I’m not a pacifist but …

Eirene, goddess of peace.

Two events collided today. Firstly, the troops are ending combat operations in Iraq and secondly the Tories mumbled something about not replacing Trident.

Those of a traditionally militaristic nature, or who subscribe to fears about rogue nuclear states launching stuff at us, look away now.

I find the idea of having an aggressive military presence a piece of nonsense in a modern democracy. I think having folk in uniform is useful for some ceremonial outings once or twice a year and in case of natural catastrophes. Other than that, we can all read up on guerrilla tactics if we are invaded and concentrate on building a world-class diplomatic presence to help avoid testosterone-driven bloodshed.

There is a huge range of personality types in every society and I can understand and even sympathise with those who need firm boundaries, strict routines, lots of physical action, and an aversion to having to decide what to wear of a morning. But they don’t need to be given guns and other expensive penis-substitutes, instead they can be kept busy keeping the peace.

A subset of this group will be efficient killers and I can see that in some extreme situations that is a handy evolutionary adaptation, but my faith in human nature is such that I refuse to countenance the idea that there are sufficient numbers in that category that we need finance an army just to keep them out of jail. Those types can be encouraged to join foreign mercenary forces and be trained at the expense of the shareholders in those companies. Not that I in any way approve of mercenaries, but they might, again in extreme circumstances, serve a purpose, as long as they are strictly regulated.

Of course, other military organisations such as the navy could be retained because we are an island, so that makes some sense (not entirely sure what). These vessels need not be equipped with leaky nukes. The airforce; um, I’ve not thought through what their role can be. But you’re getting the picture.

Equally, we don’t need plans to invade other countries just because some of our citizens delude themselves that they still live in an empire, and contemplate the red parts of the map while twirling their mustachios. Would it not be more honourable to be an active force for peace within the UN sending the adventurous types off to assist in this, rather than engage in illegal wars that bring destruction to women and children and allow warlords to control the female populations in the name of their gods?

I’m aware that much of any population has at least a sneaking regard for their warrior class, and speaking out against them makes one unpopular. However, more and more people see the fairly obvious links between lack of respect for other nations, cultures and the health of the planet as well as the way women are disrespected and animals kept in conditions that allow their viruses to mutate to affect humans. Those who do not, are generally subjects who source their information about the world from heavily censored publications and broadcast media, and may never have heard the term critical thinking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking

As for Trident, well, at least on that topic I can be confident that most of the population in my country are against it, want it removed and are adamant that it not be renewed. Parliament voted against it in 2007.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/6752089.stm

Here’s a discussion we’d never get in the UK.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10569222

This is what we get…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/28/david-miliband-private-military

The High Court Building in Glasgow

Of the various interesting things I’ve gotten up to lately, the visit to the High Court in Glasgow is amongst the more notable.

Glasgow High Court is housed in a very smart new building. Nice shiny marble and bright entrance. I was there with a group who had come along to listen to a talk by the Witness Service and to be given a short tour.

The Court Witness Service is a specialised part of the Victim Support organisation. These volunteers look after people who are witnesses in serious court cases, including bereaved relatives in murder cases, child witnesses and women who have been raped.
http://www.victimsupportsco.org.uk/page/witnesses.cfm
This was a fascinating insight into the working of the legal process but ultimately a depressing reinforcement of the problems in obtaining justice for large sections of the population.

We were shown witness rooms, which are relatively comfortable small rooms where a witness waits until being called to give evidence. There are careful procedures in place to ensure that the witness is not confronted by the accused in corridors or when leaving the building.

Next, we were shown a standard courtroom. It was nowhere near as large as I’d imagined. Then we were shown into the courtroom, which was described as secure and used for high profile or for particularly dangerous criminals. Lots of reinforced bombproof glass and a corridor that could be sealed off from the rest of the building. But again, quite cramped, especially if there was more than one accused, each of whom would need his own set of defence lawyers. A member of the Procurator Fiscal’s Office known as an Advocate Depute represents the Crown. For some cases, it is probably that the Advocate Depute has only just gotten their hands on the case, maybe even the night before the trial. This does not inspire confidence in justice for the victim of serious crime.

We were also taken to look at the CCTV room, which is where witnesses under16 years give their testimony. A volunteer from the witness service sits in the room with the child, but cannot even offer any words of comfort if the child gets upset. How bloody inhumane is that? Yes, I can appreciate that the perpetrator is innocent till proven guilty and any suspicion of "coaching" of the child by an adult will be exploited by rapacious defence council, but arrghhhh what a dreadful system. It would be so much simpler if all those who commit crimes against kids just stopped their vile behaviour.

