Mixed feelings

Today was sunny. It is unbelievable the difference this makes to life here: the gloom of a stormy day which merges into darkness in the afternoon seems to bring all sorts of pressures, not the least being the sense that there is so little time to do anything in a day, so that you feel your life is drifting past - or galloping past, more like. But today I was walking on Loch Striven, surrounded by the rushing of the many small torrents which had erupted on the hillside above, looking at a lonely seal doing back exercises on a rock and a disdainful cormorant-like bird ignoring it. All very peaceful, very restorative.

And then there was the naval vessel refuelling at the NATO fuel base on Loch Striven. It looked enormous against the sun, filling the end of the pier, looming rustily in my viewfinder. I remembered how, in my activist era, I once wove a CND symbol from snowdrops on the wire gate there. And I reflected on how simple the cold war era now seems, with Iraq once more boiling over the execution of Saddam, and how it feels to have voted for a government which made such things come about.

And I realised how glad I was to have the joyous frivolities of my blog comments to return to. Heads back in the sand, chums - quick.

Televised execution

Just been listening to Broadcasting House on Radio 4. They're discussing the televised execution of Saddam, which yes, I saw yesterday. I saw it at least three times, because it was there, in someone else's house, and I was there too. I've seen lynchings in movies - usually involving a horse and a tree - but, of course, this was so different. In fact, it was unlike anything in my experience, and I found it horribly disturbing.

Judicial killing. Judicial murder? I've heard a former Nuremberg prosecutor say that it shows the victims that their grievances have been taken seriously; I've heard a politician say that "of course" he didn't watch the images, as if, somehow, we're all soiled by having done so. I don't think so. I think that to avoid seeing this keeps you in movie-mode, able to push out of your mind the reality of the death penalty. Perhaps the fact that it has always in the West been carried out off-camera does the same.

Too early in the morning for me to be judicious and measured. But the very civilised nature of the proceedings - the cloth round the neck, the careful explanations, the calm demeanour of Saddam - all these underlined the horror of taking a life in cold blood. Shooting him on sight as he emerged from hiding might have been one thing - except that the Iraqis wouldn't then have been involved. I know why it was done. But I'm damned if I can feel that it was right.