New toy.

Terribly pleased with the quality of the camera on my new phone - especially as I didn't have to pay any extra to acquire said phone! The last one tended to produce very fuzzy images, so this - of the sun setting over Bute as I travelled on the Western ferry home on the one sunny day in living memory - is a great surprise. Better still: if you send your old phone back to Vodafone, they credit your account - in my case with only slightly less than I paid for the upgrade two years ago. And they send you the prepaid padded envelope .....gosh.

My only gripe is that it's not Bluetooth and the other one was - but I think I'd rather have the good photos!


Update: As ab points out, it is Bluetooth after all - I was too impatient to explore properly!

Words, words, words....

Interesting discussion on prayer today, in the context of looking at keeping to a rule of life. Words can be such a barrier - a snare, a temptation or merely a smokescreen. And listening is so very hard ........

So that's all I have to say about that. For now, anyway.

Prelim preparation

Anyone with the patience to read the comments on this blog will have noticed that I've been having an interesting chat with Liz O'Neill about the teaching of textual analysis. This evening I scurried back from a very civilised lunch in the Rogano in Glasgow to see my two private pupils for the last time before I vanish to foreign parts for a bit and they vanish into their Higher prelim exams. In both cases we were discussing how to construct an effective Critical Essay under exam conditions: ie choose a question that has some connection with one of your texts, work out exactly what it is asking you to consider, plan how to use your knowledge of the text in order to answer the question and then write about 700 words - all in 45 minutes. Then do it again for another question and a text of a different genre from the first.

All this - and it's hard work, at this level - had me thinking further about the effective sharing of ideas on literature. It seems to me that the most meaningful learning happens when the student begins to make the connections for herself (both my current students are female, so we'll stick with that pronoun). This takes time and patience, and sensitive probing and leading to help the insecure to a place of confidence. But what if a pupil arrives in your class with four years of less than satisfactory experience of literature? (Not the case with my current pair, but a possibility) What if they've never read any particularly complex stuff until they fetched up in a Higher class? Suddenly you've got to get them to a pitch of expertise that will enable them to pass a demanding exam in January - and you've got about five and a half months to do it in, with four weeks of holidays in two blocks to break up the rhythm.

I don't feel like solving the whole mystery right here and now - the nice lunch is still affecting the brain - but would suggest the following for starters:
If you can, make sure they read a novel over the summer holiday before S5 really starts. Something big, like "Sunset Song". Start analysing it with them in week one of the first term. If they can't hack it, they'll realise something about themselves. If they find themselves passionately reacting to the situation of the heroine in the middle of discussing her home life, they're hooked. Real literature is really involving - and there is so very much to say about it. Anyone who has failed to do the reading suddenly realises that they've dealt themselves out of the conversation, and either gets the finger out or gives up the ghost.

If you leave something as big as that till later in the term, you'll never do it. They'll get bogged down in Maths homework (it was always maths) and have no time to sit and read an extended text. You'll be stuck with short stories or jounalism for the Prose option - and that's not always ideal. My aim was always to have the novel plus, say, two of Doris Lessing's short stories - Lessing because she is such a superb crafter of language that every word and phrase tells and nothing is redundant. But what you absolutely must build in is the opportunity to talk about these texts - with you, with each other - so that they own them. It's not enough to set them questions to wrestle with in writing when they haven't the basic personal understanding that is only achieved through discussion and turning back to the text to back themselves up. And it is we the teachers who have to ask the hard questions, the whys and the hows, the whats and the what ifs, that will set their critical faculties working efficiently - and it is we who have to be the first to react with enthusiasm when they start to get it. You can do this in class time - because when you're with them it's a better use of your time that sitting doing your own thing while they write. I used to do it orally - with them all joining in, I hoped. Now I'd perhaps do it differently - a blog might involve everyone simultaneously.

But I'd really miss the chat.

Writing again

I've been writing again - a new poem which you can find over at frankenstina. The subject matter had been swirling gently in my head for a few days - since driving round the Holy Loch on one of these days when you're always looking out for the next downpour, heralded usually by the sudden disappearance of some landmark which had been perfectly visible two minutes previously. A smidgin of blue sky reminded me that above the clouds it's always a sunny day - a revelation that still amazes me every time I take off in a plane. The poem finally appeared at half past midnight last night, so sleep proved elusive.

I'm having bothers, however, in formatting my poems for satisfactory layout on the screen. The short half-line at the beginning of the second section of this poem should appear below where it would have been had it stayed on the line above, where rhythmically speaking it belongs. If anyone can supply an idiot's guide to the correct html to achieve this, I'd be grateful. (I've tried centering, but this sticks it miles away in mid-screen.)

However, I am decidedly pleased by the fact that this poem came to me in the form in which it appears. After being hung up with a regular metre for some months now, it was with a grateful bow to the memory of RST that I felt free once more to go with the words and my inner ear. It's early days yet to see if I think it's a success, but I enjoyed the process.

The Man who went into the West

Before I end my current train of thought, I'd like to comment briefly on Byron Rogers' biography of R.S.Thomas, The Man who went into the West. I finished reading it yesterday, and as usual after enjoying a book so much, I feel bereft. It was totally absorbing, so that I had to ration myself into reading it in relatively short bursts and not stay awake half the night to finish it.

Many biographies begin with the birth of the subject - or even of his parents - which is often so far from the character of interest to the reader that boredom can set in long before the subject's adult life is reached. But on page 4 of his "Introduction", Rogers quotes extensively from something he had written 30 years ago, giving what he calls "a snapshot" of Thomas when he interviewed him, aged 62, and then going back fifteeen years earlier, when Rogers was only 17, to describe "a very tall, lean athletic man, his face quite unlike any other I had ever seen. It had no spare flesh, so that afterward I remembered cheek bones, forehead, chin; ... The face was hard, severe, almost predatory. ..... The face was the face of the poems."

As Andrew Motion comments in his review of this book, "Looked at from one angle, the result is a jumble: impressionistic, prone to repetition, confusing about precisely what happened when, and excessively self-referring. From another point of view, it is engagingly high-spirited and daring." He is right, of course, but it is that very jumble that engages, and the repetition which you can't help noticing actually reinforces links in a way which a more ordered biography might not. But what shines from this book is the author's fondness personally for the poet and his poetry; an understanding which communicates to anyone who has felt their guts contract at one of Thomas' extraordinary last lines. Mix this closeness with the personal reminiscences of not only parishioners - for we had some of those in Justin Wintle's "Furious Interiors", a biography writen without Thomas' cooperation - but also of his son and grandson, his daughter-in-law and his two remarkable wives, and you have a rounded picture of a gifted and complex man, a picture which brings me at least closer to understanding the poems and the thought behind them.

My interest, as I said previously, goes back to when in the first days of 1987 I set about analysing one of his poems, "Evans", to set questions on it for an exam paper. Analysis, rather than simple reading, brought home to me what was going on in the poem and fired me with a need to know more, to read more. I also fired off a fan letter, pure and simple, care of Thomas' publishers. Within a week, I received a postcard in the wild writing now familiar from the signature facsimile on the Selected Poems 1946-68. Having learned from the Rogers book that such an item now has monetary value as well as the huge personal value to me from that moment, I've had it scanned, and reproduce it here. Years later, in 1999 - the year before Thomas died - I received another letter, this time asking me how I felt now that we had in Scotland a parliament of our own. The old Welsh nationalist was in full flight in that letter, though the wild writing has grown spidery with age.

