even sympathised with the salesman when he told me about his awkward previous customer.

Dirt under the nails again

2010-05-22T20:58:00.004+01:00

I'd like to record my first tiny bit of gardening after about a six year gap. The tenement I stay in has a nicely-kept communal garden where I have negotiated planting rights. This has coincided with unseasonably warm weather. The heat made it feel like I was back in my garden in Ipswich in the warm muggy south.

Election night

2010-05-06T17:50:00.004+01:00

First an update on my personal election postbag. More materials have been arriving, including various of those newsletters that pretend very unconvincingly to be newspapers, but of course just have stories about Party X and how great they are. Is anybody actually swayed by this kind of stuff? The ruse is so worn out that I doubt it. More convincingly, I received a letter with a handwritten address from the Lib Dems. The contents looked handwritten but was actually printed/photocopied (not quite sure). But anyway, somebody was trying hard, and some family member/intern probably got the job of writing out lots of addresses. Oh, and I just got an almost identical one from the Tories. Sorry guys, but saying "Me too" doesn't cut it.

I have a polling station across the road, but it's not my polling station. Some odd boundary-drawing means that I had to walk up to Sciennes and vote in the school there. As a kid in Glasgow my primary school was used for elections, so that an early memory was going to vote with mum and seeing familiar classrooms with the desks pushed back and plywood partitions in front of the sandbox. Today was much the same really. I lingered in the corridor for a moment to admire children's work based on Matisse's The Snail (erudite or what?).

If any readers aren't familiar with a British General Election, what happens is this. You enter a large room, usually a school classroom. It is almost empty. Sitting at various desks in it are a selection of pensioners and students earning beer money. They are always very polite. You read a list of streets to see which desk to go to, then hand over your polling card, have your name checked off a list by one of the polite people, and get a voting slip. You then retire into one of the plywood shacks and place an X in the position of your choice using a pencil on the end of a bit of string. It only remains to slide the folded paper in the slot of a black-painted metal box and you have voted. You may then optionally view children's art on your way out, nodding to the various political hangers-on who congregate round the entrance for some reason.

Other countries have vote rigging, violent demonstrations, and people being prevented from voting. Gives you a cosy feeling, doesn't it?

Unlike some, I will not be staying up for the first results, as it's pointless. I'll find out quick enough in the morning.

Nautical

2010-04-25T21:44:00.004+01:00

I finally got to Trinity House in Leith on Saturday. It's the old story: if it's on your doorstep you don't make the effort. It's a lovely interior filled with maritime stuff, including harpoons, sextants, ship models and a totally mad painting of Vasco da Gama rounding the Cape of Good Hope.

You have to turn up at the right time though. On my first attempt I must have missed the slot. It was a nice day though, so I walked down to Ocean Terminal, where the tricolour was flying. The Latouche-Tréville of the French Navy was in, with a support ship whose number I didn't note.

Volcano news

2010-04-16T18:23:00.002+01:00

I must admit that I feel a tiny tingle of, well, almost pleasure about the Icelandic volcano business. It demonstrates that we don't run the planet, we just live here. Although after the winter we've had we arguably don't need the demonstration.

It also exposes the odd biases of the media. You could summarise the news on this in very few words, but that doesn't stop them spending lots of time on the story as it's judged to be important. Well it is, but maybe you could report more about what's happening in Iceland, rather than get more reactions from stranded travelers. I mean, what do you think they're going to add?

Mull

2010-04-08T21:06:00.010+01:00

I spent the Easter weekend in Mull, which is becoming one of my favourite areas of Scotland. My first visits were as a child in 1971 and 1972 (it was the only holiday location that we ever repeated). I can't honestly say that I remember anything about this, although family legend records that I wouldn't let go of my teddy on the ferry, and that only stale bread was available when we got to the island.

We apparently went to Duart castle on that visit, meeting the clan chief. It felt like time for a return visit. Duart has a fantastically romantic location, perhaps only equalled by Eilan Donan castle. And Easter Friday saw perfect weather, with a spectacular view over Loch Linnhe to the mountains of Lochaber.

Inside it was chilly as the immense walls don't warm up until later in the summer. Apparently it's then quite cosy until January. There's also a nice account inside of a Cromwellian shipwreck that's just off the shore.

I walked to Lochbuie on Saturday in the drizzle. Mull's only stone circle there. You reach it by following some white-painted stones across a soggy field.

I had been watching The Stones of Blood recently and on seeing deep indentations in the field, though that an Ogri was on the move. But it was just a cow. It's a pity there are so many rhododendrons around the circle. If it was clearer, you might be able to see why it was placed here.

Lochbuie also has Moy Castle, a cracking 15th century tower house. The scaffolding seems to have been up for a while with no obvious sign of work. I hope somebody gets around to finishing this work off.

I got back to Pennyghael, where I was staying, by walking up Glen Byre (named because it's square and boxy?) in worsening weather.

Sunday was a clearer day, revealing that more snow had covered the higher peaks the day before. I set out to walk to Carsaig along a forestry track that was pointed out to me. Forest changed to moorland and then to the modest summit of Cruach Inagairt, which turned out to have a superb view.

Then it was down to the shore and along the coast to Carsaig. For some reason I didn't blog about Carsaig when I was there last year, but it is a gorgeous place which I can't really do justice to here. Pausing only to sneer at the people who were getting out of cars and putting on clean new walking boots, I walked through the grounds of the house and up the moorland road. Ben More said hello again.

A letter from Ian

2010-03-31T14:43:00.001+01:00

I've got the set now. Another personnally addressed letter, this one from Scottish Labour.

More misery

2010-03-30T21:41:00.003+01:00

What awful dreich weather. I had been meaning to blog about how the last trace of snow had just about disappeared from the Lammermuirs, making my view totally snow-free for the first time since about December. Then comes today's weather, taking us back to shivery midwinter. All day at work we looked out on to slanting lines of sleet. The bits of the Pentlands that were visible were blanketed with snow again. I actually find it worse than proper winter weather. I like it crisp and cold, but temperatures around freezing feel colder than those below.

We've had strong winds all evening and lots of sleet. A small drip has appeared in the corner of my living room. Argh! that's all I need. But now it has started snowing properly and the drip has stopped. So that's something.

