A Romance. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2003, 292 p.

A novel about King Arthur? What new is there to be said?
Well, Massie’s approach is different. This is the second part of his Dark Ages trilogy as told by Michael Scott (known as the wizard) to his pupil, the Hohenstaufen Prince who would become The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II.

In Arthur the King the focus is not so much on the legend we all think we know as on Arthur the man, a very human creature, from his humble upbringing, through his kingship to his gritty death. The effect is to demystify, to demythologise, to render Arthur into history. Michael Scott has his own reasons for this, to educate the prince, to remind him of a monarch’€™s duty to maintain peace and justice, to underline the burden of kingship but it also serves to emphasise the Hohenstaufen line’s links back to the Roman Empire. It’€™s a nice piece of ventriloquism by Massie and allows the use of wonderful Scottish words like howdumdeid.

In addition he has Scott locate Camelot in Scott’s boyhood environment – the Scottish border country – and mentions, among others, the legend of Arthur still residing in a hollow under the Eildon Hills. There are of course many parts of Great Britain which claim Arthur as their own. Indeed a cave by the Clyde shore at the Havoc in Dumbarton was/is known as Merlin’€™s Cave (though others have it as Bruce’s cave, such is legend.)

In the narrative the point is made that most of the tales of Arthur are actually those of the Knights of the Round Table. Here, there are some digressions of that sort but they are short and we are never away from Arthur for long.

Characters who might have seemed important, like Merlin and Lancelot, are bit parts; even Morgan Le Fay isn’€™t Arthur’€™s main antagonist. Merlin, though an instigator of the sequence of events which lead to the complications inherent in the tale, is disappeared offstage about halfway through.

The main problem with all this is the narrative style. Massie, as Scott, digresses frequently and irritatingly, leading to a certain turgidity in the delivery. I remember this trait as being worse, though, in the first book of The Dark Ages, The Evening of the World, which I read before I started blogging. So much so in fact that I left off reading this one for years.

It probably won’€™t be so long, I suspect, till I undertake the last in this series, Charlemagne and Roland.

How to explain the move of David Beckham to Paris Saint Germain?

It can’t be on footballing grounds. He has been playing for six years in the US, where the standard isn’t the best, he’s 37 years old and plays in midfield where it’s hard to hide. Okay, he admits himself he never had any pace to speak of, but still. How many minutes playing time do you reckon he will have for PSG between now and season’s end?

In any case I have always thought he was more than a touch overhyped as a footballer. He could take a free kick and put in a cross but rarely dominated a game in the way great players do. As for his most famous feat in England – scoring from his own half – that’s not even unusual. Chic Charnley did it in a Dumbarton shirt, and it’s a regular occurrence at Gayfield (wind-assisted of course.)

The news programme I first saw this on yesterday implied Beckham was a big football name and mentioned, condescendingly, that PSG had also recently signed players like Zlatan Ibrahimovic. As far as the present football scene is concerned Zlatan is a much bigger star than Beckham – and more valued.

For some unfathomable reason Beckham is still assumed to have a superstar’s lustre. PSG can only have signed him to promote their global brand and sell jerseys.

In football, British football anyway, the phrase “selling the jerseys” means to make a mistake that costs your team – a goal, two points, the match. PSG may have scored an own goal here.

On the way back from seeing Eric Brown in Dunbar we stopped off at Tranent. The main reason is my mother was born there – or at least it was her first home. Her family later moved to Eyemouth before coming to Dumbarton.

I found it a typical Scottish small (post)industrial town with all that implies. But it has Art Deco.

The above is Homezone – on Edinburgh Road just after it branches off from High Street. This is a close-up on the detail:-

At the other end of High Street is this solicitor’s. The stepping on the roof line is good – and the triangular effect on the upper stone blocks.

To its left (on the right in the above photo) the deco feel continues. The pillars on the stone work are nicely detailed. The premises were to let, as you can see.

Not only will Wednesday night’s game be our first play-off final it will also be our first ever appearance on live TV.

Brush up your Gaelic, though. It’s on BBC Alba. See here for its availability.

To get through to Dumbarton on a midweek night and back again in a decent time would be pushing it for me. This news eases that dilemma. This week I won’t have the Europa League (sic) final to take my mind off things, I’ll have the Sons game itself.

Europa League* Final, Arena Națională, Bucharest, 9/5/12.

