Polygon, 2018, 241 p, plus vii p Introduction by Brian Morton and iv p Foreword. First published 1976.

Some people swear by Spark. For myself I struggle to see what the fuss is about. There is just something about her writing that strikes me as off.

I suspect this one was meant to be a comedic novel. Its tone would certainly suggest that. However, its bittiness and lack of characters with whom the reader can be sympathetic – the book is peopled with an assortment of chancers, frauds, swindlers and charlatans – make it something of a chore to read.

Hubert Mallindaine claims to be a descendant of the union between the Roman Emperor Caligula and the goddess Diana. He is renting a villa at Nemi from Maggie Ratcliffe, fairly recently the new Marchesa di Tullio Friole, who also has a house in the vicinity as well as residences elsewhere. Maggie is much exercised by her collections of jewellery and valuables – paintings, Louis XV chairs etc. The local Italians are not too pleased about these foreigners having houses in the town.

Maggie wishes to evict Hubert but he has various ploys to avoid this, among them setting up a religion based on his claim to be descended from Diana. He treats his secretary Pauline contemptuously and is also systematically replacing Maggie’s paintings and chairs with copies/reproductions.

Maggie meanwhile is having sex with her factotum, Lauro, who is, Brian Morton’s Introduction tells us, “a priapic opportunist” (for which read ‘all-but rapist’) “and kleptomaniac.” In addition, Lauro has fathered a child on a local girl (but blames her as a calculating bitch) and without warning jumps on Maggie’s daughter-in-law Mary, giving her little choice but to succumb to his advance. He tells her that next time she should relax. Not one to brook dissent.

That Introduction describes the motley crew of thieves and conmen surrounding Maggie as, “All as respectably dressed and gentlemanly as the Devil must be in a Scottish narrative.”

Things get murkier as the narrative proceeds; it seems there are other claims on the land the houses are built on, while a dodgy financial adviser worms his way into Maggie’s affairs.

There was a review and article – one each – in The Guardian Weekend supplement on both Sat 07/06/25 and 14/06/25 about the latest biography of Spark (Frances Wilson’s Electric Spark – The Enigma of Muriel Spark. Personally I find her the complete opposite of electric.) The review comments on her elision, “Spark knew what to leave out.” Perhaps it is those “odd gaps” which I find so problematic about her œuvre.

Pedant’s corner:- More than a few USian usages, vide infra.

Inter alia pantyhose (tights,) “a vodka-tonic” (vodka and tonic,) boy-friend/girl-friend (several times: both all one word; boyfriend/girlfriend,) station-wagon (estate car.)

Otherwise; “as if treading a mined field” (why not ‘minefield’?) “set at nought” (set at naught. Nought is the number, zero; naught has the meaning of ‘nothing’,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech (x 2.)

Grayson Perry’s Smash Hits Show at the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, got a rather sniffy and somewhat off the point review in the Guardian.

Yes, it’s about Englishness, even a very Grayson Perry kind of Englishness, but why should an exhibition about Englishness not take place in Edinburgh? Especially in the middle of an International Festival.

In any case it could be argued that Englishness has had more effect on Scotland than any other influence (except perhaps Calvinism) and is therefore an entirely appropriate subject for contemplation in the Scottish capital.

One of the most intriguing exhibits at the Exhibition was a model of a ship, titled The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman. (I’m always a sucker for ship models.) Perry’s explanation of the piece is here.

Another piece, Temple for Everyone, reminded me of the story of Hansel and Gretel. See Perry’s explanation here.

I was more taken with this kintsugi piece than I was with Perry’s undamaged vases. Kintsugi* is the Japanese Art of smashing an object – especially a piece of pottery and then gluing it back tgether and highlighting the joins with gold:-

This plate, Two Old Guys Wearing Checked Skirts, like a lot of pieces at the exhibition, (far too many in fact) features Perry’s childhood teddy bear Alan Measles and is a sort of homage to the late Queen Elizabeth:-

This piece of pot, English Wanker, just about speaks for itself:-

*Edited to add: I have since found out that the Japanese frown on deliberately breaking something to reform it. Kintsugi is more properly the highlighting of imperfections – the repair of broken pottery lending itself to this.

I saw in the Guardian earlier in the week that Dan McCafferty lead singer of Nazareth, one of those Scottish groups which found success in the early 1970s, has died – only a few months after the band’s guitarist Manny Charlton passed away.

McCafferty had the perfect voice for a singer of hard rock’n’roll. That voice was shown off to great effect on Love Hurts – see here.

I also noted a couple of the band’s cover versions in this post.

Here’s the band’s second UK hit, a no 10 in 1973 as performed on The Old Grey Whistle Test.

Nazareth: Bad, Bad Boy

William Daniel (Dan) McCafferty: 14/10/1946 – 8/11/2022. So it goes.

When I saw this photograph in Monday’s Guardian it reminded me of something.

See below for our reptilian overlady.

