From Grantham we moved on to Stamford, which is apparently where the BBC TV series Cranford was filmed. The town seemed more prosperous tha Grantham had looked.

The approach was olde worlde but the High Street was a bit more modern. I might have expected Deco like this at the western end of the High Street:-

However on Broad street was a fine example of the style:-

It has a lovely rounded facade and original style glazing. Pity about not being able to get a photo with no street furniture in the way. That lamp post!

Central looks like it was once a cinema but now it’s a nightclub. At least it’s getting used.

I noticed it just after photographing the War Memorial, which is on the other side of Broad Street, set into the wall of quite an imposing building.

A couple more photos of Stamford are on my flickr.

Euro 2012 Qualifying round, Rheinpark Stadion, Vaduz. 8/10/11

I missed most of the first half of this as I was travelling back from Dundee. By the commentary on Radio Scotland it sounded like we were scorning innumerable chances. It was 0-0 when I arrived home. Imagine my surprise when, two minutes later, I turned on the TV and saw we had scored. Chris McKail-Smith, the first double-barrelled surname player ever to start a game for Scotland, took it well.

The second half was a snooze fest – with Liechtenstein shading the mid part of the half – up until the last ten minutes when Peter Jehle in the home goal had to make two great saves in a minute.

So. Only Spain to beat now.

Onwards and upwards to the play-offs.

(No. Me neither.)

The missing days from my blog meant I wasn’t sure if any new posts would appear. As a consequence I did not post about David Francey when his death was announced.

Francey was football’s radio soundtrack to any Scot of my generation and those before. Who who heard it could ever forget his trademark, “It’s a drive!!!”

I remember he was reputed to have been driving home from a commentary game, up around Aberdeen way I think, and spotted a notice for a David Francey sound-alike competition that night. He stopped; not to observe but to take part! He came third and didn’t tell the organisers who he was.

This may be apocryphal but like all good stories really should be true.

David Francey: Feb 1924 – Sep 2011. So it goes.

Last week I heard a DJ on Radio 2 saying when Agnetha came to sing this song for Abba she must have said to Björn and Benny, “The lyric on this is insane! It doesn’t scan or rhyme.”

Silly, silly man.

It does both.

I think this lyric is fantastic, precisely because of the rhymes and scansion.

The rhyme scheme for the first verse is AABB*CC*DEFF* (where the * is for a part rhyme – which is more than common in popular music.) Moreover the D and E lines have an internal rhyme of lunch with bunch. Indeed, if you consider the line break is at “lunch” – which verses 2 and 3 suggest is more correct – the rhyme scheme becomes a near perfect AABB*CCDDEE.
The second and third verses both have an absolute AABBCCDDEE rhyming.

As to the scanning; it’s brilliant. In fact the line, “Undoubtedly I must have read the evening paper then,” is a wonderful iambic heptameter.

“There’s not, I think, a single episode of Dallas that I didn’t see,” is superb; the best line in any Abba song bar none. If you allow the “see-ee” at the end as an iamb it’s also a near perfect iambic nonameter.

The only thing I dislike about the lyric is it’s written in USian. Gotten is now archaic in British English – except for the phrase “ill-gotten gains” – and we don’t say “to go” but “to take away.” But then “to go” provides the rhyme.

Plus there’s an element of SF to it all, with the looking back to something that has changed, the implication of a life transformed.

I’ve always had a soft spot for the Blancmange version.

There is also an eight minute version on You Tube.

I don’t usually watch the ITN news but I caught the bulletin at 6.40 yesterday and was reminded why.

Their lead story was “Lockerbie Bomber Escapes Justice Again.”

Really?

Escapes justice?

Again?

Apparently the new Libyan regime will not extradite Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet Al Megrahi to the West.

And why should they?

ITN was peddling utter tosh. Twice over.

Even putting aside the fact that he is almost certainly innocent, Megrahi has not escaped justice. He was convicted, and served a term of imprisonment from which he was released on compassionate grounds under the terms of the justice system concerned.

