A Google Maps tour of Benbecula

The wonderful people behind Google Maps seem to have recently updated their satellite images, because while having a browse around I discovered that they now have Benbecula in greater detail than ever.

Benbecula, in the Western Isles, is where I am originally from, having grown up there between the ages of 5 and 19. We lived in this house right here - house on the left, church on the right (the island’s war memorial just squeezing into the bottom right corner).

I went to primary school here and here, and secondary school here. Other sights I’ve noticed include the main town Balivanich, Nunton cemetery, the Roman Catholic church, Borve Castle, Peter’s Port, and some radioactive sheep, a delivery at the Co-op, and the secondary school’s windmill.

The island boasts some fantastic beaches, including here, here and here. However the most interesting beach by far is Rossinish, on the largely uninhabited east coast. Rossinish is a geographical peculiarity, being the only east-facing beach in the Western Isles, and coming out of moorland rather than machair.

So there you go - Google Maps generally rocks. However I think there might be a few errors in the way they mark the placenames, though. I don’t remember there being quite so many Grimsays…

Alas Sheila Sergenson

It’s a week since I emailed Palacerigg Golf Club. There’s been no response. I don’t know about you but I find that surprising (and maybe a wee tad rude) given I did offer in my email to make a donation to club funds.

This leaves me at a bit of a loss as to what to do. I could always just pitch up at the golf club and ask around, or perhaps “do a Shawshank Redemption” and write to them twice a week until I get a response. The phonebook might be one option, too, as might writing to Cumbernauld’s newspaper, should they have one.

But something about those options makes me err on the side of caution. After all, I don’t really fancy a restraining order, and it’s very hard to blog from inside prison.

So… any ideas?

Innocent, smooth and nice

I had a quick chat with Greg in church tonight. He’s one of St Silas’s numerous bloggers (our minister’s blog has what I suppose is the definitive list).

He told me that he’s a bit of a fan of the lovely Innocent Smoothies and made a video a while back in which he solves the problem of how to get the dregs of your smoothie out of the bottom of the carton.

Clearly a great problem which befalls many of us, because his video was not only put in Innocent’s newsletter but it ended up on one of Yahoo’s front pages.

Greg’s solution involves dancing to reggae while holding the carton upside down in his mouth, and is well worth watching. I can’t confirm reports that this is how Greg dances in church during our livelier worship sessions.

Oh, incidentally, Greg’s in a cult, too. Not the same one as me, though.

My favourite Welsh football team

When the football results come out, both Justin and I tend to note how Total Network Solutions get on. They are a Welsh Premier League team who were formally called Llansantffraid FC but changed their name to that of a new sponsor, Total Network Solutions.

What a magnificent name for a football team! Tells you nothing about where they are, smacks of faceless, soulless corporatism, and is just so totally off-beat compared to the traditions of British football, that you just can’t help somehow loving them.

I’ve always wondered what sort of chants the fans must have come up with: “We’re total, we’re networked, we’re full great solutions, we’re TNS, we’re TNS!” I guess it beats “give us an L, give us another L, give us an A…”

I was gutted to discover today, however, that their sponsor, Total Network Solutions, has gone bust and so the club changed their name to The New Saints - a reference to their old nickname which cunningly maintains the TNS abbreviation. It does however inject a bit of feeling into the name, so they’re no longer worthy of my support.

But as Justin says, we can always shift our allegience to fellow Welsh Premier League team Airbus UK.

What other football clubs are there with silly names, sponsor-related or otherwise?

Mullett Coat of Arms

A big hello to David Mullett, from Ipswich in Suffolk, who recently stumbled across my website and dropped me an email to introduce himself. I visited two Mullett’s Farms in that county this summer, so I suppose David might be related to the people after whom the farms were named, centuries back.

The other day I stumbled across a genealogy website which contains the Mullett family coat of arms. The site explains that the name Mullett came to Britain after the Norman conquest of England (the Normans never bothered with Scotland for some reason - maybe it was the greasy food). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the coat of arms contains neither the fish nor the haircut.

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a few Mulletts so far on my journeys around the globe, including a descendent of a 19th century migrant from Aberdeenshire who gave Mullett Creek near Bundaberg in Queensland, Australia, its name.

Maybe there’s another challenge for me once I’ve got the placenames under my belt…

Contacting Sheila Sergenson’s golf club

This evening I wrote the following email to the secretary of Palacerigg Golf Club in Cumbernauld in an attempt to contact Sheila Sergenson.

If I get a response, you’ll be first to know. Well, at least second, after me.

___________

From: Simon Varwell <mail@simonvarwell.co.uk>
To: secretary@palacerigg.co.uk
Date: Aug 21, 2006 9:25 PM
Subject: Contacting Sheila Sergenson

Dear club secretary

This might seem like a bizarre enquiry, but I am a resident of Glasgow and am attempting to contact someone by the name of Sheila Sergenson, who I believe is a member of your club.

