Midweek Update

What on earth is Davie doing posting at this time on a Thursday evening, I hear you cry. Well, I thought I heard you cry. Perhaps it was the sound of a nocturnal contract bin-man out on his rounds!
Nah, posting has been a wee bit erratic of late - still pestered by the well-documented allergy problem - so I thought I had better try to catch up before the urge to blog goes forever. What's new?

Work
Well, NEN's August issue went to print today - that's four weeks since the staffing hours were cut due to a chronic funding shortfall. Our Board decided to cut each of our working weeks to 24.5 hours, commencing on 1 July.
It's been slightly surreal finishing work in the middle of the afternoon, and I'm still wrestling to get my head round a new way of working, but it's all about managing your time properly. The August paper tends to be a small one as the schools (and a lot of projects) are off in July, but there was still no shortage of material for this month's paper. I hope that the readership will notice no difference to the content. Quite a bit of Inverleith content this month too.
And what have I been doing with these precious afternoon hours? Actually very little. I get home, sit in an armchair and fall asleep! I trust this is a side-effect of my medication.

Sport
Well, I predictably got the winner of the Open wrong - at least I was right about there being a play-off, pity the names were wrong! Felt really sorry for Tom Watson - he'll never have a better opportunity to make history and I fear it can't happen now.
And I renewed my season ticket for more misery at Easter Road. I did this just after Mixu's departure - not because John Hughes was taking over, but all the signs were that Setanta was going belly-up and the coverage of SPL football would be severely curtailed, so I got that bit right.
I hope for the best at Easter Road - Yogi has got to be a better tactician than Mixu, and he has proved to be a real motivator. However he's working with some distinctly average raw material - Jones is a huge loss, more so than Fletcher I think, and no-one has come in to really strengthen the squad. Our wee Moroccan wizard may be back but I won't be pinning my hopes on him - great player when in the mood, a real natural talent, but too often anonymous when things not going well. Maybe his spell away has matured him - I hope so, because I think it will be another long hard struggle this term. Maybe the quality of the football on display will improve - and let's be honest, it couldn't get much worse! - but I've learned not to expect too much.
Elsewhere, it seems Hearts' financial problems have risen to the surface once again which must be a concern for Hearts supporters. They had a very successful season last term with a fairly mediocre team, and I hope for their sake they can retain their coach and find a decent striker from somewhere. Can't see them finishing third again, though - it's Dundee United or perhaps Motherwell for me.
And I'm delighted to see Tony Mowbray back in Scotland. I think Mowbray is a terrific coach and, if he's given time (a big if, that) he'll have Celtic playing the attacking football their fans like to see. Last night's poor European result aside, to me they look like SPL certainties.
Wimbledon: Alas, poor Andy ... those speculators who spent thousands of pounds on Men's Final tickets must have been absolutely gutted when Murray went out in the semi-finals. However if they were real fans they must have appreciated a spell-binding final, one of the all-time classics. Murray's turn will come, I'm sure of it.

Leisure
I've been to the cinema twice over the last month, something of a record for me. 'Public Enemies' tells a somewhat romanticised version of bank robber John Dillinger's story - good film for old-fashioned mobster flicks, though.
And the latest Harry Potter. Great escapist adventure for all ages, even if Alan Rickman should be arrested for hamming it up to ridiculous levels. I don't want to spoil the ending if you haven't seen the movie yet, but DUMBLEDORE's DEID!!! Sorry, it just slipped out...
Went out for a run on my birthday - no, not jogging, that's just ridiculous - up around Aberfeldy, Kinloch Rannoch (pictured above) and Pitlochry. Stunning scenery.

The Garden
The garden has continued to bloom is still looking pretty stunning, despite all the rain we've had. The oft-discussed Yorkshire Lavender (above) has come on leaps and bounds, and alongside a selection of mints makes up a 'sensory patch'. Beautiful aromas - it's probably all this stuff that kicked off the hay fever in the first place. Gggrrr ...
As well as all the usual winged visitors of recent months there have been a couple of new arrivals. The feeding station under the lilac tree (how gay does that sound - Little Lord Fauntleroy eat yer heart out!) was visited by a squirrel last week, and a wee while ago another mammal also slipped over the garden fence from the railway to enjoy a snack. Grey in colour, long thin tail ... I'm convinced it was an otter but Caroline reckons it was something less welcome. I have to grudgingly admit that she may be right - bird (and rodent) feeding has been put on hold meantime.

News
Very sad to hear about the death of the last surviving WW1 'Tommy' Harry Patch, who died last week. Harry fought in the trenches, and was a machine gunner in the infamous battle of Paschendaele when he was wounded by shrapnel. You saw Harry quite a lot over recent years, laying wreaths and attending remembrance parades - the last of the few.
Wars are different today, of course. These days, we witness the almost daily ritual now of military planes returning from Afghanistan, bearing the bodies of British soldiers, and of quiet streets lined with mourners in Wooton Bassett. The death toll there is rising - there seems to be another casualty every other day - but a soldier's death over there still makes the news headlines here. They'll read out the names in sombre tones as the coffins are carefully taken off the plane.
Back in WW1, in Harry's time, Britain lost 19,000 dead in just one day (57,000 including wounded) on the first day of the Somme. And at Paschendaele, where Harry fought and soldiers literally drowned in liquid mud, the casualty figures were even higher. Hundreds of thousands of young men lost their lives in a futile, hopeless campaign that eventually stuttered to a halt: it gained a few hundred yards of useless, waterlogged ground.
An old war, a new war but there are similarities. Back in 1916, when unrest was growing about increasingly-lengthening casualty lists, we first heard the phrase 'lions led by donkeys'. Today, it's not the officers to blame but the politicians, with anger about our troops being handicapped by a lack of equipment.
And in 1914, some people were asking: what are we fighting for? What has the murder of a Serbian arch-duke in Sarajevo got to do with us? In 1914 we came to the aid of 'little Belgium'; that was the purpose of our involvement.
And today, what are we fighting in Afghanistan for? To allow democracy to flourish, apparently, and to clear the country of the elements we decide are a threat to our nation's interests. In both cases diplomacy and negotiation has failed.
Historians will point out that big, powerful nations do not win wars in Afghanistan, but it seems our leaders are not learning these lessons. At what point do we walk away, what constitutes victory? No-one talks of a 'war to end all wars' any more.
The final similarity, of course, is the grief. Whether a lone soldier in Afghanistan killed by enemies he may never have seen, or a wounded Tommy drowning in the mud and fifth of Flanders, death is death. And the pain felt by the families of today's victims is exactly the pain and loss felt by the hundreds of thousands of parents, wives and children of those soldiers such a long time ago.
Age shall not weary them ... feeling a bit down tonight; could be the medicine kicking in. Goodbye, Harry - it's a bit like losing a grandfather you never really knew, and now you know you never will.