A Son of the Rock

Hutchinson Heineman, 2026, 364 p including 2 p Author’s Note.

“‘We see the world once only,’ she said. ‘In childhood. The rest is remembering.’” So says Mrs Graveney, the headteacher of Witchelm, the school in which Philip Deval, having recently left the army after service in the Second World War and in the dying days of the Palestine Mandate, is to take up teaching. Farewell to Eden is the novelistic expression of protagonist Deval’s life, which before the war was a kind of aimless drifting through University and a relationship with Alice Western which is to end in tragedy and leave him reticent to expose himself to further possible grief.

At Witchelm he strikes up a companionable friendship with music teacher Frances Darwood, a woman with haunted memories of her own from recent times. In their conversations they eventually come to tell each other about their previous lives. The main body of the book, though, is concerned with Deval’s experiences in Palestine and its ramifications for his later life.

During the exercise of his duties Deval comes upon the aftermath of the bombing of the King David Hotel by the Irgun and Faulks does not flinch from describing its gruesome detail. There are episodes of cloak and dagger in a kind of colloquy with the militants and a pervading sense of imminent danger. One of Deval’s army colleagues habitually refers to the Jewish activists as Bagels. I suspect – and indeed Faulks makes reference to it in his Author’s Note – any such word used would have been much more offensive.

Deval’s encounters with Arab Palestinians portray them – despite the pre-war Arab revolt – as unprepared for the adversity which would shortly befall them.

In one of his conversations Deval’s company chaplain reflects on the Jewish origins of Christianity. “‘Life would have been easier, certainly,’ said Matthew. ‘If He had come from nowhere. If He’d been untouched by previous gods and tribal wars. If He’d been less … specific. But we can’t question it.’

‘Can’t we?’ said Philip.

‘No. It’s too late.’”

That last sentence may also be a comment on the present situation in those troubled lands. Faulks has here examined the turbulence amid which the state of Israel was founded; the genesis of what is an enduring tragedy.

Pedant’s corner:- “in Hebrew Gethsemane meant ‘oil press’.” (Well, no. It means ‘oil press’ in English. In Hebrew it means Gethsemane,) “the lowest point on the earth’s crust” (in the text this is the Dead Sea, but there are many lower points in the earth’s crust than that. The Dead Sea is merely the lowest point on a continental surface.)

The club website has announced that former Sons player Jimmy Veitch has died.

I knew that he had joined from Newtongrange Star as it was the first time I had heard of that then Junior club. I remember a goal for Sons at Boghead soon after when he and another signing also from Newtongrange but whose name for the moment escapes me combined with one of them putting in a glorious cross and the other scoring. The guy behind me said, “That was crafted in Newtongrange.” I had remembered it as their first game but the club’s tribute said Jimmy made his debut at Station Park, Forfar.

Jimmy has a unique position in the club’s history as the first player to come on as a substitute.

Jimmy ‘Tich’ Veitch. So it goes.

Almost no sooner had I read the obituary of Walter Koenig (Ensign Chekov in the original Star Trek) than came the news that Patrick Stewart (Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation) had also died.

The line I most remember Koenig uttering as Chekov was in reply to a grandiose claim by one of the series’s baddies. “And I am the Tsar of all the Russias.” I always wondered how well that would have gone down in the Soviet Union.

Koenig’s appearance in Babylon 5 came as a delight – especially since his character’s name in that show, Alfred Bester, was a nod to written SF history.

Walter Marvin Koenig: 14/9/1936 –  25/10/2026. So it goes.

I first saw Patrick Stewart in I, Claudius where he played Tiberius’s enforcer Sejanus. He also played Karla in the BBC adaptations of John Le Carre’s Smiley novels.

I must admit that when he was given the part of Picard, I was somewhat surprised given that he was more well known at the time for stage work. He made it his own though.

Patrick Stewart: 13/7/1940 – 28/10/2026. So it goes.

SPFL Tier 4, Meadowbank Stadium, 31/10/26.

I wasn’t at the game – our record against them is appalling and we haven’t won away for well over a year – but it’s galling to lose the game in added time. Especially since my correspondent at the game isn’t convinced the ball crossed the line.* That’ll make two goals against this season have been dubious.

Again we lost a goal early but at least Leighton McIntosh got us back into it about half an hour in. We could have done with holding out for the draw.

Away to Elgin next week. Another defeat no doubt.

*Make that “isn’t convinced was onside.” I misunderstood the WhatsApp message.

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.)