The chronicles of Ruin, continued.
Call me Ishmael said....intelligence is knowing what to do when you don't know what to do.
Anonymous said... When I don't know what to do,I come here.
10 September 2009 22:59
"Sodom and Gomorrah. It's in the Bible. And the Quoran. God didn't want to do it, stands to reason, Him being a loving God, but the sex got too much for Him to turn a blind eye to, so He just had to rainsulphur and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah and all the Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground Genesis 19:24–25"
mrs ishmael: "What's that got to do with Hollywood?"
"Are you kidding me? If God thought the sex was outrageous in Sodom and Gomorrah, what's He going to think about the centre of the Western porn industry?"
mrs ishmael: "Now that's where you're wrong. Porn production moved to Florida, on account of how California passed laws to say porn stars have to wear condoms and the punters, they want to see the naked cock squirting baby juice all over the co-star's face or boobies and they aren't going to pay to see cocks in mackintoshes."
"You don't say? Florida's next, then. Fire and brimstone."
mrs ishmael: "This God of yours, he's a pretty harsh dude, yes?"
"Not at all. Abraham asks God "Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?" Genesis 18:23 and God agreed to spare Sodom if 10 righteous people could be found."
mrs ishmael: "So that was a fail, then?"
"Yes, He sent a couple of angels and the local citizens wanted to bugger them."
mrs ishmael:"Same sex activity has been legal in California since 1976. Did God take a while to notice?"
donald: "You are barking up the wrong tree, with this sex and porn business. Nothing wrong with sex and porn is there, ms Daniels? It was all the dead brush wrong tree wood on the forest floor that should have been swept up. "
simon (waking up): "With respect, gentlemen, Bollocks. The fires started in the canyons. Where there isn't any dead wood. I'm only here to promote my new TV series, The Story of Us, you'll enjoy it. It stars me being me. As usual. But I'm going with climate change."
mrs ishmael: "I refer you to our mr mongoose. Greenland ice cores. Natural cycles."
mrs ishmael has now left the discussion, having been arrested for the now-capital crime of aggravated climate-change-denial.
"It was aliens. Started the fires on purpose. They were seen skulking around with flame throwers strapped to their backs".
Everyone: "Who are you?"
They really do believe all this god-bollocks, at the same time, simultaneously, with believing in the sanctity of same-sex marriage, aliens and of America being a bit, you know, special.
I was wondering why Elon Musk has been championing Tommy Robinson and it occurred to me that,while we regard
Tommy as a thug with unacceptable views and multiple aliases, the Americans
regard him as a fearless investigative journalist and leader, much in the mould of Alexei Navalny, who single-handedly exposed the rape culture of Pakistani Muslims in the Cities of the Plains and the Establishment's role in covering it all up to avoid further inflaming racial tensions and losing Labour the Muslim vote (oh, wait, that last bit's true, isn't it?). There are calls for the U.S. to intervene, get him out
of prison and set him up as leader of Reform, displacing Nigel Farage, who, it turns out, was quite wrong about Elon being his best friend and wanting to give him lots of money.
Here's mr ishmael:
YES, WOGS, THEY START AT DOVER, THEY'LL FUCK OUR WOMEN,YOU KNOW, DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YOU.
NIGEL FARAGE, THE ONCE AND FORMER GABSHITE. THEY HAVE THREE COCKS, SOME OF THEM, IMAGINE THAT.
The fruits of Empire - the cities - now clogged in part with brown immigrants, cities which rose only by the exploitation of their ancestors, their native resources, their labour, their markets. Birmingham, Bradford, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, all grown boastful and smug, gilded civic halls and mercantile palaces, ostentatious and vulgar, ghastly Rotarians and bent freemasons, knowing whispers and secret handshakes; slaves, tea, coffee, spices, cotton, all fuelling industry and commerce, spawning Fred Dibnah's steamy smoky mad genius can-do world of shuttling and pumping connectedness, onwards and upwards, walking on the face of the Gungha Din. Absorbing a few million migrants, now, with common sense and tact and legality doesn't seem too high a price to pay, retrospectively, without interest.