Since I am not any kind of expert, here is some background info:
http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/justiciary/index.asp

However, one of the worst shocks to many women who are victims is that they do not have their own lawyer. They are merely a witness to the crime which is prosecuted by the Crown. Most people have spent years watching American legal programmes where a mini-skirted fast-talking and very smart lawyer wins cases for vulnerable people. Well, it’s just not like that in real life.

But this gives me an excuse to publicly mourn the demise of Boston Legal.

Boo Hoo and bye bye James!
http://www.tv.com/boston-legal/show/25525/summary.html

Women and Politics 2

Dave protecting his Tory clones from infiltration by non-white, non-males.

This wasn’t in my original plan to write about women politicians, but I’m not about to resist commenting on the Times quaint half-hearted moan about Call Me Dave and his lack of ladies.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6182399.ece

Dave, it turns out, had made some encouraging noises about increasing the number of women candidates for the next Westminster election. He had some vague plans about one in three ministers being female sometime after his lot win at Westminster. Judging by the picture above, he's not been successful to date.

Tory ladies have previous. I suspect many non-rightwing inclined voters will mostly recall the various exploits of Maggie and then Edwina. Then there is Anne. Even though I cannot imagine holding any views in common, I always found Anne Widdicome an interesting and colourful political personality. More recently there was Caroline and her childcare, with which I have some understanding. One of the seven demands of the Women's Liberation Movement is free accessible 24 hour childcare and even though this may not have been part of Ms Spellman's motives for paying her assistant for providing childcare, at least she did not expect this to be on tap by the woman. Childcare, whoever the mother is, is always a difficulty and it should always be paid for, whatever job the mother is employed in. I'd much prefer to subsidise childcare over second homes and other 'expenses'.

In this country, the estimable Annabel Goldie is usually in fine form leading the Tory contingent in Holyrood, but otherwise, there’s not an overwhelming womanly presence in the prospective Tory ranks and little hope of increasing numbers in the short term. Mostly their problem is the same as faced by aspirational women in all parties: the boys shout louder, the collaboratrices pull the rug from under their sisters and few if any have a clue about the importance of 50:50 representation. Instead, the pale, male and stale whine on about positive discrimination as though they didn’t operate this themselves.

The selection procedures in most parties do not mean that we get people who are picked on their merit, but are more likely to produce the time-honoured numbers of mediocre white males who are chosen via the old school tie, shared football/sports affiliation or the correct funny handshake or whatever other ‘fair’ route into power for the lads is employed. And no one can seriously argue that we have anything other than the calibre of politicos that we deserve in this democratic deficit culture.

We're not convinced by this tokenism, Dave!

At the Flicks

I took my mother and daughter to see a programme entitled Britain at Bay, Peace & War 1937-1949 this afternoon.
http://www.independentcinemaoffice.org.uk/mediatheque_britainatbay.html

This is archive material from the British Film Institute, which is touring the UK courtesy of the Independent Cinema Office. The site above has a link to the dates and venues as well as information about the eight films in this programme.

All eight films had something to recommend them and I can’t think of a better birthday treat for my mother and an education for my daughter (and me!).
Around the Village Green Directed by Evelyn Spice & Marion Grierson had the best line; an old codger was resisting change in the manner of old codgers everywhere and of all era’s:

"I haven't got a bath but I've got a river down the bottom of the garden so I can have a good bath when I want one."

There is more info on these directors at the link below.http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/594220/index.html

The best film was Spare Time, which looked at the range of activities that families, and workers in some heavy industries got up to in their spare time. Absolutely wonderful footage of a Kazoo Jazz Band with some happy children swinging to well-known tunes.

After the final film, the old chap behind us began to tell us he remembered this period as he had enlisted in the navy in 1940. He talked about the earliest air raids which came as the German planes swept up the river Forth trying to bomb the Forth Bridge. Of course this all led to an outpouring of reminiscences by my mother about the war years which as a small child she lived through.

Entirely predictably, daughter and I had opposite reactions to some aspects. She stated how she felt that everyone in the films looked so smart in their flowered dresses and coats and little hats. While my thoughts had been about the impracticality of factory and farm work in flowered dresses, to say nothing of the young women enthusiastically filling sand bags dressed in their Sunday best the week WW2 was declared. I count all my blessings that I can wear practical clothes without comment, which it took a war and women drafted into all kinds of work to establish as sensible.