The difference here was in a striker who could fashion goals for himself from very unpromising situations (Madrid’s Falcao) and one who may have been carrying an injury (Bilbao’s Llorente) though Madrid’s defending contributed to the latter’s ineffectiveness. Bilbao laboured in the first half and, apart from Falcao, so did Madrid.

In the second, Bilbao had to chase the game and swarmed all over the Madrid half but weren’t able to create a clear cut opportunity – except once when Courtois made a great block. Bilbao also seemed unable to get enough width into their play.

Vulnerable to the break, Bilbao fell to the sucker punch from Madrid’s Diego, another goal created from an unpromising situation. It might have been better defended just the same.

Bilbao’s players are mostly young so may come again. Muniain, with his scurrying run and combative attitude, reminded me of ex-Son Andy Geggan (but an Andy Geggan who can play.)

Speaking of the Sons, a narrow 2-1 win over Arbroath last night makes Saturday’s second leg (with our rank record up there) very iffy.

*So-called.

Take a look at these historical league tables (top four only) which show when Cowdenbeath FC has won the Scottish Second Division.

Scottish League Division Two 1913-14

1 Cowdenbeath P 22 pts 31
2 Albion Rovers P 22 pts 27
3 Dundee Hibernian P 22 pts 26
4 Dunfermline Ath P 22 pts 26

In those days promotion wasn’€™t automatic so Cowdenbeath were in Division Two the next year. Cowdenbeath were one of three teams on equal points at the top.

Scottish League Division Two 1914-15

1 Leith Athletic P 26 pts 37
2 St Bernards P 26 pts 37
3 Cowdenbeath P 26 pts 37
4 East Stirlingshire P 26 pts 31

A three-way play-off decided the league winners. Cowdenbeath defeated Leith Athletic at East End Park and St. Bernards at Easter Road to take the title.

Scottish League Division Two 1938-39

1 Cowdenbeath P 34 pts 60
2 Alloa Athletic P 34 pts 48
3 East Fife P 34 pts 48
4 Airdrieonians P 34 pts 47

Cowdenbeath’s only other Championship was in Div 3 in 2006. Their other promotions came as runners-up, through play-offs or as a result of another club’s financial problems leading to a readjustment in the leagues.

So does anyone spot something here?

Well, I notice that every time Cowdenbeath have been Champions of a Division 2 in Scotland the UK has been involved in a major (world) war the next September.

Now take a gander at the present position in the SFL Div 2 (as of 7/2/12) :-

1 Cowdenbeath P 20 pts 41
2 Arbroath P 20 pts 39
3 Stenhousemuir P 20 pts 31
4 Dumbarton P 19 pts 28

Gulp!

Come on Arbroath!!! (And the Sons, obviously.)

I took my photos of this over a year ago and have only just got around to posting them.

The Loch Lomond Hotel is in the village of Balloch which as its name suggests is at the foot of Loch Lomond. The loch is only five or so minutes from the hotel.

Balloch and Loch Lomond are only a few miles from Dumbarton.

This one shows the doorway with its nice rounded portico but the windows have been mucked about with.

These two old postcards show how it used to look. It seems once (in the 1960s, judging by the cars) to have had a pointed pediment above the doorway.

Edited to add:- some more of my photos of the hotel are on my flickr.

I don’t know how I missed this before, I suppose I was so used to it I never looked properly. The picture is a stitch of two to get it all in. I took them after the game against the Shire last Sunday. We took a turn along the High Street and I gazed up at the Co-Op building and noticed its date; DECS 1938. This building was where the linen, drapery, furniture and clothing depts were. It had those pneumatic pipes for sending your cash off to the central office where all the money was dealt with. The food department was (and still is) a bit further along the High Street. Strangely, there the money was handled at the till by the assistants.

(For anyone who doesn’t know, DECS stands for Dumbarton Equitable Co-Operative Society and the elephant is on Dumbarton’s town crest.)

I’ve got one more photo of the Co-Op on flickr.

I can still remember my mother’s Co-Op dividend number…..

I think it was Oscar Wilde who said that anyone who did not have the stoniest heart could not read about the death of Little Nell in Charles Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop without laughing. (For possible Wildean phrasings of this aphorism see here.)

I confess I feel much the same way about the current position of Liverpool Football Club.

Their supporters bayed for the previous owners to sell up and for the previous manager to go, or be sacked.

