sunset

This afternoon, down where the River Esk flows out into the mighty Firth of Forth in Musselburgh, looking back across a very swollen high tide towards Edinburgh and the hills as the sun set behind the city and turned the world copper.







Funny, but although I've been on the beach on the opposite bank many times I hadn't been to this spot - just near the race course, behind the some houses, where there's a bit of a peninsula made from the clinker and ash from the nearby power station. And for some reason right next to the junction of the two rivers there's this giant blue arrow in a small park. Why? Turns out that it was originally put there right next to the river to let RAF bomber crews line up for their bombing run on a floating target out on the Forth. I had no idea this was here.

New Captain Alatriste novel coming soon

Really pleased to note there's a new Captain Altriste novel from Spanish author Arturo Perez-Reverte coming next month, The Man in the Yellow Doublet. I'm quite addicted to this series (also very much enjoyed his Fencing Master and Dumas Panel novels too) - he's a highly respect Spanish author but the Alatriste novels have the air of delightful romp around them, but a romp written by a top notch writer who gives us swashbuckling historical adventure and intrigue - like Dumas but for a modern reader rather easier to enjoy - but laces this pulp adventure with well researched gems from history, literature and the arts, especially Spain's history and artistic culture. Wonderful stuff, I've devoured the whole series thus far. Still disappointed that the film (starring Viggo Mortensen) never seems to have had a UK release, although it is available as an import (but a bit pricey for me), have wondered how the film version compares to the novels.

PM apologies for Turing

A while ago a petition was started on the 10 Downing Street site asking for the British government to do something posthumously about the great Alan Turing. Turing wasn't just a genius - an astonishing mathematician, one of the fathers of computing (this in the 1940s, mark you), early thinker in Artificial Intelligence and a legendary codebreaker whose work in the incredibly secret world of BletchleyPark's Station X was an enormous part of the Allied effort in the Second World War. In fact it is no exaggeration to state without the work of Turing and his fellows there is a very real chance the good guys might not have won, or at the very least the war would have run far longer, claiming many more lives (and imagine if Nazi Germany had lasted another 2 or 3 years, imagine if they had time to fully develop their new fast jet fighters to attack Allied bombers, expand their V2 rockets which there was no defence against, continue atomic experiments... It doesn't bear thinking about).

There is a part in Neal Stephenson's fascinating Cryptomonicon, a novel which, like his later (although set in earlier period) Baroque Cycle mixes real historical figures with fictional to create a tale richly detailed with extensively researched history, where those working with Turing in the race to decode the German Enigma codes ponders what they do. At first he thought their team was fighting the shadow war while the real war raged in the skies and seas and land. Then he starts to realise what they are doing, shadowy and theoretical as much of it is, is the real war: fates of convoys, great warships, divisions of troops, even the fates of nations depend on what they are doing behind the scenes.

For his enormous contribution to saving his nation and invaluable intelligence in defeating the most odious, vile threat the free world has faced Turing was persecuted by his country. Alan Turing was homosexual, at a time when it was not just treated as unacceptable by society but actually a criminal offence. His security clearance was revoked, he was hounded, subjected to a ridiculous snake-oil 'cure' which was effectively a form of chemical castration. Alan took his own life not long afterwards, eating an apple he had laced with cyanide. An intellectual genius who had armoured the free world against violent Nazi oppression was oppressed by a bigoted society until he took his own life. Thankfully today we have moved on a bit in the way that gay, lesbian, bi or transgender folks are viewed and treated but there are still so many ignorant bastards who still rant their ignorant bigotry as if LGBT people were of a different species and this is the cost of that kind of uncomprehending, ignorant hatred, one of our best and brightest lost and although he used his brain rather than a bayonet or a Spitfire, someone I would consider a war hero who fought the good fight as hard as anyone.

It is good in this month that marks the 70th anniversary of the start of World War Two that Gordon Brown has formally apologised for the way Turing was treated, although a full pardon and offering proper government support for the museum at Bletchley Park would be better - the place where many men and women laboured in secret, without honours or publicity, to help win the war deserves to be better known. Its not as eye-catching as a Spitfire or the Normandy Landings, but the backroom boffins of Station X paved the road to victory as surely as the soldiers, airmen and sailors, as well as pioneering a whole new field of codebreaking, intelligence and birthing the modern computer, all kept secret for decades, so sensitive was this information (much of it was used during the subsequent Cold War for British Intelligence, it was that good) and both Turing and his colleagues should all be far more honoured than they have been. We have many public monuments to those who sacrificed all in defending us, and its right we should, but we should also honour the remarkable intellects who did no less a work in defending everything we believe in.

Scottish mining museum

When I was off earlier this month I went down the coast a little outside Edinburgh to the Scottish Mining Museum, which I've been meaning to go to for ages (the 26 bus right from the city centre takes you to right to the entrance). Annoyingly the visitor centre and inside attractions and tours weren't up and running, even though I had checked the website before going down and it indicated everything was, but I did get to wander around all the surface remains and had the place largely to myself at the time too, quite atmospheric, so quiet now but once teeming with hundreds and hundreds of men working in the mine, the mighty boilers of the power house and the nearby brick kilns. Shot quite a lot of photos and only now uploading them - the first batch are on my Flickr page, with more to follow, and also a short video 360 panorama:

Brunel in pictures

Photojournalist David White set out to mark the 150th anniversary of the death of Robert Howlett. You may not recognise his name, but you will have seen at least one of his photographs, of the legendary engineer isambard Kingdom Bruenel, in dusty coat and top hat, cigar between his lips, posed in front of massive chains, ever inch the great Victorian pioneer and engineer.

Howlett was dead within a couple of years of taking that photograph at the age of only 27 (the toxic chemicals in the photography process most likely killed him), but he created one of the iconic images of the 19th century. All the more remarkable, as White points out, because photography, itself a 19th century creation of that great age of innovation and exploration, was barely twenty years old when he fashioned this image, not content to do a simple portrait but to frame, pose and light a scene which capture the essence of the man so well. White had a re-created camera similar to the one Howlett would have had in the 1850s and took it around Britain to photograph some of Brunel's surviving structures in as close a manner as would have been available to Howlett (although wisely he used non toxic chemicals); the BBC has an audio visual slideshow of the result which is both asethetically pleasing and historically fascinating, drawing on the early days of photography and that period when there seemed a great romance about the new world engineers and inventors were shaping in our little islands.

American dreaming

BBC Radio 4 has been running a fascinating series entitled "America, Empire of Liberty", presented by historian David Reynolds, which I've been listening to over the last weeks. The actual history, leading up to, through and just after the War of Independence and the actual establishment of a country out of a disparate groups of revolutionaries and often competing and arguing states is interesting enough, but the series has also done what any good history should do - present the links between the Then and the Now. History is not a static, dry study but something dynamic, events from decades and centuries before constantly bleeding into the present the the future yet to be born, which makes it a shame so many people tend to ignore it (and that escalates to tragedy when we see what our so called leaders do in ignorance of historical precedent).