Rogers' biography points out that Thomas always replied to letters. I feel I knew that already, as I knew instinctively many of the things I found in this book. When he died, I felt I had lost a heroic companion. But now I have spent a week in his company, brought there by a journalist with an easy manner and an unobtrusive charm. I'm not lending anyone my copy - but you should read it. Really.

Enjambement - again

Thought I'd indulge myself with a post about enjambement. Not much chance of a wide readership for this one, but I must be missing the classroom or something.

The poem referred to in the previous post, R.S.Thomas' "Evans", uses enjambement in what I would recognise as two different modes. The start of the poem tells how the poet recalled his leaving of the sick man's house, and here the enjambement suggests an almost breathless haste, as if the visiting vicar, "appalled" at his failure to help the man in any way, cannot wait to be outside again.
Evans? Yes, many a time
I came down his bare flight
Of stairs into the gaunt kitchen
With its wood fire, where crickets sang
Accompaniment to the black kettle's
Whine, and so into the cold
Dark......

However, there is also the prominence of the words which start the lines: accompaniment, whine, dark - and "dark" is used here as a noun, as Thomas goes on to talk about "the dark/ silting the veins of that sick man", a dark that the light of faith cannot alleviate. A complex poem reflecting on the failure of a complex man to fulfil his secondary calling - that of priest - in the language that Thomas saw as his one refuge from a world "glib with prose."

As he grew older, Thomas used this device even more starkly, as here, from "Launching a Prayer":
The stripling posturing
before the hero;
the mature man
posturing before

God.

Here, the stanza break (this is a three stanza poem) emphasises, builds up to the word "God" - and Thomas always thought of God with awe.

I'd like to look briefly at favourite examples of enjambement from two other poets - my response to sorlil's comment yesterday. The first is from Norman McaCaig's "Visiting Hour". The poet, on his way to visit an apparently dying woman in hospital, writes:
I will not feel, I will not
feel, until
I have to.
Read that aloud and the jaw-clenching self-control is brought out by the marking of the line breaks as much as by the repetition of the words "will not feel".

Similarly, in T.S.Eliot's great poem "Journey of the Magi", one of the "wise men" who sought the infant Christ looks back over his life at that momentous journey so long ago.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death?
As the old man dictates to a scribe, his hesitation as he searches for words to express his bafflement are there in the enjambement, along with the repetition that underlines his determination to convey his overwhelming question.

Great. It took me such a long time to realise this, but it was worth the wait. A final thought for the educators out there: it's when you're really fired up by something you teach, as I am by poetry of this calibre, that the magic happens. There is this awesome responsibilty not to let the poet down by your teaching - death by a thousand cuts to the teacher who cares not! I'll give R.S Thomas the last say on such moments:
But here once on an evening like this,
in the darkness that was about
his hearers, a preacher caught fire
and burned steadily before them.....
(The Chapel)

Enjambement and R.S. Thomas

I'm reading Byron Rogers' new (2006) biography of R.S. Thomas, and though I've not quite reached the end and want to say more about the book as a biography, I've just read a fascinating, and to me exciting, section where Thomas is quoted on the development of his writing style during his last ministry in Aberdaron, where, as Thomas said, "My poetry underwent a change of style"..."I broke up the lines..." He mentioned in a letter "some people ...still nit-picking about my so-called lack of form"and goes on :"I wish they'd catch up."

His explanation of what he was about makes an immediate impression on me. "When I write, I'm listening with an inner ear to the way it sounds. I build the poem up like that. And if there's a word too many, it goes into the next line. But the thing is that I never really wrote them to be read out loud. There's a contradiction here: they may look artificial on the page, but they must sound right..."

The reason for my excitement about this? Ever since the Chrismas holiday of 1987, when, charged with making up the Practical Criticism paper for the Higher English Prelim exam, I chose Thomas' poem "Evans" as the text, I have been an avid reader of his poetry. Analysing that one poem in order to set questions on it drew me into a world where I felt at home, and influenced the style in which I would begin to write seriously. I didn't think about it at the time, but if you immerse yourself sufficiently in a poet's work, it obviously has an effect. And years later, when people had begun to read my stuff, I was asked why I used enjambement in the way I did.

My answer reflected, I now learn, the reaction of Byron Rogers to Thomas' poems: the run-overs (as he calls them) allow you to emphasise the words which come at the beginning of a line. Because I had no teacher, no mentor with me to discuss my writing, I felt shaken in this knowledge when others - including Edwin Morgan - asked me if this was something I really wanted to do. The implied answer was usually "no" - and for a while I have dabbled with metre and rhythm in a way which irritates me. Suddenly, I feel liberated.

Why am I writing this now? Because it pleases me to record it. An epiphany on the eve of Epiphany. And I'll be back on R.S.T. later .....

March of the Penguins

Just been watching the amazing "March of the Penguins" - another component of the Christmas haul at The Blethers. An interesting effect of becoming so absorbed in the heroic dedication of the penguins to the whole business of procreation was that for most of the film I forgot that there had to be people there filming. However, these film-makers must have been possessed of their own brand of determination and dedication, for I cannot imagine how they got some of the shots they did.

Escapism? or a reinforcing of the need for us not to make such a mess of looking after this planet we inhabit? Maybe neither - or both - but a humbling recognition that we are not alone in our efforts to live well. Well worth a look - check out this site for a taster.

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.

Five things you don't know about me?

Well well. First post of 2007 is in response to being tagged by Mrs. O'Neill to do the "Five things ...." - so a self-indulgent New Year's morning (well, it's actually the afternoon, but the day began late) thinking about moi. Here goes - and I'd like to know if any of these things are new to Ewan!

1. I was nearly born a month prematurely - prevented, I was told, by my grandfather's not allowing my mother to attend the VE Day celebrations in George Square. And when I did appear on the scene, my newly-demobbed father called his 2 month old daughter "the Belsen baby" because (a) I was so skinny (don't things change?) and (b) the horrors of Belsen were uppermost in people's minds.

2. I had my tonsils taken out on the kitchen table of our top floor flat in Hyndland. I was seven, and I can remember it with alarming clarity. The kitchen was full of nurses and doctors - apparently observing this practice before it went completely out of fashion - and I had to sit on a fat nurse's knee while they anaesthetised me with a mask onto which something was dripped. (Aagh). I don't think I was completely unconscious, as I could hear clatterings and was aware of a bright light throughout. Afterwards, I threw up down the wrong side of the bed (the one next to the wall). The stain was still there when we left the house three years later.

3. When I was ten, I had a passion for shoes which made a noise when I walked. I persuaded my father to hammer segs into the heels of my school shoes. By the time I had my first pair of "heels" at 15, the fashion was for stilettoes and the little metal tips would ruin the lino - so none of my friends was allowed to keep their shoes on if they came to visit.

4. I always wanted to learn to abseil and rock climb. I used to draw mountaineers doing classic abseils - using only the rope rather than karabiners etc - down the inside covers of my school text books. This hurt no-one except my concentration, as I went to the kind of school where you had to buy your own text books. You could tell the boring subjects by the density of the illustrations. In the end, I learned to abseil when I was 46 and it felt exactly as I had always imagined, so I had no fear and scooshed down the cliff at Benmore on Loch Eck like the SAS.