It is the hijacking and amplification of Otherness, its colonisation for gain, by the likes of Darcus Gob-Howe and the wretched Yasmin Alibhai Muslem, it is the spawning of a corrosive race relations industry expertise where none was previously necessary, it is these petit bourgeois nouvelle preoccupations which blight Harmony's landscape; it is the lack of common sense and tact and legality, and the grandstanding of the Worthless, such as CallHimDave, which beggar hospitality and strangle assimilation.
I would suggest, furthermore, that while landlords' South Asian sharp financial practice is well-known among urbanites it is very small beer, inconsequential, compared with the efforts of the financial terrorists of Wall Street and Canary Wharf who are looting all our homes - mostly, of course, they are white and in control of the White House and Downing Street, so - the story goes - it doesn't count; best turn on the wogs. Aye, and the disabled.
Perspective, that's the thing.
Lots of people have those bootstrapping histories - industrious, self-denying parents, grammar schools and so on. But what about those who don't, who can't, those whose bootstraps are too threadbare to pull them up, or who have no boots; what about them, the faultless, the deaf and blind, the mute, the mistreated, mateless mother, the crippled, the sick, must we tramp on them that the likes of Cameron have even more than they need, must we tramp on them to make ourselves feel better, feel glad that we are not among them. I am a welfareist, but at the same time, pissed and angry, discontented, hungry for light, I would have been among the first out of the sea, up the shores, into the caves, out on the veldt, into the cities and out to the stars. There is no dichotomy between progress and compassion, au contraire, mes amis.
Back in the '80s, whilst Whisky Maggie and her spivs were gangfucking British industry, I worked in a Voluntary Projects Programme aimed at getting long-term unemployed people not back into work but into work for the first time. It was funded by the Manpower Services Commission as part of SEMAG, the Special Employment Measures Action Group and had close connections to various Community Programme Schemes which offered part and full-time work for up to a year and sometimes longer for supervisory, managerial grades. Before I could steer people to the CP, I had to source or provide basic skills training and generally a couple of days a week on voluntary community projects, some manual, some domestic, some admin. Through these simple, structured activities people learned the comradeship, the regularity and the self-esteem which accompany regular employment and I never knew one single soul who did not benefit hugely, either in the short-term or, in many cases, the long. I used to hustle money, too, from charitable trusts, particularly the Cadburys, to take these less than privileged people to see Shakespeare or the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra; my office was run a bit like this blog, ongoing conversations in which some engaged and some just watched, all of an anarcho-plumbing bent, all eventually insisting that survival required at least a degree of conformity, not to govament but to one's fellows commonly agreed purposes. Work was good in and of itself, even done voluntarily, education was good, in and of itself, the arts were for everybody, not just for Kirsty Wark's opulent wankers.
There were lots of these projects, up and down the land, once I knew the stats, which proved their worth, but it's a long time ago and I forget. What I know, though, and when I say know, I mean know, you know, as night follows day, beyond sophistry and rhetoric is that people are not naturally idle - we would not have survived all these centuries if that was the case - but people are often denied opportunity and then eventually shut out and called names.
I have nothing against employment programmes, sensitively and efficiently and productively run. But if they are used punitively, to bizarrely aggrandise the spiv and the financial terrorist to whom, seemingly, we owe our very fucking lives, who adjudicate on our rights to services paid for with our own money, whilst they piss champagne down each others' throats and blow cocaine up each others' arses then we deserve to lose everything they steal from us, in the name of book balancing, the fucking bastards. It is not the impotent poor whom we should thrash but the idle fucking rich.
I spoke Brummy on the street and Belfast indoors. Even then, at five or six, I felt I was betraying my Mum, and felt ashamed, little knowing that all I was doing was an early example of Cameronism, poor little bastard.
That Al Sharpton, what's he like, doing all that complaining on behalf of the niggers? Doesn't he know that as recently as in our lifetimes, those white folks have almost entirely stopped lynching niggers, castrating them, burning them alive and laughing, free, from good ole boy judges and juries courts. Jesus, anybody'd think they'd been mistreated. All those Ivy League boys, from good American families, grown rich on centuries of slavery, what possible advantage could they have over the negro, ain't this the land of the free?
