A Son of the Rock

SPFL Tier 4, The Rock, 7/3/26.

An odd thing happened at this game.

We looked like an actual football team.

Unlike last week where we started as if we hadn’t seen each other before, this was cohesive right from the kick-off. We peppered their box with crosses and though balls.

Mind you with every wasted promising situation I was beginning to think that this had them scoring from their first opportunity written all over it. Thankfully that wasn’t to be.

Diminutive midfield loanee Alexander Smith (known as Smudge or Smudger apparently) was putting himself about to good effect with some great footwork. He also carried out defensive duties, tracking back well and harrying opponents.

It was frustrating not to be ahead at half time.

That frustration ended on 51 minutes. A great cross from the overlapping Ali Omar – we seemed to be playing three at the back with him on the left – found Gordon Walker free towards the back post. His bullet header was diverted by the keeper onto the bar but it came down and bounced off his back into the net.

Spartans then began to play with a bit more urgency but didn’t trouble loanee keeper Aidan Rice much except for a good save he made with his feet.

Then Scott Tomlinson got the better of a defender whose feet got in a muddle and his cross was converted under the keeper with a great back heel flick by Leighton McIntosh.

The third came because Spartans were overcommitted.  A swift counterattack saw Scott Tomlinson cross again this time for Scott Honeyman to deliver the coup de grace.

Players and fans were enjoying themselves now even if there was time for Aidan Rice to make a good save from the only threatening shot he faced from outside the box.

We need this kind of performance to carry on to Tuesday night against Stranraer. Especially since Edinburgh City also won yesterday to keep within touching distance of us.

Flamingo, 1995, 219 p.

This is a chronicle of life in the Orcadian island of Norday in the years between the World Wars till just after the Second. But it is also a collection of short stories.

Thorfinn Ragnarson is a dreamer. His teacher, Mr Simon, says he can’t seem to teach the boy anything and his father says he’s not good at farm work either. At one point he seems to be channelling Dad’s Army’s Captain Mainwaring when he refers to Thorfinn as, “You stupid boy.”

Not much gets past the islanders. Many of their conversations take place in the island’s shop and post office.

Thorfin has an imagination, though, letting it run wild through history, which is where the short story aspect of the novel comes in. We read his reminiscences of Vikings on the road to Byzantium, a dilapidated knight and his squire travelling to the battle of Bannockburn, the experience of the inhabitants of one of the then new-fangled brochs, an ancestor taking Mara, a selkie woman, as a wife.

Meanwhile, Mr Drummond, the new Minister, surprises the community by being unmarried and letting the Manse fall into grubbiness, scandalises some by, once, treating the men in the pub to a round before inviting them to church and having a young female arrive to stay with him at the Manse. She is taken to by the local ‘person of quality,’ Mr Harcourt-Smithers, riding his horse all over the island. It is not until she is leaving that her relationship to Drummond is revealed. She has nevertheless fired Thorfinn’s imagination again.

The outside world (and impending war) intrudes when government men arrive to survey the land for an aerodrome, whose impact will change the island forever.

The last chapter, Fisherman and Croftwoman, sees the return of Thorfin to the island after being in a POW camp for most of the war (where he began writing, using his earlier daydreams as source material) and of Sophie, a childhood acquaintance, to take the inheritance of a nearby croft.

Like most Scottish literature Beside the Ocean of Time is about loss and change; but it is also about what endures, what makes a community, and acceptance.

Pedant’s corner:- “less worries” (‘fewer worries’ but it was in reported speech so probably true to the speaker,) “Johnny Walker” (the whisky: it’s ‘Johnnie Walker’.)

Neil Sedaka died last Friday.

He was one of the most distinctive pop acts of the late 1950s and early 1960s before the advent of The Beatles overturned everything.

His many songwriting credits include Stupid Cupid, a 1958 hit for Connie Francis, and Love Will Keep Us Together (Captain and Tenille, 1975.) (Is This the Way to) Amarillo (1971) eventually became a big hit for Tony Christie – aided by Peter Kay’s video – in 2005.

Sedaka’s own hits include Calendar Girl, Little Devil, Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen, Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.

He kind of reinvented himself as a singer-songwriter in the 1970s with a more adult-oriented approach.

Here’s a live performance from 1975.

Neil Sedaka: Laughter in the Rain

This one was a hit for The Carpenters but this is a Sedaka performance-

Neil Sedaka: Solitaire

Though he had an earlier hit with I Go Ape this was the song which really announced him in the UK in 1959.

Neil Sedaka: Oh! Carol

Neil Sedaka: 13/3/1939 – 27/2/2026. So it goes.

In Virago Omnibus II, Virago, 1987, 279 p, plus xi p Introduction by Polly Devlin. First published in 1941.

Last night I dreamt I went to Aragon again.

Oops. Sorry. Wrong book.

Yet, despite being not like it at all (well, apart from the fire,) there was something about this which kept reminding me of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca.

Maybe it was the looming presence of the house itself – the author is lavish in her descriptions of it and its grounds – or the emotional investment in it the characters have, especially its housekeeper Nan O’Neill, who feels herself its custodian all the more strongly since her intimate connection to it came from her sire (on the wrong side of the blanket) being from the present owner’s previous generation but one.

Aragon is what in Scotland used to called a big house, that is where the local landowner lived and lorded it over the general populace. The novel is an illustration of how the Anglo-Irish gentry (who thought of themselves as Irish) considered their Catholic servants and employees as being somehow empathetic with them. It is 1920, though, and events, dear boy, events, will be inevitable, though the gear change when this manifests itself is a little jarring since the story starts off as looking to be one of unsuitable love across the class divide.

