King’s Lynn was the next stop after Boston. My first time, in Norfolk which in this part of it was very reminiscent of the Netherlands.

King’s Lynn itself contains a strange mixture of architecture with several buildings surviving from mediæval times.

We passed this old gateway on the way in but photographed it on the way out:-

This is the Guildhall, the largest surviving English mediæval Guildhall. It’s not really curved I had to stitch two photos:-

King’s Lynn Minster lies just across the road:-

And just across the other road (the Guildhall is close to a junction):-

A quaint old street:-

Greyfriars Tower, King’s Lynn. One of only three surviving Franciscan monastery towers in England:-

Without street furniture in the way. The building behind it, with the fire escape, is an Art Deco former cinema!:-

Carlos Alberto, former captain of Brazil and scorer of that goal in the 1970 World Cup final, sadly has died.

The goal, which summed up that team – and perhaps Brazilian football as a whole – came after a brilliant sequence of dribbling and passing which culminated in Pele’s pass, apparently rolled to no-one, but perfectly timed for Carlos Alberto to gallop into the frame and thump the ball past Enrico Albertosi. Sublime.

The only drawback of the clip below is that it isn’t accompanied by Kenneth Wolstenholme‘s BBC TV commentary, where about halfway through it he said, “This is sheer delightful football!” more iconic to me than his other well remembered phrase “They think it’s all over.”

A reminder of a simpler, freer, less monetarily compromised time:-

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Carlos Alberto “Capita” Torres: 17/7/1944 – 25/10/2016. So it goes.

I see Sheri S Tepper has died.

She has a long list of SF works and awards to her name but the only one I have read so far is Grass. So many books, so little time.

Sheri S Tepper (née Stewart): 16/7/1929-22/10/2016. So it goes.

In the Third Round of the Scottish Cup Sons have been drawn to play Bonnyrigg Rose at New Dundas Park, Bonnyrigg on 26^th November.

This will be the first time we have played a junior team in the Cup. It will be tricky as they are bound to be very up for it. Even more so considering we haven’t won an away match for nigh on a year.

They beat the Highland League champions in the last round which attests to their abilities.

I’ve got a bad feeling about this…..

Boston has its fair share, perhaps more, of Art Deco buildings.

The West End Cinema doesn’t look so deco from this angle:-

But this corner doorway has Art Deco styling:-

There are Art Deco elements in this side view too:-

There was typical 1930s Deco styling on Marks & Spencer’s:-

Clarks has a vaguely deco look with an undoubted deco sunburst and “M” just above the Clarks sign – presumably a relic of the original occupant:-

As does QD Stores:-

Cash Generator was more to the point. Rule of three in and on the pillars:-

Then there was the striking Cammack’s:-

Rule of three in the windows, sunburst decoration in name frieze:-

SPFL Tier 2, Tannadice Park, 22/10/16.

This was an unusual occurence. The last time I was at Tannadice to see the Sons (or at all) was over thirty years ago. (We did play there in the 1995-6 season but I didn’t go. A combination of the fact that that was during the time where we went a whole year without a win and my family was quite young.)

The end result was the same. We still haven’t won in Dundee since 1958.

They had a beginning flurry – Alan Martin with a superb double save – then we had a great chance, Garry Fleming stabbing the ball from close in but the keeper made a great save. Then Robert Thomson sent a header towards the post area which the keeper again clawed away and David Smith couldn’t connect properly with a ball that came to him after a corner. Martin again did the needful to keep out a free-kick.

The best bit about the first half was the seethe from the home support at their forwards continually being flagged offside. With their pace there was no need to even be close to an offside position.

At half-time I was slightly disappointed that we weren’t ahead.

The blows came equally spaced around the hour mark. Mark Docherty misjudged a header from a corner and it flew into the net. Their second was also from a corner. Our players were slightly late to react to Willo Flood running up from his halfway line. His free header across goal was turned goalwards but Alan Martin saved it. Unfortunately the rebound fell to one of them who couldn’t miss.

Despite a two goal lead they still couldn’t make any impact on us from open play. We did though, sub Andy Stirling’s cross deflecting to a perfectly placed Robert Thomson to bundle the ball below the keeper. They looked a bit nervous after that but we couldn’t make any more clear chances. Even so Sam Stanton was obviously held back when going through but no free-kick was forthcoming. Not the only odd decision by the ref in the game.