Sig Other would have appreciated Sam Goes Shopping as it was narrated by one of his hero’s – Stanley Holloway*. This is an amusing film, which was really an advert for the Co-op.

The 8 short films take the viewer on an emotional roller-coaster from the build up to war and into the first days and weeks of what must have been devastating to people barely recovered from the war to end all wars. If you get a chance to see this touring programme take it.

* Stanley Holloway the comic narrator, and if I have had to listen to Sig Other spout, er declaim this over breakfast, then you can at least have a quick look over it. Imagine a thick Yorkshire, or possibly Lancashire accent (is there a difference?) http://homepage.ntlworld.com/michaelanthony.keating/Stanley_Holloway/The_Lion_and_Albert/the_lion_and_albert.html

Women in politics

I’m putting together a short theme of blogs on the subject of women politicians. Not least because, as usual the whole issue of under-representation of women never goes away, so the only way to address this is to keep on demanding equal numbers of women at all levels of elections.

Who's Counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics

Last night I went to see a film made in 1995 about the work of New Zealander Marilyn Waring, who at 22 in the mid 70’s was elected as an MP there. During her many years as an MP, she was effective in highlighting the detrimental effects of not counting women’s unpaid work in the GDP. She visited many developing and western countries where she sought to talk to women first hand to find out about their lives and the amount of work they did to keep their family fed and cared for. The film tracked her discussions with women in Africa where she devised methods of counting the hours women worked and compared this with the vastly smaller hours the males worked. But if no money changed hands, the drudgery of the women’s work does not count in GDP. This of course has the ongoing impact that if what you do during your working life does not count, and you are simply invisible during these years, then when you retire you have no pension so you become a ‘burden’ on the welfare of the state as happens in this country to women who have looked after children or cared for relatives (I think this may have changed a little in recent times).

Marilyn is a feminist economist and travels the world lecturing on the need to count women’s work. She spent two months at the UN in New York where the weighty tomes containing the rules for all treasuries for all countries with membership of the UN are kept. These rules were created by Keynes and some other Brit economist after the 39-45 war and were based on the framework used to rebuild the economies of the Brit Empire at that time. At the time of the film these were still the rules enforced by the World Bank, the IMF and other economic policing bodies.

Marilyn’s message is that “the system cannot respond to values it refuses to recognize.” This means that values you and I most likely share, such as peace, sustainability, non-violence and all the kinds of intangibles which cannot fit into the present madness of our economic system count for nothing in comparison the war machine of the Westminster and Washington governments. Our disgust at food being used to create fuel instead of to feed people, the lack of opportunities for girls in all countries (it varies hugely but is present everywhere) and the growth of trafficking in children and women which increases as poverty increases. All of it was brought together in this easily understood demystifying film about economics and how we can help change things.

Most creatively, Marilyn suggests that if women’s work in the home does not count, then at the next census, women whose work is unpaid should invent job titles that do not mention housewife or homemaker. I thought that mothers could describe themselves as ‘Play Directors’ for example. And anything that gets people to subvert authority even in tiny ways is empowering.

The Westminster budget and its vicious slashing cuts of Scotland’s ‘pocket money’ was announced this week, so it seems appropriate to recommend this inspiring film to anyone who has an opportunity to see it and grasp the full iniquity of our present financial mess. That is not so easily done as it is not distributed here, only in Canada. I was invited to a free showing by an organisation who had bought a copy but do not have a license to show it other than to invited guests.
http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/who.html

Even though the film was made in ‘95 it is even more relevant today. It shows footage of GB Senior’s Gulf War and makes links with the pollution and devastation caused then with the impact on women and children’s lives and ever since in that area. It shows the real environmental costs of the Exxon Valdez which turned into the most economically successful tanker voyage ever because of the costs it generated in dealing with the disaster. That is just one example of the skewed nature of the global economic system.

Today, the Scottish Government talks proudly of sustainability and focuses on renewable energy which is possibly achievable and we are led by a respected economist, of whom, the Herald stated “Mr Salmond likes numbers the way some people like kittens.”
http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/news/display.var.2503944.0.Word_to_the_wise_for_Iain_Gray_when_in_a_hole_stop_digging.php
But for all that, is it likely that the Women’s Budget Group are going to be able to persuade Oor Eck to take on the campaign to include women’s unpaid work in Scotland’s GDP?
http://www.swbg.org.uk/

Marilyn's last words in the film were to exhort all women to join political parties and to bring them into line on the 50:50 representation campaign then leave and move onto the next one!

