Take a look at these historical league tables (top four only) which show when Cowdenbeath FC has won the Scottish Second Division.

Scottish League Division Two 1913-14

1 Cowdenbeath P 22 pts 31
2 Albion Rovers P 22 pts 27
3 Dundee Hibernian P 22 pts 26
4 Dunfermline Ath P 22 pts 26

In those days promotion wasn’t automatic so Cowdenbeath were in Division Two the next year. Cowdenbeath were one of three teams on equal points at the top.

Scottish League Division Two 1914-15

1 Leith Athletic P 26 pts 37
2 St Bernards P 26 pts 37
3 Cowdenbeath P 26 pts 37
4 East Stirlingshire P 26 pts 31

A three-way play-off decided the league winners. Cowdenbeath defeated Leith Athletic at East End Park and St. Bernards at Easter Road to take the title.

Scottish League Division Two 1938-39

1 Cowdenbeath P 34 pts 60
2 Alloa Athletic P 34 pts 48
3 East Fife P 34 pts 48
4 Airdrieonians P 34 pts 47

Cowdenbeath’s only other Championship was in Div 3 in 2006. Their other promotions came as runners-up, through play-offs or as a result of another club’s financial problems leading to a readjustment in the leagues.

So does anyone spot something here?

Well, I notice that every time Cowdenbeath have been Champions of a Division 2 in Scotland the UK has been involved in a major (world) war the next September.

Now take a gander at the present position in the SFL Div 2 (as of 7/2/12) :-

1 Cowdenbeath P 20 pts 41
2 Arbroath P 20 pts 39
3 Stenhousemuir P 20 pts 31
4 Dumbarton P 19 pts 28

Gulp!

Come on Arbroath!!! (And the Sons, obviously.)

Well. I’ve got some shortbread in (thanks to son no. 1) and I bought a cherry cake. Also on the table will be some cider for the good lady, beer and Irn Bru – my favourite advert for which remains this one:-

Hogmanay’s all sorted then.

Coggeshall is a village on the road between Braintree and Colchester. We used to pass through it a lot on the bus to Colchester (and back) when we went of a Saturday to the big metropolis from the wilds of Braintree. At least it was on the main A 120 road then; like Braintree it too has been bypassed now.

Coggeshall had a reputation in Braintree as being inhabited by yokels – they told tales of “Coggies” in the same way others would of the Irish (or the Irish do of Kerrymen.) It’s barely three miles away!

We went on there after Silver End to see how much it had changed. Answer: not a lot. Mind you the minor road from Silver End to Coggeshall Hamlet (just south of Coggeshall proper) is the windiest thing I’ve ever driven on – like a sideways roller coaster. The road is called Cut Hedge Lane and skirts the edges of a farmer’s fields and there are no fences – nor hedges come to that – the fields start where the road’s edge is.

Coggeshall is still quaint, with Tudor style wooden framed houses of which this was the example most lopsided in appearance.

It’s not without some modern references, though. Someone had obviously been watching The Two Ronnies.

Cambridge is a curious mixture of mediævality and the modern. Plus you take your life in your hands walking about the place. People on bikes whizz around almost silently. We nearly got knocked down several times. So many bikes are there parked in one spot I heard one woman say to her companion, “Well my bike’s in there somewhere but I can’t tell where.”

It was morning when I took this, and raining slightly – not many takers for the punts.

King’s College (entrance below left) is impressive, but you can’t get back far enough to photograph it all. See below right for the chapel.

Access to the river is also restricted by the various colleges’ grounds.

On a lane down to the river we saw this unusual vertical sundial – well, actually four vertical sundials, one on each compass point of the tower I suppose.

This is from the footbridge over the Cam that we were able to cross. More empty punts – though if you look hard enough you’ll see one being poled just beyond the right arch of the bridge.

Lincoln’s most striking architectural feature is of course its cathedral.

The cathedral can be widely seen from miles off. When we got to the city it was obvious why. It’s at the top of a very steep hill up from the main street. Once through the gateway it’s too close to get the full facade in one shot. This is a stitch of two photos.

Also on the hill’s summit is Lincoln Castle. The picture below was taken by turning 180 degrees from the first shot of the cathedral.

On the way up the hill we stopped into an antique shop. From its window I noticed the building across the street. More particularly its name.

It’s now host to a second-hand book shop. You can just about see the steps up to the main floor level through the doorway. On the fronts of two treads it says BOOKS, NEW & SECONDHAND.

The next house down has a similar startling title (to modern eyes.)

