A Son of the Rock

By the time we got to Balmoral it was far too late in the day for a visit. So we just scouted the outside.

Gates to Balmoral Estate. With monograms GR for George V and MR for Queen Mary:-

On the appraoch road from the car park lies a War Memorial unveiled by King George V in 1922.

Note the swastikas (or fylfots) at base of the inscription. These are in a different orientation to the later German swastikas and were good luck symbols.
The names on the upper block are of Balmoral estate employees, the lower ones are for men from the nearby village of Crathie.

Dedication plaque:-

Pocket, 2004, 574 p, including ii p Map and v p Dramatis Personae.

The usual from Turtledove’s long series fiction, this being the fifth in his Darkness sequence, where he reinterprets the Second World War (at least as it occurred in Europe) in a fantasy setting complete with dragons substituted for aircraft, behemoths for tanks, leviathans for submarines, with added unicorns (for colour,) and magic as the agent of weaponry.

Here, the tide of war has turned, the Algarvian invasion of Unkerlant has been halted and pushed back, and the pursuit of the ultimate theoretical magic is on the verge of being put to systematic use in Turtledove’s equivalent of the Manhattan Project. This can apparently cause devastating earthquakes via spells which also seem to involve a degree of time twisting.

Along with common soldiers (and not so common; this is a world of overweening Kings and servile subjects – at least to their king’s face) we have partisans, resistance groups, people playing one side against the middle, others hiding from the occupying power, even recruits from conquered nations enlisting in their vanquisher’s cause.

It has all the faults I have noted previously, the constant repetition of information the reader already knows or of characters’ thoughts, the utilitarian prose, the lack of depth to most characters, the sexism and misogyny.

I still can’t make up my mind whether Turtledove approves of any of these or not: but he does depict soldiers’ resignation and weariness. As far as racial prejudice is concerned, though, he is clearly against it. As should we all be.

Pedant’s corner:- On the Map Kuusamo is spelled Kuusano. Written in USian. Every name ending in ‘s’ is given s’ for its possessive rather than s’s. Otherwise; blond (blonde,) “a little village of her own” (of his own,) “who’d taken over for the departed Mosco” (who’d taken over from the.) “In a whisper even he had trouble even he had trouble hearing” (unnecessarily repeated ‘even he had trouble’,) “walked thought the door” (walked through the door,) “lese majesty” (x 2, lèse-majesté,) “which weighed more nearly as much as he did” (why that ‘more’?) “‘We’ll better drive ‘em back over the river’” (‘We’d better drive them back,) “‘doesn’t seem to worried’” (doesn’t seem too worried,) “and those who followed him trust no one who’d fought the redheads on their own” (trusted no one who’d,) “‘and you to, milady’” (‘and you too, milady’,) “Ilmarinen came up to Sabrino” (the scene had changed; it was Fernao whom Ilmarinen came up.) “Fernao want to take her in his arms” (Fernao wanted to,) “at Leino’s jointing the war” (joining the war,) “Phalanx of Valmieran” (elsewhere always ‘Phalanx of Valmiera’,) “something else instead of hold their little eggs” (something else instead to hold,) “a company of Yaninan soldiers were ..” (a company … was,) “when I set home to Vanai” (when I get home,) “outside of” (no ‘of’, just ‘outside’,) “he hoper their was a bridge” (he hoped there was.)

Bridge Street, Ballater, showing War Memorial:-

Ballater, Bridge Street looking towards bridge. The shop on the corner sold very good ice cream:-

Unfortunately I didn’t get to a vantage point to see the bridge itself but I was able to photograph the River Dee from the bridge. Looking east:-

Opposite view, looking west:-

SPFL Tier 4, K Park Community Stadium, 20/9/25.

A game of two halves.

But first, the K Park Community Stadium is a seriously awful place to watch a football match if you’re an away fan. We were confined to one end of the pitch in a small enclosure which had at most three steps up from pitch level and there was a net strung along the back of the pitch – presumably to prevent injury to spectators. Not an ideal view by any means.