5. When I was small - about 3, I think - I had decided views on aspects of my life. (I know - what's new about that?) One was that I didn't like being a little girl, so that if someone said kindly "And what's your name, little girl?" I'd reply "I'm not a little girl. I'm a boy and my name's Peter Pan." (Really) And I often embarrassed my mother when someone to whom she might talk came along; I would look resolutely at my feet and say "I don't talk to this lady." And I didn't. But when it came to my interview with the child psychiatrist to see if I was suitable Hillhead High School material (I was 5) I apparently took the hand of this terrifying figure with a nicotine-stained white walrus moustache, smiled sweetly and went off with him. I got into the school; the child who screamed and wept at the psychiatrist did not.

And now, having done this, I see that my whole life was mapped out with a terrible inevitability. Fascinating.

And I tag: Ruth, Kelvin, Kenny, Di - to get her blogging again - and David, who's been far too quiet these hols.

Farewell, Domestic Goddess, farewell 2006

It's dark again. A dark, blowy Hogmanay with further gales forecast. Before I return to the role of Domestic Goddess for one more time - cooking for a meal with a friend - I'll join the hordes who post their look back over 2006. I hate this night of the year - have done ever since I was a child. The days may be imperceptibly lengthening, but the turning year brings with it the reflection that life ain't - let us not think after these ways: so, it will make us mad.

For me, 2006 was a big year - the trip to New Zealand, the death of my friend Edgar, the wedding of Ewan and Morgane, Neil's graduation. But it was also the year in which I made a host of new contacts - some virtual, some becoming three dimensional, like David and Andrew, who no longer needs to stand sideways for me to recognise him. I still enjoy the thrill of making new contacts online - especially if they seem to appreciate what I have to say. And I still find it amusing when people much younger than I say "You have a ... what?" I wonder if there will come a day when writing a blog is as commonplace as keeping a diary - though come to think of it it's not everyone who does that either. (I have kept a diary continuously since 1958 - quite a thought!)

That's enough. I'm off now to do wonderful things with a fillet of venison from Winston Churchill, and then I'll domestic goddess it no further. A Good New Year to you all.

For the sober and literary: there are two Shakespearian references in this post. The usual rules apply.

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.

Present joys

I've been tidying (just a little) before I put the Domestic G. disguise away for another year. Having assembled a neat pile of presents, I thought I'd post a pic of a few which are going to give me sustained pleasure (to distinguish them from the more instant gratification of edible/quaffable gifts, some of which are already gone forever..)

The sultry cleric in the background is on the cover of the wonderful Calendario Romano, full of pin-ups for collectors of dog-collars, a present from Mary who knows me too well. The photo album is a collection of wedding pics from the summer, taken from the vast number Flickred of the occasion - thanks to all who took them! The books? The new R.S.Thomas biography, "The Man who went into the West", Richard Holloway's "How to read the Bible", Andrew O'Hagan's novel "Be Near Me" and "Landmarks:an Ignatian Journey" by Margaret Silf. I shall perhaps blog about these when I've read them.

You will also notice the boxed set of DVDs of the wonderful "Rome" soap which I desired after seeing it last year, and a pair of amazingly comfy earphones for my iPod: I have tiny ears which complain hotly if I try to force the usual ones to stay in safely. These little beauties are Sennheisers, which cut out a great deal of noise and have graded rubber adjuster rings so that you can have different-sized ear-holes and still use them!

And the mask? A lovely Venetian one for when I've been drinking too much, perhaps ...really very flattering.

And all was for an Apple .......

I sent a letter to Apple today - the final act, I hope, in my latest internet saga. It accompanied the Airport which arrived yesterday to replace the one I have which turned out not to need replaced. I post it here to make me feel better.
Case Number : ********

I am returning the new Airport Base Station which you sent in response to a phone call in the week before Christmas. Please note that this is the new Base Station rather than the one which I have been using for the past two and a half years. It has not even been removed from its packaging. The reasons for this are as follows:

Three weeks ago my printer stopped responding to “print” commands, despite the fact that it was still operating as a printer and had new ink cartridges. As I had neither the time nor the expertise to work out what had gone wrong, I called in a so-called local “expert”. After some time he pronounced that the printer was faulty. However, a new printer fared no better and we managed to return it. At this point I was still connected to the Internet through the Base Station.

Our “expert” now phoned your help line, as I have a Protection Plan. After several hours on the phone, and conversations with, I understand, two of your experts, it was decided that the Airport was faulty and should be replaced. By this time I no longer had any internet connection on my laptop, as the Apple advice had been to change all the settings and these settings were left in such a state that I could make no sense of what had happened. (I should point out that I am not entirely witless in this department, and had set up the entire system myself on purchase.)

And so it was that on the Wednesday before Christmas I was awaiting a replacement Airport, had no internet connection and could not print. The next day my son arrived for a few days and within half an hour had fixed the entire network so that everything was once more working perfectly. Hence the return of the replacement Airport.

Your telephone help in this case turned out to be telephone hindrance, I’m afraid, and left us considerably worse off than we had been. Perhaps the routine questions they ask in this kind of case should be reviewed – or are they on rails like all other call centre operatives?

I should add, perhaps, that I spoke to a very sensible young man at Apple this morning - I suspect that their customer service bods are better than their hapless helpline ones.

A fiery Christmas

Having recovered from yesterday, I feel moved to share with anyone still sad enough to boot up their bloglines on Boxing Day a glimpse of the culinary splendour at The Blethers yesterday. I was a tad concerned that Metaxa might not burn as spectacularly as the usual cooking brandy (rather like Larkin's "washing sherry") but behold: a veritable conflagration. It tasted amazing too.

You can find the original of this, and several other photos of over-indulgence, at Christmas 2006 from edublogger. I was too busy being a domestic goddess again to do much snapping - unless the snapping at said Edublogger for getting in the way counts. But harmony reigns at The Blethers this morning, and I've almost managed to clean the spatters of turkey gravy from the interior of the fridge (don't ask). Now I intend to drink some coffee and indulge in an old-fashioned pastime.

I'm going to read a book.

Bird of dawning

Every year around 10pm on Christmas Eve I think I won't survive the combination of cooking and church, and every year the delight of it all takes over. Last night, Mr B and I stuffed the turkey - rescued from the shed, where it had reposed since Saturday, there being no room in the fridge - and headed out to Midnight Mass. The church was lit entirely by candles apart from the red overhead heaters, and seemed to be full of young people - all former pupils - back home for the holiday. The holy smoke was the best I've seen in years, and the coughers surpassed themselves.The excellent innovation of sherry at the back of the church afterwards soon sorted them out.

Here's another wee quotation for the virtual mars bar hunters:

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:

Last night I finally went to bed at 3am, and outside my window a bird was singing - not the neurotic oyster-catchers down on the shore, where the lights on the promenade confuse the poor things into squeaking all night, but a real, singing bird whose song continued until I was past listening. Coincidence?

Brilliant anyway.

Descrooged!

After my Scrooge-like grumblings about badly-behaved weans and pathetic parents, I have to redress the balance by reporting that in our church this morning there were four children, visiting their grandma, of whose presence I knew only because I'd seen them on the way in. Two wee boys and a six year old girl behaved impeccably throughout and then joined in with a will as the entire congregation set about decorating the Advent-bare church for Christmas.