Sexist split infinitive

Those who are unapologetic, nay, proud to label themselves Trekkies will automatically identify the subject of this post from the title. Those of us who formerly bashfully called ourselves Trekkers, will also have an inkling of what is to come.*

While the terminally pedantic will point out that the whole split infinitive argument is … er, well, I lost the will to live long enough to decipher whether it is a split infinitive, or if the whole split infinitive discussion is sooooo 2 centuries ago, and none of that matters now, so just make up your own mind. Whatever it is, it is sexist, which might have been almost excusable in the 60’s when ST:TOS** originated, but not in 2009. Of course, another search aspect during which I lost the will to live was to ascertain if the (potential split infinitive warning) “Boldly going where no man has gone before”, is actually used in the new film or not. Much more egalitarian and inclusive is “Boldly going where no sentient being has ever gone before” at least it is in my equalities overloaded cranium where split infinitives take a negative warp-factor 10 backseat to politically correct grammar.

This dismal excuse for blogging about the new ST film is so that I can nit-pick about the lack of female characters in contrast with Rodenberry’s very first pilot where Majel Barrett was first officer and the (for the time) groundbreaking casting of Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) in the first series. I noted in a previous blog that Majel Barrett lived long enough to record her customary role as computer voice in this (possibly) final ST film outing, but it appears that otherwise female roles are scarce this time round. Feminists will readily acknowledge that this is more evidence that in some key areas, women’s progress towards fully recognised humanity has been put into reverse in comparison to 40 years ago. That’s a blog for some future date.

One of the first accidental discoveries I made when going online in the early 90’s was that ST:TOS mainly, but also other parts of the franchise, were mainstays of the burgeoning slash fiction genre. I’d first encountered this phenomenon courtesy of Joanna Russ in an academic essay on Kirk/Spock zines in the 80’s but had not read any. Call me fussy, but after a memorable afternoon reading quantities of this online I’ve never bothered again. And the purist in me cannot cope with crossover slash fiction. That would be where enthusiasts mix their series or genre and have stories in which say Highlander meets Buffy. Just not my idea of entertainment. If none of this is making sense, then you really need to further your education at this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash_fiction

To continue this theme. Jean-Luc Picard and Gandalf were performing together in Edinburgh last week. Apparently, this was not crossover slash but some boring play by some boring boy playwright. They were joined by the bloke who died in a kilt in that film “Four Weddings and a Hugh Grant”. Still, apparently not slash.
http://www.list.co.uk/event/89151-waiting-for-godot/

If you are still mystified by all this or have thus far managed to avoid the whole ST franchise, then this link takes you to as good a review of the film as any. Of course, I’ve not yet seen the film, but that will be rectified when it arrives in Edinburgh.
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/index.php/showbiz/23740-new-star-trek-is-a-superbly-entertaining-return-to-its-tv-origins

*OMG!!!!!!!! I did a Word spell check and discovered that Microsoft (at least on my comp) corrects Trekkies to Trekkers – you just know what this says about Microsoft employees.

** Jargon buster for the wilfully untrekked
ST:TOS – Star Trek, the original series
ST:TNG – The Next Generation
And so on and so forth.

“He’s deid captain, stane deid, nae pulse…”
http://digg.com/d1A3Q0

Just appreciate …
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/8822/nichelle.html

Art Exhibition

I was priviledged to be invited to the opening of an exhibition of 'Polaroid Paintings' at the small gallery in Gladstones Land on the High Street. Rhiannon Connelly uses a wonderful technique with polaroid photography to produce the most gorgeous art. She is blogging her exhibition week at the link below. It contains some of the images from her exhibition in case you can't manage along in person.

http://starrybluesky.wordpress.com/

And a link to Gladstones Land which is an example of how some people lived in earlier times in Edinburgh. It is owned by the NTS

http://www.nts.org.uk/Property/25/News/495/

Their website describes the exhibition:

Rhiannon uses Polaroid technology and then manipulates the emulsion on the
photographic paper to create a dreamlike image half way between a photograph
and a painting. The photograph is then scanned and printed to create a much
larger final image.

Stop Nagging!