So he did not “escape justice” even once: still less once more.

The BBC news earlier in the week wasn’t much better, though. A reporter knocked on his door in Tripoli and received no answer and on these grounds decided Megrahi had fled and had thereby broken the terms of his release.

Now, if you lived in Tripoli would you have answered your door this past week? And, if he has fled, wouldn’t you have in his place?

While he has survived way longer than we were led to expect he would, the man is still clearly ill. Given that he has already been duly processed, if under extraordinary provisions, it would be a crime to subject him to further detention.

And let’s have none of this “the victims want this to happen.” (That is to say the victims’ relatives.) They most certainly do not – or at least not all of them do.

That there is talk of US snatch squads apprehending him is an outrage. To do so would be a clear breach of international law and would put the perpetrators on an equal footing with any other law breaker.

Edited to add:-
It seems Megrahi is now at death’s door and has been found in his family home so perhaps we’ll hear an end of this.

There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the realm of Scottish football over the results of the qualifiers for the Europa Laegue.

After the first leg comprehensive horsing of Hearts by Spurs and the draw and defeat for the ugly sisters (Rangers and Celtic for those who don’t share the disregard in which they are held by Scotland’s real football fans in the lower divisions) the BBC Scotland Saturday football airwaves were full of doom and gloom.

Since this Thursday and the – extremely predictable – elimination of all three Scottish clubs this rose to a cacophony on Radio Scotland this afternoon as I was making my way to New Bayview.

Most contributors seemed to be under the illusion that somehow or other the natural order of things had been upset and that Scottish clubs owed it to the country (or the fans, or something or other not entirely clear) always to survive these early rounds.

Well, ask yourselves. When was the last time a Scottish club outwith the Old Firm won a two-legged qualification tie? Motherwell was it, against Llanelli? And did they survive the next round? While I do remember Aberdeen doing well when Jimmy Calderwood was their manager, that was a good few years ago now. Most others have been deposited on their backsides very quickly indeed. And that is where Scottish football is and has been for a long time. This is the competition the Old Firm has to beat (and finds it ridiculously easy to do so by and large.)

This set of results has been coming down the pipe for a long time.

And they are perhaps to be expected from a small, poor country on the north-west periphery of Europe.

The riches pouring down on those clubs – and the leagues where they play – which habitually inhabit the knock-out stages of the so-called Champions League from television rights make this a circumstance not easy to alter.

That is where a lot of the disfunction lies. The Champions League is a monstrous carbuncle on the body of football ensuring (with only a few exceptios) the same old teams divi up the rewards between themselves. Only a Russian oligarch or oil-rich sheikh can have any hope of upsetting the apple cart.

Had the Champions League never been invented the world of football would be a purer, more innocent place. But Scottish football at the highest level would still be a self-serving, myopic miasma.

So. It’s Russia.

Well done, comrades. (Or don’t you say that anymore?)

Fat lot of good having David Beckham, the Prince William and Mr Irresponsible presenting the England bid as part of the team did them.

But what an outpouring of bile we got from the commentariat on BBC news in the aftermath, saying that the process was flawed, not transparent enough and must be changed.

What? You lose the vote and that’s because of the system?

This display of sour grapes is profoundly unappealing. You were acting as if it were your divine right to have the tournament. I know God is supposed to be an Englishman but get a grip. No wonder you lost.

Where does this ridiculous sense of entitlement originate? You lucked out once and have been more or less mince ever since. You continually puff up your league as the best in the world. If it is – and that’s by no means a given – it would only be because it is stuffed full of foreign players who are more gifted technically, and more intelligent in the football sense, than your indigenous ones.

And before anyone points the finger, my poor little football country has no such delusions of grandeur. We cured ourselves of any vestige of that a long time ago.

It’s indicative of the desperation fans of England feel that they appear to think that only by hosting the World Cup will they ever win it again. (I would suggest that the way the England team is going now even being hosts wouldn’t guarantee that.)

