Stormy Monday

Eric Clapton in 2003.

NSW — No Slush-fund Worries…

What should we think of the Government of NSW? Easy. Watch Four Corners tonight.

Development is good, eh!

Presbyterian nostalgia: Burns “The Cotter’s Saturday night”

The cheerfu’ supper done, wi’ serious face,
They, round the ingle, form a circle wide;
The sire turns o’er, with patriarchal grace,
The big ha’bible, ance his father’s pride:
His bonnet rev’rently is laid aside,
His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare;
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,
He wales a portion with judicious care;
And “Let us worship God!” he says with solemn air.

They chant their artless notes in simple guise,
They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim;
Perhaps Dundee’s wild-warbling measures rise;
Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name;
Or noble Elgin beets the heaven-ward flame;
The sweetest far of Scotia’s holy lays:
Compar’d with these, Italian trills are tame;
The tickl’d ears no heart-felt raptures raise;
Nae unison hae they with our Creator’s praise.

– Robert Burns

Denise Mina and “Tartan Noir”

I have just finished, and greatly enjoyed, Denise Mina The Last Breath (Bantam 2007), set in Glasgow in 1990.

Paddy Meehan has it all: flash car, flat, job as Scotland’s leading columnist, and giant packet of biscuits all to herself, but the groggy bliss of a Saturday night in front of the TV is shattered when the police knock politely on her door, smiling sadly when she answers it. Someone close to her has died, but she’s staggered when they tell her who it is.

Terry Patterson has been found in a ditch, stripped naked and executed with a shot through his temple. He was her first ever lover and her hero, the sort of journalist she always aspired to be.

Paddy chucked him months ago but she’s down on his passport as his next of kin. Not only that but he has left everything to her in his will, a house in Ayrshire, boxes of notes, a folder.

Beginning the investigation into his murder she realises all too late that if the secret he was about to expose is worth killing for then she - and the people closest to her - are in terrible danger.