In my lifetime all this shit was going on, segregation and the Klan, the official face of the Southern States, fuck me, it's a good job that niggers aren't Jews, or they'd a had some other people thrown out of their country and taken it over, we'd all be creeping around observing Nigger Holocaust Day, just that the Nigger Holocaust lasted centuries, not a decade or two. What was it we called this post, it's so long ago, now, Denial of Perspective?
Here in Ruin, sympathy and compassion are infinite.
Here's something to lighten the mood, courtesy of editor mr verge: Dining out with Walter and Connie.
Walter and Connie, hilariously assisted by Hattie Jacques, starred in a series of short English language teaching films in the Sixties.
As we motor on into 2025, don't forget your copy of one of the four splendid anthologies of the writings of mr ishmael and stanislav, the young Polish Plumber. Or buy the set as a luxurious indulgence for yourself or as a gift for a broad-minded friend. The anthologies have been compiled and produced by editor mr verge, the house filthster, in answer to the appalled and bereft reaction of ishmaelites to the passing of mr ishmael in January 2020.
You can buy the Quartet from Amazon or Lulu. Here's how:
Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) are available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.
IIshmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps
please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box. Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed.
At checkout, try WELCOME15 in the coupon box, which (for the moment) takes 15% off the price before postage. If this code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for "Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.
With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.
Liverpool Docks at Night. Atkinson Grimshaw. York Art Gallery.
1. I wag at cunt declares timey-wimey seasonal queen. A. This was, of course, Ncuti Gatwa, a homosexual Rwandan/Scottish actor currently impersonating Dr. Who with great energy, big teeth and a complete absence of thought. Couldn't imagine him married to River Song.
Capaldi's Dr Who with Alex Kingston as River Song
Personal indulgence over, back to the serious stuff.
2. Will reedy divas sing his praises at the Lubedems Xmas party? A. Sir Ed Davey, famous in 2024 for risking life, limb and any pretension to seriousness, to win votes. And the great British public being what they are, it worked.
3. Tartan nihilists admire Ruin's cool agent, whilstTartan buttplug spokesman denies tainted grandee comes with face fit to make an anus-tool cringe. And still they cry "she's stealing our con!"
A. All three are Nicola Sturgeon, disgraced Scottish politician.
4. Bossmarries striker? A. Sir Keir Starmer, currently under attack by Elon Musk - which means everywhere, for failing to dissuade Pakistani Muslim men from forming rape gangs to serially abuse and rape young white girls for, no doubt, ideological reasons.
5. Moreknob-ache, Demi? A. Yes, itsKemi Badenoch, completely out of her depth and presiding over the death of the Conservative Party, about to be re-configured under the charismatic and assured....
6. Hear demagogue finagle rage? Watch pond-pervert finger algae? Call old queen a leering fag? (Free anal gig for lucky milkshake fetishist.) A. Nigel Farage - Freedom of Speech Champion, apologist for Elon Musk, who believes Britain has a Muslim rape culture and its all Keir Stammerer and Jess Philips' fault and is best friends with Donald Trump. Who will save me when the wokeistas come? Why, Nigel Farage, my new Hero.7. Pity litter-pickers’ damp old runt? A. Donald Trump, due to be sentenced on the 10th January for offences of falsifying business records. Not to worry - Judge Juan Merchon has said he's only going to impose a conditional discharge, just as well as Trump is due to be inaugurated as 45th President of the United States 10 days later. Donald, who Farage assures us is genuinely fond of Britain, would like to see us getting rid of the windmills and stop dithering about with oil and gas extraction. This might have something to do with Apache, oil producer, saying it will withdraw from the North Sea by 2029 due to the increase in windfall tax on fossil fuel producers. Apache? Texan firm, yes? Make America Great Again!
8. “I need job”, bleats downsized coot. A. Joe Biden. Altogether, now, Awww........9. Starmeradds repellent moronto Embassy roster. (Always good tohave a droll serpent demon in the snakepit.) A. Lord Peter Mandelson, the UK's new ambassador to the U.S.
He'll fit right in. 10. Prancer wined alone – the Windsor sleigh moves on without him. (His rancid new repdid him no favours.) A. Prince Andrew
Mr Yang has said allegations he is a spy are 'ill-founded' and 'entirely untrue'.
