SFL Div 2, Recreation Park, 18/9/10

League goals for predictor:- 18.

Chalk and cheese.

We were unrecognisable from the team that succumbed at New Bayview. The defence looked as if they had talked to each other. We ran, blocked, covered and played for each other.

Mind you we were also unrecognisable as a team that would score a goal; but first things first, a little at a time. I think the Alloa keeper only had two saves to make and only one of them troubled him – and that was by accident.

Michael White had one good and one excellent save for us and handled well throughout which helped the defence stand firm, I’m sure. If Stephen Grindlay gets the nod next week it’s a disgrace.

Alloa were much the better team and had much more of the ball but couldn’t really break us down. Chappie had us set out in what approximated a 3-5-1-1 with Scott Chaplain just behind Ross Campbell. At least it made us difficult to beat.

30 more of these and we’ll end up with 34 points.

It it keeps us up, fine, but Arbroath finished last season with 40.

I know some people swear by Dylan (hello Alastair) but I was never much into him. I usually thought that interpretations of his songs were better than his originals principally because his singing voice is not to my taste.

This therefore is, to my mind, the definitive version of All Along The Watchtower. (It beats U2’s into a cocked hat, for sure.)

The Jimi Hendrix Experience: All Along The Watchtower

Dunoon is a seaside town so it’s not surprising to find some Art Deco but I didn’t expect quite so much. (I knew previously there was at least one typically flat roofed house.)

This is McColl’s Hotel:-

Here’s a close up on the entrance. The fenestration has obviously been updated.

This photo of the rear was taken from beside the Lamont memorial.

On the main street was Home Hardware, surely a former Woolies.

This is the La Scala cinema (as was) – opened in 1936, closed in the 1970s, now a shop.

There is a frontal image of this at the Scottish Cinemas website.

This is the house – in Mary Street – I mentioned above. It has been reroofed. Originally its windows were much more deco. I’ve seen a photo of this where it resembles the face of a robot.

Finally is Selborne Hotel which is up (down) a side street and difficult to photograph in its entirety.

Big Rab recently posted up this list. Apologies to Sassenachs and others furth of Scotland for the incomprehensibility of most of what follows.

1. You consider scattered showers with outbreaks of sunshine as good weather.

2. The only sausage you like is square.

3. You have been forced to do Scottish country dancing every year at secondary school.

4. You have a wide vocabulary of Scottish words such as numpty, aye, aye right, auldjin, baltic!

5. You destroyed your teeth when you were young using Buchanan’€™s Toffee, Wham bars, Penny Dainties, MB Bars, Cola Cubes etc.

6. You have an enormous feeling of dread whenever Scotland play a ‘€˜numpty’€™ team like the Faroe Islands.

7. You happily engage in a conversation about the weather with someone you’€™ve never met before.

8. Even if you normally hate the Proclaimers, Runrig, Caledonia, Deacon Blue and Big Country, you still love it when you’€™re in a club abroad and they play something Scottish.

9. You used to watch Glen Michael’€™s Cavalcade on a Sunday afternoon with his side-kick Lamp, Paladin.

10. You got Oor Wullie and The Broons annuals at Xmas.

11. You can tell where another Scot is from by their accent -€“ ‘€œAwright, pal, gonnae gies a wee swatch oa yur Sun ? Cheers. Magic, pal.’€ Or, ‘€œFit ya bin up tae? Fair few quines in the nicht, eh?’€ etc.

12. You see cops and hear someone shout, ‘€˜Errapolis.’€™

13. You have participated in or watched people having a ‘€˜square go.€’

14. You know that when someone asks you what school you went to they only want to know if you are Catholic or Protestant.

15. You have eaten lots and lots of random Scottish food like mince’€™n’€™tatties, Tunnock’€™s Caramel Logs/Wafers and Teacakes, oat cakes, haggis, Cullen Skink, Lees Macaroon Bars, etc.

16. A jakey has asked you for money.

17. You think nothing of waiting expectantly for your 1p change from a shop keeper.

18. You know the right response to, ‘Ye dancing ?’€™ is, ‘Y’€™askin?’€™ followed by, ‘€˜Ah’€™m askin,’€™ and finally, ‘€˜Then ah’€™m dancin.’

