A Son of the Rock

In my post about the latest issue of ParSec magazine I said it would contain my review of Hammajang Luck by Makana Yamamoto.

Well; it didn’t.

After the issue had been released I received an email from ParSec’s editor saying that just before the issue went live he had received a letter from the book’s publisher demanding that my review be taken down.

The letter apparently described my review as “hugely upsetting to the author and a lot of people.” Quite how that could be the case when the review had yet to appear is a point to ponder. The author maybe – if the review had been shared with them – but a lot of people?

The letter claimed that I had misgendered the book’s protagonist, Edie, throughout as “they are explicitly known as they/them throughout the entirety of the book” and I had failed to follow that designation. 

Now: the book was written in the first person singular by a narrator who was clearly not male. With such a narrator occasions on which the use of they/them will describe the protagonist will be vanishingly rare.

Regular readers of this blog will know how unlikely it is that something as striking as a still relatively uncommon use of personal pronouns would pass me by.

Nvertheless, just to check, I did a quick scan of the Advanced Reading Copy sent to me for review and, as I had recalled, the pronouns used to describe the protagonist are actually ‘I’ and ‘me’ (naturally so for a first person narration) – or ‘you’ when the narrator was being spoken to by other characters. I could find no instance of ‘they/them/their’ at all. In this circumstance it can surely be understood why a humble reviewer would assume that the normal pronouns for a female character would apply.

My review, as reviews must be, accordingly was based on the text as written – or at least as published in the ARC.

In the cold light of day and coming to the review afresh there was a three word passage which perhaps came across as more flippant and thoughtless than I intended. Had I been contacted directly about this I would have acceded to its removal/replacement without hesitation. I was not given the opportunity.

I will nevertheless alter that when I post the review here in due course.

I have no quibble with ParSec’s editor’s decision not to publish the review. He has after all a relationship with the publisher to nurture but I would add he has enough on his plate without having to deal with a back and forth about something so trivial as a book review.

I must add that it used to be considered bad form for an author to complain about a review.

But that a publisher can all but demand a review not be printed is surely a bit over the score.

De Spitkeet is an open air rural museum near Harkema, Friesland, The Netherlands. A spitkeet was  akind of Earth-house.

The first exhibit you come to is a building called the Mallemolen:-

The Mallemolen acted as a poorhouse. The coldest room, on the northeast, was given to the latest arrivals and when others became available they would move into those:-

The rooms look not too bad though:-

Box beds:-

Near the Mallemolen was a stork’s nest:-

The deal for the Sons to be taken out of administration has fallen through “due to ill health.” (The article in the link is behind a pay wall.)

The administrators will now be talking to other possible buyers but presumably these won’t be proposing to pay the creditors in full, which makes resolving things more difficult.

We can only hope that there will be a successful bidder and that they will have the interests of the club at heart rather than building houses.

Edited to add:- The club website says the other bidders are understood to be football orientated which sounds promising. (The link also has a great pic of the stadium.)

SPFL Tier  3, The Rock, 26/4/25.

The last home game of the season and an entertaining one.

Annan had the best of the opening twenty or so minutes but really only created one opportunity. It was a golden one though but loanee keeper Shay Kelly pulled off an incredible point-blank save. I still don’t know how he did it.

Then we got a free-kick reasonably far out from which I wasn’t expecting much but Ryan Blair beat the keeper with a shot at a fairly savable height I thought but which squeezed in close to the post.

One-nil at half time and soon Annan’s task got more difficult when a second yellow card was shown to one of their defenders. from where I was it looked as if his slip had simply caused Michael Ruth to fall over him but the ref signalled it was a trip.

Annan then brought on sub Tommy Goss. At 6 feet 4 inches he towerd over everybody else on the park. Not good when we were playing with a makeshift centre back pairing neither of whom are centre backs. (Curiously the same was true of Annan’s line-up. No centre backs playing at centre back on either side is surely an extremely rare phenomenon.) Goss began winning balls in the air bringing out another superb save from Shay Kelly but their forward blazed the rebound over when it was surely easier to score. Goss then converted a corner and Annan looked more likely to win the game – which they had to if they had any hope sof avoding the relegaton play-off spot.

A few minutes we had a pitch invasion. No, not really, but the crowd did end up on the pitch. A fire alarm had gone off in the stadium and the game had to be suspended.

That turned out to be the turning point. After the restart we scored twice in quick succession. Firstly Tony Wallace was played in by fellow sub Joel Mumbongo but he took what felt like an age in beating the same defender twice before finally planting the ball in the net. Also Mouhamed Niang was put on Goss at set pieces after which Annan seemed to stop trying to find him.

Two minutes later another quick break saw Finlay Gray play the ball across the box. Joel Mumbongo perhaps ought to have scored but seemed to miss the ball. However he mananged to confuse the keeper who then failed to stop the ball reaching another sub Jinky Hilton who put it away.

Things were not over. They were given a penalty and Shay Kelly took his good time getting into place going behind the goal line and seeming to aplly something to his gloves, time-wasting for which he was given a yellow card. His ….housery worked, though, as he got down well to save the shot from Goss. Man of the match for me.

The home season ended on a playing high, then. Only Stenhousemuir away next week before a season unforgettable for all the wrong reasons is over.

Will we still be around for the next one though? An owner whose only interest in the club is as a site for housebuilding might well pull the plug. Fans are powerless in this regard.

Canongate, 2000, 237 p.

After a sojourn in Basah in the far East, painter Angus McAllister has returned to his Hebridean roots on the island of Flodday, whose only drawback is that the local women refuse to pose for him.

