tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-178527842024-03-13T13:36:06.654+00:00Kirk Elder, Senior Citizen from PeeblesKirk Elder is Life President of The Peebles Showboaters Amateur Dramatic Society. For many years a columnist on The Scotsman newspaper, he is currently "in recovery" from the experience. He enjoys parma violets, cloudless winter nights, and the films of Mr Burt Lancaster. He is currently writing his autobiography, "And Not For the Better".Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.comBlogger206125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-8442182948506185342020-03-10T11:31:00.002+00:002020-03-11T11:33:40.132+00:00As The World Is Being Run By Twits, What Comfort Can Be Found In The Official Advice To Self Isolate (And Other Symptoms Of Viral Paranoia)?
Some idiots are on the news. They think it’s all over. Perhaps it is. This morning, Radio Four’s Today programme ended with a debate about the value of life. I did not catch the name of the participants because of the noise of the helicopters overhead, and the knocking at the door, and the telephone ringing endlessly in the sideboard, and the clatter as the wireless bounced against the glass ofKirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-21875886922680469912016-12-16T14:57:00.002+00:002016-12-16T18:06:25.082+00:00When I see garments labelled "Blue Harbour", I shiver, because there can be no more exact metaphor for death than docking one's tug in that melancholy port
It is a terrible day, is it not? Increasingly, they are terrible, the days, and they fold together into terrible years. You may perhaps have your own reasons for thinking today is especially bad. For me, the tin lid was the Greggs' cheese pasty I just ingested. It tasted, I think, of defeat. My own. It was lukewarm - the better to avoid Value Added Tax. The pastry flaked over the tweed of my Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-51563756586724840222014-06-17T18:23:00.002+01:002014-06-17T18:23:49.035+01:00The Independence Debate Is Giving Me The Constitutional Collywobbles, And Not In A Good Way
Mr Iain MacWhirter
I am no longer sure who it was who advised the Scottish people to live as if they were in the early days of a better nation. I think it was Mr Alasdair Gray, but it could have been the Rev IM Jolly. Whoever it was, they deserve an award for prescience, as the independence referendum has caused all of us to enter a state of constitutional collywobbles in which everything is Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-89834537378832798292012-10-15T15:24:00.000+01:002012-10-15T16:14:20.614+01:00Another Monday In Edinburgh, Another Day Of Destiny For The Long-Suffering Scottish People Whose Destiny It Is To Endure Many More Days Like This
Mr Salmond, left, in happier times, with Sir Sean
Connery (centre) and Mr Donald Trump
To paraphrase a great Scot, whose greatness and Scottishness are matters of dispute and denial, I felt the hand of history on my balaclava this afternoon, as I reflected on yet another momentous day in our nation's history. The Rt Hon David Cameron, the Prime Minister, and Mr Alex Salmond, the Senior Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-16204724333336307642012-05-29T14:29:00.006+01:002012-05-30T15:31:19.651+01:00Whither Scotland? The nation stands blinking at the Pelican Crossing of its own destiny
Oddly enough, I feel the need to apologise for my silence. I am not sure why, given that I was always raised by my mother, Mrs Elder (or Ma'am) to remain mute except in case of emergencies, at which times I was permitted to raise my hand until an adult noticed, or my arm withered (whichever came first). The young are different. They never stop communicating: sending texts or having "sext" on Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-80251812288082957722011-09-05T13:48:00.011+01:002011-09-06T12:59:55.737+01:00Committing Suicide In Order To Survive: The Scottish Tories Come Up Nuts, Slice After SliceI noted with some excitement the news in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph that the Scottish Conservatives have decided to embrace the inevitable and disband due to lack of interest. I paraphrase slightly, but one must congratulate the Conservative leadership candidate, Mr Murdo M McMurdo (or thereabouts), whose ruse this was, as the doings of the Scottish Tories have not been newsworthy since Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-76525067956190176922011-09-02T15:31:00.008+01:002011-09-02T16:15:11.601+01:00Apologies For My Extended Absence. I Have Been Held Hostage By My Teeth
I would apologise for my absence from these pages if I thought anyone had noticed, but the sad truth for a silver - verging on ferrous oxide - surfer such as myself, is that the internet has become overrun with celebrity, filth, and irrelevance. And that's just the Daily Mail.
