Monsieur Eiffel's Magnificent Meccano Set!

Postcard from Paris

My older son, Boris has been asking to visit Paris since he was about four years old. It was around then that he was given a video of Disney's take on Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame - and was intrigued. For years we have told him that we would take him there, "one day", but that he would need to be at least ten; and be able to enjoy sitting in a restaurant with us and enjoy experimenting with strange food served pretty slowly! This year he met all those requirements, and so rather than a birthday present, or party or outing with his friends, we took him to Paris.

Paris is a wonderfully photogenic city (well, the historic centre is anyway), and contrary to popular myth is stocked with many friendly and charming Parisian's. On the Metro, one lady asked us if we were Irish and in Paris for the football. On discovering that my wife is indeed Irish she roundly denounced France's cheating handballed winner in the World Cup qualifier the night before - "this is not how we should win", she said. Who could disagree!

In terms of wonderful things to do, see, experience and eat - Paris is simply fantastic. Museums, galleries, history, churches, modern buildings, abound. The only negative thing about this is the exchange rate; we kept asking ourselves "how much?!?!" and moving on minus purchase. Books were the best example because many of the English language books had the price in Sterling printed on the back for direct comparison. One that caught my eye, about France under occupation in WWII was priced at £7.99 but on sale in Paris for €18- . With an exchange rate of close to 1:1, the book was duly returned to the shelf.

The photo above, is of a Notre Dame gargoyle, which family consensus maintains bears an uncanny resemblance to myself. This is the place that young Boris wanted to go to most of all - up the towers of Notre Dame, to imagine young Quasimodo clambering up over the stonework and looking out over Paris. It's a LONG wait to get up the tower, but well worth it, and one of the cheapest trips in the capital (€8, but under 26 year-old free).

The follow-up parenting task is to help young Boris appreciate that this was a huge treat requiring gratitude; not the norm generating demanding expectations!

More photos to follow - if I get time.

Film Notes: Kes

Ken Loach's 1970 film "Kes" is a classic of its kind. Brutal, honest, painful, with moments of joy, humour and tragedy. The film, based on Barry Hines' book A Kestrel for a Knave, concerns a schoolboy in a poverty-stricken Yorkshire mining estate. Young Billy (David Bradley) is trapped in an inescapable cycle of deprivation, caused by poverty wages, an absent father, a failing school and a troubled mother. His problems are exacerbated by the ridicule and abuse he receives at school and a bullying older brother at home.

The film takes place in Billy's final year at school in which the various factors contributing to his hopelessness, coalesce to seal his fate - of not being able to escape from the poverty and powerlessness that has been his lot. His school is an especially grim place, with a headmaster (Grice) who thrashes and berates his pupils, in the apparent belief that education in a meritocracy should lift people from their circumstances - and if it fails to, is simply the fault of the individual. Unwilling to see the social-economic system as the problem, Grice is left with the only option - to blame the victim. While Grice is a worrying character, Brian Glover as the idiotic (and juvenile) PE teacher is like some PE teachers I remember from school, slightly dangerous - and very funny. Colin Welland, as Mr Farthing is one of few sympathetic characters in the film, a teacher genuinely interested in helping the boy, yet his sympathy and care is in itself also powerless in the face of wider social forces.

Sullen, quiet, withdrawn and defeated, young Billy finds an interest which at last inspires him, spurs him to read, to engage and instills hope within him for the first time. He finds, and hand-rears a baby kestrel who he names 'Kes', teaching, training and flying his beloved bird every day. The relationship between the boy and the wild creature is beautiful, and a key part of the film. In one memorable scene, Billy speaks to Mr Farthing's class about the art of Falconry - suddenly speaking with knowledge, authority, eloquence, and passion; qualities entirely absent from his life until that point.

Once again though, the central message of the film is rammed home by Ken Loach that most political of film-makers; as even this individual hope is snuffed out in the cruelest of ways.

This is a really memorable film, quite brilliantly acted and directed. There are several films in which child-actors with very pronounced accents are a problem for the viewer from outside that region - but not here. This is rather a captivating representation of a group of people, a time, a place, a set of social circumstances and the characters interactions within it. This is emotionally charged, thoughtful and highly political film-making. HMV have been selling the DVD at around £2 as well, an absolute bargain!

Remembrance '09

I don't think I am alone in sensing that the Remembrance day observance struck an unusually sombre note in the national consciousness this year. Perhaps the pictures on the early evening news of soldiers coffins being paraded through Wooton Basset, the dead of Helmand, has changed our views. I may be wrong - it may be simply that my oldest son is now of an age to ask serious questions about it all; or maybe it was that he was affected by attending the Black Watch memorial service in Perth last week that brought the reality closer to our home. Either way, at church on Sunday when the 2minutes silence was respected as usual - there was a poignancy in the air.

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, I found myself in the timber section of B&Q on the Crieff Road in Perth. The two-minutes silence was duly announced and virtually the whole shop stopped, in total silence. My Grandparents described the way that in decades past, when memories of World Wars were fresh and raw - the whole country would come to an Armistace standstill to remember the fallen; cars would pull off the road, trains would wait at stations and trading and conversation would be postponed.

During my childhood, the stalemate of the cold-war meant that our exposure to the victims of war was minimal. Today however, our more volatile world, and our governments' willingness to engage our armed forces in conflicts means that such rememberings are resuming their significance. My son, (who is 10) learnt more about the horror of war, and the seriousness of it through the tears he observed from the bereaved of the Black Watch last Friday, than he will from any history book.