Networking

2010-03-27T20:49:00.003Z

I've just gone wireless, and it's quite a relief. Since shortly after moving into my flat, I've had ten metres of Ethernet cable snaking through my hall in order to connect my Mac with the modem. It's always been so, but my old flat had a more centrally located phone socket, so the cable was shorter and not much in the way. Here, either I have my Mac in the kitchen, or its out with the masonry drill, or I get a wireless router. I got a wireless router.

When you enable Airport connections, you can see whatever networks are in your area. There's quite a lot round here. It makes me very aware of the verticality of living in a tenement. Maybe "Monkeymouse" is some of the people I see tapping at lit windows across the back green.

In the eight months or so that I lived with the Ethernet cable I've got used to stepping over it at several key points. It feels odd now that I don't have to. And I can shut the living room door now.

A letter from Neil

2010-03-24T17:37:00.004Z

I have just got another personal letter, this time from the Conservative candidate for Edinburgh South. If you missed the comments on my previous post on the subject, this is clearly because Edinburgh South is a key marginal with the incumbent about to step down. Actually it wouldn't surprise me if the Torys took it.

Short post

2010-03-23T21:06:00.001Z

I have mice in my kitchen.

We know where you live

2010-03-15T19:35:00.003Z

Just got a letter from the Scottish Liberal Democrats, God help me. It is addressed to me personally, yet I have never had any connection with them or any other political party, and I haven't lived here very long. I presume they get the information from the electoral register, but I really don't like this. I can't help seeing it as a very Big Brotherish own goal.

The Diet Delusion

2010-02-08T21:50:00.002Z

I recently finished Gary Taubes' excellent book The Diet Delusion. The first thing to note is that the title misleads, as the book is only partly about diets and is most certainly not a diet book. (It's no doubt an attempt by the publishers to cash in on The God Delusion, but there's no resemblance to Richard Dawkins that I could see). In the US, the book's title was Good Calories, Bad Calories, which gets much closer to its subject. And--unusually for an American book--the cover is better.

TDD argues that much of what we accept as true about diet and disease is actually little more than a set of plausible assertions that were accepted about 30-40 years ago, but that may in fact be totally untrue. Saturated fat may not actually be bad for you. Excessive carbohydrate might be the culprit instead. Eating fat does not make you fat. Excess calories do not necessarily make you fat. Exercise is not normally an aid to weight loss, and often has the opposite effect, as it boosts appetite. Refined carbohydrates make you gain weight by raising insulin levels, which then stores the food as fat. The nub of it may be that, unfortunately, we still have the same design spec as our Palaeolithic forebears, and they just weren't set up to cope with sugar and starch rather than meat, nuts, and berries.

If you want a more extensive summary, see the ten-point conclusion quoted in the review on David Colquhoun's website, where I first heard about TDD.

One of the book's best features is the absence, not only of diet advice, but also of any dogmatic conclusion. Books that put forward a challenging set of ideas can turn shrill and whiny, but that never happens here. Taubes wisely stays above the fray, instead giving us a detailed and well researched history of how our views about what we should eat developed over the last century or so, and how our health may or may not have been influenced by this. One over-arching conclusion is that pinning down cause and effect in such matters is enormously difficult, expensive, and lengthy.

Taubes' narrative shows how many conclusions reached between about 1930 and 1960 were overturned by a number of well-intentioned but forceful individuals who "knew they were right" even when studies failed to back them up. They also didn't read German much: German and Austrian medicine in the 30s had sorted out fat metabolism and diet to a surprising extent, but who was going to turn to these sources in the late 40s?.

This is one of the best factual books I've read in a long while, perhaps comparing with Richard Rhodes history of the Atomic Bomb. I can't say the sorry tale of poor policy-making surprises me. My (admittedly short) experience working in the civil service gave me plenty of examples of policy based on not-very-much. It would also be interesting to hear how UK policies on diet and health fell in behind the USA's lead.

Time to go and eat something fatty, I think.

Tram

2010-02-05T17:09:00.002Z

I discovered today that the Edinburgh tram project has inspired its own Downfall mash-up.

I keep getting into conversations about the tram, usually with people who claim that the lateness of their bus/the quietness of this shop/the bad weather are caused by the tramworks. I've never really reached a conclusion myself. I have been hugely inconvenienced by the works, but then there's always something going on in a big city to get in your way. Edinburgh has always had serious unresolved transport issues, and I do like the city-of-the-future look of the promised system. One argument the anti-trammers use is that "it won't even reach to the airport", but as far as I can tell, this is simply not true. One day, we'll look back at this and laugh.

Dryhope Tower

2010-01-25T22:00:00.002Z

Although Edinburgh has reverted to standard damp dreich January weather, the Borders has had lots more snow. I walked over a bit of the Southern Upland Way, ending at St Mary's Loch. The large amounts of fresh snow on the hills didn't photograph well, but the Dryhope Tower on the way out did.

Woolgathering

2010-01-19T20:18:00.005Z

The slow churn of people at work joining and leaving (mainly the later recently) has continually moved me, like a pebble on a beach, to lie next to different pebbles. To put it another way: I keep having to change the group I have lunch with. Our quintessentially millenial office in the woods allows me to stare out of the window (an office in the woods! - what would my dad think?) and not really attend to conversations about X Factor, or knitting, or football. The woods seem active today, or maybe I am just observant. See a squirrel, various tits, a bullfinch, and (probably) a treecreeper. Around me, beans on toast, low fat yoghurts and soup are consumed.

Not sure what this post is about. Thank you for your time.

Weekend pictures

2010-01-11T20:54:00.005Z

Some pictures from the weekend. From Arthur's Seat, early in the morning:
Skies over Midlothian, from the Pentlands:
A cold snowy day, with better winter conditions than I've experienced on hills twice the height. And on the way down, some big icicles:

Yet further snow

2010-01-04T09:30:00.004Z

I reckon we've now had about a fortnight during which I could always see snow in the streets or on roofs. This will be deeply unimpressive to you if you live in Canada, but for Britain it's pretty rare. You have to go back to the early 80s, or maybe even late 70s to find a precedent. Yesterday I visited some friends nearby, and we went skiing on a golf course (best use for it that I've ever found). After lunch, we did a South Edinburgh haute route from Blackford hill onto the Braid Hills. Although we did this on foot, there was snow all the way, raising the possibility of Norwegian style ski tours. If we got this more often, would I ski to work though the snowy wastes of Midlothian?

