A Son of the Rock

Lion Bridge (over the River Aln) seen from Alnwick Castle rampart:-

Gates to The Alnwick Garden:-

Gabriel’s second solo hit, taken from his third album Peter Gabriel 3 (aka Melt.)

In terms of chart position it’s Gabriel’s equal highest, along with Sledgehammer.

Its title is a literal translation of Jeux sans frontières, the French name of the international TV game show known in the UK as It’s a Knockout, words which appear in the lyric.

Peter Gabriel: Games Without Frontiers

Outer courtyard, curtain wall behind (quidditch practice on grass!):-

Reverse view:-

Grass inner courtyard and clock tower:-

Note stone figures on ramparts:-

Outside the Fusilier’s Museum was this captured artillery piece:-

Statue of Henry Percy, known as Hotspur:-

Sign on a doorway:-

Archway. The sign reads, “Please do not use. The Great Hall Privy is not a real toilet.”:-

Strange Fiction of Scottish Descent, Eibonvale Press, 2013, 270 p, including 1 p Contents, 7 p Introductions (one by each editor,) 3 p Contributor Biographies and 1 p Editor Bios.

This is a book which celebrates the “Guid Scots Tongue” as Hal Duncan’s Introduction has it, with stories written by Scots or descendants of Scots, each inspired by a particular Scots word. Words such as wersh, clarty, maukit (twice,) sweirt, scroggy, laird, rammy, cludgie, ramscootrify, canny, murnie, thrawn, stravaigin, guising, greetin, boak. Most of the tales are in standard English with Scottish trimmings but two are in very broad Scots indeed.

Though most have a speculative bent the definition ‘strange’ in the book’s subtitle does not necessarily mean fantastic or science-fictional. Rob McClure Smith’s Palais 1930 (riffing on the word rammy) is a resolutely realist account of goings-on at a 1930s dance-hall.

On the whole this collection demonstrates that Scots is neither a dead nor dying language, can bristle with vitality and is a perfectly suitable medium for writing – in whatever genre or mode.

Pedant’s corner:-  whacky (wacky,) dipthongs (diphthongs.) “The crowd have fallen silent” (The crowd has.) Chieftans’ (Cheiftains’,) “the prophesy” (the prophecy,) gasses (gases,) “let him breath again” (breathe,) a question without a question mark at its end, innoculation (inoculation,) focussed (focused,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech (x 2,) carnapcious (carnaptious,) “a vertebrae” (a vertebra,) a full stop following a question mark at the end of a sentence, stotious (more usually spelled ‘stocious’,) colored (coloured,) “shadowed figures plod slow around and again” (????) hoi-poloi (usually spelled hoi-polloi,) miniscule (minuscule,) “the clean-cut, regular features, immaculate dress, and individuality” (clean cut; plus, such a list doesn’t usually have a comma before its last component,) Behaviorism (Behaviourism,) a missing comma at the end of a piece of direct speech (x 2.) “A tableful of weak smiles flutter into existence” (a tableful … flutters,) “‘there are no English words that have Xĩ in it’” (that have Xĩ in them,) practiced (practised,) an unindented new paragraph (x 2,) woolen (woollen,) trash cans (bins,) “a blaize football pitch” (blaes,) “took out a some cigarettes” (superfluous ‘a’,) “that that her gran” (a superfluous ‘that’,) a  missing full stop, a closing parenthesis that ought to be an opening one, “a vertebra.!!!!” (doesn’t need the full stop before the exclamation marks,) “across the UK and Us” (across the UK and US.)

Alnwick Castle is surprisingly hidden from the town of Alnwick itself (except if you go along the street known as the Peth  -which I haven’t done.)  It has been owned by the Percy family since 1307.

It’s very impressive from the approach from the nearest car park:-

Entrance:-

Inner entrance:-

Courtyard:-

Door and cloister:-

Cloister:-

Lantern:-

Model of castle:-

Gollancz, 2020, 260 p.

This novel charts the distanced relationship between Shaw, a man recovering from “a rough patch” and whose tetchy mother is in a care home, and Victoria Nyman – or Norman, Shaw initially can’t remember which – who inherits her own mother’s home in another town.

Then again, everything in this book is distanced, starting with Shaw. We are never given his first name, a fact which detaches him from the narrative and puts a barrier between him and us as readers, as though, like us, he is merely an observer of proceedings. This is of course, a deliberate choice on Harrison’s part, a pointer to oddness. Throughout the novel Shaw’s interactions with others are reserved, emotionally unengaged. His mother may be partly to blame; she had had a succession of relationships with unsuitable men and is dismissive towards Shaw.

Not that Victoria is much less detached. The pair’s communications are sparse, almost ad hoc, their relationship more off than on, her experiences too tinged with oddity.

By chance Shaw meets Tim Swann, who goes on to give him a job which takes him round the country. Tim’s sister, Annie S Swann, is a medium whom Shaw consults. Her name is so close to that of all but forgotten Scottish writer Annie S Swan that it is unlikely to be a coincidence – a thought reinforced by one of the book’s chapters being titled The Swanns’ Way, an obvious reference to Proust.

Victoria becomes friendly with a waitress named Pearl, with whom she goes swimming in a pool near to Victoria’s inherited house and it is with her that the book’s oddness creeps in as she simply disappears (though not drowned) while swimming on her own.

This is a world which is apparently normal but in which strange things happen at its margins and in which none of the characters ever appears wholly part of it.

A paragraph which perhaps sums it up goes – “Poor Shaw! Compelled to believe he doesn’t believe in anything, in case he unearths from himself the one belief – the one deep consolation he daren’t relinquish; that he was always one of us. So much of his attention bound up in the work of denial that what happens to him can never really be experienced, only stored, and interpreted later as symbolic. So marginally conscious that the endless return of the repressed is all he has to work with.”

Harrison’s prose is always measured and lucid.

Pedant’s corner:- sometimes there was no question mark when a question had appeared in dialogue, acquifers (aquifers.)

Sons reward for beating Keith on Saturday is another home tie, this time against either Johnstone Burgh or Formartine United, whose game was postponed. The Third Round tie is scheduled for the weekend of 28/11/26.

This presents the possibility of Sons facing former manager Stevie Farrell who took over the reigns at Johnstone Burgh not long after leaving us. They’d have to get past Formartine first, obviously.

Scottish Cup, Round 2, The Rock, 24/10/26

Well, a win’s a win and we’re into the next round which is the main thing.

I didn’t go to the game – the Amber Warning for winds and rain put me off the 144 mile round trip.

It seems we weren’t very good but the conditions were apparently dreadful, wind and water on the pitch both holding the ball up. Leighton McIntosh took his goal well according to Pie and Bovril.

In the circumstances we’ll take the win and move on.

We’re away to Edinburgh City next week so that’ll be nul points. They own us.

In the Pictish Sculptured Stone Museum.

Pictish Beast Stone. Depiction possibly a precursor to tales of kelpies:-

Hogback stone (these are more usually associated with Vikings):-

Stone with Christian motifs:-

A song which really ought to be dear to my heart, since Chemistry was the subject I studied at University and then taught in schools.

(The video does have in it that typical agglomeration of chemical apparatus which visual media use as a shorthand and actually doesn’t make much sense – the green and red solutions are particularly incongruous. I liked the rotary evaporator though.)

Semisonic: Chemistry