This relatively minor incident made me hopeful once more - hopeful that there are still parents who can bring up their children to behave appropriately in whatever situation they may find themselves. I don't even need to grump at David about it!

Yule Tide maunderings

Well well. Seems we poor bloggers have been banned by Argyll and Bute because we use Blogger. Apparently the reason given is "sex". I have a sneaking feeling that perhaps iGear can't spell - it could be the "...gger" bit that gets the cyber-masters hot under the collar, or wherever else they feel the heat. Never mind. Presumably someone out there will continue to look in from time to time.

I do hope so, because I've just published a new poem over at frankenstina. It arose from that chilly visit to Edinburgh last week, and is dedicated to my pals Marilyn and Fraser. (Forgot to put that in the title - shall rectify some day!)

In the meantime, if you haven't received a card from The Blethers please blame my computer problems - my address list is in a label page file and the system flipped just before I printed them off. On this Yule Day (apparently it's today) I wish all non-Christians a Happy Yule , and the rest of you a happy and blessed Christmas.

Geeks and Goddesses

The Domestic Goddess decided that today merited a premature tasting of the cake iced yesterday, in celebration of the visit of a real computer expert and the subsequent recovery of all we had thought lost: two fully functioning computers, wireless connection to the printer and an apparently hale Airport base station. This wizardry took him all of half an hour, during which he seemed to be attending to his own mails as well. Now we just have to deal with the new Airport which the less-than-expert persuaded Apple we required and which is even now winging its way, fog permitting, to The Blethers. Silly thing is that the Apple Help Desk people seem to have compounded the confusion with their assistance. This is less than comforting when one is less than gifted in the geekery department - from whence cometh mine aid now?

And I suppose the answer is along these lines: why breed experts and then ask someone else? So sorry, chaps - let's just hope there are no more probs for a bit. Right now I feel a tad pathetic - but I can report that the cake tastes brilliant, gritty snow icing and all. So, unlikely a role as it may seem, I'm staying a Domestic Goddess for the foreseeable future.

Trials of a Domestic Goddess (1)

Slipping briefly (I hope) into DG role, I wish to share, gentle readers, the trials of icing the Christmas Cake in this, the Year of Our Lord 2006. The (1) in the title represents a superstitious gesture to the jealous gods who would doubltess heap more trials on my head if I even suggested there would be no more.

What I have to tell you will make most sense if you can remember snow in Glasgow - or some similar city - in the 1950s. ( I know this rules out all but a minority of the bloggership, but bear with me) Snow used to lie. For weeks. Shopkeepers would brush "their" bit of pavement, jannies would spoil good slides in the playground by putting salt on them, but given a decent, pre-global warming cold spell in January, the snow would remain, turning gradually a strange fawn colour and changing texture as it thawed and refroze, so that it resembled demerara sugar in its discoloured graininess.

Why am I telling you this? Because that's what my cake is like. It is no longer possible to buy in Dunoon the unrefined icing sugar which is the preferred taste at The Blethers. So this afternoon, having forgotten to look for the stuff when abroad in Edinburgh, I made my own. Unrefined granulated sugar in the coffee grinder. The kitchen filled with puffs of sugar, the bowl with a pale fawn dust with bits in it. By the time I'd ground a pound of the stuff, I had lost the will to be fussy. And then I added a couple of drops of 33 year old glycerine. I know this because I've had the same bottle since my first cake, when I was expecting infant number one. I think glycerine keeps.....And so it is, best beloved, that we shall have a cake iced with the snow of childhood, crunchy bits and all.

And just a faint aroma of coffee......

A sour note

I promised (threatened?) to post about that child at the carol concert the other night. I owe it to myself, let along anyone else, to get on with it. So, for starters: there was a child at the carol concert. He was, I'd say, four at most - could have been a largish three. He was sitting maybe five rows from the front, next to a woman who might well have been his grandmother. His parents were there too, but took very little interest in him or what he was up to. He had with him a set of antlers, a blanket, a soft toy and a small car. He was surrounded by adults who had paid for the best tickets in the auditorium and who presumably wanted to enjoy the exqusite and finely-balanced singing of Cappella Nova.

This child was bored about fifteen minutes before the concert began. He was obviously physically uncomfortable on the seat and growing tired and irritable. The result was that he wriggled about, wrapped himself in the blanket, waved the toy in the air, made faces and then began to communicate with Grandma. When she tried to shush him, he pinched her arm with some vigour. He was so obviously past it that I began to hope that his hapless father might remove him at the interval - but no. There they were, back again, the child still carrying on, the parents still resolutely ignoring him. At last, Grandma managed to get him settled in a semi-recumbent postition across her lap, and he fell asleep.

Now there are some things to be clear about here. This was a concert, not a church service - that's another can of worms altogether, and one I'll leave for now. People had paid for their seats and had to put up with this distraction for three quarters of the concert. It was doing the child no good whatsoever; in fact I wouldn't be surprised if the experience put him off choral music for life. He was heard to whine at one point "I don't like this music" - that was when he was writhing on the floor with his fingers in his ears. So why was he there?

Presumably because his parents were too selfish to decide that one of them should stay at home and put the child to bed where he belonged, or too idle to arrange a babysitter, or too egocentric and lacking in imagination to see how unsuited the event was for such a young child. They had the comfortable look of people accustomed to their surroundings, but seemed completely unable to deal with their own offspring. I personally believe that children need to be introduced to adult events only when they are of an age and a stage in their development where they will not spoil things for everyone around them - and this includes church services (I can feel hackles rising in cyberspace already). Parents have no right to inflict the delights of family life on everyone else; it's their choice and they should realise the limitations which parenthood bring - and the responsibilities.

Meanwhile, well done Grandma for trying, and thumbs down to a couple of parents who are raising a petulant child for others to teach. But then, they'll not have the imagination to understand that either.

Primus on Civil Partnerships.

I was intending to discuss the child cryptically mentioned two posts ago, but have put that off to say hurrah! for Bishop Idris Jones, Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, for his statement reported in today's Sunday Herald. The debate over civil partnerships in Scotland has led him to want to speak publicly about the fact that the different Christian denominations hold very different views on non-traditional relationships, a fact largely ignored by the public as a whole. The Roman Catholic Church is firmly against civil partnerships, a postition "unaltered and rock solid", and it now seems likely that a majority view in the Church of Scotland will go the same way.

However, said +Idris, "that is not where we are as a church", pointing out that "there are many Christians who think that the legislation on civil partnerships is appropriate and an enlightened policy that should be supported." The RC church and the C of S apparently declined to comment on his statement.

Purple Advent .....

This photo of the Advent Wreath in Holy Trinity Church, Dunoon, in the diocese of Argyll and The Isles, is specially featured for the instruction of those who favour red berries and - shudder - red candles for Advent. I have already made my feelings in the matter clear on Kelvin's blog, where a wonderfully abstruse theological argument is currently raging.

I love a church where the big issues have their place, don't you?

Clydeside Christmas?

A late start this morning after a late night - going to concerts in Glasgow tends to mean the midnight ferry and subsequent reviving with cups of tea before bed is possible. We were at Cappella Nova's 20th Carols by Candlelight, in the Barony Hall, an occasion which the choir marked by singing a selection of requests from past concerts and commissioning a new carol.

