There are people out there who don’t like folk who travel the country and live in caravan encampments. These  people get a hard time from the Bleeding Hearts. I remember one  such an encampment near my mum and dad’s. One day the field, which was a short cut between two neighbouring villages, was occupied by some tough looking characters. The savage dogs that wandered between the caravans and the surrounding area made using the short cut impossible. Even worse, the occupants of the caravans made their living from laying asphalt driveways. That kind of business generates some highly toxic by-products which would be very expensive to dispose of safely. That’s probably why they were just tipped it into the stream next to the encampment. I can’t say whether the driveways lasted for any substantial period of time  but I suspect it was just long enough for the encampment to have moved a couple of hundreds miles away from any disappointed customers. A knee jerk dislike of Travellers is a terrible thing. But so is a knee jerk assumption that they all, each and every one of them,  represent a rich cultural tradition.

I’ve always reckoned that a person could be punched in the head seven times in the course of their life time and never go down. But if those seven punches were all delivered in the space of as many seconds, then they  would end up on deck. Life’s like that. It’s more about luck than we’d like to admit. That’s why farmers and fishermen are amongst the most religious and god fearing members of most communities. They realise just how tenuous our lives really are and how little control of them we actually have. It’s scary.

The Winter Olympics are a bigger deal here in Canada than they are in Britain. No great surprise, Canada has more snow and I think nets more medals in the winter games than in the real Olympics which attract more countries. I hate the Olympics. But in one minor way the winter gamed are slightly better than the summer version. One of the things I have against The Games is that many of the competitors begin preparations as children. They often are pushed, bullied, and exploited by adults who should know better. It's child abuse. But many of the events in the Winter Games though basically circus tricks involve competitors who only took up the event as a late teenager or young adult. So, less child abuse. Though events such as ice dancing are more on the traditional Olympic model. 

A lot of people have smart phones. I don’t. Two or threetimes a year that’s a problem. Here’s why I don’t have a smart phone. When Iworked at the Government of Saskatchewan I was supposed to be on call 24/7, via what was the cutting edge of technology at the time, The Blackberry. So, I’ve always associated smart phones with wage servitude. I’d rather not be available to idiots 24/7 every day of the year. But of course it’s getting harder and harder not to have smart phone. Proving you’ve had your Covid jags is way easier if you have  smart phone access to the government health app. I’m not sure how much longer I will be allowed not to have smart phone. I just hope I don’t become one of Those People, you know who I’m talking about.

Sometimes my brain plays strange tricks. I inherited an old Canonet camera, circa 1963, complete with built-in light meter. For some reason it came into my head that I would need to get some black and white 35mm film for it. I mean, old camera equals  black and white. Of course that was nonsense. The lens and shutter don't care if it's colour or black and white film in the camera. And it's the film that capturing the light that's the key. In any case, there was colour film around in 1963. Maybe not great colour but colour nonetheless. There's even colour footage of the Second World War, a conflict most of us are used to viewing in black and white.

I once won a prize that I could only claim if no-one else wanted it. Believe it or not I was once declared Employee of the Year. Actually, from what I can gather it was more of a lucky draw from a list of employees who had on at least one occasion gone above and beyond what was reckoned to be normal requirements  of their job. I won a watch, which soon stopped working. But even better, I could make one- time use of the corporate box at the local arena along with three friends. Or maybe I could go twice  with one friend . The arena played host to a lot of interesting events and concerts. However, it turned out that I and my friends could only get into the box if company management didn’t want to use it. Or if the promotions department didn’t need space in the box as a prize in one of their numerous competitions. So, not surprisingly, it turned out that as other people always wanted to see the same things as  I did, I never did get to claim my prize.

Canada’s state broadcaster told me recently that the French had to invent the guillotine. Why would they need to that when the Scots already had an almost identical device, known as The Maiden?  What I suspect we have here is an information silo. Feed the information into the search engine and it tells  you what it thinks you want to know. A bit like all these people whose social media feeds deluge them with bizarre conspiracy theories. The Maiden, a frame with a 75 pounds of lead weighted blade, was first used in Scotland in 1565 and remained in service until 1716. Similar devices had been used in Europe since at least 1539. Halifax in Yorkshire claims to have inspired The Maiden, though it is not clear when it when its version was first used. So, if Mr Guillotine did indeed invent the device which carries his name, it was a case of reinventing the wheel.

Folk live in such silos these days that they assume all their troubles are caused by their skin tone or some other marker. They don’t realise that most of their troubles come from a group of people who have been exploiting nearly everyone for generations and love to play divide and conquer. A classic illustration is the resurgence of the Klu Klux Clan in the American South of the 1920s. Money interests realised that they could smash working class solidarity if they could whip up racial division. Pitting white against black worked wonders when it came to keeping down the wage bill and forcing people to accept lousy working conditions. The great grandchildren of those same bosses still manage to do much the same thing.