Take for example on of last week's episodes - some parts of the series have touched on US history I was familiar with, but this part I didn't know: the Aliens and Seditions Act, passed by Alexaner Hamilton's Federalist Party in the 1790s as debate raged over the newly independent US's stance on the growing global conflict between France and the British Empire. This largely forgotten act delivered unheard of powers to central government (and at a time when US central government was very weak, by design, most power designed by Jefferson et al to be held more locally at state and county levels, not like today where the executive has steadily accumulated powers to itself). Basically a 1790s War on Terror (WOT?) it allowed the president to deport aliens without right of appeal and to silence criticism in the interests of the country. The parallels between the 18th century and the draconian changes to civil liberties in the laws of the US, UK and other countries in the post 9-11 world are disturbingly familiar.

Likewise debates over a newly minted land of so-called liberty happily ignoring the rights of women (even when President Adams wife implored him to remember that a land of democratic liberty which ignored one entire gender was pure hypocricy. She was, of course, ignored by the male leaders, many of whom, truth be told, for all their fine rhetoric, were not overly mad on giving all men the vote, let alone women, unless they were the right kind of men (well bred, well off, basically the New World's aristocracy), thus again repeating old mistakes even back then. And then there was the odious issue of slavery, not to mention the way the native American Indians would be treated...

Meanwhile on the TV the BBC has just started a new series by Simon Schama, "The American Future: a History". The first episode also linked the Then and Now, exploring the seemingly insatiable consumerism of the US and its almost unshakable belief that it can endlessly exploit natural resources throughout its history, noting how this belief is slowly (and perhaps a little too late) being shaken as drought in the West means constantly shriking water for more and more people, to say nothing of the over-dependence on oil driven not only by car culture but an over-sized (and extremely inefficent) car culture.

Schama brings us right up to date with both Obama and McCain's campaign comments on climate change and resource management and comparing to a century or so before with one man telling the good and great of Westward Expansion that there simply was not enough water in the land for all the cities and the farms they planned (he was booed of stage, but he was right) and in more recent history replaying what Jimmy Carter told America during his presidency (but more Americans preferred to listen to a B movie actor at that election than a man who had been a farmer and actually knew what he was talking about in terms of managing the land).

Reviews from the past: the Mechanical Turk

For the next of my Reviews From the Past I've dug out a review of another popular science book and yes, it is another one I found utterly fascinating, a look at some quite incredible mechanical automata, ingenious clockwork devices of astonishing intricacy which counterfeited life. As well as entertaining they also raised philosophical questions about the nature of life and the possibility of artificially creating life and intelligence, questions which have come to the fore once more in our digital age as we build ever more powerful computers, learning system and robotic designs. Its a story of invention and showmanship that takes in crowned heads of Europe, signatories of the Declaration of Independence, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Babbage and even PT Barnum as the Mechanical Turk crosses continents and history. This review dates from 2002 and first appeared on The Alien Online.

The Mechanical Turk,
By Tom Standage,
Allen Lane, Penguin Press



A chess playing automaton from the 1770s – father of modern AI or a clever illusion from an age of wonders?

It is the mid-1760s, the beginning of the Age of Reason. Science and engineering are creating new wonders almost every week. Intricate clockwork automatons are devised which highlight the ingenuity and skill of the mechanical age – skills often used for more practical purposes, such as Watt’s perfection of the steam engine or Jacquard’s loom. Mechanical trumpet players and flute players, with moving fingers, artificial lungs and a range of music to play. Mechanical ducks that swim, splash around, flap their wings and even eat food proffered to them. Such devices delighted the Europeans of the time, much as the Victorians would delight in intricate clockwork toys for their children a century later. Into this time comes the Turk.

Devised by Wolfgang von Kempelen, a nobleman in the service of Empress Maria Therese, this was a life-sized automaton, dressed in the oriental style popular at the time. Seated at a cabinet with a chess board before him, this Turk was rotated around on castors while his panels and doors were opened and a light shone through to show his inner workings and ensure no trickery was possible, much in the way a stage magician will do with his cabinet before an illusion today. A challenge for a player was given and soon the Turk was not only astounding the court by playing chess against a man, he was beating the human player. Mechanical fingers grasped pieces and moved them precisely, his hand would rap on the cabinet impatiently if the opponent took too long to move and illegal moves were swiftly adjusted.

Kempelen was keen to move onto his other devices, but the Turk was to overshadow him for the rest of his life. Ordered to take it around Europe, it appeared before the great and good of the land. Doctor Johnson and Charles Babbage were amazed by it. Babbage, like many was not sure it was truly machine intelligence, it may have been a trick. But if it was true mechanical thinking, then could he not use similar mechanics to create a calculating machine? A Difference Engine? Napoleon plays the machine, as does the great American scientists and diplomat Benjamin Franklin.

Long after Kempelen’s death, the Turk had his career, now under the stewardship of Maelzel, an automaton maker with a flair for showmanship. A young Scot is intrigued by the device and the speaking machine of Kempelen’s which has been fitted to it to allow it to say ‘check.’ An artificial voice? Could such a voice be transmitted in some way, Bell wondered, as with the new-fangled telegraph?

In America the Turk plays the last surviving signatory of the Declaration of Independence (it throws the game) and is written about extensively, just as it was in Europe. Many speculated about what trick it conceals. Is there a dwarf hidden in a small compartment inside the machinery? Is it a double amputee Polish officer hiding form the Czar? Or does the operator use magnets or wires? But it is moved around and opened, so how is this possible? Such speculation followed the Turk for a century and only increased its popularity. Even Edgar Allan Poe attempted to rationalise its mysteries, using a scientific detective model, which he would later use in his novels.

As with the wonderful Map that Changed the World by Simon Winchester, Standage has created a compelling science history, which is as fascinating for the historical figures and events around the main character as it is for the actual tale itself. The idea of this device inspiring Babbage and laying the foundations for the information age, for Bell and his telephone – even the later operator Maelzel giving lessons in showmanship and publicity to a young P.T. Barnum – the characters are fascinating. Of such little interconnections are our histories made, as intricate as the clockwork of the automatons themselves.

Standage brilliantly captures the mood of a world where knowledge was progressing quickly and engineering the casually miraculous was becoming an almost everyday event. He wisely keeps his chapter on the real secrets of the Turk to the end of the book, allowing our interest to peak. We all loves a good show and we all love a good mystery – the Turk gave both for a century, as well as fuelling speculation about artificial intelligence to this day. The final chapters discuss chess playing machines and computer intelligence in our time, from the brilliant Alan Turing’s early programming to IBM’s Deep Blue finally beating the human chess champion, Kasparov. This final chapter cleverly reminds us that our own time has produced great marvels of our own, that we are direct inheritors of that age of genius and passion. This is a delightful scientific history that will appeal to the sense of wonder in us all.

