Painting the windows

Not quite what most people mean. Spike has been painting our windows. Love it.

Final booking made and paid for

After a week or so of back and forth with hotels in Singapore trying to confirm the existence or otherwise and circumstances of any wheelchair accessible shower area ...

• Novotel - no but have a good day
• So Sofitel - yes but there's a marble bench
• Ibis - yes but it's in a single-occupancy room

Rendezvous Hotel, Singapore

... we finally made a booking today. We'll be staying at the Rendezvous Hotel on Bras Basah Road. It's central, near the art gallery and museum, not far from Raffles if Spike insists on another Singapore Sling. I'm hoping it won't be too far from a Singapore Chilli Crab dinner which I missed out on last time we were in Singapore (my mother sought out more familiar fare).

This booking means we've arranged wheelchair accessible showers at every stop on our trip: Tokyo, Prestwick, Belfast, Kirkwall, Edinburgh, Manchester, Weymouth, London and Singapore. That's nine towns or cities in five countries. Ten years ago, maybe more recently than that, I doubt if I could have arranged that. Thirty years ago, when I first started travelling between continents, it would have been impossible. 

So we're moving ahead. There is some way yet to go but all one can ask is that we keep moving forward, keep making progress. The Dougie Herd who boarded that flight to Hong Kong back in 1988 would be impressed how far we have come. And he would be pleased to know he would play his small but important part in kicking along greater inclusion. For sure, though, he'd tell me to keep up the work because we've not yet reached the end of the road.

America ... just say no.

Even the preppy, white-kids who predominate at the Conservative Political Action Conference have this man pegged for the self-serving, megalomaniac charlatan we know him to be. Please America, just say no.

Rave on John Donne?

Earliest known image of John Donne, around 1590

I'm back with the metaphysical poets, in particular John Donne. This morning's English Literature lecture focused on the social, religious and political context for his work and our course director, Dr. Ian Higgins, gave an impressive, historicist-reading of key poems from the poets early, libertine period.

It's not hard to be seduced by the bravado of the early-period poems, their common tongue, their focus on sex, the irreverence of their implied commentary on the hierarchies of the poet's time. He would lose that outsider's edge as he advanced through Courtly patronage and his misogyny seems never to have been far from the surface in any period. But here we are, more than 400 years later and there is still much to be said for and learned from the inventiveness and daring of a poet who would be dead by my age. 

We looked at one of his post-coital, morning after poems in today's tutorial. As Van Morrison urged, Rave On John Donne.  Well ... up to a point Van, up to a point.

The Good Morrow by John Donne

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

Three priceless points

PTFC makes it two in a row against St. Johnstone

Who would have thought something as ordinary as football could matter? But I was very pleased indeed to read this morning that my team had won away from home in the Scottish Premier League. We rise to seventh place and despite the hard games ahead (against numbers one, two and three in the League - Celtic, Aberdeen and Hearts) our future in the top division looks secure for another year. Phew.

It seems one can take the boy away from the football but the game remains within the boy. The beautiful game indeed.

John Oliver on Donald Trump

Spot on and priceless.

Margaret and the Dali

Salvador Dali: Christ of St. John of the Cross

First draft completed. Three thousand, five hundred words. I have no idea if it's any good but it's a start.