Another artist drawn postcard of the Empire Exhibition, Scotland, 1938. This time the United Kingdom Pavilion building.

The artist who drew the paintings featured on these postcards, issued by the manufacturer Valentine’s, was called Brian Gerald. A list of all the cards he painted can be found here.

This year’s tournament has been very watchable stuff, even if the games involving Tahiti were total mismatches.

Italy have been strange; leaking goals in the group games was very unlike them. They reverted to defensive type in the semi-final against Spain, though, except they seemed to adopt that most un-Azzurri tactic, the ball over the top. An un-Italian inability to convert chances scuppered them in the end. I wonder if Brazil will try the ball over the top in the final. It caught Spain out a few times, confirming the sense that the Spanish are get-at-able at the back.

Nigeria look to have the nucleus of a side for the future; get themselves a clinical finisher and they’ll be there.

I was surprised that Japan ended up with no points. They were excellent but allowed themselves to be caught out. Given a good draw in next year’s World Cup they could go deep into that competition.

Brazil aren’t the full article yet either but Neymar is a player (even if he falls over too easily.)

And what a transformation for Uruguay’s Edinson Cavani from the group games – when he looked lost – to the semi-final, where he was influential all over the pitch.

(The final will probably be a let down now.)

I mentioned not long after I started blogging that I had been on a diet. (The relevant post is the only other one in this category.)

Well I put back some of the 20 lbs I had lost (too many you could say) and as a result I again became careful with what I ate.

However, over the past fortnight, due to upheavals at Son of the Rock Towers, meals have had to be snatched so I have been dieting inadvertently and am now as slim as I can ever remember.

Last week in the Beveridge Park, Kirkcaldy, I noticed this growth on one of the trees. It’s huge.

From the other side of the tree you can see there are two growths.

This is a close up of the first fungus from underneath.

Very textural.

An artist drawn picture postcard of the Tower of Empire (Tait’s Tower) at the Empire Exhibition, Scotland 1938.

I’ve just watched the third of mathematician Marcus du Sautoy’s television series Precision: The Measure of All Things on BBC 4.

There’s a lot been going on at Son of the Rock Towers over the past week or two (details may be forthcoming in due course) so I missed the first two episodes, Time and Distance and Mass and Moles – which is a pity as the second at least will have been about Chemistry – and I don’t know if I’ll get the chance to catch up on them.

Tonight’s last in the series was titled Heat, Light and Electricity and discussed how ways to measure these phenomena have been developed and extended over time.

du Sautoy irritated me though by using the word phenomena as if it were singular. I now quote Wikipedia:-

Phenomena are observable events, particularly when they are special.

A single observable event is of course a phenomenon.

The same distinction applies to the word criterion – like phenomenon, based on Greek – and its plural where too many people, especially news reporters, refer to a criteria. It makes me cringe.

In sum, the only criterion for using the word phenomena is that more than one event is involved. If there’s only a single event then it’s a phenomenon.

Atlas Publishing & Distributing, London. A Street and Smith Publication (Cover price 1/-!)

This is a 10 x 6½ inch magazine which I bought at an antique fair late last year along with the corresponding magazine issue of March 1958. Apart from a few adverts, this one contained nothing but fiction, in double column layout. The cover illustration is uncredited. Three of the four interior illustrations bear the relevant artist’s signature.

Space Fear by James H Schmitz
A very much told, rather than shown, farrago about the overthrow of a psychic illusionist who is holding a planet in thrall. Replete with cardboard characters with unbelievable motivations.

Philosophical Corps by E B Cole
The Corps of the title go about planets ridding them of the influence of degraders who have disturbed the natural order of things by exposing the inhabitants to galactic technology before the natural time. Packed with clunky expository dialogue.

Casting Office by Henderson Stark
History is represented as a sort of horror play by an Author (who parrots Shakespeare) undone by backers who dislike the ending he has written.

Experimentum Crucis by Andrew MacDuff
A trader from Earth pulls off a deal with an alien in a far away system. He may not have got the bargain he thinks.

High Threshold by Alan E Nourse
Someone with a high threshold for adaptation is required to understand the properties, and withstand the dangers, of a strange cube which distorts things – something to do with negative absolute temperatures and negative molecular motion. The only suitable candidate – a woman – has an unusual response.

Protected Species by H B Fyfe
An inspector of colonial installations on a visit to the Planet Torang, decides the local large animals are worth protecting. It is a fateful decision. The twist in the tale – even if a bit deus ex machina – is an effective one.

Lyrically this reminds me of the hymn, “Christian Dost Thou See Them?” a version of which is on You Tube here.

The best known version in Britain is the one by Fun Boy Three, whose lead singer Terry Hall co-wrote it – a restrained, almost gloomy, treatment with more than a hint of menace.

The original by the Go Go’s (whose guitarist Jane Wiedlin was the other composer) is much more carefree; a typically bouncy pop song.

Fun Boy Three: Our Lips Are Sealed

The Go Go’s: Our Lips Are Sealed

Tor, 2012, 359p.

After a strange encounter with a renegade, when a dangerous piece of technology, an instantiation lattice, is forcibly inserted into his brain, information specialist Luc Gabion is called in to investigate the murder of a member of the Temur Council, one of the Thousand Emperors of the title, rulers of the Tian-Di, half of the two parts into which humanity had split after the events of Gibson’s previous novel Final Days.

Thereafter we are plunged into a mix of power politics, interstellar intrigue and action sequences with all the attendant skiffy stuff – armed insect–like machines called mechants, jump gates, books that release their contents on contact, enhanced humans with disseminated consciousnesses – of which devotees of Space Opera are fond.

I have a feeling that Gibson may have rushed this one; or else was squeezing too much into his word count. Quite a lot of the background information was revealed through dialogue and as a consequence seemed unnatural. (Yes, no-one in novels actually “talks” as in real life; but even so.) The mayhem count will please those who like that sort of thing though

Curiously a crime was “perpetuated” at one point but “perpetrate” was used later in an appropriate fashion. Compared to Final Days there was an increased span count of 5 here – though there was one “spun.”

My latest review book for Interzone is Deathless by Catherynne M Valente.

Ms Valente is new to me but the blurb seems interesting as it promises a combination of fairy tale (Fantasy elements then) and Russian History.