As usual, at this time of year I pause to read a little from the First World War poets, whose words are so powerful, moving, alarming, and as deceptively simple as they are disturbing. Of them all, I find Seigfreid Sasoon's words consistently engaging and thought-provoking. This is his poem 'Survivors' which describes the shell-shocked, injured and bewildered patients of Craiglockart military hospital where Sasoon was incarcerated.

Survivors
No doubt they'll soon get well; the shock and strain
Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk.
Of course they're 'longing to go out again,' -
These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk.
They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed
Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died,-
Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud
Of glorious war that shatter'd all their pride...
Men who went out to battle, grim and glad;
Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad.

Craiglockhart. October, 1917.

Icicle Land

This last one is of the front bumper of the hire-car!

Mautendorf

Mautendorf was a lovely village to stay near - but really seemed to come alive under a good snowfall.

Eritrea: Online Human Rights Petition

Many people are concerned that the usual EU principle of giving aid in conjunction with seeking improvements in human rights, has recently been waived in the case of Eritrea. The human rights situation in that country is desperate, with minorities, especially Christians, facing severe persecution when they seek to express their 'freedom of thought, conscience and religion' (As per Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights).

Historically, such unmonitored grants have been used to further pressure dissenters into obedience to state control. If you agree that the EU should have tied the 122m Euro development to verifiable improvements in civil liberties, you may wish to add your name to the online petition calling on them to do so. You can find it at www.csw.org.uk/eritreapetition

(please note this petition is now closed)

And then it snowed...... Mautendorf

'parrently the heaviest they've had there in October for a quarter of a century

John Lees' Barclay James Harvest Live at Perth Concert Hall

John Lees' Barclay James Harvest played a great gig in Perth Concert Hall on Friday night, featuring a strong set of classic songs, covering the full breadth of their diverse four-decade history.

The gig got off to a strange start, the sound crew having a few problems balancing the sound, and John Lees himself looking strangely flustered and distracted. At the end of the first song (Nova Lepidoptera) he explained that he'd just received a phone call ten-minutes before walking on stage to say that he'd become a grand-father!

The gig then really got started, the sound system seemed to be sorted and band stormed through their set, the highlights of which were upbeat rockers like Cheap the Bullet, and Poor Wages, delicate ballads like Galadriel, the bluesy confessional River of Dreams, as well as more proggy epics such as Mockingbird, She Said, and After the Day. On their last trip to Scotland, keyboard player Woolly Wolstenholme contracted laryngitis and couldn't sing properly which meant that the set had to be changed, and the harmony vocal department was deprived too. This time however he was in good voice, which made for a better show than 2006.

The band had clearly spent long hours in the rehearsal rooms, they were very very tight, every change, every ending worked through (except perhaps for Early Morning - a very late addition to the set). It was a great night which came to a fitting conclusion with the singalong of Hymn, and a standing ovation from the Perth crowd.

As usual, after the gig the band came out to the foyer to chat to the crowd, I always appreciate the way they take time to talk to the kids, sign programmes, answer questions - which helps to make the evening more of an occasion for them too.

It was a fabulous event and a real treat to enjoy a (much maligned!) band who can still deliver their craft with skill, verve, passion enthusiasm and humour. John Lees' Barclay James Harvest are on the UK leg of a European tour, at the following venues:

•23.10.09 Perth Concert Hall (01738 621031)
•24.10.09 Glasgow Òran Mór (0141 357 6200)
•25.10.09 Holmfirth Picturedrome (01484 689759)
•27.10.09 Cheltenham Town Hall (0844 576 2210)
•28.10.09 Milton Keynes, Stables Theatre (01908 280800)
•29.10.09 Colchester Arts Centre (01206 500900)
•30.10.09 London, Bloomsbury Theatre (020 7388 8822)
•31.10.09 Portsmouth New Theatre Royal (023 9264 9000)
•01.11.09 Canterbury Gulbenkian Theatre
•03.11.09 Norwich The Waterfront (01603 508050)

The full Perth set-list was as follows - but the band have over two and a half hours of material rehearsed and will be rotating several items over the next couple of weeks.

1) Nova Lepidoptera
2) Child Of The Universe
3) Poor Wages
4) Mockingbird
5) Iron Maiden
6) Cheap the Bullet
7) Poor Man's Moody Blues
8 ) Harbour
9) Galadriel
10) For No One
11) River of Dreams
12) She Said
13) Loving is Easy
14) The Poet
15) After the Day
--
16) Early Morning
17) Hymn

Tamsweg

Eisriesenwelt

Up in a cable car, high into the mountains, where a long path through the snow leads to the world's biggest ice-caves, Eisriesenwelt (no photography). Deep inside the mountain, limestone caves allow water to percolate through - dripping slowly into the sub-zero caves and freezing in the most amazing shapes resembling animals, as well as great columns, of fused stalactytes/mites, made entirely of ice. Sadly they very stictly enforce the no photography rule in the cave, so if you want to see what we saw, look at some of the on-line photos in places such as this.

The Donut Man

Lots of fun in Blairgowrie with the kids - listening to 'The Donut Man' (children's entertainer, singer, pupeteer, and Bible-story teller) doing his thing. It was a bit too young for Boris, but nevertheless had its moments for my younger two - who especially liked his Donut (er, that's a Doughnut to you and me) puppet which is somewhat inevitably known as Duncan.

Radstadt

How strange that our grandfathers fought the grandparents of this lovely Austrian town.

Austria

When some friends invited us to join them on holiday in Austria at half-term, we thought it was a great idea - except that we don't speak any German! But with Aer Lingus offering to fly us all there and back for £139- and lots of fun in great scenery awaiting, even we weren't foolish enough to decline! A really good week; great to get away for a few days! Maybe a few more pix to follow later.

