The World’s End

Today we are in what is probably Edinburgh’s most notorious pub. The World’s End on the Royal Mile.

You need to do a little thinking as well as just reading on this one. Here is a crossword clue I remember from way back.

WORL  5, 7, 3  Answer at blog end.

The bar area is cosy with atmosphere in spades. Low ceiling – must have been grim before the smoking in public ban.  Majority of customers are tourists with a small core of a couple of dozen locals. It has become a tradition for visitors to write their name / city on some folding money from their home country and pin it up above the bar for posterity. Nice touch. How’s your geography? Ethiopia and Doha anyone.

I’m trying a pint of Cask Marque in the bar. New one on me but good. How it works ( I think? ) is that Belhaven Brewery make a batch of beer which they distribute to their wholly owned pubs and each pub sell it as if it were a special for that particular pub? Not sure if that is totally up front?

Pleasant helpful staff and the adjacent food area doing a lively business.  Good choice of beers for tourists with the most Scottish of lagers and most Irish of stouts on draught. The pub changed hands when Greene-King ( UKs leading pub retail company) took over Belhaven Brewery and it’s associated pubs. In the week of  putting this blog together they have taken over several other well known Edinburgh hostelries. Day of the Clone.

When I left you last you were to think of the three things that got on your goat the most. Did you do that?  You didn’t!  – I’m hurt.  If you did, then the next question is?  What are you going to do about them?    Sit on your backside?   Is it a good philosophy to simply just accept what the world throws at you?

What’s in the news this week?  – apart from the Donald Trumpet. Well Maria Sharapova has admitted to failing a drugs test. Make up your own minds on that one. In the bigger picture she has been cheating throughout her career by screeching when she hits the ball. Some sports psychologists say that this is a natural reaction. Guff. I was a reasonable player and a pro tennis coach for half of my working life and it was the classic tipping point situation, like tattoos today, where enough people were doing it that other sheep soon followed. Tennis balls weigh about 55/60 g.  If you are tackled by a 20 stone American football player or a rugby opponent you would be hit by 127005.864 grams. Now that may force you into a grunt or screech.

Do competitors in other hitting sports like badminton, squash and hockey shriek ?  I certainly never did so when attempting to convert a rugby try and a dry rugby ball  weighs about 7 times more than a tennis ball. A few years ago I watched a doubles at Wimbeldon with the Williams sisters and they started out with no grunts but soon the four of them were at it.  –   On drop shots girls??

The WTA never had the cajones, literally obviously, but metaphorically certainly, not to stamp it out in it’s infancy. However the men are no paragons of virtue either.

Connors and Seles have a lot to answer for on that score!

The notoriety of the World’s End stems from the murder of two girls in October 1977. They were last seen alive leaving the pub.

No one was brought to trial ’til 2007 and the accused was acquitted as having no case to answer due to insufficient evidence. This unleashed a hornets nest in legal circles and a wide ranging review of the legal system which resulted in The Double Jeopardy (Scotland ) Act in 2011. Most countries give weight to the principle of double jeopardy. Some have it in their constitutions others by statute. The amendment made to the situation in Scotland allowed for retrial if new evidence was forthcoming and in 2014 the same man was convicted with help from improvements in DNA profiling.

The first half of my working life I worked in molecular biology, and research into DNA and other chemicals with extremely long names was a big deal at that time. The second half in sport (pun unexpected therefore unintended!) It seems strange how those two elements have come together in this one blog.

What I found particularly poignant about the murders was that the girls were on a pub crawl and legally in Scotland you need to be 18 to drink. Both were seventeen.

Crossword Clue:  If you haven’t worked it out, you are going to kick yourself. Given the title of the venue for today’s blog  – I mean how much help do you need?

WORL   5, 7, 3

World Without End