* The 2021 Book of the Year has just been announced - Book of the Year 2021

I always felt the winter solstice festive period was a season of two parts. Christmas was for family. New Year was mates and community. Most folk, at least in theory know how Christmas is supposed to go. But I'm beginning to wonder if the Art of Hogmanay is being lost. It's hard to say from here in Canada. If the Canadians ever got New Year, it was long before my time. I once went to the square outside Edmonton City Hall for Hogmanay. Folk just stood in their own little groups and didn't mingle. I think the square was almost empty by 12:15am. It was a poor imitation of something folk had seen on television beamed from New York. A similar event in Scotland, at least when I was young, would have have involved the whole crowd trying to interact with everyone else in it. Though there was the occasional empty bottle launched into the air. And everyone seemed to throw their home open to everyone else, even if they didn't particularly like them. Everyone was pals for one night, or at least pretended to be. But I gather things are a lot quieter in Scotland these days, and have been since  long before Covid came along. Maybe folk these days have nicer furniture that they don't want damaged or stuff around the house that they don't want people they barely know, if they know them at all, pocketing. Or maybe I'm just getting old. 

I'm getting fed up translating ignorant into English on a daily basis. And I'm not thinking of slips of the tongue, but scripted material delivered by supposed professionals. "Journalists" who believe that situations are exasperated rather than exacerbated. That preempting is the same as predicting. And the plural of child is childs. And they are all being paid to produce this confounding drivel. I shouldn't have to work out what they are trying to say or mean. It's their job to use the correct words. 

So, excited about the impending announcement of the SMD 2021 Book of the Year? Probably not. I think the only folk who might care are the ones on the shortlist. That's because I'm not beholden to any publisher and don't have to creep up to any fellow writers.  A lot of those pithy quotes from reviewers  on the back of new books are more about getting the some publicity for the reviewer, often a writer, than guiding potential readers. And I can think of one Canadian best seller praised for its originality by reviewers who did not realise that the central "revelation" had formed the opening chapters of British book two years earlier. So, the choice of SMD Book of the Year is usually less tainted than most such awards. The same goes for all the reviews that appear in Book Briefing. 

Does anyone else remember a Scottish TV drama series from the 1960s called High Living? I remember it was about people living in a Glasgow high rise but that’s about it. Was it some kind of Scottish Coronation Street? I have no idea. It was in black and white. Or was it? Maybe we only had a black and white TV and really it was in colour.  I remember getting an old camera and automatically assuming it would only take black and white photos. Strange sometimes what I come up with. Am I only person who remembers Pogle’s Wood? I think I always hated Andy Pandy but used to make sure to be home from playing in the dark woods for in time Bill and Ben. It turns out that the dark woods where we were sent to hunt rabbits every morning takes up a space about the size of a football pitch. But when I was three or four and armed only with a bag of salt, which I was told if I could sprinkle on a rabbit’s tail would paralyze it, the dark woods seemed massive.

Many of us have been brainwashed by the shear weight of American self absorption into believing that the Second World War in the Pacific theatre began with the Japanese air attack on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on Dec 7 1941. Not so. Several hours before that the Japanese shot down an RAF flying boat which was shadowing the invasion fleet heading for the Malayan Peninsular. It's a mystery as to whether the plane from 205 Squadron failed to get off a radio message before it was blown apart, or whether the message was not received, or whether it was simply ignored; because the crew were all killed. Certainly, RAF and Australian air force planes had been aware of the invasion fleet since December 6th, though no-one knew where it was headed at that point. When the Catalina flying boat was was first raked by Japanese machine gun fire the fleet was only 150 miles from the invasion beaches. Actually, perhaps few people are aware that the first Allied casualties of the war in the Pacific were flying with an RAF squadron rather than Americans at Pearl Harbor because the incident raises too many  questions about British military ineptitude. 

I wonder how many people realise that the present 2nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment was once part of the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders. And how long will it be before folk forget that the 1st Battalion of the new Ranger  Regiment is descended from the old Royal Scots and King's Own Scottish Borderers, two of the oldest regiments in the British Army. 2 Para is usually associated with the guys who got the bridge at Arnhem in 1944. But actually what is now the 2nd Battalion started life as the 5th Battalion in May 1943 when the 7th Cameron Highlanders was converted into a parachute unit. The 5th Battalion was was redesignated the 2nd Battalion in 1948. So, there is a precedent for turning what used to be called a line infantry battalion into a specialist unit. Which is what is being done with the 1st Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland, formed from a 2006 merger of the Royal Scots, by the way the oldest line regiment, the old 1st Foot, and the KOSB, once the 25th Foot. In the run up to the 1881 Army reforms there was much talk of making the 1st Foot a London regiment and the 25th a Yorkshire unit. 