Mr Mischief

OK - it's not a picture of today's birthday-boy, but his little brother, Mr Mischief. Captured, as usual, charging without thought to wherever his imagination leads next... This photo is like the infamous, "what happened next" round on A Question Sport, we wait with baited breath to see what horror he will retrieve from the water - or whether he will just lose balance and roll into the pond. Mr Mischief - aka 'Norris', is creative, irrepressible, hilarious, musical, intelligent, loving, ludicrous and quite unable to make adequate links between his actions and their consequences. We always think that after each tumble he will stand up again, wiser, calmer, more contemplative, and less combustible. We continue to live in this hope!

One day when he was quite young, we urged him not to walk too close to the edge of the gorge at The Birks of Aberfeldy, over which he seemed destined to hurl himself. "what would you do if you fell over there?" we asked? "I'd turn into Buzz Lightyear and fly down to the bottom" he announced. Only of course, he wouldn't, would he? The parenting challenge we have for this daft imp, is how to channel his irrepressible energy, contain it positively without breaking his joy, sparkle and character. Parenting...? who can manage it?

A Prayer for My Boy on His Tenth Birthday

Father, I thank you for the ten years I have had with my son.
As I look at him I see so much of myself looking back -
hopes, plans, dreams, abilities, failures, weaknesses, vulnerabilities.

So Lord, I pray for my boy tonight, asking that you will provide all that he needs.
Lord, give him the wisdom to navigate life, in times of joy and times of anguish.
Help him to find straight paths, in an often tangled world.
Lord give him insight into others, the ability to perceive the world from their perspective - so to love them in a Christlike way.

Lord give him insight into himself, to save him from pride, and misjudgement.
Then Lord, give him insight into you - that he might find the certain security that comes from walking with you.

Lord, bring the influences to bear on him that will help him to be a well-rounded character, emotionally whole and spiritually healthy.
Lord, may he find good friends, who will care about him, and he for them; friends who will build, not damage the formation of his character.
I pray that one such friend might one day be his wife, a woman of integrity who will stand by him through whatever life offers him, good or ill.

Lord I pray that he will identify the skills you have given him which education will hone to enable him to work usefully and productively in the world.
Lord, I pray that my boy will seek the forgiveness of his sins, and will be so filled with a sense of your forgiving grace, that he will always seek reconciliation with others, always offering forgiveness, just as he has been forgiven.

Lord I pray that as he grows he will find a place in a church fellowship that will love, accept, forgive, embrace, care and nurture him and be a spiritual home for him.
Lord I pray that he will not inherit too many of my bad habits, sins, follies and errors.
Rather that he be spared from these and protected by you.

Lord, when I look at the world, I am filled with paternal concern for my boy,
But I believe that your love for him outshines my own.
So I pray that your good hand would be upon him.
May he have a deliriously joyful birthday,
and may we have the peace of knowing that you are with him always.

Imperial War Museum

The Imperial War Museum in London is an interesting place. We had a few hours there, with my Mum over the half-term holiday. WWII has a massive, and ongoing influence in British culture - the sacrifice and cameraderie of a nation uniting to defeat the evil of Nazism, is a compelling image of national goodness and gallantry. Indeed I remember my Grandpa talking with obvious pride and nostalgia about wartime experiences, and comrades.

For generations of us brought up on such recollections, or on the Dambusters, or The Great Escape, the sight of a Spitfire or a Lancaster can produce a satisfying nostalgia. How easy it is though to forget, in the middle of such displays that everything on show in the great hall of the Imperial War Museum, is an instrument of death. Every machine, every vehicle, every piece of equipment, every aircraft are killing machines. Every Spitfire that risked pilot and crew to down enemy bombers heading for London, or Coventry, and defend us from tyranny, spat out bullets that ripped through the bodies of mother's sons, children's Dad's, wives husbands, someones' neighbour, someone's friend. Unlike the Imperial War Museum North (in Manchester), the main part of the London exhibition has too much kit, and not enough humanity. I would maybe have felt differently if I had attended the Holocaust Exhibition on the top floor, but (afraid that my young children were neither capable of dealing with the subject - or acting appropriately in it) sadly I didn't manage that.

The kids really loved the "Horrible Histories: Terrible Trenches" exhibition though. Based on the TV/series and books, the informative, grizzly and funny exhibition engaged and educated the kids for ages; and left the adults with an interesting ethical dilemma about how long should pass before a tragedy is suitable material for satire. Everyone agreed that the death of Saxon King Edmund II, being stabbed up the rear-end by a Viking hiding in his toilet was ripe for such humour; but has long enough passed since WWI for jokes to be made about malnutrition and lice in the trenches? Here there was less agreement. Either way, the kids were happy - and learning, and asking serious questions too.

Most bizarely however, we met another family from the same school as our kids, and then found out that our kids babysitter was in the museum at the same time as us, and we missed her!

Book Notes: Bad Science by Ben Goldacre

This is a fascinating read: Ben Goldacre's "Bad Science", based on his Guardian column of that name, as recommended in Phil Hammond's amusing "Medicine Balls" book. Although it is about science, its the kind of book that an arts graduate (like me!) can read quite happily, as it's funny, fast-paced, satirical, topical but also makes some very telling points about today's culture and its relationship to 'science'.

After an introduction into what good medical trials ought to consist of, (things like large, randomised, trials with control groups to screen out placebo effects) the first major section of the book debunks a lot of the so called 'evidence' supporting much contemporary and alternative medicine (CAM). Although he scorns things such as homeopathy as scientifically dubious, and totally unproven in proper medical trials - it is the current fad of 'nutrition-ism' which is his major target. His disdain for Dr Gillian McKeith PhD ("or to give her her full academic title, ...Gillian McKeith" - ouch!) is well known. What he seeks to expose is the consistent attempts of the vitamin/nutriotionism industry to dress up new-agey cures in "sciencey-sounding-words" to convince the public that their wares are proven in normal large-scale, replicable, scientific trials.

