29 Moffat

“Magical Moffat – Scotland's Wee Gem”
C & CC Site
May 30^th - 31^st

This episode is going to be a bit delayed. When I got to my next stop I found I had no internet coverage with my dongle. It's a pretty boring episode (I slept most of the time) so you won't have missed too much.

After dropping-off for a night's rest at Lochgilpead I moved on to Loch Lomond and had another quick stop at Luss.

 

 My friends the mallards were still around and mobbed me pretty much as soon as I got there. Then quite a long drive (ninety four miles) down along Loch Lomond, over the Erskine Bridge and on to the M74 towards Carlisle. The geography along the way, once free of Glasgow, was pretty much rolling grassy, rocky and heathery fells, sheep and babbling brooks.

Busy site right in the centre of town. Had a walk around the metropolis (pop.2,500) in the afternoon after my usual nap. Nice! Old lady sitting on a seat outside the cemetery having a fag and basking in the sun had a quick chat, saying she could manage if this weather lasted until Christmas. More hotels here than people, because as I discovered, it used to be a popular spa town. Must try to take the waters to-day. Got an interesting Japanese detective novel in Oxfam and asked the ladies there for their opinion of the best fish and chips in town. One had just closed down, possibly to re-open, because the ninety-year-old lady proprietor had died.

Outside the very old, very interesting, but very closed Black Bull Inn was an inscription which left me puzzled. Was it ambiguous or am I being dense?  Also passed the narrowest hotel in the world (it's official, it's in the Guinness Book of Records). A sighting to go with the narrowest snooker hall in the world (not official, though, just my guess) which I had seen in Darlington.

Sat outside in the warm sun and read for the rest of the afternoon. The people in the caravan next to me have a small cat on a lead. I must ask them how they trained it. Katie had phoned me to ask if I wanted a ginger tom cat which her friend was going to have to let go as she was moving flats. Another Mick! It would be interesting, but I think that a female would be better for me as they don't wander like a tom. Another Mick, though!

I had bought a Times as a Friday treat and found a wonderful article on Johnny Wilkinson by Simon Barnes. How about this for journalism?

 

Turn on your television at teatime and you'll find yourself watching a quiz show. What do the contestants have in common? Ignorance. They grin and guess and hope for questions about Coronation Street and maybe Manchester United. They know nothing. They just want to be on telly.

At lunchtime you can watch random strangers buying antiques to sell at auction, all ignorant of the basic facts of history, without any understanding of craftsmanship and knowing nothing about the antiques market. But they're on telly, famous for the usual length of time. Call it Warholsworth, four to the hour.

Scan the channels and you find talent shows for people without talent and gory revelations about people no-one is interested in. The world is full of people who, with no qualifications such as knowledge, intelligence, understanding, talent or personality, have received a homeopathic dose of fame; fame in the abstract; fame as a kind of basic human right; fame unearned; as ardently sought as it is undeserved. To each such person a Warholsworth. It is part of the way we live.

How about that? He's right, isn't he? How weary he sounds of this dumbing-down awfulness. O Tempora, O mores. Of course he is, like everyone else, just in search of a hero and goes on to talk about Wilkinson, who, because of his temperament, shunned the limelight but in vain because of his tremendous talent. Great article.

And then I saw some good news. Malcolm Glaser has died, the American property developer who bought Manchester United and turned it from one of the richest clubs in the world to one of the most indebted and who is responsible for the club's current malaise. This is a man who, when “his mother Hannah died in 1980, leaving a million dollars, ….assumed all her assets and for the next twenty-four years resisted his sisters' challenge to his mother's will.” He made a fortune from shopping malls and trailer parks and was successfully sued for illegally charging trailer park tenants an extra $3 a week per dog and $5 per baby. This was a bad person, a monster, and now he's dust and has discovered that you really CAN'T take it with you. I'm so glad he's no longer among us. Someone like this should never become owner of a community asset like a football club. The game must protect itself against such animals.

I also found a really funny article (really good value, this Times) about a Wigan footballer who had his wedding rings (he was about to get married) and FA Cup medal stolen and who was quoted as saying “I am devastated, as is my fiancėe. The medal is priceless.” I do hope he is still getting married.

Well, dear reader, your correspondent is ashamed of himself. Saturday was such a beautiful day I spent it sitting in the sun, reading the paper and my Japanese detective mystery, which is very strange. Nothing at all to report, then. Never mind, everyone is entitled to a day off now and then. Onwards! I promise to try harder.