In truth, I have been unwell. My teeth have been playing up again, and I have been forced to endure a series of sadists Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-14574216522493446812011-03-21T16:29:00.006+00:002011-03-21T19:34:15.084+00:00The Scottish Election: A Nation Shelters Beneath A Potless Rainbow Awaiting Deliverance, Or A Free Prescription Of Custard CreamsAlas, and indeed, alack, in this diffident spring of earthquakes and lavender revolutions and supermoons and Cruise missiles raining down on the close personal friends of Mr George 'You Can Call Me The Cat' Galloway, an election to the Scottish parliament is underway. You may have detected the signs, though this might more easily be done with the giant stethoscopes they used to employ inside Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-89395934680113164982010-11-16T17:49:00.015+00:002010-11-16T19:24:09.125+00:00Prince William's Wedding Is An Act Of Great Optimism. He Must Hope He Is Heir Only To His Father's Hair, And Not His Matrimonial TricycleThe news that HRH Prince William is to marry his lady friend, Miss Kate Middleton, is, of course, to be welcomed. One must always accept tokens of optimism as they are dispensed, and there can be no more optimistic act than for the heir to the heir to the throne - who is also heir to the heir's hair, or absence of same - proposing to enter wedlock with a civilian, and "sealing the deal" by Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-90677706528115776402010-09-28T16:14:00.012+01:002010-09-28T17:37:37.990+01:00Mr Ed Miliband Should Stop Talking About How Young He Is, Because He Is Growing Older And Less Fresh With Every Passing MomentI am of an age where I can only be ambivalent about new leaders of the Labour Party. I was never very taken by the messianic drabness of Mr Tony Blair, who is the most successful leader of the People's Party, even though his success was based on what my old drama teacher, Mrs Ballet-Oliphant, of the Roxburghshire Ballet-Oliphants, used to call "charismatic misdirection". (Meaning that Mr Blair's Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-72486324011194731352010-09-10T13:59:00.010+01:002010-09-10T15:26:44.476+01:00The Senior Retainer, Mr Salmond, Does Not Believe The Scots Are Ready To Vote For Independence. Is This The Last Midge Bite Of Scottish Nationalism?Living in the Borders has its advantages, not least the ready availability of Hawick Balls, and a plentiful supply of knitwear at reasonable prices. Less obviously to the outsider, we Borderers are blessed with an independent spirit, and a refusal to be swayed by flim-flam, tomfoolery or nonsense. Perhaps this explains my antipathy towards the Palatul Parlamentului in Holyrood, and my inability Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-46269713427877386672010-04-13T14:31:00.011+01:002010-04-14T10:18:16.807+01:00Mr Elder's Guide To Understanding The Election, Involving Chewing Gum, And A Gratuitous Joke About Mr Salmond's Expanding BriefsElections are traumatic events, promising milk, honey, and liquorice torpedoes for all, but delivering little but disappointment and mild angina. The cycle of hope and despair is so predictable that it is possible to become quite jaded by the political merry-go-round.However, rather than fall back on the counsel of despair, or, indeed, the council of despair, I like to quote Sir Winston Leonard Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-78788712726498290742010-04-07T10:28:00.009+01:002010-04-07T11:36:36.059+01:00The Prime Minister's Tunnock's Teacake Offensive Is A High-Risk Strategy In The Bantustans of Middle EnglandMy mother, Mrs Elder (or Ma'am) was one of nature's floating voters. Her broad opinion of politicians was that they should be gathered in a sack, like kittens, and thrown in the nearest canal. (She had no time for felines, on account of sharing a crib with four irascible tabbies in early childhood; an experience which also led to her being unusually fond of ocean sticks). But I am a citizen and aKirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-37952675196368637242009-12-24T09:34:00.013+00:002009-12-24T13:33:27.555+00:00Tis The Season To Be Merry, So Pardon Me If I Respond To The Gaiety Of The Season By Hiding In The WardrobeAnd so, another year draws to a close, and with it, another decade. It is, I now realise, customary to greet the passing of the winter solstice by noting grimly that the past 12 months have been dire, and to hope for better in the coming Spring. But 2009, has been an unholy stinker, hasn't it? We have endured the worst recession since people began compiling worthless statistics about the Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-2798783611856438762009-10-22T11:11:00.012+01:002009-10-22T12:49:33.958+01:00Queuing In The Post Office With The Old, The Infirm and the Merely Discombobulated, Is Like Waiting Around To DieToday, the posties are on strike. Post will be delivered, but not sorted. Tomorrow, apparently, it will be sorted, but not delivered. The day after that, when the men return from their braziers, sorting and delivering will resume, but will be hampered by the backlog of mail which has accumulated during the strike. The postmen will have more work to do, and less time in which to do it. They will Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-43933636715895426502009-08-26T15:52:00.001+01:002009-08-26T15:56:18.747+01:00The Blu-Ray Henries Of The Conservative Party Display Poverty Of Metaphor When They Compare Britain To 'The Wire'I was intrigued to note the comments from the Shadow Home Secretary, Mr Chris Grayling, comparing the United Kingdom to the television series, The Wire. I understand that Mr Grayling has form in this regard, having previously compared life in this sceptred isle to the Channel 4 drama, Shameless, and also to the