The Mail reports that more than £230,000 has been pulled from Prince Andrew's initiative Pitch@Palace. During the financial year ending March 31, 2024, the amount of cash at hand and in the bank decreased by half, from £454,979 to £220,990, as accounts filed to Companies House on December 30, reveal. The withdrawal was signed by Pitch@Palace's sole director Arthur Lancaster.
11. Power’s lever reaches no.11. A. Everyone's favourite head-girl, it's Rachel Reeves, who massaged her curriculum vitae to gain credibility in her role as Chancellor of the Exchequer. And hasn't she done well, as Britain's fat-cat farmers and wealthy pensioners are sure to agree.12. Eery anal gran promises house-building bonanza. A. Who else but Angela Rayner.
Winner of the Twelve Captions of Christmas
Can there be any doubt? its mr ultrapox. Congratulations!
Anyway, that's enough larking about. I hope mr mongoose is recovering from the flu and will be able to raise the tone of the establishment shortly.
SPORTING NEWS
Played in the town centre of Kirkwall, the two sides are the Uppies and the Doonies, short for "Up-the-Gates" and "Doon-the-Gates" from the Norn gata (path or road). The Boys Ba' is for boys up to 15 years old. There's no lower age limit and small boys of as young as 5 join in around the edges. The Boys Ba' is thrown up from the Merket Cross on the Kirk Green on front of St Magnus Cathedral at 10.00 and the number of boys participating can number over 100.
The Men's Ba' is the real deal though. It starts at 1.00pm when an honoured Orcadian throws up the Ba' from the Merket Cross into the waiting scrum of up to 350 men. The Ba' disappears into the scrum and much surging play occurs while the two sides weigh each other up and determine who has the weight on their side on this occasion.
Occasionally, the ba' appears out of the scrum and someone makes a dash through the crowds of spectators.
The Doonies have the benefit of a flat push to Albert Street, while the Uppies have a hard push up to the top of Tankerness Lane. The game may also go down one of the flagstone lanes, or down Castle Street onto the open Junction Road. Once there either side may gain the upper hand by means of a smuggle and run, or the scrum may become immobile in one of the many closes and yards.
However, if the Uppies manage to enter Victoria Street, or the Doonies Albert Street, the opposition have a much harder time, due to the narrowness and the press of often many hundreds of keen spectators. All the same the Ba' may be restricted for several hours in any of the many lanes and neither side ever gives up the struggle until the goal is reached. The Doonies' goal is the sea, normally within the Basin of the Harbour, but so long as it is immersed in the salt water of Kirkwall Bay, the Ba' has gone doon.
The Uppies must round the Lang, or Mackinson's corner at the junction of Main Street with New Scapa Road, opposite the Catholic Church, which was the site of the old town gates in bygone times. The last remains of the town gates were removed in the 1950s, leaving the Uppie goal as the gable end of a house on Mackinson's Corner.
Visitors are not encouraged to play, because this is an Orcadian thing. It is played on Christmas Day and New Year's Day, in the town centre and the preparations to ensure the safety of shops and houses begins in mid December, when the Council puts up the Ba'boards, which will remain in place until the end of the New Year holiday, when they go back into storage. They give the street a rather grim appearance:
as shops struggle to trade whilst sheltering behind the protection of solid planks of wood. Better than hoping for the best, though - the scrum and crowd knock down walls,
up-end signs and plants, damaging themselves and property.
This top was ground into the street - maybe the owner just got too hot. It has been snowing, though, so perhaps the wearer was trampled underfoot and is now a former Ba' player.
LOCAL NEWS FOR LOCAL PEOPLE
Each year, the people of Norway gift the people of Orkney with a Christmas tree, as a pledge of our close genealogical, linguistic, spiritual and historic ties. The tree stands proudly outside the great St Magnus Cathedral, Britain's most northerly cathedral, known as "the Light of the North", founded in 1137 by the Viking, Earl Rognvald, in honour of his uncle, St Magnus, who was murdered in Orkney by his cousin Haakon, for the usual acquisitive reasons.
This is this year's gift.
Yes, I know. A bit ratty. So ratty that the people of Orkney muttered darkly, wrote letters to the paper and to Radio Orkney. Don't they like us anymore? Why have they sent us this piece of crap? Sweepings off the forest floor? How is this worthy of our Cathedral and our celebrations?