The second major section of the book is an impressive expose of the way in which the pharmaceutical industry is less than transparent in its dealings with journals, doctors and the public. All manner of dodgy scams are exposed, from burying poor results, setting up false comparisons to make the drug look effective, tinkering with base-lines, ends points and sample-sizes to 'tweak' findings - meaning that trials funded by the company developing the drug are consistently four-times more favourable to the drug than independent research!

The final section looks at the public misunderstanding of science -especially the way in which the media, misunderstands, distorts, sensationalises or just makes-up, a lot of what passes as scientific coverage. The media obsession with whether foods 'cause' or 'cure' cancer - with little evidence for the claims, - or claims based on lab data that has no verifiable effect on real human bodies, is ruthlessly exposed, and the worst newspapers named and shamed. Another media tactic that he deals with is the disproportionate reporting of risk. A headline might scream that 'ibuprofen doubles the risk of heart-attack' - but doubles what, and for whom? If it doubles an infinitesimally minute number, then so what? If it doubles that infinitesimally minute number for a minute fraction of at-risk people, then the risk needs to be factored down even further! Goldacre's book certainly gives the reader many laughs, but also arms them with many useful tool with which to interrogate the claims of all manner of therapies, and the journalists who report on them.

Reading isn't often both as informative - and as much fun as this!

It's Nearly Friday

John Lees' Barclay James Harvest are playing Perth Concert Hall this Friday night! I can't wait - and even better it's a hideous family outing too. The above is from "After the Day", an apocalyptic classic from the early 1970s, filmed on their last UK tour, three years ago.

In the Grounds

Final Hampton Court photo (this is not my garden!)

Two Palaces in One

Part of Hampton Court's appeal is the incongrous clash between the two styles of building - the red-brick Tudor charm of Wolsey/Henry VIII's front, (above) and the grandiose pomposity of Christopher Wren's 'little Versailles' rear (below). Thankfully William and Mary of Orange ran out of cash (and health) before they managed to demolish all the earlier parts of the palace and completely rebuild in baroque opulence.

It's a fantastic place, well worth a visit of you're in the London area. But if like me you think that family admission (including parking, gardens, maze and palace) at well more than fifty quid, is quite beyond the means of most families; you'll do what we did - settle for a walk in the grounds. While maintenance of the place must be vastly expensive, surely the nation's historical sites need to be a bit more accessible to everyone - than this?

Tudor Chim-cheroos

The famous Tudor brickwork chimneys on Hampton Court Palace. Although the palace was built by Cardinal Wolsey, it was grabbed by 'Enery the Eighth after Wolsey's fall. English monarch's hung out here by the Thames, west of London for a couple of hundred years after that time, Henry probably gazed up at these chimneys whilst planning his extensions to the palace, or maybe when contemplating smashing another monastery, or his latest marital adventures.

Fountain

Brian Kennedy live at the Inn at Lathones

On Sunday night, Irish singer-guitarist-songwriter Brian Kennedy played a tiny venue in Fife, the Inn at Lathones. Mrs Hideous and I were amongst the fifty people crammed in to the former stable-block, now music-venue, for his nearly two-hour set.

Kennedy, backed by Eddi Reader on vocals and occasional percussion, played a rich variety of his own material (folk and pop), songs from other bands he's worked with, classic Scottish and Irish folk tunes, and one of Reader's Burns renditions too.

I've seen Kennedy a couple of times before, and they have been mixed experiences. When solo - or with one or two acoustic musicians he has shone, when going down a more pop route with a conventional rock band, he has been good, but lacking the distinctiveness that marks him out as a great talent. At the Inn at Lathones on Sunday, he was in sparkling form. His soaring voice will always be his trademark, and he sang with range, power, delicacy, emotion and quite breathtaking control. He's a surprisingly good guitarist too, not just strumming his way aggressively through the upbeat tunes like "Curragh of Kildare" but picking his way with great sensitivity through heartbreaking numbers like "The Ballad of Killilooe".

Kennedy and Reader was a fabulous combination (she sang many of the backing vocals on Kennedy's best album The Great War of Words") and she wasn't intrusive, but added some gorgeous harmonies to the overall sound. Kennedy himself seemed more at ease playing a small venue than last we saw him, in a large hall when he looked angst ridden and ill at ease. At Lathones he was relaxed, and clearly enjoying pleasing a crowd obviously full of many of his die-hard fans. We only have a couple of his albums, yet neither Mrs H or I could think of a time in which two hours flew by so fast. A top-notch gig.

I've never been to the Inn at Lathones before, and its not somewhere that you'd stumble across, located between St Andrews and Cupar in the depths of Fife. It's where Mundell music have re-located their gigs to from The Famous Beinn Inn in Glenfarg. It's a great little venue too - and if this gig was indicative of the quality on offer, I'll be back.

The following clip (from the inevitable YouTube) is a video of his from 1990. Alternatively see http://video.yahoo.com/watch/2020000/v2143469

Book Notes: Adventures on the High Teas by Stuart Maconie

I loved Maconie's previous outing - his 'love letter' to the new North of England, his homeland, "Pies and Prejudice", it was witty, charming and somehow seemed to reek of passionate authenticity. I was intrigued to see that in the follow-up volume, the quintessentially 'northern' broadcaster had travelled across 'middle England' searching for its identity, probing its history and traversing its landscape.

