SPFL Tier 3, The Rock, 18/12/21,

I’m seriously depressed now.

That’s us won 1, drawn 3 and lost 5 at home this season. Just dreadful. Compare that with won 4, lost 5 away from home, though.

But it’s individual errors that are costing us for the most part.

We started slowly but came into it and managed to score from our first ‘proper’ (ie floated as opposed to driven in at knee height) corner, Andy Geggan heading in at the back post. (Not that I actually saw it; the fog was so bad that the Pixellot camera on the stream coudn’t follow the ball.)

We couldn’t hold on to it, though. An inexplicable failure to make any challenges in midfield left Sam Muir exposed down our left and the guy ran on to put it under Sam Ramsbottom.

Amazingly we didn’t fall out of it at once. instead a great run by Sam Muir saw his cross missed by everybody except Conner Duthie at the back post (near post to the camera’s view.) Again I didn’t see it but it seems his finish was composed.

Could we hold on?

No.

Sam Ramsbottom’s mistake this time, failing to control a back pass and making a foul for the penalty or so the commentary said. Sam saved it but the rebound fell to the taker. 2-2.

Our best hope at half-time was probably for a postponement as the visibility was even worse in the second half due to the sun going down. The floodlight glare on the stream all but obliterated the view at either end of the pitch. But the ref played on. And the Pixellot camera trained itself more or less consistently on the middle of the pitch – except when the nearside ballboy was juggling with a spare ball.

Andy Geggan again had the ball in the net from a Joe McKee free-kick but the assistant’s flag had gone up. How he managed to make out it was offside in the gloom goodness only knows.

That might have made a difference but it was all over when Peterhead scored after a corner. Again I didn’t see the goal and had to rely on the stream’s commentary – apparently the tallest guy on the pitch had been left unmarked.

That was game over, we don’t come back from deficits.

We’re seriously in trouble now.

The annoying thing is we can score. But we can’t defend. Not a recipe for success.

Queen’s Park away on Boxing Day. We’ve lost 3-0 to them twice already.

Not a happy Christmas then.

The land on which Chesters Fort was uncovered belonged to a man called John Clayton. His house is right beside the site of the fort:-

There’s some elegant topiary, not to mention a lovely tree, in its grounds:-

Just beyond the English Heritage entrance to Chesters Fort, past the path leading to the ruins is the Chesters Museum where many of the artefacts uncovered by the excavations are displayed.

Hadrian’s Wall Milestones:-

Statue of Juno Regina, Juno Regina was a popular deity among the Roman soldiery:-

There was a piece of soldier’s graffiti carved in the shape of a man’s genitals on one of the displayed pieces which I was going to go back to photograph. Unfortunately this was just after last year’s lockdown was lifted and a man with no mask started to cough loudly in the museum room’s enclosed space so I thought I had better make myself scarce and hence missed my opportunity.

Also in the Guardian last week was the obituary of Robbie Shakespeare, one half of the rhythm section players Sly and Robbie.

Reggae wasn’t/isn’t my thing but I knew Sly and Robbie were well-regarded in the music business.

Another (private) blog I visit posted this, recorded when he was nineteen, as a tribute to Robbie.

Bob Marley and the Wailers: Midnight Ravers

Robert Warren Dale (Robbie) Shakespeare: 27/9/1953 – 8/12/2021. So it goes.

I saw in the Guardian that Steve Bronski has died, subsequently revealed tragically to have been by smoke inhalation in a fire.

He was a founder member of Bronski Beat, who were I believe the first openly gay band to have a big success in the UK when the song below reached no 3 in the charts.

Bronski Beat: Smalltown Boy

Steven William Forrest (Steve Bronski,) 7/2/1960 – 7/12/2021. So it goes.

Previous posts on Chesters Fort are here, here, here and here.

Commandant’s house from distance:-

Closer view. Stacked bricks are likely part of the hypocaust (heating) system:-

Side nearest River North Tyne:-

Remains of the floor:-

These niches are part of the bath complex. I forgot to include them in the psot about the baths at Chesters:-

You may have noticed on my sidebar that I am reading a book titled Absynthe by one Brendan P Bellecourt.

This is to be reveiwed for the online SF magazine ParSec.

Mr Bellecourt is an author new to me and Absynthe appears to be his first novel.

I was attracted to by the publisher’s blurb given to Parsec wherein it mentioned “a palace full of art-deco delights.”

Two posts ago I listed my review of Robert Alan Jamieson’s A Day at the Office, one of the 100 Best Scottish books.

That makes it just about all of the fiction on that list that I have now read, plus the non-fiction The Golden Bough

The only exceptions are The Wind in the Willows (which I believe I did read as a child but can’t remember actually doing so,) the J K Rowling Harry Potter book (which I won’t be reading) and Trainspotting, which along with Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song has appeared on all the lists of Scottish books* which I have covered over the past few years.

Since it was written in Gaelic I’ve also not read An Oidhche Mus Do Sheòl Sinn (The Night Before We Sailed) by Aonghas Pàdraig Caimbeul (Angus Peter Campbell.)

I feel a sense of satisfaction at not only having tracked down these books but finally reading them.