So Radio Orkney dragged the Norwegian Consul into the studio to justify this insulting gift. It went something like this:
How dare you, ungrateful scum dogs. What would you know about a good-looking tree? You cut down all your own trees and the Norwegian people kindly provide you with a tree from the very forest where the little St Magnus played as a boy and all you do is complain. The Norwegians not only selected a tree for Orkney, they cut it down, transported it, filled in all the paperwork and shipped it here, all for free. So shut the fuck up.
Well, maybe I've embellished a little for the purpose of dramatic irony, but I think I've captured the gist.
The tree did look a little better on arrival, but since then there have been the storms, and the Ba'.
And we've also had a display of the Merry Dancers.
I was away for the decorated tractor run but here's a flavour of it:
Happily motoring into 2025, don't forget your copy of one of the four splendid anthologies of the writings of mr ishmael and stanislav, the young Polish Plumber. Or buy the set as a luxurious indulgence for yourself or as a gift for a broad-minded friend. The anthologies have been compiled and produced by editor mr verge, the house filthster, in answer to the appalled and bereft reaction of ishmaelites to the passing of mr ishmael in January 2020.
You can buy the Quartet from Amazon or Lulu. Here's how:
Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) are available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.
IIshmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps
please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box. Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed.
At checkout, try WELCOME15 in the coupon box, which (for the moment) takes 15% off the price before postage. If this code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for "Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.
With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.
If you are a woman who marries in, survives the big-like-elephant mother-in-law bullying, and produces weans then you'll gain a grudging acceptance, but never be really part of the Orcadian extended family. That needs five generations in the kirk-yard. A man who marries in will always be a ferry-louper, a sooth-moother, even if he competes in the Ba'. As for us, incomers who thought Orkney was just another county in the United Kingdom - (free movement throughout the UK), bringing with us much-needed skills, knowledge and expertise; well, superficial politeness masks suspicion and resentment. Cummin' here, tackin' oor best jobs, tellin us what tae dae, whisht, thae Cooncil is all incomers. Even if you join the W.I. or the Men's Shed, even if you've been here 25 years, they'll talk friendly to you, but you'll no be asked round to dinner. Which is why I'm a member of the ex-pat community. It's all a bit reminiscent of Empire, the Fifties, and racism, without coloured skin being involved. Accent and surname are sufficient for identification and demarcation purposes.
And, at Christmas, the ex-pat community launches itself south, driving home for Christmas, as the song has it. The Council facilitates this holiday diaspora by closing down for a fortnight, scooping up the Bank Holidays which are usually scattered through the year's sunny calendar and stitching them between the Christmas closure and the two-day New Year closure (that's right - two days to recover from the hang-over), locking the doors and turning off the heating.
Ferry after ferry leaves St Margaret's Hope, Stromness or Hatston in the run-up to Christmas, full of expectation and excitement, with boatloads of agency workers, internal migrants, students and retirees.
Each little barque of frailty (that's a Regency prostitute, mrs ishmael, not a car. I know, but I like the phrase) thunders off the boat ramp onto the ferry slip, full-bellied with hampers of Orkney cheeses, fudges, bere bannocks, farmed smoked salmon, pickled herrings, bottles of Kirkjuvagr gin and 12 year old Highland Park, and carefully selected gifts with an Orkney feel, bought from gift-shops in Kirkwall that have bought them in from India or China, and lovingly-knitted little cardigans for new grandchildren. And with a reckless lack of trepidation, swooping South like great ungainly migrating birds, wheels are set on the deadly A9, gears are crunched up and down the Berriedale Braes,
and drivers whose normal distance driving is around 15 miles, launch themselves, at just about the worst time of year for the enterprise, into a journey to the Cities of the South. It is a magnificent road, the A9, taking you over the Slochd Summit
and through the Drumochter Pass.
Drumochter - it means high ridge - is the main mountain pass between the northern and southern Scottish Highlands. It is the only gap in the Grampian Watershed suitable for road traffic routes between Glen Coe and Cairnwell Pass and is the highest point on the A9 at 1508 feet above sea level. It gets pretty severe up there in winter - the clue is the regular spacing of snow poles, which show where the road is when it is under deep snow, to guide the snow ploughs and snow blowers.
