Monthly Archives: June 2006

Supporters

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I am somewhat mystified by the talk recently about what team Scottish people, and various MPs, particularly Scottish ones, “should” support in the football World Cup. There are no “should”s, of course: anyone can support any football team they want to, or none. It’s just daft, at best, that anyone made an issue of it regarding the behaviour of our public servants.

But the stranger thing, really, is that anyone might expect a Scotland fan to support England under any circumstances.

I don’t mean here, a Scot who takes little interest in football between World Cups, but might enjoy watching some of what should be the best examples of the game. I’m talking about your actual, dedicated football fan. Some people suggest that such a Scotland fan ought to support England because we are neighbouring countries, and part of the same meta-country.

But consider this: Spurs and Arsenal are neighbouring teams, and part of the same city; the same can be said of Liverpool and Everton, Manchesters United and City, and perhaps most significantly, of Celtic and Rangers. Now, tell me this: if Spurs were in the European Cup (as I still think of it) , would an Arsenal fan support them? Would anyone say that an Arsenal fan “should” support Spurs?

Well, I can’t speak for any of the English teams I mentioned above, but I come from a family of Celtic fans, and was quite a dedicated fan myself in my younger years (before I grew out of the whole thing, and put my interest into music instead), and I can tell you that there is no way on this Earth or beyond that a Celtic fan would ever support Rangers in anything. My Dad’s saying about it not mattering who wins, only had a tangential application to the national teams. It’s Platonic form was, “It doesn’t matter who wins, as long as it’s not Rangers.”

I’m quite sure that Rangers fans feel just as strongly about Celtic’s successes.

The logical extension of this interclub rivalry is to the national teams of Scotland and England; and no doubt, to those of various other pairs of nations. I imagine that French fans are unlikely to support, say, Germany against Brazil, just because they share a land border with one, and only a planet with the other.

So really, expecting a Scot to support England is crazy. Supporting the opponent of your greatest rival is perfectly natural behaviour

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Book Notes 7: Nova Scotia, edited by Neil Williamson and Andrew J Wilson

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(I haven’t stopped reading, nor writing these notes: I just haven’t got round to posting them, for various reasons).

I actually started reading this back in October last year, but, it being a collection of short stories, I took it slowly, over months. Since I finished it this year, it belongs in my 2006 Book Notes.

Before I get much further I should declare an interest: one of the editors, Andrew, is an old university friend of mine.

So it might come as no surprise that I am more impressed by the very existence of this boook than by its content. Which is not to dismiss or belittle the content. There are some very good stories here, by some top authors and fine newcomers. But the overall sense of it is less than overwhelming.

Perhaps the most surprising letdown is a sin of omission: where is Scotland’s most famous SF author; indeed, probably its most famous living author? No doubt the good Mr Banks has other things to do — I doubt that he writes short stories at all, these days — but you’d think he could have done an introduction or something.

The introduction in fact is by David Pringle, the former editor of Interzone: I had no idea that he was even Scottish. But there you go: we get everywhere.

I’m not going to go through all the stories, just hit a few high and low points.

In a way the most disappointing story is Hal Duncan’s ‘The Last Shift’. Not because it’s badly written or anything. Rather, because it’s not SF, fantasy, or speculative in any way. It’s a sadly-commonplace tale of the last day of a factory whose company is “outsourcing” or “offshoring” all the work. The fact that the characters all have wings and horns like the demons of our world’s mythology (and that the location doesn’t exist in our world) neither adds anything to it nor detracts from it in anyway: those factors are just irrelevant.

Which is a shame. I’m a keen reader of Hal’s blog, and look forward to reading his first novel, Vellum (I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve so far been put off buying it by the price: it’s a full-price hardback at £17:99, and that just seems a bit too much for an essentially unkown author).

The high points for me are probably ‘Sophie and the Sacred Fluids’ by Andrew C Ferguson (another disclaimer: I also had a passing acquaintance with this Andrew); ‘Deus ex Homine’, by Hannu Rajaniemi; and ‘Snowball’s Chance’, by Charles Stross.

In conclusion, I’m very glad it exists, and I’m glad I read it; but I hope the next volume, if it happens, is better.

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The Water of Life

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Or at least a container for it. It’s Bike Week this week, and as I happened to be cycling through Islington anyway, I was caught up by the members of the local LCC. They were offering a free cyclists’ breakfast, and a Dr Bike clinic. I had already had breakfast, and my bike was serviced recently, so I didn’t stop for that (though it is making a strange noise again, so perhaps I should have).

However they were also handing out free water bottles, which is just what I needed: I just noticed this morning that mine is cracked, and in any case it’s very prone to making the water taste plasticy. So I accepted that gratefully, and am giving something back by adding what tiny amount of Google juice I can to the URL that is printed on the bottle: Islington Borough’s Green Travel page.

Now get on yer bike, everyone.

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It doesn’t matter who wins…

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I found myself feeling curiously left out as my colleagues left work to watch the England match yesterday. This despite the fact that I didn’t want to watch it, I purposely avoided watching it, and I intended/hoped to take advantage of the reduced commuter traffic (not much reduced, as it happened: such is London’s diversity) to get home easily, and collect my kids from school.

Where they were watching the football, of course, courtesy of the after-school club.

Above all, if I had intended to watch it, my sympathies would have been with the other side anyway: I am Scottish, after all, and as my Dad used to say, “It doesn’t matter who wins, as long as it’s not England.” Plus I’m a sucker for an underdog (I mistyped that as “undergod”; there’s a story in there, I’m sure).

But despite all that, as my colleagues left the office for the pub or wherever, I still felt a slight echo of the thing I felt as a kid when I was left out of something that “everyone else” was doing.

We all want to be part of a tribe, I suppose.

In the end I watched he last half hour or so at the school; from just before the scary personality-cult chants of “Rooney, Rooney!” to the end. The cheers, as you might expect in a primary school, were very high and shrill. I was pleased, though, that Trinidad and Tobago’s goal (before it was disallowed) got almost as loud a cheer. This was Hackney, and of course, there are a lot of kids with Caribbean ancestry.

And maybe a lot of good sports, too. Maybe I should learn from them, and support England. But I can’t see it ever happening: there are some early-learned prejudices that die impossibly hard.

So I guess I’m still part of a tribe.

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The Official Belief System of the World Cup?

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I’ve just bought a Mars Bar which is labelled “Believe” instead of “Mars” (though still in the standard typography). Apparently this means that I am to “believe” that England will win the World Cup. This, presumably, will make it so.

Of course, I neither believe nor hope such a thing; by the logic of Mars, then, it won’t happen. Sorry.

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