I discovered yesterday that poet W H Auden spent some time (two years) in Helensburgh – eight or so miles from Dumbarton – teaching at Larchfield Academy.

This information came to me via a review in the Guardian of a book Larchfield by Polly Clark.

The book, a novel, deals with Auden’s time there but there is also apparently (I’ve not read it, only the review) a present day section featuring Dora, an incomer to the town, who finds herself ill at ease there as it is “seething with hatred of outsiders.”

Really? Helensburgh, in my youth at least, was a tourist town and has had a fair number of incomers over the years what with the Faslane base just up the road. Is it really seething with hatred to such outsiders who bring – or brought – money into the town? Is it unwelcoming? No more so than anywhere else I’d have thought.

Or is Clark unfairly traducing it for literary purposes?

(It is entirely possible of course that a few incomers might “play the English” – as an English writer acquaintance of mine who now lives in Edinburgh depicts some of his compatriots who come to Scotland and moan about why it isn’t English and try to throw their weight about – and suffer adverse comments as a result.)

Not a very catchy headline, is it?

Yet this is exactly what has happened at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan – an event which has now apparently overshadowed the many thousands of deaths from the tsunami which followed the earthquake; a tragedy of enormous scale, very difficult to get your head round, and virtually unbloggable.

Yes, it was stupid to site the plant by the sea-shore in a quake-prone region subject to tsunami inundation. Yes, there should have been thought put to the likelihood of a tsunami stopping the cooling system’s pumps from working. Yes, there should have been back-up cooling systems in place.

But…

No-one has died yet.

Of course any unnecesssary deaths are to be deplored but any deaths will be microscopic in number compared to the natural disaster.

And there are deaths associated with the extraction of coal and oil/gas for burning to make electricity. Even hydro-electricity has its drawbacks.

There are catches to alternative power generation methods too.

No power generation technology will be free of them.

It’s a question of risk, and nuclear generation has quite small ones really. (The waste is a different issue.)

I wouldn’t want a nuclear power plant in my backyard, though.

What’s that? Torness is only a relatively few miles away (as the wind blows) on the Berwickshire coast?

Hmm. So it is.

But then I grew up between Glasgow and Faslane; two prime targets in the event of the Cold War becoming hot, with a third – Holy Loch – not much further away, and barely gave it a thought.

Mind you, thermonuclear immolation would be a damn sight quicker than radiation poisoning.