And the snow gates, of course, to close the road completely, requiring travellers to turn back.
I've struggled north through the Drummochter Pass before now in heavy snow, at night, headlights illuminating a world of whirling white and the tail lights of the lorry in front, thinking I'd never get through, but, after thousands of years, the road starts dropping, your ears pop, the snow stops and you coast into Inverness, where it just looks a bit wet.
This year, going South, I didn't hit snow, but by the time I got to Aviemore it was, as my gentlemen friends inform me, balls-achingly cold, the trees were coated in sparkling frost, not snow, like giant Christmas decorations, and the rills that flow off the rocks in the Cairngorms, where the road is cut out from the surrounding mountains, were frozen into miniature Narnian waterfalls.
Returning North, the temperatures had lifted, and fog made the journey both hideous and beautiful, as cars would screech to a halt for no perceptible reason, and Ravilious tree skeletons would emerge from the thick whiteness.
And so, one by one, the little barques bearing the ex-pat grandparents, siblings, and adult children limped back to Orkney, expectations deflated, digestions ruined, backs rendered hideous by nights on the bed-settee, minds exploded by traffic, crowds and the Cities of the South.
One chum, enduring the monstrous journey to stay with her son and new daughter-in-law for Christmas in the expensive Edinburgh house which she had part-funded, was drawn aside by her son to be given a bollocking.
"Really, Mother, you must not fill the freezer with sausages."
"But they were the best sausages. From Donaldson's. Special Christmas offer."
"Now Mother, you know that Eloise is careful about our food."
At this point, I jumped into the narrative. "Is Eloise gluten-intolerant? Allergic? Phobic? UHP averse?"
My chum shook her head, utterly defeated by life: "No, no, mrs ishmael, she likes to eat healthy."
"Nothing wrong with that," I said, robustly.
"But you don't understand. For breakfast, I saw her - no word of a lie - mashing up an avocado and spreading it on toast. An avocado!"
"It's a thing, dear old friend", I replied, all woman-of-the-worldish, "They do that in the Cities of the South. You've been too long in Orkney, which, as we know, is the Land That Time Forgot".
" I don't know where he gets it from", she drearily responded. "He were brought up on sausages."
"And now he's married into the Avocado Classes" I commiserated.
Another chum, a new grandmother, had laboriously knitted what we used to call a layette out of that fine, white baby wool that takes forever. The new parents, suspicious and wary as befits survivors of their parents' parenting, had ingeniously managed to keep my chum and her hubby immured in Orkney since the birth but were helpless in the teeth of the Season of Goodwill, and agreed to the grandparental visit, on the basis that they stayed in the local Premier Inn.
"And how did that go?" I enquired.
"The Premier Inn was wonderful, mrs ishmael, so comfortable, and the food was entirely acceptable. Not the same as home-made, of course".
"What? Didn't you have any meals with your daughter and son-in-law?"
"Well, no, because they were so busy with the baby, and they asked us not to stay with them in the evening. Or afternoon, really."
"Your daughter must have loved all the gorgeous baby things you knitted?"
"She wrote a very complimentary description of them on the Ebay entry, mrs ishmael. I hadn't realised they weren't suitable for a modern baby, as they can't go in the washing machine and they might trap little fingers....."
She is having her doubts about being so quick to put her Orkney house on the market and offer on a house near her daughter, the penny having dropped that the new baby, although a relative, is basically and essentially, someone else's child.
What was your worst meal out this Christmas, mrs ishmael?
I think the star prize has to go to the Merkister Hotel, West Mainland, by default.
The website informs us that "situated on the shores of Harray Loch, the Merkister hotel stands in its own grounds in the most wonderful location, commanding impressive views of this famous loch and its surroundings. We are situated lochside, and offer a jetty to launch your own boats, or rent one for yourself and offer guided Ghillie bookings for those unfamiliar with the area".
I arranged to meet my chum for lunch at the Merkister one Tuesday in late November. A snow storm blew up, but I doggedly white-knuckled down the long single-lane track, thinking how am I ever going to get back again, don't let me skid, can I actually see the track? Am I even now in a field, bouncing towards the Harray Loch? Perhaps the Ghillie will find me and prise my cold dead hands from the steering wheel next March? But at least I have the consolation of a fine lunch to look forward to. A fill of warming mince and neeps and tatties.