Face it guys. Nobody likes you. You’re too arrogant.

On BBC TV news yesterday – in Scotland certainly, and I think on UK-wide bulletins too – it was stated time and again that the Forth Road Bridge had been closed due to snow for the first time “in living memory.” For all I know other news providers said the same.

It was a significant event certainly, especially for all those inconvenienced by it, but since the bridge was opened in 1964 that would be the first time, then; first time ever, no qualification required. It was only 46 years ago after all, nowhere near three score and ten. There are loads of people older than me (and younger too no doubt) who can remember it opening.

It makes you wonder – again – about the accuracy of all the other comparisons we are provided with on these organs of supposed truth telling.

Maybe this isn’t really a linguistic annoyance; just one about those who don’t think about what they’re saying. Or writing, for those who composed the script.

No ref, no game. (Bob Marley should have written that.)

It’s a farce isn’t it? The SFL brought to a standstill because of a dispute in which it is not involved. (As far as I’m aware no SFL club has complained of any referee bias against them – or even of incompetence.)

Yet the SPL, one of whose members it is which is causing all the fuss, has its games go ahead?

Okay our game might have been off anyway due to the weather but the prime reason is the referee’s strike.

I see from this report that the Polish refs whom the SFA was going to bring in have also called off. Pity; I was wondering what the Polish for, “Who’s the mason in the black?” is.

I saw Mark McGhee on BBC Scotland on Thursday night saying that it was a dangerous precedent, what if the foreign refs turn out to be better than ours.

I don’t think Scottish refs are perfect but I also don’t think they are biased or corrupt, merely mistaken at times – as are all refs.

So what, Mark, if the foreign refs are worse?

That might actually tell us something.

It would be marvellously ironic if today Celtic were on the wrong end of an important decision. But if they are on the right end of one it proves nothing – beyond the possibility that the ref just doesn’t fancy an earful from Neil Lennon, or snide blustering from a certain Dr John Reid.

Let me be clear. All clubs suffer from poor decisions at times. Yet it is simply ridiculous for either of the Old Firm to say they do not benefit in the majority of cases in Scotland.

A similar situation occurs for all big clubs everywhere. (Manchester United rarely have penalty awards given against them at Old Trafford. I have no doubt Real Madrid benefit from this effect in Spain.) In Europe it is the Old Firm who are small beer and suffer accordingly.

As things stand it seems Celtic’s management now have what they wanted; an atmosphere in which decisions against Celtic cannot be made for fear of the consequences.

The SFA has not been strong in this. Member clubs should be told only to question decisions via the SFA and not the media. Persistent complaints, such as those we have seen, should engender a points deduction.

Club managers should be banned from the touchline for the remainder of the season (or half the next if in March, April or May) for any nose-to-nose confrontations with match officials. Players mobbing the ref should mean a club fine.

I’m not holding my breath for any of that to happen to either of the Old Firm.

Last Saturday the good lady and I went to the B2B Edinburgh Antiques and Collectors Fair held in the Royal Highland Centre Ingliston (thought I’d give them the full puff.)

Occasionally we had to dodge the cameras filming BBC 1′s Bargain Hunt.

One of the stalls had a lot of deco stuff including some unusual glass cabinets.

The nearer one is tall. It had empty flower pots in it suggesting that it might be intended as a terrarium. (Spot the Bargain Hunt crew’s microphone boom in the photo’s background.)

The further pair were the image of each other and very deco, having curved edges at one end and an off centre towered part with mirrored sides.

These had gravel in the bottom so may be intended to be terraria as well. They’re a bit large for anywhere but a greenhouse I’d have thought. Our greenhouse is well stocked and we wouldn’t have room elsewhere for anything like them.

I have to say I didn’t see much else to pique my interest so didn’t buy anything all day. (The good lady did, though.)

The next such Fair at Ingliston is in February (12^th and 13^th.)