There is no special tendency of biospheres to preserve their current
inhabitants, and certainly not to make them comfortable. Lynn Margulis

Stop nagging! Yes, you lot at the back there, that's right, the ones in danger of being mistaken for sleazy politicos. Cease and desist with the toddleresque whining about nuclear power plants. We, the sovereign citizens of Scotland, have made it clear we do not want nuclear power on our soil.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/south_of_scotland/8000580.stm

What is it about you that you cannot hear the message that nuclear, or if you prefer the GWB version, 'nucular' power is a bad thing, not a good thing. Do you really want to provoke Gaia until she bites back, 'coz that is what you are on course to do with your earth killing unnecessary vanity project crony pocket-lining atomicaly imperialistic colonising plans.

Some interesting stuff.

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/g/gaia.html

http://www.gaianvariations.com/learn/ap22.htm

Unidentifiable flying object

Driving up the M74 yesterday, a few miles short of Abington, South Lanarkshire, when a movement flickered in my right eye. My instant thought was that this was a large, really large bird. Nope, it was a dull grey aircraft flying northwards perpendicular to the carriageway along the Clyde valley. I had a clear view of the underside as it faced me and my next thoughts were that it was possibly about to crash due to its unlikely angle of flight and how low it was flying, and how slowly.

Thankfully for all concerned, it righted itself and flew cheekily on up the valley until it was out of my sight wiggling its wings all the way.

I am aware that I’d make a pretty useless eyewitness to anything, as I am not visually oriented, and tend not to take in details, but I know this was not a type of plane I’d ever seen before. I maintain it had three propellers mounted at the front of each wing. I am clear on that point because I was much put out by the black smoky reek coming out of each propeller engine.

I phoned Sig Other to ask for help in searching online to find out what the plane was. The conversation went along the lines of:

Me “A huge, but not that big plane was flying alongside the motorway nearly level with the carriageway. It was over the steep sides of the hills, so was not in danger of hitting anything. It had 6 propellers.”

SO “No idea what has six engines. I’ll ask Wiki Q’s, but what size was it?”

Me “It was larger than a spitfire but smaller than Concord. It was completely different to a jet. It looked quite old.” (A reasonable response in my opinion).

Some time later …

SO “Could it have been a Messerschmitt Me 323?”

http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/LRG/me323.html

Me “Nice plane but too old, and much more frightening than the one I saw.”

SO “What about a B-36?”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_B-36

Me “ Nothing like it!”
I paused to snort disdainfully when it dawned on me why a search for B 36 produced lingerie sites.

SO “It must have been a Hercules!”

http://www.airplanemodelworks.com/c130-super-hercules-model-plane-p-259.html
Me “Absolutely not. It had 6 propellers. It had no markings on it.”

SO “There is no plane of that description still flying. Other people googling this have been told that. How big was it?”

Me “I don’t know. I am now convinced it was a mirage or a UFO. Will I call NATO and ask if one of their aircraft is missing?”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035153/

SO “You’ll recall Father Ted with a small cow in one hand explaining size and distance vis a vis the cows in the field to Father Dougal …”

Me “Grrrrrr”

SO “This is the only pic online and it doesn’t look like a real plane.”

http://i87.photobucket.com/albums/k144/h3mpy/herc.jpg
Me “Yes!! That looks more like it!”

The end result of an hour's phonecall and joint search-engining is that we don't know what I saw, but I now know more about the Luftwaffe than I needed to.

And one I photographed near the Russian border last month.

Signs of Spring

At last things appear to be moving into spring-mode. I took a train journey through West Lothian yesterday and had my camera to hand.

As the train sped past, I caught a glimpse of a barge on the canal. You can just make it out in this photograph above. Although the trees are yet to come into leaf, the grass is beginning to grow in the fields. I've yet to see any new lambs, but maybe this weekend I'll get to see some further south on a trip to Yorkshire.

April Recipes

It’s ages since I last blogged any recipes! That’s not because I’ve given up eating or cooking, but just that I’ve not made anything worth talking about. But the last wee while, I’ve rediscovered my interest in baking, so here is a brief update on what I’ve been up to in the kitchen.

Figgy Flan
Most of a packet of dried ready to eat figs
Double slosh of Madeira wine
Two oranges
Two large spoonfuls runny honey
Half a cinnamon stick

Chop the figs into odd size pieces; peel the oranges then whizz in a whizzy machine till slushy. Put all into a pan to heat until it all goes very sticky and the little seeds come out of the figs. Add this filling to a whole-wheat sweet flan case that has been baked blind and cook for a little time in a moderate oven. Feed to appreciative guests.