Told you so

2009-12-29T10:14:00.003Z

Yes, my next walk was somewhat miserable. Tranent to Pathhead on slippy wet snow under a grey sky. The low point came when we felt we ought to have some sort of lunch stop, and stood among dripping branches in a wood for ten minutes. The day did improve after this, and the hill up from GlenKinchie distillery brought some crisper snow. More incident too: we helped somebody get their car out of the snow, and a few fields later saw a barn owl hunting along the hedges.

Mair snow

2009-12-23T22:30:00.004Z

First thing this morning, I had one of those half-awake thoughts. "Wouldn't it be funny if there had been a huge snowfall overnight, and the world is turned white?" Then I looked out and it had.

There had been remnants of snow the night before, but there was now a perfect, even covering. There was snow banked up at the base of my windows, and skeins of spindrift reached out between the rooftops.

As you can perhaps guess, I retain enough of a kid inside me to still enjoy some extreme weather, especially when I have nothing in particular to do at work. I'm certainly not alone in this. As I made my bus journey, the shared sense of adversity produced a kind of camaraderie with my fellow travelers. We offered personal experiences of our journeys so far, swapped stories about the stupid things we'd seen people doing, and shared plans for the rest of our day. I wonder if anybody has studied the positive effect of extreme weather?

I got to go home early too, and saw these tower blocks catching the afternoon sun.

Snow

2009-12-19T16:35:00.005Z

My flat has a nice view, but I find it hard to photograph. You really have to see it. Here's quite a nice picture of Blackford Hill from this morning anyway.

In other news, snow and ice on Arthur's Seat reduced my time to 17 minutes. On the way down, a walker on his way up warned me of the ice. "I know!" I answered, and did a standing glissade down the path towards him. We did a short dance of awkward laughter and skidding feet until we were both stable again.

Sunday walk

2009-12-14T21:16:00.005Z

I've started going walks with a local club, and yesterday's outing to Dunkeld was my second. It was a day of classic winter high pressure: clear and cold with banks of fog and frost over everything. A great day for pictures.

That's Schiehallion in the distance looking a bit like Mount Fuji. And to its right, Farragon Hill, which I have managed not to get to a couple of times.

There were predictions of the walk being a mudbath, but the heavy frost made the turf like concrete, and froze lochs most picturesquely.
How nice of those swans to position themselves as pure white accents in the scene.

Savor these delicate harmonies in grey and brown. My next walk will no doubt be soggy and damp.

Yum

2009-12-14T19:39:00.003Z

I seem to have discovered another talent: baking. We had a sale of baking at work today, and my carrot cake was consumed by ravening coworkers by 10.20. I didn't get a bit myself either, though I did of course get to lick the bowl last night.

I wonder what it is about women and gooey cakes?

I must use my gift wisely.

Arthur's Seat

2009-11-15T16:23:00.002Z

Better pacing today bought me to the top in 14 minutes.

In fairness to my previous comments, I should point out that there were a couple of local lads on top, who asked me where lots of things were before I got my breath back.

Arthur's Seat

2009-11-08T13:57:00.007Z

It's a lovely day today. I went up Arthur's Seat this morning (and how many cities have their own mountain, albeit a small one?). I used to do this fairly regularly and in a nerdy but harmless way, would measure the time from my doorstep to the top. I think 21 or 22 minutes was the record. This is only my second ascent since moving, so I think I should start making the exercise more regular. And my new benchmark is 16 minutes from the park gates to the top.

It is an exceptionally clear day. From the top, a line of peaks in the Highlands were visible, where normally there is cloud or haze. The summit viewpoint indicator actually misses quite a few out, but I had prepared with a crib sheet. Some of the more impressive sightings were Ben Bhuide, Ben More and Stob Binnean, Ben Lawers, and a bit of Beinn A Ghlo.

I had a chat on top with a German student about hills and Edinburgh. It's always noticeable how few natives you meet up there.

I didn't have my camera, so no nice pictures, I'm afraid.

PS: Just realised how similar this is to a previous post. Clearly, I'm becoming very predictable.

Oh dear

2009-10-27T18:48:00.002Z

Radio 4's 6.30 comedy spot doesn't get any better. A hilarious programme set in a tourist information centre, anyone?

Bookmarks

2009-10-25T11:57:00.005Z

I've just purchased some big bookcases to replace various small ones that I've acquired over the years. So last night I had some anoraky fun sorting out my books. Quite a few contained abandoned bookmarks. I've never been one for using proper bookmarks, usually just grabbing any handy piece of paper, so these form a kind of demented summary of my last 20 years. In no particular order:

Receipt for OPTIKA, 22 Stall St, Bath on 17 August 1996. Looks like I had an eye test, though I have no memory of this.
Receipt for Napier University library, recording the borrowing of Mathematics in Western culture on 05 January 2005.
Slip of paper torn from a A4 sheet. The header has Chapter 5 The Holos Worksheet.
Cheap day return, Edinburgh to Dalmeny, 11 September 2004.
Credit card receipt for Edinburgh-Glasgow monthly ticket, 30 October 2006. £250! No wonder I left that job.
Receipt from Ipswich and Norwich Co-op for compost, 12 April 2003. I was served by Lynn.
Wrapper from Terry's Waifa. Best before APR97.
Two genuine bookmarks from Word Power books. Recent.
Ditto, much creased, from Waterstones, circa 1997.
Ditto, from John Smith and Sons, Glasgow, early 90s.
Punched Fortran card. Rescued from Glasgow University Physics Dept, circa 1990.
Ticket for the Courtauld Gallery, bearing a detail from Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergere.
Seagate Pound. A fake pound note produced as a drinks voucher for a company bash. By means of Photoshop, our company secretary's head was substituted for the queen's, and didn't she look the part. Late 90s.
Room card from Spread Eagle Hotel, Thame. Probably 1998.
Business card/bookmark from Tin Can Mailman, Arcata, CA. I bought from them via abebooks. December 2001.
Nice bookmark, bought in Paris, reproducing drawing by Gustave Moreau. I wondered where that had got to.

