ALL OVER THE PLACE – a guest blog for Christmas and the New Year

Margaret Dunlop, proud owner of this blog site, is too busy preparing for Christmas.  That means endless cooking and baking, decorating the house and tidying up after her husband.  So she has asked her husband, that’s me, to write a blog for Christmas – and that is likely to be all over the place.   Don’t expect literary prowess as I am only used to writing scientific papers and a couple of textbooks (animal breeding, genetics and my favourite “the Yak”) and that style of pedantic writing is miles away from the novel – never mind chicklit.  Sadly, I also lack the ability for the subtle humour of my significant other – but read on.

Here are some of our thoughts for the year that is nearly past.  Let’s leave out most of the personal stuff which includes our gratitude to our National Health Service (a hint here!), frustration at airports, incredulity that nearly everybody, but especially the young, have their mobile phones glued to their ears most of the time, or on their laps - texting.  That of course leads effortlessly to other areas of surprise such as the appropriation of lovely words in the English language to mean something entirely new – or at least skewed.  The latest of these is the craze for “selfies” referred to by Margaret in her last blog.  The word actually means a photo taken of oneself  by oneself (I took one of myself in a mirror to remind me how horrible I looked with a moustache before shaving it off – and that was in the 1950’s!).  Now they tell us that it has to be a photo of oneself taken with a mobile phone with arm outstretched.  No doubt mobile phone manufacturers are rubbing their hands with glee.

On a more serious note, we (that’s both Margaret and this scribe) are sad that the world seems not to be a better place and the end of 2013.  There are still wars, ethnic and religious strife, sectarian hatred, hunger and disease for many, climate change deniers, several natural disasters from hurricanes, floods, earth quakes and catastrophic droughts, gross inequality of living standards both within and between nations – and all in a world that should be crying out for peace, tolerance, good will, caring and fairness.

With a disclaimer from Margaret who thinks it’s not a topic for Christmas, I want to add that politicians, the supposed leaders in our societies, are not helping much as they seem to be concerned with the short term only, with putting their opponents to disadvantage (irrespective often of the merits of the case) and with staying in power.  Our own government (that’s the one in London, not the Scottish one in Edinburgh) is now pretending to think long-term by making promises for 2020 and 2025 – how credulous do they think we are?   And the Scottish National Party government in Edinburgh hopes to persuade us that manna will come again from heaven if only we were a nation independent of the rest of the UK (how credulous ... ?).

None of this sounds very cheery or as seasonable as it ought to be at this time of year when many of us celebrate Christmas with its deep underlying meaning and when most in the world look forward with hope to a New Year – even if it does not start on “our” January 1^st for all.

So here are some things to be cheerful about:  there is the potential from science and technology to transform lives everywhere for the better if the will and understanding can be mobilized.  And we can feed the world if we are willing to accept changes to food production and reduce waste.  In politics, someone like the late Nelson Mandela showed that it does not have to be conducted in the way it usually is.  Culture and scholarship flourish, millions of young people are still enthused with idealism and not yet infected by the cynicism of many of their elders.  As Margaret Dunlop (owner of this blog) is also an author we can marvel at the explosive expansion of self expression through indie publication.  Large publishing houses no longer willing to support unknown authors, without an assured market and profit, have been effectively bypassed by the e-book trade.  The only downside perhaps is that it becomes ever harder to sift the grain from the chaff – so to speak.

And on a cheery note, we marvel at a Hollyhock in our garden – in Inverness, a part of the country where the climate is not good for this “English” garden plant.  Well, two days from Christmas and after cold, frost and even some snow, it is still flowering five months after it started to do so.  That surely is a sign of the marvel of nature and an omen that good and beautiful things are here to stay.   And with that, we (Margaret and her temporary scribe) wish all of you who have been able to read this screed to the end a very happy festive season and a Good New Year.