Aragon has belonged to the Foxes for centuries. Like many such houses it has its secrets – not least a long neglected, indeed all but forgotten, room full of S&M paraphernalia.

Its head is Mrs Viola Fox, whose husband is long dead, but it is Nan O’Neill who runs things. Of Viola’s two daughters, Sylvia, the eldest, is level-headed but Grania, barely sixteen, is a deluded naïve, imagining herself to be in love with Nan O’Neill’s son, Foley, the local horse master – and sometimes dodgy horse trader. Foley is, of course, not even toying with Grania’s affections but, instead, exploiting her inexperience.

Symptom of Nan’s control is her treatment of Miss Pigeon, an elderly Fox aunt, whom she all but starves and occasionally locks in her room. Yet Nan is in many ways the heroine of the book when, in order to exonerate Foley, who stands accused of complicity in the abduction, she steps in to confront the IRA men who have kidnapped two British officers, one of whom is the object of Sylvia’s affections.

Sensitivity notes; “a black plaster nigger,” “that cup of tea in moments of crisis, whether disastrous or happy, is to the peasant Irish what his opium is to the Chinaman.”

Pedant’s corner:- in the Introduction “rhymster” (rhymester.) “Startled though she was, to discover” (ought not to have that comma,) “and is therefore a cousin” (not a cousin; an aunt,) devotion (devotion.) In the text: “the Fox’s” (many times employed here as a plural for Fox. This should, of course be ‘Foxes’, which was used once,) “six Miss Foxs” (Foxes, but the phrase ought to be ‘six Misses Fox’, ‘two Misses Fox’ appeared later,) “slipped off her rings and settle down” (settled down,) “unbrindled confidence” (unbridled,) goulish (ghoulish,) “octopus like quality” (octopus-like.) “Everyone on the place” (in the place,) “how would it effect and disgrace her?) (how would it affect and…,) “‘what happened Doatie?’” (what happened to Doatie?) “‘your Sunday afternoon’s off’” (afternoons.) “‘How could you be, poor child.’” (Is a question, so needs a question mark,) “into it’s socket” (its socket,) “some silly christian demur” (Christian,) “‘Captain Purvis’ name on it’” (Purvis’s.) “‘If anything happens them’” (happens to them,) “‘what happens Mr Foley’” (what happens to Mr Foley,) “more awful stalactites reached up” (if they’re reaching up then they’re not stalactites; they’re stalagmites,) “a quite insolence” (quiet insolence,) “meeting each the others branches” (the other’s branches.)

As well as the model in the castle’s grounds there is this one in metal with labels of the castle’s interior:-

Its reverse:-

The Castle keep from below:-

Tower from inside:-

Walls and windows:-

Another title to be reviewed for ParSec has duly arrived.

This time it’s the latest from Adrian Tchaikovsky.

It’s called Green City Wars. I’ll get on to it soon.

Castle from car park:-

Main building:-

Walls to left of above:-

Walls to right:-

Model in grounds:-

SPFL Tier 4, Forthbank Stadium, 28/2/26.

Given recent results – we haven’t won this year – I was in two minds about going to this. But Forthbank is about the nearest ground in the Division to my home so if I wasn’t going to this where would I go?

Another baffling selection choice from manager Frank McKeown. No width picked at all. It looked as if he’d sent the team out to play for a draw; an utterly daft exercise as it’s wins we need and we’ve only now got ten games left to secure any.

Still, we had more of the possession first half but lacked confidence in shooting. Leighton McIntosh came on to a good cut back from Scott Honeyman but miscontrolled the ball into the air which gave the keeper time to narrow the angle for his subsequent volley. All the other cutbacks went to a defender’s foot.

We were ragged in the middle of the park and let their players advance considerably before making any sort of challenge.

Then Stirling got a mysterious penalty, Brett Long penalised for a challenge which appeared relatively inoccuous, with Brett, Mark Durnan and the attacker getting there at the same time. Long was booked though and despite taking an age to get back into his goal was easily sent the wrong way from the spot. It was about the only shot he had to face all day apart from a longish range effort in the second half. Stirling were poor which makes our approach all the more frustrating.

We came out more strongly in the second half and made their keeper make a few saves from long range but Stirling didn’t appear to be bothered about trying to score a second.

Triple substitution time came a bit earlier than usual, the ineffectual Ryan Blair and Jack Duncan being replaced by new loanee signing (and diminutive) Alexander Smith and Scott Tomlinson respectively _ potential width at last – and, more surprisingly, Adam Livingstone off for Ally Roy.

Scott Honeyman seemed to have been fouled in the box but was booked for diving – it certainly hadn’t looked like a dive.

Smith began to grow into the game and had a great low cross begging to be buried but Gordon Walker blasted the ball wide when it looked easier to score. (Walker’s crossing was poor all game, rarely getting past the first man.)

In the end we got a deserved equaliser when Smith popped up on the right, came back on his left foot and delivered a beautiful cross for Mark Durnan to head home. Cue delight on the pitch and the away stand. It was noticeable that Durnan immediately ran towards the fans to celebrate.

Stirling woke up for a bit, then, but their efforts came to nothing.

This was a game where we needed three points and they were there for the taking. The players are, I’m sure, up for it. The manager seems to have other ideas.

The reason for our visit to Warkworth was to take a look at the castle, which stands on a hill at the end of the village:-

And dominates the road past it:-

The group’s second big hit and only no 1. From 1997.

The Verve: The Drugs Don’t Work