I can hardly believe that Tommy Burns has passed away. Tommy was not an old man (only 52) and was First team coach and head of the Celtic Youth Academy until he was taken ill. Tommy was certainly worthy of the title “Celtic legend” and was a thoroughly decent man. Who can forget him going a whole season undefeated (or maybe he lost only one game?) and yet not winning the title as Celtic manager during the reign of King Walter
It was well known that he had been suffering from cancer but I was unaware of how serious the situation was. What a terribly sad piece of news and it renders reports on last night’s Rangers match versus Zenit St Petersburg redundant.
Amy has worked incredibly hard for the last year in preparation for her exams and off she slunk at 8.45 this morning for her first Highers exam; English. She’s sitting five in total including Art, Maths, Geography and Chemistry.
If you’re thoughts are turning to the garden and what to plant this year.
Will I have hanging baskets or containers, or will I just stick to cutting the grass?
Why not come along to the Gyle this Saturday or Sunday between 10 am and 4 pm, all activities free of charge.
Carole Baxter of Beechgrove Garden fame is headling up a Flower Power weekend with garden advice and plant clinics. However, more importantly, Suntrap Garden will be there showing you how to plant your hanging baskets and containers.
There will also be lots of activites for the kids with a stilt-walker, table decorations to be made and lots more.
My golf, as regular readers will know, is a mixture of disappointment and disaster mixed up with a smattering of anger, frustration and bad luck.
I am never, ever lucky and when push comes to shove I always lose on the last - like last week in the club doubles. Add to this the fact that, on account of my putting so badly on Sunday, my putter is now in putter hospital (ICU) I was not feeling overly confident about beating my mate ‘Senor (El Bandirto ) Chris Rough’ in the Club Handicap championship first round
When he announced that, far from his handicap being cut because of his Mexican tendencies, it had just gone UP and consequently I was faced with the challenge of giving him a full six strokes my heart sank.
Disaster loomed.
Sure enough, I quickly surrendered an early lead to go one down but scrambled to the turn all square.
Neither of us were playing the beautiful game. In fact it was like an East Stirling v Dumarton relegation play off match. Huff, puff and a lot of fecking swearing.
But gradually Chris succumbed to my pressure (Actually he just drove like Nikki Lauda - on the burny day) and I found myself on the 16th tee two up. Sure enough, he won the 16th to take it back to one and somehow I managed to grind out a half, despite giving him a stroke, on the 17th.
Dormy one.
All there to lose.
Chris hit his best drive of the night to the par three 18th (20 feet from the pin). I hit a piece of shit to 40 yards, left, in the rough. My second was so-so leaving me a 15 foot downhill putt from off the green. Chris, meanwhile, was 10 feet away from a three.
That was when life deviated from the script. The pin removed; Gorman stood over the 15 footer, gently nudged the ball holeward and with the very final roll of the ball it dropped.
Apparently a West Lothian councillor has had to apologise after claims she referred to Fauldhouse as a town of inbreeds. Hailing from Broxburn, Councillor Ellen Glass was in safe territory as it takes one to know one.
Although I guess I shouldn’t say that as half of my family originated from Broxburn.
Apparently she raised the issue at a health meeting, saying she was worried because of inbreeding in the town, before being told to “shut it” by her colleagues.
I’ve been itching to write about this for months but have been worried about displaying political niaivety. However, even I cannot be accused of that in the face of Wendy Alexander’s kindergarten politics
It would seem that in attempting to raise a referendum bill she is simply not permitted to do so by Holyrood protocol because Smiley Alec Salmond beat her to it! Now that’s a silly wee mistake to make. Just like accepting £900 of unrecorded political support was.
But by taking a personal independence agenda into the public domain at total odds with the Labour party in Millbank she has managed to piss off Gordon Brown and most of the National Executive of the Labour Party, the Scottish Labour Party, John Prescott, The Lib Dems - who may or may not be Labour’s allies - and most amusingly of all, the Scottish Tory Leader, Annabel Goldie, who sees her behaviour as tantamount to destroying the Union.
Needless to say Alex Salmond must think he’s died and gone to heaven.
But what underpins this ‘car crash’ politics? I think it must be ego. She is well known for having zero people skills and has dodged and ducked her way through political minefields for a while and bottled a leadership contest with Jack McConnell.
