A Spring Morning - Omuta, Japan

Some of you may have wondered where I've been all this time. Most of you couldn't give a monkey's of course but then neither do I, give a monkey's that is about those who couldn't give a ... for fuck's sake, what am I raving about. Anyway, here I am in all my soft cuddly gorgeousness, back with a new blog to delight your eminences, if you would give me your attention for a few moments more.

I am going away. Now I don't want you all to gather round weeping and wailing. You'll just have to accept it and get on with your own lives. I'll be back eventually, perhaps in about two weeks but I'm not sure. I'm off to Korea in the morning, not for long, just a day or two there then I'm sailing (although not by wind power) to Japan. Another day or two there then it's back to Croatia in time for the good weather.

So! Interesting little trip. I should try and get some pictures of the strange and enigmatic orient to entertain you on my next post. Would you like that? I've been to Korea and Japan before, many times, and I do like it out there. It's so ... how can I put it? Different! That's the word. By jove sometimes I surprise myself with my perspicacity.

But you do see some "different" things out east. The people there have a different take on things. It is another world. I'll give you an example. I was walking along a downtown street in Omuta one quiet Sunday morning. It was a nice, sunny & mild spring morning and I came across an old man sitting on a small folding stool, his knees were up around his chin. He had an easel in front of him and he was painting a small watercolour scene of the street and the buildings, the level crossing and the sky, and he was so old and hunched over the easel, and he was trembling. He had Parkinson's disease or something and he trembled so much I wondered how he could possibly achieve anything. I couldn't help but stop and wonder at him and I wanted to get a better look at the painting. It was just a beautiful splash of colours and shapes, the blue of the sky, a red banner outside a store, white lines suggesting the level crossing gates. He had not captured the form but he had captured the feeling of that morning perfectly. The old man looked round as I looked over his shoulder, and he gave me the loveliest smile. I felt blessed.

Look after yourselves, and I'll see you when I get back.

The Good Fight

The following letter is from today's Sunday Herald (the Glasgow-based quality newspaper, sister publication of The Herald). I don't know the story referred to but I do admire the way Dr. McLachlan takes the paper to task for its sloppy use of language. More power to him.

Imprecise meaning
THE story by Aasmah Mir about her return from London to Glasgow is called: “Return of the prodigal daughter” (Seven Days, March 5). Why? “Prodigal” means “wasteful” but there is no suggestion in her article that she is or was wasteful. In the biblical story about the wasteful son, the wasteful son happened to return. Has this created the false impression that a prodigal person is one who returns? Not all prodigal sons or daughters return. Not all sons and daughter who return are prodigal. The prodigal son was so called because of his prodigality, not because he returned home.
It is obvious that words can change their meaning and that misuses of language can become, through their frequency, correct uses over time. However, to say that the rules of language can change is no reason for disregarding them or acting as if they had already changed.
Dr Hugh V McLachlan
School of Law and Social Sciences
Glasgow Caledonian University

Isn't that a treat?

Paradise

We played golf at Turnberry yesterday. The boys and I were celebrating the wee fella's fifteenth birthday. I could tell he was excited about it by the way he'd been planning for over a week what he was going to wear. He's not normally the voluble type, and you have to know how to read the signals to know how he feels, but it was a dead giveaway when he laid out his all black Tiger Woods outfit, including his newly shined black school shoes which he will never in a million years wear to school.

We've had a few great golfing days out, the boys and me, over the years. I suppose the first biggie was when I took the big fella to Troon in '97 for the Open which Justin Leonard won. We arrived at about seven thirty in the morning, in time to see Jack Nicklaus on the practice ground with Payne Stewart. How poignant that image is now. We walked the whole course that day, sometimes stopping to watch the players come through, sometimes following one of our favourites like Jesper Parnevik or Seve, or Barclay Howard, the leading amateur.It was the Saturday we went down so we could watch the final day on the Sunday in the comfort of our own front lounge. The big fella was just twelve then and he lapped it up. A golden day.