This year the new piece was an arrangement by John McIntosh (Mr B) of Dave Whyte's Clydeside Christmas Eve, with words by poet Donny O'Rourke - a gentle, questioning piece for an age in which "Faith's candle's going out". The choir sang it beautifully, making the hair stand on end with the sonorous "We still have faith in beauty" and the alto solo's (Alexander L'Estrange) quiet "When all that's certain is our doubt" and the audience reaction left us in no doubt that this was a hit.

It was good to meet Dave and Donny - we were all sitting in a row, rather splendidly - though rather strange to be so aware of the intense listening to the performance on either side of me. I need a replay - it'd be good to have a new CD, Cappella Nova! The hall was packed, and by some miracle of the loaves and fishes order it seemed as if almost everyone present managed to acquire a mince pie and mulled wine in the hectic interval.

Other memories? The lovely St Petersburg Baroque Brass Quintet, complete with antlers and rabbit ears (don't ask), John Tavener's "The Lamb", the chance to sing with the choir in the Carols for All moments. There was also a child - but I'll leave that for another post.

A great evening of great singing and considerable bonhomie. Just what should happen at this time of year, in fact!

From the ridiculous to the sublime..

I have a confession to make. I have, in the midst of trying to be up to speed with Christmas cards and puddings (damn - I meant to do something about them this evening!), wasted enough time to gain the certificate pictured here. In the spirit of sharing and of educational enlightenment, may I direct any who haven't tried it already to the elf movie, where you chuck snowballs at a number of inanely-grinning elves. If you hit Santa - laudably dressed as St Nicholas in a scarlet chasuble - you are reprimanded and Santa protests. There is one wee elf of indeterminate age who grunts if hit, but he tends to be elusive. The sound effects are repetitive and infuriating and I can't think why I laboured to reach the expertise needed to succeed. I hope I encourage someone out there to join me in this nonsense.

On a more wholesome note, I made a barley loaf today. If that's what they had to eat at the feeding of the five thousand then jolly good it might have been. But of course there was more to it than that ....

Christmas medley, anyone?

Just back from a visit to Edinburgh - a heady mix of a stay with dear friends, a meeting of the Lay Learning committee of the SEC and a visit to the German Christmas Market in Princes Street Gardens, where I took this rather low-quality pic on my phone. I would have had my camera had it not been for the horizontal rain on a snell wind as we left the car; actually we had a sufficiently long splash of dry to glug down a mug of scalding gluwein at the market stall and feel suddenly much cosier. We were not, however, tempted by the big wheel - it looked decidedly shoogly to me, and a sure ringer for a bout of hypothermia.

And the Lay Learning? I have much to debrief on this one, but came away thinking about the balance between content and delivery systems in any sphere of learning. There's a debate into which I stuck a toe over on John Connell's blog which threw me into reflecting further on this; the tension between knowledge and the communicating of same is complicated by the problem of having to engage with an audience which, unlike school pupils, can turn away and demonstrate only indifference - even harder to deal with than hostility. And the problem of sentences like that last one is that one loses the will to live ploughing through them - could do better, Blethers!

On a lighter note, a thought about Christmas carols. As we skelped home through the incipient floods on the M8 we listened to a sampler CD of new carols. After one particularly ebullient offering, we were struck by a mental image of the Christ-child, square-faced and open-mouthed, wailing inaudibly as the heavenly hosts gave it laldy over the manger. Makes you realise how very good are some of the by now classic arrangements - a case of content not matching delivery systems in many of the new ones.

We made it home in tempest, storm and wind - another quote for the carolophile!

Celebrating Advent

Today was the Second Sunday in Advent. It rained, relentlessly. The borders in our garden were flooded and we had to wade through a massive puddle to reach the car. The wind blew ominously, making us fear for the ferries again. And yet, among all this wildness, we have had the most wonderful day.

For the first time in many years, we had a proper Advent Carol Service in Holy Trinity Church, Dunoon. I was one of a group of singers drawn from our church and St Paul's, Rothesay, a group small enough and expert enough to make great sounds together and goodness, we enjoyed the experience. Our visiting singers weren't deterred or stranded by the weather, and were followed by a group of parishioners from Rothesay, so that even on a day like this there was a congregation of 50 in the candlelit gloom. The water poured into the vestry and the back of the nave; buckets slithered on the wet floor; the draughts swept down from the tower and into the choir - but there were candles everywhere, the silences were full of the anticipation of the season, and the atmosphere was electric.

We are so blessed in the circumstances which have brought together Kimberly our new rector, Martin our singing bishop, some great readers and this wee choir - to say nothing of our organist, about whom I say less than most because he is also Mr Blethers. Our church may look scabby and leak horrendously; it may be stuck up a hill in the woods; we may have no money to do more than keep the heating on for an extra day to stave off hypothermia. But the inner fire is there, the spirit is alive, and I wouldn't have it otherwise for the world.

And our Rector makes fabby mulled wine!

Things that you can't buy ...

I may chuck something at the telly next time I see this ad - I pictured it in French as being less irritating for today, when I realised that there are mega problems associated with buying more than a Marks & Spencers' semmit with my MasterCard. It's a question of enhanced security making life difficult, not just when I tried to buy online tickets for internal flights in the US - understandable to think that someone had run off with my card there, I suppose - but today, when I tried to pay for the new telly in a local shop. That's the telly I'll be chucking things at ...

It seems that if you actually spend the amount of money that it actually would be inconvenient to have on your person, it's a problem. You can be there, have put in the correct PIN, have heard the retailer give your security numbers off the back of the card, be known personally by said retailer - who happens to own the business you're trying to pay - and still some lassie far, far away with the accent to match won't let you use the card unless you tell the retailer the first two letters of your private password so that he - not you - can pass it on. I refused to do this in a crowded shop where your business is everyone else's, so the deal was cancelled.

I then went home to a serious-sounding call-back message from my bank's security; a further 15 minutes passed before I could actually remonstrate with a real person with a Scottish accent. Apparently it was "such a big sum of money". I had no idea I was turning into a big spender - it didn't strike me as ferociously big bucks. And I'll have to go through the business of contacting them again before I go to the US because that'll be another new spending pattern.

I dunno. I guess I'll have to stuff dollars in my bra or something. Dead convenient. "For everything else there's MasterCard" - but only if it doesn't cost too much.

Bonding with the new Bond

I've just enjoyed one of these days you retire for: morning coffee in Fazzi's in Glasgow, a visit to the big cinema (it keeps changing its name - was UCI) to see the new Bond film, and a late and bibulous lunch in Dino's. I have to say I enjoyed Casino Royale so much - more than any Bond movie since Doctor No, which I remember more than the guy who took me to see it in the early '60s.

This film has shed all the smoothie humour of the Roger Moore days and the growing reliance on gadgets and fancy transport, and has reverted to a much more physical style, as well as sticking much more closely to the original book, especially in the key scenes. The violence is ...very violent. Bond doesn't emerge from conflict with a smirk on his face and barely a smudge on his tux; he goes through clean shirts at a terrifying rate and sits in the shower wearing his second dinner suit of the evening after a memorable death-fest in a stairwell. The baddie is wonderfully unpleasant and has an eye problem that fair puts mine in the shade. I particularly enjoyed the fact that nearly all the technology used - by goodies and baddies alike - was familiar to me: mobile phones featured greatly, as did laptops, SMS and Photoshop. The only thing they didn't seem to do was keep a blog - but I don't suppose there was much time for blogging. Maybe M (Judi Dench) blogged on her bedside computer.....

