Temperatures are so low that our central heating is overwhelmed and just can’t take the edge off the cold. Our central heating is no slouch either. Cast iron, school style radiators which pump out a ridiculous amount of heat and retain it for a considerable amount of time as well. As the first person up and into the shower every day, I am treated to the full blast of the barely heated air.

Add to that the fact that the TV and internet news channels are completely overflowing with footage of stranded planes and people kipping in their cars, interspersed with the odd snowman or Robin Redbreast for ‘light relief’. We get the point. It’s getting boring. You can’t go anywhere without slipping and sliding and nearly falling on your arse. As well as that, the bottom of my jeans are almost permanently sodden with icy water, so you can see how the whole thing starts to become old very quickly.

We’re not a snowy country. We’re a grey and miserable country. Let’s get back to the status quo.

By the way, mention Francis Rossi and you are dead. He’s even more tedious than three weeks of snow.

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Over the last few weeks, it’s started to dawn on me that he isn’t actually heading anywhere. He’s not checking the bus times or looking at his watch. In the course of the last few weeks, I’ve also realised that at some point or other, every bus service which stops at this bus stop has passed him by without him making a move to get on the bus.

I suspect he is going nowhere. Just killing time in the bus shelter watching the world go by. Perhaps he wants to stay a part of the working world for a little longer. I don’t know whether to admire him or feel sorry for him.

In other news, it appears that archeologists have recovered 18 medieval bodies from the big holeright outside our front door. I knew they had been busy but 18 bodies? Our street is giving up it’s dead like Dennis Nilsen’s drains. The photo in this post was taken by my wife and shows a skull and some bones which made an appearance about two weeks ago.

Read the full story courtesy of the BBC here.

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Spare a though then for the husband of home secretary Jacqui Smith, who had to face the nation’s press at the weekend and apologise for purchasing “jazz” movies on his wifes expense account, presumably for the purpose of “having a game of solitaire” whilst watching them.

Richard Timney’s cringeworthy apology is one of the news highlights of the week and I felt the need to blog about it. Poor sod. Having to stand in front of the press corp and admit you’ve been having one off the wrist.

Mortifying.

(Full video of Mr Timney’s humiliation here – warning, difficult to watch…..)

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First port of call was the endless array of Russian spammers who think that I (as forum administrator) won’t be suspicious in the slightest of around 400 registrations on a Scottish non-league football site from users with .ru email addresses. Hmmm. No brainer.

I decided to leave them a message on the forum using Google Translate:-

Я на вас душ спам, Виагра продаже bawbags. Вы никогда не получите прошлом мне и зарегистрироваться в нашем форуме. Понятно?

Now class. Notice anything odd?

Я на вас душ спам, Виагра продаже bawbags. Вы никогда не получите прошлом мне и зарегистрироваться в нашем форуме. Понятно?

That’s right. There is apparently no word in the Russian language for bawbags. Which is a huge oversight really, given about a dozen of the aforementioned bawbags try and register with the official Spartans forum each day.

Second target of my anger today. The tram pricks. As usual, they surpass themselves. A note was left in our stair last week outlining the work being carried out from Monday onwards. Fair enough. We read it and there was no mention of not parking in our street. In fact, reference was specifically made to maintaining local access.

Today, whilst working from home, I nipped out to buy some lunch only to find our car surrounded by police cones with notices in front of it outlining the fact that any vehicles ‘parked illegally’ will be towed. Better move it thinks I and proceeds to drive to Leith Links to dispose of the vehicle in a less controversial spot.

Except of course, they’ve obviously been out ahead of me and painted double yellow lines just about everywhere. In fact, the roads around Leith Links are so yellow that half a dozen Munchkins would not look out of place. I ended up driving round for about fifteen minutes (essentially because everywhere is diverted so you can’t just go direct to where you want to go in Leith at the moment)

Brilliant. I love trams.

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An Irish guy who I used to work with once told me that the Scots were the most divided, beligerent people he had ever encountered. In his words, “the east hates the west, the Catholics hate the Protestants, the north and south hate the central belt and there are people on the islands who refuse to speak English”. I took that as high praise indeed from an Irishman, given their history of not being able to get along with fellow countrymen who essentially believe in the same God.