Beinn Chabhair

2009-10-18T17:03:00.006+01:00

The forecast for yesterday was excellent, so it would have felt wrong not to go up a hill somewhere.

I've pretty much been through the Southern Highlands, so picked out Beinn Chabhair, which I've not done since some time in the early 90s.

Other than the well-known waterfall that you pass on the way up, I recognised very little from my previous visit. Funny how much you forget.

I feel I'm fairly fit these days, but only managed to match the Naismith time rather than undercut it. I put this down to doing some of the northwest ridge, which the SMC guide describes as 'strenuous'. So there.

Some mist rolled over just as I got to the summit, so no panoramas from there, I'm afraid. Still, a good day out.

On the way back, I went into the Drovers for a pint. There was a time when this was a standard stopping-off point on the way back from weekends, but I've not been in for ages. It's much the same as it was, though the bar staff have less hairy chests, and whether the stuffed bear in the entrance is the same stuffed bear that I remember is hard to say.

A week ahead

2009-10-18T14:11:00.003+01:00

My digital radio confused me this morning by changing from BST to GMT a week early. I spent some time resetting other clocks and watches, and then tut-tutted over the fact that my Mac hadn't got it right. Except that it had, of course. Clocks in the UK change next week. Is it just me, or is this information not communicated as much as it used to be? Maybe we now just expect clocks to have the computational power to reset themselves.

Day out

2009-10-12T18:58:00.003+01:00

Last weekend's fix took place on the Moorfoot hills. Not exactly one of the greater ranges, but you have to use what you've got available. The Moorfoots form a boundary to the view when I travel to work in the mornings, filling as they do the gap between the well-known but flat Lammermuirs, and the popular and more eye-catching Pentlands. And some tiny fragments are visible from my flat. A while ago, I formed the idea of a Moorfoot traverse that joined the A7 to the A703. So that's what I did.

It was a day of wind generators, quiet backroads that you didn't need to share with much traffic, and quite a lot of dead things. As well as roadkill pheasants and a badger, I found a still-living lamb on the hill with its eyes pecked out. Enjoy the view.

That's Gladhouse reservoir with Arthur's Seat behind. There were Whooper swans on the reservoir, which (according to a passing birder) were in Iceland the day before. On the 62 bus home, an 82 year old called Irene filled me in on local gossip, how the trams were going, and what shops used to be on the site of the St James centre.

Doors Open Day

2009-09-28T21:23:00.004+01:00

DOD continues to surprise me, usually in relation to things I thought I knew.

I saw inside the City Chambers for the first time: the 10 storey staircase, the view over Princes Street, the gaudy gifts presented by visitors and twinned towns. They have a great statue outside, of Alexander and Bucephalus, which is public, but I don't usually have a reason to pause there.Of course, the subject is reason winning over animal passions (the horse was afraid of its own shadow). No chance of a moral lesson will be passed up.

Best interior of the day was the Royal College of Physicians. Their main hall contains columns that are masterpieces of the decorator's art, made to resemble Sienna marble, and so good that they are probably worth more than the real thing. Two beautiful libraries too, filled with leather-bound volumes with titles that I could spend all day browsing through (The Atlas of Skin Diseases, anyone?).

Old job, new job

2009-09-07T17:31:00.004+01:00

My current job is the sort where you can be very busy for a bit, then have nothing to do. For the last couple of weeks, things have been very thin, and I've been writing some training documents. As an ex-tech writer, this should be right up my street of course. To be honest though, the experience has made me glad that I (mostly) do something else now. Although I got some vague satisfaction from tracking down that comma splice, or systematically eliminating all passive verbs, my main feeling was of boredom. I mean, who's going to read this stuff anyway?

And today, I got to do some programming, which felt like a delight.

Dragonfly

2009-08-29T11:46:00.003+01:00

Seen during my lunchtime walk on Friday. And just for once, I had a camera with me. And just for once, it settled on a tree trunk to have its picture taken. It seems to be a male common aeshna (Aeshna juncea). The female have dull green spots instead of blue.

xkcd hits the mark again

2009-08-25T17:38:00.000+01:00

This is so true.

Weasels, painting, walking

2009-08-24T21:53:00.004+01:00

I'm currently enjoying The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, which manages to get some reasonably serious musings on our globalised world and why people work in it. I was thinking about Alain de B's photo essay on tuna fish and the interconnectedness of our world while drinking weasel coffee at work. Myself and two colleagues chipped in to buy it. So, in short, small Vietnamese mammals vomitted so that some statisticians in Midlothian could muck about and avoid finishing that analysis plan.

I actually bought the book for quite another reason, as I know the painter profiled in it. It seems a fair write up, and it's good to see an intelligent commentary on painting.

And rather oddly I know somebody else who has a book out. Step forward Craig, whose book The Weekend Fix is being published by Sandstone Press. It's based on his hillwalking experiences. I don't figure by name apparently, but I may be some kind of presiding spirit.

I know, it's been ages

2009-07-28T14:35:00.002+01:00

Since my last post, I've moved house, waited for BT to connect my phone, called them to ask why they didn't do it, waited again for the second order to be filled, contacted my ISP to transfer to the new number, and phoned them again to ask why they hadn't done anything. I'm hoping that I will have home internet in a few days.

I am enjoying the view from my new flat though.

Why not?

2009-06-18T19:37:00.003+01:00

I'm quite a fan of RSS feeds these days. They are great for getting rid of some of the more "creative" (i.e. hideous and useless) features of web pages. I was just looking at some cinema sites to see what's on and none of them have an RRS feed for this. It seems such an obvious thing to do.

Warmer

2009-06-02T19:53:00.003+01:00

Another fun weekend, but of a different sort. Rog can't visit Scotland without a high pressure system getting lonely and following him north, so we had wall-to-wall sunshine. We packed quite a lot of different things in, but one of my best pictures was taken on Calton Hill while we waited for the marathon to start.
I do need reminded sometimes that I live somewhere nice. We didn't envy the runners in Sunday's heat.

