Doctor Who Day

The 25th December is Doctor Who Day. Now I know that many people will claim that this has merely hijacked the ancient pagan festival of Yuletide and I have to say that the timing, tinsel and general merrymaking do have a certain familiarity but if the Christians have been pulling this trick off for centuries then why not Whovians?

The Time Of The Doctor has been much anticipated – mainly because we have now known for several months that we are to get a new Doctor in the form of Peter Capaldi. However, this was really the last great hurrah for the outgoing incumbent, Matt Smith. Regeneration stories have varied greatly over the years. I would say my personal favourites are The War Games (where we actually only see the regeneration start) and The Caves of Androzani where we see the 5th Doctor turn into the 6th. This was actually rather unexpected as it wasn’t the end of the series but the story was fabulous and saw the Doctor sacrificing himself to save his companion – a common theme throughout the show’s history.

The central idea behind The Time Of The Doctor was a brilliant one – the Doctor has run out of regenerations and uses up his remaining life defending a town under siege from the Daleks (and many other assorted alien species). This was actually one element that I think could have been simplified. There was really no reason to have any other aliens in the plot – although the Daleks have become a bit rubbish and whilst they are very good at flying around and causing random explosions they don’t seem to be particularly good at exterminating. In the past, half the townsfolk would have been lit up like fairly lights, but now they are very good at saying “Exterminate” without carrying out the deed: all talk and no ray-gun.

The other one element I could have done without was Clara’s family who appeared to add nothing to events (although her Grandmother was good value – and did she indicate that she had met the Doctor way back when?) However, I think that is nit-picking and for me the real female lead was Tasha Lem as the Mother Superious and head of the good guys: sexy and commanding and probably not to be messed with (although one suspects that the Doctor has done.) I looked up Orla Brady to see what else I’ve seen her in and she does pop up all over the place – however her birth certificate appears to be 20 years out of step with her face: timey-wimey or what? I did rather like the disembodied cyberman head, “Handles”, which rather harked back to the 790 robot in oddball Sci-Fi Lexx. In fact Handles made for a perfectly decent companion - did the Doctor need Clara at all?

Given the break-neck pace of the last three episodes (Name, Day and Time of the Doctor) I do wonder whether Steven Moffat had anticipated Matt Smith staying another series. There do seem to have been many, many loose ends ties up in these episodes and it feels like an entire series arc has been squeezed into 3 hours. It’s a pity as I had really hoped that Matt would do at least one more season. I think it is possible for an actor to stay too long in a role and I found David Tennant’s Doctor to have become a rather repetitive pantomime towards the end. I even think Tom Baker made a series too many but it’s not something I could accuse Matt Smith of who has always remained a delight to watch: I really felt a lump in my throat when he dropped his iconic bow tie to the TARDIS floor.

In spite of the packed script with more loose ends to tie than a threadbare Persian rug, I think Moffat did pull this one off and it does feel satisfactory – not only because it makes sense within the shows history from the last 4 years but because it makes sense over the last 50. Quite what the casual viewer would have made of plotting that relies on knowledge of episode details from 1983, 1977, 1969 and so on is debateable. Again, I think this would have worked better in a series long plot arc but that clearly wasn’t an option. Possibly it’s just better to assume that the audience will remember the plot details from the other 799 episodes!

That just leaves our first proper look at Peter Capaldi. My god, that man has scary eyes! I think he might just be able to stare out a Dalek until the old dustbin implodes. From what I can tell he is going with a Scottish accent and I think the relationship between him and Clara will be more of a generational one – possibly a 3rd Doctor / Jo Grant type relationship (or even a 1st Doctor / Susan one?) Anyway, we now have a long wait until the next series comes on but I have high hopes for the future with old freaky eyes. For now, it’s goodbye, Matt, and thanks for all the fish fingers and custard.

The Office Party

I enjoy Christmas. I didn’t at one time but at some point I seem to have had an Ebenezer Scrooge type transformation from curmudgeonly, miserable bastard into someone who really likes the whole spirit of the thing. I think it’s because it comes right at the end of the year during the shortest, darkest days and is something to look forward to – along with an excuse for various forms of excess and general merrymaking. However, there is one element which I try my best to avoid, and it is the total humbuggery of the office party.