The best bit about the film, however, is the lovely Daniel Craig (pictured). He has all you need in a Bond - blue eyes, reluctant but totally charming smile, and a body. (I'm being really, really restrained here). He does a great deal of running - see the photo - and there is a wonderful sequence near the start of the film in which he runs his socks off in pursuit of one of these amazing free runners. We see how Bond acquires his 00 status, and there is a suggestion that his later attitude towards women may evolve from what happens to him in this, the film of the first of Ian Fleming's Bond books. There is also an interesting reversal of the usual Bond/girl formula - the girl in question isn't the usual eye candy, which Bond undoubtedly is.

I'll stop there. I don't want to discourage my male readers. Just see it - preferably in a proper cinema. They even play the right tune at the end. Great stuff!

Achievers, huh?

Just came across this site, where I find one of my offspring recorded as having achieved something. (Where is the other one, I find myself asking indignantly - and it's not a wiki so I can't do anything to it). However, rather than dwell on this minor irritant, I find myself considering other FPs of our local school - the ones who will not be considered as having achieved anything much, ever. I had an interesting encounter with three of these former customers of mine today, as I returned from an equally interesting trip to Glasgow. The first two were in the Cal Mac waiting room; I had sat down fairly near them before clocking who they were.

The one who hailed me first was half cut, and swigged from a half-empty bottle of Buckie in between remarks - mostly friendly but excessively loud - which soon had the attention of every concession ferry passenger in the room. (The non-rush-hour traffic is mostly made up of old people. Like me.) He had acquired a villainous-looking scar down his cheek since I last saw him, and became alarmingly verbose within minutes. His pal, who had been in my class for years, was obviously embarrassed and eager to tell me that he himself was working hard at college and doing well, that I would be proud of him. When the drunken one went out for a smoke, the other apologised for the disturbance and seemed eager to show that he was civilised and adult and pleased to see me again.

The third lad was in the saloon when I boarded, working on diagrams in a college log-book. He was friendly, natural and proud of the work he was doing, which he was pleased to show me. Enjoyable company, in fact. He had obviously matured beyond the stage where he needed to prove himself with macho posturing or hide his embarrassment behind giggles and whispered remarks. The nadir of the afternoon came when I found myself wheeling on the drunken one and telling him not to use language such as he was shouting in my hearing. I'd been jolted out of my "normal person" mode and back into school-think. An old lady looked alarmed, but Buckfast Boy stepped back, hands spread: "Sorry, Miss. Sorry."

I relate all this partly to make sense for myself of the mindset of a boy like this. He was a nuisance in school, and he's now skiving college and annoying more powerful thugs who carved his face for him. He's about to acquire what his pal called "an ankle bracelet". As Shakespeare would say, "His eyes were set at three o' the afternoon". He told me he's going to grow up soon - but into what? All he seems to have learned is that I was not someone to mess with - and that's not going to see him far, is it?

And the visit to Glasgow? Very pleasant - lunch with
David to make up for distractions at Teach Meet 06 meant interesting conversation before I headed for the train.

And he paid - thanks, David!

Ben Gunn without the cheese

Well, that was quite a weekend! This photo of The Cathedral of The Isles, taken during Friday's lull in the frightful weather, gives no notion of the rattling slates, creaking roof timbers, guttering candles and flooded coastal roads that were to follow, nor of the fact that we would be stranded on Cumbrae by the storm and feel that by Sunday we were escaping by the skin of our teeth as we bumped across on the recently-restored Cumbrae ferry link which had been off earlier in the day. (We also had an interesting ride on the Western ferry from McInroy's point, travelling stern-first through the darkness as the sea washed down the length of the car deck, engulfing the cars at roof-height in a white-out of water and spray).

As for the weekend? We were there to sing in the Advent Carol service, and there were choristers stranded who had to be in London today (Monday), so we were not alone in our anxieties. But there was another sense in which we - four of us who've sung together in the cathedral since 1968 - were on our own, and that was in the experience stakes. By now, the rest of the choir seems to be made up largely of singers young enough to be our weans, and the result for me at least is a mix of smugness and irritation. Smugness because we've done it so often that we know exactly what's required, read like pros and don't wander off in mid-piece; irritation because we were surrounded by sopranos with the voices of angels and lowly sight-reading skills and an operatic bass who had never sung in a choir before and who tended not to watch the conductor. I was quite ratty by the time the performance began (who? moi?), so the spiritual dimension was somewhat lacking, though I did manage to fit in a quiet afternoon of study (1st Samuel, anyone?) before the singing began.

I'm ratty again right now because I still can't post my photos as I want to, and lost a first version of this because of it. But there's the usual virtual Mars Bar for the first to spot the point of the title of this post.

Cut off

Woe, woe and thrice woe. This is one of the relatively few times when I feel cut off, living here on the wrong side of the Firth. The photo was actually taken a couple of days ago, when the sea wasn't causing travel problems other than sea-sickness, but today all our ferries have been off since mid-morning and it's now so dark (at four in the afternoon) that I can't see the waves any more.

And today I was planning on travelling. Not anywhere exotic, but a trip involving two ferries, to The College on Cumbrae. Now, instead, having spent the whole day hanging around waiting to see what would happen, I'm going to have to resurrect some chilli from the freezer and think about going in the morning. Very disappointing.

Worse still, the connction saga continues, with the added complications of our new telly and the Sky package. Microfilters or no, neither the installation of the Sky line nor our broadband connection have been behaving normally. Furthermore (I love that word - so portentous) I don't seem to be able to blog from flickr any more. And yes, I have updated my settings.

I might as well be living in a cave. I used to be good with an open fire ....

Words fail me .....

Having just sat for 15 minutes trying to load beta blogger to publish an entry, I find myself so startled by the sudden appearance of the page that I've almost forgotten what I was going to post about. I had, in fact, begun to mail a reply to BT that the problem is theirs - but I'll do this first now that I'm here.

After teaching two hours intensively today on Higher Engish, and then spent 30 minutes on QuickTopic Document Review doing formative assessment on a Higher essay, I feel suddenly very ... teacherly again. I am exercised by the problems pupils carry into the Higher English course - in particular, today, the problem of a limited vocabulary. It is, I imagine, unthinkable that someone would sit Higher French without making an effort to learn new words, and words of a certain degree of sophistication so that they could get past the "je m'appelle.." mode, and yet they expect to cope with the subtleties of English literature without knowing, say, what "dreary" means. That example comes from today, but I could come up with many others - and that's before I move on to the technical language required to discuss literary technique with any degree of clarity.

Ah well. There is much to be done. I've suggested the daily read of Guardian Unlimited as a start to acquiring the necessary vocabulary - as well as the skills of the essayist. In the meantime, I find Quick Topic Document Review an excellent tool for online tuition at the moment, and am grateful to Dave Weinberger for pointing me towards it.

And now to see if I can establish sufficient connection to publish this ......

Commitment and nags

As I've bragged (or should that be brogged? - a neat amalgamation of verbs) about the success of edublogs like Progress Report I think it's only fair to acknowledge that wildbanks has been a complete failure in terms of encouraging a student to work and progress. The joyous bit for me was that I felt able to tell the parents that they were wasting their money and my time and that we should cease trading forthwith - how often did I long for that freedom in my classroom days!