Wet but worthwhile

2009-05-25T21:46:00.009+01:00

I thought I might manage to get a walk in last weekend, but it turned into a proper staying-overnight-and-getting-wet trip to the West Highlands.

Saturday started with a heroic attempt to avoid activity by dossing around Fort William in the rain. At one point, we were even procrastinating about whether we were procrastinating. The rest of the weekend could easily have vanished in a hedonistic frenzy of tea drinking, laughing at souvenir shops, and leafing through climbing guides in Nevisport. Yet somehow the afternoon saw us climbing a hill in the rain. There was no view to speak of, but once we came down the weather was clearing a little. The best part of the day was walking in to a bothy in evening sunlight, with a view of Eigg in the distance.

It's a while since I had a dose of bothy atmosphere, so this was very welcome.

And the situation is lovely:
The canoes weren't ours, but they make a nice picture.

Goodbye Paddy

2009-05-15T19:31:00.003+01:00

I feel very sad about the demise of Paddy's Market. It always felt like a bit of the middle ages that had been forgotten about. And now it is no more, to be replaced by 'craft stalls', for fuck's sake.

Maybe I should just be grateful that I experienced something as visceral and unconsumerist in my lifetime.

Day out

2009-05-05T21:52:00.002+01:00

I think this is wild thyme. Wild mountain thyme, in fact. It was near the summit of Ben Bhuidhe, which I climbed on Sunday. The man who makes Fyne Ales gave me a lift up the glen a bit, which makes him a nice man and you should buy his beer.

I'm hungry now

2009-05-04T20:39:00.003+01:00

About a year ago, there were various reports in the media of a report from the World Cancer Research Fund that claimed cooked meats raised your risk of bowel cancer. On reading this, of course, my cynicism circuits kicked in and I started searching for the flaw that is usually present in such reports. But I couldn't find one. So maybe I should give up Lorne sausage; a depressing thought. However, David Coloquon has excelled himself with an article about randomised controlled trials, and why dead pig wrapped in bread probably won't kill you.

Teaching the Professor

2009-04-28T21:37:00.003+01:00

I think most of us have books that we turn to for some dependable entertainment, no matter how many times we've read them. One of mine bears the unlikely title of More Humorous Tales From 'Blackwood'. Blackwoods was a well-known magazine, that was published in Edinburgh between 1817 and 1980. Known colloquially as Maga, it flourished particularly in the era when the British Empire was still a political fact. I bought the book in a second hand book shop in York for 50p in (I think) 1978, and learned an enormous amount from it.

Despite being a fairly precocious ten-year-old reader, I did find it heavy going in places. Some of the lighter pieces went down easily enough (building a house in Barbados; tales of 'My Uncle' -- an eccentric inventor), but despite the humorous theme, some others defeated me. Take Two-Blocked, from 1953, a bewilderingly dull (to my 10 year old self) account of a naval exercise. Returning to the book years later, I realised that it was by Geoffrey Willans (author of Molesworth), and was a rather well-written piece that had a lot to say about post-war Britain trying to thrash out a new relationship with America (the exercise was a joint RN-USN one). Indeed many of the tales (and they are Tales, please note) speak, more or less directly, about the war and about Britain's transition to ex-empire.

Over the years, the collection has stayed fresh, with some over-familiar friends dying away, and previously ignored tales gaining new life. Teaching the Professor is one such. This seemingly slight account of a drive across north Africa in 1943 is one of my favorites. The narrator of the story and the Professor of the title are army officers who need to be in Cairo, but are in Algiers. They make the journey in a thirty-cwt truck, which they christen 'Pinafore'. The Professor really was a professor before the war, and is ferociously erudite, but has trouble with things like making tea, and coping with those who do not match his own high levels of ability. To alleviate the boredom of a fortnight's drive, they agree that whichever of them is not driving should educate the other. It's easy for the Prof., who holds forth about classical history, art, and literature, and can even use the territory of Carthage as an illustration when they pass through it. The narrator has more trouble thinking of a theme, until he discovers that the Professor cannot ride, and so instructs him on hunting, horses, managing hounds and other buccolic English pursuits as they traverse battlefields and amphitheatres.

Over the years, I have often wondered who the Professor really was. Only today did it occur to me to search for him on the internet. Within a minute, I had discovered that he was Enoch Powell. Teaching the Professor was written by Michael Strachan, whose obituary is here.

Ballardian

2009-04-20T22:31:00.003+01:00

I heard about the death of J.G. Ballard when my radio alarm came on this morning. As it wasn't a school day, I lay for a while and drifted in and out of sleep, not really sure what had happened. I think he might have liked that.

The Borders

2009-04-20T20:47:00.006+01:00

I've never quite understood the romance and mystique surrounding the Scottish Borders. Recently though, I may have been beginning to see the point.

Today was an Edinburgh local holiday and in a fairly random way, I decide to go to Dryburgh Abbey. So it's on to the bus and down the A68 to St Boswell. I walk down to the Tweed and follow it upstream for a mile or so. It's a stupidly pretty spring day. The sun is out, but it's early enough in the year not to be too stuffy. The woods are full of wild garlic, which I can smell if I step on any of the leaves. Small birds are twittering, a swan is being graceful on the river, fishermen are wading, and it wouldn't surprise me if I started singing Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.

On getting to the little foot bridge where I cross the river, there is an Arcadian style temple on the hillock on the other side.

Somebody's been doing odd things to the landscape: I love this kind of stuff. It's a Temple of the Muses, to the memory of the poet James Thomson, erected by the Earl of Buchan, who was keen on making this area a kind of open-air monument to Scotland's past. In fact, a Temple of Caledonian Fame. The Earl was also keen to preserve (and perhaps to "improve") Dryburgh Abbey itself, which is where I go next.

Dryburgh is a ruin, but a really interesting one. It has some of the best preserved medieval paintwork in Britain (don't get excited, it's just smudgy marks really), and has wonderful trees round it (some of them thanks to the earl again). Also there are the burial places of Walter Scott and Douglas Haig. Haig's gravestone is of the standard World War 1 design.

