The last battle

View of Cumberland's lines
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

We were in Inverness at the weekend, for the 20th anniversary celebrations of Cursillo in Scotland. However, before partying with the fifty or so who turned up on the Friday evening, we visited the site of the Battle of Culloden, the last battle of the '45 rebellion, the last battle to be fought on British soil. I've been here twice before, and on both occasions was really unable to get any feel of the battlefield, though on my first visit, in 1970, I looked at the three huge graves of the Mackintosh clan and wondered if I was to be called upon to an act of repopulation.

This time it was very different. The forest which had completely covered the battlefield on that first visit is gone, and the NTS are currently restoring the land to its original boggy state after the years of drainage since the battle. The positions of the two armies are marked by lines of flags - red for the Government troops, blue for the Jacobites - and gravelled paths lead you on a guided tour with a sat-nav triggered commentary telling you through an earpiece what you are looking at and incorporating contemporary comment.

On a grey, chilly day such as Friday, this is a sobering experience. When we stood where the Mackintosh clan had stood, we could see clearly the impossibility of their advance: the lines had not been parallel and they were at the furthest distance from the enemy, with great tracts of bog and tussock to cover under fire before they could engage. The photo above shows this part of the field - you can't actually make out the red flags of the opposing front line except on the largest possible format.

The new Visitor Centre is a huge improvement too, with convincing audio-visual displays (to which it is suggested you do not take young children) and weapons and personal effects found on the field, as well as contemporary accounts of the events of the '45. I learned a great deal - hardly surprising for someone who picks up her history mainly from fiction. We spent four and a half hours here and on the battlefield, and felt our NTS subscription had been well justified for another year.

This is a sobering and thought-provoking place, and well worth a visit. I couldn't help feeling that if one of the dead had been able to return today to this field, he might have taken some pride in the knowledge that his story was being well told.

Having a ball...

Thoughtful investigation
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

It's amazing how the rediscovery of an old toy can turn the clock back. We dispatched Mr B to the loft to find some of the wooden toys our two had, and he came back triumphant with this one - rainbow coloured wooden balls on poles of varying lengths. The balls are pleasingly solid and shiny, and miraculously there was only one missing.

We had a wonderful half hour while Catriona very carefully lifted off a yellow ball and examined it minutely. She waved it about, poked her finger delicately into the hole, put it to her mouth - and then it slipped and fell to the wooden floor and rolled off under the sideboard and back out again. She was transfixed by this process while we pondered on the obvious uneven-ness of the floorboards. Eventually all the balls were rolling about and we were all laughing helplessly and batting them back and forth.

I don't recall having such fun with this toy 35 years ago. I remember the balls being lost and the horror of stepping on one, as I remember the ritual of collecting them all up at the end of the day. Maybe I simply didn't have the time - or felt I didn't - to sit and watch the mental processes going on as a baby makes sense of a new experience. Maybe I really needed that automatic washing machine and/or some effective disposable nappies - for what I do recall is the hours spent washing terry nappies in a twin tub machine.

I must have been mad. Kids seem to have done all right, though ...

Bucolic baby

What more could I want?
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

My granddaughter is paying a visit to the West just now. I'm amazed all over again at how babies develop - seeing her in our environment rather than her own home somehow reinforces this. Instead of the baby who lay on her back or reclined in her seat passively watching, we have a 9 month old search engine, programmed to seek out and investigate cables (hidden under the audio set-up), ceramic pots (likewise concealed under furniture), the gas fire and, this morning, the wine rack. The full wine rack. In a few weeks, it seems, she has learned vigorous forward motion and a cunning sideways twist from a sitting start which propels her suddenly towards some interesting object. And every new discovery is greeted with grunts of interest and squeals of delight.

In addition to all this domestic exploring, she had a walk in the country yesterday. She seemed unfazed by midges despite ending the day with two bites on her face (note: obviously has Argyll blood: they remained tiny and have now vanished). But the best moment came when the sheep in the field beside the road suddenly moved closer. Catriona's scream of delight had them all charging off again, including the toddler lambs and the daft-looking beast with its half-demolished fleece dangling from its flanks. Was it a case of not recognising them as animals until they came closer? How far does a nine-month baby see?

Answers from any experts out there in the comment box, please!

Bloggers and bluebells

Indiana Jones moment
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Bloggers and Bluebells. A sort of bucolic TeachMeet? Well, in a way I suppose it was. It was all Kimberly's fault. Let's invite Scottish Episcopal bloggers to Dunoon and take them to see the bluebells. I suspect the bluebells might have been an excuse for an alliteration, but they also gave us a starting point for a walk, and a picnic.

Of course, nothing goes entirely to plan. Who could have foreseen that Maximilian ( a dog) would decide to go back to the car, so that Rosemary and Kimberly had to go with him? Who would realise that Kelvin was fallible and would end up heading for Strachur? And why was this the first cloudy, damp day in two weeks so that the midges would attend our jaunt? However, undaunted by such setbacks, a good proportion of the SEC's finest viewed the bluebells in Kilmun Arboretum and ascended the Indiana Jonesworthy upper reaches of Puck's Glen (pictured).

It was great, as always, to put faces and voices to the names familiar from blog posts and comments. Many of us had been contributors to an Advent blog and a Lent blog in the past year, in such a way that we had learned more about each other than many people do in years of actual contact. And of course there was the repeated amusement of someone you feel you don't really know telling you they know all about what you've been doing recently or what you think about Christian Aid collecting - a right conversation-killer, you'd think, but no. Conversation flowed, except when the breath failed.

And at the end, a eucharist. Today was, apparently, St Catan's day; the site I've linked to is much less informative than was Rosemary's address but is the best I can find right now. However, it was also the first time I've ever felt so strongly the community connections made by blogging, as we came together in the wonderful exchange that is the eucharist and was the name of the blog where many of us comment. The church needs to embrace this form of communication far more ardently than it does at present, when too many of its senior figures shy away from the medium and seem to fear the openness and immediacy it brings.

But today we were blessed - by each other's company, by the bluebells, by sharing a picnic together and by our shared communion. Great idea, Kimberly - where to next?

I'm collecting ...

Collecting in Bullwood
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

This is Christian Aid week. All over the country church people are slogging round allocated districts delivering and then collecting red envelopes in which - they hope - householders will have had time to put sensible money (as opposed to all the coppers they want rid of) and fill in the Gift Aid declaration. That's the theory.

In practice, the experience is more haphazard. Mrs Heathbank and I were covering the area known as the Bullwood, the main road south of Dunoon. I suspect we get these odd places because the Episcopal church is not so readily associated with a parish, but whatever the reason this is our patch. Only this year we doubled "our" bit of road because of a shortage of able-bodied Piskies willing to take it on. And so it was that on Sunday we covered about 3 miles of road and drives and hillsides as we delivered the envelopes, and this evening we again covered the same 3 miles collecting them. As you will see from the photo, it involved some ingenuity and energy to retrieve some of the envelopes.

I actually hate doing this. Most of all, I hate the dogs. I think there are more dog-owning households down the Bullwood than anywhere else in Dunoon. I was on my second house when the door opened to reveal a large German Shepherd on the step above me, so that its face seemed alarmingly close to my own. It was accompanied by a totally inadequate small girl with golden hair. I found myself gibbering at her. Not a good start. After that, Mrs H got all the houses where I remembered that there were beasts, as well as the ones where there was barking.