19. Whenever you see sawdust it reminds you of pools of vomit as that’€™s what the jannies used to chuck on it at school.

20. You lose all respect for a groom who doesn’t wear a kilt.

21. You don’€™t do ‘shopping’€ you ‘€˜go the messages.’

22. You’€™re sitting on the train or bus and a drunk man sits next to you telling you a joke -€“ and asking, ‘Ah’€™m no annoying ye ah’€™m a?’€™ and you respond, ‘€˜Naw, not at a’, yer fine. This is ma stoap, but.’

23. You can have an entire phone conversation using only the words, ‘awright,’ ‘€˜aye,’€™ and ‘€˜naw.’

24. You have experienced peer pressure to have an alcoholic drink when out – regardless of the circumstances.

25. You know that ye cannae fling yer pieces oot a 20 storey flat, and

that seven hundred hungry weans’ll testify tae that.

Furthermore

you’€™re sure that if it’€™s butter, cheese or jeely, or if the breid is plain or pan, the odds against it reaching earth are 99 tae wan.

26. You know that going to a party at a friend’€™s house involves bringing your own drink.

27. Your holiday abroad is ruined if you hear there is a heatwave in Scotland while you’€™re away.

28. Your national team goes 2-0 up against the Czechs in a qualifier in Prague and your mate says we’€™ll end up losing 3-2 here and you think, ‘€œProbably.’€

29. You can properly pronounce McConnochie, Ecclefechan, Milngavie and Auchtermuchty.

30. Your favourite pizza is deep fried and battered from the chippy.

31. You’re used to 4 seasons in one day.

32 You can’€™t pass a chip shop or kebab shop, without drooling, when you’€™re drunk.

33. You can fall about drunk without spilling your drink.

34. You measure distance in minutes.

35. You can understand Rab C Nesbitt and know characters just like them in your own family.

36. You go to Saltcoats because you think it’€™s like being at the ocean.

37. You can make a whole sentence out of just swear words.

38. You know what haggis is made with and still eat it.

39. Somebody you know used a football schedule to plan their wedding day date.

40. You’€™ve been at a wedding where the footie results were read out.

41. You aren’t surprised to find curries, pizzas, kebabs, Irn Bru, nappies and fags all for sale in one shop.

42. Your seaside holiday home has Calor gas under it.

43. You know that Irn Bru is an infallible hangover cure.

44. You understand all the above and are going to send it to your pals.

45. And, finally, you are 100 per cent Scottish if you have ever used these terms -€“ €œ’How€™s it hingin’€™?’€ ‘€œclatty’€ ‘€œboggin’€ €’cludgie’€ €œ’dreich€’ ‘bampot’ ‘bawheid’€ ‘€œbaw bag’€ and ‘€œdouble nougat,’€ (this last pronounced “nugget.”)

My review of this book has been delivered to Interzone.

For those of you who remember it the cover depicted is not the one which appeared in my “currently reading” Library Thing link. (At the time I was reading Look At The Birdie Library Thing did not have it available.)

The one on the book I received had a different encomium to that above, though. Mine read, ‘One of the master alchemists of modern American fiction,’ Sunday Times.
In addition there was a puff from Dave Eggers, ‘Relentlessly fun to read,’ New York Times.

After Inveraray it was off round the headwaters of Loch Fyne. Hooking left at Strachur we went down the Cowal Peninsula. This took us along the shores of the stunning fresh water Loch Eck. The road runs along the (north) east side. In the late afternoon the water looked black in places, reflecting the hills on the other side like a mirror. A beautiful spot for a canoeing or fishing holiday if you’re into those.

Scotland is well served for lochs such as these; usually with steep sides. To my mind fresh water lochs are so much more scenic than sea lochs as they do not have margins scabbed by brown seaweed.

Destination was Dunoon.

I’d only ever visited Dunoon by ferry boat/paddle steamer before – probably en route to Rothesay on a “Doon The Watter” trip and I don’t remember actually setting foot in it.

Its heyday is obviously long past. The main street was shabby and a bit forlorn and the pavements up the town were festooned with weeds.

