As you can see from today’s Guardian I’m only 19 miles from Crackpot. It’s very strange because I thought I was a lot closer!
The photo is from an article about strange place names which you can read here if you’re interested.
I think it was written because the towns of Dull in Scotland and Boring in the US recently became twinned. The K.Stephen in the photo is referring to Kirkby Stephen of course and not Katrina.
For some reason I found myself reading Ian Jack’s column in the Guardian on Saturday which you can read here if you’re interested. It’s a bit of a long ramble about Anglophilia/phobia and Scottish independence amongst other things.
I have to say that I do like England and have lots of English friends and family, but I really can’t stand the sort of Scots who go down to England and have the attitude that they have somehow got one up on the rest of us who weren’t successful enough to get ourselves to the south. We tried it and didnae like it – so we took oorselves aff hame again.
Not for the first time I wondered to myself why Ian Jack is given space in the Guardian at all but this article seemed to be even more silly than usual. I think he feels guilty for being a Scot living in England, I can’t see why else he would write about famous Scots who found themselves living/dying in England. You don’t have to be brilliant to realise that lots of Scots have had to go to England at some point for work or career reasons. Most of us do want to get back home as soon as we can, especially if we’ve had the misfortune to pitch up in the very over-crowded south-east.
Poor R.L. Stevenson was in Bournemouth at one point apparently and Lewis Grassic Gibbon died in Welwyn Garden City (I managed to survive it – just!) It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Ian Jack that doctors routinely told their patients to move to a warmer climate when they had poor health, generally TB/consumption. The doctors knew that there was nothing they could do for them. If they were wealthy they took themselves off to Italy and died a wee bit slower than they would have in Scotland’s colder climate. Otherwise they went to the south of England where the weather was marginally better in the summer. However the worst two winters which I have lived through were way down south in Essex.
R.L. Stevenson who had been sickly even as a child, went all over the place trying to prolong his life in hot climates, but to no avail. John Buchan lived in Oxfordshire (shock horror) he had graduated from Oxford University but as a career diplomat he spent most of his life in Canada and became the Governor General there, he was steeped in all things Scottish as far as I can see.
But it was when Ian Jack mentions that Kenneth Grahame wrote The Wind in the Willows and describes it as “one of greatest Anglophile novels” – I thought to myself Ian Jack has lost it completely!
Kenneth Grahame had an idyllic childhood with his siblings in rural Perthshire, until the death of their mother. It wasn’t long after that shock that they were all moved down to England, where Kenneth was badly bullied at school because of his Scottish accent. I know that people who should know better point to a stretch of river and say that it is where Kenneth Grahame set the book. In reality the setting was his childhood, the characters his siblings and yes THE WEASELS were the English. They were the people who had pushed him around as a child – and he was getting his own back. It suited him at that very class conscious time to see the good guys – Mole, Ratty, Toad and Badger as English gentlemen and the weasels as common riff-raff, and no doubt for commercial reasons that was the right thing to do because the book wouldn’t have been published otherwise. Perhaps Ian Jack should read some books on children’s literature of the early 20th century.
By the way – the people I know who are the most ardent supporters
of Scottish independence just happen to come from Surrey and Oregon, but they live in Scotland so they’ll be voting, which is just as it should be. I have no idea what’s going on in the minds of the ex-pat Scots many of whom apparently want a vote when the time comes. Whoever heard of people having a vote in a country they don’t live in!
I was flicking through the Guardian the other day (yes we do actually buy it) when I came across this article. It’s quite long but well worth reading, even if the result is to make you spitting mad, like me.
The upshot is that the BBC is having to pay Rupert Murdoch £10 million a year to have the privilege of BBC programmes being shown on Sky. I feel as if I’ve wandered into an alternative universe again. I thought that we lived in a Capitalist society which is very simple to follow. If you have something which someone else wants then they have to pay you for it, if you want them to have it. So why isn’t Murdoch paying the BBC £squillions to be allowed to broadcast BBC programmes?
I have always prided myself that I haven’t knowingly added any money to the Murdoch coffers. I’ve never bought one of his newspapers and I don’t have Sky, so I’m more than a wee bit peeved – actually I’m incandescent – that my licence fee money is going to Murdoch.
I’ve always thought that the TV licence is just about one of the best bargains around. I would even be quite happy if Auntie Beeb didn’t block the internet viewing so that people in other countries could look in. That would stop Murdoch in his tracks, which could only be a good thing.
Please BBC, stop giving money to Rupert Murdoch et al!