Another hazard is the people you meet. One woman yelled (above the barking of two ferocious hounds) that she gave money to her own religion. Reasoning that the money goes to help poor people and is merely collected by Christians didn't work. No luck there. Then there was the old boy who took an age to come down his hall, past washing on a clothes horse, then laboriously unlocked the door. I switched on my brightest smile. "No," he said, lugubriously, and locked up again. And there is the Grumpy Woman in the Dolls House, who waved a minatory finger at us on Sunday, so that we didn't even try to leave an envelope. We've tangled with her before and it wasn't pretty.

You do see some places you never knew existed, though. Some of the houses lurk up huge long driveways, and others have bungalows sprouting in their enormous gardens. Some people have built expensive-looking conservatories and then filled them with junk; others houses have strange smells. I was reminded yet again of Larkin, talking about "the smells of different dinners" - by this time it was well past my dinnertime, but I was glad I wasn't dining at some of the houses we visited.

But the hardest thing of all is remaining polite and cheerful. Mrs H is much better at it than I am. I have an insatiable urge to say "sod off, then" when rejected, or told that I'm doing a grand job but "we have our own charities, thank you." And when people on "my" patch tell me that they've given their contribution to their own church, I have to fight down a snarl. Especially if they've used the envelope I left them.

I have, however, to record that some people are delightful, with their envelopes filled and waiting for us, or rushing off apologetically to find money to put in it as we wait. And most deserving of mention is the former pupil who didn't hear us at her door as she was putting her children to bed when we called. She appeared in her car just as we were setting off back down the road, waving the envelope out of the window. She was going to drop it off at my house if she hadn't caught us. To her, and to all the others who kept the smile on my face - thank you. Till next time ...

Another good read

I've been reading another book by Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother. Like his bestseller, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, this is a painfully funny book, the story of family at a turning point, but primarily the story of George. George, fifty-seven, recently retired, is looking forward to a peaceful time of self-fulfilment when his daughter announces that she is about to remarry (her prospective husband has, according to her brother, "strangler's hands"). Said brother, Jamie, fears that to bring his lover Tony to the wedding will expose him to the awfulness that he has so far managed to avoid, and George's wife, Jean, finds her affair with a former colleague of George threatened by all this family activity.

But it is George's problem which preoccupies him and us. For George has discovered a sinister lesion on his hip and - as the blurb puts it - quietly begins to lose his mind. He becomes convinced that his doctor is incompetent and decides to treat himself. The resulting chaos is of an order to leave you simultaneously sniggering helplessly and cringing.

Haddon's style is well suited to this kind of writing. He makes a feature of the short sentence and the one-sentence paragraph, as well as the grammatical non-sentence - features which, once noticed, could irritate but which in this case do not. He has a wonderful way with climax, taking us along a path we know we have to follow without the slightest idea what waits us at the end.

I loved this just as much as The Curious Incident, and probably for the same insight into strange mental states. I almost wish I'd saved it for a holiday.

Pentecost

Fiery symbolism
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Sometimes, the impossible happens. Flames dance and souls are transformed. This wonderful flower arrangement to me symbolises the madness of Pentecost, the craziness of Christian faith, the exuberance of letting go of earthbound restrictions.

Whatever happens at Pentecost, it is not safe and not ordinary. Thank God!

Calls and drumrolls

Colintraive
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Some of my rellies are birdwatchers. I cannot claim to be a birdwatcher, as I rarely see anything that I recognise, other than oystercatchers and magpies. Oh, and I recognise a curlew, if it's not a dotteril, and can clock a heron at twenty metres. But I do think I'm turning into a bird-listener, or a bird-hearer, especially this wonderful spring.

The road in the picture runs along the shores of the Kyles of Bute. We started at Colintraive pier and walked for an hour before we turned back, and all the time we were surrounded by the most fantastic chorus of birdsong. But clear through it all we could hear a cuckoo on Bute, its call carrying over the glassy water, and on our way back a woodpecker was making the most incredible noise in the woods (in the middle distance in the pic) - a seven-beat roll, to my mind.

So there you are. I may be as blind as a bat but I have good hearing. A birdlistener, me.

Church going

Kilbride Church door
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?

Philip Larkin's great poem, Church Going, was very much in my mind yesterday as we visited this sad, quiet church in the midst of its orderly, green graveyard, still mown and tended but with a creaking iron gate which is obviously little used and this grim little warning note on the door (you can read it if you click on the photo)

The gravestones told of lives bound into a close community - the blacksmith, the soldier killed on The Somme, the soldier who died - why? - in 1919. And one huge stone seemed way out of proportion to the small life it commemorated, but perhaps symbolised the enormity of the loss of a six-year-old son. Actually, there were many, many stones which told of infant death; we thought of the parents coming to church every week past their graves and wondered if the community was a comfort to them, if death was any easier to bear when so many died at what we would consider an early age.

I don't know when the congregation of this church finally closed its doors and boarded up the windows. There was no sign of vandalism; it was merely empty and sad. But I like old graveyards where the birds sing and mortality seems comprehensible - If only that so many dead lie round.

I've been away ...

Ostel Bay
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

I spent hours on this glorious beach today. We had a picnic, we paddled, I contemplated a swim but decided it was too early in the season: there were warm bits of water where the tide had come in over the warm sand, but elsewhere it was perishing. All afternoon a cuckoo called (a major third, if you're interested, slightly flat at first but bang in tune as it warmed to its song) and an invisible skylark gave it laldy over our heads.

I don't remember being so aware of all this birdsong in past years. I've never listened to a cuckoo for so long that I thought it sounded like a boy scout. I've never felt so strongly the power of the trees bursting into leaf - today I was sure the trees on the homeward drive had come into full leaf while we'd been on the beach. And then I realised that for most of my life I've been stuck in school while all this was going on - all these mornings when I've longed not to turn up Bencorrum Brae to the grammar school but instead to keep driving - out past the Holy Loch, into the glens and fields. No wonder I felt stir crazy for all these years at work.

The car thermometer read 28º when we returned to it at 5pm. I had sand between my toes and a pink nose. I heard today that pensioners are the worst hit in the current round of inflation, but today I felt rich.

A rich pensioner, in shorts.

Lambs and exams

Lambs
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

It's absurd how the climate works in these parts. It seems no time at all since we were still bemoaning temperatures of 7ºc and huddling in the wind and rain, and now it's like being abroad - 27º when I took this photo. I was laughing at these lambs, who seemed to have abandoned their mum to play with the gang; they formed what I was thinking of as the Toddler Group and were butting each other and - yes - gambolling. On the same walk I clocked several swallows, some agitated oystercatchers and a couple of butterflies, and the other day I heard my first cuckoo of the year and a woodpecker.

It is, of course, what we used to call exam weather, and I was recalling the sensation of emerging from the gloom of the assembly hall in Hillhead High School to the smells of a city spring - dust, cut grass, diesel fumes - with the feeling that life was going on without me. I seem to remember taking exam leave very seriously, swotting away in solitude at home before going back to school for an orchestra practice. I used to experiment with cigarettes in our empty house (my parents were both teachers) and then spend an age trying to disguise the smell, but there were never any friends around to distract me because we were scattered over Glasgow and it was too hard to meet up. Besides, I never had any money. What a strange life, now I come to think of it.

We all did rather well, mind.

Glaring Technical Codswallop

One of the features of being a retired teacher is the requirement to do something about staying registered - something I still do lest I am overcome by penury or boredom. And so it was that in the last couple of weeks I received two missives from the GTC, one informing me that a direct debit was being taken for this year's sub and therefore I need do nothing and the second informing me that I had to pay £40 by the end of May. The trouble arose from the opening sentence of this second letter:

You may recently have received a letter with regards to a Direct Debit being deducted, please ignore this letter.

