A Son of the Rock

John Murray, 2023, 329 p, including 3 p Contents, 5 p Historical Notes and 1 p Acknowledgements.

In 1883 former emigré Niall Munro returns from the US to Scotland to practice his new trade of shoemaking with a firm in Rutherglen. He is told by someone on the bus to the town that the widow Bain may have a place for a lodger. Mrs Bain hesitates slightly before taking him in, setting strict ground rules for his stay.

She was once Jamesina Ross, from Glencalvie in Strathcarron, with a musical bent and hopes of fulfilment but has had a hard life since and bears the literal scars to prove it. In her youth the local Minister, Reverend Aird, had taken her under his wing, and taught her Latin, which in her later years she still used to examine the words and phrases with which people spoke to her. But life in Glencalvie was about to change, evictions were in hand. Reverend Aird says in answer to Jamesina’s questioning, “‘People have always had to leave the places they love because of the folly of others. They get by in the end, most of them, and some may even flourish, but no one should imagine on that account that dispossession is right.’” He tells her the evictions are about race and shows her a newspaper column sanguine about such clearances since, “This exodus might allow for settlement of racially superior people of Teutonic stock in districts from which the Gaels have been removed.” (The main replacement, of course, was by sheep.)

Music in the Dark, however, is also a story of love in later years. In interspersed chapters, all beautifully written, some set in the kitchen bed where the two reflect on their lives and relationships, others as a relaying of Jamesina’s experiences of growing up, we see, because of Mrs Bain’s singing her songs of remembrance, Munro realise that, as a boy, he knew her, and, despite themselves, their closeness grows.

In a fairly restrained manner, matter of fact but not gratuitously, in Music in the Dark Magnusson has placed the forced removal of Gaelic people from their ancestral homes at its focus, and, moreover, highlighted the resistance of local women to those evictions and the brutality meted out to them. It by no means a chronicle of doom, though. As Reverend Aird said, most people get by in the end. Take solace where you find it.

SPFL Tier 4, The Rock, 17/10/26.

I wasn’t at the game since I was otherwise engaged yesterday but it seems a draw was a fair result and the team played quite well.

Mind you, there’s a bit of doubt as to whether their goal crossed the line or not.

Josiah Sowa got ours and the man of the match.

We’re up against Keith of the Highland League in the Cup next week at home.

This rather splendid sight greeted us as we were leaving Drummond Castle:-

Luckily we were able to get closer and catch him preening:-

Peacock reclining:-

Bassist Jackie Jackson, a cornerstone of Jamaican music, died last month. He was a player on many records of the ska, rocksteady and reggae genres as well as dub and discomix and played bass with Toots and the Maytals for over 50 years. Among the artists on whose records he played are Desmond Dekker, Bob Marley, Ken Boothe, Paul Simon and Jimmy Cliff.

This is one of the sixties hits.

The Upsetters: Return of Django

Clifton Courtney (Jackie) Jackson: 22/3/1947 – 23/9/2026. So it goes.

The above was the succinct and somewhat cryptic WhatsApp message I received from my younger son yesterday.

And yet I understood it immediately.

As would have any Sons fan receiving a similar message.

For the club had announced that manager Frank McKeown has stepped down and left the club.

This came after a 4-0 drubbing in the KDML Evolution Trophy (the Challenge Cup as was) at Clydebank, a side one division lower than us in the Scottish pyramid – though outwith the SPFL – and sometime derby rivals*. A result which saw the club lose out on the prize money available for qualification from the “league” stage.

Whether McKeown jumped or was pushed was left open.

Whatever, it will be a relief to the vast majority of Sons fans who had lost faith in him long since.

In the meantime Director of Football Danny Lennon will oversee team affairs.

It is to be hoped that a full and proper recruitment process will now take place: not like the previous time our manager was punted.

The club today announced McKeown’s coaching assistants have also left the club.

Sons fans will now be looking forward to Saturday’s home game against Stirling Albion with more of a spring in their step.

