Flett-cetera

In May, I almost bought a flat

Posted on 31/05/2026 by alasdairflett

April saw me fail to re-enrol for a further term at the Alliance Francaise. Part of me is disappointed in myself. I don’t like to give up on things. However, it had been a year, and I think I got what I wanted out of it for the time being. I feel I was able to progress significantly beyond Duolingo and out into the vrai vie francais of the wide world.

The next challenge I encountered was the Bishopbriggs Triathlon on 26 April. It was a sprint event – 750m swim, 21km bike and 5km run.

Prior to the event, I knew I was capable of all three disciplines individually, but I’d never put them together before. For the swimming heat, I was quite conservative with my predicted time, so was first out the pool. The bike was probably the toughest part, but it was fun to race competitively, albeit a bit soul-destroying to have to do the same big hill six times for the 3-point-something kilometre lap. Coming out of the bike and into the run, I was significantly fatigued and did a slow first kilometre, then a fast one to make up for it before evening out to finish in a time of 1 hour and 31 minutes, 46^th overall and 25^th out of 48 for my age group.

In May, I almost bought a flat.

The wheels of property ownership had begun to turn in December 2025 when I found myself living solo after my flatmate moved out to move in with his girlfriend. This coincided (albeit three months prior) with the significant pay increase from trainee to fully qualified solicitor. The combination of affordability and an automatic doubling of my rent heightened the question somewhat.

I was now paying a third of my income on rent, which is what I gather is financially recommended, but one feels one is getting a raw deal when you’d basically been able to live for £400 a month up until that point.

However, the idea that getting a mortgage is cheaper than renting, which I had heard from a couple of sources, seems not to be true. There are also a lot more costs involved with owning a place like maintaining it or paying factor fees for someone to fail to maintain it adequately. You also can’t get out of it very easily as mortgage deals tend to lock you in for a couple of years, and you need to wait to build “equity”, i.e. be able to pay off the mortgage and fees and still have some cash left over if you’re selling it, so it needs to meaningfully go up in value. There is a degree to which you’re trapped if you don’t have sufficient equity that simply is not the case with renting.

Then again, people say that rent is giving away money that is doing nothing for you. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. It’s kind of the same with having cash in the bank, which depreciates with inflation.

Whereas buying a place means you have a “real right in land”. It is qualitatively different to liquid assets; more solid, less flexible.

Another factor apart from having the physical means to buy was that it seemed everyone else around me was buying, including my siblings and colleagues.

But just because something is the done thing doesn’t mean that it’s right for you. Or even for the majority of people. “The done thing” is a logical shortcut; it short-circuits thinking.

As well as pull factors, there were plenty of push ones. I started feeling very negative about my current flat. I was getting a bit depressed about the uncleanliness of my neighbours, the litter and detritus in the close, the horrible muddy bins area round the back, the fly tipping on the street, the alarms going off at night, the disturbing smells in the stairwell. It all adds up to make your environment meter go into the red.

Yet, on some days, I love living here. The street itself is gorgeous in the sun. The sandstone gleams.

The lower end of the street practically has a tree corridor, organically grown up by green-fingered residents who are doing their best to fight against all the things I have already mentioned above.

At the top of the street, I am always cheered by the view of the three towers that forever lead you on. You have the kirk (St Jude’s of the Free Presbyterian Kirk), Old Trinity College and the Park Church Tower (luxury flats I believe now).

My flat is small, but it does get a lot of light. It gets more light now I live alone as I can keep all the doors open, which also makes it feel bigger.

Also, because I live alone now, I can keep it how I like it. This does actually have its pros and cons, however, because how the flat is, is now a reflection on me, not anybody else. If it’s grimy or dusty, that’s my dust, my grime.

I’ve come to realise that I’ve not really put much of my own stamp on the place despite having lived here for almost four years. The artwork and the me-ness are all crammed into the poky second bedroom I have not bothered to move out of. The rest of the flat is mostly pretty blank…and when I look at all the “negative space”, all I can think of is it’s in need of a good paint.

I began to consider my flat a negative space, but I ought not to consider it so. I should see it as a neutral zone. One of potential, not absence. I need to work with what I have and make it work for me.

The story is, at the beginning of the year, I went searching for flats.