I quote this verbatim primarily for the delectation of my more pernickety readership, but I must confess that I rang the contact number on the letter to complain, Meldrew-fashion, about the slight ambiguity and the far-from-slight horror of the sentence. I did ask the very civil chap at the other end if he would like me to take time from my retired life to come and teach English to his minions, and I'm afraid I pointed out that this was supposed to be a council for "maintaining and enhancing professional standards" (if you enlarge the screenshot you'll see this claim from their site).

He promised that they would try harder, and we both laughed. But I bet he's away looking up "comma-splice" somewhere.

Poetic hi-jinks.

They're a persistent lot, the International Society of Poets at Poetry.com. Having ignored their first mail about the Las Vegas thrash, I had the above in my mailbox this morning. I still won't be going, but I checked the RSVP link to see if there was any way to tell them, politely, where to go. However, it's like all their other bits and bobs - there is no way to refuse, only to sign on the dotted line.

What interests me is what happens when you don't actually turn up. Does the original poem still feature in the competition, the way missing prizewinners were still awarded their prizes at school prizegiving and applauded briefly before their absence registered? Or is it quietly dropped? I shall only know, of coursed, if I win. I'll keep you posted. Don't hold your breath.

It ain't what you say ...

Just watched a few snippets of Gordon Brown's interviews on the evening news. So ... he's serious, has a difficult smile, knows it. And he's Scottish, and sounds it. Apparently all this makes him an electoral liability. He's made mistakes, and knows it. And he's just admitted it. To my simple reasoning this makes me more hopeful rather than less - I can't bear the fast-talking smarm of the kind of politician Brown says he is not.

I suspect this may be a nationality thing. Despite what I wrote the other day about the wonderful disengagement of having autonomy as a nation, I feel no hostility towards Brown. Exasperation, perhaps, but no more.

And I can't help reflecting on the years spent under PMs who sounded ...well, English, actually.

Are you listening?

Spent the day in Stirling at the SEC's Listening Day. I was there with a job to do: facilitating one of the groups as it listened to and reacted to the stories of two witnesses. Would I have been there had I not been asked to do this? I don't know that I would, for I have already experienced the same format in Argyll, last autumn. But it was good to be with a roomful of people trying to engage with a pressing and urgent situation, even if I find frustrating the glacial pace of that engagement.

I felt sad that at least one gay person known to me was not there because he had chosen not to risk confrontation with still more homophobia in the church, for he would have been encouraged. I felt impressed by the insistency of Bishop Michael, whom I have not seen for 25 years, that something had to result from this day - impressed not least because here is someone who is still making uncomfortable demands in his mid-eighties. Something must indeed happen, for the spirit of independence which cheered me yesterday is apparent in the SEC and must not be allowed to sink beneath the waves of expediency and compromise.

There is much listening still to be done, as light is shone on the dark corners of our church and our assumptions. But for those of us who have long held that the darkness is no darkness at all, there must be the chance to walk forward. There are too many people for whom time is finite and the need great. Let's not fail them.

Do what you like ...

Today, St Athanasius' Day, England decided to be Tory again - or Liberal: anything but Labour - and might even elect a buffoon to be mayor of London. As I walked among brilliant gorse and fat cushions of primroses beside Loch Striven this afternoon, I reflected on how distant all this seems these days, in stark comparison to the gloom election results used to plunge me into in the dark days of Thatcher.

Then, England still seemed miles away ideologically as they returned Tory governments that Scotland didn't vote for, but the impact on our lives here seemed disproportionately great. Now we have our own government and I realise that I don't care what England does. It affects me no more than what happens in France. It is fitting that we have a Scottish government - and right now, fitting that we are not tied to a UK party. So, as the pheasants rush squawking through the woods and the rabbits risk death on the roadside, a happy St Athanasius day to you!

Burning zeal?

Bonfire and boys
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

I think I may live after all. Despite the spectre of possible ticks lurking on every bush, I enjoyed thoroughly an afternoon of ground-clearing at the church today. Much of the enjoyment came from the satisfaction of the successful pyromaniac: I lit that fire with no more than half a dozen matches and a few squirts of barbecue-lighting gel. (Never tried that before - it's jolly effective) Oh, and a single page of the Dunoon Observer and Argyllshire Standard.

It was a jolly afternoon - a bunch of the aged and about-to-be-infirm attacked the overgrown and branch-littered grounds with varying degrees of zeal, assisted by the two chaps in the pic who spent several hours complaining of barbecued eyeballs. You'll find another pic if you click through on this one.

And at the end of the afternoon we all trooped into church, smelling like kippers, for the Ascensiontide eucharist. We even had enough energy for a couple of hymns. And the bonfire ended the day as a pile of glowing white ash. Bear Grylls, anyone?

BIG deal?

I should have known better. Some time last year, in an idle moment, I sent one of my lighter poems to a site which promised a prize - a cash prize big enough to be tempting - for the best submission. Since then, I've been bombarded with vanity publishing offers, commemorative pins, plaques ... you name it. I could have filled my house with laudatory tat. I have deleted all these as they arrive, vowing each time never, never to do such a thing again.

And then yesterday's mail arrived. For a fairly princely sum, I can attend a Convention and Symposium in Las Vegas, where I can read my poem aloud and where Tony Danza, star of several long-running hit TV shows, will be entertaining you and thousands of other poets at our Gala Dinner and Banquet on Saturday evening, July 26, 2008.

The mind boggles. Obviously my font is boggling too, as it has stuck in some alien form at the thought of a return to Vegas. But I must remember to check out the site on the appropriate date - just to see if people actually go to these things.

Ticked off

Ticked off
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

This, gentle reader, is a tick bite. It is on my arm, just above the wrist. It itches like something unladylike with which I shall not sully this blog. And it's been there for rather longer than I think healthy, so in an hour or so I shall see the practice nurse and find out if my arm is about to fall off. And no, the nurse is not practising on me.

I do not remember ticks as featuring largely in my childhood. I don't mean the hours spent playing on a bomb site or among the trees above the underground shelters in the west end of Glasgow, but I do mean the annual two months in which I roamed, more or less as I pleased, in the woods and hills of Arran. All these times we lurked in the bracken hiding from one another did not result in later minute examination of the skin and attack with oil and tweezers.

Why are there more of the creatures? Are there more deer? And how is it that something so miniscule can effect so much damage in the space of an hour? Answers welcomed ....tick all the boxes, if you can.

Hmm.

Virtually everything?

Now here's interesting! I just found this courtesy of Mark who leads the Anglican Community on Second Life, and have this sudden vision of all my online networking taking place in a virtual reality setting.

This is fascinating, if a tad mindbending; as it's late and my mind is feeling quite bent enough already I shall merely note the idea and leave it for now. But it has interesting implications for my mission in the church in Argyll ....

Great and small

I just learned, thanks to my knowledgeable rellies and a timely link to the RSPB site that the large white bird I saw on the roadside near Inveraray the other day was a ptarmigan. At 50mph it's not easy to make out what you're seeing, especially if you're the kind of person who just knows of Small Brown Jobs, but this plump beauty was quite unlike anything I'd spotted before. It was, I would say, in the process of losing its winter plumage, if the big brown splodges were anything to go by.

The small brown jobs are great just now, however, and two of them appear to be building a nest in our weigela. I think they are sparrows, and I'm interested to notice that they seem to be using the very fork in the branches that housed a family of blackbirds last summer. So far they are a bit agitated when I go out to retrieve the washing, but they'll have to get used to me. I only found out about last year's nest when the babies were just about to fly.

