Posted in Trips, War Memorials at 12:00 on 30 May 2026
The War Memorial for the parish of Resolis lies beside the 9163 road in Cromarty.
A stone column with carved crossed sword and rifle enclosed by a wreath, all surmounted by an urn:-
Great War dedication and names:-
Second World War dedication and names:-
Posted in 1970s, Events dear boy. Events, Music at 12:00 on 29 May 2026
US band Dr Hook (and the Medicine Show)’s lead singer Dennis Locorriere – not the one with the eye-patch – died last week.
Their output was at best soft rock but their hits tended to stick in the mind.
The band’s first UK hit was Sylvia’s Mother (no 2 in 1972) but they had a no 1 in 1979 with When You’re in Love with a Beautiful Woman.
This is a live version of the earlier song apparently recorded on the houseboat of the song’s writer Shel Silverstein.
Dr Hook & The Medicine Show: Sylvia’s Mother
Dennis Michael Locorriere: 13/6/1949 – 16/5/2026. So it goes.
Posted in Dumbarton FC at 12:00 on 28 May 2026
This comes around quickly doesn’t it?
Our League Cup opponents will be St Mirren, Dunfermline Athletic, Cove Rangers and East Kilbride.
The games will be played between July 11th and 26th.
However, due to the installation of a plastic pitch over the summer, our “home” games will take place away from the Rock.
Details are still to be provided.
Posted in Museums, Trips at 12:00 on 27 May 2026
Some of Hugh Miller’s possessions:-
Fossil finds:-
More fossils:-
Mudstone:-
Posted in Museums, Trips at 12:00 on 26 May 2026
Hugh Miller was a pioneering geologist and fossil collector who was born in Cromarty.
The cottage of his birthplace is now in the care of the National Trust for Scotland.
Exterior:-
The actual cottage is to the left above, the building next to it is a museum.
Cottage interior:-
Garden to rear showing thtched roof of cottage:-
Garden:-
Sculpture in garden:-
Posted in Other fiction, Reading Reviewed at 12:00 on 25 May 2026
In The Sea of Fertility, Penguin, 1987, 196 p. Translated from the Japanese 曉の寺 (Akatsuki no Tera) by E Dale Saunders and Cecilia Segawa Seigle. First published 1970.
This instalment of Mishima’s tetralogy starts in 1940 and follows on from Runaway Horses by featuring now retired judge Shikeguni Honda, still convinced that Isao Iinuma was a reincarnation of Kiyaoki Matsugae, the doomed lover in Spring Snow; a belief mainly due to the presence of three moles on their left sides.
As part of his legal consultancy work protecting Japanese exporters’ interests Honda travels to India via Thailand. He meets a six-year-old Thai princess, Ying Chan, who is convinced she is Japanese but her assertions are, of course, treated by her family and attendants as mental aberrations. Honda believes her and tries unsuccessfully to see if she also has three moles.
On to Benares in India where Honda has an epiphany while Mishima takes the opportunity to impart to us a lengthy treatise on various ideas of reincarnation from around the world. At a waterfall in the Antaji caves Honda also recognises a scene which Matsugae had predicted he would encounter.
The Second World War comes and goes off-stage and the story undergoes a shift in tone when it restarts in occupied Japan where Ying Chan has come to study. Honda becomes obsessed by the idea of seeing her naked to confirm his reincarnation belief. He invites her to his house (but several times she does not turn up on time.) He tries to get the nephew of his neighbour to seduce Ying Chan, on whose intended room he can spy via a peephole, but this plan fails. (I note the recurrence of this peephole scenario in Mishima’s later novel The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea.)
Honda becomes even more of a voyeur before the novel’s climax during one of his houseparties and there is an odd, almost detached, final chapter set in 1967 where he discovers Ying Chan’s destiny.
Mishima’s unease at Japan’s loss of identity under Western influence is less to the fore here than in the previous two volumes. It is almost as if this instalment is from a different story sequence, despite the reincarnation connection.
Pedant’s corner:- “voices chanting a sutra rose rapidly to a crescendo” (No. The crescendo is the rise, not its culmination,) “plusses and minuses” (pluses and minuses?) “the aureoles around the nipples” (the areolae.)
Posted in Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Other fiction, Scottish Fiction, Ursula Le Guin at 12:00 on 24 May 2026
The Guardian has published a list of the 100 best novels of all time.
I was particuarly delighted to see Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness appear there but no 89 is really too low. Some of the others are on my tbr pile.
Shockingly – to me at least – Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song is not there though I note Maggie O’Farrell did include James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (the quintessential Scottish novel) in her top ten.
The others I have read are:-
80 Rebecca
79 Go Tell It on the Mountain
75 The Bluest Eye
71 Kindred
66 The Master and Margarita
63 White Teeth
62 Half of a Yellow Sun
56 Mansfield Park
51 My Brilliant Friend
50 Wide Sargasso Sea
46 The Leopard
41 Heart of Darkness
36 The Handmaid’s Tale
35 Great Expectations
34 Wolf Hall
33 David Copperfield
31 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
30 Frankenstein
29 Pale Fire
23 Midnight’s Children
22 Things Fall Apart
20 Wuthering Heights
18 Persuasion
17 One Hundred Years of Solitude
16 Nineteen Eighty-Four
14 Mrs Dalloway
13 Emma
09 Pride and Prejudice
08 Jane Eyre
07 War and Peace
04 To the Lighthouse
02 Beloved
Posted in Trips, War Memorials at 12:00 on 23 May 2026
Fortrose’s War Memorial is the entrance arch to the cathedral precincts:-
GreatWar dedication and names:-
Second World War dedication and names:-
Posted in 1970s, Music, Reelin' In The Years at 12:00 on 22 May 2026
This song was the only one of Tzuke’s to trouble the top twenty (no 16 in 1979.)
Here’s a live performance.
Judie Tzuke: Stay With Me Till Dawn
Posted in Architecture at 12:00 on 21 May 2026
On our trip north we were to pass through Fortrose on the Black Isle, so we stopped to look at the remains of the cathedral:-
Reverse view (stitch of two photos):-
Diagram of mediæval layout and ghost hint of how the cathedral looked then:-
Effigy of a former bishop in the precincts:-