Reviews from the past: Monturiol's Dream

Over the years I've written a large number of reviews of comics, books, graphic novels and movies and even the odd play (and now beer too). A lot appeared on the Library of Dreams, the first site I ever made and which I posted a lot of reviews on, along with some pics and some poetry I penned and which went defunct when the provider decided to stop making the free hosting free - the site stayed up for a good while after but I couldn't update it anymore. I was planning a new reviews site when my good mate Ariel suggested I contribute instead to The Alien Online and soon I was posting a lot of reviews to TAO, which grew to be practically a magazine online - reviews of comics, science fiction and fantasy were the backbone of TAO but we had articles and interviews and other features too, from a wide range of contributors, including several authors such as Adam Roberts and James Lovegrove.

When TAO finished its run it stayed up for a while too but now its gone too, so I was thinking, I still have a lot of those reviews tucked away in a folder and maybe it would be interesting to repost some of them myself. So now I'm slowly picking upon the Woolamaloo again I thought it would be a good time to start reposting some of them. I'm starting with one from 2003, a popular science book (although TAO was mostly SF we also posted on some interesting factual science works too) which I found absolutely fascinating:

Monturiol’s Dream,
By Matthew Stewart,
Published Profile Books



A socialist utopian dreamer tries to create a better world through science


Narcis Monturiol is a name I suspect that most people will not recognise, even those of us who fancy we have a fair smattering of the history of science. Born in Catalonia in 1819 Monturiol was one of those people who seem to be able to turn to whatever interest takes them and to be rather good at it. A remarkably intelligent man he was also very politically aware, his soul fired by the socialist dreams of a modern utopia where men and women (for Monturiol was a staunch advocate of the role of women) could live a better life. Despite his fervent belief in the progress to a utopian future he remained, unlike many others, committed to achieving this goal through non violent means. This gentle man, like many intellectuals around Europe in the 1800s, turned to the new sciences to create a better world.

Monturiol’s contribution to this better world would be a remarkable device - a submarine. To modern readers this may seem almost laughable, but Narcis was in deadly earnest. While others around the globe had struggled to create somewhat poor submersibles barely worthy of the name he would create a proper, sea-going submarine. At a time when the best attempts had produced small vessels that could stumble along a few feet under the water with a breathing hose sticking up through the waves (such as those used in the American Civil War) Monturiol would settle for nothing less than a fully functioning craft that could sustain life for hours and cruise the deep depths.

During times of great political turmoil he fired his friends and other residents of Catalonia with his dream. Constantly struggling with cash flow Monturiol, with no backing from any big company or government, used his collective to help him design, build and launch his ‘artificial fish’ the Ictineo. Lined with portholes so that they could see the marvels of the underwater world the Ictineo would have been remarkably impressive for a team of engineers working in a naval dockyard. For a self-taught man working within a socialist co-operative it was a stunning achievement.

The Ictineo was powered by several volunteers turning cranks. Monturiol, through much experimentation and thought had hit upon the idea of a double hull design to help the submarine sustain its integrity in the crushing depths - a design every submarine follows to this very day. Monturiol turned to chemistry and devised a mixture of compounds that would be mixed to generate fresh oxygen without ruining the cabin’s atmosphere with noxious gases as a by-product. The Ictineo could thus sustain a number of crewmen for many hours beneath the waves, giving ample time for exploration of the depths.

His attempts to raise more investment cash by attracting the government were not so successful however. Despite the backing of engineers and local Catalan politicians the admiralty was unimpressed. Monturiol even, reluctantly, added a canon to his ship to show that it cold be used offensively. Being the man he was he devised a method to fire this while still submerged. Fair to say this would have been a devastating weapon if it had been explored further. Monturiol rationalised this to himself by reasoning that this would level the playing field between navies such as Spain’s and France’s against the omnipotent might of the Royal Navy. Still the Spanish admirals were not impressed.

Once again Monturiol was rescued by friends, fellow socialists and the local Catalan people (who often came down to Barcelona’s harbour on a Sunday walk to see the marvel of the Ictineo diving and surfacing). A new co-operative managed to raise enough funds to being work on the Ictineo II. Monturiol was feted by the local population and politicians as a great inventor. Emboldened he sets to work on a much larger submarine. Ictineo II is capable of diving to depths of over thirty metres and sustaining life for many hours safely and comfortably. Monturiol devises manipulators on the hull to allow him to interact with the marine environment. His chemical knowledge allows him to create a mixture that will give him underwater illumination. The human-powered crank engine is replaced by a steam engine. Once again this amazing, self-taught man invents an astonishing way to power a steam engine underwater. Instead of a fire to stoke the boiler Monturiol uses a chemical reaction to generate heat to boil the water and drive the engine. This reaction also produces oxygen for the cabin and he employs more chemical means to scrub carbon dioxide from the air. The Ictineo II is, to all intent purposes, a fully functioning modern submarine.

Bear in mind that this is the mid 1860s. No-one else in the world would come up with anything so advanced for decades, yet here was a self-taught man who had made the fiction of Captain Nemo a reality before Verne ever wrote his wonderful novel. This was a man who took a concept which was science fiction and sculpted it into reality. He works out aqua dynamics, engineering principles of double hulls to withstand pressure, devices for interacting with the undersea environment and submersible locomotion and navigation, all by the 1860s. Unlike the many others around the world who tried to create a submarine - and usually failed, often fatally - Monturiol publishes detailed descriptions of his designs and methods so that others can copy and improve upon them. Still his utopian dream behind it all, a belief that this new type of artificial fish could help usher a new era in for humanity.

Of course we know today that the submarine as it was developed in the decades after Monturiol’s death was used more principally as a terrible weapon of war. And yet some glimmer of his original idea can still be seen today. Submersibles that can touch the very floor of the ocean - something Monturiol longed to do - and explore the myriad of new life found there in the darkest depths. Knowledge of our environment, tectonics and evolution have all been enhanced immeasurably by underwater exploration. How many of us thrilled to Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea when we were younger? What would Monturiol have made of the fantastic sights millions could view in their own home watching Blue Planet?

Monturiol’s Dream is a fascinating and utterly delightful scientific history. The history of those turbulent times in European and Spanish history are absorbing enough in their own right - the beginning of genuine attempts to have politics for the masses and a striving to make a better world using modern reason and science. The technical brilliance of Monturiol is undeniable and makes for remarkable reading. What I took most from this gorgeous little book however was the same thing I took from the finest SF novels - sense of pure wonder. This is a quite wonderful tale of a very gentle man who really wanted to change the world. Not for honours or riches, but because he believed it was the right thing to do, to create a finer world. Perhaps on some levels he did. Hopefully Matthew Stewart’s fine book will go some way to restoring Monturiol and his work to the place he deserves in the history of science.

Pardon for witches

A Lothians-based paranormal group, Full Moon Investigations, has asked the Scottish parliament to issue a posthumous pardon to all the people persecuted under charges of witchcraft throughout Scottish history; not the finest part of our long history and not a part the tourist industry likes to talk about too much, preferring either (often wrong) ancient history or extolling the Enlightenment (except, of course, if you are promoting a ghost walk tour!).