Jeremy Kyle show. Now, it is reassuring to note that Mr Grayling takes such an active Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-36602563803680449062009-08-13T14:56:00.007+01:002009-08-13T20:56:49.655+01:00The BBC's Deracination Of Dennis The Menace Is Not Political Correctness Gone Rife. It Is Much Worse Than ThatIt was with some alarm that I read the news that DC Thomson’s imp of the perverse, Dennis the Menace, is to be “toned down” in order to suit the requirements of the BBC’s children’s channel, CBBC. Dennis’s catapult is to be banished, and he will no longer be allowed to pick on Walter the Softie, for fear that this might encourage “gay-bashing”. Even Dennis’s horrible dog, Gnasher, will be given aKirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-88664850585512656892009-05-07T14:27:00.006+01:002009-05-07T18:15:48.232+01:00After Ten Years Of Devolution, The Scorrish People Are Fat And Tanned, Which Is A Success Of Sorts For The Senior Retainer, Mr SalmondSuspicious as I am of anniversaries, it has not escaped my notice that it is now ten years since the election of the first devolved Scottish parliament. How long ago that seems, and how near. This great experiment in representation without taxation has changed the country, but left it exactly the same. If I were an optimist, I might construe that as progress. What has changed? Well, the other Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-36497637211938482472009-04-21T18:33:00.010+01:002009-04-26T15:25:39.265+01:00The "Munter" Miss Susan Boyle, The Elephant Man, And The Polar Magnetism Of Mr Simon Cowell's TeethIn the matter of deadly sins, I am far more likely to covet my neighbour's ox than to submit to jealousy. However, I can't deny that the unlikely success of the Blackburn chanteuse, Miss Susan Boyle, has set my heart aflutter with unusual palpitations. To be clear, I do not envy the woman her fate. Anyone submitting themselves to the slings and arrows of reality television will come, I suspect, Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-33446574946751266402009-04-07T18:37:00.011+01:002009-04-07T20:38:16.227+01:00If the Credit Crunch Sounded Like A Breakfast Cereal, The "Downturn" Is A Meteorological State Which Must Be Endured With Stoicism And SpamFirstly, an apology. I have been absent from these pages too long. I offer no excuses for my absence. I was in a blue funk and had nothing constructive to say, so decided to adhere to a maxim passed on to me by my mother, Mrs Elder (or Ma'am). Perhaps in deference to the wartime propaganda posters about loose lips and sinking ships which decorated the pantry, she was an advocate of eloquent Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-35645702126150599022009-02-04T09:19:00.003+00:002009-02-04T15:45:13.371+00:00Golliwogs and Miss Carol Thatcher: Another Case Of 'Political Correctness Gone Rife'I have some experience in the matter of political correctness gone rife. My old lady editor at The Hootsmon used this phrase almost as a matter of punctuation to express her disgust at every aspect of modernity; a trick she had learned at that temple of unreasonable ire, the Daily Mail. But the sacking of Miss Carol Thatcher by the BBC is a puzzler. She should have been sacked long ago for being Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-88215601745127945172009-01-19T10:45:00.008+00:002009-01-19T11:57:48.058+00:00The Cutbacks At The Hootsmon Canteen Are A Sad Symbol Of The Decline Of Our Notional NewspaperI was saddened to hear that the staff canteen at my old employer, Scotland's Notional Newspaper, The Hootsmon, is - as the jargon has it - facing cutbacks. Employees at the paper will be forced to fend for themselves on Sundays, and will go hungry on weekdays after 2.30pm. On one level, of course, this is good news. Journalists, as a species, tend towards obesity, on account of all the free Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-47373726632982897202009-01-13T13:54:00.006+00:002009-01-13T14:27:03.789+00:00Ask Not For Whom The Burglar Alarm Tolls. It Tolls For Me. And It Keeps On A-TollingThis morning, as yesterday, I awoke to the sound of a burglar alarm. The house opposite the Old Manse, a council property, has been unoccupied for some time, and empty, as far as I know, of valuables. The burglar alarm, as well as being unnecessary, is sensitive enough to be triggered by the flap of a starling's wing, the wisping of the breeze, or the cracking of thin frost, and can usefully be Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-88556908757117945292008-10-30T17:21:00.007+00:002008-10-30T19:00:54.315+00:00Mr Russell Brand And Mr Jonathan Ross May Be Idiots, But They Should Be Spared The Pitch-forks Of Synthetic IreMuch as I have enjoyed my visits to the Hammer House of Horror, I have always been suspicious of witch hunts. Perhaps because I have lived in Peebles for so long, I have an inbuilt scepticism of the pitchfork-wielding mob. Indeed, on more than one occasion I have had to seek sanctuary in the fatty nave of Big Eb’s chip shop, while the hoodlums did their worst. On such occasions, I tend to seek Kirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17852784.post-2485538955024413622008-09-29T19:50:00.006+01:002008-09-29T22:39:32.553+01:00Back To The Puggies On The Promenade As The Supercasino Of The World Economy Collapses Supercasino Originally uploaded by Herschell Hershey. There have been many times, over the last 40 years, when I have found myself on the wrong side of history. The sale of the public utlities, in which the unemployed and the feckless were encouraged to join the share-owning minority, was one such occasion. It was not that I was unattracted by the idea of money for nothing - I have playedKirk Elderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05301246188133213386noreply@blogger.com5