I have seen the film of Trainspotting, which did not encourage me to read the book. I suppose that is a bullet I must bite sometime though.

*As well as the 100 Best there were:-
The Scotsman’s 20 Scottish Books Everyone Should Read (from 2005.)
The Herald’s 100 Best Scottish Fiction Books
Scotland’s Favourite Book

This posting falls out of the usual sequence of my music posts because Mike Nesmith of the Monkees died only a couple of days ago.

The Monkees may have been a manufactured band but they recorded some great songs like the one below and of course Nesmith went on to have a successful solo career. I also read that his video for Rio provided the inspiration for the setting up of MTV.

Nesmith wrote three of my favourite Monkees’ songs, Listen to the Band; Daily, Nightly; and the one below which came out on the B-side of A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You, which I bought back in the day. Its title is The Girl I Knew Somewhere. According to Wikipedia it was the first recording the group played on themselves rather than merely providing vocals.

I have mentioned before I alluded to its title in my novel A Son of the Rock. That was in the throwaway lines:-
“Who’s Sile?”
“A girl I knew somewhere.”

I must confess I’m not much of a fan of this video. It is of its time. It’s the only one I could find, though, of the original mono mix which was of course the one on that B-side.

The Monkees: The Girl I Knew Somewhere

There is another version of The Girl I Knew Somewhere on You Tube (possibly a demo?) which features Mike on vocals.

The Girl I Knew Somewhere with Mike Nesmith vocal:

Robert Michael Nesmith: 30/12/1942 – 10/12/2021. So it goes.

Polygon, 1991, 236 p. One of the 100 best Scottish Books.

This seems a consciously literary endeavour. It has no fewer than four epigraphs, a prefatory two-page introduction telling us that what follows is a day and night in the life of a Scottish city and that its three main characters are encompassed by a sequence of symbols of the major arcana of the Tarot, before riffing on the importance of dreaming and the imagination. Each subsequent narrative section begins with a page or two in page-centred bold print, sometimes using multiple fonts and sizes, headed with the time of day it refers to. Characters’ thoughts – italicised and also centred on the page – pop up in between the descriptive, or indeed speech, passages making the layout for those elements appear as a poem might. In the sections focusing on Douglas Shaw speech is denoted by opening ‘<>’ rather than the usual quote marks. Throughout, contractions such as can’t, won’t, couldn’t etc are rendered without their usual apostrophe.

Those three main characters are nineteen-year-old Ray Craig, searching for some blow, Helen Orr, 24, who married at seventeen but left her husband because he hit her (yet her mother wants her to get back with him,) and works in a casino’s restaurant, and Douglas Shaw, a drug dealer using an antique shop in a run-down but likely to gentrify area as a front and who is waiting for a big deal in Holland to come off. Helen now lives above Douglas’s shop in a flat rented from him – with whom she is in a loose relationship – while Ray comes across Douglas while seeking his hit and is offered a job (and that flat as a place to stay) by him.

There is nothing particularly memorable about their interactions or, indeed, their backgrounds. The only thing lifting A Day at the Office out of the ordinary as a novel is the typographical eccentricity of its layout. Which is not to say it’s bad. Not at all. I have certainly read a lot worse. I don’t think I would put it near my list of best 100 Scottish books, though.

Pedant’s corner:- mantlepiece (mantelpiece,) “taken care off” (of,) Douglas’ (several times, Douglas’s,) St Leonards (St Leonard’s,) “a gang of scaffolders were setting up” (a gang … was setting up,) “a second gang were at work” (was at work,) |”that brought to Douglas mind his brother” (Douglas’s,) a missing close quote mark at the end of one piece of speech, “or spit back” (spat back,) some missing full stop at sentences ends, stunk (stank,) focussed (focused.) “The opera was reaching a crescendo” (no. It wasn’t; the opera’s crescendo was reaching a climax,) “making with an effort at a smile” (that ‘with’ is unnecessary,) beneficient (beneficent) “on the bed next her” (‘next to her’ is more organic.)

SPFL Tier 3, The Rock, 11/12/21.

This all started quite well. We had the better of the first part of the game, even if Montrose looked tidy on the ball they didn’t threaten our goal. Eoghan Stokes put a header against the post from a narrow angle, Conner Duthie latched onto an exquisite pass from Andy Geggan, rounded the keeper and slotted it. The retreating defender could only put it in the net. Callum Wilson hit the bar from a corner.

Then the roof fell in. Paddy Boyle misjudged the bounce of the ball and his attempt to recover caught their attacker who tumbled to the ground. Penalty. No question. Then two minutes later they pulled our defence out of shape and had a man over on the left. Goal. Eoghan Stokes was through one on one just before half-time but the keeper narrowed the angle well and saved with his legs.

Again at the start of the second half we looked as if we might get back into it but the third goal killed it. Failure to challenge properly allowed the attacker to manœuvre the ball into a striking position. Game over.

It’s especially disappointing as we looked bright enough going forward when we passed the ball. We can only hope that a Ryan McGeever return might improve our defence (and provide an extra attacking threat on set pieces.)

Down to second bottom. Next Saturday’s game against Peterhead looks like a six pointer even this early. Lose it and I reckon we’re stuffed.