HIGH JINKS IN LONDON AND HOME TO THE SAME OLD POLITICS - and Christmas just round the corner

Well, I got back safely from London after having a wonderful time with Laura and Margaret.   On the Friday night we showed up at Ronnie Scott’s club, Jessica, grandaughter, and now working as an intern in the crazy capital joined us as we took our places at our booked table.   Three hours of great jazz, great singing, terrific atmosphere, all small, lighted tables.  We ate our meal and drank our drinks in a haze of unusualness.     At least for me, the older generation, it was a really exciting occasion.   So we three generations of Scots, out on the tiles – didn’t we live it up and have a ball!   Even paying the enormous prices for taxis (London is a big city!) seemed daring and amazing £l6 here and £20 there.   We didn’t venture on the Tube – in Glasgow when I lived there, they called it “The Subway”.   Alternatively you can call it “The Underground”.    I had decided we should celebrate in style and for three days we would be toffs and use London Cabs.

You just get in and give them the postcode of your destination and off they jolly-well-go!   Great fun!    We had dinner in an Italian restaurant with some Scots friends and relatives working in London, and from there we dashed off to see “The Bodyguard”.    This was an A1, ace, dramatic musical story of the singer Whitney Houston.   What a fantastic performer she was.   Her life story was so moving.   We cheered with the rest, and at the end the cast got a 20 minute standing ovation.   Then ….. to my astonishment, the audience burst into wild dancing and singing etc., etc.  This included my party.   I became a sort of embarrassed bystander at this point.   Don’t people have fun nowadays?   When I was young shows and films usually ended with The National Anthem and we all filed out gravely, showing what good people we were.

Otherwise, I picked up a hideous cold – an acquaintance, a lady vet, explained I didn’t pick up the virus in the Big Smoke, but on the aeroplane to Gatwick from Inverness.   However I got it, it was hellish – wheezing and coughing, probably my punishment for enjoying myself so much at my age.   I was dressed up in my new long black boots, and felt great when I was there, but I never got invited to any party!!  Well, you can’t win them all.   We went to the Tate Britain Gallery, and we got a free round of drinks at the Hotel St. Pancras because their service was slow that Saturday night.

Christmas presents all purchased for better or worse.   Terrible scenes of refugees in Syria and Lebabon.   Winter storm and dreadful privation.   I admit I have to turn to another television channel as I can’t watch these poor children in their suffering, and their poor parents.   What a ghastly world it can be for people.   We Brits are so lucky in 2013 about most things.   And old Nelson Mandela is gone.   What a shining light he was.  Glasgow should be proud of how they stuck up for him while he was imprisoned.   He was made a Freeman of the City of Glasgow when he was still in jail, and they changed the name of a street to name it after him.  Warm-hearted people as always.   They’ve had it hard themselves in the past in Glasgow, and know how to stand up for the underdog.

The Prime Minister, David Cameron and the Leader of the Opposition, Ed Milliband continue to shout at each other in parliament.   David makes one statement and Ed completely contradicts him.   Then Milliband  makes a statement about the failures of the government, and Cameron accuses the Labour Party of failures in their term in government, and so on, and so on.   Even Gerald and I, dedicated politics followers get cheesed off, and despair of things coming right for the tired, penny-pinching  population, that is 90% of our country today.   Compared to some areas of the planet we are privileged.   Caring people raise money for the charities that try to aid these poor people.   It is all we can do, it seems.   The instant communication of television is a double-edged example of progress.    We can be entertained and horrified within a few hours.

May the Christmas Season bring you and yours Joy and Peace.

SELFIES, ESCAPE FROM THE RAT-RACE AND MIDDLE-AGED DRUGGIES.

Bet you don’t know what a “Selfie” is!   I didn’t know a few days ago.   It is a new word to be put in the new Oxford Dictionary.   It means, apparently – “a photo of yourself which you have taken with your mobile ‘phone and put up on Facebook or the Internet”.   It seems it is an Australian invention.   It sounds like Aussie-speak.   They call relatives “rellies” and Marmite (the great Australian salty sandwich spread) “Marmie”.    Most Australians love it, and the few who don’t love it, hate it.

My age- group, between sixty and ninety years old have had to take on a lot of new words and concepts – such as the World Wide Web, Mobile phones, texting, chatting on Facebook and Twitter and so on forever.   My granddaughter, Alicia and her partner, Sandy have just bought themselves a 3D Television set.   And so it goes on.   My significant other, Gerald, even enjoys looking at tweets for a spell, most days.   He thinks about these strangers from all over the planet while I do the ironing or cook up a storm in the kitchen.