I successfully negotiated my way into the car park, where there were three other vehicles, and tramped my way through the snow to the conservatory entrance, which opens into a splendid hallway with floor to ceiling windows, looking out over the loch and the snowy landscape. Three gentlemen were taking coffee and chatting together in Yorkshire voices, and we exchanged views on the day and the snow, as you do, then I turned to enter the hotel, obediently pausing and ringing the bell, as a large sign instructed me. There was a delay, so, just as the wait was growing embarrassing on account of the three Yorkshire gentlemen, doubtless here for the fishing, but thwarted in their sport by the weather, the door opened and a large Person of the female persuasion forbiddingly said: "Yes?"
It used to be, 25 years ago, when I was first here, a Stranger in a Strange Land, that a pleasantry ventured to a Local Person would be received with a grunt, or subvocal Fuck Off English Cunt. Things have hugely improved over the decades, an improvement that I unequivocally attribute to Mr. Tesco's Customer Service training. The improvement hasn't spread out into West Mainland, though, a massive distance of 13 miles from Mr Tesco's emporium.
"I'm joining my friend Freya Johannsdottir for lunch", I ventured.
"Oh, no, you are not", replied the Large Person.
Thinking perhaps that Freya had forgotten to book a table, I faltered,
"If Freya hasn't booked, could we get a table for two?"
"No."
I looked enquiringly at her and she added: "We're closed." As I looked about at the Christmas decorations and the three Yorkshiremen enjoying their coffee and biscuits, and the general air of an establishment that was open for business, she added: "it's on Facebook".
So I plodded back out into the snowy carpark and phoned Freya, who was just turning off the road onto the Merkister's long track. "That'll have been the cook," Freya said. "She can be grumpy."
A noble runner-up in the Worst Christmas meal stakes was the caff in the York Art Gallery.
Here's the blurb: "Located in York Art Gallery’s beautiful Victorian building and situated in the heart of York.... We have carefully selected (what we think are) the best local suppliers in order to provide you with locally sourced produce whenever we can. Alongside our staple faves, our Head Chef takes full advantage of what Yorkshire has to offer and loves to create new dishes dependent on what the season offers."
My kind host had taken me to the William Morris exhibition in the Art Galley (much recommended, by the way), and lunch at the Gallery's caff seemed the sensible and convenient option. I've been duped before by skilful blurb about seasonal offerings - a menu at a National Trust property once offered me a tart with local seasonal berries. Intrigued by which seasonal berries are available in February in the North of England, I asked the foreign waitress. Of course she didn't know, and went away to consult chef. "Rhubarb", she announced, on her return.
Back to the Gallery Caff. "Staple faves" should have had me heading out to the nearest Burger King, but, you know, once sitting down, coat off, parcels settled, it is hard to escape, so I opted for the least annoying menu item. I thought I was getting a turkey dinner, deluded by the menu descriptor of turkey, cranberries, Brussel sprouts, coleslaw and toast. I thought I could leave the coleslaw. What I did get was a two inch slab of toasted bread, smothered in sliced raw brussel sprouts in mayo, and topped with two circular slices of compressed turkey studded with raw cranberries. Honest, not invent. I was hungry and tired so I ate some. I know I have a particularly sensitive digestive system, but it would have taken the digestive apparatus of Desperate Dan to have dealt with Chef's innovative and amusing take on a turkey dinner.
Desperate Dan statue in Dundee, home of the Beano
We could develop a Restaurant Avoidance list - please provide suggestions for inclusion.
Ancestral Voices Prophesying War
Did you catch the Queen's King's speech?
He was wearing Very Serious Face
and I was convinced that King Brian was using his address to the nation to prepare his people for War. The images were all of war, ancient servicemen and disabled soldiery and the text was not reassuring: "During previous commemorations we were able to console ourselves with the thought that these tragic events seldom happen in the modern era. But, on this Christmas Day, we cannot help but think of those for whom the devastating effects of conflict – in the Middle East, in Central Europe, in Africa and elsewhere – pose a daily threat to so many people’s lives and livelihoods."
Then take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind