Holyrood 9A

Above the typical red sandstone building which houses the pub.

I settle in with a pint of Ferry Crossing IPA at 4.4% On doing some research I find this brewery opened only this year and is run by a husband and wife team operating out of the Rosebery Estate near South Queensferry.

This pub is sister to the Southern which has been previously featured. It contains a similar impressive range of beers, lagers and ciders. Also a few that the gin queen has yet to try.

Well, I thought that I would try to start this blog in a lighter frame of mind.

Oh fuck, that’s just gone oot the windae!

He’s got Scottish blood.

What word can you come up with ( four letter sweary words not allowed ) that describes him best?

Without in any way belittling the loss of life, a German contact reminds us that we have two of our modern day disasters on 9/11 and 11/9.

This morning I have played my guitar and tried not think about it.

But — into my nearest wine shop this afternoon and what is the first topic of conversation——— ?  ?

” Walls” come up, and I suggest that someone should start a cloud fund where everyone can contribute a brick so that we can build a wall in the UK ( or what is left of it ) to keep all Americans out – unless you are of  Mexican fruit picker descent.  If you are, here in Scotland we could probably soon do with your help in the berry season –?

Mr Zimmerman is to be awarded the Nobel prize for literature and is being slagged for not responding appropriately!   Lost for words?    That would be a first.

No good will come out of it some people say. But people who play around with words would say that such people are wrong and that Nobel could be Le Bon backwards.

I am currently reading “The Scottish Nation A Modern History”

Also “A Book of Scotland ” from which I’d like to quote a few lines. These are taken from the Foreward of a reprint of 1969 and are by an English historian addressing an Edinburgh audience in 1865 on the Scottish character.

“Institutions exist for men, not men for institutions; and the ultimate test of any system of politics, or body of opinion, or form of belief, is the effect produced in the conduct and conditions of the people who live and die under them”.

And again, “So far  as one can look into that commonplace round of things which historians never tell us about, there have rarely been seen in this world a set of people who have thought more about right and wrong, and the judgment about them of the upper powers. Long-headed (?) thrifty industry; a sound hatred of waste, imprudence, idleness, extravagance; the feet planted firmly on the earth; a conscientious sense that the worldly virtues are, nevertheless, very necessary virtues; that without those, honesty for one thing is not possible and that without honesty no other excellence, religious or moral is worth anything at all– this is the stuff of which Scottish life is made, and very good stuff it is”        My italics.

After this quote the editor comments, This was a sound appraisement then. Dare we hope it still has the same validity?

Honesty was on very short rations during recent Brexit and US presidential ( not presidential in the good meaning of the word, Ed ) campaigns.  It seems the higher and more wondrous things we accomplish in e.g. science and medicine, the lower we can debase ourselves in our treatment and manipulation of our fellow man.

From The Scottish Nation I’ve learnt about the large amounts of immigrants who came to Scotland from Ireland in the early to mid 1800s, some of them economic and some of them because of the Great Famine. We didn’t stop them then and they brought their Protestant Catholic rivalries with them, which unbelievably, and particularly but certainly not exclusively so to the West of Scotland, still fester like a boil that could well do with it’s pus being lanced.

As terrible as ” the troubles” were, they are nothing compared to the intra religious conflicts currently raging elsewhere in the world.

Colonsay Brewery IPA 3.9% as a night cap this week. They claim to be the smallest island in the world to have a brewery.

It was Armistice Day this week and as usual the BBC featured the commemorations held in London. Countries all over the world are marking the end of World War 1 and in Horse Guards parade we have Prince Harry reading from Rupert Brooke’s ” The Soldier” which contains the lines ” If I should die, think only this of me, that there is some corner of a foreign field, which is forever England.

Dismissive. Self centred. Ignorant. Arrogant. You could go on and on–    And you can probably tell that I am trying to keep these moderate.

You have absolutely no fucking idea how fucking incandescent that makes me feel. Never mind the dead from the other UK and Commonwealth nations.

Do I like English people?  No I don’t.

Well I bet that’s got your attention!

That would be like saying do I like Scottish people?  Would a better philosophy not be to like people if they are nice human beings?

Give me a decent ( language again!– in the good sense of the word)  { why did he not say good in the first instance and save us all these parentheses. Ed} English person any day rather than a dickhead Scottish one.

Learnt “dickhead” during a lesson with a 14 y.o old girl pupil from a private school. You pays your money and you gets your classy expletives!

Whilst writing some of this I have watched Australia narrowly beat Scotland -again- at rugby,  and on their shirts they have commemorative poppies.

 

 

In the constitution for the People’s Proportionality Party all members will have to sit an awareness test? How do your values and choices affect others? Setting out the parameters for this will be really tricky and I will need your help but that is for another day.

I was in the South West of England with a team a few years ago and I overheard another coach asking a man what his relationship was with the kids in his team. And he said he was “loco in parenthesis”

This week the intolerable frog faced wanker quotes: “that Obama creature, loathsome individual—”  and “Trump’s Scottish connections are good news for the UK”

Oh Rabbie! How low have we sunk?

Demagogue is one of the words that best describes the US president elect. If you are unsure of it’s definition, like I was, then Wikipedia has a really good one and it could have been invented for DT. If they clone him we could all end up with the shakes.

Some of the 25 fonts and wide selection of gins and other spirits.

A fine beer may be judged with just one sip.

But it is better to be thoroughly sure.