I often reflect on the discrepancy between parents' ambitions for their children and the inclination of said children to do anything to fulfil these ambitions - which the child may even profess for themselves. On the other hand, it was just great when one of the Progress Report bloggers came back sua sponte with an onslaught on her Higher work - for then I was reminded of the drive created to improve and succeed.

In the end, of course, it's all a matter of commitment. Some people reach that stage of maturity earlier than others; some people have wonderful nagging parents who sacrifice their own peaceful lives to keep up the pressure. That's what I had when I was at school, and I've never ceased to marvel at the way my father - a famous Glasgow English teacher in his day - helped me with physics while my mother would do the preliminary work on my Virgil translation because I had so much homework. I hope I in turn was able to carry on the noble tradition of nag-in-chief despite the temptation to do my own thing.....

Sic transit Google

The past few days - since Wednesday afternoon, to my knowledge - I've had a completely creaky internet connection. It seems slightly better today, but not well enough to make web use anything but frustrating. Pages time out before loading; I have to make several attempts to load perfectly ordinary sites; Google is hopeless and Flickr not much better. I know of one other household, also on BT and also in my area, where they are suffering this problem, and it's happening to the two computers at The Blethers.

Any comment on this from all you more savvy users?

Travelling Russians

After a frustrating couple of days of slow downloads, timing-out for several web-sites and the inability to access Blethers at all some of the time, I'm typing with crossed fingers (no, not really) that we seem to have recovered. I've been seduced by Neil into adding the Twitter badge to my sidebar - not wildly useful in that no-one really wants to know what I'm doing except Mr B, and if I'm updating the badge he knows what I'm doing - but providing, in Neil's case, an explanation of why he wasn't around for me to moan at about my internet woes.

But a word more about our Russian friends, now safely in Cumbrae - kudos to the good people at The College for taking them in a day early after their brush with yesterday's weather on the Clyde. This incident underlined for me what I knew already: this is such a hard life, this touring with your music. So why do such splendid musicians have to trail round the towns and villages of Britain in winter, or leave their homes in St Petersburg every summer to perform in Italy? We're talking a minibus driven by their conductor: nae roadies, nae backup - there is no sense of pampering and they cannot afford to stay in hotels or B&Bs.

They are in this position because Russia is full of excellent singers and professional choirs - far too full for there to be audiences for their performances. The hangover from the Soviet era, in fact, when many of them received their training. Now there are no grants for young musicians and no subsidies for performers. So they come here, bringing their music to a wider audience and sending our money home to families and to impoverished students. They rely on hospitality to keep their costs down and good takings to make any kind of profit from the outlay on the hired bus (I noticed that this year's bus had Swiss plates)

I was horrified to learn of their experiences elsewhere - though not, Jurij assured me, in most of Scotland. But it must be galling to turn up to a venue to find that the responsible contact has either forgotten about publicity or not bothered to set it up; where a church which seats 500 provides an audience of 50; where the incumbent announces that he has only charged £5.oo for a ticket and intends to take half the proceeds anyway. I felt his gloom when he announced that he wasn't getting any younger, and watched him write mails to his daughter back in St Petersburg.

So why am I going on about this? I suppose I'm flagging up a point of view to counter those I've come across about visiting choirs being "too much bother" - "too demanding" - "expect you to look after them all the time". Let's put it straight: these are terrific musicians trying to earn a living by their singing. They can earn the same money creating mobile phone rings - one of last year's tenors coudn't come because this is what he's doing now and he has a girl friend. He's got a life, in other words, that he wants to live normally. But I'd rather have the singing than the ringing!

These were the days ...(an in joke)

A couple of days ago I passed the first anniversary of this blog. I was, however, too busy to mark this, as I was hosting the fifth visit to Dunoon of Voskresenije, a professional vocal ensemble from St Petersburg. Now, reeling slightly, I offer the fruits of my experience to the blogosphere.

So: Visiting Russians? Nae bother! (A brief guide)
The key to success is keeping the visit in mind for about eight months before it happens. You need to plan your publicity and the timing of adverts and press-releases and poster-putting-up (they send the posters). You need to arrange for sufficient host-families to put up the singers for the night of the performance. You should encourage others - I do this through a church - to supply tea and buns. Emails arrive from strange places and you realise the choir is to be in the UK for at least a month before you see them. This is important, as you can't be sure that the director will be able to hijack someone's computer at each venue. You need to be able to contact other hosts in moments of crisis - even if only to find out how many singers are coming this year. And then, despite all your confident predictions, they drive like the wind and arrive before the earliest you thought possible in a hired minibus driven by the conductor, intent on the nearest loo followed by a great deal of tea. In that order.

The singers like to eat before they sing - but not a proper meal. Anything like cakes, soup, rolls ...... anything. They rehearse, briefly, in the venue. They vanish, and reappear in performance mode. And the performance? Wonderful. The sound is intense, electrifying. At one point, as the whole ensemble came together on the word "gospodin", I felt the hair rise on my head - the volume reaching a pitch I would have thought only possible with amplification. The sopranoes are petite figures with huge and wonderful voices, and the second alto, who sang a solo, seems far too slender for such a rich cello-note.

But this is not a critique - it is a "how to". It is fun to have a few words of welcome in Russian, but not necessary. It is good to have filled the venue and to have charged realistic prices for the tickets - this is not some amateur group for whom you sell tickets apologetically. It is good to remember that this is their livelihood, and not to skin off half the takings for your own purposes. The singers sell CDs and Russian dolls at the interval. They take a collection for students back home. They do a couple of great encores if you clap sufficiently - this is a good idea also. And then you take your alloted Russian(s) home and give them a good meal and put them to bed, where they will stay as long as possible.

You make like a proper Scottish seaside landlady at breakfast - whatever your own preference, sausages and black pudding vanish along with the bacon and eggs - and deliver them back to the meeting point in good time for their departure. Often more tea has to be consumed, and more cake/rolls/whatever: a sense of stocking up in case of problems later.

And problems happen. In the middle of writing this I had a phone call from Jurij, the conductor. The gales which we had feared have prevented the sailing of the Ardrossan-Brodick ferry, and they are due to sing on Arran tonight. No gig, no accommodation = substantial loss of revenue. Last I heard, they were heading for Cumbrae. It's a wild night. I hope they make it.

Slapped wrists?

In a recent post I leapt into a storm (well - a slight depression, perhaps) about the apparent barring of Blogger by Argyll and Bute. It turns out it was a technical hitch, apparently, and all is now well. Today, wrist smarting slightly, I feel the need to justify the haste with which some of us believed the worst and didn't instead seek out the technical staff to find out what was what.

For a start, of course, I'm no longer in the system. But I was in it, and my experience as an employee left me more ready to trust the former colleague who alerted me to the outage than the people in charge of deciding what we could/could not do online in school. I'd like to give a picture of the possible scenario had I still been in B7, trying to use Web2.0 technology with, say, a boisterous class of S3 mixed-ability boys.