I'm cat-watching with renewed vigilance.

Announcing ...

Finding myself missing ....well, travel, actually, on this bleakly misty day, I consoled myself by posting a new poem from my recent trip to Nevada. You'll find it here.

It's strange to notice how often I clock Las Vegas as a backdrop to drama and reality shows on TV, now that I've been there. It didn't feel familiar while I was in the place, but now I feel it should have. Maybe I simply felt the unreality of it, as if I too was part of some fiction.

But the most real part was the desert, and the thought of the uses to which we put it in the last century - and that's what the poem is about.

Ducking and dying

Just been indulging myself with another Christopher Brookmyre, Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks. Set in and around my alma mater and familiar bits of Glasgow's West End, this is an ingenious foray into the world of psychics and mediums, which for much of its narrative has you wondering as to the exact state of its principal narrator, Jack Parlabane.

Using several points of view, the story blows a mighty wind through the mists of psychic readings and is genuinely gripping as it approaches the denouement. I love the cocky Parlabane, who first appeared in Quite Ugly One Morning, and I enjoyed picturing my old haunts thinly disguised as Kelvin University. As usual, I have the feeling that the spattering of very topical allusions in the dialogue will render these books ephemeral, but I shouldn't imagine Brookmyre worries about that.

This is a cracking good story with, perhaps, rather less of the laddishness of earlier books - which the author apparently felt made them an unsuitable read for someone's mother.

As the blurb has it: death is not the end - it's the ultimate undercover assignment.

Brain training: a new approach?

How often do we listen to a talk, a lesson - a sermon, even - and let it wash over us? Perhaps we begin attentively enough, but drift down a personal byway and never get back - I used to do that during maths lesson, with dire results: it's impossible to latch on to the principles of calculus when you've had a ten-minute mental lapse. Perhaps the speaker is not particularly riveting and we doze off ... doom. Anyway, I'm now wandering. Back we come.

There is nothing more calculated to make me listen to a sermon than the sudden realisation that it's my turn to write it up for the local paper. And it's not always easy, by the time the sermon is over, to recall what was said as distinct from what you personally took from it - for that's the way with a sermon, oftener than not, and I think it's fine. But you can't go writing it up from a personal slant - because then you run the risk of the speaker buttonholing you to tell you you were way off beam and how dare you misrepresent them .... You get my drift.

In any other circs, of course, you'd take notes. It just seems somehow contrary to the spirit of the occasion to take notes from the front pew in a small church and a smaller congregation. And so it remains: an interesting exercise, worthy, almost of Dr Kawashima.

Recurring nightmare?

There's been a wee exchange - not really a wonderful one, but there you are - on Kimberly's blog today, about coping with housekeeping, a full-time job, and the necessity to do things like blogging. Ok, so you don't find the last a necessity? Some of us do - or it might be reading, or talking on the phone, or climbing mountains: life-enhancing activities to which we feel drawn and which pull us away from tedious but worthy tasks.

Since retiring from paid employment in a situation where your every move was controlled by bells - right down to that pressing comfort break, as they call it in polite circles - I realise once again how much harder it is, in a way, to cope with freedom. If you have to make up your own timetable, compensating tomorrow for tasks left undone today, things can slide. Boy, can they slide. But I reckon I've hit on the solution as far as routine housework is concerned. (I'm not talking about cooking here. I like to eat, and I like to eat well)

If you don't do, say, the vacuuming on the appointed day one week, make no attempt to do it a couple of days later when you could be out in the sun which has suddenly appeared. Leave it till the day you've designated comes round again. You won't really notice, and no-one else will notice if you don't draw their attention to the stour. When you get round to doing it a week later, the carpets will look so good by comparison that you'll get double the satisfaction. See, housework never goes away. Never. So you're never really on top of it. Ergo, it's not worth getting in a tizz about it. Get on with living instead.

Just make sure you live with someone who agrees with you ....

At the violet hour?

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

Funny how I always misquote Eliot's opening line to myself: I tend to think of the violets which grow out of seemingly dead ground at this time of year. Today on Loch Striven there were great swathes of them along the verge, as well as tiny bright clusters like the ones in this photo. There were also multitudes of primroses and huge banks of acid yellow gorse - two contrasting yellows which couldn't have been more different.

Loch Striven is magical in spring. There are pheasants everywhere, the wee dowdy females pursued by strutting males in all their glossy greens and reds, emitting these startling croaks which sound almost mechanical in origin. Long-legged waders with curved beaks stalked the water's edge, and an oyster-catcher revved up to his penetrating see-saw squawk.

And because it is the school holidays here, there were people - some on foot, but even more in cars, resolutely driving to the road's end and back again: each one giving us two chances to dive for the verge and watch to see if they acknowledged us.

And I walked along trying to remember bits of The Waste Land and thinking of the waste of trying to teach me to appreciate it at Uni. I'd do a great deal better now - even if I do substitute violets for lilacs!

Cut down to size

I have a hunch that if there had been hydrangeas around in the time of Christ, there might have been a parable woven around the pruning of same. I've just finished pruning the second of the massive and elderly bushes in our garden - they were there when we bought the house 33 years ago, and they looked much the same then as they do now. Pruning is always the same. I find a new shoot 'way down a sturdy branch and immediately cut just above it. I watch with awe as the tiny sprout lengthens and grows; last year they grew a full three feet over the summer. I feel excited (well - not wildly, but this is a story) about new growth on old wood, even though I know it will not flower this season. And then I forget about it ...

..Until the following Spring. And the shoots which gave me such a buzz (relatively speaking) are now silly long, bendy boughs with a stupid tuft of leaves at the top, blackened no doubt by late frosts, and I cut them down to within an inch of their lives. Again, they won't flower this year. If I go on like this they will never flower. They will always be new and leafy until they turn into over-long woody monstrosities which I demolish altogether. And there will once more be a huge pile of cut branches to remove to the recycling.

Actually, I hate my hydrangeas and I loathe pruning them. But I couldn't help making mental parallels as I grunted and hacked away. Too much lay training, I reckon, is bad for a seasonal gardener.

Pricey pee?

Spotted in Glasgow's Central Station, this wonderful notice conjured up a multitude of possible answers and scenarios. Primarily, I suppose, there was this wonderful image of someone who did indeed suffer from a pressing need but who, strapped for the necessary 30p, was doomed. The sign seemed almost gleeful in anticipation and I couldn't help thinking of the woman in Edwin Morgan's poem "At Central Station". Added to that, of course, the implications of the slippery floor warning seemed to promise injury added to insult - and raised the worrying spectre of unmentionable horrors.

The chap heading down the stair seems unfazed by the price hike. Perhaps he reckons it's worth it to get a shot of the Dyson "blade" hand dryers...

Helium or hot air?

Back again. No blogging since Thursday as I went into Martha mode, from which I have returned, exhausted. However, the photo here shows why I did it: two joyous friends celebrating the culmination of another Cursillo weekend. Not a weekend I was attending - I was one the wee legs thrashing away below the water, helping the weekend to surprise and delight, clearing up the considerable aftermath. And as a result, my pleasure was in seeing the results, and in the warmth of the reaction to our work.

And for the rest? Well, there's a great restaurant in Perth's South Street, where six of us had splendid fish and game before resuming our toil. There was the fun of camping in a friend's house (thanks for leaving the heating on, Hugh!) and the wonder of sharing real conversation without any inhibitions. The only casualty was the odd exploding balloon - rainbow-coloured rubber, not human. The actual business of the weekend was, in a way, paralleled among us who call ourselves The Fourth Day - living proof of the effect of Cursillo, when you get me - moi! - arranging wee pots of rainbow-coloured flowers.