The results are not what I had expected. After a few disparaging remarks in Pies and Prejudice, unfavourably comparing the the soft south with the gritty North - I was expecting plenty of derision here. But while I expected the full weight of Maconie's 'Northern' eloquence to be directed against a parody of Daily Mail reading, 'disgusted of Tunbridge Wells' caricatures - in fact Maconie was a better writer than this. His book explores the swathes of England that actually exist, rather than the popular parody that lingers in the minds of too many journalists -and others who have never actually lived there. He is in turn, bemused, surprised, charmed and delighted by much of what he finds, and visits many places with which I am familiar in his travels.

The only problem with the book is that it just doesn't sound like Stuart Maconie! While Pies and Prejudice is impossible to read without hearing his voice in your mind as you read - it was sometimes hard to imagine that this was all actually written by him at all! While P&P was all pathos, memory, passion, and written with immense personal knowledge - this book is stuffed full of well... competent research. While Pies and Prejudice was curiously moving, this one is .. just rather nice. Perhaps that though was the point. Adventures on the High Teas was a pleasant and amusing way to meander away a few spare moments, but not in the same class as his previous outing. It was also a startling contrast to the last book I read on England, in every conceivable way.

A Psalm for the Day

Psalm 133
(A song of ascents. Of David)

1 How good and pleasant it is
when brothers live together in unity!

2 It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron's beard,
down upon the collar of his robes.

3 It is as if the dew of Hermon
were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the LORD bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore.

A Puritan's Prayer

I read this 'Puritan's Prayer' today and was moved, not merely by its truth, timeliness, relevance and profound insight, but by the fact that its warm spirituality glows through the somewhat archaic language. This prayer is certainly not the last word on penitent prayer as there is little or nothing here about penitence towards people we have sinned against. Such sins too sear the conscience and burden the soul - and bring us to prayer and confession. Nevertheless, the clarity of thought and language here most poignantly gives voice to deep convictions.

O Lord of grace,
I have been hasty and short in private prayer,
O quicken my conscience to feel this folly,
to bewail this ingratitude;
My first sin of the day leads into others,
and it is just that thou shouldst withdraw
thy presence
from one who waited carelessly on thee.
Keep me at all times from robbing thee,
and from depriving my soul of thy due worship;

Let me never forget
that I have an eternal duty to love, honour
and obey thee,
that thou art infinitely worthy of such;
that if I fail to glorify thee
I am guilty of infinite evil that merits infinite punishment,
for sin is the violation of an infinite obligation.

O forgive me if I have dishonoured thee,
Melt my heart, heal my backslidings,
and open an intercourse of love.
When the fire of thy compassion warms my
inward man,
and the outpourings of thy Spirit fill my soul,
then I feelingly wonder at my own depravity,
and deeply abhor myself;
then thy grace is a powerful incentive
to repentance,
and an irresistible motive to inward holiness.

May I never forget that thou hast my heart
in thy hands.
Apply to it the merits of Christ’s atoning blood
whenever I sin.
Let thy mercies draw me to thyself.
Wean me from all evil, mortify me to the world,
and make me ready for my departure hence
animated by the humiliations of penitential love.

My soul is often a chariot without wheels,
clogged and hindered in sin’s miry clay;
Mount it on eagle’s wings
and cause it to soar upward to thyself.

If ever..

If ever I am tempted to question the matter, I turn on the sound, click this link, and ponder anew the truth of its short simple message.

Taken

Liam Neeson stars in this shoot-em-up thriller, as an ex-spy, whose daughter has been, er... 'taken'. The Albanian trafficking gang who have abducted her to sell as a slave to an Arab Sheik, soon learn that they are messing with the wrong man, as he fills them, one-by-one with lead and liberates his daughter. The sub-plot is that Neeson's character was too busy spying to be a good Dad when his daughter was young, but believes he can redeem that time by using his gun-toting skills to be there for her at the decisive moment.

The plot-line is a reasonable premise for a thriller, and the cast isn't bad either. Somehow though, this film fails to build any emotional intensity, despite the danger, the heroics and the wanton blood-letting. Having recently watched Changeling, a film that grabs the viewer by the throat and refuses to let go, 'Taken' seemed lightweight, trivial, and even un-engaging. Obviously they are totally different types of film, but they do illustrate the rather arbitrary nature of the certification process. The excessive shooting of criminals earns Taken an "18" certificate, even though it's violence is sterile, unaffecting and tedious - certainly not disturbing; whereas the violence seen and implied on Changeling (cert 15) is the stuff of nightmares. Changeling is a true story, with a dark ending, Taken has the standard feel-good ending in which the main characters are OK, and the others discreetly forgotten.

I can't help feeling that doing a movie like this was an odd choice for Liam Neeson - he surely can't be that short of good scripts on offer? Perhaps he harbours a secret unfulfilled ambition to play James Bond, and a lone spy systematically executing criminal masterminds in their secret bases in Taken was as close as he's got! Certainly this effort was below him, with a track recors of having voiced mighty Aslan in Narnia, and played Michael Collins in the excellent Irish historical film of that name.

Taken.. gains only two out of five stars - no more than standard Hollywood fare.

Book Notes: London Orbital by Iain Sinclair

Many years ago, I heard a book review programme on Radio4 on which they reviewed Edward Platt's Leadville, and Iain Sinclair's London Orbital. I soon found Platt's work and was utterly captivated by it. While the idea of a 'biography of the A40 Road' seemed like a 'minority interest' subject matter in the extreme, in reality this work was a stunningly sensitive portrayal of the human stories which interact with the decisions of city planners, a wonderful collision of poetic prose, urban geography, and biographies. With this in mind, I finally tracked down the other book recommended on that same programme; Iain Sinclair's London Orbital.