*Clydebank aren’t quite a Phoenix club. Their registration was transferred to Airdrie United when the original Airdrieonians were liquidated, leaving Clydebank supporters without a club to support, with the new club taking their Scottish League place. A group of Clydebank supporters then created a club for themselves and Airdrie United agreed to transfer the name and insignia to them. They have since moved up through various shared grounds and the Junior football divisions before moving to the West of Scotland Football League on its formation and won promotion to the Lowland League in 2025. Sons had therefore not played a Clydebank side in a competitive game for about 25 years. Airdrie United later adopted the Airdrieonians name.

In The Sea of Fertility, Penguin, 1987, 196 p. Translated from the Japanese 天人五衰 (Tennin gosui) by Edward G Seidensticker. First published 1971.

In this conclusion of Mishima’s tetralogy, not long after which he committed seppuku, once again we find ourselves following Shigekuni Honda’s obsession with the reincarnation of his boyhood friend Kiyaoki, this time in 1970. Tōru Yasunaga is a signalman notifying the imminent arrival of ships to Shimizu harbour. He is an orphan and has a female acquaintance, Kinué, who, in order to come to terms with her lack of attractiveness, has convinced herself that she is beautiful.

One day Honda and his platonic companion Keiko visit the signal station. Honda recognises on Tōru the three moles he believes signify the reincarnation and resolves to adopt Tōru to try to protect him from the early deaths the three previous incarnations had suffered.

Tōru will eventually work this situation to his own advantage but it only reveals his own selfishness.

The evolution of modern Japan is tangential to this final instalment of the tetralogy but its background nevertheless colours the novel. That Tōru is a kind of negative impression of Kiyaoki perhaps reflects Mishima’s own assessment of his work and life and the direction Japan took over his lifetime.

When a minor character refers to “people who commit suicide to establish themselves,” illustrating it with an elaborate analogy, it may be a prefiguration of the author’s own intentions.

Pedant’s corner:- “a crematory” (usually a crematorium,) “the hoi polloi” (‘hoi’ already means ‘the’; it’s just ‘hoi polloi’.)

Waterfall in folly. The waterfall cascades down the stonework behind the building:-

Sundial. Castle in background:-

In greenhouses:-

View beyond gardens:-

Red Fox, 2010, 366 p. First published 1965.

The Drew children, Simon, Barney and Jane, are off on holiday with their parents to their Great-Uncle Merry’s residence, the Grey House, in Trevissick, Cornwall. Great-Uncle Merry’s activities are something of a mystery, as he is prone to disappearing on various expeditions from time to time.

The family’s arrival in Trevissick was marred by an encounter with a surly message boy who turns out to be dealing with a swish yacht, The White Heather, recently arrived in the harbour.

While exploring the attic one day the children discover an illustrated manuscript telling of The Holy Grail, carried to Cornwall by Sir Bedwin, now buried over the sea and under the stone – hence the book’s title. At first they mistake the picture for a map but cannot fit it to the local landscape. Then they realise it is a drawing.

Matching the salient points to local landmarks involves climbing to outstanding stones and walks round the harbour, all the while being dogged by the attentions of the yacht’s owner Mr Withers and his sister, eager to keep the Grail to themselves. For these adventures their parents are not on hand, going off on a trip to London while at the crucial point Great-Uncle Merry has been steered away by his housekeeper Mrs Palk, to whom Jane had already taken a mistrust.

This is a fairly typical childrens’ adventure story riffing on the tales of King Arthur and embellished by snatches of Cornish dialect. To explicitly equate Great-Uncle Merry with Merlin, though, possibly overeggs the pudding.

Pedant’s corner:- workman-like (nowadays one word, workmanlike,) “in line with anyone of those blodges” (with any one of,) “was was” (only one ‘was’ required,) “duffle coat” (duffel coat,) a missing opening quotation mark, a missing full stop (x 4.) “Garefully”  (Carefully,)  ambiance (ambience.)

As I mentioned before Drummond Castle is famous for its formal gardens.

You may notice a bridge in the photo above. This is it from the other side with the castle in the background:-

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.