I have a nice lunch, during which I eavesdrop on a couple sitting next to me. What are they up to? The woman gets jumpy when she thinks she recognises somebody else coming in. It's tempting to stay and see what their assignation is about, but I head off for another part of the yer man's hall of fame. It's a 10m high statue of William Wallace, looking across at the Eildon hills.

It's a pity that somebody has tried to colour in the shield in that rather half-hearted way. Somebody should do a study of bad art inspired by Wallace.

So there we are, a day out full of quirky stuff in the Borders. I'll have to go again.

Mental

2009-03-30T18:42:00.002+01:00

I'm enjoying Matter at the moment. Banksie has revisited ship naming, of which he is a master. I particularly liked the Ned-speak Pure Big Mad Boat Man.

Fife coastal walk: 6

2009-03-23T21:37:00.006Z

This stage doesn't start out as much of a coastal walk, thanks to RAF Leuchars. The first task is to walk past the neatly fenced military quarters, bringing you up in front of St Athernase Church. That's genuine Norman blind arcading, that is.

If I'd known I'd have lingered longer, but I was itching to stretch my legs. After some slightly confusing signposting, I found myself walking across country rather like Suffolk, where I lived for some years. I say this because it was flat heathland with pine trees and sand dunes in the distance. And it was sunnier than Scotland in March usually is.

After walking past more perimeter fence of RAF Leuchars, I finally got on to Tentsmuir beach, and very fine it is too. There is a sense of space here that is utterly different from anything else on this already very varied walk round Fife. The military theme was never very far away though, as I could hear gunfire and occasional explosion during most of the walk. This came from the firing range at Buddon Ness, which is only a few miles away to the North across the Tay.

I settled into a steady pace, and headed North, passing the odd figure on the huge expanse of sand. After a bit, there was a somewhat greater concentration of people, clustered around the one access road that leads to the sea. I found this relative crowd quite heartening: it all seemed very British in its determination to enjoy the North Sea in March.

I thought the beach section would be the slow part of the day, but it passed fairly easily (I'm talking subjective time here--you know how some bits walk themselves and others drag). It wasn't long before I was watching some seals lazing around on Abertay Sands. There's an awful lot of sand in this corner of Fife. In fact, this section of coast is growing at a healthy rate. I cut across the dunes and came across more tank traps. It turns out these were constructed on the high tide line by Polish forces in 1941. The sea is to the left in the photo below.

By this time I had turned my final corner. As at Fife Ness, the vista swings round and we're on the Tay. All that walking on sand had taken it out of me though, and the section round to Tayport felt like a real task. Also, my idea of cutting across the mudflats was not a very good one. But there we are, all the best walks should have an ill-considered section.

Let's end with more bridges.

From Newport-on-Tay I caught a bus into Dundee and refreshed myself with Irn Bru, then caught a train home. I realized that, oddly, I'd never been on the Tay Bridge before. From the train, you can see the piers of the original bridge (the one that memorably blew down in 1879) poking out of the water.

Fife coastal walk: 5

2009-03-13T21:26:00.008Z

Partly because of the amount of golf on this stage of the walk, and partly because of the indifferent weather, I didn't take many pictures of landscape. So I thought that this time we'd do some nature study instead of a travelogue.

I've always loved lichens. That sounds a bit sinister, but they are odd things: not-quite-plants that change and soften the appearance of a lot of objects in the landscape. I've no idea what species these ones are, but they form a fantasy landscape of their own.

I can't remember ever seeing fungi like this before. If anybody knows what kind it is, let me know.

I do know that these are winter aconites, and very pretty they look too.

The Buddo rock looks incongrous and Dali-esque. Lapsed climbers like me will enjoy doing a bit of back and foot to reach the top via the cleft that runs through the rock. Pity it's full of bird shit.
All the pictures were taken between Kingsbarns and St Andrews. Next time, Tentsmuir Forest.

Signs and portents

2009-03-12T19:25:00.003Z

This morning a heron flew past our office with a frog in its beak. The frog didn't seem happy with how things were going, and the heron couldn't seem to find anywhere to settle down and eat the frog.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

2009-03-09T17:35:00.006Z

I don't normally do this, mind, but last night I went to see a film based on a comic book. The fact that the work in question is Watchmen made the decison much easier. It's pretty good. Zac Snyder (he of the visually interesting but silly 300) has put in a good effort and has managed to translate a lot of the long and complex original to the screen. In fact, over-faithfulness may be the main failing here. Many shots follow the original virtually frame by frame, which may please obsessive fan boys, but one suspects it may not get to the nub of what the whole piece is about. There is a lot to like though, including a brilliant opening montage sequence which covers forty or so years of alternative history, Kennedy assassination, moon landing and all. A small blow for male nudity on screen is struck by the inclusion of Dr Manhattan's cock (blue and glowing, of course). Perhaps inevitably, there are too many Hollywood conventions, including slow motion fight sequences, which tend to glamourise the protagonists too much. They are meant to be morally ambiguous misfits and losers, remember?

But don't listen to me. Check out what young Jimmy Critic says!

Fife coastal walk: 4

2009-02-12T21:33:00.009Z

It was snowing hard in Edinburgh as I caught the bus for Anstruther and part 4 of this saga. Almost miserable enough for me to decide not to go, but I persevered, and am glad I did. Anstruther looked picturesque in the sun, and there were fine views across the Forth to the snow-covered Pentlands. I really ought to go to the fishery museum sometime, but onwards!

Islands and hills dominated the view for a while, what with the Isle of May being close by, and the Bass rock and Berwick Law defining the southern shore. The last cute fishing village on this walk is Crail, which has a harbour partially built by Robert Stevenson.

A pill box near Fife Ness was so neat inside that it looked as though somebody had put it up a few years ago. They must have had a good batch of concrete in 1940. The northerly firing slit commanded a view over a golf course, and I indulged myself for a few minutes with fantasies of mowing down golfers on the 16th green with a Bren gun.

If, like me, you think of the map of Fife as being like a Scottie dog seen in profile, then Fife Ness is the tip of the dog's nose. It's certainly cold and wet. The view across the Firth of Forth rotates out of sight, and you have a new vista out to sea, with the snow-covered hills of Angus ahead.