And talking of rainbows: that amazing jacket in the photo was a spontaneous, wonderfully crazy gift. Like Cursillo, in fact.

Pepys lives!

Assiduous readers of this blog will know that I lost my personal journal the other month by leaving it on a BA plane. (They will also know that BA's way with lost property is up there with its abilities with new terminals and baggage handling). So distraught was I at this loss that I vowed never to keep a journal again. After 50 years of diary-writing, I would cease. Blogging would do, I thought.

Well, it didn't. Do, I mean. Suddenly I realised that life without a journal felt too transient - that days merely passed, unrecorded, and were lost for ever. So a few days ago I began another kind of journal, this time in a beautiful hardbacked book given by a friend and still waiting for some suitable use. I shall not be hidebound by ruled spaces and the tyranny of the calendar, but I shall record the passing of time nonetheless as the whim takes me.

And suddenly life seems real again. Sad, eh?

Twittering away

I love this. I got the link from Neil, who sent me here. It shows all the stuff I tweet about - and if you don't know about Twitter maybe this is the day. It would be just the thing to update, for example, the Bishop's diary: if he tweeted "On Lewis" we wouldn't even try to get him to pop down for a flying visit to Dunoon, and if "Too busy to talk to a soul" or "driving from Campbeltown to Fort William" we'd know not to ring. No-one would be offended and everyone who cared to know would be in the loop.

But you can see from my little cloud of tweets above that I seem to be preoccupied with offspring and bed. Sounds just about right ...

New, improved ....

A spin-off from my judging of the school talent contest t'other night was a visit to the classroom of one of my erstwhile colleagues in the English Department. I've barely been in the building since our abortive attempt to hold a choir practice in the music department - abortive because of the combination of bagpipes and poor soundproofing - so I was interested to see what kind of room I might have ended up in had I stayed on till the new building was finished.

I'm really glad I didn't. Really glad. My last fifteen or so years in Dunoon Grammar were spent in a room in what was then "the new bit", and I always regarded it as a terrible let-down after the spacious top-floor room I'd been evicted from when the MFL dept wanted it back. However, this new room had it beat for lack of amenity.

For a start, it was still smaller, by about a couple of feet either way. And there were no cupboards. No built-in cupboards - and no space in which to stand one. An arrangement of four flimsy shelves on a back wall - about 4' long, I'd say - held tottering piles of the folders necessary to hold the coursework for five yeargroups. I used to keep the folios carefully stashed away, so that precious work was not open for accident or worse, but there is now no provision for this. My pal was contemplating acquiring some boxes to keep them in: I suggested wine crates.

Ah, I hear you say, but what about the shiny new techy stuff? Who needs folders when all the work could be held electronically? Well, quite. The techy stuff consisted of a handful of the laptops which used to travel round the department in two trolleys, plus a distinctly elderly desktop machine of the large, fawn variety. These were ranged along a shelf at the back of the room, behind the desks. The power supply for this lot came via a cable which originated below the whiteboard at the front of the room, was sellotaped to the wall till it reached the ceiling where it was fed above the tiles, re-emerging (with more sellotape) above the rear shelf.

The only improvement I could see was a ceiling-mounted projector. Otherwise the space was a cramped, over-heated, under-equipped box - and apparently the 28 Higher students who use the room fill it to bursting point. I'd hate to have to work there. My pal is a tidy sort of bloke, but anyone with less than a submariner's ability to stow their gear would find it a nightmare.

Why do these things happen? I hope my friend gets his wine crates - perhaps at least one of them should be full.

Nothing to crow about

Spotted in yesterday's Guardian, and still to be found here, in a piece about a memorial service for Sir Edmund Hillary, a sad but faintly hilarious (no pun intended) example of that common fault in writing, the misrelated participle:

Featuring Tibetan prayer wheels against a blue background, the knights escorting it paused at the back of the chapel while Mereana Hond, a human rights lawyer and TV journalist, performed the karanga welcome call.

As always, there is a moment when you envisage what is suggested. I wish I could draw - for the knights featuring prayer wheels sound like something out of th Revelation of St John the Divine. Tsk tsk.

And today, a word for the passing of a crow. We passed it on the shore path, apparently too feeble to do more than fly a yard or so in front of us. We skirted it quietly and left it standing in the late afternoon sun in the middle of the path. When we returned an hour or so later, it was dead. It seemed to have keeled over where we had left it.

It seemed a peaceful way to go.

Judgement Day

Apologies for a rather feeble photo (didn't have my Leica) to illustrate this evening's activity: I was part of the team of judges for the Talent Contest at DGS. A hard task, actually - there were twenty or so acts, ranging from hip-hop dance to a jazz trio to stand up comics, so that to differentiate was quite a balancing act.

In the end the prize went to a boy playing an oud with great skill and panache. It was fun, in an exhausting sort of way, but I'm really glad I don't have to go to work tomorrow. It was also very strange to go into the new building and feel so unfamiliar with it all; the Forum comfortably accommodated tonight's audience of over 400 but felt a bit like a prison compound, while the English classroom I was taken to visit afterwards was tiny, cluttered (there were no cupboards; just shelves) and the laptops on a shelf along the back wall were served by a wire sellotaped up the wall and behind the ceiling tiles. All very Heath Robinson.

Still, it was a good night in memory of a popular janitor - I'm glad I said "yes" after all.

Freedom!

Oh well, all right. No blue face, and no hair extensions either. But I do feel a sense of freedom right now, having discarded my only private student on the grounds that he kept giving me late notice that he wouldn't be coming (at breakfast this morning - he was on a trip that was arranged ages ago) or - even more annoying - simply not turning up. A bright kid, engaging and essentially well-mannered - but completely scatter-brained and disorganised.

I've commented on this before. His parents, middle-class and highly educated both, know fine how scatty he is. But do they take the trouble to nag him about his obligations? Or even ask him if he's checked in about a lesson if there's any doubt? Or even - shock, horror - tried contacting me themselves to see how he's getting on/apologise/offer an explanation?

No on all counts, I'm afraid. So, on behalf of teachers everywhere who are deemed to be beyond common courtesy - I walked away. And I wrote the letter. It's in the post. And I feel liberated.

"Free at last" ... if you prefer Larkin. Source, anyone?

Fussy macs?

Another interesting wee glitch involving Mac apps. My pal Di and I write church reports for the local paper. Because we try to make them different from the average church report, we tend to concoct them on one of our wet walks or while recovering from same over a cuppa. She then mails them as an attachment to my Powerbook for me to forward to the paper. All very straightforward.

Well no, actually. Di uses Mail on her mac powerbook; I gave that up after the demise of my relationship with Demon and now use Googlemail on Firefox. But if I try to open the file - which I know fine well began life as a Word file - it appears as a Quicktime movie which then can't be opened. However, if I open the mail in Safari (and you'll recall I don't do this right now 'cos I can only write lower-case mails on Safari) it opens nae bother.

So, for all my friendly geeks out there: does mac only speak to mac these days?

Riding high

Rather like this photo I took today from a helicopter over St Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh - the confusing symmetry of the crescents and the way you can see why it's quite a long way from the bus to the cathedral when one is late for the Synod Eucharist. The helicopter in question belonged to Jensen Button, the F1 racing driver, until about 10 months ago, and was quite alarmingly old, I felt, at more than 25 years. Apparently most helicopters are, according to the pilot - don't quite know what he meant by this, but he reserved the information till we were landing, which was probably wise.