The premise of Sinclair's book is promising, intriguing even. The author and various companions set out (in the months running up to the millennium) to walk round the M25, recording their insights into the landscape, history, literature and people that they discover en route. The results turned out to be very surprising.

From the start the author writes in a style which is hard-going. While on some occasions his use of half-formed sentences consisting of lists of adjectives and nouns to describe what he sees, is punchy and effective; overuse of this technique makes it simply affected. Sinclair also enjoys bombarding the reader with streams of half-explained references, a technique which appears to detract from the force of his insights. After all, the informed reader already knows the things to which he refers, while the uninformed remains so, left stranded by Sinclair's constant preference for alluding to things, rather than actually talking about them. Reviews of London Orbital have divided readers very deeply into those who found all this irresistibly brilliant, and those who simply found it impenetrable, and gave up. I found that on every occasion when the density of language, irritating repetition, obscure allusion, and verbose pretension drove me to give-up and add to the little pile of "couldn't finish" books in my study - Sinclair would hit back with a piece of writing so touching, so beautiful, and powerful that I couldn't bear to put it down in case I missed another such moment.

For me the sections of the book which worked were those where I knew the landscape in which he was working. In such sections, the obscure allusions had reference points for me. Of course when I understood his literary tangents, when they occasionally drifted into my frame of reference, the impressions he sought to make were all the stronger. Likewise, when his landscapes were beyond my recollection or his references beyond my reading, the sheer volume of words that Sinclair spews forth became boring - because of his constant unwillingness to initiate the newcomer, rather than simply reward the learned with opportunities for smug self-congratulation.

Quite brilliant were Sinclair's observations on the ring of Victorian mental hospitals which mark out the outer-London ring, which the M25 follows. Built to give "lunatics" fresh air, and to screen London from their reality, they flourished throughout the 20th Century, but are now being developed into soulless luxury apartments. His explorations of these facilities and the way he is able to make the past mix with the present in a intermingled, morbid reality was delicious. His wanderings with companion Renchi, into psychogeography, of ley-lines and the M25 as a vast astrological wheel were dull tangents an already overlong book could have thrived without; trekking through leafy Weybridge in the wake of Diggers however, was magical. The descent into The War of the Worlds between Epsom and Leatherhead is compelling, but the view that the River Thames bridge at Runnymede is some deeply significant and illuminating concrete cathedral is simply putting too much strain even on the psychogeographers desire to write florid prose about the most artless of items. Frustrating too is the lack of a map to see where the writer has got to in any given chapter, given that his ability to wander away from the matter in hand is as great as his remarkable determination to complete the project! Likewise, the frequent references to photographers and cameras, but the total absence of images is strange. Either the publisher refused to add them to the paperback edition (already grotesquely swollen to almost 550 pages) or Sinclair is so convinced of the power of his writing that he has rendered the image superfluous. Not so.

To be fair to Sinclair, there is a tremendous book in here. The trouble is that such a fabulous book would be about 200 pages long, and an extremely judicious editor would need to be employed to cull the wanton excesses from the original. The worst part of the book is actually its beginning, (he doesn't reach the M25 until p125!), and the best parts are all when he stays close to the M25, physically -and in his writing. Where he succeeds is when he stays close to the books initial premise, when he tests the reader's patience is when he departs from this. To be fair, he improves as the book progresses, reducing his words-per-mile count as he goes - possibly realising that unless he did so, a thousand page book was in the offing.

I'm glad to have finished this, to have got through it and to have seen Sinclair finish his quest. There are passages that I have marked and will return to. But if I wanted to read a book that got inside an urban environment and felt it from the inside, I'd still turn to Platt's Leadville - every time.

Horrible Histories

My kids have discovered the brilliant and hilarious, "horrible histories", a children's TV show packed full of the weird and wonderful from history; told in often quite alarming ways! From cruel Victorian factory bosses sacking children who lost hands in their machines, to a madly ego-centric (and gloriously camp) Alexander the Great, naming countless cities after himself, to Kings George I-IV forming a boy-band and singing their story; education is rarely as funny as this! The official website, containing full episodes is here; in the meantime enjoy the following clip:

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To get the song "Standing On The Rock" by Ian White: right click here

Last night in Acts...

Last night I had the opportunity to speak in church, taking one section in a teaching series on the book of Acts entitled, "How the Church Grows". I was asked to cover Acts 21:27-22:22, the arrest of Paul in Jerusalem and his defence. This was no easy matter - not least because Paul's suffering for the gospel isn't something I've experienced and so in a sense I was preaching 'above myself'.

A summary of the talk is in the diagram below which was my concluding slide. The emphases seem to be that (i) Paul was willing to suffer for the gospel - he went to Jerusalem knowing that persecution awaited him. (ii) He was willing to offend people, but only with the gospel because on all matters of culture, he fitted in with them as much as possible 'becoming like one under the law, in order to win those under the law'. (iii) His 'boldness' is matched with sensitivity to his audience, tailoring his talk to their understanding, and speaking with great respect and politeness.

Fabulous 3D mapping

I have had some mapping software for the computer for a few years, but my old PC went belly-up if I tried to use it! My "new" computer (I've had it since February!) has got the memory to handle it, and I've enjoyed planning some of my walks on it, and generating OS Maps in 3D! I've been impressed by the customer service at Anquet mapping too. When I tried to install the software, it wouldn't work at all despite the "successful installation" notice displayed. An e-mail to Anquet was very quickly answered telling me that the problem I reported was due to incompatability of my version with Windows Vista, and directions to a free patch to fix it. Sorted! The above route is of a walk I did back in June, over Beinn Liath Mhor and Sgorr Ruadh.