Lets face it, Scotland for all it’s beauty and culture is essentially a craggy outcrop in the middle of the freezing atlantic. To survive here for thousands of years we needed to be a wee bit spiky.

That aside, I couldn’t believe my ears this morning when I heard that the Leith/Edinburgh rivalry (conflict ?)had been sparked back into life by Forth Ports decision to rename Leith Docks to Edinburgh Harbour. Some bloke has even written a folk song about it. You can hear that folk song here.

To be fair, the song is absolutely murder. The bloke who wrote it should be thrown in Leith Docks, I mean Edinburgh Harbour, I mean Leith Docks.

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Four hours of sleep was all I got last night as the tram workers decided to drop off a squad of workies and their associated tools and materials at 6am, stirring the young lad from his sleep and as a result waking us all up from that point onwards. I’m starting to wonder if it will ever end. They are never done digging up bits of Leith and to be honest, it’s starting to rankle.

On the subject of digging up things, I couldn’t help but notice that there is a bloody great hole at the edge of Princes Mall (or the Waverley Market for those of us over a certain age – by the way, does anyone actually shop there any more?). When I say a bloody great hole that’s exactly what I mean. It’s like a huge shaft into the bowels of the earth, with concrete walls. I half expect some Jules Verne style tunneling machine to come plowing out of it like some mechanical cross between a mole and a corkscrew. Possibly with Doug McClure at the helm.

Remember Doug McClure? The guy was never done finding lost civilisations full of savages and Pterodactyls. He always seemed to wear a white crew neck jumper as well. One of the savages was guaranteed to be totally shaggable, a real Raquel Welch sort, and would help Doug escape (sometimes if he was lucky he would get his leg over as well).

Back to Princes street though, I’m dying to know what the story is with the big hole. Answers on a postcard. First prize of a trip to Nigeria’s “Slavery and the Jackson Five” theme park.

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According to today’s Sunday Mail, young Alfred may not necessarily be the father of the baby girl after all. Turns out that Chantelle (Alfie’s girlfriend) has been kissing (and more) about half the boys in the school, which has led to a bit of a muddle as to who exactly is, The Daddy.

Poor old Alfie. He “only did it once” by his own admission. Now he seems to be in the frame for the CSA claiming half of his pocket money every week. He’s in the paper today saying that he’s off for a DNA test to prove he’s the father. I’m suspecting he’s secretly hoping it will come back negative and he can go back to doing normal teenage stuff like playing football or hanging around outside chip shops.

The poor little sod only looks about 8 years old as it is. I suspect that this is half of the press appeal of him being the father. Turns out now that he might not be. Of course, it wouldn’t be like The Sun to let the truth get in the way of a good story.

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All over the UK though, blokes are saying quietly to themselves – “Fair play to you son. I couldn’t even get a sniff of action when I was 13″.

Funniest thing to come out of the story is the outrage in parliament, where politicians are questioning whether the sex education in this country is working. Well, I’ve got news for them. It is. They had sex and then they had a baby.

Of course, if he’d dropped his trousers and tried to stick it in her ear then that would have been different. That definitely would have been evidence that sex education standards were dropping.

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That got me to thinking. That type of pissed, warped creativity seemed exclusively Scottish to me. On the back of that, I’ve decided to put together a list of some of my favourite things about being Scottish. The list is in no particular order and is not exhaustive.

