Category: General

We have had a wonderful afternoon, the NSW and I, a good lunch followed by a pot of coffee and a glass of brandy in front of a roaring log fire as the afternoon darkens around The Cave and the temperature drops outside, reviewing all the wonderful contributions of cherished colleagues for the January comps which closed this morning.  The subject for both the poetry and photo comps was “Happiness” and I am genuinely astonished by the variety and quality of the responses.  Make no mistake, there are some very talented and sensitive people out there.

Continue reading “The Results of Happiness”

Should someone tell Mr Justice Tugendhat, who has reportedly just commented that

“Bond girls who had intimate relationships with the promiscuous 007 could have suffered lasting psychological damage,”

that no one suffered anything because it’s all fiction!  And this is a judge.  God help us!

When I read about a novel short-listed for some Guardian prize or other that was about Aberdeen, I asked my local library to get it for me.  Now that I’ve read it, I can safely say that only the first few chapters are actually about Aberdeen.  It is in fact about the life of a child, born in the Granite City, brought up by a mother living on benefits.

Tony Hogan bought me an Icecream-float before he stole my Ma by Kerry Hudson is about the child’s life, seen through her eyes from her birth.  We learn that mother had moved to London, found a job but had been seduced by a married American.  Pregnant she returned home to Aberdeen and ended up living on benefits, cigarettes, vodka and drugs.  The Tony Hogan of the title is a bad lad, a vicious, violent drug dealer who takes advantage of mother’s council flat to move in ( there’s a novelty!) and then starts abusing her, though thankfully not the child.  Mother and child head back to London – and that’s the end of Aberdeen’s role in the book – to find father.  What they find is father’s wife, who has no idea where the philanderer is but offers them shelter and comfort for a couple of days.  Mother then moves self and daughter to Canterbury where she meets another man.  Then back to Scotland, this time Airdrie and Coatbridge, then on to Yarmouth.  The daughter finally makes it back to London, hoping for help from her stepmother.

The language is appalling and very tedious through repetition and the whole thing is totally depressing and at the same time annoying.  Always a shortage of money, moonlight flits with the landlord’s furniture, yet vodka and cigarettes.  I’m sure it is supposed to be a “scathing indictment” or some such of our society, but for me it is simply a damning piece of evidence that benefits do not in fact benefit the recipients.  Mother falls out with her own mother just after the baby’s birth – Grandma having had the temerity to suggest that she’ll have to find a job – and then relies totally on benefits, wherever she is. The child’s life might not have been much better if they had been forced to stay with Grandma, but it couldn’t have been much worse.  Schools seem full of undisciplined children, swallowing every drug they can find, and one can already see the next batch of unemployable young adults getting ready to hold out their begging bowls.

Landing in Paris on the 27th of December was a bit of a relief. My fears of flying Air France were unfounded as it turns out. The service was polite and pleasant. The flight departed San Francisco on time and arrived, if anything, a bit early. This made the connexion to Luxembourg all the less stressful. Passport control was simply. There was only one person in the EU/EEA/CH passport queue ahead of me. To say that the officer was indifferent would be to lend him more credibility than he perhaps deserves. He could not be bothered as he was chatting happily with his mate. I handed him my passport which he grudgingly picked up, glanced at, and promptly tossed back at me hardly looking at either me or my passport. Security was also reasonably quick, it being an intra-Schengen flight. Perhaps the most annoying part of the entire passage to Trier was a very slow cleaning woman who insisted on taking her time to clean the men’s WC after I had drunk a quart of water and 3 coffees. After giving a performance which could pass as a reasonable performance of Irish dance the WC reserved for parents with small children finally opened. The flight from Paris to Luxembourg on Luxembourg Airlines was a bit surprising. There were under 10 passengers including myself and almost all seats were empty. That we were able to fly at all was surprising. Even more surprising, then, was that my aunt who is generally as punctual as the Royal Mail actually arrived at the same time my suitcases were delivered. Her sons, my cousins, were there as well. One recently turned 18, the other will turn 10 next month. My uncles were there as well, one having driven up from Baden-Württemberg for the purpose of visiting my mother and myself. Continue reading “On Holidaying in Germany and England.”

JM and TR, I’ve just watched the first of the Blandings Castle episodes.  Dreadful!  Why must the BBC do this to perfectly good books?  Apart from the names of the characters, it bore little resemblance to the original “Pig Hoooey”, which was funny.  This just made me feel embarrassed.