Just finished reading a book called, “No!  I Don’t Want To Join a Book Club” by Virginia Ironside.   Quite brilliant!   The narrator explains that she has just turned sixty, and is very happy to be able to sit back and think of all the things she doesn’t have to do or worry about now that she  has reached the start of her seventh decade.   Especially she doesn’t want to know about complicated things like relationships with the opposite sex.   Yes, and SEX itself.   She is glad to be rid of such activities for herself.   It’s a hoot!    She writes very amusingly and sympathetically.   I really enjoyed her matter-of-fact style, so easy to read.   Talking about style, my daughter, Mimi Martin (Margaret) has written and published a sort of children’s book called, “Jeremiah Buttons and the Hamlet of the Lost.”   She has written and illustrated it.   Her writing style is so quirky and original.   She is definitely a ‘one-off’, inventive, crazy writer.   Gerald started reading it in bed the other night and he has never laughed so much for a long time.   It is purely mad!

What about the new name on the block in GB. – Paul Flowers?   Craziness is everywhere.   First of all he is a Church minister, a respected pastor.   Also was a Local Government official.   He puts his computer in for repair, and it is reported that he has a store of pornography on it, so he has to give up his political position.   Then he is made Chairman of the Co-operative Bank.  He has little idea about banking and the bank is now in a serious position, having lost much of its money.   He was in the past week or so, filmed buying cocaine and crystal meths, whatever that is, but it sounds  as if it is very bad.     Are the oldies starting to go off their rockers?   Also he is pictured negotiating a session with a male prostitute (rent-boy) in London.   He is caught by the prying newspapers that set the story going.   You couldn’t make it up!

This overweight, middle-aged sinner, Paul Flowers, is matched by the Mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford.   He has been caught on video smoking crack cocaine.   He has admitted to heavy drinking, and drink-driving.   Also he has made obscene remarks on public   television about his sexual habits.   And the council are having great difficulty getting him to step down from his post .   Who needs fiction when these goings-on are available on your news media every day?

Anyway, I’m a lucky oldie!   It being my birthday this week, my formidable daughters, Laura and Margaret, are taking me for the weekend to the Big Smoke.   Flying from Inverness to Gatwick (London), and then staying at the Marriott  Hotel at St.Pancras station, going to Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, and on Saturday night  to a show.   Also being taken to the Tate Gallery to see a show called “Painting Now: Five Contemporary Artists.”   And I hope to see the magnificent new staircase at the entrance built by the architects Caruso and his partner, Peter St. John.    Can’t be bad, say I!   So long as the wild girls don’t walk too fast for me.   So wish me luck as you wave me goodbye.

 I made some lovely tomato and cheese pizzas, home-made hamburgers and steak mince for Gerald for while I am away.   Hope he doesn’t go out on the town and forget the way home.      Have bought a new pair of black boots and a short black skirt with a purple horizontal stripe!   Bring on the Gin & Tonics, and what was that joke about the man who escaped the rat-race and went to live in Alaska?   He met a friendly fellow called ‘Lars’!   He got invited to a party!

SELFIES, ESCAPE FROM THE RAT-RACE AND MIDDLE-AGED DRUGGIES.

Bet you don’t know what a “Selfie” is!   I didn’t know a few days ago.   It is a new word to be put in the new Oxford Dictionary.   It means, apparently – “a photo of yourself which you have taken with your mobile ‘phone and put up on Facebook or the Internet”.   It seems it is an Australian invention.   It sounds like Aussie-speak.   They call relatives “rellies” and Marmite (the great Australian salty sandwich spread) “Marmie”.    Most Australians love it, and the few who don’t love it, hate it.

My age- group, between sixty and ninety years old have had to take on a lot of new words and concepts – such as the World Wide Web, Mobile phones, texting, chatting on Facebook and Twitter and so on forever.   My granddaughter, Alicia and her partner, Sandy have just bought themselves a 3D Television set.   And so it goes on.   My significant other, Gerald, even enjoys looking at tweets for a spell, most days.   He thinks about these strangers from all over the planet while I do the ironing or cook up a storm in the kitchen.