This is no doubt a true reflection of mediæval Lincoln. In those times, Jews were not present in England to a great extent and were restricted by law to a very few occupations – specifically money lending (which was forbidden to non-Jews.) They would also have been required to live close together to avoid mixing too much with their Christian neighbours.

Thank goodness we’re more enlightened, open and friendly nowadays to people who may be different from us. Or even just foreign. (Oh! Hang on.)

I’ve just put all my missing posts back up via the medium of googlereader.

My blog administrator could see them all and showed me how to access them. Much cutting and pasting followed.

Unfortunately the back up he attempted did not succeed (there was some error message) and as a result the comments have gone. I think all the comments – for up to five months!! – have disappeared. Only ones since the restore are there.

This all seems to have played havoc with the formatting of the second page of entries.

Italian scientists have reported a finding that implies that neutrinos can travel faster than light. So much for Einstein, then. (And perhaps Lieutenant Montgomery Scott of Star Trek fame – to be born in Linlithgow in 2222.)

I can’t deny it’s quite exciting and may mean we have to throw over everything we thought we knew about the the way the universe works.

And perhaps all those space operas where starships cleave the paper light years with ease might be reasonable after all.

Well, maybe.

The result is only that the neutrinos seem to arrive 60 billionths of a second earlier than they should have, with a plus or minus margin of 10 billionths of a second. It awaits checking.

Caution may be in order. Remember cold fusion?

In any case light is already known to travel at slightly different speeds depending on the medium it is moving through. It is slower in glass and air than in a vacuum, so maybe this is a similar effect.

Anyway, the reported difference between neutrinos and light isn’t much – 299,798,454 metres per second compared to the 299,792,458 metres per second of light in a vacuum and according to the first link above it’s already been postulated that neutrinos might be faster than light, if only by a fraction.

I think there’s sufficient accumulated evidence to suggest that Einstein’s famous E = mc² equation is reliable that we won’t have to junk it just yet. Newton’s F = ma and F = Gm₁m₂/r² are still going strong after 400 years.

The Saturday before last we went to St Andrews for the afternoon.

It’s one of our favourite places. We stopped at the Botanic Gardens to look at the plants for sale.

By coincidence it was the day of the Leuchars Air Show. The assistant mentioned that she hadn’t heard the aeroplanes much so far. On the way back to the car (50 metres?) we were subjected to a blast of sound and 8 aircraft in formation swung over the trees. I didn’t have my camera out then unfortunately, but I did later.

I just timed this right to get four aircraft above the church in South Street.

Here’s one of four in formation.

And this is “patriotic” smoke trails.

The eight halfway decent photos I took are on my flickr site.

I’m glad I got the pictures because with the RAF leaving Leuchars soon there won’t be many more opportunities.

Brechin City’s ground is one of the tightest in senior football. They have recently been threatened with fines if they do not increase the pitch’s area, apparently because it is not large enough to meet UEFA‘s standards.

One of the reasons for this is that a beech hedge runs along behind the terracing on one side of the ground. You can see it in this photo I took on Saturday.

There is no scope to move this as Brechin do not own the land behind the hedge. The hedge is, in any case, one of the joys of attending a match at Glebe Park. To remove it would be a sacrilege.

And when are Brechin likely to play in a European tie anyway? And, if they did, why can they not use Dundee’s stadium, or Dundee United’s, both of which are compliant?

It’s nonsensical. The hedge must stay and Brechin not be fined.

This is the David Will stand, behind one of the goals. It is reputed to be able to seat more people than actually live in Brechin! In his time David Will became one of the top administrators of football; ironically eventually a UEFA official.

You can, by the way, view Dumbarton’s new home strip in the above photo in which I can see six of our players. It’s basically an all gold effort with trimmings.

Here’s a panorama of the ground from the stand. A stitch of three photos.

There are two more beech hedges, on the right as you look at the above, split by the smaller stand which houses the changing rooms.

Here’s a close-up of the nearer one.

All in all it’s a lovely wee ground.

One of the many people who have taken out super injunctions – that reprehensible state of affairs where the press is not allowed to publish, and hence the public is not even allowed to know, that an injunction against publication of certain material has been obtained – has turned out to be none other than BBC journalist Andrew Marr.

This is almost unsatirisable. A journalist takes legal steps to ensure other journalists may not publish something? Bizarre.

At least he seems to have come round to the realisation that hiding things is the opposite of the business he is in. It’s not as if he’s a politician.

But, to lower this to the level of the flippant, does anyone else think that a strange part of this story is that Andrew Marr has somehow managed to be attractive to more than one woman?