Banana Raisin Buns
I only had one banana deteriorating in a lonely fruit bowl*, which was not enough to make proper banana bread, so I made a small amount of mix with mashed banana, vanilla extract, egg, whole-wheat flour and lots of raisins, brown sugar and milk to mix . This went into six bun tins in a moderate oven for about 15 minutes.

* For clarity: the banana was lonely not the fruit bowl.

Coffee Walnut Buns
I used this rather good Canadian whole-wheat flour as in the previous two recipes for these buns. I used four times the amount of instant coffee any other recipe indicated so that I could actually taste the coffee flavour and plenty of chopped walnuts. The rest is a fairly standard mix. After baking and cooling these, I slathered them in butter cream icing made with maple syrup.

Sweet potato spinach casserole
This is a footery dish but worth it.
Mashed sweet potato and ordinary potato in a ratio of 2:1. Stir in plain yoghurt and a generous quantity of crumbled up feta cheese. Season.
Wilt a whole packet of baby spinach in good olive oil, add a few fresh chopped tomatoes and season with lots of paprika and veg stock.
Place the potato mixture over the spinach and bake until golden and a little crispy topping forms on the potato.

Lentils and Grains
Most cuisines have their local version of legumes and grains and in the effort to have a balanced veggie diet I keep experimenting with these types of ingredients. Luckily, my daughter loves this sort of food and happily scoffs the end results. Below are two versions I’ve made recently.

Caribbean influence rice and peas
Take roughly equal amounts of black eyes peas and long grain white rice. Cook both separately then combine with very finely chopped fresh chilli or a good pinch of chilli flakes, coconut milk and lots of fresh chopped tomatoes and coriander. Season with S&P and veg bouillon powder. Cook all together for a short time, then sprinkle finely chopped spring onion on top to serve. Can be eaten hot or cold, but I think hot was better for this dish.

Version 2: Lentils and Bulgur Wheat
This time I boiled up yellow split peas and some bulgur wheat. I combined these when cold with heaps of flat leafed parsley and celery leaves and a handful of sunflower seeds. I added lemon juice and my best olive oil and left this for several hours to let the flavours meld together. It probably could have been heated through to make a warm salad, but I enjoyed it cold.

So, not too much scoffing going on these days, but this brings me up to date and records what was nice to eat so I can make it all again sometime.

GOMA

I took my camera for another outing yesterday. This time to Glasgow. A while back, I'd commented on my visit to the Tate Liverpool to see the Niki de Saint Phalle exhibition which was on around this time last year. An anonymous commenter said that the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art had a mirrored vestibule created by N de SP and yesterday I finally managed to take a trip through to see this.

http://www.glasgowmuseums.com/venue/index.cfm?venueid=3

The mirrored entranceway is just beautiful as it is created using different pieces of mirror cut in varying shapes on all four walls. Some are curvy, some straight-edged and some long and narrow.

Close up detail of the mosaic.

As you walk into the museum, helpful staff are there to hand out maps and guides of the museum as well as to provide more information about the gallery. The person I spoke to informed me that N de SP had also created the decal on the entrance outside the building. I went out, crossed the road and took some photographs of this which I've displayed above.

Approaching festival time

Edinburgh prides itself on being the Festival City and indeed we are about to enter into another series of festivals from Easter to autumn. First up is the Science Festival. Daughter served as a useful reason for me to go to the interesting kids things when she was young enough to be enticed along to hands-on fun experiments. That period in our lives was all too short and as soon as she could protest sufficiently loudly it was over. But this year as most years there are a few things aimed at adults that I'd like to attend.

The Science Festival this year has an astronomical theme and takes more than a passing look at Darwin. However, there is a smattering of evol psyche/biology which I will naturally shun if only for the preservation of my highly evolved and sensitive BS detector.

http://www.sciencefestival.co.uk/

Yesterday I picked up the programme for the International Festival. It's theme is the Enlightenment. Too much choice for a limited financial and time budget. I'll definitely aim for the exhibitions at Dean Gallery and some of the talks at the Hub. Perhaps I'll try to go to the Fireworks having missed them for some years. Usually the Fringe or the Book Festival claim my attention more than the EIF, so maybe it is fortunate I have got my hands on the programme so early and can seek out other interested folks and choose some options to buy tickets far in advance.

http://www.eif.co.uk/

The Film Festival is also on the horizon but I've not looked into that yet. I'll post it when I get hold of the programme.

The image at the top is of the Last Witch By Rona Munro from the EIF programme.