It was interesting to contrast this flight, on a grey and decidedly blowy day, with the flight over Las Vegas four weeks ago. This felt very ... real, especially when it bumped about a bit. I had been fairly sanguine about it all after my first ride, but today's flight was more like I'd imagined. I left my insides, I think, somewhere above Arthur's Seat.

Fun, though - and the last of this year's Christmas presents. There's always Glasgow from the air, now .....

Late thoughts

Update: the gremlins are still there on Safari. I've submitted a bug report to Apple. I wonder if it'll have more effect than telling BA about the ineptitude of their lost property arrangements.

On the other hand, Skype is working beautifully - even if Neil in LA looked as if he was speaking about 2 seconds after I'd heard him. Skype has to be the best thing since sliced bread.

I've been tinkering with a poem I wrote six years ago. I realise how my lines have lengthened since then - and wonder what Larkin and Thomas felt about their early work. Did they ever want to rehash, or did they simply write another poem? Pity I can't ask them...

Gremlins

Very strange happenings chez blethers this evening. It all began normally enough, with one of these wee windows from Firefox advising a new update, which I duly installed and found that the quick contacts box had vanished from my g-mail account page, along with the ability to chat. Had Firefox decided that such activities were a threat to my security? Next I tried downloading the updates to my OS, including the latest version of Safari. Now, Safari hadn't supported the chat facility till now, but, advised by a friendly guru that it now did, I went ahead.

No joy. No chat - just delayed messages received when I had been, apparently, offline. But the latest horror was that when I tried to compose a new mail (using gmail on Safari) I found that every time I pressed a "shift" key, the text migrated into the subject box. Daunted, I sent an entirely lower-case mail to a recipient who will think I've lost my few remaining marbles and relaunched Firefox.

And there it was. Chat and quick contacts miraculously restored. All well. I did nothing new - just relaunched.

Safari on t'other hand is still doing very strange things with the shift keys. Anyone else had this bother - or am I especially favoured?

The Passion - retrospectively

Last night saw the final episode of the BBC production "The Passion". The above photo comes from Friday's episode and shows Mary at the foot of the Cross, and I've chosen it because the focus on Mary provided such a powerful means of engagement with what was happening. You can see much more about the film, and leave your own comments, here.

The drama succeeded on many levels, for my money, not the least because it managed to avoid crassness. It left questions unanswered and raised more, and provided thoughtful insights into the background pressures of the time. I'd not seen Joseph Mawle in other parts, which I felt was a good thing, but I realised that James Nesbitt was convincing me in the part of Pilate even though his face and voice were so familiar. Main impressions? The incredible dusty confusion of the Passover-crowded Jerusalem, the lack of ceremony with which some of the key moments were played out, the casual brutality of the crucifixion, the matter-of-fact attitude of the soldiers, the eyes of Mawle as he looked at the disciples and the gasping agony he brought to Jesus' death. And Mary, his mother, played by Penelope Wilton, in the agony of watching her "beautiful son" so tortured - a clever move, to spend such a long focus on her face at the foot of the cross, or as she ran gasping over the dusty hillside to confront the soldiers with her grief.

The resurrection appearances of Jesus were played by two different actors - one near the tomb, one on the road to Emmaus - who shared only a slight resemblance to Mawle. The dream-like reality was convincing, I felt, though I was glad to see the recognisable Jesus among his disciples at the end. What did this suggest? Was it saying that they became convinced by faith? or longing? or was it simply a way to convey the strangeness of the original story - that at first Jesus was not recognised by those who had known him best?

I'd like to watch it again - but not now. Too immediate, too real. But cheers for the Beeb. It's quite something to get people actually interested in the first Easter these days, and to refuse to be hidebound by convention. Definitely the best Passion film since Pasolini's "Gospel according to St Matthew" - and that's a gap of over 40 years. A lifetime, in fact.

Accomplished!

Paschal candle
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Joyfully we have celebrated the Resurrection. Last night, as the snow fell and put paid to the outdoor New Fire, we lit our candles and sang our hosannas, we witnessed the baptism of a twelve year old who had memorised all his responses and spoke out clearly of his wish for baptism - and I sang the longest piece of plainsong I shall ever sing, the ancient Paschal Proclamation.

And just as there were disciples who were still hiding away when the women discovered the empty tomb on that first Easter, there were church folk, neither elderly nor infirm, who were absent. Doubtless they had some reason to justify their absence for themselves, but I cannot understand them.

Just how do you decide to opt out of the most important events in the church year?

Cold passion

The triduum – the last three days in Holy Week – have their own momentum, such momentum as to make me wonder every year how people arrive at Easter without experiencing the journey towards Sunday. I’m talking religious people, of course; presumably the rest of the world spares the Passion nary a thought unless they happen to be watching the current version on the telly.

On this Good Friday afternoon, I’m already noting the characteristics of this year’s season. Last night, we celebrated the Last Supper at nine in the evening. As we entered the church, we noted new marks of vandalism in the porch – names and slogans scribbled on the doors and on the memorial cross, a small fire stinking in a corner, the water with which it had been doused staining the doormat. Encouraged to think of it in terms of the events we were recalling, I thought of the careless violence of life, the ribaldry of the thoughtless, the anger of the unloved. And somehow the familiar church didn’t feel as safe as usual, attendance less … mainstream, more outlandish than I’d been used to.

As if to underscore such thoughts, the gales seemed to attack us suddenly as we entered the phase of quiet contemplation round the Gethsemane altar. The words of the gospel reading were drowned in the sounds of great heaving gusts of air which rattled the slates high above and threatened to burst open the door. And again that sense of impending danger as the huge tree outside swayed unseen, groaning. And when it was over and the candles extinguished in the chill of midnight, we walked out into the assault of a snow flurry. The cold was intense; it might have been Christmas rather than Passiontide.

Today, as we watched at the foot of the Cross, it was even colder. Cold enough to freeze the emotions, cold enough to make us long for the brazier lit in the courtyard of the High Priest two thousand years ago.

So far, this has been a very northern triduum. No cosiness here, but a sense of threat, danger, hostility. Perhaps that is how it should be.

Retreating

Sunset on the cathedral Originally uploaded by goforchris.

How do I convey the essence of a Holy Week retreat to a world which barely recognises either retreat or holiness? And how do I convey the miracle by which a small island very close to the central belt of Scotland can feel like another world, so that the return to the mainland yesterday was a painful jolt? If I fail to describe adequately the fault is mine.

Begin with the island experienced in the midst of religious focus. I rise on the first day before seven. I have no responsibilities other than to be at Morning Prayer at eight-thirty. The sun is brilliant outside, and the air still and cold. I walk down the lane from the Cathedral of The Isles, two woodpeckers drumming impeccable seven-beat rolls in stereo from the cathedral woods. The seafront is deserted, the sea a glassy calm. The hills of Arran, snowcapped, beckon temptingly, but that is another kind of delight to which I shall return another day. This tiny island of Cumbrae, this little town of Millport, are transformed by a radiant morning and my own sense of growing peace. I realise I have no need, for now, of the usual distractions. And this is retreat.

And what manner of retreat am I undertaking? Not, I think, the conventional one of addresses, contemplation and prayer. Because I am there as a musician, and while others read and listen to talks, I am with my fellow-musicians in the choir stalls, rehearsing for daily Evensong. We sing, we analyse, we criticise, we sing again. And sometimes it is perfect, just for a moment, and we are satisfied, just for a moment. When we sing, it is to a gathering of no more than twelve, including ourselves, and at this time that number seems fitting. We all sit in the choir stalls, and share with and in something beyond our understanding. It is completely absorbing, so that all sense of self is vanished. It is magical. And this, too, is retreat.