The other week a Royal Bank of Scotland five pound note came into my possession - I don’t remember precisely how or when - which has “Sheila Sergenson” written on it. You can see it at http://www.simonvarwell.co.uk/sergenson.jpg. Being of an easily-bored disposition, I decided it might be rather fun to see if I could return the banknote to her. A friend did a “google” search and found mention of her on your club’s website. Hence my email.

I’d be intrigued to find out why someone wrote “Sheila Sergenson” on a banknote. I’ve heard it’s quite a common challenge to write your name on a banknote and then spend the note, just to see if you ever get it back again or hear from someone who finds it. In which case please let her know that she’s succeeded. If she would like her £5 back, I’d be happy to send it to her care of the golf club as a memento of her successful mission.

If of course it was someone else who wrote it, then I wonder why. Perhaps someone felt she deserved to have her name recorded due to her skill as a golfer. Or maybe someone accidentally confused their bingo money for their address book.

Anyway, if you could pass on the message and let me know if she would like her £5 back, I would be so grateful. And if she doesn’t, perhaps I could send it to you anyway as a donation to club funds. Or even better, you could frame it and put it on the wall of the clubhouse, above the caption: “The mystery of how one of our members’ names ended up on a Royal Bank of Scotland £5 note, and how it caused a random stranger from Glasgow to gain possession of it and email us to say he’d found it“. Your call, really!

I shall leave this message with you, and will look forward to a response at your convenience.

With very best wishes,
Simon Varwell

PS I’m afraid I’ve never played golf, but I did play crazy golf a couple of times. It was fun!
PPS I’m also afraid to confess I’ve never been to Cumbernauld, either. Or watched “Gregory’s Girl”.

American Shadow

Justin recently blogged about the Shadow Percussion Project - a part-time music teacher’s attempt to arrange hiphop artist DJ Shadow’s music for an orchestra. The video of his work, where a school orchestra play two DJ Shadow tracks, is brilliant. It takes ages to load, but it is worth it.

I ended up surfing around the rest of the teacher’s website. He, Brian Udelhofen, an American, writes an interesting blog - and one entry, an apology for his country’s foreign policy, is an intimate and thought-provoking reflection on the irony inherent in the war on terror.

Who is Sheila Sergenson?

I’ve had a £5 note in my pocket the past few weeks which I have not spent, because there is a name on it. Sheila Sergenson.

I can’t remember where I got the note - change in a shop or pub, most likely. I think I remember receiving the note, seeing the name, and thinking it might be worth investigating, but I have no recollection of where I was at the time. I just tucked it away in my wallet, forgot about it, and only discovered it again tonight.

I wonder who Sheila Sergenson is, and why she or someone else wrote her name on a Royal Bank of Scotland five pound note? It would be nice to return her cash to her - it’s got her name on it, after all. She might be wondering where it got to.

A simple google search doesn’t throw up much, other than the confirmation that “Sergenson” is a real name.

Any other ideas?

The occasional, obligatory football post

So we’re into the new football season. Things have continued in the same exciting vein as last year, with Hearts (aka Romanov Utd) continuing to make unpredictable headlines, and everyone’s favourite fairytale, Gretna, storming their new division (albeit with both clubs wobbling in Europe). And the mighty Ross County have started with their usual consistent mediocrity.

It’s good to see Hearts at the top of the SPL, though - I hope they continue to do well so that they can further smash the Old Firm hegemony and keep Scottish football interesting and competitive.

Another interesting thing happened today - the SPL agreed to the idea of creating an SPL2, which would effectively replace the first division in 2008-09. Far from a pointless reshuffling, it will allow the first division clubs to get a slice of the SPL financial pie and maintain their full-time status, and also it opens the door for regional leagues in what are currently divisions 2 and 3.

That’s something I’ve always been a fan of. Teams in the regional leagues below division 3, such as the Highland League, have so far been denied the chance to progress into the Scottish leagues on footballing merit, with occasional vacancies only coming about as a result of reorganisation or clubs going bust.

Since Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Ross County came into the Scottish league, the first new clubs for decades, all new entrants have done very well - Inverness are now in the SPL, Gretna have swept all domestic opposition aside, and Ross County and Peterhead have risen above division 3. Only Elgin City have not gained promotion, but by not finishing bottom last season they’ve proved that they were good enough to be admitted.

Regional leagues which feed directly into the national league will liven up Scottish football by letting those in what is currently division 3 know that they must prove themselves to be better than those at the top of the regional leagues. And competition is what football should be about. Maybe in time we’ll actually have a national game whose competitiveness is the cause of a major rise in quality.

The theology of feline baptism

I’m enjoying this debate on David Lynch’s blog about if and how the church should baptise cats, especially given that they (cats, not churches) have nine lives and don’t like water.