I know, I know, some people sigh cynically, what is the point of this nonsense? Every month there seems to be someone demanding a government issue a retroactive apology for something which happened long before most folks in the country were even born and aren't we all fed up with it, isn't it just trying to apply political correct modern sensibilities backwards onto long-past events to make us feel better? Well to be honest it is easy to think that way, but then consider that when we ignore past injustices we tend to allow those patterns to repeat.

What were some of the principal elements of witchcraft allegations in previous centuries? Picking on someone who was a bit different (old woman living on her own with cats), groups who may not have been popular with the majority (ultra Calvinists suspicious of Catholics), people in positions of power encouraging utterly irrational hatred, suspicion and fear of those who are different for their own ends and using them to consolidate their own grip over the populace, justify draconian changes in law and to prosecute actions which would normally be seen as uncivilised... Gee, sound even remotely like certain events in modern society? And if you are still thinking nah, it is just PC nonsense, just remember how the phrase 'witch hunt' has become a phrase we use regularly when talking about the persecution of any individual or small group. Then think again.

Hogmanay

And so we click over to the final day of the year and also my fortieth birthday. Soundtrack for today: Clare Grogan (fworrr) and Altered Images with "Happy Birthday", Alice Cooper's "I'm Eighteen" ("got a baby's brain and an old man's heart... I'm a man and I'm a boy..."), The Cure's "In-Between Days" ("yesterdayI got so old, I felt like I could die, yesterday I got so old it made me want to cry"), Queen's "Who Wants To Live Forever?" and then nothing to do with age or birthdays I'm sticking on my namesake the jazz musician Joe Gordon.

Here lies Joe Gordon; no, he's not dead, just full of champagne... Born at the height of the Swinging Sixties and the Space Age; unsurprisingly he has a soft spot for the Beatles and still at 40 harbours a great desire to be an astronaut when he grows up. 1967. Britain wasn't even on the decimal system back then - I don't remember the old money as it changed when I was very small, but I still have my first bank savings book, opened by relatives when I was born, and the entries are all in pounds, shilling and pence which I don't actually understand. According to a card my mum and dad gave me in 1967 a pack of crisps would cost 1 shilling and 3 pence (about 6p modern style), a gallon of petrol 5 shillings and 5 pence, around 27 p modern (now the old money and the gallon are gone) and a pint of Guinness would have set you back 2 shillings and sixpence, or around 12 and 1/2 pence modern (and the half pence is long gone now too, of course).

Sandie Shaw won the Eurovision Song Contest in '67 with "Puppet on a String", the Beatles' "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was released (still one of my favourite albums of all time and also one of the best cover designs ever), "In the Heat of the Night" won an Oscar ("they call me Mister Tibbs"), Elvis married Priscilla, Francis Chichester completed the first solo voyage around the globe and the QEII was launched. Louis Leakey announced the finding of ancient, pre-human fossils in Kenya, still one of the great sources of knowledge painfully peiced together on the very earliest days of humans and the species which lead to us back in the dawn days (there's nothing like reading about a 600, 000 year old proto-human fossil to make you feel younger on your 40th). Jimi Hendrix releases "Are You Experienced?" Yes, Jimi, I am and thanks for giving me my theme tune, "hey, Joe, where you goin' with that blog in yore hand?"

The Russians postured, telling their allied (actually controlled) states not to have full diplomatic links to what we used to call West Germany, while Israel went into the Six Days War and the US was embroiled in Vietnam. Of course aggression in the Middle East, Russian leaders posturing against the West and Americans getting themselves into the quagmire of an unwinnable war in a country that has nothing to do with them for dodgy political ideology are all mistakes we have learned from in 2007 and would never allow to happen today... Oh, hold on... Martin Luther King denounces the war (and of course he gets villified an killed) and Muhammad Ali refuses the military draft. They villify him too, but today who remembers the politicians who postured about, calling him names? But they remember Ali. Che Guevara meets his end but in doing so becomes immortal.

Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions was published, collecting some brilliant writing by Philip K Dick, Samuel Delany, Fritz Leiber and others. Ah, the days when Harlan was pioneering some great writing; sadly in 2007 he seems to be mentioned more regularly in connections with legal cases... The first colour broadcasts began in the UK (on some BBC2 programmes); I'm old enough to remember TV's used to have little badges on them proudly proclaiming 'colour' (usually each letter in different colours in case you were especially thick and didn't quite get it) and so did station idents. Today they all say 'HD' instead. Plus ca change.

The Summer Of Love year was also an apex in humanity's drive to the stars - both NASA and the Soviet Union (another name gone since I was younger) were sending probes to Venus and the magnificently daring Apollo programme was literally going 'where no man has gone before'. Jocelyn Bell and her colleagues using a new-fangled radio telescope discover a regular extra-terrestrial signal from the depths of space. Regular signal? Artificial? Alien life? Sadly it wasn't ET calling but it was the discovery of the bizarre stellar phenomenon of the Pulsar. Her colleagues later shared a Nobel Prize (the discovery was written up in 68) but not Bell, a controversial move. She is now a Dame. The drive to the stars seems to have faded away and I'm looking at another year where I am unlikely to have a holiday on the Moon, dammit. In other scientific advances '67 also saw Barnard perform the first heart transplant and the gloriously beautiful Concorde took her bow. Same age as me, but she's gone from the skies; luckily I am still flying, albeit rather more slowly and with a much smaller nose. Moves to have me preserved for the nation in a museum have so far come to nothing.

1967, seems worlds away now, doesn't it? And yet it was full of events still influencing 2007. Let's hope 2008 gets more of the better influences from the past and not the negative. Sadly my birthday didn't begin with me waking up sandwhiched between Monica Belluci and Winona Ryder, waiting for Nigella Lawson, clad only in a maid's apron, to bring us breakfast in bed. Then again I did wake up knowing my family are healthy and with me, I've got friends and a decent roof over my head while there's still millions who can't say that. That injustice infuriated me as a kid and a younger man and it really makes me incandescent that in 2007 we still spend more killing people than we do trying to help those who need it. I dearly wish some of our so-called leaders would read more history and learn from it. 2008 will probably bring more mistakes repeated from the past, but let's hope - let's hope it gets better. Happy New Year to you all and Peace Out, y'all.

Doors Open Day

Tomorrow (Saturday 29th) is the annual Doors Open Day for Edinburgh, when people can get into buildings and areas of buildings that aren't normally open to the public. It's pretty interesting and also free so accessible to anyone - certainly every place we tried last year proved to be pretty busy with folks making the most of the opportunity. The Cockburn Association has all the details and there is also a Flickr stream for last year's Door's Open, which, I'm rather chuffed to say, also has one of the photos I took on it after the organisers asked if they could use it to help promote the event - hopefully I can get some more pics tomorrow with the new camera this time. I'm looking forward to wandering round with some friends poking into parts of my city that I don't often get to see.

