The ominous sounding ‘Omicron Variant’ – obviously named by a Dr Who writer – has led to sudden reappearance of metaphor from people who should know better. We’re back to “battling” against a “super-sneaky” virus. My thoughts on this have not changed since March 2020, but I’m surprised that it is still so prevalent.
Also, as the UK Government (and others) reintroduce some travel restrictions, as predictable as a predictable thing, the travel industry jumps up bleating.
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I watched the much-advertised Peter Jackson Beatles documentary Get Back. I wasn’t sure about part 1 – I thought it strayed just the wrong side of the line separating ‘fly on the wall’ from ‘voyeuristic,’ although watching the song Get Back emerge from random strumming was remarkable. Episode 2 livened up when Billy Preston dropped by the studio. Episode 3 was the one that fully did it for me. I promised a friend I’d avoid spoilers, so I will, but the evident joy on their faces as they play together as a band makes it special (as does young Heather McCartney, fresh from drumming with Ringo, earnestly discussing the ethics of killing cats with John Lennon).
I’ve seen a lot of reaction in which commentators watched the footage and found their prior biases confirmed. There’s a time and place for that, but sometimes you just have to watch genius at work.
Re-activating the ‘Covid-19 Diary’ category to note that Kirstin and I got our boosters yesterday. We were given Moderna this time (it was Astra-Zeneca last time) and I felt this one in ways that normally I don’t. I suspect the nurse wasn’t quite as precise as others have been. My arm still aches and I’m feeling a bit out of it. In fairness, I’m still feeling out of sorts as a result of the switch to a low-carb diet, but I’m hoping that sorts itself out over the next couple of days. I slept for 9 hours last night and expect the same tonight. We have someone coming round to do some maintenance work in the garden tomorrow, so I’ll need to be up.
I have mixed views on the boosters. The dominant one, of course, is that I’m pleased to have had it, but I am acutely aware that there are several billion people in the world who haven’t had any vaccine at all. I don’t mean the ideological anti-vaxxers, for whom I have neither time nor tolerance – I mean all those who have never had any chance of being offered the vaccine in the first place. From my earliest posts under this category, I have said that I am aware of my privilege; that privilege is on a global scale, not just local.
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Doctor Who has hit a streak of form. It is the final set of episodes with Chris Chibnall in charge and Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor. Frustratingly, it is only in this season that Whittaker’s potential is being realised. Reactions online are ‘mixed.’ There are a lot of people who don’t seem to get the idea that in a multi-part story, it isn’t going to get wrapped up in episode three. Social media is dominated by the furious shooting their mouths off in incoherent rage: the rest of us, who enjoyed it, just wait for the next episode in anticipation.
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COP26 ended with politicians saying that it was, on balance, a success, and scientists calling it a disaster. When push comes to shove, I’ll side with the scientists. I cannot see this ending well. All the troubles we currently have with flows of refugees are nothing to what is coming. Borders will either hold, or they won’t, but they’ll certainly be fortified. My guess is that, once the politicians finally wake up to what’s happening, we’ll see substantial erosion of what we consider to be social norms. It is going to get messy in the medium to long term.
It’s a week since I brought the daily posts to an end, and the seven days since have been slightly weird as I’ve resisted the urge to open up the laptop and write something here. The game of the foot and the ball has helped divert my attention, which is a good thing. In the interim I’ve done a bit of writing, taken the self-publishing process a bit further, and begun research for the novel(s) after the current work in progress.
Yesterday I did something that I’ve taken to enjoying. Its about a mile and a half along the old railway track past the golf course to the nearest tram stop. Using my travel pass I can get from there to various places for free, do a bit of shopping, or wandering, then get back to the same stop and walk home. I get three-plus miles of walking in and enjoy the surroundings. I went out to the Gyle shopping centre yesterday. We lived nearby when it opened, and the scrawny trees the planted then have matured nicely, and I must be one of the few who can remember it being opened by the late Stratford Johns in front of no crowd at all.
Anyway, the tram line goes through the Gyle Business Park, once thriving but now, I think largely thanks to Covid and working from home, plastered with ‘To Let’ signs. For decades developers were pushing for more office space in Edinburgh, and a lot of institutions, such as pension funds, invested as landlords. It’s a bit soon to say for definite, but I suspect substantial changes to come in the pattern of development (see bullet point 6 here from last March).
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Part of the research I’ve been doing was to track down a copy of The Short Arm of the Law, the autobiography of William Merrilees OBE, a former Chief Constable of Edinburgh. Whatever Merrilees’s merits, undue modesty wasn’t one of them. The short book is notably unreflective on his later life, being based around a succession of his ‘successes’. The success that was his springboard to promotion was the prosecution of the proprietors of the Kosmo Dance Club in 1933, on the basis that the club was a front for prostitution.
Subsequently, he was fixated on cleaning pre-WW2 Edinburgh of the scourge of homosexuality, a task at which he claimed he succeeded, although all the evidence is to the contrary. I should add in fairness that the chapters on his early life in Leith are far more interesting and considered.
His crusade on vice, in conjunction with the then Procurator Fiscal in Edinburgh James Adair (so much for separation of duties), crosses all the lines you might imagine between prosecuting the organised commercial exploitation of prostitution (the Kosmo Club) and punishment of anything that people appear to be enjoying (it is no coincidence that Adair was a long-standing elder of the Church of Scotland). Along the way, by accident, Merrilees drops tantalising hints about pre-WW2 Edinburgh, from the brothel that almost exclusively employed married women hoping to earn some extra cash, to his regret that there is no law under which he can prosecute the two lesbians who are obviously enjoying themselves (a very Edinburgh attitude to pleasure).
