On the road leading west out of St Andrews (the B939) there lies this house.

It is flat roofed and shows signs of having had nice deco windows once but they have now been double glazed and look weird.

Further west, at the next junction, the road forks. The B939 goes on to the lovely wee village of Ceres but the other fork – called Strathkiness High Road – has 6 (count them, 6) flat roofed 1930s semi-detached bungalows.

The photos are presented in order west to east. Click on any to enlarge them.

They’re kind of sitting out on a limb as they are a few hundred metres from the rest of the town.

I suppose these could be described as modernist rather than Art Deco since they are quite stark but they do have all those horizontals and verticals which are like a signature. The glazing is of course not original.

I think it was Oscar Wilde who said that anyone who did not have the stoniest heart could not read about the death of Little Nell in Charles Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop without laughing. (For possible Wildean phrasings of this aphorism see here.)

I confess I feel much the same way about the current position of Liverpool Football Club.

Their supporters bayed for the previous owners to sell up and for the previous manager to go, or be sacked.

Having got both their wishes they immediately set to complaining about the new manager, Roy Hodgson – who had just won the Manager of the Season award, don’t forget – for not being their darling, former player and manager Kenny Dalglish. Effectively they never gave Hodgson a chance.

It is as if they believe they have a divine right to success and to a winning team. Despite their club’s trophy laden history they do not.

I think it is this sense of entitlement that makes me anti-pathetic towards the club – as I am to the similarly deluded fans, and the overweening behaviour, of the Old Firm clubs.

And now Hodgson has gone, in that telling weasel phrase “by mutual consent,” and replaced – for now – by Kenny Dalglish.

Admittedly Liverpool’s results have not been good this season – in the Premier League at least.

Yet how much of this is really to do with the manager? Can a manager really turn around several seasons’ worth of decline in six months? Liverpool’s current position stems in large part from the mistakes made by previous manager Rafael Benitez; mistakes in signing certain players and mistakes in alienating and then in letting go others.

It is evident from the scantiest perusal of their games on television that the present players are not performing. Whatever their affections for the old manager and whatever they may think of the new it is their job to do what he asks of them. Surely some of the blame ought to be placed on them.

Okay, Fernando Torres has an excuse. He has been injured, then not match fit and also probably suffering a reaction from Spain’s World Cup win in the summer.

Steven Gerrard is a more complicated case. He is clearly not playing as effectively as he once did. That may be due to an overall decline in the ability level of players around him. He is also probably trying too hard. And here’s a thought; actually he may not be quite as good a player as everyone made out. Or he may simply be in decline.

There is another problem with him, though. I think he has too much of an influence on the team in that the other players defer to him. When he’s on the pitch they look to him to drive things on – they even get out of his way when they are actually better placed to play the ball. His shadow hangs over them even when he’s not playing as they seem to believe that without him they are not as capable of achieving a win.

Changing the manager is a desperate throw of the dice. My own club Dumbarton did precisely this just before the recent snows interrupted the fixtures. Whether that was a wise move only time will tell. As in Liverpool’s case it may have been too late. It was for Newcastle United two seasons ago when they appointed Alan Shearer to try to avoid relegation; a strategy that did not work. His unheralded successor, Chris Hughton, then performed miracles to restore the club to Premier League respectability – and got the sack for his trouble.

But Kenny Dalglish as saviour?

If I were a Liverpool fan I would not count on it.

Yet another breaking of the rules, as I’ve used Booker T and The MGs before.

But a certain sporting series win Down Under makes it seem appropriate today.

Most folk probably have never heard the full version of this, though.

Booker T and The MGs: Soul Limbo

Well, English success at cricket hasn’t exactly been too plentiful in the past several decades.

Gollancz, 2010. 472p.

After Africa (Chaga – aka Evolution‒s Shore -, Kirinya and Tendeleo’s Story,) India (River Of Gods, Cyberabad Days) and Brazil (Brasyl), in The Dervish House McDonald now turns his attention to Turkey: specifically Istanbul.

The novel is set several years after Turkey has finally gained EU membership and joined the Euro (perhaps a somewhat more remote possibility now than when McDonald was writing) in an era when children can control real, mobile, self assembling/disassembling transformers and adults routinely use nanotech to heighten awareness/response in much the way they do chemical drugs at present. The fruit of what may have been a prodigious quantity of geographical and historical research is injected more or less stealthily into the text.

The main plot is concerned with a terrorists group’€™s plans to distribute nano behaviour changing agents designed to engender a consciousness of mysticism, if not of the reality of God/Allah. The resultant, what would otherwise be magic realist visions of djinni and karin, is thereby given an SF rationale.

In the interlinked narratives of those who live in and around an old Dervish House in Adam Dede Square, and covering events occurring over only four days, there are subplots about contraband Iranian natural gas, corrupt financial institutions and insider dealings, the circumscription of non-Turkish minorities, tales of youthful betrayal and frustrated love, not to mention the discovery of an ancient mummy embalmed in honey, which last gives the author the opportunity to deploy a nice pun on the phrase honey trap. The usual eclectic McDonald conjunction of disparate ingredients, then, and somehow amid all this he manages to finagle football into the mix as early as page two. Fair enough, though; Turkey’s fans are notoriously passionate about the game.