She’s just not good enough. Intellectually brilliant perhaps: as the author of the Smart Successful Scotland strategy I have to say I admired the way in which this document seemed to lucidly capture the issues facing the nation. But her job is not an academic one, it’s a political one and politics appears to be the least of her talents.
This is brilliant. Click on the interview panel on the BBC sports page at this link.
Craig Levien, Dundee Utd’s manager, letting off steam after losing a crucial game to Rangers today. Now, when I say letting off steam I mean totally losing it. I like and respect Craig Levien - even if he is a Jambo - and I know exactly how he must feel
And oh what joy to find this old school photo of him on google…
And this one…
Yes, that’s right. It is yours truly on the left. A vision in black. And not overly gaylordish.
Now, we all know that referees favour Celtic and Rangers, but according to Levien, Mike McCurry’s performance today was nothing short of a scandal. He calls him a cheat - which will get him in big trouble with the numpties that run our game - but he is almost certainly right. I haven’t seen the incidents in question, but judging from this outburst I think he probably has a point.
Listening to discussion about it on Five Live’s 606-phone in a Rangers fan brushed it off by saying…
“They’re getting all excited about this one game. Maybe if they’d tried this hard all season against lesser teams this would be less of an issue.”
A neat body swerve I have to say, but, you know what? Totally true!
And that applies to every other team in this shitty league.
And Hibs are no exception.
They turn up for the old firm and Hearts matches and don’t bother their arses against the likes of Aberdeen, Motherwell, St Mirren…
I rather like this ad to encourage kids to cycle to school. It made me laugh out loud when I saw it.
The target audience, of course, will hate it because they won’t empathise with the geek in the shot.
I think the research was a bit misplaced too because we all know that green and yellow are Catholic School colours (indeed this was my school uniform at Holy Cross) and the ginger hair of the wee lad also has massive catholic symbolism.
Based on Rudyard Kipling’s iconic poem the new Irn Bru commercial has landed. Set in various locations across Scotland and somewhere abroad it features some lovely vignettes. Some work brilliantly, like the Loony Dooking pensioners (at 33 seconds) which struck a real chord with me, also the kissing Celtic and Rangers fans, the despondent Scotland fan with his wee lassie and the way folk choose the wrong descriptor for their meal times are all great.
Others are less succesful and I’d question Martin Compston’s voiceover.
But three cheers for the choice of South Queensferry for two of the settings!
I feel the whole campaign suffers from being shackled by a weak strapline. Phenomenal does nothing for me. It’s unphenomenal frankly.
Overall it’s a nice, rather touching return to form.
I have supported Rangers’ dogged and boring progress through Europe but I am not, repeat not, a closet Hun. And they couldn’t have achieved it without ripping the guts out of The Hibees first 11.
This is funny. Thanks Mike.
One thing I am 100% behind them on is condemnation of the stance that the SFA have done nothing to further the cause of the Scottish game.
10,000 folk turn up at Hampden Park to audition for the X Factor yesterday, despite the fact that the programme producers knew, full well, that unlike Engerland the Scottish exam season is in full swing.
A friend of mine’s daughter got through to the judging stages - at the expense of her English Standard Grade exam. Same day, different place. (That’s the equivelant of an O grade if you happen to be an English X Factor producer).
It’s a fucking disgrace.
Enjoy watching the auditions when they come along and maybe you might think about how a slightly more sympathetic timing might have got someone’s son or daughter an extra qualification.
Then again…
(Actually, you know what? That photo says it all.)
So, I’d like to suggest that you make a date in your diary for a trip out for its Open Day on 25th May, 10.30 am - 4.30 pm. If the weather stays like it is just now it’ll be a fantastic day out in a beautiful spot with money going to charity.
Is Walter Smith the greatest football manager Scottish football has ever enjoyed?
I think so.
I was in Glasgow tonight to witness, in a pub, the effect this remarkable man has had on a patently average football team. Not only has he achieved greatness for Rangers Football Club but he has done so with six Scottish players on the pitch. Sadly, two of them Hibbies.
Clearly Rangers were not actually better than Fiorentina (or Werder Bemen, or Sporting Lisbon) but they beat them all- this is not typically Scottish behaviour.
I met Jim Sutherland last week at a Guardian event in Edinburgh. A really interesting and modest guy with a great vision for this orchestra.
I particularly liked the ideas of the four Hurdy Gurdies that feature in his orchestra.
