Bob Servant

Quite a disappointment, to be honest. Maybe after Burnistoun and Still Game (and the occasional tweet by 'Bob Servant's account') I had expected too much. Maybe I need at least one character to relate to even in a sitcom, and the protagonists in this one could be roughly divided into the unpleasant and the revolting. Maybe it was simply unfunny for somebody with my sense of humour. Whatever the reason, I basically stopped paying proper attention midway through the second episode.

Nothing truly Scandinavian?

The problem with the recently pulled SAS advert was ... that there were too many problems with it.

It pretended to challenge some myths, but did so by buttressing others (like the 'democracy' of classical Greece, which was only economically viable thanks to slave labour).

It implied that a nation can claim something as truly 'its' only if it wasn't a development of something else from elsewhere (as if baseball couldn't be 'truly American' if it developed from English rounders).

It implied that something can't originate in more than one place independently (there is no evidence that vertical European windmills developed from horizontal Iranian ones).

But the main problem was that it didn't really say "for many things we think of as Scandinavian we are, partially at least, indebted to other nations". It said "some nations are inventive, but all we can do is steal ideas and then pretend they were ours".

James Robertson: The Testament of Gideon Mack

This task of ordering my thoughts and writing them down is doing me good. It brings me ever closer to a conclusion.

(Gideon Mack, p 35) 

One of the great things about writing is that by turning one's thoughts into written words one is forced to phrase them carefully, maybe even reconsider them. That's why I was writing short 'texts', afterwards buried in my desk's drawer, even in those bygone days when a pen and paper were the usual tools; that's why I'm blogging now even though I don't expect anybody else to read my posts.

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I dissembled, as ever.

(Gideon Mack, p 94) 

A gay growing up in a 70s/80s small town, I developed dissembling into such a second nature that I couldn't (still can't) shed it when it became unnecessary, even unhelpful.

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I have no objection to ferries or newspapers or play-park swings or television on the Sabbath, but I understand where the impulse to ban such things comes from. Sundays for too many people have become noisy, unrestful days. I like quiet Sundays, Sundays of thought and reflection, churchgoing, family lunches for those who have families, long walks, long naps in front of old movies on the box; Sundays without supermarkets and traffic, loud neighbours and trouble in the streets.

(Gideon Mack, p 95)

I would list slightly different sets of activities, but heartily agree with the general drift. Unfortunately where I live even DIY is considered a perfect Sunday pursuit, and half the population seems to think that making a lot of noise is imperative for feeling good.

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On 1st March 1979, a referendum had been held, asking the Scots whether they wanted a devolved Assembly in Edinburgh. The result was a resounding maybe.

(Gideon Mack, p 122)

The best summary of that particular public vote I've ever read.

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Everything in my life seemed to be in the past.

(Gideon Mack, p 159)

Since I went into self-imposed exile almost five years ago it feels like however long I may yet be here, nothing really important can happen, because it already has.

What lockdown?

I can understand that for most people something quite out of the ordinary is happening, but as for myself ...

Yes, where I live now I have to wear a face mask in public; to wait for my vernal haircut; to hope clothes shops will reopen before I run out of something through wear and tear; and I can't take my Kindle and go for a few pints in a pub. But otherwise ...

I go to work as usual - we factory menials can't work from home. I keep my distance from my workmates - as I had before. Save for food shops I go basically nowhere else - but then I hardly had for a few years. With the exception of the pub - but there isn't that much difference between reading a book in a cosy pub and doing it in a cosy bedsit. (The pub can be more pleasant, but it isn't always so; and the bedsit is always cheaper.)

In a sense I pity the others, because I know too well how unfulfilling this way of living is. In a sense I just shrug their frustration off thinking "welcome to my life" ...

Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (Il barone rampamte)

I recognized his usual manner of rejecting anything that forced him to emerge from his world.

(p 239)

One might say that the more determined he was to stay hidden up in his branches, the greater the need he felt to create new relations with the human race.

(p 267)

(both by the narrator, Biagio, about his brother, Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò)

I suspect I'm a lot like that. Where I live is neither attractive nor interesting to me, so I have little to talk about with the locals. I live in my own world of books, music, websites and so on, and if anybody tries to drag me out of my shell I instinctively recoil. On the other hand I'm constantly looking for ways of meeting people with similar interests via the internet. I do enjoy communicating with people ... but only with some people, in some languages, and preferably in writing (which for me is an easier way of expressing myself than speech is, but that's a topic for another post).

My fifteen minutes of Twitter fame

I basically never tag anybody on Twitter, even if I talk about them. But the other day a wisecrack alluding to the lyrics of Dreamers occurred to me; when I later tweeted it, on a whim I did tag Neon Waltz, the band responsible. Somehow I felt it might amuse them. And lo and behold, they retweeted it, which resulted in its accumulating 30 likes by midnight.

I know, I know. But I've probably not received so many likes for all my other tweets put together, and during the year I've been on Twitter I must have posted a few dozen.

Stuama

'S ann neònach a tha seo. Dh'òl mi balgam vodka glè bheag madainn DiLuain, agus as dèidh sin, gun a bhith a' rùnachadh sin, cha do dh'òl mi balgam alcoil eile gus oidhche Ardaoin - agus cha do dh'ionndrainn mi e. Gu dearbh, cha tàinig e a-steach orm gus an oidhche Ardaoin gun robh seo air tachairt ...

Earrach a' tighinn

Cha robh an geamhradh garbh, ach cha robh e snog a bharrachd, le cion an t-sneachda. A thuilleadh air sin, bha sreath de sheachd seachdainean ann dar a bhiodh mi ag obair dìreach nan sioftaichen maidne, rud a dh'fhàgadh mi claoidhte gu dearbh. Agus 's mathaid gu robh mi a' cosg cus ama san taigh-sheinnse, mus do dhùisg iad uile.

Air an làimh eile, lean mi orm le mo ionnsachadh chànanan, leugh mi (no, na bu trice, ath-leugh mi) iomadh leabhar math, agus ged nach do lùghdaich mi  gu mòr càrn-obrach nan cùisean a tha mi airson a dhèanamh fhathast, 's dòcha nach do mheudaich mi e.

Co-dhiù no co-dheth, bidh co-là Glaodhach Obar Bhrothaig ann a-màireach: tha làithean nas fhaide na oidhcheannan mar tha, tha an teothachd a' sìor èirigh, tha duilleagan a' nochdadh air na craobhan ... Chì sinn am bi an t-earrach nas fhearr na an geamhradh a dh'aindeoin a' bhìoras.