Square up to politicians. Nothing is perfect but the BBC has a place in the hearts of most Brits which is second only to the NHS.
Why am I not surprised that this whole situation came about through Maggie Thatcher’s sucking up to Murdoch. Cakes and ale anyone?!
I could go on at length but I can already see that 2012 is going to be a year of grumping and groaning. Now, does anybody know how I go about setting up an online petition to support the BBC?
Duncan just got the keys to his flat yesterday, he’s one of the few first time buyers to be able to get a mortgage at the moment, so we just got one son moved out of Dundee a few months ago and now we’re busy moving Duncan into Dundee. It isn’t my favourite place in the world, it seems so remote and far away from what I think of as civilisation, but it’s as close to St Andrews as any normal person can buy a place nowadays and his drive to work won’t be so long now.
It’s going to be really weird having no ‘children’ in the house, after 24 years my husband and I are going to be on our own again. Tonight we had them all around the dinner table though and they’re going to be with us over Christmas and New Year as usual.
So for the next few days I’m going to be running around furniture shops because despite the fact that our house is overflowing with antique furniture, mainly inherited, he wants his place to be new and modern – what a pain!
I just had enough time yesterday to get a quick look at The Guardian G2 section and read this article on Little House on the Prairie and Laura Ingalls Wilder
I watched the tv series as a youngster and although the whole frontier thing really attracted me I seem to remember that I was driven round the bend by the whiney youngest girl. Was her name Amy? As the youngest of 3 girls and with 2 older brothers as well, I was nothing like her at all and she seemed to me to be really spoiled so I don’t think that I ever read any of the books. Did I miss something and are they worth reading as an adult?
“Finally, to Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s South Bank, where the toast is Edwin Morgan, Scotland’s first national poet, who died in August aged 90. A great Scot, a great man of letters. A man with a very sweet tooth. So it seemed a fine idea from the Poetry Society to mark the occasion by distributing Tunnock’s Snowballs – individually wrapped marshmallows covered in chocolate and coconut flakes – to the audience. The sweets were brought from Glasgow and each carried the message: “A treat from Glasgow.” Alas, they could not easily be given away, because when managers at the Queen Elizabeth Hall realised that the sweets had not been risk-assessed, they banned them from official circulation. Still, it mattered not, for word spread and, oblivious to the dangers, members of the audience helped themselves to the confectionery. Poetry and silliness. Edwin would have pronounced it a fine night.”
The above is an extract from The Guardian Diary of 5/11/10 by Hugh Muir (last item here).
I know that we Scots are well known for having a sweet tooth and a general love for all things bad for you, but really, how daft can you get.
Why would anybody think that a Tunnock’s Snowball would have to be ‘risk assessed’? I’ve been told that Tunnock’s biscuits and Teacakes are very popular in Canada and Newfoundland but apparently they haven’t heard of them in London. Why something that is obviously commercially made and wrapped in cellophane would be deemed to be unsafe for consumption is beyond me.
I think Edwin Morgan would have laughed. I’m glad that I wasn’t one of the people who had to clean the hall afterwards though, Snowballs are incredibly messy and sticky, bits of coconut flakes would have been all over the place.
If anyone comes around to visit me, the kettle gets put on immediately and it’s a fair bet that Tunnock’s Snowballs will be amongst the delights on offer.
I read all of Nancy Mitford’s books when I was in my twenties, so that’s a good long while back and they’re due for a re-reading because I remember that I really loved them.
The whole family is fascinating but I always identified with Deborah who became the Duchess of Devonshire. Not that I married a duke or anything, my husband was a Chemistry Ph.D. research student when I married him and I think that a duke would have been an easier option!
Deborah was the youngest of a large family, as I am. Of course her older siblings were horrible to her and I know just how she felt, but I think she probably had a more interesting life and she has outlived the rest of them, being the only one left now.
She’s 90 now and has written her memoir which is called Wait For Me! and that’s one which I’ll definitely be requesting from my library, it sounds like a ‘must read’ for anyone interested in the Mitfords and that era. There certainly aren’t many people around who have met both Adolf Hitler and John Kennedy.
If you want a wee taster of what’s in her book, have a look at the interview which was published in The Guardian yesterday.
The Chatsworth estate is another one of those places on my list of ‘places to visit eventually’.
I’ve been busy this week trying to catch up with all the things around the house and garden which are neglected during the school holidays. So I’ve been hard at it cutting back a lot of growth in the garden which is mainly the result of the amount of rain which we’ve had recently. This time last year I ended up with a frozen shoulder because I overdid it in the garden and by Christmastime I could hardly move my arm at all, so I’ve stuck to using the pruners and steered well clear of the saws.
