After the Second World War housing was so scarce in the Friesland area that chicken coops were converted to housing. De Spitkeet contains an example of this. It looked fairly substantial to me and homely enough:-

Goats at De Spitkeet. This type of goat is particular to the area:-

One of those quirky singles that occasionally hits a chord with the public. A UK no 16 in 1980.

Jona Lewie: You’ll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties

According to the club’s website we have been drawn against Hearts, Dunfermline Athletic, Hamilton Academical and Stirling Albion in this year’s League Cup (aka the Premier Sports Cup.)

Ties are to be played during July starting on July 12/13^th and finishing on July 26/27^th.

Polygon, 2021, 123 p.

This is another of Birlinn’s Darkland Tales which re-examine Scotland’s history from a modern perspective.

David Rizzio, secretary to the heavily pregnant Mary, Queen of Scots, was famously murdered in her presence by courtiers – and especially her husband Lord Darnley – jealous of Rizzio’s supposed influence on her.

This recounting of that incident is necessarily told in the present tense in order to underscore the inevitability of the ongoing rush of events once the assassins’ plot had been set in motion – and the inability of Mary or Darnley to affect those events.

Mina manages to invoke the feelings of the various characters she focuses on but usually by telling not showing. Hers is an omniscient narration laden with the benefit of hindsight.

The novella is perhaps mistitled, though. It is not primarily about Rizzio (he is dead by a third of the way through) but instead charts the relationship of Mary with Darnley and with her Lords. It is also of course an indictment of the misogyny of the times. In that respect Mary never stood a chance. She had flaws enough of her own even without that to contend with.

I note that at the back the description of the Darkland Tales project has Alan Warner’s then forthcoming contribution titled as The Man Who Would Not Be King. It was eventually published as Nothing Left to Fear From Hell.

Pedant’s corner:- “Here the change of seasons are dramatic” (the changes of seasons are,) “and snakes his arm right around her waist until his hand on her swollen belly” (is missing a verb after ‘hand’; rests? lies? settles? is?) “Lady Huntley” (Huntly, as it is always spelled elsewhere in the text.)

Another building at De Spitkeet (see previous posts) was called the Jehannes-Hinke Hus:-

Side view:-

Entrance (and bikes):-

Entrance from inside:-

View from entrance:-

Looking back:-

Living room:-

Oven/cooker:-

Box bed:-

Another doll’s hosue:-

Thatched roof and tools:-

On 18/5/25 and 19/5 25 Astronomy Picture of the Day featured time-lapsed videos of photos of Pluto and Charon taken by the New Horizons spacecraft.

I haven’t embedded the videos as I think they are copyright but the links take you to them.

Stunning stuff.

To think that the first time I posted on the Plutonian system these worlds were mere dots.

Paul Harris Publishing, 1982, 253 p, plus vi p Introduction by P H Butter. First published in 1932.

Edwin Muir is better known as a poet but he wrote three novels of which this is the third.

The plot centres round the conflict arising when Tom Manson finds out his brother Mansie has begun seeing Helen Wiliamson, a girl whom Tom had previously walked out with.

This causes tension within the family, the brothers stop speaking to each other and Tom starts drinking to excess.

For a book published in 1932 and set in 1911 there is a considerable emphasis on sexual matters. Of the imaginings of becoming intimate with a woman we are told, “Such secret pleasures are exciting, but they leave a sense of guilt towards the object that was employed to produce them. Tom was filled with shame that such thoughts should come into his mind when he was with Helen, and told himself he was a waster.”

There is stress too on the attractions of Socialism to those of Mansie’s persuasion and social standing, and of the similarity of its tenets to Christianity.

Tom has a bad fall under the influence of drink and thereafter suffers a series of headaches which increasingly incapacitate him. Both he and Mansie (but not the reader) are confused by the doctors they consult about Tom’s condition asking whether he has ever associated with loose women.

As the illness progresses reconciliation occurs and we are treated more to Mansie’s reflections on having an invalid in the house.

As a novel this is not entirely successful. As an insight into aspects of life in pre-Great War Glasgow (the Mansons had moved there from a farm some time before the novel begins) it is certainly better than Guy McCrone’s books about the extended Moorhouse family.

Pedant’s corner:- in the Introduction; superceded (superseded.) Otherwise; threatingly (threateningly,) Maisie (elsewhere always Mansie,) inimaginable (usually ‘unimaginable’,) excretary (excretory,) “he turned and literally flew downstairs” (not literally.)

Between 1995 and 1999 Liverpool band Cast had ten top twenty hits in the Uk. This is the one I remember most.

Cast: Walkaway

A view taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacacraft from above Pluto. From Astronomy Picture of the Day for 15/5/25.

The ice mountains of Norgay Montes on left, with Hillary Montes along the horizon and Sputnik Planum to right. Clouds in the thin atmosphere appear to the top.

The administrators of Dumbarton FC have announced they have agreed terms of a deal to sell the club to a “Canadian entrepeneur and business owner,” Mario Lapointe, who “has a passion for sport, particularly football.”

From comments on Pie and Bovril on this page it seems the club’s history and iconic location played a large part in Mr Lapointe’s decision to invest in the club.

He also seems to have no illusions  about the club’s present place in the Scottish football landscape and its likely future one.

His main saving grace though is that he doesn’t appear to be interested in selling the ground for housing.