He brought along a Japanese Saw player (Su-a Lee) who performed ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow on the saw’. Cracking and really beautiful.
You can hear some of the music on their myspace site here. I urge you to do so because it is stunning. Beautiful. Magical.
And this is what his myspace site says about the orchestra.
La Banda Europa is an extraordinary 35 piece band of virtuoso musicians assembled from some of the finest musicians across Europe
“The Hurdy Gurdies are amazing to look at, like Elizabethan ships, with a sound somewhere between the violin and the bagpipes. The nykelharpas are similar, having a strange, other-worldly sound to them.”
In 2006, composer, Jim Sutherland was awarded the Creative Scotland Prize for artists of distinction It is one of the richest arts awards to an individual in Europe….. The Award allowed him time to develop his ideas for an orchestra that could make a unique ’sound of Europe.
“All in all we’ve got some incredible musicians, some of the very best in the world on their particular instruments.”…… …..“The Armenians play an ancient instrument called the duduk made from the wood of the apricot tree and which sounds like a woman singing alto.”
The whole thing was initially Inspired by Jim’s score for the BAFTA and Brittish Comedy Award winning film Festival when they famously flew the Drambuie Pipe band over to Seville to record Jim’s score with La Banda Tres Caidas, an Eighty piece Semana Santa band.
“Instruments like the ancient Celtic carnyx will grab the eye – it’s the only one of its kind in the world and was reconstructed from one found in bogland in Scotland. It’s a bronze war horn which was 6ft long and held vertically above the player’s head.”
Jim initially put the orchestra together to perform his score for ‘Before the Wolf’, a theatrically presented outdoor production. Niel Butler of UZ events raised the funds and facilitated the shows. These first performances were very successful and have lead to enquiries from event organisers and festivals throughout Europe.
“Bagpipes of 5 countries, Swedish nyckelharpas, , Armenian duduks, Turkish drums, trumpeters from Scotland and Serbia……..Many of the players in the Banda Europa are exciting composers in their own right.”.
First off he was playing at number three in the team match at the weekend against a six handicapper (Tom’s off 21) and they play off scratch in these matches. Nevertheless, he halved the match having missed a putt from a foot to win. Doh!
Then yesterday he won the first medal of the season (he won three last year at Ratho and three at Dundas, plus another two prizes). The good thing was this medal was also the qualifier for the Dunfermline Building Society sponsored SGU Scottish Junior Masters.
I was extremely privileged to be invited to attend the Remembering Service for Michael Wills at The Apex Hotel in Edinburgh’s Grassmarket yesterday, along with Jeana. We knew Michael through his wife Elspeth who both Jeana and I worked with, and for, at different times in our lives.
Michael was, is, one of Edinburgh’s unsung heroes. Having retired from a distinguished career as a librarian at Edinburgh’s Heriot Watt University he took to retirement with relish.
Michael was a striking physical specimin. He suffered for many years from Ankylosing Spondylitis which may have been a consequence of a broken back many years ago. Whether or not this is the case I know not, but either way it meant he walked with a pronounced stoop. His gregarious nature and constant smile marked him out as different from ‘ordinary’ people. In that respect the photo above is very representative of him.
Michael was a true intellectual, but he was in no way elitist about this and this was reflected wonderfully in the unique Remembering Service which featured original poetry (the stunning ‘revising the Blue Guide to Scotland’ by Anna Crowe), Happy the Man by his wonderful wife of 39 years, Elspeth, and a poem written in his honour by his nephew Jonathon Wills.
But the readings from The Origin of the Species (First Edition - where there is no mention of the creation - Michael was a staunch aetheist) and The Song of Solomon (ironically perhaps - a bible story that Michael sent Elspeth as a love letter in his courting days) really added to the eclecticism of the day
A truly moving and beautiful ceremony - we were indeed glad to have had a small place in Elspeth and Michael’s lives.
My mate Mike is a rubbish golfer. He can’t hit a driver to save himself but he’s solid with a 7 iron. Plop, plop , plop goes each shot, down the middle, sinks the putt and it’s a par.
It’s real safety officer stuff but it grinds out results.
So, to Rangers.
Their European campaign, although succesful is like playing golf with a 7 iron. Nothing ventured, nothing ventured.
It makes you weep how dull and unimaginative it is. It’s horrific. But hey, the ends might just justify the means.