Doors Open

And as another Festival fades away (although the city is still busy with tourists - that ebbs and flows according to season but never actually stops) there are still more things to look forward to, including this year's Doors Open Day on September 29th. That's when many buildings, a lot of which the public normally don't get into (or if they do there are parts they never normally see) allow people in free to explore their city and appreciate its culture, architecture and history - its really a great day, getting to see things in buildings you pass regularly but had never seen within. And I was quite pleased when I was asked if a couple of interior shots I took at last year's Doors Open could be borrowed to be used for illustrating this year's. You can get details from the Doors Open page on the Cockburn Association site here.

Simpson

Not the yellow cartoon variety this time, but Doctor James Young Simpson, one of Edinburgh's many noted contributor's to medical science and also the first man to be knighted for services to medicine. On the way home tonight the bus was stopped further back from a junction than usual because of the sheer business of the city during Festival time. I looked up from my book and noticed that ten feet up on the western wall of the ultra-posh Balmoral Hotel is a plaque I've never noticed before, despite passing it a thousand times (just the wrong spot to be noticed as you are walking past). And the plaque commemorates the spot where a pharmacy used to stand before the hotel; it was here that the chemist prepared the chloroform that James Young Simpson would use in 1847 as he experimented with anesthesia and pain relief for medical procedures. Many resisted his work at first (which sounds crazy to us - imagine many medical procedures without anesthesia?!?!) as 'un-natural' but its use took off when Queen Victoria gave in an used it to ease childbirth. I'm sure more than a few mothers will silently thank that chemist and Simpson for starting a line of modern medicine that eases the miracle of birth :-). Simpson I knew about, but I had no idea that plaque was there or the chemist's business either.

Dig for victory

I noticed in the news that the Bevin Boys have been belatedly honoured for their efforts during the Second World War. Some were volunteers, some drafted, but instead of the army, air force or navy they were drafted into a service just as dangerous (although a lot of folk simply don't realise how dangerous) and even dirtier - they were the guys who had to man the coal mines to keep the home fires burning (literally). And it reminded me of my papa on my mother's side, who was a miner and who trained many of those boys. A couple of years ago I bought a book on the history of mining which covered the region back home for my mum and dad; we were surprised to find inside a bunch of grinning Bevin Boys with the senior miners who trained them, one tall, broad, strongly built man standing out.

He looked like the Comrade, who we lost the other year, but it couldn't be him back then... Papa, his dad. I only new him as an old man, semi-crippled from the work in the pits and missing fingers, speech damaged (of course he never got any compensation - slip on a wet towel and sprain an ankle today and you sue for ten grand, crippled in mining accidents then, tough) and we just don't have a lot of photographs of him when he was in his prime. How like the Comrade in his prime he looked, grinning for the camera, strong, confident, young, smiling out at us in this book from across six decades. These men took the 'dig for victory' slogan literally, tearing out fuel for the war effort from deep under the bedrock of our islands, its a bloody disgrace they had to wait sixty years for even this tiny amount of recognition.

Walking through time: Holyrood Palace



The Palace of Holyrood with Arthur's Seat in the background, viewed from Calton Hill in Edinburgh, by James Valentine, thought to date to around 1878.



The Palace of Holyrood, the ruined Abbey and Arthur's Seat from Calton Hill taken by me, spring 2007.

I found this online recently as I was sorting out some of my photographs to upload to my Fotolog and Flickr sites. Despite the history Edinburgh isn't changeless, but obviously it has more than its share of places which do remain almost the same than most cities and sometimes you find photographs of buildings and streets which are almost the same today.

Imagine both pictures as portals to two different spots in history; imagine you could use them as the travelling points between those periods, to walk from the picture from now to emerge from then, to find yourself standing on Victorian-era Calton Hill, caressed by the wind, local worthies enjoying a peramabulation past you, lots of smoke rising from buildings in those days, a mix of tall masted ships and new fangled steamships visible down on the Forth an at the Leith docks, and perhaps Hill and Adamson, the great pioneers of early photography setting up one of their experiments with this new camera device, using the 'pencil of nature'. How lovely would it be if you could do that? I suppose I will have to make do with living and working around the sites, which is, in its own way, walking through time every single day.

Overlord

The 6th of June; on this day in 1944 thousands of ordinary men did something extraordinary and stormed the enemy beaches in a landing now as legendary as the thousand ships of the Greeks beaching at Troy; the bad guys were finally going to be pushed back inch by bloody inch. Before they made that monumental charge how many others had been there secretly before them? How many agents, resistance fighters and Commandos died silently in the dark scouting those beaches to get the information needed to make D-Day work? I wonder where my old childhood hero wee George was that day with his Commando mates and again I wish I had known him as an adult and had the chance to record some of his memories. Gold, Juno, Sword, Omaha and Utah; a huge endeavour and an enormous gamble, even with the massive naval and air superiority the Allies had built up, but it worked. I remember seeing a photograph years ago in a history book - I think it was some airborne troops preparing to get into the wooden Horsa gliders; someone had chalked on the side "the Channel stopped you, but not us." I do wonder, as time passes, in the distant future will people think that this enormous armada and legions of brave souls are just a poetic exaggeration like the Iliad? What a price was paid for our freedoms.

Modern history

I've been really enjoying Andrew Marr's Modern History of Britain - this week's episode was the late 60s dissolving from Flower Power into riots, demonstrations and dreadful national debt into the early 70s, fuel crisis and mass strikes. It's quite fascinating not only to see how dreadfully racist and bigoted we were then - 'decent' people objecting to the decriminalisation of homosexuality (between men anyway, there was no such legal injunction against lesbianism, supposedly because years before Queen Victoria refused to believe lesbians existed, which is a shame, because there was a dour old queen who could have seriously used some clitoral stimulation), jokes about coloured people being 'different' on prime time TV shows, panic about immigration and the older generation convinced all young people were terrible. Alongside this mass marches of people protesting the British prime minister for being too close to a war-mongering US administration, demands for 'Americans out' and 'end the war' (Vietnam here of course) and Northern Ireland going from tricky to bloody with the introduction of interning suspects without trial and violent action by troops among civilians leading to terrorist strikes on mainland Britain.

Gee, I'm so glad we're beyond all that now, eh? We've learned so much from our mistakes in the intervening decades. Oh, hold on...

Does anyone else ever get the idea that anyone who stands for government should be battered around the head with several volumes of history books and forced to produce essays on them to prove they have learned something before they are allowed to run the country? The BBC site has the whole second episode (from last week) up for perusal.

Painted faces

How lovely is this brief trip through the history of Western portraiture: 500 years of female portraits, from Da Vinci to Pablo Picasso, morphing into one another, accompanied by a cello suit from Bach.

The Graffiti Project

What do a bunch of famous Brazilian street artists have in common with a historic Scottish castle? Well, they are painting graffiti all over it - at the invitation of the laird. Turns out Kelburn Castle, 35 miles west of Glasgow, was covered with a dodgy rendering a few decades back which is proving detrimental to the ancient stonework underneath it, so it will be coming off in the future. Meantime it provides an amazing temporary canvas for the Sao Paulo Crew to work their colourful designs on. Not often you see a historic castle being redecorated like this - its been on the Scottish news a lot in the last week or two and really made me smile. The month long project has an official site here with lots of pictures and some very cool time lapse videos of them working (when the Scottish weather doesn't interrupt them).