Just finished reading a book called, “No!  I Don’t Want To Join a Book Club” by Virginia Ironside.   Quite brilliant!   The narrator explains that she has just turned sixty, and is very happy to be able to sit back and think of all the things she doesn’t have to do or worry about now that she  has reached the start of her seventh decade.   Especially she doesn’t want to know about complicated things like relationships with the opposite sex.   Yes, and SEX itself.   She is glad to be rid of such activities for herself.   It’s a hoot!    She writes very amusingly and sympathetically.   I really enjoyed her matter-of-fact style, so easy to read.   Talking about style, my daughter, Mimi Martin (Margaret) has written and published a sort of children’s book called, “Jeremiah Buttons and the Hamlet of the Lost.”   She has written and illustrated it.   Her writing style is so quirky and original.   She is definitely a ‘one-off’, inventive, crazy writer.   Gerald started reading it in bed the other night and he has never laughed so much for a long time.   It is purely mad!

What about the new name on the block in GB. – Paul Flowers?   Craziness is everywhere.   First of all he is a Church minister, a respected pastor.   Also was a Local Government official.   He puts his computer in for repair, and it is reported that he has a store of pornography on it, so he has to give up his political position.   Then he is made Chairman of the Co-operative Bank.  He has little idea about banking and the bank is now in a serious position, having lost much of its money.   He was in the past week or so, filmed buying cocaine and crystal meths, whatever that is, but it sounds  as if it is very bad.     Are the oldies starting to go off their rockers?   Also he is pictured negotiating a session with a male prostitute (rent-boy) in London.   He is caught by the prying newspapers that set the story going.   You couldn’t make it up!

This overweight, middle-aged sinner, Paul Flowers, is matched by the Mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford.   He has been caught on video smoking crack cocaine.   He has admitted to heavy drinking, and drink-driving.   Also he has made obscene remarks on public   television about his sexual habits.   And the council are having great difficulty getting him to step down from his post .   Who needs fiction when these goings-on are available on your news media every day?

Anyway, I’m a lucky oldie!   It being my birthday this week, my formidable daughters, Laura and Margaret, are taking me for the weekend to the Big Smoke.   Flying from Inverness to Gatwick (London), and then staying at the Marriott  Hotel at St.Pancras station, going to Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, and on Saturday night  to a show.   Also being taken to the Tate Gallery to see a show called “Painting Now: Five Contemporary Artists.”   And I hope to see the magnificent new staircase at the entrance built by the architects Caruso and his partner, Peter St. John.    Can’t be bad, say I!   So long as the wild girls don’t walk too fast for me.   So wish me luck as you wave me goodbye.

 I made some lovely tomato and cheese pizzas, home-made hamburgers and steak mince for Gerald for while I am away.   Hope he doesn’t go out on the town and forget the way home.      Have bought a new pair of black boots and a short black skirt with a purple horizontal stripe!   Bring on the Gin & Tonics, and what was that joke about the man who escaped the rat-race and went to live in Alaska?   He met a friendly fellow called ‘Lars’!   He got invited to a party!

NON-BEEF  BURGERS, MAKING MONEY & PINK SARIS.  I  DON’T BELIEVE IT!

Well, here we are again, in the middle of August.   I heard someone on the radio calling the year, the year two thirteen.   Maybe that’s the zeitgeist, but we have been saying the year twenty thirteen for a while.   However, we must move with the times, and what times they are.   I feel like Victor Meldrew in the famous sit-com, “One Foot in the Grave”.   His catchphrase, you’ll remember was  “I don’t believe it!”   This was his well-known response to the happenings of the modern world occurring in his expected quiet retirement.

“I do not believe it” was my response to several pieces of gleaned information from the media recently.   Among these was the story from scientific research about experiments to make beefburgers without beef .   These are too sickening and horrendous to narrate here, enough to say that a “fetal bovine serum” produced from the blood of bovine foetuses is used to grow human stem cells into “burgers”.    And they are talking about in future using human umbilical cord blood plasma in place of the blood from bovine foetuses, OMG!   If you want to be horrified read the Science column by Michael Brooks on page 19 of the New Statesman of 16-22 August, 2013.   Maybe you can get it online.

