First essay in

Spike's Daffodils

Okay, it's not quite a host of golden daffodils but it's evidence enough of spring's arrival here in the nation's capital.  Me and the cat are enjoying a quiet, suburban morning together basking in the balmy heat of the sun in a cloudless sky - all nine degrees but it feels like a Scottish summer's day already.

I wrote about the daffodils - Wordsworth's rather than Spike's - as part of my essay submitted digitally last night. Digital submissions ... who knew?  Gone, it would seem, is the caffeine-fuelled, all-nighter of the 1970s, culminating in the dash across the campus to the English department, the frantic search for a pen that worked to complete the essay cover sheet before slipping it through the gaping mouth at the top of the submission box fixed to the external wall of the departmental office. Five minutes before the deadline expires, a great weight lifts from your shoulders and you think, time for a celebratory beer or three. I wonder who'll be in the bar, like me, bragging about how close we got to that box being shut.

That was then and this is now.  Last night? Check the bibliography, run Microsoft's spelling checker, upload the file ... hit send.

And how does one celebrate?

With a mug of tea and an episode of season four of The Walking Dead.  Avert your delicate gaze Douglas as you not-quite-watch our raggle-taggle band of survivalist heroes at the very limits of their existential tethers finding even more novel ways to stab, smash, crush, squash, slice, dice and decapitate an almost limitless supply of zombies.

That could almost be a metaphor for the intellectual processes of preparing 2,800 words on 18th Century Romantic poets and the gendered pursuit of the sublime.  Or not.  

It's done and in.  Just not like the old days.

Thank goodness.

Time for the first essay

And I'm back to the Romantics.

Wordsworth by William Shuter

                                         For I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes

The still sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue.—And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things

I have been enthralled by those lines and the idea behind them since the first time I read William Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey, which you can read here.  But my task in the first essay of my first semester at the Australian National University, following my return to undergraduate study, is to take the poems apart.

Four hundred words or so into my essay, here’s my argument against Coleridge and Wordsworth:

This essay discusses the treatment of gender in the poems.  In contrast to the poets’ claims to be addressing the natural or universal characteristics of the human condition this essay argues that the texts reveal a gendered view of ‘the vast empire of human society’ in which the circumstances, condition and perspective of the male – especially the creative imagination of the male poet – is privileged within the 'natural' world, the poetry that emerges from the male experience of that world and in relation to women who are assumed to be inferior to men.

Sorry guys, although I still love many of your works.

News from the colonies to the old country

So my name cropped up in a Facebook wander down memory lane by some old friends peppered across the UK now.  In the late 1970s and early 1980s we were part of the same student politics organisation.  There were ups and downs, as I recall those times, but it was fun to be involved.  They were exciting times in which we helped to move the world forward in some areas, were beaten back in others.

I felt no real need to enter into the nostalgia but then my name came up.  Someone then asked, "is Dougie Herd still alive?"  Time, I thought, to intervene.  So I added these words to the conversation:

Call this living comrades? Call this alive?

I'm in a Tory Hell with a Prime Minister that thinks the 16th Century was a bit advanced, that global warming is a left wing conspiracy, that Prince Phillip needed a Knighthood from the Australian people, that women have a place but only one of them is good enough for that place to be in his Cabinet, that it's ok for his sister to be gay but not ok for his sister to marry the woman she lives with ... and that football is played with a rugby ball and goals with no nets. 

I could go on but then I look at home and see George Osborne is considered by some to be an economic progressive and free-thinking, intellectual power house.

If that's all not bad enough .... and it is ... we have three types of spiders in our back garden that could kill you if you look at them, brown snakes that'll stop your heart beating if you even think to breathe in the same space as them and a giant chicken-like bird called a Cassowary that could rip your lungs out in five seconds. And that's before we even mention the sharks, sting rays and crocodiles.

All things considered though ... one mustn't grumble.

A luta continua!! A luta continua.

Are we doomed to repeat the past?

When I was a child growing up in Scotland my parents brought me up within the Presbyterian traditions of the Church of Scotland - the Kirk, which in many ways acted as the moral compass of our small, northern nation.  Although I never acquired the sense of Faith felt by my mother and father, and I am not a Christian, I have taken with me into adulthood and my life in the world fundamental tenets that have guided 'Believers' across centuries - millennia, I suppose.

Among those fundamentals are these two pillars of decency and civilised co-existence:

• First, there's the 'Golden Rule' also known as the 'ethic of reciprocity'. I know best the Christian version from the Sermon on the Mount and rendered in the King James Bible as ... "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets." (Matthew 7:12)  Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.  It's a maxim one finds in every major religion and, I have no doubt, in any moral framework where religion isn't the driver.