Edinburgh from the air

At the weekend I did something I haven't done since I was a about seven years old - I climbed the 287 winding steps of the Scott Monument to the uppermost viewing gallery. Built to honour the memory of the famous Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott this great neo-Gothic rocket of Binny sandstone was completed in 1844; designed by George Meikle Kemp. Kemp was the son of a shepherd in the Pentland Hills, reputedly inspired from his rural existence as a boy by a visit to Roslyn Castle and Roslyn Chapel. He seemed to have a knack for the fine arts, but it was an an unknown he entered the public competition to design a memorial to Scott; in fact for the first round he used a pen name rather than his own humble name which at that time had no great reputation, so when his design was ultimately chosen he went from being a respected but not well-known draughtsman and designer to being responsible for one of the major iconic landmarks of the capital of Scotland, an area now designated as a UN World Heritage Site.

Sadly poor old George did not live to enjoy the fruits of his studies and labours; early in 1844, several months before the Monument was completed, he fell into the canal at Fountainbridge, not far from where I live, and was drowned. Citizens of the city lined the streets for his funeral procession as his casket was led to Saint Cuthbert's kirkyard, in the shadow of the Castle and in sight of his construction.

It was very odd to be back at a spot you hadn't been to in decades; last time I went up those stairs was with my mum and dad as a wee boy. One thing that was noticeably different was that the spiral stone staircase seemed a lot smaller and much, much narrower than it was a lad. One way up and one way down, so if you are going one way and other folks coming down the other it is a bit of a problem. The higher you go the more the spire narrows and so does the staircase. On the final segment from the mid gallery to the upper one the staircase becomes very, very narrow; the heavy stone walls are scraping my shoulders and I need to duck as the roof is lower. Hemmed in by dark stone blocks you could swear you are deep inside the lowest dungeon, which is a strange feeling when you know that you are almost 200 feet in the air.

The viewing platforms become smaller too as you ascend. The first one is relatively wide, with a tall, narrow room in the centre with beautiful stained glass windows and carved wood which includes the names of Watty's books carved into the decorations; many scores of feet beneath this is a similarly proportioned, but far plainer chamber, deep beneath the earth, between the massive stone pillars of the Monument which one guide claims go down almost 40 feet into the bedrock (our 19th century ancestors built to last). Up, up and up to the next level, wind blowing through the arrow slit windows of the stone stairwell (no escalator here, kids, you walk 200 feet into the air by foot) and a smaller gallery to look out from, all the time surrounded by dozens of sculptures, large and small, of characters from Scott's many books. That final, tight, narrow climb and out onto a tiny upper gallery barely wide enough for one person.

Wind streaking past you, carrying the sound of the bagpipe player at the gates to Princes Street Gardens up to you even 200 feet above him. I don't suffer from vertigo but leaning over the top still makes my stomach do a wee twirl; 200 feet may not sound much in our age of high-rise buildings but for the mid 19th century it must have seemed staggering. Since there is a limit on how tall a building can be in the centre of Edinburgh to preserve the brilliant skyline the Monument remains towering above most of its neighbours. Right across the road from it the Victorian splendour of Jenners Department Store, the original facade covered in carvings and sculptures. I've admired some of the Caryatid statues on the building many times but how odd to see a building I pass every day, a large and tall building, from above, looking down onto it. Raise your eyes up and the view leads you across the Georgian splendour of the New Town to the River Forth and the hills of Fife on the far side, upriver the great iron shape of the Forth Bridge looms out of the haze.

Walk round, the wind stinging your eyes, trying not to hit your knees against the stone rail in the narrow walkway. There's the expensive grandeur of the Balmoral Hotel, North Bridge striding across the valley between New Town and Old Town past the old Scotsman building; in the background the distinctive modern dome of the Dynamic Earth, the new Parliament next to it, Holyrood Palace and rearing above it the great volcanic rock of Arthur's Seat, nature's way of pointing out She's even better at this monumental architecture than humans are. The skyline of the Old Town with its tall, narrow old buildings and church spires, with the Pentland Hills visible beyond the city, the white marks of the dry ski slope standing out against the grass. And then turn your head past there, past the expensive homes of Ramsay Gardens and there you go, the Castle. I just don't get tired of that view, but how cool to see it from the top of the Monument again after all these years.

Free historic Scotland

Historic Scotland's free weekend is coming up, where visitors can enjoy a number of our historical sites which normally cost for entry for free, including Edinburgh Castle on April 21st and 22nd. Looking on the HS site which has a list by region of attractions is a nice reminder of some of the history which is still physically with us (a lot which I haven't seen yet) literally covering not mere centuries but millennia, from Maeshow and Skara Brae to the dramatic remains of Tantallon Castle perched on the rugged, rocky cliffs looking out over the Forth (very Castle Dracula in the right lighting and weather). The RH site has details and individual entries even give OS map references and travel guides including information on going there using the National Cycle Network. Why do I have the troubling worry I will forget about this and remember on the following Monday and realise there was something I meant to do...

Behold the mysteries of the Great Pyramid revealed!

French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin (I wonder if he is related to the famous 19th century magician Robert Houdin, who later inspired the stage name for Harry Houdini?) claims to have solved the mystery of how the Great Pyramid of Cheops was built - he has a 3-D simulation available online (although you may need a plug-in to make it work and it takes ages to load), which will walk you through the theory or also allow you to 'free navigate' the 3-D reconstruction. There's even a little Second Life-style animated person (presumably a virtual Monsieur Houdin) who walks on to narrate the theory part. Fascinating stuff.

"I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."

Frederick Douglass

Douglass may be known to some of you already; for many years his writings have continued to be published by the likes of Penguin Classics and still read more than a century after he died. Frederick Douglass was a slave, who used the small amount of reading and writing he was taught to educate himself further, then to begin to elucidate upon that most despicable of institutions, slavery. Douglass did not confine himself only to the plight of the African slave in America (and other lands), he spoke eloquently and with passion on the inequalities between poor and rich and men and women (in an era where even a rich, white wife was essentially the property of the husband). He was a confidant of President Abraham Lincoln and was pressed by the mourners at his memorial to speak, which, reluctantly he finally agreed to, speaking unprepared and off the cuff he moved the mourners to tears and gained a standing ovation; it is said Lincoln's wife was so moved she passed to Douglass the president's favourite walking stick as a keepsake.



Today marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Great Britain, one of those sadly rare moments where morality, public will and politics all came together to do something good. Soon the British would go from being some of the most efficient at running this diabolical trade to an almost missionary zeal in preventing it, with the sight of a Royal Navy man'o'war something slave ships feared to see as the fleet enforced this law. It is a good time to consider not only our shared history but how that history still informs today. Centuries before this point a Spanish monk pleaded with the crown that the Conquistadors in the New World not treat the natives as animals and slaves because, regardless of their faith a true Christian would still percieve them as children of God and therefore to be treated as equal with anyone else of any colour or creed. The Spanish crown was more interested in exploiting those natives and their land, but the monk's enlightened words never went away.

