I walked up Dundee Law (a conical hill that is the city’s highest point) for the first time yesterday.

From it you get fine views over the city and the surrounding countryside – except that yesterday it was misty so the views weren’t so fine.

It is a good vantage point to see the North Tay Works, or the McGregor and Balfour building, which I have featured before.

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.

SFL Div 2, The Rock, 13/8/11

I was only going to write this season about matches I actually attended but this result requires comment.

I don’t want to talk about it.

Nor the 4-0 defeat to Dundee in the League Cup.

Nor last week’s humping at Airdrie.

You spot the theme, don’t you?

Played 2. Won 0. Drawn 0. Lost 2. For 1. Against 8.

The school is in Byron Street and has some Art Deco touches.

The otherwise strict verticals and horizontals are interrupted by the arches over the windows and doorways on this gable end block. The building on the right is probably the janitor’s house.

There’s one more photo on my flickr site.

Now known as North Tay Works – off Loon’s Road.

Note the typical Art Deco verticals and horizontals and pastel colours. Designed by a local architect William M. Wilson, this was built for timber merchants MacGregor and Balfour in 1937-8 and added to at the rear in the 1950s. It is now B listed and known as North Tay Works. It is situated, up an alley really, off Loon’s Road in Dundee. This is a stitch of two photos. Somebody’s garden prevents getting the whole from the front in one picture. The windows are either original Critall ones or very sympathetic replacements.

There is very nice Deco styling to the doorway and note the curved windows.

The rear was apparently added in the 1950s but the curve is in sympathy with the 1930s. The glass bricks are in keeping too.

It has had a recent revamp but unfortunately appears to have no occupant at present.

See more pictures on my flickr site.

Edited to add:- I have added a view of this building from Dundee Law in a later post.

What? This early? It’s barely June.

Dundee. At home. On 31/7/11.

Well. There’s a gubbing.

Aren’t they just about the highest placed team we could have got?

This always seems to happen to us.

I see the League Cup is now the Communities League Cup. Sigh.

While looking up Eddie Turnbull’s career for my post on his death I noticed something remarkable.

Hibs won the league three times during Turnbull’s playing career; in 1948, 1951 and 1952. Not only that: in the seventeen years spanning their first win till Kilmarnock’s sole league title in 1965 no less than five different non-Old Firm sides won the league. Apart from Hibs and Kilmarnock, Hearts (1958, 1960,) Aberdeen (1955) and Dundee (1962) are on the roll of honour. That beats even the early years of the Scottish League when in its first 14 years Dumbarton – 1891 (shared with Rangers) and 1892 (outright) – Hearts (1895, 1897,) Hibs (1903) and Third Lanark (1904) all were champions of Scotland.

Can anyone imagine that sort of thing happening now?

The Old Firm duopoly is so entrenched that the mere thought is instantly dismissable.

The only team to upset the Old Firm domination of the league between the two World Wars of the last century was Motherwell, in 1932. (See here for the full list of winners.) The 28 year run from Third Lanark’s title in 1904 till Motherwell’s is the longest such period of unbroken Old Firm hegemony. So far.

At present it is 26 years since anyone but Rangers or Celtic won the league. (Aberdeen 1980, 1984 and 1985) and Dundee United (1983) are the only provincial sides to win a championship since the 1960s. Neither look likely to repeat the feat soon. Barring extraordinary circumstances, circumstances that are unforeseeable, to me at any rate, that 28 year record will be broken in 2014.

The Scottish Cup has always been a more likely prize for a “smaller” club to win but even so that 1950s and 60s period saw no fewer than seven non-Old Firm clubs lift the trophy. Aberdeen in 1947 (and 1970,) Motherwell (1952,) Clyde (1955 and 1958,) Hearts (1956,) Falkirk (1957,) St Mirren (1959) and Dunfermline Athletic (1961 and 1968.)

Of course, in those days the playing field was a bit more even as each club shared its gate money with the away team. Since the introduction of the system whereby each club keeps its own home gates the imbalance between the Old Firm and the rest has grown bigger. This is merely exacerbated by the Champions League money available to Celtic and Rangers nearly every season. (Though none of that stopped Rangers getting into substantial debt recently.)

The other clubs are simply not in a position to compete. It’s a sad and unhealthy situation.

Well Christmas has been and gone, and my birthday just before it.

We had both boys, plus the younger’s girlfriend, with us for a few days. A nice family time. Among other things as presents I got a few more tins for the collection; mainly containing biscuits.

Yesterday I was van driving again, the road and the miles to Dundee. Not to mention humphing furniture flat packs up two flights of stairs at the other end.

I can barely move today.

So there’s not been much time for posting.

There has also been a full scale thaw.

We were back up in Dundee on Friday taking more stuff to the flat our son has bought.

The weather was still interesting.

Above is the block of flats where his flat is, below is the entrance road.

That’s where the van got stuck on Tuesday. Here you can still see the ridges in the snow/ice:-

This is where you would normally park:-

The access road is lined with tenements. There were some great icicles hanging from one of them but the picture didn’t come out too well.

The main roads were fine, though.

I’ve remarked before that it’s not often we get a lot of snow at Son of the Rock Towers but like the rest of the country we haven’t escaped this winter’s early deluge.

Despite that we had a visitor. Well, our garden did.

Here it is, showing as a backdrop the first (relatively trivial in hindsight) snowfall.

I don’t recall ever seeing a snipe before but we looked it up in our Wildlife of the British Isles book and it was exactly like the illustration there.

Snipe are wading birds. We’re only a couple of hundred yards as the snipe flies from the sea here so perhaps it’s not surprising to see one. It was grubbing about in the snow – for food I suppose, maybe there’s not much down on the shoreline at the moment – but it had measly pickings. It was there just long enough for me to rush upstairs for the camera and to get the one pic.

Yesterday we moved some of our elder son’s stuff to his new flat in Dundee. We just moved son no. 2 out of Dundee in the summer and now the other moves there. Isn’t life strange?

I was driving the van. That was fun. We couldn’t get near the ground entrance to the flat so were humphing stuff through twenty metres of snow. Then the van was reluctant to come out of the iced up snow and had to be dug out. South of Dundee on the A92 on the way home it began snowing again. I could barely see where the road was.

Still, not a scratch on the van despite a few slips and slides at roundabouts – including one 165 degree skid on exiting one! The snow/slush caused that but also saved me from damaging the van as it gave a soft place for the skid to end up. We ended up facing completely the wrong way blocking that exit. It must have been entertaining viewing for the folks in the vehicle waiting to get onto the roundabout at the previous exit. I just drove back onto the roundabout and went all the way round. More carefully.

Eight or so more inches fell overnight so it was a bit tricky this morning getting the van out of where it had been parked in front of the house but once on the road I got it back to the hire place OK. The main routes are ploughed and gritted but not our street. We also had no bin collection today. Next one’s in a fortnight!