1. Deep fried food. Take cheap ingredients, coat them in batter and then fry them. Smother in chippy sauce (optional), salt and vinegar. Shite would taste nice when prepared thus. I have still to actually find a chippy which sells the now mythical deep fried Mars Bar. Despite this lack of deep fried confectionery country wide, it seems that some people think that this is one of Scotland’s main culinary achievements.
2. Pish. The word ‘Pish’ is so much better than any other word in the English language. It can be used to indicated disbelief (“Pish!” as in “You are talking”)  or to indicate that something is of poor quality (“That was pish”). A very flexible, and completely Scottish word.
3. Ally McLeod. The famous photo of the former Scotland manager sitting on the bench in Argentina with his head in his hands is synonymous with the disaster which was the 1978 World Cup campaign. The great joke of the late 1970′s was that Mickey Mouse had an Ally McLeod wristwatch. He was a national clown at the time but when he died there was a outpouring of warmth towards the man. Scotland in the late 70′s was pish (see 2 above). Declining industry, strikes all the time and the Bay City Rollers. When Ally and the Scotland Squad were piped out of Hampden, there was a resurgence in national belief. Unfortunately, an absolutely disastrous campaign resulted in such a dip in national confidence that when a referendum was held for Scottish devolution in 1979, the country voted against it. Never mind though, we had Archie Gemmell’s goal to take us through the hard times (see 4 below).
4. Archie Gemmell’s goal against Holland. A Scottish icon. As defining a moment in our history as Bannockburn? Not far off it in modern terms. I’d never tire of watching it. All those silky Dutch ‘total’ footballers and a wee bald guy, 4 foot tall with his hands in the air, taking it past three of them and then slotting it past the goalkeeper. One of the finest World Cup goals of all time AND converted into a dance routine. Magic.
5. Drinking. A national pastime. “Take a drink”. Get “pished”. Possibly only the Irish are in the same league as us. I’m not talking about binge drinking. I’m talking about lose your house, wife and kids, piss your pants and forget your own name kind of drinking. Not necessarily something to be proud of but part of the heritage. It remember leaving the house on a Monday morning once and passing a wee skinny old boy walking home, dark stain around the crotch and the Sunday Mail and half a dozen rolls under his arm. Like a wee Scottish Andy Capp. I could imagine the wife polishing the rolling pin.
6. Fighting. The natural partner of 5 above. Usually starts with a “Who ur you looking at ya cant” and finishes with a liberal sprinkling of “Moan then”. Somebody might get “tumblered”. Thrilling stuff. Makes jakey drinking more than just a downward spiral. Allows for significant adrenalin highs.
7. Neds. Love them or loathe them, they are Scottish comedy gold. The making of many a good episode of “Chewing the fat” and “Still Game”. Brainless, unskilled, manual labourers who are highly proficient in 5 and 6 above.
8. The English Civil War. That one threw you. I’m currently reading a book on the English Civil War. Apparently the sparks of the wars were started by the Scots. 400 years ago we were exactly the same seditious, awkward fuckers that we are now. Got to love consistency. Apparently Charles I tried to impose a new prayer book on us. We said “naw”, possibly with an added “ya bass” on the end or a “ya bass yer majesty” if he was lucky. Scotland. Being a pain in England’s arse since the middle ages.
9. The theory that we invented everything. Everyone knows that Scots invented the television and the telephone. We also discovered anaesthesia and penicillin. Those are undisputable facts. Not bad for a rocky little outcrop in the North Atlantic. Even better, we refuse to let anyone forget it. We are never done going on about it. And rightly so. The majority of Scottish history has been full of strife, struggle and presbyterian dourness. Let’s focus on the positives.
10. Tattie Scones. Need I elaborate?

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Listening to the lyrics made me think so much of the political and social climate of the 1980′s (when the song was written). High unemployment, the decline of traditional industry etc. However, it’s taken me until tonight to realise that the lyrics have as much in common with the current recession. Listening to it now, the lyrics sound eerily prophetic.

Working Town – Spirit

Working Town

The kindest people that I ever knew
Came from the countryside to look for work
They brought me here when I was barely two
To council houses and a state run school

Sun shines on this working town, oh
Grass grows where the factories stood
Old places closing down
No work in this working town

Wheels are turning as the cage goes down
Another bellyful of men for the mine
And from these hilltops that their fathers made
All seems much smaller than I realised

Sun shines on this working town, oh
Grass grows where the factories stood
Old faces closing down
No work in this working town

Sun shines on this working town, oh
We’re resigned to the way things are
No anger
No point anyhow
No work in this working town

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