Sadly slavery in one form or another has existed for most of human history; even the Cradle of Democracy itself, the Classical Athens of Pericles, the culture most Western nations like to say they draw upon for the basis of their modern, enlightened societies, saw nothing wrong in slavery (and of treating women as second class citizens either). The Spartans who are celebrated in the new film 300 could only run their warrior society by subjugating an entire race, the Helots (which did cause other Greeks to squirm a bit - enslaving barbarians was one thing, but enslaving other Greeks seemed a bit off; the hypocrisy of this notion was lost on the ancients).

Look around your home city today; look at some of the grand buildings in Glasgow and Bristol and London and wonder - how many of these splendid buildings we take as part of our great historical heritage were built with money earned from the slave trade? Or take America, with that remarkable Declaration of Independence and the Constitution - "we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal." Alas many of the signatories to that document were happy to own slaves; the Land of the Free was born on the back of whips and iron shackles. A century on from the American Abolition and ordinary folks like Rosa Parks still had to fight for the simple right to sit down on a bus.


(image of a French slaver ship taken from the archive run by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities)

How much did the idea that you could enslave another because they weren't really as human as you poison societies and leave us the evil bequest of racism, discrimination and hatred that plague us to this day? And far from a Western condition how many African tribes made large amounts of money happily capturing and selling their fellow Africans to white slavers? How many Arab merchants carried on the trade? Watching an interview on the news today I found myself in rare agreement with a journalist from the Catholic Herald when he commented that slavery had, sadly, been going on for so much of our history that we were all, every one of us, in all likelihood the descendants at some point of slaves - and slave traders. Push far back enough... Now there's a thought, and not a terribly pleasant one; certainly makes you think about that awfully jingoistic dirge "Rule Britannia" where the line proudly proclaims "Britons, never, ever, ever shall be slaves..."

And today? Yes, we may have this awful trade finally abolished in most of the world - remarkable given how many millennia it has been around, outlasting empires and entire civilisations - but the legacy of it is still there, in the way different people are treated differently even in modern, Western societies. It still poisons us. When you see others as different it it too easy a step to then consider them lesser, inferior. When you start thinking that way you walk into hate and bigotry which shackles all of us as effectively as the iron slave collar. It leads into thinking of others as less than human. It leads to discrimination, hatred, violence, slavery and even to the death camp. That's where that sort of hatred takes us, make no mistake and let no shouting, red-faced BNP bigot telling you "there ain't no black in the Union Jack" and that all our ills are caused by 'immigrants' (including those 'immigrants' born and raised here) tell you otherwise.

No, we are not all the same in a pluralistic society, but the way we treat one another should be the same. And yet skin colour, wealth, nationality, gender, even accent still dictate how we are treated. We still have chains to break; I don't know if we ever can break every last link in those chains, human nature being what it is, but it is still a fine thing to try.

Ivor the Engine

Walking round the Museum of Scotland with my mum and dad the other day we heard a noise, "scccchhhhhhhhhhhhh tpppptt, scccchhhhhhhhh tpppptt...". Looking down from the gallery we were on we realised an engineer had started up the gleaming steam engine on the floor below us. This modern addition to the Royal Museum in Edinburgh takes you round Scotland's history in chronological order, starting at the entrance with Pictish standing stones, taking you through the early Kingdom of the Scots and on. By the upper floors you reach the Industrial Revolution - there is a large stone building actually inside the museum housing a Newcomen style 'atmospheric engine' (the earliest steam engines, before James Watt improved them) with the wooden beam projecting from the stonework. Beside this is this working steam engine; when we passed it we noticed the can of oil and the dirty rag on top and realised someone had been working on it - of course we hoped we'd see the engineering curator come back and start her up.

While walking round the next floor up we heard the distinctive sound of a steam engine 'breathing', a dragon of iron and copper brought to life by a fusion of fire and water. Like a lot of little boys I loved steam engines as a kid; I well remember my mum and dad taking me round the steam museum at Carnforth in Lancashire, which I loved - not only did you see restored engines you saw great, rusted hulks awaiting rescue which, if you came back a couple of years later, would have been lovingly and painstakingly rebuilt by volunteers to working condition, freshly painted, brass and copper pipes gleaming.

Even better it was a living museum, not just a static exhibition; the engines would be fired, build up their steam and come to life, so much better than seeing just a static exhibit. I guess there are some things you never grow out of and I still love steam engines; the intricate movements, the harnessing of water and fire to create something new in history after thousands of years of humans relying on their own muscle or beasts of burden. Quaint today, perhaps, but world-changing, cutting edge technology at the time and still, to my mind, carrying themselves with an elegance and style no modern, more efficient engine ever quite captures; in their own peculiar way steam engines seem to be alive in a way no other machine is, breathing, pumping oil and water like blood and with a heart of fire and iron; our most mythical creature, the dragon, born anew from imagination and engineering.

300 previewed

I was approached by some of the folks who were organising previews of the upcoming film adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel 300, which tells as historically rather loose but nonetheless brilliant tale of the 300 Spartan warriors who held off the entire army of the Persian Empire for several days while the other Greek city states rallied their forces (Athens would later repeat this victory at sea, crushing a huge Persian fleet). It is one of history's great turning points; had the Greeks been ground under the Persian heel our modern world would be very different, without that Classical flowering of philosophy, scientific enquiry, writing and democracy (how ironic a bunch of military zealots who ran their brutal society by enslaving an entire people to do their work while they trained would be so instrumental in this).



Unfortunately for me the preview was at the BFI's Imax screen in London, so I couldn't really make it, but a couple of my colleagues at FPI based in London were only too happy to go along and have now posted a preview up on the FPI blog. I can't wait to see it myself - historical inaccuracies aside it looks quite amazing, being shot in a manner very similar to Sin City (another Frank Miller comics adaptation), matching the comics original almost panel for panel, shot against green screens with very few actual sets to give it an incredibly stylised look. And I'm sure the girls (and some of the boys) are going to enjoy 300 incredibly fit men who spend a lot of screen time almost naked and oiled :-)

Walking in the glen

I went off with Gordon and Bruce the greyhound (with his head stuck out the car window as usual) to Roslyn, just outside Edinburgh, for a good wander around the woodland walk around the glen, then up to the remains of Roslyn Castle and finally a walk past Roslyn Chapel.



Starting from the carpark down in the glen, we crossed the river and started up the steep slopes. The greenery you can see all over the hillside is not grass - it's wild garlic, masses and masses of wild garlic. The entire area is virtually carpeted with garlic plants and even early in the year like now you can smell the pungent aroma - another month or two and it will be much stronger. There's more garlic here than every Italian and French restaurant in the whole of Edinburgh combined.



After walking up the steep, wooded slopes, ducking low branches and clambering over roots and moss-covered rocks and fallen trees we came to the bass of Roslyn Castle and decided to do a circuit. This is the approach to the stone bridge linking the road to the castle.