I didn’t even get around to reading The Guardian so this morning I did some catching up. We always buy The Guardian but you can get most of it on-line I think. Unfortunately they don’t put the cryptic crossword on the site and we both love doing the crossword, it’s a bit of an addiction really.
There was an interesting article about biofuel. They are experimenting with by-products of the whisky making industry at Edinburgh Napier University. Apparently it can be used in cars without having to adapt their engines. Sounds good. I’m wondering what it smells like. It would be fine if it smells like the finished product, but some of the smells created by distilling whisky aren’t so good.
I was brought up in a distillery town where they made Ballantines, J&B and many more, but the smell could be pretty nasty at times.
I’ve heard that if you adapt your car to run on old cooking oil from fish and chip shops then the exhaust fumes have that distinctive chippy aroma. Very confusing if you’re in need of a fish supper and you don’t know where your nearest chippy is. You used to be able to rely on your nose to sniff one out!
I’ve got no doubt that when they get down to the investigation of the horrendous accident in the Gulf of Mexico, they will discover, as ever that it was caused by the oil companies’ penny-pinching ways.
I’ve lost count of the number of oil rig accidents which have occurred in the North Sea. The companies are completely uncaring of their employees’ welfare and people die because of the sheer greed of the companies.
Even although the profits which the oil industries make are eye wateringly enormous, they can’t bring themselves to spend paltry sums of money on maintenance. I’ve seen photographs of pipelines which look like badly patched quilts and obviously the only safe thing to do is to replace the broken pipe. It must be terrifying to work on an oil rig under such conditions.
The first disaster which I can remember which concerned oil was when the oil tanker Torrey Canyon ran aground on rocks between Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly in 1967 when I was 8 years old. You can read about it in an article which was published in The Guardian yesterday.
I can’t see how the oil is ever going to be cleaned from the sort of coastal grasslands which I have been seeing on TV.
My husband bought me The Forsyte Saga boxed set on 7 DVDs for Mother’s Day. Well, he’s not a bad lad and of course it was really cheap from The Guardian. (£19.99)
I’m really shocked that this was first screened in 1967, so I was only 8 years old. I remember that I loved it and certain parts of it have always stuck in my memory. I think it was actually on quite late at night, I’m sure that it wasn’t meant to be viewed by 8 year olds but as I was the youngest in my family by quite a long way, my bed time tended to be forgotten about. Lucky me.
It was a BAFTA and Emmy award winning series but of course it is in black and white which doesn’t really bother me, I love watching vintage films which are often in black and white too.
So I’ve been having a great time watching it again whilst my husband was out at a football match, and I’m already on episode 5. As you would expect after all this time it is a bit dated but that hasn’t spoiled my enjoyment. Some of the acting is really good but some is quite bad. The love scenes are terrible, really hammy so they are an absolute SCREAM. I think it was all a bit too much for the BBC to cope with in 1967. I certainly remember that it was talked of in the newspapers and thought to be not quite ‘nice’ and a bit risque.
I think that the cast was well chosen, apart from John Bennet who plays the part of Philip Bosinney. His acting is fine – apart from the hilarious love scenes – but he is just too old for the part, he looks older than Soames a lot of the time.
For some reason I have never liked the actor Kenneth More who plays the part of young Jolyon, but again he doesn’t spoil it for me.
As an 8 year old, I remember being a fan of Soames and I still think that he was very badly treated by Irene. Eric Porter was perfect as Soames.
So my Mother’s Day present has been a great success and I can’t wait to watch the rest of it.
I’ve made a bit of a study of classic children’s literature over the years and although I don’t count myself an expert on the subject, I felt I just had to write to The Guardian Review about last week’s article by A.S. Byatt.
So I was really pleased to see that they had actually published the letter yesterday and illustrated it with a cartoon.
Letters section of Guardian Review 6/3/10
For some reason the Review letters aren’t on the website so I can’t link to them. I took a photo of the page instead. Here’s a close-up of my letter and their cartoon which was by Tom Gauld.
In general it was quite a good article but I do think that Byatt might have made some mention of the fact that so many of the authors she mentioned were actually Scottish.
I find that people from England tend to take it for granted that the great children’s classics were written by English writers. However, J.M. Barrie, George MacDonald, R.L. Stevenson, Kenneth Grahame and A.A. Milne were all Scottish. In the case of Milne, I believe he was born in England but brought up by Scottish parents and had a grandfather who was a church of Scotland minister. Just thought I’d mention it.