Our mysterious ‘lady’ proved to be an active pervert in a big way, a Lesbian of strongly masculine tendencies, and a woman of great wealth. She appeared to enjoy her unnatural relations with young women…Curiously enough, however, this practice between women is not an offence in law. (p.108/9)
Interestingly, to me at least, aside from the Kosmo case, which was widely reported at the time, he offers few details of other cases he mentions, and rarely mentions names, although the prosecutions must have been a matter of public record. I suspect names were removed pre-publication when the manuscript was reviewed for approval. I’ve identified one case, I think before he was promoted to sergeant, as that of the Commercial Hotel in Leith (1928), again in connection with prostitution, of which details are available in the Scotsman archive. Another, relating to Maximes Palais de Dance and its links to homosexuality, of concern as it exploited its position on the tramline to and from an Army barracks, was harder to track down. I think that it was the prosecution of Peter Allan Ogg in 1938 (a partially successful appeal against his conviction is reported in the the Scottish legal records) who is described as, amongst other things, a dancehall proprietor. A second defendant, whose name appears in one brief reference in the Scotsman, has disappeared into history–I can’t find him on the usual genealogy sites either. In this case, the homosexuality itself was the crime (acts of gross indecency with other male persons). So far as I can tell, neither the Scotsman nor the Evening News reported the trial.
I note that counsel for the defence in all three cases was Daniel Blades, later Lord Blades, a senator of the College of Justice. Coincidence?
And so, after fifteen months, the daily Covid diary comes to an end. As I write, the Prime Minister has just announced a delay in lifting of restrictions in England; I have no idea what the position is in Scotland, that will be announced tomorrow–though if I have to hazard a guess it will be exactly the same as England but with a kilt wrapped around it for presentational purposes, quite possibly accessorised with faux grievance.
No such faux grievance about Scotland -v- Czechoslovakia this afternoon. It’s great that Scotland are back in a major championship, but they have the disadvantage of not being very good. I hate to think what will happen in their next game, which is against England. Of course, there is a lot to be said with sticking with teams through hard times as well as good, why else do I keep my eye on the Derby County scores? But it abrades the soul. Don’t Come Home too Soon, sang Del Amitri, but Scotland are already at home which, in the circumstances, is just as well.
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I thought about writing a farewell paragraph or two, but decided against it. I’ve said previously that my plan is to reduce all of these posts to book form, and part of that process will be writing an introduction reflecting on the process and contents–I’m a bit too close to it right now. When I do write it, a version will no doubt appear here.
I will say that, on the whole, I’ve enjoyed it, and the discipline of writing it, even if only a single paragraph, has introduced a welcome rhythm to the day during a strange time. I’ve also very much appreciated getting feedback and responses in comments, by eMail and via assorted mobile Messenger apps.
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Music: I’ve added at least one piece of music to almost every post since last March without, for the most part, any duplication (or at least very little deliberate duplication). The music has ranged from early music of pilgrims to Bethlehem, to Taylor Swift. Listening to it has been a pleasure, for me at least, while having to think of something new every evening has occasionally been a chore. Anyway, I’ve posted both of these before, though in one case as a cover by another artist. No regrets.
Joni Mitchell, of course: Urge For Going and Coyote.
A year ago today (Waiting For The Good Samaritan) it was cloudy and grey and I described Mr Michael Gove as a man lodged in the u-bend of power like a turd that won’t flush. At least the weather is better now.
I slept for ten hours last night. I didn’t expect it, but I’m not complaining. I had a sleep mask over my eyes (recommended by my friend Sheila last year) and that helped. I’m still tired, but that’s because I had a good walk this afternoon. Part of it was spent wandering around B&Q in search of things I thought they’d have, but they didn’t; the other part was getting there and back in 24° heat, albeit that there was a pleasant breeze. The walking was fine, but the final bit, back up the hill to our house, took it out of me. A cold beer when I got home helped.
There isn’t much more to say. I’ve been offline all day and have no idea what, if anything has happened.
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Music: This being the penultimate daily post, I thought I should have an appropriate tune as I start to reflect on the past fifteen months and life in general. So here’s Eddie and the Hot Rods: Do Anything You Wanna Do, a motto I’ve tried to live by one way or another most of my life, though not as successfully or consistently as I might have liked. Still, that’s what retirement is for.
Note: this post was drafted earlier in the day and almost didn’t go live–I was watching the Denmark-v-Finland game in which Christian Eriksen collapsed. As I write this, the news is that he is stable in hospital; had he not been, this post would have been pulled.
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For a long time now I’ve been describing the spirographic arc* of a slow waltz through Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of TIme, which I find I have to be in the right mood to read. It can be very funny once you get into the rhythm of its endless proliferation of sub-clauses, all perfectly punctuated. I recently started on book 6–The Kindly Ones–which puts us immediately before, and in the early months of, WW2, and find, slightly to my surprise, that I’m really enjoying it.
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…and that’s another thing about Stargate SG1, no matter the planet, everyone speaks English. And not just any old English: they all learned that peculiarly stilted English with no contractions that US network SciFi reserves for alien races. Also, the stories just aren’t that good, at least in season one.
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New adventures in baking today, as I tried baking a loaf with spelt flour. This is an attempt to vary the grains somewhat and see how it interacts with some intolerances in the household. I have a vague memory of using spelt flour many years ago and deciding not to do it again. I can’t remember now why that was, but I can say that it is a lot more difficult to work than your average commercial bread flour.
The end result is OK; quite dense, but tasty enough.
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* yes, I know that, strictly, the shapes described with a spirograph set are known as hypotrochoids and epitrochoids.
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Music: after the Christian Eriksen thing, here’s Ian Dury: Reasons To Be Cheerful Part 3
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