A Son of the Rock

SPFL Tier 4, New Douglas Park, 10/10/26.

Another away game, another loss. Over a year now without winning away.

That is extremely unlikely to change while Frank is in charge. He’s pretty much clueless as to how to set-up a team or how to change things during a game.

Still, we did score to put a gloss on the scoreline; but it seems this was a fine individual effort by Leighton McIntosh.

Drummond Castle lies not far from Muthil and was our main destination the day we travelled that way.

Castle from approach road from car park:-

Entranceway:-

Main building:-

The castle’s prime attraction for visitors is its magnificent gardens.

Castle from gardens:-

More psychedelia.

The band Turnstyle’s only release, from 1968, a bit late to be following the surfing song trend. (Which it isn’t really.)

Turnstyle: Riding A Wave

Sixwhits Press, 2025, 279 p. Reviewed for ParSec 15.

Everyone experiences a multiplicity of worlds, for modern science tells us that this is a prerequisite for consciousness. However, for those who are not entangled, they experience such a narrow slice of all the realities that all seem identical, so it feels like a single universe. The day-to-day experience of the unentangled is one of many worlds, but a thin, uniform one.

So goes an extract from The Measurement Problem, A Guide to Entanglement by one A K Amari, quotations from which precede each chapter of David Whitmarsh’s novel of the same title. This imagined non-fiction work is a handy device for the novel’s author to provide background and context without it jarringly obtruding into the text. Our narrator, Detective Inspector Lewis Drake, is reading it (intermittently) to gain some insight into the world of the entangled, people who can experience the multiple worlds, a group he abhors since his sister Alice is in The Grange, a care home, after being given the implicitins which promote entanglement, with results which incapacitated her.

The action takes place mainly in a future London beset by rising sea levels, with a flood defence wall surrounding an area from which people are given encouragement to leave, in the long aftermath of a damaging virus war. Transport in this world seems to be by apparently driverless cars effortlessly on call to the public, though the rich, as ever, have their own provision. Implicitins were developed from research into CM-2057-phi-kppa, a virus that robbed people – like Drake and his sister – of memories from before their infection.

Exposure to implicitins can be benign or lead to cerasthesia, where the mind is overwhelmed by overlapping sensations from the many worlds. Their various forms, produced by the firm VirGenTech, range from alphas through betas, gammas and deltas and give access to memories/sensations from increasingly further back in time according to which has been taken. Alice’s treatment for cerasthesia in The Grange has heavily involved Drake both emotionally and financially and led to estrangement and separation from his wife. Lost in the other worlds, Alice has occasional reversions to the more benign Omega State but more generally presents as unaware of her immediate surroundings.

We start, though, on the day Drake is killed. In Marek’s café, an establishment with a signature ill-fitting door which scrapes noisily when opened.

Except of course, he isn’t. Killed, that is. Not in our narrator’s world anyway, but certainly in one of the multiplicity of entangled worlds. “Our” Drake does experience a feeling of dread, however, as sensation bleeds across from that universe.

In the wake of that he is assigned to investigate the murder of one Roger Wyndham, presumed to have been shot by a criminal organisation called Rdeča Kremplja, or Red Claw, run by a shadowy individual known as Vidmar, and the thriller plot, with attempts to frame Drake for that murder, kicks in.

Solving it all necessitates the usual detective novel contretemps with superior officers and agents of the state, not to mention encounters with Red Claw minions, kidnappings, betrayals and narrow escapes, with Drake needing to take implicitins himself to access as much information from the many worlds as possible in order to give him the edge. Recovery of the records inside a machine called Regenesys 5101 which can edit DNA sequences and be used to change identity also proves necessary.

Apart from a tendency to spell out acronyms, both police and otherwise, Whitmarsh handles everything well. The slipping from one reality to another as Drake falls under the implicitins’ spell could have been a source of confusion to the reader but isn’t. All in all, Whitmarsh’s The Measurement Problem (as opposed perhaps to A K Amari’s) is an enjoyable enough SF/crime mashup.

The following did not appear in the published review.

“time interval later” count; substantial.

Pedant’s corner:-  focused (several times; focused,) plus points for ‘whence’ used correctly, “a hairdressers” (a hairdresser’s.) “I wracked my brain” (I racked my brain,) “DI drake” (elsewhere always Drake.) “There were a string of voice messages” (There was a string of.) “Drake street” (Drake Street,) “outside of Cambridge” (no ‘of’, just ‘outside’,) “she’d drank me under the table” (she’d drunk me under the table,) “as good a guess is any” (as good a guess as any,) canvasses (canvases, please,) focussing (focusing,) “but the timing their appearance” (the timing of their appearance,) “latching onto to Alice” (no need for the ‘to’,) “Alice had invited us too” (invited us to,) “span off” (spun off. Two more instances of ‘span’ for ‘spun’,) protestors (protesters,) unfocussed (unfocused,) disk (disc,) “Soames’ answers” (Soames’s,) a new sentence begun with a lower case letter (x2,) imposter (x2, I prefer the spelling impostor,) Soames’ quarters (Soames’s,) “Regensys 5101” (elsewhere always ‘Regenesys 5101’,) “Sergeant Reynolds’ eyes opened” (Reynolds’ x3; ‘Reynolds’s’,) sat (sitting,) stationery (stationary,) “where Tamboli’s plants” (were Tamboli’s plants,) a question not given a question mark, “a drainage grill” (a drainage grille.) “It did me good, seeing him uneasy, relaxed me” (the second comma needs removed,) a missing opening quotation mark at the beginning of a piece of direct speech.