Just past the Ness itself is a flat area of rock with some concentric circles on it. This is where Robert Stevenson knocked up the light for the North Carr Rocks before deploying it. So we're back at industrial archaeology.

Having rounded Fife Ness, you are on the "golf coast", God help you. As you may have guessed, I detest the game and everything to do with it. I therefore found the next couple of miles very trying, as they skirt a course, and are prefaced by a sign that tartly requests you to walk on the shore and not on their course, and specifically not to visit Constantine's cave. This cave is where tradition suggests that Constantine I was killed in 874, while trying to repel a Danish invasion. Or maybe he wasn't. Anyway, the cave lies all of five meters from the shore, and dangerous subversive that I am, I took a picture.

The light was getting rather lovely by about 3 o'clock or so, and it was tempting to keep going and soak up the views. However a local bus to St Andrews from Kingsbarns looked like a good deal, and I took some pictures while waiting. It felt very cold once I had stopped for a while—amazing how a good walk warms you up.

Fife coastal walk: 3

2009-02-02T20:31:00.008Z

Episode three of this wee adventure rapidly developed its own character. I rejoined the route at Leven, next to the disused power station, but turning to the left and walking along the beach soon left industrial Fife behind. Largo Law beckoned in front of me.

Although the day was dry and fairly clear, there was a strong wind off the sea, so I had to wear a lot of fleece and keep moving. I did manage to take a lot of pictures though. I'm really pleased with my new(ish) camera−it lets me do a lot of things that I couldn't before, including taking hand-held shots on windy beaches without much camera shake.

Largo is famous as the birthplace of Alexander Selkirk, the historical figure on whom Robinson Crusoe was based. Here's a statue of him.

After Largo, there was another fine beach, over which the wind whistled unhindered. The flat openness probably also explains various Second World War defences that are found there. There are lots of tank traps (concrete cubes) in a line along the beach, and a few concrete pill-boxes with a field of fire to the sides in case Jerry managed to land and get past the cubes.

After skirting a drift of caravans at Shell Bay, I wandered up my first bit of cliff of the day, showing that I was now in the East Neuk. I already knew that there was a Klettersteig along the base of the cliffs here, but it didn't seem like the day to try it. Instead I walked along the headland, passing some former gun emplacements as I went.

After pausing for some overpriced food in Elie, I followed the now rather rocky coast to some classic fishing villages. St Monans church is mediaeval and very close to the sea. The path in front of the church takes you within splashing distance.

Days are lengthening a little now, so I managed to keep going until Anstruther at 4.30, where I was nicely in time for my bus home. Passing back in the gathering dusk through the places I had just walked through, I could still see the waves beating on the shore.

The origins of Tetris?

2009-02-01T15:37:00.003Z

I know, I should get out more often.

Genius

2009-01-19T21:49:00.005Z

Genius was a cartoon that appeared in the Observer from 1978 to 1983. It featured Anode Enzyme, the greatest genius since Leonardo, who had an IQ of 12, 794 (it was higher, but he lost a few points through watching television). Working for Lord Doberman, the world's richest man, gave him a lot of freedom, but he mostly confined his talents to doing whimsically obscure things like firing colour televisions into the sea, or recording the sound of a tape recorder being destroyed by a chain saw. Aged about 11 or 12, I hugely admired this serial work, so much so that I collected the strips for a while, pasting them into an old notebook. It's hard to say whether I prefered the surreal humour, the delightfully messy ink drawings and lettering, or the rather lovely watercolour that formed the main part of each week's installment. They clearly came from a complex, witty, un-bourgeois, and generally splendid intelligence. It always felt faintly subversive, as if nobody at the nice paper quite knew what the chap was up to. They never really gave it enough space. The same point is made in a nice appreciation here. I recently came across my yellowing cuttings, complete with original dates in my own childish hand. The one above was undated, before you ask.

John Glashan, the creator of Genius, seems to have rather sunk without trace. A great pity.

Tony Hart

2009-01-18T14:49:00.003Z

Tony Hart has died. I spent a lot of my childhood watching him, on shows like Vision On, and Take hart. Like most of the best TV presenters, the programs were never about him. They were generous, encouraging to aspiring artists like me, and always fun.

Happy New Year

2009-01-09T20:13:00.002Z

And now, nuclear war.

I grew up in a threatened generation: in the late 70s and early 80s. It already seems a long time ago, but there was a real prospect then that something very big could kick off. I don't remember this being talked about much, although it would surface as nervous laughter at school: "Imagine Miss Watt announcing a three-minute warning over the Tannoy!" One focus for these fears was the television film Threads (1984).

It is a docudrama that tells the likely consequences of a nuclear exchange on Sheffield, and when I watched it—aged 15—it scared the shit out of me. Recently, Rog pointed out to me that you could watch Threads on Youtube (all 13 parts). Now I have, and it remains riveting.

Despite almost 25 years elapsing, some of the scenes were still vivid in my mind, though I had forgotten that some of them belonged to this film. Take, for example, the woman wetting herself in the street, or Ruth giving birth in some straw with a barking dog outside, or the post-apocalypse children blankly watching a scratchy video about skeletons.

The documentary angle helps the film and means that it doesn't just become incoherent and shouty. Paul Vaughan's narration of chaos was particularly effective, as he regularly voiced episodes of Horizon at the time.

Near the end, we see that children born after the attack are evolving their own corrupted form of speech. Give it a few centuries more and you have Riddley Walker.

Fife coastal walk: 2

2008-12-31T15:27:00.007Z

It's taken too long to get round to it, but here is the next part of what is becoming a winter project to walk the Fife coastal path.

Days are short at the moment, so 9.30 am saw me getting off the train at Kinghorn and seeing what was more or less a sunrise.

The caravans thankfully didn't last very far, and I soon got to the day's first castle, Seafield Tower, with its own tiny harbour.

I reached Kirkcaldy not long after, and stopped for coffee and a not-very-nice all-day breakfast. I always find that Fife has a good supply of baker's shops where traditional plain baking may be acquired, and Kirkcaldy is no exception. I bought a bag of scones for £1. The assistant wore a badge that said "SAY AYE TAE A PIE".