Normally we skirt round the side of Balbirnie House Hotel when we take our daily walk to Markinch for the Guardian. (To the left in the photo below and round past the front of the building.)

During the first lockdown last year we felt able to take a stroll through the House’s gardens.

Balbirnie House was the “big” house nearest to Markinch and was home to the Balfour family before being sold off in 1969. It is now a hotel, the Balbirnie House Hotel and the estate grounds are now Balbirnie Park.

Nearly every morning I walk past it and through its grounds (more than half of which is now a golf course) on my way to Markinch to pick up the Guardian.

This is a photo of the hotel from just over a year ago:-

There had been reasonably heavy rain and a pool of water had collected beside the footpath which skirts the estate road leading upo to the hotel. This was followed by a freeze:-

Lower down the estate road, nearer to Markinch, this area of the golf course had also been flooded and frozen:-

On the other side of the estate road this part of Balbirnie Park remained flooded for almost all of 2020:-

Manchester City’s best team may have been the one of the very recent past. Certainly in terms of trophies won it is the most successful. However City’s last great side, the one of the late 60s and early 70s, is worth mentioning in the same breath.

That side’s outstanding performer, one of the greatest players Manchester City ever had, if not the greatest, Colin Bell, has died. The only one of City’s players ever to be dubbed ‘the King’, in his case ‘King of the Kippax’, after the Kippax Street Stand at City’s old Maine Road Ground. He was also nicknamed Nijinsky after a famous race-horse of the time due to the seemingly effortless way he covered the ground. The team was an attacking force to be reckoned with and Bell was its driving creative hub.

His stature at the club was such that one of the stands at City’s new ground, the Manchester City Stadium, aka the Etihad, was named for him.

There was a fine appreciation by Simon Hattenstone of what the man meant to City supporters in yesterday’s Guardian.

By all accounts he was a decent man as well as a great footballer.

Colin Bell: 26/2/1946 – 5/1/2021. So it goes.

…. five boys from the town nearest to where I live went off to watch a football match.

And never came back.

They were caught up in the crush on Stairway 13 at Ibrox Park – as it was then known – in which 66 people died.

No one in Markinch knew their fate until the last buses and trains through the town that night had come – and gone. And then they feared the worst.

The incident is still a sore memory in Markinch, it is almost as resonant, perhaps even equal to, Remembrance Day in importance.

The loss struck the town hard. Many of the present inhabitants were at school at the same time, if not the same year group, as the five, whom they remember vividly.

In the years after, one of the mothers would run down the street from her work every lunch time to be beside her boy.

The last big anniversary – the fortieth – saw a refurbishment of the town’s memorial, which till then had been a plaque lying on the grass overlooked by both the streets in which the boys had lived. An appeal to raise funds for refurbishment was inundated within days with contributions coming in from all over the world. So much so that the memorial was added to and made into a pair of stones one atop the other.

I posted a photograph of the upgraded memorial here.

There was a programme about the disaster on BBC Scotland on Monday 28^th December, available on iPlayer for 11 months.

The disaster was also the subject of a piece in the Guardian earlier in December, mentioning previous crushes on the same stairway (ten years earlier one of these had resulted in two deaths) which ought to have brought about remedial action.

Sadly, it took the 66 deaths fifty years ago for Rangers FC to start upgrading the stadium.

As well as the memorial stone in Markinch there is a bench in the grounds of the local Kirk, St Drostan’s. Since St Drostan’s is on a hill the bench overlooks the town.

Names of the five boys:-

I see from George R R Martin’s blog that SF writer and editor Ben Bova has died.

Martin is particularly indebted to Bova as it was he as editor of Analog who helped Martin’s career (and those of many others) by accepting his stories for publication.

As a writer Bova’s style was in that USian hard SF tradition, which isn’t entirely to my taste. Looking at my records it seems I only bought two of his novels, Millenium and Kinsman.

Benjamin William (Ben) Bova: November 8/11/1932 – 29/11/2020. So it goes.

I also saw (on CNN as it happens) that legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager, first to person to fly faster than the speed of sound (in air,) yesterday passed away. (The link is to his Guardian obituary.) I read Tom Wolfe’s book The Right Stuff (and also watched the film made from it) about Yeager’s era of piloting and the early US space programme.

Charles Elwood (Chuck) Yeager; 13/2/1923 – 7/12/2020. So it goes.

Also gone from us is former golfer and TV commentator Peter Alliss. His style had gone a bit past its sell-by date in recent times but it cannot be denied that his knowledge of golf and its history was immense.

Peter Alliss; 28/2/1931 – 5/12/2020. So it goes.

This photo appeared in yesterday’s Guardian as part of their Fantasy House Hunt feature.

It’s a wonderful Art Deco block of flats, white rendering, horizontals, verticals, balconies with rounded corners, flat roof, rule of three in entrance column. All its windows have been ruined though.

A one-bedroom flat inside it will set you back a cool £495,000.