Janet Maxwell has temporarily left her philandering husband and sought refuge with her brother, the owner of Flodday’s hotel. She is pulling pints in the bar when she and McAllister meet. Eager to incite her husband’s jealousy, she conceives the idea of living at McAllister’s house Ardnave, as his housekeeper. Janet is originally from Skye and has second sight. When she enters McAllister’s living room she immediately feels a tragedy will occur there. This, combined with McAllister’s possession of a blowpipe spear, means Chekhov’s dictum about the gun on the wall will most likely come into play. Brought up a Wee Free, Janet has particular ideas on sex as being a sacrament; an attitude her husband finds both ridiculous and irritating.

Janet also foresees the arrival at Ardnave of a woman and her daughter. This will turn out to be Fidelia Gomez, one of McAllister’s former lovers in Basah, a devout Catholic who could not contemplate divorce from her husband, and her child Letitia. However, she is preceded at Ardnave by the Australian Nell Ballantyne, another of McAllister’s lovers. Such goings-on with three married women eventually occupying the same household, none of them the wife of the owner, set many tongues wagging.

These complications to Angus’s life all take place in Part One. Part Two sees the entry of Janet’s and Nell’s husbands, both golf nuts, and the demand by Fidelia’s to have custody of Letitia which precipitates the novel’s rather sudden climax.

This examination of Hebridean life, the locals’ gossip, the minister’s censure, the frustration and delay incurred by everything being shut on a Sunday reads as being somewhat traditional. Nevertheless, the hotel owner’s daughters are amused by the minister’s reference to God knowing everything since, “It didn’t matter if God knew your secrets. He could be trusted not to clype.”

The novel was first published in 2000 but has the feel of having been written earlier. Yet I suppose it was 25 years ago now.

Poor Angus is not quite perhaps as serious a book as some that Jenkins has written but I still accomplished.

Pedant’s corner:- “looked in stony copulation” (context suggests ‘locked in’,) “‘he’s got to be made understand’” (made to understand,) delf (it was pottery, Delft,) “when it ought to have been growing stranger” (growing stronger makes more sense.) “‘What’s your, then?’” (What’s yours, then?’”) “But what man McAllister’s predicament would not be” (what man in McAllister’s predicament,) clifs (cliffs.) “‘Keep your eyes off her books’” (‘off her looks’? Perhaps even ‘off her boobs’?) a missing end quotation mark, “while he was an his studio” (in his studio,) a missing opening quotation mark, “‘Why do like painting ladies with no clothes on?’” (Why do you like.)

Echo and the Bunnymen were a band from Liverpool who had both critical and (some) commercial success in the 1980s.

In 1983 this single achieved their second highest chart entry, at no 9 (just below the no 8 of both The Cutter and the later Nothing Lasts Forever.)

Echo and the Bunnymen: The Killing Moon

Iwema Steenhuis (see previous posts) has several exhibits relating to childhood.

Model of schoolroom:-

Vintage children’s books:-

Toy vehicles:-

I just loved those dinky caravans on the second top shelf above so here’s a close-up:-

There was also domestic memorabilia.

Inkwells and desktop paraphernalia:-

Inkwell partly in the shape of a Great War tank (a French Renault, I think):-

Old style shop:-

I’m late to this this year.

The awards will have been made at Eastercon on Sunday but I haven’t been paying attention.  I also didn’t receive the usual BSFA produced booklet but I think it’s now gone over to electronic only.

The main fiction categories’ nominees were:-

Best Novel

Calypso, Oliver K. Langmead (Titan)

Rabbit in the Moon, Fiona Moore (Epic)

Alien Clay, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Orbit) Removed from the ballot at the request of the author

Three Eight One, Aliya Whiteley (Solaris)

The only one of these I have read is Alien Clay and that has been withdrawn from consideration.

Best Shorter Fiction (for novelettes and novellas)

Navigational Entanglements, Aliette de Bodard (Tordotcom)

What Happened at the Pony Club, Fiona Moore (Fusion Fragment 8/24)

Saturation Point, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Solaris)

Charlie Says, Neil Williamson (Black Shuck)

Best Short Fiction

Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole, Isabel J. Kim (Clarkesworld 2/24)

The Portmeirion Road, Fiona Moore (Clarkesworld 5/24)

Unquiet on the Eastern Front, Wole Talabi (Subterranean 10/24)

Intrinsic – Extrinsic – Terrific, Aliya Whiteley (The Utopia of Us)

The full list of nominees is here.

The museum part of Iwema Steenhuis has some industrial relics. A roller press:-

Machine for moulding speculaas biscuits:-

Speculaas and jelly moulds + wicker basket and rolling pins:-

A speculaas pressing machine:-

Stained glass and enamels:-

Colourings:-

Tiles and enamel signs:-

(For some reason this post didn’t appear when originally scheduled.)

SPFL Tier 3, Links Park, 19/4/25.

A draw is a decent enough result, though selection bingo was in evidence again. It’s really a bizarre approach to management.

They took the lead through a twice taken penalty which Shay Kelly seemingly saved twice but the second time couldn’t prevent the rebound off the bar leading to a goal.

Then Carlo Pignatiello brought things level. In the second half we went ahed through a penalty ourselves Tony Wallace doing the honours.

We couldn’t hold the lead though and they scored with six minutes to go.

Annan up next week for the last home game. Let’s hope we can round things off with a bit of cheer.

They have a habit of pulling results out of the bag, though.