The Cowal peninsula was the territory of Clan Lamont. In our wanderings we found a memorial to the Lamont dead of the Civil Wars of the 1640s. (Wiki has this titled as The English Civil War but it was way more complicated than that with various shifting alliances involving the whole of the British Isles.)

The plaque with the names was a bit corroded so they are difficult to pick out.

.

Down by the seafront just across from the ferry terminal at the pier there is a memorial to the Great War and World War 2 containing names of all those from the peninsula who died. As I recall, it (unusually) gave the names of nurses. Once again (as was also true at Inveraray) vastly more names for the Great War than the later one.

Round the coast, at Sandbank, there was another, this time dedicated to the more local dead of Sandbank and Ardnadam.

In days gone by, in the background to this memorial, you would have been able to see swathes of US Navy ships, or at least the anchorages they used, for this is Holy Loch which housed (harboured?) a Polaris missile submarine base. Note this is within twenty-five or so miles as the crow flies from Glasgow. Would such a thing ever have been allowed that short distance from London if the requisite deep water had been as close to it?*

*Edited to add:- Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet is based even closer to Glasgow; at Faslane in Gare Loch (the Gareloch as it’s known locally.)

SFL Div 2, The Rock, 11/9/10

League goals for predictor:- 18.

I thought I’d conquered it. That I’d given this season up for dead. It’s been a fortnight since New Bayview after all.

But there it was at three this afternoon. That small wriggling worm of hope.

And finally getting round to checking the score at 4.40, the nagging worry.

1-0, but time not up. Stenny would equalise, or worse.

Then the sending off. Was it a penalty?

Agonising seconds waiting for the final score.

A WIN! Three points!

And a clean sheet. How on Earth did that happen?

We’re not even bottom of the table any more.

It seems Michael White was in goal. About time.

No Ben Gordon in the starting line-up. He’s been poor this season it has to be said. Maybe giving him the captaincy wasn’t a good idea. Was Chissie in central defence as this team list suggests?

The result is welcome but it’s not enough for me to change the goals for and against predictors though.

And since son number two now has a flat in Alloa, within walking distance of the ground, I’ll be there next Saturday.

(I would have gone anyway.)

Another single I bought in Bexhill-on-Sea; this one a couple of years after The Happenings.

It was the first big hit for Jethro Tull, coolly if somewhat archaically named after the improver of the seed drill, fronted by a trampish looking guy who sported a codpiece and played the flute while standing on one leg.

Rock and roll?

Apparently the band quickly came to hate this song and didn’t play it on stage for what amounted to decades.

Jethro Tull: Living In The Past

After Oban it was on to Inveraray (Inbhir Aora) on the shores of Loch Fyne. That Gaelic spelling, by the way, suggests it should still be pronounced Inverayrah though most people seem to have given up on that and say it as it is spelled in English.

The town signs announce it as “Birthplace of Neil Munro.” To those of my vintage that immediately conjures up images of Roddy McMillan, John Grieve, Walter Carr and Alex McAvoy in the BBC Scotland productions of The Vital Spark stories and sure enough sitting in the harbour (or at least at the shoreside) is that venerable fictional puffer; or anyway the boat that stood in for it.

Some of those original programmes seem to be available on You Tube. An example is below. The humour was gentle and a bit obvious but it’s a reminder of other times.

There was a later BBC Scotland TV version of these stories starring Gregor Fisher but it never quite caught the spirit of the first incarnation.

Also on the shore side is Inveraray’s War memorial. It’s a nice one this, showing a kilted soldier.

Hampden Park, 7/9/10.

On the highlights (there were highlights?) Liechtenstein looked like a team. They were comfortable in possession, passing the ball, running in support, and in Mario Frick they had a very good player in their ranks – who took his goal superbly but ought to have been closed down to prevent it happening. Every time they got the ball I thought – they’re going to score, they’re going to score – and eventually they did.

Scotland looked nothing like a team, disjointed, unable to make the simplest pass or run, scared of possession: but got out of jail.

There is no point dreaming of qualification – notwithstanding the fact that Lithuania won in the Czech Rep last night (we won’t) – and even if by some miracle we do qualify what’s the use? We’d only get humped in every game in the finals; or the play-offs.

Even the chance to become unofficial world champions has now been taken away after Spain were demolished by Argentina yesterday.