In the centre of Muthil are the ruins of its mediæval church, the 15^th century parish church:-

In the churchyard is the grave of a Great War soldier, Private D Taylor, Black Watch, 29/1/1918, aged 23:-

Muthil’s more modern cemetery is a few hundred yards west of the village and contains a Second World War grave, Sgt J McDonald McKinnie, Air Gunner, RAF, 1/3/1943, aged 21:-

Richard Drew Publishing, 1989, 248 p. First published 1966.

Charlie Grant is a working class University student with important exams coming up and worries that his girlfriend Mary may be pregnant, when he is summoned home by a cryptic telegram saying FATHER DYING.

His father had always been keen on him doing well at University and hadn’t wanted to disturb his studies but the crisis overtook him. Charlie is distressed he hadn’t been told and also that his father’s worth had never been recognised by wider society.

In addition Charlie’s mother had left and married a middle class man able to provide a more comfortable life for her than Charlie’s father. Curiously, she is always referred to in the parts of the text featuring her as Mrs Whitmore, her new married name.

His father’s death throws Charlie into a tail spin, abandoning university, dumping Mary (thankfully not pregnant but to her mind with marriage prospects ruined,) leading him to question his place in the world, like a modern day* Hamlet. (The parallels are clear, though the former Mrs Clark didn’t then marry her first husband’s brother.)

The climax comes when Mr and Mrs Whitmore make an unannounced visit to the Grants’ home – uncertainly welcomed by Charlie’s sister Elizabeth and her boyfriend Harry – and Charlie comes on them while still suffering from a boozy night out with his university flatmates.

Remedy Is None is a consciously literary endeavour but perhaps a little overwritten at times, betraying its origin as a first novel.

*Okay. Like a sixty years ago Hamlet.

Pedant’s corner:- vender (vendor – spelled as such later [in newsvendor],) “Charlies’ imagination” (Charlie’s.) “The hooves reached crescendo as….” (no they didn’t; the crescendo reached climax as….,) mermerized (mesmerised,) transcience (transience,) “oncet again” (once again,) “on its Todd” (x 2, more usually ‘on its tod’,) a missing end quotation mark.

SPFL Tier 4, The Rock, 04/10/26.

Another win and another strange one.

We set up with a back three – of Tom Lang, new loan defender Chris McKenna and Ali Omar on the left of the three.

But we were absolutely woeful in the first half. Despite nominally having five bodies in that area they were strolling through our midfield as if it wasn’t there (well, it wasn’t,) and Josh Todd gave away more balls than he held on to.

Their goal was a case in point: no resistance whatever given in the build-up and the guy who crossed it given oodles of space to do so. Not to mention the all but free header. Once again we had not enough of the ball. Most of their other efforts were from comfortable range with Mason Munn’s positioning in goal making his saves comfortable. We did manage to make their keeper make two good saves, though. One close-in block when Josiah Sowa was played in and the other a long range pile driver by Owen Hartington, heading for the top corner before being pushed away for a corner.

Not much changed early in the second half. Oddly we equalised while Josiah Sowa was off the park. He’d had his boot trodden off and was forced off to replace it. Scott Honeyman retrieved the ball in midfield from a miscontrol by a Forfar defender and sent Mikey Doyle down the right. His cross was powered in by Robbie Cleary.

Two minutes later we were in the lead. A ball played up to Leighton McIntosh evaded the defender and he scurried to the bye-line and crossed. The keeper spilled it but Owen Hartington had to turn back to pick it up before the nearest defender. He swivelled on it and wrongfooted the keeper to place it in the corner.

We ended the game with effectively no forwards on as Robbie Cleary and Leighton McIntosh were both withdrawn with ten minutes to go. I thought that might cost us. One day it will.

This was a win achieved not by any tactical acumen – the set up wasn’t right – but by the players doing what they could to overcome that.

Sons’ second round opponents in this season’s Scottish Cup will be Keith from the Highland League, who beat Stonehaven of the North of Scotland League in the first round yesterday.

Muthil is a village in  Perthshire situated on the A 822 just north of Gleneagles.

Its War Memorial is a granite Celtic Cross on a tapered square plinth set on the junction of Willoughby Street and Thornhill Street:-

Dedications and Second World War names:-

Great War names, W Brown – T McGregor:-

Great War names, P Malloch – J Waddell:-

Alice Cooper’s fourth top ten hit in the UK. Number 10 in 1973.

Alice Cooper: No More Mr Nice Guy