Each day there is a celebration of the Eucharist. It is very simple, said apart from one hymn, sometimes including a brief address. And each day, by some chance, there are twelve people present, and not always the same twelve. But by the end of this three day period, I am aware that we are becoming a community, and that our number is somehow ideal. The rhythm of worship, meals, work and recreation seeps into my soul. And this, too, is retreat.

The day ends with Compline, the ancient service of the church, sung entirely in plainsong. We meet again in the choirstalls – singers, gardener, Warden, priest, bishop, visitors from near and far. For at least one of these, it is the first “authentic” compline he has ever experienced. The singing is quiet and totally relaxed, as the novices rely on the singers to lead and support. The rest of the church is in darkness as we pray in a pool of light. And then, insanely early by my usual standards, we go to bed.

And for the rest? In such a busy schedule, there are precious moments of sharing, laughter, hilarity even. Mealtimes, where everyone sits at long refectory tables, provide a setting for conversation that can switch seamlessly from narrow-gauge railways in Wales to our perceptions of Judas Iscariot to whether or not one of the clergy present ever cooks. (The answer is no, and he tucks into his beef cobbler with gusto). And throughout all the interaction, the rehearsing – even the moments of tension when something is not as it should be – people are so gentle with one another that I realise I cannot bear to leave.

Perhaps we are all simply frayed by everyday life. Perhaps it takes the liberation from normality to free us to be thoughtful and kind to one another, to take the time to notice what someone has done well, to read and to talk and to be aware. It would be good if this is how we could live among the pressures of ordinary life, but for now, this is what retreat can do.

Time out

Candles and stained glass
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

I'm about to vanish to the smallest cathedral in Europe again - the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit on the Isle of Cumbrae - for three days of Holy Week music (which I shall be singing) and meditations from +Martin. Three days in which to redeem some of the most mis-spent Lent in years; three days in which to get wellied into "The Last Week" by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan; three days in which not to blog or become mired in controversy.

Should be good - and good for me.

BAstards or BAAstards?

IMG_2330
Originally uploaded by danlinwood.

It's been two weeks. Two weeks since I left my personal stuff on a BA plane as it landed at Glasgow, two weeks of complete frustration verging on rage as I tried to contact someone who might be able to tell me something of its fate. Apart from the hours spent hanging on the phone, I have now visited Glasgow Airport (at a cost of £5 for parking) and spoken with two managerial types - one from BA, the other from BAA. No joy - the BA chap reckoned it would have been dumped. I think this too - probably after my rather nifty little earphones had been removed - but now want to focus on the process.

The first breakthrough came in finding the number to call Glasgow Airport: 0870 0400008. You get an automated voice giving you options, and press button 3 to get to Lost Property. You then press button 3 again to get to "property left on an aeroplane", and then button 1 to get to "property left on a BA plane". Then, at last, a phone rings. By this time hope is welling up - will a real, live person answer?

Dear reader, the answer is a resounding No. Not ever, at whatever hour of the day or night you phone. I have now lost in the mists of despair the routes by which I did talk to a helpful but brisk chap in Gatwick (but no-one answered the number he gave me) and a nice girl in Glasgow Airport who sent someone to check the relevant office for me but rang me back (yes!) with the news that there was no-one there. By this time Mr B's boarding pass was covered in phone numbers and I was losing the will to live.

I psyched myself up a bit for a visit to Glasgow Airport, but in fact the meeting with the two aforementioned chaps has been, in the end, as useless as anything else. The Customer Services Operations Manager did try the novel experiment of phoning the same chain of numbers as I had, and promised to get back to me when he found out what the correct number should be and what was going on. He rang me once to tell me he was still working on it, and I rang him when he failed to phone again. On that occasion he told me another, direct number to phone: 0141 207 9018. Guess what. No-one answers that phone either.

Did I mention that I'd also used the website to mail an enquiry? The final mail from the person who is dealing with it ended with these words: "I realise we have not met our usual high standards this time, and I hope that there will be more for you to enjoy when you next fly with us."

Maybe I shall fly with BA again. I know it was my fault that I was so dozy that I forgot my stuff. But it must happen all the time. If this is the useless procedure that BA have in place to make a perfectly reasonable attempt to contact them, there must be all sorts of lost baggage chucked into black bags. Let's just hope someone, somewhere, makes a security check first.

Glasgow belongs to ...

Spotted in Glasgow today - Buchanan Street first. This wonderfully crazy trio were publicising a St Patrick's Day event. The first we knew of it was when we were accosted by a sheep in the doorway of one of the more upmarket shops. It had an interestingly bleating voice, and referred us to St Patrick for further information. 

St Patrick, we felt, had a look of Rowan Williams about him - perhaps the beleaguered archbishop had found a less demanding way of keeping in touch with his flock? Anyway, he marched around looking suitably benign and dispensing leaflets and bonhomie.

The other photo was taken in Argyle Street, where a group of native Americans was performing.

 Just out

 of shot - I simply couldn't manoeuvre into position without being unsighted - there was a real Glasgow drunk with a grey beard worthy of St Patrick and a cap of the kind Chancellor Schmidt of Germany used to wear. He was just sober enough to stay upright, and he was dancing in a space which he appeared to have created for himself  what appeared to be a creditable imitation of the kind of dancing you see in cowboy movies. Arms in the air, he appeared completely oblivious of the crowd and the catcalls.

Only in Glasgow ...            

Transplant surgery

At last I've gathered up the will power to install the new Mac OSX - Leopard, or whatever feline it's named for. I must say it seems to have bucked up my aging laptop no end - all working very fast at the moment, and looking strangely shiny and clear-eyed. I'm somewhat disappointed to find that iPhoto seems to be just the same as before; I was looking for the features of the new version as found in iLife. Do you only get that if you buy a new machine?

And I've returned for the moment to Safari rather than Firefox; when I last used the former there were no useful features in my Blogger posting window, and now they're all there. It seems very speedy - is this generally accepted these days?

Anyway, to anyone who has upgraded in this way, I'm open to all suggestions as to how to enjoy this to the full - until the G4 has a fatal heart attack and gives me an excuse to buy a replacement!

All happening in Alamo

Alamo, Nevada
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

This is Alamo, Nevada. We stopped there to refuel car and bellies. There was, as far as we could see, one shop and two gas stations before the desert began again. But The Lincoln County Record - pages of which were wrapped round the Area 51 shot glasses we bought in Rachel - tells us there is more to Alamo than meets the eye.

FM RADIO STATION IN ALAMO?

Harvey Caplan of Pahrump wants to build an FM radio station in Alamo. Caplan is the co-founder of an Internet talk station in Pahrump and says he has an FCC permit to build a new station in Alamo within the next three years. Although he would like it to be a lot sooner than that....
...
.... He said his plan was to have the station to ..."be as local as possible. ... We will start as best we can, as many hours as we can, with responsible individuals who will not curse over the air.."

The technical end would be professionally run, "but the content end," Caplan said, "would be relaxed and casual. I have nice people come in and do interesting shows."

In the same paper there was news of the prospective builders for the new Alamo rodeo grounds and an advert for - I imagine - real estate near Rachel, Nevada. (If you've read my previous post you'll know about this even less likely place):

Beautiful views, excellent recreational opportunities, mild climate and peaceful environment. New subdivision with CC&Rs (whatever they are). Eight, 1 acre, buildable lots left i Phase 1, with toads*, water, power and telephone available to the lot line. Only $16,500 per lot. Financing and home construction available. View our website at www.lincolnestates.com.