A while back I was reading one of Ian Rankine’s Rebus novels and it involved Rebus phoning a cop in Shetland. The cop was more Western Isles than Shetland in the way he spoke. I thought, wrong island group there chum. But I’d forgotten something. Many of the Shetland cops in the days of the old Northern  Constabulary were from the Skye, the Hebrides or very remote parts of the Western Highlands. There had been a problem with Big City cops raised among the bright lights of Inverness. They hated Shetland and they took it out on the locals. One of my colleagues at the Shetland Times once heard a couple of them as they got into their squad car declaring they would “Spill some Sheltie blood  tonight”. A few weeks after I went to Shetland to work I was back in Inverness for a couple of days and went with a pal to a local hostelry. The owner pointed out  a guy sitting at the bar with very fancy, very shiny, shoes and said he had just returned from the Shetland. It turned out he was cop. Oddly, my pal stayed at the other end of the bar and after I’d finished chatting with the cop I asked him why he hadn’t come across. It turned out he’d met the cop only a couple of days earlier. My mate told me that the cop had wanted to beat the crap out of him for no good reason and had only been restrained by an older wiser colleague. Anyway,the Northern Constabulary had decided only volunteers or cops from remoter regions  of the force area should be posted to Shetland.

Next time someone trots out the old "The British Invented Concentration Camps" lie, consider that you might be talking to a Nazi. I had forgotten that this canard was a central plank of Nazi propaganda. It even featured in a German Second World War film called Oom Paul, set during the 1899-1902 Boer War. Of course, there was a big difference between a Nazi murder camp and a poorly run British refugee camp for Boers whose homes had been burned down in a savage anti-guerilla campaign. Something like 28,000 died in the British Camps, mostly children and mainly from disease. An estimated 14,000 black Africans died in their segregated camps. Something like 14,000 British troops died in Southern Africa during the same period, also in the main due to official stupidity and incompetence. Official credit for "inventing" concentration camps has to go to the Spanish Army in Cuba around 1896,  once again linked to anti-insurgency warfare. And what were the US Indian Reservations and Canadian Reserves but concentration camps without barbed wire? Another point is that the British brought ignominy on themselves through a basically humanitarian gesture to fellow whites. No effort was made to help the non- white victims of previous colonial punitive campaigns after their homes were burned. Anyway, next time someone tells you the Brits invented concentration camps, you'd be entitled to wonder if they know they are spouting Nazi nonsense. They may well do. Another group who trot out this lie are supporters of the IRA joining the Germans in bombing Britain during the Second World War. 

For several years now I've been making my own calendars on the computer. The monthly illustration is usually on a military theme of some kind. It is very seldom that any image is used more than once. About the only exception is for the month of November. It is a photo taken of a First World War battlefield dotted with the kilted corpses of soldiers from a Highland regiment. Somehow the glimpse of a scrotum peeking from under a kilt brings home home that we are looking at human beings and not uniformed automatons. And it's a reminder for how soldiering can end. The photo is usually attributed to the Imperial War Museum. But I have seen it credited to the Official Canadian war photographer. So, the bodies could be Canadian. The Canadian forces fielded several kilted regiments during the conflict. I've also come across mention of Zonnebeke, 1917 and the Battle of Passchendaele. Anyway, click here to see the photo 

So, the BBC has declared Glasgow the capital of Scotland. I take it that it backs what it broadcasts. According to People Fixing The World presenter Marnie Chesterton Glasgow is the Scottish Capital. If it is not, I suppose Chesterton will be fired in a bid to restore the programme's credibility. I mean, if she got something so basic wrong, what else does she get wrong? In real life, I wonder how many other BBC presenters covering the COP 26 in Glasgow will show the same ignorance of life north of Watford. My guess is that Chesterton will not be only one. UK national broadcaster? 

I was recently reading a novel set in a British military prison during the Korean War. What struck me about this tale of life and death in The Glasshouse were the parallels with high school in Scotland. No, not the constant drill and endless mindless bullshit, but being forced into the company of nutcases. Maybe Craigshill High School had more murderers and psychos among the pupils than most schools. Maybe some of the staff only kept their jobs in teaching because no- one else was prepared to brave the literally murderous pupils.  I remember years later in a bothy south of Ullapool meeting the brother in law of one of my teachers and voicing the opinion that he and another teacher from the same department were certifiable psychopaths. The brother in law immediately agreed. It was only as an adult that I realised how dysfunctional several of my teachers were. She is only a schoolie and maybe you shouldn't be taking a shower together in the boys' changing room sir.  I guess  the end of National Service meant there was less job opportunity in the Army for psycho inadequates as Glasshouse staff. Shame Scottish Education offered a cosy billet to so many who would have been  otherwise unemployable. 

It is a truth universally acknowledged that friendship is founded on a communality of thought or of experience; best of all a combination of the two. I recently went camping and hiking in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains with a guy I've known since we were at high school together in Scotland. Years ago I slept on the floor of his flat in Edinburgh for several months while looking for job. But I was a little concerned. I think we'd only spoken once on the phone in the past two years and he doesn't give much away in his emails. We're both older than we once were but not much wiser. Was the essential spark of communality of thought and/or experience still there. Fortunately, yes. We were like a well oiled machine. As before, he seemed to be able to read my mind. Years ago I was good friends with one of my flat mates in Newcastle upon Tyne. When he got his girlfriend preggers and they set up home together on the other side of Chillingham Road I thought the friendship would continue. But without the communality of experience we'd shared at old digs, it turned out we had nothing.