So our players scored two goals, theirs one. We scored from open play they didn’t. The team performance was good but we shouldn’t beat a team like Dundee United at their place. Still, it felt like at least a point lost.

Gollancz, 2015, 543 p.

It is sometime in the 14,700s, Homo sapiens has speciated, “Prismed into a dozen breeds of fairy-tale grotesques,” Pifoon, Vulgar, Melius, Amaranthine, being only some of its descendants; Immortals wait out their time before falling into madness, a war is being waged. There is intrigue over the succession of a new Emperor. A machine called the Soul Engine can resurrect dead bodies, undamaged dead bodies, into true immortality and is an object of desire for some of the characters, none of whom engaged my interest or sympathy. A pair of long-dead space-faring dinosaurs found among the rings of Saturn also feature.

Despite containing spaceships and superluminal engines (which somehow also seem to be capable of operating at sub-light speeds) this future still has artillery which fires shells and recognisable place names and locations on Earth. Also marring it all are unconvincing fight and battle scenes, tedious information dumping and a failure to adhere to Colin Greenland’s injunction to beware the pluperfect.

I never give up on a book; but I came perilously close with this one.

Pedant’s corner:- The text mentions lifeless worlds exist where oxygen concentration is higher than that of the Old World. (Oxygen is a reactive gas; without replenishment it would swiftly be used up. Replenishment is a by-product of plant activity, ie life,) “the drilling team were” (was,) whisps, (wisps,) Impatiens’ (Impatiens’s; and this use of the apostrophe is not applied consistently, witness Sotiris’s,) fetid (I prefer foetid,) the crew were (was,) crenulated (crenellated?) metal is “soft enough to mould and carve in a person’s hand, with only a dip in salt water necessary to begin the hardening process” (no metal I know of behaves like this; each metal is either soft or not, depending perhaps on the temperature. Mind you, this metal grows on trees,) “said…. a voice in the chapel that appeared to come from everywhere” (the chapel came from everywhere?) “hoping at least one would find their target” (its target surely?) “but did nothing shade them” (nothing to shade them,) hingeing (I believe the correct form is hinging – but to someone from the West of Scotland there is a distinction between hinge and hing so I would accept hingeing in a Scottish work, which this isn’t,) the expectant trio were (was,) epicentre (centre,) master-at-arms’ (master-at-arms’s,) wollen (woollen.)

I was actually thinking last night it was that time of year again, and also that if I caught sight of any of that unholy brigade of Farage, Johnson, Gove, Fox and Davies sporting a poppy this year I would be livid with rgae.

How dare they?

How dare they blazon their attempt to corral patriotism to their own ends?

How dare they coopt the sacrifice of those who died in the cause of better relations with our European neighbours rather than worse ones?

I actually saw some poppies for sale in the bank today when I was paying some bills. When I got home I got my first sighting of this year when there was a guy labelled as a historian wearing one on the news. He was commenting on the non-story of the Russian aircraft carrier which travelled through the Straits of Dover today en route to Syria, saying they normally went by the top of Scotland as it was shorter that way.

Really? Longer to go straight down the North Sea than travel across the top of Scotland and all the way round Ireland?

I suppose the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen etc made their channel dash in 1942 because that was the longer route? Pull the other one.

I found the tone of the news coverage of this perfectly unexceptional use of international waters to be verging on the hysterical. I do hope we are not being softened up for something.

The Dominion Cinema may be the most striking Art Deco building in Edinburgh’s Morningside but there is some minor deco about the area.

Art Deco style old bank in Morningside, Edinburgh, now an Estate Agent’s:-

Doorway. Note cartouche and surround:-

Bank entrance, Comiston Road, Edinburgh. There was a van parked on the street directly in front of this so I couldn’t photograph it from any furher away:-

I didn’t photograph all the plinths lining the avenue leading towards Boston War Memorial as there were about forty of them, some of which commemorated lesser known conflicts or aspects of large ones.

Arctic Convoys, 1941-45:-

Cyprus Veterans’ Association, 1955-58:-

Falklands War 1982:-

Suez, 1945-56:-

Dunkirk Veterans. (My father was one of the evacuees from Dunkirk):-

Dieppe, 1942:-

Battle of Jutland, 1916:-

Gallipoli 1914-16:-

Battle of the Somme, 1916:-

Battle of Amiens 1918:-