Doors Open

Every year, Perth & Kinross Heritage Trust co-ordinates a "Doors Open Day" in which public buildings are opened up for visitors to look around, and appreciate, when they are not in regular use. Last year our family took the guided tour of the local court, courtrooms, witness rooms, lawyers offices, judges bench, cells - the lot! It was a great afternoon out.

This year, the church I'm part of has joined in the event by opening up its premises for the day, combining viewing the now completed premises with an exhibition of local art, from the church, local nurseries, schools and care homes. In keeping with the building the art exhibition is themed around dramatic biblical stories, and this morning I saw one particularly striking Noah's Ark bring carried in from a nearby nursery school. Info below.

A great day out at the Falls of Bruar with all five of us, plus my sister and her new toy-boy boyfriend.

Cairngorms Bonanza!

It is a rare and splendid thing to look up the mountain weather forecast the night before an expedition and read, "No Rain", and "Chance of cloud-free Munro's: 100%"! It's even better when they get it right - and yesterday was just such a day! With the prospect of clear skies, and the whole of the Cairngorms before me, I packed for a long walk - and cycle, setting off soon after sunrise to make the best of the light. From early on it was clear that it was going to be a good day, the golden-orange morning sun shone through the mist still clinging to the surface of the River Isla near Blairgowrie, while glistening off the dewy grass on each bank; a mysteriously wonderful collision of textures and colours.

My day-proper started at the Linn of Dee carpark - a place from which many Cairngorm expeditions have begun. I have walked the path from here to Derry Lodge many times, but this time I had a bike with me, speeding my passage toward the high tops. Derry Lodge itself is a forlorn sight, once a hunting lodge in the heart of the Cairngorms, at the centre of a minute community where Gaelic persisted until well after WWII; it is now boarded-up and gently crumbling. I remember feeling similarly forlorn on my first visit to Glen Derry, a borrowed mountain bike broke - and as I fiddled with the broken pedal the party I was with cycled into the distance, leaving me to push the wretched machine all the way back to Linn of Dee. This time, however I was on a brand new bike - its inaugural flight in fact, and it did a great job, speedily eating through the miles. Memories of Derry Lodge are not all bad though; as I dismounted and got ready for walking I remembered camping here with the ever affable Percy Cowpat esq. many years ago. The smell of cigar-smoke and Glenmorangie, the gentle hiss of a heather fire, the brilliant blue-black sky bespeckled by millions of bright stars, framed on every side by the vast-black outlines of great mountains. Such reminiscence was quickly countered with the memory that when we broke camp in the morning to head out towards Beinn Bhreac, the wind suddenly dropped and dark columns of midgies rose from the heather like the fiery exhaust of a steam locomotive, eating our skin and even biting the whites of our eyes!

It was Northwards into Glen Derry that I was bound again on this trip, turning eastwards up the Coire Etchachan, the long climb up onto the Cairngorm plateau, past the little bothy known as the Hutchison Memorial Hut.

Loch Etchachan

At the head of Coire Etchachan the scenery changes suddenly and surprisingly. Within seconds, the bleak and bouldery corrie gives way to a pleasant loch, nestling beneath its cliffs -under Ben MacDui's long Eastern flanks. On my visit the delightful scene was made complete by a row of tents nestling on the water's edge, a high level camp-site pitched in pursuit of a Duke of Edinburgh Gold award. From Loch Etchachan, a scratchy path winds its way steeply at first up the side of Beinn Mheadhoin, a great bald whaleback ridge that marks the eastern edge of the central Cairngorm massif. Mheadhoin is noted for its series of absurd granite tors which sit bizarrely along its crown like a row of badly maintained craggy teeth. They do provide some nice scrambling up their sides though - a pleasure not usually associated with the Cairngorms. By the time I stood on the summit tor of Beinn Mheadhoin, a fierce wind was funnelling around the contours of the mountain, so I clambered down and retreated back to the shelter of Etchachan.

Summit Tor - Beinn Mheadhoin

My mind's peculiar tendency to anthropomorphise makes me think of Derry Cairngorm as a particularly happy mountain. I am sure that this is due to a combination of its gentle slopes and smooth lines, and the fact that I have so often seen it in sunshine when mountains all around it have loomed as menacing hulks in dark cloud. Climbing it proved to be a bouldery experience, but the views southwards across Deeside and into Perthshire were breathtaking. Climbing onto its summit, I must have moved within range of a mobile phone mast, as my rucksack started to vibrate and a familiar tune rang out. I stopped, unpacked, found the phone, only to be informed that I was in receipt of 100 free extra texts... lovely, but hardly worth stopping for. I must however change that text ring-tone. At the moment, it plays "Lady Day and John Coltrane" by Gil Scott-Heron; a funky little tune indeed. The problem is that the second lines goes, "Ever feel that somehow, somewhere, you lost your way? And if you don't get a help quick, you won't make it through the day!" This may not be what I want to hear next time I am wrestling with a map and compass in fog, rain, zero visibility whilst trying to navigate some precipitous ridge! In the meantime if you see someone in the Scottish hills screaming "SHUT-UP" at his rucksack, it just means I have received a text!

Distant Lochnagar

There are some guidebooks which talk about 'conquering mountains', to describe ascending them. I think that such talk is foolhardy. To wander up a mountain in summer conditions is not to conquer it, merely to walk with it, to spend time with it. In contrast, I find that to stand in these great mountains and to tremble before their grandeur is more akin to being conquered by them; surrounded and overwhemed by them, to hold them in awe. Of mountains, so of God; perhaps illuminating what a Psalmist once wrote: Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the great deep. O LORD. For such granduer can be contemplated, engaged with, even perhaps wrestled with - but never conquered. Such thoughts filled my mind, and seemed to press home with an unusual urgency as I strained hard up a long climb, with a summit ahead of me, and the ground falling away on either side, Glen Derry on one side, Glen Lui on the other.