Looking up towards the bridge above us; this doesn't really do the sense of scale justice, it is a fair old drop from up there, then on the far side yet another drop down to a low river valley where you can see walls of stone eaten out by millennia of water erosion.



On the other side of the stone bridge, looking up; I love the way some of the base stones are just huge boulders with the edges trimmed by stonemasons, then higher up the structure is of more conventional stone blocks cut to shape. Looks several stories up on the left and you will see glass and curtains - this part is still occupied and we'll come round to it in a moment





Roslyn has quite a history, including being attacked by Oliver Cromwell; old warty face stabled his horses in nearby Roslyn Chapel to show his disregard, although at least he didn't destroy the chapel. Much further back Sir William Wallace has associations with the castle and further along the forest walk than we went today is Wallace's Cave. All across Scotland there are sites named for Wallace and associated with folk tales of our hero - I grew up near Wallace's Well on the outskirts of Glasgow and used to cycle to it, it's supposedly the spot where he was betrayed to the English and finally captured to meet a gruesome end. There are far fewer such places now, but they still number in their hundreds, probably a hangover from a pre-literate time when the common folk wanted to remember their hero and so named spots for them and associated them forever after with a tree, a rock, a cave, a well... It may also derive from a deeper, older Celtic heritage and the association of the hero with the land itself.



Reached the summit now and this looks very much like a lovely old Scottish rural cottage, doesn't it? Actually this is the top of the building you saw earlier - the back of this drops down several stories as you saw two pictures back; quite deceiving from this angle though, isn't it?



Another view of the still habited remains of the castle; between the location and the fact it is surrounded by great swathes of wild garlic growing all over the hill and glen it must be the single home most protected against vampire attack in the entire kingdom.



On top of the stone bridge pictured earlier, leading up to the remains of the castle.



Just walking past Roslyn Chapel, which as you can see is still covered in scaffolding and a temporary roof as it is repaired and renovated. As Wallace is associated with the nearby castle so the Bruce is with this building, with a stone carving within said to be a death mask of the greatest of King of Scots. Of course the Chapel is also associated with the Knights Templar, several of whom pledged their service to the Bruce and fought for him at Bannockburn in 1314, where a vastly outnumbered Scottish army shattered a vast, well-armed English army and secured the independence of the nation, changing the future shape of Great Britain as they did so, although they would not have known it at the time. Far distant ancestors of my own clan, the Gordons, also fought alongside Bruce at Bannockburn and this is thought to be where they started their rise to prominence in later Scotland, being granted extensive lands by the Bruce for their services.



Another view of Roslyn Chapel, covered in its repair structure. Somewhere deep within this small structure is said to lie the Holy Grail itself; certainly one of the functions on my new camera was set off today, the special function which lights up in the display to warn you that you are close to an ancient and mythological device (it also works on Arthur's sword and other ancient relics, but I don't use the function much). Seriously though, I have no idea if the Grail is buried within the Chapel at all (Dan Brown includes Roslyn in his pile of second-hand nonsense in the Da Vinci Code) but the carvings within it are of astonishing quality and intricacy.

It is also linked with another mystery, that of early visitors to what we now call America; the Sinclair family who were instrumental in building it were also known as sailors and they hired navigators to sail from the Orkneys westwards. Some local traditions from native tribes in Canada and eastern America tell of their visit, long before that idiot Columbus took a wrong turn. On the roof of the chapel is carved the 'bounty of God's Earth' and among the fruits and vegetables is a representation of the crop of maize, then unknown here, being a New World crop. Does it mean they made their voyage and came back? No-one knows for absolutely certain, although some circumstancial evidence leans in their favour; I'd like to think they did. Next to the chapel is a fine old house which used to be an inn, which saw visits from Robert Burns, Walter Scott, Boswell and Doctor Johnson and Dorothy and William Wordsworth. However, lest we get carried away with mythology, history and nostalgia, I loved this advert one of the local farmers had placed, cashing on on the Dan Brown associations while also pretty much showing what he thinks of it all:

Carbon indulgence

I was reading yet another article on carbon offsetting the other day; on one level it is good to see people taking some responsibility for their environmental impact. On the other hand giving a token amount to some company to 'offset' the damage your long haul trip for your expensive holiday in Barbados doesn't actually undo the damage and from a lot of the reports it looks like many of the companies taking money for this sort of thing do bugger all that could be considered helpful to the environment, but it does make wealthy but guilty-feeling folks feel better about themselves. And that's when I realised what these were: buying carbon offsetting is the 21st century equivalent of the old buying of religious indulgences. Buy a clean conscience and purer soul; done wrong? Spend for salvation. Several centuries later and the same old trick repeats, with worried folks seeking to use the wealth that helped create a problem to assuage their conscience while the descendants of those priests are only too happy to promise them pardons for a reasonable donation. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Dig that Castle

Interesting article in the Evening News today of an archaeological dig by Historic Scotland which has been going on underneath Edinburgh Castle, where they have been surprised by finding part of a two-metre thick defensive wall added after the attacks by the Covenanters and then that barrel of laughs that was Oliver Cromwell in the 1600s. The access tunnel used to explore this find under the Castle is, coincidentally, pretty much under where I stood on the Esplanade (where the Tattoo is held in August) to take the photos of the Castle by night a couple of weeks back with my new camera. Fascinating to think that with all of that history right in front of me there was even more hidden history a few feet below my boots.

Of course, with Edinburgh being built on a number of hills (which terrifies many an American tourist - walking around town is a shock to most of them, walking up and down hills is their nightmare) it means that much of what you see if built atop older structures. Recent relaying of cobbles on the Royal Mile (which runs from the Castle gates down the ridge to Holyrood Palace at the other end) revealed more bits and pieces from the 18th and 18th century (what passes for modern or recent history to us) and, famously, Mary Kings Close is an old street built over after plague and then rediscovered and now open to visit beneath the City Chambers.

Who knows how many other layers of deeper history lie below the Castle though? There is a reason why such a massive castle is built where it is, rising out of the volcanic rock, man-made structure and the hand of nature combining to create something which dominates the city (I love passing it every day to go to work - beats the hell out of passing high rise offices on your commute, doesn't it?) and it is thought that some forms of fortified dwellings would have been there pretty much since people have lived in the land after the great glaciers retreated, carving out the hills and mountains that shape that land and the people; literally thousands of years of history beneath us, sleeping in the native earth, the ancient structures we see, old as they are, only the surface of a history stretching back millennia, through Scots, Celtic tribes, Roman visitors (who didn't stay long) and back and back before even the Celts. Were there small groups fortifying that impressive rock back when the Callanish Standing Stones were being raised on the opposite coast? And if we consider the geological events which shaped these landforms we find we're walking through not mere millennia, which flit past swiftly like birds, but the deep, deep time of the Earth itself; almost inconceivable timsescales we attach numbers to as if we really can understand a concept such as millions or billions of years. All of that comes together in what I see every day as I go past. I like that.