Another puzzle to me was what is meant by the word “algorithm”.   I have long wondered about this, and now thanks to Wikipedia I have an answer.  It says: “In mathematical computer science, an algorithm is a step-by-step procedure for calculating, data-processing and automatic reasoning.”   I wanted to understand this word due to the fact that much of the amazing activity of stockbrokers and market traders makes use of algorithms in computers.   Some transactions take fractions of a second to perform.    In the crash of 2008 on one day, a total of $900 BILLION was wiped off the US Stock Exchange.    If you have enough money to invest then, even for a penny of difference in commodities’ prices between, say, London and Stockholm, you can buy or sell in under 8 seconds.   The trouble is that there are many other people out there who will jump on your bandwagon, and try to make their own fortunes.   So the bonanza doesn’t last.   It’s called High Frequency Trading and aficionados talk about Market Equity Volatility.   Sad to consider that many of the players have no inkling of what type of goods they are buying and selling, that’s not the game.   Worse than that is to consider that, in future, because of the power of the latest computer algorithms, the computers can do it themselves for you.   It’s another, “Oh My God!” situation.

I will mention only two other disturbing events of the present day.   First the deadly fighting going on in Egypt between the Military Government and the Muslim Brotherhood.   It seems to me like a microcosm of the world situation – the opposing philosophies of the West Christian/Judaeo/Atheist and the followers of Mohammed. The two sides have differing ideas about political systems such as democracy, and about the treatment of women, their dress and their right to good education.  Who can foresee the future of this conflict?  

Secondly, it seems that two allied countries, both members of the European Union should be threatening each other around the Straits of Gibraltar.   At present there is a British warship cruising there .    Each government is standing up for their rights, that is Spain and Britain, to establish to whom belongs the fish in the sea around Gibraltar.   Let’s hope a solution is found soon for the Gibraltarians, and for the Spanish fishermen, and we must not forget the poor tourists held up at the customs post.

What has cheered me up is that the British Film Institute in London is planning to show some of Vivien Leigh’s old films.   Also there is to be an exhibition of her seven and half thousand letters and other things at the Victoria & Albert Museum from 5th - 22nd November.   I first fell in love with Vivien when she appeared in “Gone with the Wind”.    Who can forget the beautiful young actress as Scarlet O’Hara?   They don’t make them like that anymore.   She along with Marilyn Monroe and Lady Diana Spencer are my most notable heroines.

Lastly, I was cheered to read of the Pink Gang of Uttar Pradesh in India.   This almost lawless region is infamous for cruel rapes of women, and these vigilante women have grouped together to defend one another, and to seize their human rights.   They are now 30,000 thousand strong.   Their leader, Sampat Pal Devi, was the first to speak out, and she suggested that her followers should wear pink saris (she bought the material) so that they would be able to recognise each other in the street.   They carry sticks and go after abusers of women and cruel husbands.   The book, “Pink Sari Revolution” by Amana Fontanella was read in an abridged version on BBC Radio 4, and the Indian reader made it sound very amusing.

Finally, this amused me.   It is a quote from Winston Churchill.   On being told that an arrest had been made in Hyde Park involving a semi-naked Member of  Parliament who had been making advances to another in sub-zero temperatures, his reaction was: ‘Naked and below zero!   Makes you proud to be British.’

SUNSHINE, RAIN, HAPPINESS, SADNESS AND FENNEL SOUP.  

Hello again,

Here are a few notes from the North of the British Isles.   We are having intermittent French Riviera weather some days, and with the Rain Forest in Brazil for others.   For a few days we are lounging on our steamer chairs among the sweating roses in the garden, already worrying about looking out for too much sun on our skin, and then in the next few days the heavens open and the rain cascades down.    We go from 27 degrees Centigrade to 16 degrees within a short space of time.   Then we have to store away our cushions and sunglasses while the thunder cracks.   Oh, well, we don’t get bored with the sameness of things in this country!

Just now GB is sort of divided between the enamoured millions who are charmed by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, William and Kate, and their new-born son, little George Alexander Louis.   Then, there are the fewer millions who think it is time we became a modern democracy and, well, do away with the privileged Royal family.   There are as well, of course, those people, the millions, I suppose, whose cares about money, and about how to manage their household budgets in these hard-to-fathom times, are enough to think about.   Many younger couples with families are struggling too hard to care for very long or have time to dwell on the great wash of excitement gripping the newspapers and the television programmes.