Over the years I’ve worked at a few places and the office party seems to fall into two categories – the freebee night out at the managers’ expense (generally experienced in the private sector) and the begrudgingly given two hours off to attend an overpriced, undercooked dinner at a local hostelry at one’s own expense. The latter is a particular favourite of the Civil Service and is something I avoided like the plague. Essentially this involves being crammed into a low rent eatery and serviced minute portions of something that may at a push be described as “Christmas lunch” but featuring minute slithers of cold turkey mixed with vegetables that have been boiled and bleached out of all recognition. For this “privilege” one is charged in the region of £25.

Such was my dislike for the corporate Christmas lunch that I conspired with fellow workers in Glasgow to establish an alternative revelry which involved going down to the blood donation centre and allowing them to suck out a pint of A+. At least with this tradition we didn’t have to have the horrible spectre of organised fun thrust upon us and it didn’t cost us £25. Also the Tunnock’s tea cake and cup of coffee was far more welcome than the cold meat and soggy Brussels sprouts.

I now work back in the private sector but I still don’t do a Christmas party. We are allocated a very generous £15 to put towards the cost of a festive meal but as the rest of my colleagues are spread around the four corners of Scotland we don’t have the option of meeting up. In the past we have just let this go - the company are welcome to keep the money provided we don’t have corporate hospitality inflicted upon us. However, this year someone had the bright idea of asking whether those who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) attend a Christmas meal could donate their money to charity. I don’t know why anyone hadn’t thought of this before and there has been no shortage of takers. In fact, at the last count the Macmillan Nurses should be better of by around £4,000 in January – and we can enjoy our festival of overindulgence in peace.

Music For Nations

My musical meanderings often seem to take me to the more obscure corners of Youtube searching out new and unchartered territory. Over the past year I have been fascinated by a genre of music that goes under the title of Folk-Metal : essentially music that combines elements of traditional folk music with Heavy Metal. It sounds like one of the most bizarre musical marriages but I think it actually works in a big way.

I’ve been a fan of the more traditional Folk-Rock blend for years – this is a fairly broad label that covers acts like Pentangle and Fairport Convention, through the likes of Lindisfarne and Jethro Tull and even on to more hard rock orientated acts like Led Zeppelin and Thin Lizzy. The latter are interesting as they incorporated melodies and lyrical ideas from Irish music into what was essentially a full-on hard rock act – not exactly a stones throw away from later Folk-Metal acts like Newcastle’s Skyclad.

What really inspired me to poke around the whole Folk-Metal scene was bumping into a video by Russian Folk-Metal band Arkona. They play a rather extreme form of (essentially) Death Metal with the machine gun drumming, massively overdriven guitars and death growl vocals. However, this is mixed with traditional, often medieval instruments and taking melodic inspiration from traditional Slavic music, all sung in Russian. The mix is infectious and they do vary their sound from extreme metal down to traditional folk arrangements all of this mixed in with lyrics harking back to Russia's pagan past.

I think what really makes Arkona stand out is that they embrace their own national music style, including singing in their native tongue. This really stands apart from the mainstream of popular music which more or less states that all songs must be sung in English, creating a rather dull monoculture of sound-alike artists. Moving rather closer to home I came across Týr from the Faroe Islands. They sing partly in English and partly in their native Faeroese and take their musical inspiration from traditional Scandinavian music with lyrics inspired by beer, blades, battle, butchery and various other activities which gave Vikings a rather poor reputation in the first place. Unlike Arkona, Týr don’t use traditional instruments in their music but rely on the standard drums-bass-guitar line up of hard rock music. However the traditional melodies and Faeroese language make them stand apart:

Finland has a great tradition of producing left-field music - this is the country that won the Eurovision song contest with a bunch of monsters. They have produced another such group in the form of Finntroll. They combine heavy metal with Humppa – a sort of frenetic Finnish dance music derived from early 20th century jazz. They actually sing in Swedish (I believe) rather than Finnish (which is linguistically quite different and more closely related to Klingon) and turn out music which is both ferocious and comic.
 I’m not sure quite how seriously to take Finntroll (not very) but just down the road in Perth we have Alestorm who play what they describe as “True Scottish Pirate Metal”. They play very much with their tongues planted firmly in their cheeks but what they have done musically is actually quite clever – they have incorporated melodic elements of sea shanties into a comic metal mix. Oh the joy of being this drunk.

what ties all of these acts is music that is from nations – rather than conforming to a single corporate standard for of popular music they have taken folk music back from fusty, Arran sweatered killjoys singing miserably with one finger planted firmly in ear in the name of authenticity and given centuries old musical traditions a very welcome 21st Century twist. Now we just need Arkona to enter Eurovision.