Having got both their wishes they immediately set to complaining about the new manager, Roy Hodgson – who had just won the Manager of the Season award, don’t forget – for not being their darling, former player and manager Kenny Dalglish. Effectively they never gave Hodgson a chance.

It is as if they believe they have a divine right to success and to a winning team. Despite their club’s trophy laden history they do not.

I think it is this sense of entitlement that makes me anti-pathetic towards the club – as I am to the similarly deluded fans, and the overweening behaviour, of the Old Firm clubs.

And now Hodgson has gone, in that telling weasel phrase “by mutual consent,” and replaced – for now – by Kenny Dalglish.

Admittedly Liverpool’s results have not been good this season – in the Premier League at least.

Yet how much of this is really to do with the manager? Can a manager really turn around several seasons’ worth of decline in six months? Liverpool’s current position stems in large part from the mistakes made by previous manager Rafael Benitez; mistakes in signing certain players and mistakes in alienating and then in letting go others.

It is evident from the scantiest perusal of their games on television that the present players are not performing. Whatever their affections for the old manager and whatever they may think of the new it is their job to do what he asks of them. Surely some of the blame ought to be placed on them.

Okay, Fernando Torres has an excuse. He has been injured, then not match fit and also probably suffering a reaction from Spain’s World Cup win in the summer.

Steven Gerrard is a more complicated case. He is clearly not playing as effectively as he once did. That may be due to an overall decline in the ability level of players around him. He is also probably trying too hard. And here’s a thought; actually he may not be quite as good a player as everyone made out. Or he may simply be in decline.

There is another problem with him, though. I think he has too much of an influence on the team in that the other players defer to him. When he’s on the pitch they look to him to drive things on – they even get out of his way when they are actually better placed to play the ball. His shadow hangs over them even when he’s not playing as they seem to believe that without him they are not as capable of achieving a win.

Changing the manager is a desperate throw of the dice. My own club Dumbarton did precisely this just before the recent snows interrupted the fixtures. Whether that was a wise move only time will tell. As in Liverpool’s case it may have been too late. It was for Newcastle United two seasons ago when they appointed Alan Shearer to try to avoid relegation; a strategy that did not work. His unheralded successor, Chris Hughton, then performed miracles to restore the club to Premier League respectability – and got the sack for his trouble.

But Kenny Dalglish as saviour?

If I were a Liverpool fan I would not count on it.

In Great Britain there are War Memorials – mainly to the Great War and the Second World War – in even the smallest towns and villages. Sometimes when you’re driving along in the countryside there will be one at the edge of a field; covered in names even though there appears to be no habitation worthy of the name round about.

I’ve also come across them on walls in churches, police and railway stations (does anyone know what happened to the memorial at Dumbarton East when they demolished the old buildings?) and Post Offices commemorating the former workers who “gave their lives.”

It’s always striking that the number of dead for World War 1 outstrips that of World War 2 – perhaps a reflection of the fact that, after 1916 till late 1918, the greater burden of the Allies in the Great War lay on Britain and its Empire, while in WW2 most of the fighting after 1941 was done by the USSR and the US.

I spent a fortnight in Germany 30 years ago and was tremendously saddened by the war memorial in the town where I was staying. The sacrifice seemed even more poignant because they lost (and, of course, in WW2 had no shred of excuse nor reason to fight.)

I have already posted pictures of Kirkcaldy’s War Memorial.

There is another war memorial in Kirkcaldy, though, one which is fairly unusual.

It is to the local dead of the Spanish Civil War; members of the International Brigade who came from Fife or the Lothians. That conflict preceded and presaged the greater anti-fascist fight of WW2. Arguably had France and Great Britain taken the government side in that war then the later, bigger war might have been averted. But Britain at least was in no mood to fight (think of all those names on the WW1 memorials) and was also unprepared (no Spitfires for example.) This was still more or less true by the time of the Munich crisis in 1938. But failure to stand up to him on both those occasions and also during the remilitarisation of the Rhineland in 1936 and the 1938 Anschluss encouraged Hitler to believe we never would.

Here is the memorial in situ. It stands just off Forth Avenue, quite near Kirkcaldy railway station.

The main plaque is inscribed as below.

These are the names just above the plaque.

There are more on the plinth below the shield.

This is the shield. The mounted knight is an old emblem representing Fife.

It’s strange to think that had the Western European powers fought in Spain and helped the Spanish Republic to victory, a Nazi Germany would, paradoxically, likely have survived long past 1945.