Most papers have led their headlines with “It’s a Boy!”.   However, one paper, I heard, I think it was Private Eye magazine, had the headline, “Woman has Baby”.   I have to admit that  Gerald and myself were sort of smiley and happy for the young royal couple.   After all, for some reason I cannot explain, I had great empathy with William’s mother, the beautiful and sadly deceased Princess Diana.

Our wonderful National Health Service is receiving a lot of publicity just now.   Many people from all sides of political opinion are worried about the way things are progressing.  Anyone I know who has had treatment has praised the nurses and doctors to the skies.   And the fact that one walks out of hospital after a short stay, as I did with my knee replacement, and there is nothing to pay is marvellous.   It is a miracle in these frenzied days.   Yet I know that there are reasons that the strains on finances from the government are large.   Money is in short supply everywhere.   The other reasons for worry are well-known.   An ageing population, needing more and more drugs and attention, and the continual technological improvements and pharmacological improvements, although fantastic, are the reason that people are living on and on and on, even with serious diseases.   Yet, we oldies, who remember the days before the establishment of the NHS, pray that some compromise will be found to save the system.

Things don’t look too good, however, it has to be said.   A book review which I read the other day in the New Statesman illuminated some of the worries we all have.   It was of a book edited by Jacky Davis and Raymond Tallis called “NHS. SOS. HOW THE NHS WAS BETRAYED AND HOW WE CAN SAVE IT”.   The  Conservative party are wholly on the side of competition in all things.   Yet according to this review there is not a shred of evidence that competition in the area of public health does improve health.   I quote, “On the contrary, we know only too well that creating competitive markets in health is extremely harmful.”   The article goes on to cite the USA where competitiveness applies, and where costs have been driven up, and where the health service provided is very variable.

The man who has written this article, the critic, is the editor of the medical journal, “The Lancet”,  Richard Horton.    He talks of a very British coup that destroyed the NHS, heading his piece, “Cowards, Betrayers and Appeasers.”   He blames of course the former Tory health minister, Andrew Lansley, and he blames the press for not questioning what was going on, and for the promises, pre-election , “no new top-down reorganisation” of the NHS.   He also blames some of the outgoing Labour administration for preparing the health system for privatisation with some of their methods of management.   The Tories accelerated the destruction with the connivance of the Liberal Democrats.   And so a “beacon of advanced democracy” is almost destroyed.   A sad tale really for this old leftie.

Staying on a serious note, one of my heroes, Alan Turing is being talked about a lot just now.   He was a scientist and mathematical genius, and also a homosexual.     In the House of Commons there has been passed a bill allowing gay marriage in the UK.   The House of Lords have recently agreed with this decision.   The Lords have also debated whether Alan Turing should be pardoned.   Turin was convicted of gross indecency with another adult male in 1952.    Turing was a brilliant man, inventing and developing the first computers, he cracked the Nazi Enigma Code used between the German War Forces, especially ships.   He was a brilliant man whose genius for cracking codes using his early computers, and reading the German messages shortened the war, it is said by up to two years.   He later committed suicide, supposedly for his disgrace in being arrested and tried for homosexuality.    Well, just another sad tale!

Things are going well enough for us, plebs in the Highlands.   Everyone seems pleased with the weather and the telly, and the feeling of holidays, for teachers and schoolchildren anyway.   My latest  sojourn into insanity was when using up Gerald’s carefully-grown fennel bulbs, having looked up several recipes for FENNEL SOUP, the one I chose said to chop up the fennel and then to boil it up for a while, and then to throw the bulb away, and to make soup with the liquid.   So, as they say, the British built the British Empire in a fit of Absence of Mind, what did I do?   I strained the pan of fennel and stock over the sink, watched the liquid go down the plughole and was left with boiled residue, a useless soggy bulb.    So “Old age doesn’t come alone!”   No it comes with stiff muscles and general fits of sort of craziness.   Time for a large GIN AND TONIC.   From the two old soldiers among the roses, I will say goodnight!