Sons were awful in the first half. The home team seemed to have loads of room to play, with two wide men on their left getting two on one with Kristian Webster at right back far too often and also able to get down their right too easily.

Still, they didn’t force Shay Kelly into any kind of serious save. Then, on the stroke of half time they were given a penalty. This was up the other end from us Sons fans so whether it was justified or not I couldn’t say. Shay Kelly nearly got down to it but it had been struck too firmly.

The second half started much as the first had progressed then suddenly we came into it. This may have been because we had showed more urgency but seemed to coincide with Scott Tomlinson and Kai Kirkpatrick switching wings. Tomlinson began to interpret this as a licence to roam and was soon popping up all over the place in the attacking third. He missed a glorious chance to score, though by not hitting his shot early enough, then Kirkpatrick set up Dom Docherty beautifully but he opted for power rather than placement and blazed it over.

Then a fine move saw Tomlinson moving down the inside right channel before his shot beat the keeper.

It was nip and tuck from then on but East Kilbride ought to have scored at the death but somehow their attacker with only a touch required to put it in the net somehow managed to hit the ball backwards.

It was a much relieved set of Sons fans who greeted the final whistle as for all of the first half  a draw had seemed utterly unlikely.

Vintage, 2007, 202 p. Translated from the Spanish El embrujo de Shanghai (Plaza & Janés, 1993,) by Nick Caistor.

There is a certain quality to translated fiction – or at least to the best translated fiction – which marks it out. That sense of subtle strangeness, other ways of seeing, perhaps even other ways of being, and yet, reading it, the essential qualities of human interactions still shine through.

Shanghai Nights is set in Barcelona in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War and both that conflict, and more importantly the then also recent Spanish Civil War, hang over the book, an understated but permeating presence.

Narrator Daniel is a young adolescent whose father never returned from that Civil War, and several of the characters are subsumed by it, most obviously Captain Blay – called the Invisible Man for the bandages he wears to conceal his wounds but also Nandu Forcat, on whose initial furtive appearances everyone expects to be arrested at any moment. How much more so for those characters who are, or have been, in exile in France, at least one of whom is exiled permanently.

Blay is obsessed by a smell he attributes to a gas leak underneath a local pavement and ropes Daniel in to help him canvas for signatures on appetition against the leak and a chimney which spouts noxious smoke. Blay’s ineffectiveness is such that only about 14 people ever sign up.

Daniel falls into the orbit of Señora Anita’s daughter Susana, a consumptive (Marsé makes frequent mention of the Koch bacillus) girl whom Blay wants Daniel to draw as a victim of the smoke from that chimney but whom Daniel sees in a different light. She is the daughter of Joaquim (Kim) Franch, one of those exiles.

Forcat worms his way into Señora Anita’s graces and apparently has some sort of healing/heating powers. He begins to tell Susanna and Daniel a tale of her father’s adventures in the Far East, sent to Shanghai by the exiles to kill a man suspected of being a German Colonel guilty of war crimes in France and to retrieve a book with yellow covers, a book with revealing secrets. This is a lurid tale of unlikely encounters and an attractive Chinese woman named Chen Jing. It is sometimes couched in racial terms, (lousy chink, slant-eyed, a blackamoor) and clichés (dresses slit to the waist.)

Doubt is cast on this story by the appearance of Luis Deniso Mascaró (‘Denis’) a returned exile who has a grievance against Kim and whose revelations and influence alter Susana’s life.

This is a fraction of the contents of a book full of vivid characters such as the above as well as Blay’s wife, Doña Conxa, and the Chacón brothers, and which builds to a climax which is at once sordid but touched with nobility, and entirely true to its essence.

In it we read “everything passes, and it is all exactly the same, masks and the faces beneath, sleep and waking” and “however much we grow and look towards the future, in fact we are reaching back towards our past, in search perhaps of our first moment of awareness.”