Don't all rush. Remember what they test out there - and the aliens.

Update: Sorry to disappoint - but the *toads were a typo. It should have been, boringly, roads.

Alien hunting

The long straight.
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Without a doubt, the outstanding memory I have of our Vegas trip is the day we went out into the desert. Fittingly, because we were to drive along the Extra-Terrestrial Highway which skirts Area 51, we first visited the Atomic Testing Museum, incongruously situated not far south of the The Strip in Vegas, where we browsed 50s propaganda, watched movies of nuclear tests, and sat rigid on bleachers in a replica bunker in the darkness through a simulation of such a test - complete with air-blast and special effects.

But once we'd shaken off the traffic jams and the heat of The Strip, we were in the desert, a desert which grew more and more desolate as we headed east and north for almost 150 miles to the township of Rachel, home to a shifting population of 80, some of whom make a fair job of being obsessed with aliens. Actually, the alien bit was perfectly believable - if I spent a night or two in that wonderful silence I'd see anything. The silence was profound and exquisite, making me aware of the blood singing in my ears and of how much noise we have even in our remote places. Here there is no life, no water, no birdsong, and on this day there was no wind. (We did see some black cattle wandering the range at one point, but mostly there was nothing at all). You can see the rest of my pics here.

Suddenly I realised what forty days and nights in the wilderness would be like. And how terrifying to return to ordinary life after such an experience. And I knew just a little of what the servicemen from the Desert War in WW2 meant when they said how much they'd loved a place where many of them suffered hugely. It is ironic that such an area is associated with nuclear testing - the biggest of bangs in the profoundest of silences.

As we drove home in the gloaming we could see the lights of Vegas like another world. Funny - most of the people in our hotel would probably have considered us crazy, had they heard of our day. (Though a friendly bar attendant was glad we'd gone). And for those who might ask: No. I said not one word to the test veterans at the museum about the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Not a word.

But I thought plenty.

A little touch of Egypt in the night...

A touch of Egypt
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

I feel the need to return to the madness of Vegas - only in the blog, mind: I couldn't have stayed there any longer without losing a few marbles as well as my shirt. I invite you to look at this calm picture of our hotel. Our bedroom windows are right in the middle of that wall of the pyramid, looking out at the Sphinx's bottom. The smoked glass and double glazing add an air of unreality to what is, in effect, the only real thing about living there: the view of the desert and the hills beyond the airport. The room is quiet; unless someone passes the door talking loudly all we can hear is the hum of the air-con.

But open that door out to the balcony, and you step into the madness again. Down below are the statues, the palm trees, the fountain, the cinema, the food hall, the Tomb of Tutankhamun, some shops - and under that, the casino floor. And on the casino floor there are hundreds upon hundreds of slot machines, all playing insistent and manic tunes which suddenly resolve triumphantly if someone scores a win. The effect is that of all the pipers playing together at the end of Cowal Games - a sort of unified bedlam. And because everyone smokes on the Casino floor, there is, despite ultra-efficient air con, the smell of cigarette smoke.

On our first, jet-lagged night, it was this which haunted me. I became convinced that the air vents were pumping the smoke into our room - I'm sure that the sense of smell is sharpened when it's dark and I was well away. We've become so used to never smelling smoke indoors that we found it almost intolerable, though I'm happy to say that I wasn't aware of it in the room after that first night.

Another thing we quickly noticed was that it doesn't matter what time day or night it is - nothing changes in the atrium below the balcony. You can get a cuppa from Starbucks at the foot of the lift (I"ll say more of that in a mo) at 3am, and there are always gamblers on the slots and at the tables. The lighting and temperature are constant. I was tempted to look outside at night only once - because I found it strangely disturbing to be in a sleepless world.

The lifts are called Inclinators - we take inclinator 4 to our room - because they run up the corners of the pyramid, and they slope. This is unsettling, particularly after a frozen margarita or two. New arrivals look worried as they tilt gently into one another; the rest of us are only worried when the lifts misbehave and scoot up and down in a random fashion. You use your door key - a card with well-endowed girls on it - to activate the lift. No keys appear to have any well-endowed chaps on them.

Despite the extreme oddity of all this, we were saying "shall we go home now?" by the end of our time there, and realised it had become home. But as I opened my suitcase in snowy Dunoon and smelled the smoky air wafting from everything I'd worn, I was glad to be back in a country where fresh air came through an open window and smoking was no longer considered normal. My washing machine has worked overtime since then.

And, for those who care, Mr B and Master B (senior) both won at the slots and cashed it in. I, on the other hand, played my winnings away ...

Dogged?

Just back from Oban and about to crawl into bed - but first, a moment of reflection. My efforts yesterday seemed to be fraught with gremlins before I even came to the point - a hearing aid which played a silly tune throughout while its owner remained blissfully unaware, a pneumatic drill starting up outside. And then there was the unwillingness to listen to a whole point when I happened to hit on a raw nerve. It reminded me of the kind of pupil who is so anxious that their point will be heard that they strain every nerve into putting up their hand eagerly and in doing so shut out everything but their own concern - so that they hear nothing beyond the trigger-point. It seems worse, somehow, in adults - though I found some amusement in treating the recalcitrant like school children by telling a couple to stop blethering. (Thanks, Hugh, for playing along!)

And the end result? It seems from the responses after the group sessions that there is in fact a willingness to learn, a desire for suitable training and an interest in identifying suitable technology for specific purposes. Having read Kimberly's Google notes, I feel more hopeful - though as I picked up the glossy magazine that I had hoped would be replaced by a PDF file I couldn't help reflecting on how far we still have to go.

A footnote to the occasion was that our host for the night felt compelled to offer hospitality to a 14 stone St Bernard called Bailey, who would otherwise have spent a very cold night in his owner's car. He has now recovered from the effects of having said Bailey sit on his feet.

Vain Hope?

This is me, exhorting the representatives of the Episcopal Church in Argyll and The Isles on the merits of Web 2.0 technology. I may be flogging a dead horse, but it's still laughing at the moment.

Update: I'm indebted to Robin B for this link - obviously I'm not alone in my near-despair.

New York, Vegas-style

New York, New York!
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

I'm off to Oban in the morning (snow permitting) to talk to the Diocesan reps about wired ways to save money and miles - but I shall be back to share my take on Vegas when the Synod is over. Meanwhile, this photo shows one of the absurdities of The Strip - the New York skyline replicated above the casino resort New York New York. There is a permanent memorial to the 9/11 firecrew victims built into a new wall under Lady Liberty, in which signed t -shirts which originally hung there have been displayed in cases. That little area is quite solemn. The rest is not.

My photos are beghinning to appear here. But now - mind on other things. Concentrate!

Distraught of Dunoon

Home from the bright lights (and were they bright!) to a blizzard, a temperature of 3ºC and a sticking z (just found that out). And I'm almost too distraught to blog, having abandoned on the floor of the plane from London this morning a bag containing my reading specs (the ones I look at the laptop through), my book (half-read) and, worst of all, my diary. Not the one with the appointments in it, but the one with my life in it. I can't bear it.

And though there was a man at Gatwick able to tell me it hadn't turned up there when the plane returned, the phone at Glasgow rang and rang. Unlike Vegas, Glasgow shuts down on Sunday. All very right and holy, I'm sure, but deeply frustrating.

Normal service will be resumed when I get my specs back. Meantime, the photos are beginning to go up on flickr and I have the Diocesan Synod to prepare for. Joy.