The next was the open at Royal Lytham in 2001. We went down on the Friday and stayed two nights in Blackpool. The big fella's mate, Seve (real name) came with us. The wee fella was ten years old and would not be left behind. I spent more time that day trying to keep tabs on him than watching the golf. The big fella and Seve had a ball chasing autographs, although there was a tense hour at the end of the day when they were late meeting up with us at the agreed time, and I was running between the mobile police unit and the rendezvous point. Sometimes you could just murder your kids and save the lurking paedophiles the bother. We spent the last day at the Blackpool amusements. The two bigger ones went on the big dipper and I had the dubious pleasure of nearly shitting myself on this infernal thing called the Coca Cola ride with the wee fella. Ironically it was the only ride we could go on together because the wee fella passed the height restriction. First of all you were flung forward and whipped round in a corkscrew motion till you thought your head was going to fly off, and then it mercifully stopped. Just as you were thinking - Thank fuck for that - and about to loosen the safety harness - the bastard took off again backwards ! And whipped you round again back to the starting position. I'll tell you something for nothing, I was crying tears of relief when I got off. And I never did find my 'Open 2001' cap which I'd forked out the better part of ten quid for the day before. You don't normally see chinstraps on baseball caps .. pity.

St. Andrews last year was special. The wee fella and I had two great days. A B&B right in the middle of the old town, a few steps away from the first tee on the Old Course. All that atmosphere and history. It's a wonderful place to visit. I love it that you can just walk right on to the famous turf. There is a public right of way across the eighteenth fairway. Try that at Augusta or Pebble Beach. St. Andrews is great. Then we had a game on the Duke's Course. I won. No, only kidding. I don't remember the score, just that we enjoyed the game.

There's something about golf that can bring people closer. I find it difficult to define. Maybe it's because you don't have to say too much. You can enjoy the game and each other's company and the pleasant surroundings. And when you're walking down the eighteenth fairway it's the best feeling when your boy puts his arm around your shoulders and says 'This was a great day, wasn't it, Dad'.

TMA 07 - Masculinity & Femininity

Just to keep you up to date with what I'm not working on, I have to do the following for submission by the 31st March:

In no more than 1500 words, with careful reference to two of the following works, show how attributes traditionally associated with masculinity and femininity are contrasted:
Pygmalion - A Play by George Bernard Shaw
Medea - A Tragedy by Euripides
Don Juan - A Symphonic Poem by Richard Strauss
Wide Sargasso Sea - A Novel by Jean Rhys

Now I know what you're thinking; the boy can do this, no bother. Your faith in me is touching but, faithful blog-readers, I'm going to have to cut myself some quality time if I'm to make any impression on this. We shall see but it's looking good so far. The dear wife has taught herself to do the ironing one-handed so I'm relieved of those duties and, as I've bought her a new ironing board, then surely a mere broken wrist won't hold her back from producing crisp white shirts for the wee fella to play football in, leaving me to concentrate on the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.

The preceding paragraph illustrates attributes traditionally associated with masculinity and femininity. Discuss, not more than twenty words.

Are Specs Wearers Being Ripped Off?

I went looking for new glasses today. I've got this pair of vari-focals which I'm increasingly having to wear full time, and I need a pair of plain long vision goggles for when I'm on the golf course. So, having determined that my local branch of Vision Express could do the whole thing inside a working day, off I toddled.

The young man with a stiff neck and an odd sideways way of walking, who served me, allowed me to browse around the frame display on my own. Now I know that the UK is one of the most expensive places to buy spectacles in the world; I know this because I have bought them in various places like Dubai, Bahrain, the USA, etc. but the price tags were ... well, I just thought, ludicrous.

"How much are these?" I asked, indicating a frameless pair.
"One hundred and eighty pounds for the frame, plus your lenses".
That's what he actually said - "for the frames".
But there are no frames, it's just two legs and a bridge, there's fuck all to it! The material must only weigh about twenty grams, or less. When you add it all up it's nearly three hundred quid, call that four hundred and fifty dollars. Is it just me? I mean, why are we putting up with this shit?

When I expressed my views on this Great British Rip-Off to an inattentive audience at the family dinner table, I was reassured that I would be accompanied by the oldest boy to the spectacle emporium the next day to choose a frame, as a precaution against me running amok and breaking someone's head against a display stand. I can't fucking wait.