Pedant’s corner:- “vocal chords” (vocal cords,) focused (focused,) “‘Denis’s’ parents’ home” (several times the possessive of ‘Denis’ appeared as ‘Denis’s’, surely it must be ‘Denis’’s,) “the waitress’ skirt” (waitress’s skirt,) “to smoothe down” (x 2, smooth down,) “fo’castle” (either ‘forecastle’ or ‘fo’c’sle’, not fo’castle,) “you’ll know you seen so much” (you’ve seen so much,) (Captain Tu Szu’s words” (elsewhere the Captain is always Su Tzu,) “to traffick arms” (to traffic arms,) “shammy leather” (technically it’s chamois leather.) “He was in the Peace Hotel can remember” (He was in the Peace Hotel and can remember.) “It is true then that …….. betrayal?) (Is it true then that …….?) “Contrary my mother’s expectations” (Contrary to my mother’s expectations.)

I heard this again on the radio last week so was reminded of it. From their breakthrough LP Moseley Shoals, it was the band’s first top 20 UK hit.

Ocean Colour Scene: The Riverboat Song

Since we were close to Ballater after leaving Corgarff and I had seen its War Memorial on television when the late Queen’s funeral procession passed through the town I thought I should take the chance to photograph it myself.

It’s a granite cross rising from a wall where the names are inscribed, standing in front of the church on Bridge Street. Unfortunately there was a tractor right behind it that day:-

Dedication and names:-

There was what I assumed was a Great War Centenary bench nearby:-

Little Brown, 2016, 440 p.

In this (fourth) instalment of the cases of DCI Karen Pirie she is still trying to get over the death of her romantic (and former professional) partner Phil Paratka, murdered in the line of duty in The Skeleton Road. Unable to sleep properly she strolls the backways of Edinburgh at night, particularly the Restalrig railway path.

We start, though, with Ross Garvie, a joyriding teenager, whose exploits lead to him killing his three passengers in a crash and only surviving himself in a deep coma.

Then we meet (briefly) Gabriel Abbott, an obsessive about exploitation in the third world unburdening his worries about a Thai correspondent of his to a friend in a pub in Kinross.

Garvie’s DNA provides a familial hit to the murder of Tina MacDonald in Glasgow years before, thus giving Pirie’s cold case unit a lead, but complicated by the fact Garvie was adopted and accessing the original birth certificate is all but legally forbidden.

Then Abbott is found murdered on the path by Loch Leven from Kinross. It turns out his mother was killed by a bomb on a light aircraft years before – an atrocity blamed at the time on the IRA despite the crude MO not being a fit. Pirie does not believe in such coincidences but the local officer has dismissed Abbott’s death as a suicide.

Cue much treading on toes as Pirie sets out to solve both cases and the aircraft bombing, ignoring protocol as is her wont.

A sub-plot involving Syrian refugees she meets on the railway path who have nowhere they can meet up manages to entwine with the main one near the end.

I suppose this is pretty standard police procedural (or in Pirie’s case non-procedural) fare but McDermid keeps the pages turning.

Pedant’s corner:-  “none of them were worried” (none of them was worried,) “Lees’ reward” (Lees’s reward,) “macaroon bars made traditionally with icing sugar and mashed potatoes” (McDermid is here misrepresenting for comic effect, macaroon bars are not made from mashed potato,) congratulations for the subscripts in H₂O and H₂SO₄, “where the leak sprung from” (sprang from.) “Noble shook head” (shook his head,) snuck (horrible USianism; ‘sneaked’, please.)

Corgarff Castle is in the care of Historic Environment Scotland. We passed it on the way down from Dufftown to Ballater last year on the (in)famous Tomintoul – Cock Bridge road, the A 939. Unfortunately it was on one of the days of the week when the castle isn’t open.

It’s ummissable from the road standing on the hillside as it does, but there’s a steep path up from the car park.

Castle from approach path:-

The unusually shaped perimeter wall was built when the castle was a barracks.

Close view:-

From northwest:-

From southeast:-

From northeast:-

From Astronomy Picture of the Day for 9/9/25.

A view from the International Space Station of an uncommon type of lightning called Giant Jet Lightning. This arises from thunderstorms and moves upwards into the ionosphere.