B7 is at the end of a corridor, tucked far from the heart of the school - the office, the Resource Centre, where lurk the people who know about gaining access to forbidden sites. Into the room come 27 assorted boys: "Miss! Are we bloggin' the day?" Expectancy is high - this is right up their street and access to the department computer trolley is rationed and carefully booked in advance. Let's say they have just set up the necessary site/sites for their work and are are eager to get blogging. The laptops are distributed and started up. It is only now, ten minutes into the period, that the problem becomes apparent. Your plans are scuppered and class morale plummets - these are not thoughtful academics we're dealing with, but very ordinary kids.

So what now? Leave the room to find out what's up? Find someone who can reach the necessary techies for you? (I never knew how to do this - it was A Secret.) Or quickly think up some other computer-based activity to keep the boys cheerfully occupied while mentally reshuffling your planned work for the next week, knowing that if you abandon them for the necessary length of time the consequences could be .... interesting? Rhetorical question, huh?

Seems to me there are a few pointers here. The first might be to realise that if web-based activities are on the increase in classrooms, then web-based hiccups have to be spotted instantly and teachers informed before the point of no return - in the same way as we used to be warned about fire drills, say. And perhaps it'd be a good thing if every teacher had a quick contact line to the techies - and it's no use firing off a specualtive email in the hope of hearing something before you go home that night. If you know your resource isn't working but will work again, at least you can plan and don't look quite such a fool in the eyes of the pupils.

In my admittedly limited experience of using computers in the classroom - not through choice but because it was so cumbersome to arrange - I found it frustrating and demeaning to be treated as if I too were a pupil who was not trusted to know how to unlock the sacred mysteries. Perhaps that explains the vehemence of the reactions which now seem to have been excessive and misdirected. I think there are lessons to be learned.

Food for thought

Scotland is an amazing country. In one day we passed from the bright sun and autumn colours of the far north-east to the deep winter of Glencoe (pictured) - although the autumn leaves were still visible against the snow in several places. The first thing which struck me was the enormity of the windmills in a windfarm just south of Thurso - there are some pix on flickr which show them. It brought it home just what we have to do to our country to maintain the absurd standards of comfort on which we insist (the hotel had been so warm), just as did the huge lorries negotiating the Berriedale Braes on their way to and from the north coast towns - terrifying gradients with inadequate-looking escape runs off to the roadside.

There was a further comment on life in these parts in the sight of the Duke of Sutherland's huge statue on a plinth high above the town of Gospie. Even after we had crossed the Dornoch Firth I could still see it - it dominates the landscape more than any windmill or radio mast - and I couldn't help reflecting on how the people of the area must feel about it. do they notice it any more? Do they still feel resentment for the fate of their ancestors? Or are the people now living there in some way a replacement for the families who were cleared from the land in the past? Dunrobin Castle is now open to visitors; we can pay to gawp at a privileged lifestyle and feel glad that our money goes to offset the cost of maintaining it - can't we? But onward and southward, for the weather will not last ...

It broke as we headed down the Great Glen. The snow which we had seen on the distant hills was now beside the road, and actually on the road in north-facing bays in Drumnadrochit, where the temperature barely rose above freezing. As we drove into Fort William the first blobs of sleet hit the car, and by the time we reached the Glencoe Visitors' Centre it was gloomy under a dark sky. I've never been in Glencoe in snow; it was an awesome sight heightened by the presence overhead of two rescue helicopters. At the highest point of the glen the snow was all around us and the mountains merged with the darkening sky as we climbed back into the warm womb of the car and headed down the road.

It snowed almost constantly from there to Loch Eck. We drove into the funnel of white shrapnel till we were dizzy, and were glad to arrive exactly eight hours after leaving Thurso. I've made the odd reference to our need for fuel to keep us going, but there is one fuel fact I have omitted. We travelled that whole 300 mile journey on a great cooked breakfast - that, and a lump of chocolate cake in Glencoe.

Economical, huh?

A first time for everything ....

Home from my wanderings, I am left at this point with the feeling that for a small country Scotland covers a big area! It took us 8 hours to come home yesterday, and I shall write about that journey later. But now I want to look back at our experience in Thurso, and all that happened there.

We arrived in the late afternoon after a drive up the A9 - the road that links Edinburgh to Thurso. The hotel in which we stayed, The Weigh Inn, doesn't appear clearly on Google Earth, but is right there on Flash Earth - see the screen shot. It was too gloomy to see much, and we were too busy socialising with the happy couple and our friends who had travelled north with us. Thurso is about the same size as Dunoon, and they have a Somerfield's (lucky them) just like us. There is a Lidl and there is to be a Tesco, so there are advantages to being there. Apart from that, it was decidedly chilly and we were glad to be indoors with the Prosecco.

The morning brought us our first view of Orkney - that's the distant land mass in the pic - and Scabster, just along the road. There was a sense of immense space, of being on the edge of things, of the long road like a string stretched behind us. But we were there for a marriage - for that's how I think of the Civil Partnership ceremony to which we had been invited. A marriage of souls who were meant to be together. The ceremony, in front of friends and family, was dignified and touching. The photo session afterwards was joyous, the few speeches happy and appropriate, the food good and the crack excellent. The disco was too loud for my taste, but that's ok - we sat in the bar with other sensitive plants and chatted, emerging for the odd dance.

In other words, it was like any other wedding celebration. The only difference was that Douglas and Peter are men. I am so pleased to have been invited to share their day, and utterly delighted that they are together. May they live long and prosper!

Heading north

I've been packing. I hate packing - but I'm looking forward to this trip. Tomorrow I shall leave by a hideously early ferry to drive to Thurso. Thurso on a November Thursday - doesn't sound a blast, but I think it will be. My first attempt to visit the extreme north coast of Scotland was thwarted by two factors: the call to sing at a special service in the Cathedral on Cumbrae and the minor inconveniences of the early stages of pregnancy (I had gone off beer. And coffee.) That was over 33 years ago and I've never been back. Now I'm going to another first for me: a civil partnership celebration. Meeting with friends as well as new people in a new place sounds like a good mix - even if it is bucketing with rain outside.

And because it's bucketing, I've been doing what I always pictured myself doing when I didn't have to go to work (apart from the packing, that is). I've sat reading for the past two hours - more of "Imperium" and a chunk of David Day's Preaching Workbook. For most of last year I felt guilty if I didn't go out and bash along in the wet at some point, but now I swim with the pre-breakfast ancients that need has subsided, just a bit.

I'll be up at 5am tomorrow - no late blogging for me tonight!

Links and pleasure

The ultra-observant reader may have spotted a new link on my blogroll - rather self-indulgently to my own new site, where I shall probably put occasional poems - occasional in both senses of the word - as the mood or the muse takes me. Probably this is simply an excuse to keep a name and URL that I liked, as well as the rather pretty new template from Blogger beta. I'll maybe park some photos there too.

Being brain-dead today - a result of working this morning on Bible passages to do with the nature of kingship (and the difference between "kingship" and "kingdom"!) - I'll content myself with the two pleasurable inputs these last two days. One is starting on Robert Harris' Imperium, which feels right up my via already, and the other was listening to a performance on record of Rachmaninov's Vespers.

Perhaps the Vespers was in anticipation of the return to Dunoon of Voskresenije, the vocal ensemble from St Petersburg (Wednesday 22 November, 7.30pm, Holy Trinity Church). Dunoon is not in the boondocks, despite what all you city slickers may think, and it will be perfectly possible to catch a ferry after the concert - so if you fancy a very special musical experience we'd be delighted to see you. The group are not performing in the Glasgow area this year - catch them if you can!