A Son of the Rock

Perry Bamonte’s death on Christmas Eve came somewhat out of the blue.

He started as one of the The Cure’s road crew and took over guitar and keyboard duties in 1990.

This is a single from their first album with him as full member, Wish, and was a no 8 in 1992.

The Cure: High

Perry Archangelo Bamonte: 3/9/1960 – 24/12/2025. So it goes.

Much underrated Scottish footballer, and Nottingham Forest legend, John Robertson died on Christmas Day.

He was never the most athletic looking of men (which probably led to that underrating) but he was described by Brian Clough, the manager who got the most out of him, as “the Picasso of our game” and by his Nottingham Forest teammate John McGovern as “having more ability than Ryan Giggs.” Forest coach Jimmy Gordon rated him as “a better player than Tom Finney and Stanley Matthews.”

He is one of the few Scotsmen to win two European Cups, providing the assist for the winning goal in his first in 1979 and scoring the winner himself in the second a year later.

He also scored a winner for Scotland against England at Wembley. In 1981: Scotland have only won once there since.

John Neilson Robertson: 20/1/1953 – 25/12/2025. So it goes.

They’re coming thick and fast.

Raul Malo of US band The Mavericks died earlier this month, but his obituary was only in the Guardian last week.

I featured their biggest UK hit, the joyous Dance the Night Away (a no 4 in 1998,) here.

This one (ther second biggest) reached no 27 later that year.

The Mavericks: I’ve Got This Feeling

Raul Francisco Martínez-Malo: 7/8/1965 – December 8/12/2025. So it goes.

Hamish Hamilton, 2024, 280 p.

Even without reading a word, a glance at the interior of this book would immediately let you know it is by Ali Smith. It has her usual unjustified right margin, giving the text a ragged appearance, the Sabon MT Pro font, and the uncapitalised section titles (here horse, power, lines) rendered in bold type.

As to the novel itself, it is a kind of follow-on to Smith’s Seasons quartet (quintet if you include Companion Piece)  Set in an unspecified future in an apparently authoritarian state (though one never explicitly spelled out as such) where people can be designated UV (unverifiable) it tells the story of Briar (Bri, the non-binary male who narrates it) and their sister Rose.

Their mother kept them off-grid, therefore unverified. She refused them smartphones, told them, “There are different realities, and the net is a reality with designs on general reality, and I’ll prefer it if you both experience the real realities as your foremost realities.”

They had lived with their mother and her man friend Leif before their mother left to look after her sister’s interests. After visiting her one day, they come home with Leif to find the house surrounded by a red painted line, rendering them personae non grata. They have to leave in their campervan. That night the campervan also has a red line painted round it while it is parked. Leif takes off, ostensibly to find their mother and the siblings are left to fend for themselves.

As they are travelling the pair come across a field with horses in it and are accosted by a boy named Colon who says the horses belong to his father. Colon notices their bare wrists and wants to know where their educators are (pointing to where his is) and is confused when they say they don’t have any.

In a later encounter Colon’s brother, Posho, spouts all sorts of mysogynistic nonsense to Rose but lets her know of the Adult retraining centres, Arks, and child retraining centres, Circuses, where the unverified are set to work, on “majorly foul jobs” and, if they refuse, they disappear. Rose takes to one of the horses, calling it Gliff (a word meaning glimpse, or glance, a fright, a brief moment or a gleam of light – or everything and nothing at the same time.)

In later sections it becomes clear Bri is narrating this in retrospect when he has been separated from Rose but accepted into the authoritarian system and is trying to subvert it from within.

Gliff is a propulsive book about forced alienation and the difficulty, as well as the need, to resist it.

The people who need to read Gliff almost certainly won’t. The people who do read it will most likely be convinced of its message before they do.

Pedant’s corner:- No entries.

Yet another one gone. This time Chris Rea. It somehow seems crueller at this time of year.

Rea is perhaps best known for Driving Home for Christmas and The Road to Hell, jointly his highest chart placing songs but neither of which is appropriate here. His back catalogue is long.

This was his second top 30 hit (no 26 in 1985) and predates both of the above.

Chris Rea: Stainsby Girls

Christopher Anton (Chris) Rea: 4/3/1951 – 22/12/2025. So it goes.

So here it is, the final track from Tull’s Christmas Album that I haven’t yet featured, a version of Gabriel Fauré’s Pavane in F Sharp Minor.

Merry Christmas.

Jethro Tull: Pavane:

Happy Birthday to me.

I won’t let on how many years it has been since I was born.

When people see my date of birth I often get asked if I only get one present seeing as it’s only a day away from Christmas.

My childhood family, though, always made a point of treating birthday and Christmas as separate (as is only right and proper) – a tradition the good lady and my own children still adhere to.

Mind you, looking for a birthday card in the card shops at this time of year is a pretty forlorn pastime.

34 Scottish books this year, 17 by men, 17 by women. Five were fantasy or SF, one was non-fiction.

(For my reviews type the book title into my search box.)

A Darker Domain by Val McDermid

Greenmantle by John Buchan

Queen Macbeth by Val McDermid

Hex by Jenni Fagan

The Wind That Shakes the Barley by James Barke

The Skeleton Road by Val McDermid

Guy Mannering by Walter Scott

Olivia by O Douglas

Poor Angus by Robin Jenkins

Pawn in Frankincense by Dorothy Dunnett

Born Leader by J T McIntosh

Nothing Left to Fear From Hell by Alan Warner

The Hamlet by Joanna Corrance

Poor Tom by Edwin Muir

Rizzio by Denise Mina

Dark Crescent by Lyndsey Croal

The Hayburn Family by Guy McCrone

The Takeover by Muriel Spark

Columba’s Bones by David Greig

The Keelie Hawk by Kathleen Jamie

The Song in the Green Thorn Tree by James Barke

Now She Is Witch by Kirsty Logan

Black Sparta by Naomi Mitchison

Life for a Life by T F Muir

Out of Bounds by Val McDermid

Dead Catch by T F Muir

Some Kind of Grace by Robin Jenkins

The Ringed Castle by Dorothy Dunnett

The Green Isle of the Great Deep by Neil M Gunn

To See Ourselves by Alistair Moffat

The Setons by O Douglas

Auld Licht Idylls by J M Barrie

Gliff by Ali Smith

The Wonder of All the Gay World by James Barke  (review still to appear here.)

The Roxy Cinema is fairly prominent as you pass through Ulverston to or from Barrow-in-Furness, standing as it does by the main A 590 road:-

Note rule of three, and banding, plus flagpole.

Entrance, also the entrance to the Laurel and Hardy Museum:-

From south, Art Deco lettering, banding on white background and rule of three in windows:-

View from north:-

Ulverston in Cumbria, is the nearest biggish town to Barrow-in-Furness, about ten and a half miles further north. It was the birthplace of Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy fame. There is a Laurel and Hardy museum in the town which we didn’t visit and a statue of the pair in the town centre.

The statue stood outside this fairly impressive building:-

Just across the road was this building:-

The Tesco’s in the town was in a minor Art Deco style. Its upper windows are completely ruined:-

Detail:-