A Land of Iron and Steel

I’ve been trying a few new dog walking routes out lately. I try to keep things interesting and if I can include some art and artefacts along the way, so much the better. There are quite a few artworks dotted around the area and many of them are made from iron and steel – marking Falkirk’s history as a centre of heavy industry. I’ve been planning a long dog walk for a while and I came up with a route that would take in much of Larbert and Carron and on to the canal which provides a nice long (and very flat) off road path for the dogs to wander along. As for the art and history bits I’ve managed to tie up a few things and come up with a route that arbitrarily starts and ends at Larbert railway station (in fact it starts and ends at my house but I‘ve missed that off):

The route is a shade over 10 miles long and took me just over 3 hours to walk. After starting off from Larbert station (1) I headed east along Main Street to my first point of interest: the cannons outside the Plough Hotel in Stenhousemuir(2).

Just a minute’s walk from the carronades are the first of the art installations: Stenhousemuir’s iron highland cows (3). This piece represents two aspects of the town’s history: firstly as the location of the Tryst, a large field where highland cattle would be driven to be sold on to Lowland Scots; and secondly to mark the town’s history as a location of iron foundries. Evidence of these can still be seen in the street ironworks (storm grids and the like) but most of the foundries have now given way to high density residential housing estates. As it was December, the council workers had fitted them with suitable headgear.

Walking on from Stenhousemuir centre I cut through the Carron Dam (4). This was originally a reservoir to feed the Carron Works which produced the famous carronades but is now a nature reserve. This is the first place in which it is possible to let the dogs off the lead. There are two ways around the Dam (long and short) but both lead to a stairway on the far side.

Up from the stairway leads to a cycle path. Turning left leads to the back of the Carron works (and I would advise having dogs and children on a leash again as there is traffic). This is also the entrance to a landfill which isn’t particularly pleasant but it does have this magnificent iron Grahamston Gate (5), originally designed for an exhibition in Edinburgh.

The old Carron works clock tower is still standing on Stenhouse road (6) and can be seen with a short diversion. The are two more larger carronades behind the gates. Heading back down Stenhouse Road and over the bridge leads to the start of the Helix North entrance next to the church.

There are a few ways to walk through the Helix but I chose to follow the path next to the Carron. The next point of interest is the Love And Kisses sculpture (7) which looks like a heart from the end but is actually a very large pair of iron lips. It’s actually very clever once you can see what it is.

Just down from the sculpture is the human sun dial (8). It was completely overcast on this day so it just looks like a rather strange iron standing circle.

Walking down towards Grangemouth we get to The Kelpies (9). There still seems to be a lot of work going on about these but at this point the route is pretty much dictated by the Forth and Clyde canal. The footpath for this passes under the A9 and on back towards Falkirk.

I did find the next section of the walk a bit dull. There is a lock (10) which brightens things up but it is a reminder that whilst there is a lot of industrial history around Falkirk there is also still a lot of industry. For the most part the canal path keeps away from the road but I did put the dogs back on lead for a while.

The next item of interest is the disused Rosebank distillery (11). This is actually starting to look rather forlorn and I believe any attempts to restart production have failed. No doubt it will be converted to luxury flats at some point which is a pity as the whisky produced there was highly regarded amongst Lowland whiskies. Unfortunately the return on investment of micro-distillery is much longer than micro-brewery so starting production looks remote without a benefactor.

Heading off from the Rosebank there are a series of locks and also these three curious chunks of iron (12) representing Robert Barr (of Irn-bru fame), Dr Harold Lyon who established the Strathcarron Hospice and Reginald Adams, the swimming coach. Barr is the chap in the top hat on the right and Lyon is next to him.

