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?

I came across a television programme about climate change sceptics the other night and started watching it. The man-made-climate-change denier they followed the most seemed, at the least, peculiarly fixated (and was later shown up to be somewhat economical with the truth – not to say downright mendacious in his quotations.)

Where he began to annoy me was when he marched off to a geological site in Australia with some acid in a bottle in order to “prove” that there were high levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere when the whole planet was iced over. He proceeded to say, “Here’s a piece of Dolomite, let’s pour acid on it and see if it gives off CO₂,” and I thought, “Wait a minute. Dolomite’s a carbonate, of course it’ll give off CO₂ when you put acid on it!”

Any carbonate rock will do. Try the White Cliffs of Dover, you’ll get the same result. Or a piece of marble.

So this “proof” consisted of nothing other than an unremarkable bit of chemistry. Quite how it was supposed to relate to the atmospheric conditions which pertained millions of years ago was never quite made clear.

The same guy then went on to speak to an audience of Aussie sceptics some of whom the programme interviewed afterward and they spoke of him as if he were a prophet and climate change scepticism as if it were a religion.

He took the biscuit at a Tea Party rally in the US where he buttered the crowd up with the “great land of freedom” rhetoric, spoke to their prejudices and apparently almost omitted to mention any scientific evidence at all. Another of the speakers raised great cheers when he said, “Americans won’t be bullied.”

Speaking to the camera one more attender at the rally said they were standing up against tyranny. (Though what they have yet actually been forced to do that they didn’t want to I have no idea.)

A day or so later I was showing a class a (twenty year old) video about the acid rain problem and the use of catalytic converters in cars and a thought occurred to me.

Wasn’t the removal of leaded petrol equally “tyrannical” as any putative legislation to alleviate climate change? Or the introduction of catalytic converters? This was in effect a tax on people (and cars) exactly of the sort the Tea Partiers at the rally were apparently complaining about. Yet I don’t remember large protests about them. Nor hearing of Acid Rain sceptics – still less Acid Rain deniers.

Why was this? What made/makes the difference?

Where were the Acid Rain deniers?

The answer may lie in the fact that having catalytic converters in your car doesn’t imply a change in lifestyle, merely a slightly higher cost of living – sweetened, of course, in the UK when unleaded petrol was phased in, by the lower tax levied on it in comparison with leaded.

The programme also spoke to several US petrol heads who were not sceptical of anthropogenic climate change but still liked their cars and motor-bikes. One referred to oil as the US’s crack cocaine, that it’s going to be hard, if not impossible, to wean them off it.

But it was this standing against tyranny thing that struck me.

How far do these people go in their individualism and disrespect for rules/instruction/coercion?

When they get in their SUVs or 4x4s and drive off to their rifle and pistol shootathons do they wear seat belts, I wonder? Do they drive on whatever-side-of-the-road-they-damn-well-please? Or do they accept there are some limits on their freedom?

Where, exactly, do they draw the line in standing up against tyranny?

Do they accept there are any limits on their freedom? And if they do, why are they so against what, if they are right, would be only a relatively minor inconvenience in the larger scheme of things but if they are wrong means they – and all the rest of us – may be totally stuffed?

Or do they think they are somehow inviolable and just don’t care about anyone else?

Just east of Loch Leven, which is in Kinross-shire as was, is a hill known as Bishophill.

This is supposed to be the best place in Britain for the presence of updrafts and consequently is a haven for gliders and hang gliders. They make their ascent from nearby Portmoak airfield. (It’s a glorified name for a strip of grass, really.)

A couple of weeks ago the good lady and myself set off from Scotlandwell to scramble up the hillside.

This is a panorama of Loch Leven from not very far up.

A bit further on the path took us past the tip of Bishopshire golf course which is built into the side of the hill. The picture doesn’t convey the steepness of the fairways.

We needed more than several stops to catch our breaths before we made it to the ridge at the top.

At the lower summit this dome has been built in the past few years. It wasn’t there the last time we went up, as a family quite a few summers ago now. I suppose it’s a mobile phone booster or something.

A while back I mentioned the Coptic Church in Kirkcaldy.

It’s in Links Street, in a part of the burgh known as Linktown, which used to be a separate entity but in 1876 was amalgamated into the Lang Toun along with three other burghs and, subsequently, Dysart.

The building is now known as St Mark’s. I suppose it was previously a Church of Scotland kirk of some description.

Further along Links Street are some newly built houses on one of which is a mural.

There is also an explanatory panel whose photo I have expanded to make it readable.

Still on Links Street, but nearer Kirkcaldy proper, is another church which has had its usage changed. It’s now a play centre for young children; birthday parties and such.

Someone got to this blog by searching for the above two words on Google.

What?

WHAT?

But more importantly: why?

This happened today and being the second full moon to occur in a calendar month is not as infrequent an occurrence as the phrase might lead people to believe.