The Central Cairngorms

From Derry Cairngorm, I made my way back onto the central high ground of the Caringorm plateau, working my way back Northwards until I hit the busy trade route, linking Cairngorm and Ben MacDui. The Duke of Ed party had broken camp and were making their way up the long climb ahead of me, labouring under packs heavier than mine. I might have envied their night in the wild, but I didn't envy the loads they bore. It's seventeen years since I last walked this track, and there were a few things I remembered, the most distinctive of which was gash in the rock, next to the path - a spectacular gully eating into the mountain; a talking point in summer and a death trap when corniced in winter conditions. I remember posing for photos here all those years ago with Big Darren, The Rake and Crazy Jim.... and wondering what became of them all.

If Derry Cairngorm seems like a 'happy' mountain, then Ben MacDui is quite the opposite; large, dark, brutish, mysterious and foreboding. I trudged alone up the path towards its trig point, perched high on a cairn, the second highest point in Scotland - and could quite understand why fevered imaginations have run from the presence of the Big Grey Man of Ben MacDui. The Big Grey Man was not in attendance as I strode over the Ben's rock-strewn summit, yet the melancholy dread of the place was dense as I passed the ruin just short of the top; where the only sound was the howling of an anguished dog, which I heard but never saw. Two things have changed since I last stood on Ben MacDui, this time there was no dead-man lying in the boulders awaiting collection by the mountain rescue services; no helicopter hovering low, engines throbbing, swooping to collect the departed remains. The other difference was that the summit has been absolutely covered in cairns, shelters, seats and all sorts of bouldery creations. To be honest, I don't mind the odd cairn here or there - on a summit, or to mark a junction of paths; but this was grotesque, as if Fred and Barney had hosted a world championship of Jurassic Jenga, but all the contestants had abandoned the game in mid-session. Perhaps like Professor Norman Collie, they hurriedly fled the place in fear of the Big Grey Man!

The descent from Ben MacDui alongside the Allt Clach nan Taillear is awkward, and in mist would require some very canny navigation. It leads to a high col and over a swooping ridge to the ascent of Carn a Mhaim. The hill looks very easy when viewed from the likes of Braeriach, but at the end of a long day, with a brooding headache - it was a long pull. The sun, dipping low, and casting long shadows and orange patterns over the hills made a stunning backdrop to the views over the Lairig Ghru and down into Glen Lui far below. A decent path, drops from this hill, down to the Luibeg Bridge (which I actually found this time!), and then on back to Derry Lodge. After a long, hard strenuous walk, I was delighted to see the bike, leaning against the side of the Glen Derry mountain rescue station. Bringing the bike was a great idea, I have trudged the long miles back to Linn of Dee often enough to be grateful to spin swiftly along it and back to the car, to a rest, a drink and the drive home. Days as good as these are a treat to be savoured, an opportunity to be grasped, and an experience for which to be profoundly thankful.

Getting Geeky with the Archive

Loch Ossian on Rannoch Moor

One of the secrets which the dismantling of our old attic space revealed was an on old video camera, complete with leads, tapes and some amusing footage of our three kids when they were small. The kids really enjoyed looking at themselves as babies/toddlers on the tiny screen of the camera, which inspired me to see if the films could be imported to the PC for a little editing and then watching on a decent screen. As readers of this blog know, I also discovered that my PC had Windows Movie Maker, my first experiments with which are found here.

The old Sony Handycam camera however didn't seem to like my PC - despite all the relevant USB cables being shoved in the right holes. Some online searching revealed that the older Sony cameras are incompatible with Vista va USB, that Sony blame Micosoft, and vice versa. The same forums did suggest that connecting via Firewire would sort the problem out though. The result of this is that for the price of a foot or two of firewire - I can now import the hours of film that have been collecting dust in the attic for the last five or so years. On the films there are plenty of dreadful sections when the camera was switched on by mistake. When I saw these I hoped that they might contain scandalous admissions or accusations made by family members unaware that the tape was running; sadly all it revealed were reams of footage of feet crunching across gravel. Still - as these are on the PC, editing these out to leave watchable extracts is a simple, if somewhat time consuming process.

Next I discovered that a lot of the shorter film clips which I have on my PC were shot from an ordinary digital camera. These too can be slotted into the edited films at the relevant places.... mostly. The cameras we have owned over the years have mostly shot their movie clips as AVI's, which indeed slot straight into Windows Movie Maker. One camera however, captured its movies in Quicktime, which Movie Maker doesn't accept. Back online I discovered RAD Video Tools, a piece of freeware that had lots of recommendations as a tool for changing formats. Having downloaded that, and successfully making all my .mov files into .AVI's I can now work my way through chopping editing and putting together the film clips from the different years for the children's lives.

RAD Video Tools had a nice surprise in store for me too. When I opened up the "output" choices in the menu, alongside the various movie formats, it also had options for jpeg, gif and bitmap! In other words, it can separate out each individual frame as a picture, in massively higher quality than freezing the frame on a media player and capturing the screen. The photo of Loch Ossian on Rannoch Moor (above) was captured this way. One thing to note though is that even edited down to three seconds, there were hundreds of frames captured, so don't try that with a long clip!

The next problem is what to do with an old High-8 video that we have also found in the attic, which we used almost ten years ago. It has no USB or Firewire connections, and only outputs a signal on two jacks, audio and video. I am told that a gadget to convert the signal will cost me £90 - surely there is a cheaper solution than that?

Wester Ross

Assynt Cottage

Green Arrow on the Settle-Carlisle

Once again - a long time ago