While not quite reaching the heights of Brasyl or River Of Gods, The Dervish House still has more than enough to keep anyone turning the pages.

One typographical quibble: the formula for carbon dioxide ought to be rendered as CO₂ rather than CO², though. To a Chemist like me there is a world of difference between the two.

The newpapers, television and radio have been full today with obituaries and tributes to Paisley born Gerry Rafferty who died yesterday.

His first well known appearances were with The Humblebums, a group of folk oriented musicians which included a certain Billy Connolly as a member.

When they split up Rafferty set out on his own for a while. Mary Skeffington, a song apparently about his mother, shows his folkiness at the time of his first solo LP, Can I Have My Money Back?, recorded before he joined the group where he had his first big success, Stealer’s Wheel, effectively a collaboration between Rafferty and Joe Egan.

The big hit, Stuck In The Middle With You, needs no introduction nor explanation but on that LP I liked more Rafferty’s quirkier song Benediction, a web friendly version of which unfortunately I cannot source. Also a hit was Star, said at the time to be a reflection of Rafferty’s fractured relationship with Connolly but in fact written by Egan. Any rift with Connolly was later repaired.

Stealer’s Wheel’s second LP was the unusually named Ferguslie Park, after a well known Paisley housing estate.

Rafferty’s biggest success came of course after the demise of Stealer’s Wheel when he resumed his solo career and recorded the LP City To City. There is barely a dud on there. My particular favourites are the title track, Mattie’s Rag and that fantastic ballad Whatever’s Written In Your Heart.

The blockbuster was Baker Street with its signature saxophone playing from Raphael Ravenscroft. (No. It wasn’t Bob Holness.) This recording was, as I recall, the first ever winner of a Brit Award for a single (though it may have been a similar award that was the Brits’ precursor.)

The two subsequent LPs Night Owl and Snakes And Ladders still saw Rafferty at the peak of his powers but a reluctance to tour and a shrinking from fame meant more big hits weren’t forthcoming.

[Edited to add:- Rafferty’s last brush with chart success came with his production work on The Proclaimers’ Letter From America (for an unusual take on which see here.) That recording’s final musical flourish – after the drawn-out “Lochaber no more” – seems to me to be pure Rafferty.]

A sad descent into alcoholism followed in his latter years.

Everyone will be featuring either Baker Street or Stuck In The Middle but I’m going with a song each from those latter two LPs where Rafferty was still in his pomp.

Gerry Rafferty: Get It Right Next Time

Gerry Rafferty: The Royal Mile (Sweet Darlin’)

I’ve just listened to Whatever’s Written In Your Heart again.

I can’t not put it in.

Gerry Rafferty: Whatever’s Written In Your Heart

Gerald (Gerry) Rafferty, 16/4/47-4/1/11. So it goes.

SFL Div 2, Somerset Park, 2/02/11

League goals for predictor:- 18.

Well. Not an auspicious start to the year.

According to Pie and Bovril it was never a penalty and we ought to have got something from the game.

But Ben Gordon was missing and so there was a makeshift defence.

No clean sheet but Stephen Grindlay was in goal so no surprise there.

Up and onwards to the Forfar game on Saturday.

I saw this story on the television news last week.

Cue much in the way of shock! horror! reactions – especially from the Pensions Minister – but my first instinct was to disbelieve it. It is only a projection after all. (A less kind interpretation would be to say it is an estimate, even less kindly a guesstimate.)

Who is to say that the increase in numbers of those living beyond 100 will be sustained in the long term? Who knows all the factors that contribute to it?

Some certainly – better medical care, fewer diseases, fitter lifestyles – but all?

And what of the ongoing obesity epidemic of which we hear so much? Is obesity not a factor involved in shortening of lifespan? Is this not likely to render the estimate unreliable? One might say totally unreliable. And what if a more virulent strain of AIDS or BSE were to strike?

I would perhaps have given the concern over these projections more weight had it not come from the Department of Work and Pensions, an organisation which seems bent on increasing the age at which people become eligible for receiving the UK state pension. Doesn’t this estimate play perfectly into their hands?

By all means encourage people to save for their retirement. But…

In a time of high unemployment and job losses – a time which we are surely entering given the Coalition Government’s policies – would it not make more sense to reduce the pension age? That would have the benefit of freeing up jobs which younger people who would otherwise be unemployed could then fill. At the very least, until happy days are here again (and when will that be, if ever?) do not exacerbate the problem.

But of course the Government is not in the least concerned with unemployment. It is actively stoking it after all.

A Happy New Year to everyone.

In passing I hope any USian readers note the absence of the possessive (‘s) in the above sentence. Which is to say I did not write, “Happy New Year’s,” a usage I have heard on US TV programmes and which every time I do hear manages to irritate me enormously.

In Scotland (and the UK as a whole) the greeting relates to the whole year; not just to its first day. For this reason I shall still be saying, “Happy New Year,” to folks during all of next week – and beyond, depending on when I first encounter people during 2011.

It’s a culture thing. Ignore me if you like.

If you’re Chinese, or Middle Eastern, New Year is some other time anyway.