No, I don’t mean those who frequent the pubs and clubs.

It being a nice day* I and the good lady took a stroll along the shore path from Kirkcaldy to Kinghorn. Along the way we spotted some seals basking in the sun. I had the camera!

First attempt. The seals were too far away really. I don’t have much of an adjustable lens.

One of the seals was in the water. I think you can just about make it out in this photo. The previous ones are still perched on their rocks to the left of shot.

Just to left of centre in this picture (it’s the shiny bit) is a seal who’d dragged him or herself out of the water.

This is probably the best shot. A longer ridge of rock with several basking seals.

*I think I might have used the Ablative Absolute (see this post) in this phrase.

As promised, more pictures of my stroll round Dundee.

The top floors of this building are now filled by a JJB Sports and the ground floor has a Tesco Metro.

From the styling it looks to me as if it originally was a Woolworths but I’ve not sufficient knowledge of Dundee to be sure of that. I couldn’t get far enough back across the street to frame the whole building.

There are some nice flourishes around the windows.

There are four identical embellishments on the roof edge. Some of them are sprouting plants.

The building next to this (housing an Evans) has a clocktower that is obviously Deco influenced but must be much more recent.

There is another Murraygate view here of this possible Dundee Woolworths.

Fontana, 1980

(The cover above is from the 2001 reprint, not the Fontana edition which I read.)

Since his recent death I thought I’d take a look at some of Bayley’s work which I never got round to at the time.

In this one time travel has been discovered and is possible through the substratum (which members of the Time Service call the strat) between the 6 nodes which advance through historical time. As a result there are three kinds of time; nodal time, historical time and orthogonal time.

Chronopolis is the capital of the Chronotic Empire where travel to times between the nodes is strictly forbidden and requires a device known as an orthophase to stabilise the wearer’s presence between nodes. However members of the royal family can make such travel with impunity. (One such scion has ventured internodally to meet, seduce and bring back his future self to live with him. With characteristic wit Bayley names this identical pair Narcis₁ and Narcis₂.)

The Empire is heavily dominated by a church founded by the discoverer of time travel and relies for advice on an enigmatic machine oracle wherein previous Emperor’s memories are stored and which is called the Imperator. Could this possibly be where Douglas Adams got the idea for his Deep Thought?

There is also a war with the Hegemony, a culture at the furthest node. Their use of a time distorter device causes ripple effects through the Empire’s domains, wiping out entire histories and leaving no memory of them. The activities of an heretical sect, the Traumatics, feature strongly. Temporal paradoxes abound.

Oh, and the strat is a dangerous place, exposure leading to mental disturbance, and may harbour a devil of sorts.

This all utterly bonkers, of course, but it is a measure of Bayley’s ability that it does make a kind of sense when you’re reading it.

Unfortunately, this story is twenty years old and it shows. The characterisation is minimal. The book verges on being sexist since there are only three female characters (one of whom is a corpse, another is peripheral at best and the third seems to be there primarily for members of the Traumatics to abuse her and to provide a punchline at the end.) Many of the names are ridiculous. Mond Aton? Inpris Sorce? Absol Humbardt? San Hevatar?

It was however a pleasure to read an adult SF book that didn’t require a weightlifter’s muscles to do so.

191 pages of small print. That’s the way to do it.

This is the real Nirvana’s track, Rainbow Chaser, their third single, which is said to be the first to utilise throughout what became almost a trademark of musical psychedelia, phasing.

I must confess that, to me, the verses seem to be without phasing.

This alternative version (not the one I remember) does seem more phased but otherwise its arrangement is more conventional.

The first one is of course of the most striking example of the form in the city. Even if it’s a travesty of its former glory you can’t miss the tower.

Green’s Playhouse was erected in the Nethergate in 1936 as a cinema but has now been converted (rather obviously) to a bingo Hall.

The following is from the Theatres Trust website.
“A large ‘super-cinema’ – second only in the UK in size to Green’s Playhouse in Glasgow (1927) – by John Fairweather. The lavish interior was by John Alexander, with Art Deco foyer and restaurant, and the auditorium, with Corinthian columns and piers marching down the side walls, was described as an ‘outstanding and enormous Classical/Art Deco theatre’. It was said to have set ‘standards of luxury unrivalled anywhere else in Scotland’. The exterior was dominated by a 25m lattice steel neon advertising tower, later clad with sheet metal. Bingo and other uses from 1967 until a devastating fire in 1995. The remains were deemed to be dangerous and demolition followed, although the tower survived and is listed (Category B).”

The Scottish cinemas website has some stonking old pictures of the Playhouse in its heyday, including a few of postcards that were made of the exterior, the foyer and Sunshine Café; not to mention of the management and staff! Those were the days. Some of the plans are shown there too.

The building was certainly much classier then than it is now.

Here are the external lighting cylinders in close up.

There’s a photo here of the cylinders with their tips lit up.

Tor, 2003

At this time of the year I’m knackered and not up to reading anything demanding. I wasn’t going to post about this one as I only read it to see how Turtledove dealt with a juvenile. However, I was amused to note that he gets rid of the parents by the end of chapter four. Classic children’s tale scenario.

It isn’t quite an Altered History story. The book’s young heroes are part of a culture that can travel to parallel worlds (known as Crosstime Traffic) to exchange trade goods slightly technologically advanced of those in the market world in return for grain which their own society processes into oil substitutes. They of course find themselves stranded in one of these worlds – a heavily bureaucratised descendant of an altered Roman Empire – and caught up in a siege. Turtledove is careful not to place them in too great danger, however.

In many ways Turtledove’s style is ideally suited to this sort of book as the prose is functional and undemanding but to my mind, even taking account of the target market, information is still repeated too often and his elaborations of the differences between the cultures are heavy handed. There was, though, a delightful explanation of the declension of nouns in Classical Latin plus a mention of the Ablative Absolute.

Though set in the late 21st century, the Crosstime Traffic culture appears not all that different from the present US – it still has Home Depots and WalMarts, for example – with no hint of other countries in its world. Despite knowledge of resource depletion in its own timeline its attitude to the other worlds is merely exploitative – although the characters do think they’re lucky they haven’t yet met a parallel world more advanced than their own.

I hope Turtledove’s young readers aren’t superstitious. The book has thirteen chapters.

What on Earth is this supposed to mean?

We’re applying for planning permission but don’t intend to do anything with it?

Or maybe we’ll do something else ; or else invest in the team.

Make up your mind guys.

The Auld Son (at Sons Diary) will be going spare.

Don’t forget the Writers’ Bloc reading at The Pleasance Cabaret Bar tomorrow. See the poster below.