• Second, there is this ... "Blessed are the peacemakers".  Same sermon but this time Matthew 5:9.  It speaks for itself, don't you think?

Those thoughts came to mind while I was reading an article in my beloved Guardian.  You can read it here:

Osborne announces £500m for Faslane and says Corbyn threatens UK security

Chancellor says cash will create thousands of jobs at home of Trident deterrent and criticises Labour leadership hopeful’s anti-nuclear stance

The replacement cost for the Trident nuclear missile system on the UK's four - allegedly independent - nuclear-armed submarines is estimated to be at least £100 Billion over the next 35 years.  One hundred billion pounds - at 2012 prices - to replace a weapon that has never been used, should never be used, and which, if used, would signal the end of all human life.

The Trident-class nuclear submarine Vanguard. 

The Trident submarine base is located in a sea loch on the River Clyde in Scotland about 30 miles from where I was born and raised.  As the crow flies ... or nuclear missile soars, come to think of it ... the submarine base is just over 63 miles from the isle of Iona where - in 563 AD - an Irish prince by the name of Columba arrived on a missionary expedition that led to the introduction of Christianity across Scotland. When I was maybe two or three years old my father carried me on his shoulders as our family made its way across the beach to what's known as the Iona Community - blessed peacemakers if ever there were such people - where he and other volunteers were working to renovate and refurbish the community's buildings.

Iona, Scotland

Today's story in the Guardian made me sad and angry.  Scotland needs investment in its people, infrastructure and future.  Half a billion pounds to bolster the nuclear offensive capability of NATO is, however, something no one needs.

As sometimes happens, maybe often, the news set me off on one of my below the line rants in the paper's comments section.  This is it:

It seems we still have to ask the question the proponents of Mutually Assured Destruction have never been able to answer ... In what conceivable circumstances would or could a British Prime Minister independently authorise the firing of nuclear armed missiles and at which - or any - known, likely or foreseeable 'first strike' enemy?

Given there are none - not one, not ever - Trident is not now and never has been the UK's nuclear deterrent. It deters nothing and no one and would never be used independently of an authorisation from the USA via its front organisation NATO. Trident is a tool of MAD in a box wholly owned and controlled by American foreign policy

And given the genocidal consequences of nuclear war, MAD and the impossibility of a 'first strike capability' resulting in anything other than those two outcomes what social, economic or moral purpose does Trident serve?

That's right ... none. Not one. Never.

Have we still not learned?  Make peace, not war.  Join CND.

Cold in any currency

Leaf mulch, plastic bottles and a good deal of hope

First day of winter and there was frost on the ground, snow on the southern uplands and, I read in today's newspaper, snow on the streets of Braidwood where Spike and I spent Saturday.  The weather forecast tells us the temperature will drop to minus three degrees overnight, which is cold in anybody's language.  

Spike has been out in the garden, cutting the bottoms off empty bottles of sparkling water to use as mini-greenhouses to protect the sweet pea seedlings planted not so long ago in preparation for the return of warm weather and all that comes with spring.  Here's hoping the plastic bottles are up to the week ahead.

Birthday brunch in Braidwood

Spike, ordering breakfast

We drove to Braidwood at Spike's request, as part of her extended birthday celebration. Several places on the must-visit list were either closed (the most popular breakfast place was having its floor sanded and varnished ... on a Saturday ... go figure) or not wheelchair accessible. But we found a delightful cafe set off the road behind a gallery. 

The name 'Dee-liscious' did not bode well but I was pleasantly, delightfully surprised. It's a warm, welcoming place with good food, friendly staff and a laid-back atmosphere. We found a table inside - away from the giant cat with a squashed, flat face, the countless dogs (all well-behaved) and six strutting chickens.  With a narrow range of veggie options to choose from we ordered freshly squeezed juices, coffee for Spike and Chai for me then ate like hobbits on smashed eggs, mushrooms and goats' milk curd on toast. Delicious. Truly. And well worth the drive.

It's in The Guardian so it must be true

Earlier today I read a short article by Natalie Haynes in The Guardian's Books section. The article is headed March of the megabooks: it's all Donna Tartt's fault and can be read here.

The gist of the short piece is that very long novels (900 to 1,000 and more pages) seem to be in vogue.  Ms Haynes writes that she has nothing against long novels per se but that some of the recent crop demonstrate the want of a good editor.  She adds that "a book can be any length, if the words earn their keep on the page" and suggest that we might be overlooking short novels, citing two examples of fine writing: The Testament by Colm Toibin and The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono, which she describes as "the most beautiful book I read last year".

I've never heard of Jean Giono nor - obviously - have I read his short book. On the strength of Natalie Haynes glowing praise, however, I have just ordered a copy (in hardback with woodcut illustrations) from the Book Depository. We shall see soon if it lives up to the recommendation.