Onwards to Ravenscraig castle, which Historic Scotland uncharacteristically, don't tell you much about.
A lot of industrial past can be seen on this walk, and there's a bit of it at Dysart, whose neat harbour was originally used to export Fife coal. A bit further along is the preserved winding gear of the Frances colliery.
A slightly less obvious reminder of the coal industry is the vast spoil heap that the path takes you over. It has been landscaped and has enough vegetation on it now that you'd never know there was once a nice sandy beach underneath.

I'd never heard of the caves at Wemyss, but I should have. I also didn't know that the name Wemyss comes from the Gaelic Uamh (a cave). So there you go.

And the last castle of the day: Macduff castle.

Buckhaven and the outskirts of Methil tend to drag a little, though there is much more recent industry in the form of the Kvaerner fabrication yard with its massive shed. Methil power station also dominates the view for a while. It used to run on coal (do you see a theme developing here?), but was decommissioned in 2000. When I got to Leven, there was an hour or so of daylight remaining, but its cute new bus station seemed a natural point to stop. I had twenty minutes to wait for my bus home, which I occupied with buying chocolate and wandering up the main street. One shop was a huge empty barn-like space lit by strip lights. Somebody was pulling down shutters as I passed. The name above the entrance read "Woolworths".

I hope to have more psychogeography very soon.

You want disgusting local filth on that?

2008-12-23T16:44:00.002Z

The ever-fascinating Strange Maps has been mapping the boundaries of some fast food habits. I wonder how they'd get on with the distribution of salt-and-sauce on chips. A perverse Edinburgh habit that I've never taken to.

An obsession for the mentally deranged

2008-12-15T19:27:00.003Z

I was very much hoping that NordWand would be good. The mountain film is a shy and rarely-met-with creature: you just don't get that many. So there is an extra intensity of hope. After waiting all that time since Touching the Void, would I be let down? Thankfully I was not.

The film tells the story of an attempt on the North Face of the Eiger in July 1936. The feeling of climbing is conveyed very well, with lots of detail of the (to today's eyes) crappy equipment of the time. Ropes are of hemp; clothing is woollen and dull in colour; ice axes are long and wooden. Natural materials ranged against ice and rock, I suppose.

The film starts in a fairly pedestrian manner, but the device of the ascent builds up interest, and the final third is stunning, tragic, fascinating, and oddly beautiful. One small criticism: I think the film misses the opportunity to show the danger from falling rocks as the face warms up.

H2G2

2008-12-13T15:32:00.003Z

I'm currently enjoying the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy in its best form: radio. The original series, broadcast from 1978 to 1980, were a formative experience for me. I can still remember lying on top of my bed one evening listening to that bit about the Shoe Event Horizon (a section that is both manifestly true--you try living in Swindon--and which curiously failed to make it to any of the series' other forms). I didn't know before that how effective radio could be. And I didn't know you were allowed to be that funny.

Hitch-Hiker also meant that I later had a few shreds of status (at least among other geeky 14 year-olds) through being able to recite some of the Good Bits.

For years I owned a tape version of the first two series, but my tape player doesn't work these days, and I own too few audio tapes to be bothered buying another one. So a purchase seemed in order, and the chance to get all the later series too seemed too good to miss.

You gotta rush. It'll pass.

2008-12-08T21:13:00.003Z

Well, a rush of boredom. You, know, you've nothing in particular on, your boss turns out to be off sick, and you tit about pretending to finish some document that nobody really needs, and that you could have finished on Friday if you had a reason to. Things are so slow, you start writing a training document. Still, with age comes experience and the almost certain knowledge that tomorrow will be better. No, really, it will.

Visiting

2008-11-18T20:52:00.004Z

I was in Ocean Terminal yesterday and saw HMS Edinburgh in the harbour. A bit later on she left with the help of a couple of tugs. The huge picture windows at Ocean Terminal are perfect for this.

Fife coastal walk: 1

2008-11-04T19:53:00.010Z

And now, a slightly delayed post about what I did on Friday.

I've been meaning to walk along the Fife coastal path for a while, and good weather on Friday combined with a day off got me started. Recording my progress here may make me more likely to finish it too.

The starting point is one of Scotland's iconic objects. 55, 000 tons of steel sculpture with trains running over the top of it.

There's a lot of industrial and post-industrial stuff going on at the start of the walk, with disused quarries, and this jetty near Inverkeithing made of old Bailey bridge components.
It's quite a varied landscape though, and a few hours later found me looking at St Bridget's church, near Dalgety Bay. One of the inscriptions on the gravestones reads "1787 James Scott Two Breids".

I neglected to take a picture, but just outside Burntisland is a monument on the spot where Alexander III's horse stumbled and killed him, precipitating the wars of Independence. You know, Bruce, Wallace and all that. Somebody has left some cacti in pots next to the monument. I don't know why.

I can't say I enjoyed this section very much, as you are forced to walk along the road, past lots of identical mobile homes that are arranged in straight rows across the fields. A truly depressing sight. If I'd been Martin Parr, I'd have taken pictures. I guess it pays better than farming the land.

Things improved a bit at Kinghorn though. Some people were attempting to surf in the tiny bay in front of the town.

I considered walking further, but it would be getting dark soon, and I could see more caravans in the distance, so for the sake of my sanity I got the train home.

How big is it really?

2008-10-16T20:55:00.002+01:00

Check out ActualSizer. It gives you a sense of the scale of an art work: something that is often lost in reproduction. I sense some major time-wasting approaching.

More news from my lunchtime walk

2008-10-14T20:49:00.001+01:00

This wee dug was being encouraged across some jumps, seesaws and tunnels at lunchtime. It seemed happy.

My evening

2008-10-14T19:46:00.002+01:00

Excited by the smell of chips, a mouse runs across the floor and behind the washing machine. When I check where it's gone, I find a sock. I was looking for that.

Health and Safety bollox

2008-10-07T19:59:00.002+01:00

The pond that I sometimes walk to at lunchtime has acquired a couple of signs saying "Danger, water". Just in case you hadn't spotted that. I wonder how much this pointlessness costs?

Where was I?

2008-10-06T22:54:00.002+01:00

My walking gear smells of smoke. I must have spent the weekend in Clashgour.