Further down is the Falkirk Wheel (13) an engineering project that is also a stunning work of art. It seemed very quite on the morning I was there although it can be mobbed in the summer. At this point I put the dogs back on their leads although I think they were too tired to run off anywhere.

Getting back to Larbert I walked down through Camelon and up Lochlands Loan (which feels deceptively quiet until someone tears up in a truck). This leads to Larbert a spectacular piece of Victorian engineering in the shape of Larbert viaduct (14). It may be 19th century but this is arguably the most important bit of engineering still in use as it allows for rapid train travel to both Glasgow and Edinburgh city centres. After being a cattle market and a foundry town, “commuter village” is Larbert’s latest incarnation.

There is just a short walk up back to Larbert station (1) which does have it’s own, rather dark, historical note as it was from here that a train service departed to Liverpool in 1915 carrying soldiers en route to Gallipoli. It crashed at Quintinshill near Gretna resulting in 226 deaths and 246 injuries – by far Britain’s worst rail disaster. There is a commemorative plaque on platform 1.

I’ve tried to calculate the length of this walk and it is somewhere between 10 and 11 miles. There are also a few pubs and a couple of restaurants along the way so it would be easy to fit in a few breaks – not that the dogs care, of course.

The St Andrew’s Day Fondue

30th November is St Andrew’s day, the patron saint of Scotland. It has been recognised as a sort of public holiday but this year is the first time I’ve actually been able to take it off (I actually get the Monday off in lieu). It’s not particularly celebrated, certainly not as much as Burns Night and given the air accident in Glasgow this year I don’t think there would be much appetite for street parties.  However, Burns Night has its own ritual and traditional food with its familiar haggis-neeps-tatties supper so I thought it would be worthwhile coming up with something that would celebrate Scottish cuisine combined with my love of cheese. I hereby present “The St Andrew’s Day Fondue”:

For the fondue you will require:

• Green Ginger Wine 280ml (essentially Crabbies but I went for the cheapo version from Aldi)
• Lockerbie Extra Mature Cheddar 200g (see the note about the salt)
• Glen Lochy Vintage Cheddar 250g (this is the clincher – 15 months old and about as strong as a Jakie’s armpit)
• 30ml Whisky (I used Famous Grouse because I’m not wasting a £30 a bottle of single malt in the cooking)
• 2 tbl lime juice (not strictly Scottish but I suppose there are loads of lime trees in Glasgow)
• Pepper
• Pinch of mixed spice
• Salt (use with caution - the Lockerbie cheddar was full of this so I didn’t add any extra)

For dipping:

• Kilted haggis (haggis wrapped in bacon – another Aldi purchase)
• Potato Scones
• Crispy breakfast rolls

Preparation:

1. Grate the cheese without shredding one’s knuckles.
2. Pour a glass of whisky – this can be the good stuff because it’s just for drinking.
3. Simmer ginger wine and lime in saucepan and gradually add the cheese.
4. Mix the cornflower, cheapo whisky, spice and pepper in a glass. Once all cheese has melted stir the mixture into the saucepan and continue stirring until it has thickened and is bubbling.
5. Serve with kilted haggis, rolls and potato scones.

For the authentic touch mix equal measure of the cheap whisky and ginger wine to create a “Whisky Mac” – Caledonian rocket fuel that is deceptively stronger than it tastes and enables time travel as you won’t remember the subsequent 24 hours.

So how does it taste? Well, the fondue itself tastes fantastic. The sweetness from the ginger wine really compliments the other flavours and makes this something quite unique as far as fondues go. The other dips – particularly the meat stuff was rather overkill. In fact, when I got the kilted haggis home I discovered that this was kilted black pudding so I bought some battered haggis as well. This rather disintegrated when dipped. I also had to buy a baguette from the CO-OP as we had accidentally used the breakfast rolls for breakfast. At the end I thought I’d end up doing an impression of Mr Creosote so I gave the After Eights a miss.

I wouldn’t recommend this every day as it contains a huge amount of saturated fat, salt, alcohol, none of your 5-a-day and approximately two million calories per serving. In fact, if you chuck in a packet of Regal Kingsize and a bar of tablet you will have pretty much covered all of the major Scottish food groups. But as an occasional treat I really would give the fondue mix another go. Needless to say I went on a 3 hour walk the next day to try and burn off my excesses.