The township of 12 people
which sells four million
cans of beer a year
Scotland
in the
heat
The Midgie
The Midgie continues to wear his Christmas bonnet because Bob Smith hasn’t got around to giving him an outfit for the new year.
Meanwhile, the Midgie takes full responsibility for the inaccuracies in his Christmas and New Year TV highlights.
He had not realised at the time of compilation that there would be more than one Eric and Ernie retrospective; indeed that there would be little else on the box but ancient gags from the accursed duo.
He had not realised that, when he said there would be a lot of old films, none of them would be worth watching.
He had not realised that there really would be a programme about the life and times of Jimmy Savile – the Midgie intended this as a joke.
The Midgie tenders a full and unqualified apology to readers who have been subjected to the needless distress and inconvenience of turning on the telly as a result of his recommendations.
This is the Scottish Review’s first edition of 2012. Best wishes for the new year to all our readers.
Unlike many publications SR doesn’t have an online comment facility – we prefer a more considered approach. The Cafe is our readers’ forum. If you would like to contribute to it, please email islay@scottishreview.net
Today’s banner
Meikleour, Perthshire on New Year’s Day
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
3pm, New Year’s Day, Dollar
Photograph by Islay McLeod
The violence of
last hours. The violence
of first hours
Kenneth Roy
All these images were overtaken by the police video of the knife practice. Faced with the constant repetition of this scene from the Stephen Lawrence case, a loss of faith is almost inevitable.
Anuj was a postgraduate student at Lancaster. As it happens I’m familiar with this campus. From a certain vantage point, you look down to the university playing fields and the West Coast railway line and then, far beyond, across the rolling plains of rural Lancashire. It is England at its most peaceful and reassuring. Did Anuj appreciate it too? I should think he did.
Across country, in County Durham, where Tony Blair was once an idealistic young MP, the taxi driver and his female companions had just returned from a ‘family night out’. A perfectly ordinary family, as the neighbours were at pains to assure the cameras, keeping themselves to themselves, lovely people. The proximity of the six guns – all licensed; quite in order – was probably not widely known, but Mr Atherton seemed to have recovered from his mental health ‘issue’ of a few years ago. Until he shot Susan, Alison and Tanya; and then himself.
So the decent, hard-working family – the sort of unit Cameron is forever banging on about – didn’t have a wonderful holiday either. It was shown to have the capacity, once the Christmas lights began to twinkle, to turn in on itself in violent anarchy as much as any loner-occupied bedsit. How apt that the photograph of one of the women depicted her in a party hat.
All these images were overtaken by the police video of the knife practice. Faced with the constant repetition of this scene from the Stephen Lawrence case, a loss of faith is almost inevitable: faith in the goodness of the human race, in the possibility of redemption, in humanity itself. The same day as we were shown the knife practice for the first time – or was it the next day or the one before? they merge into one – a young man appeared before the Manchester magistrates charged with the murder of Anuj and, when asked to state his name, gave it as Psycho. The year began as, perhaps, it intends to continue.
Of comic relief, there was a little. The establishment brought forth its seedy little honours list, where it paid to be a convicted fraudster who had done time, or someone who once had links to the drugs trade, or a major supporter of the Conservative Party, the three categories of award being barely distinguishable. And, in the same realm of low comedy, there was Cameron himself, and his assurance that no expense would be spared to bring the Olympic Games to a London armed to the teeth from the air and on the ground; his undertaking that these games would somehow restore Britain to its former greatness.
Naturally. We are all for the high jump after all.
A glimmer of hope? That too. On the first day, thousands of geese surged joyfully over the village. I have to admit: it did look as if they were getting the hell out. But their powerful direction suggested that they at least knew where they were going. Do we?
Kenneth Roy is editor of the Scottish Review