What I was looking for was really what I have, but maybe slightly nicer, slightly bigger and perhaps cheaper. I found that the latter was not really achievable with my budget, as I would be soul-crushingly outbid in any competitive scenario.

So, in a bit of desperation, I put an offer in on a place in Dennistoun I viewed alone one February evening after work. There had been no bids, and yet my bid, under the home report, was rejected. The seller wanted £200k. It was listed for offers over £185k.

In truth, I was bidding against myself, and that should have been a red flag, the fact that no one was putting in any offers. Looking at the Land Register, I saw that it had been bought the previous year for some £40k less than the current asking price. Having bid on a couple of other places unsuccessfully, I decided to put in a last desperation bid, and shockingly, this was accepted.

Several things were attractive about the flat. I think it was marketed well with a view of a church on the other side of the street and the sandstone gleam of the façade. The ceilings were high and beautifully corniced.

Some downsides were apparent too. It had not been especially tastefully decorated, with grey carpets throughout and the bathrooms (yes, plural) both had no windows.

The whirr of the fan when the estate agent switched on the bathroom light ought to have set my mind whirring too. At that point, I should have really considered – no windows in the bathroom, inadequate extraction, moisture – mould! damp!

The home report, too, said something, something elevated moisture readings. External wall damage. Rear window cracked. Maybe I was thinking, external – not my problem? I seem to have pressed on.

My conveyancer suggested I get a damp survey. I almost didn’t want to for fear of what it would reveal…Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck/Till thou applaud the Title Deed(??)

In the end, I did get one, though not by the historical buildings expert he nudged me towards, who was very passionate about such things as the concept of rising damp being a grand conspiracy orchestrated by Big Damp Proofing. Instead, I got a cheapo one from a company who probably fell into that category. They did not go under the floor, which apparently you can do(?) Their investigations were more thorough, however, and identified the extent of the issue more starkly.

The flat was damp at the non-street-facing side. Water was getting in from outside through the gaps in the mortar.

The report did indeed call for “damp proofing” of the internal walls, recommended stronger extractor fans and said that repointing work was required alongside fixing the window. They were quoting £2,500 for the internal walls alone. If it was just that, then maybe… The conveyancer threw some doubt on that, and was sceptical of their proposed solution because if the structural issues were resolved, then the walls would most likely dry out naturally. There’s the rub. Structural issues. External fabric. i.e., common property, factor and consent of all the proprietors. Putting scaffolding up for months, and a job that could easily become pretty involved and expensive.

After a phone call, I asked him to ask them to get quotes from the factor. The seller simply refused and said that they’d remarket the property unless I committed that week. In effect, they made the decision for me. And so, I withdrew.

That was the story of how I almost bought a flat. I thought I would tell it here, partly as a way to organise my thoughts and partly as a reference and warning to anyone who thinks buying a flat in Glasgow is a straightforward thing. I don’t want to put people off, but I have definitely learnt a few things from this experience. The main thing is not to rush into any massive financial commitment just because it seems like the appropriate thing to be doing at my age and stage in my career.

I will be taking a breath before looking at flats again, and in the meantime, I will try a bit more to make my immediate living environment more pleasant within the confines of my tenancy agreement. Ultimately, property ownership seems to be as much a psychological milestone in the UK as a financial one. There is subconscious pressure to “get on the ladder” for people who either can’t afford it or whom it doesn’t actually suit if they were to sit down and think about it for a bit.

Another motivation, I suppose, is to escape landlordism. To eject from the system of landlord and tenant, which is inherently exploitative. The solution to that is, I suppose, to create more social housing and remove the stigma from that. From a different perspective, though, a landlord (whether social or private) is providing something valuable, if not a service as such. They provide the permission to exist, undisturbed in one’s own space, for a regular monthly payment. You can look at that and say, they’re providing nothing, but on the other hand, I wouldn’t and don’t underestimate the value of negative freedom. As long as you pay the rent, that freedom is yours.

I don’t want to create too much of an ‘apology for the landlord’, but I guess what I’m saying is that my current situation does suit me. There is no need for me, personally, to escape from it. I am happy for now, and when the time comes for me to move on, I will do so, calmly and carefully, and in the full knowledge of what I am stepping into, insofar as that is ever possible.

Posted in Life, Personal experience | Tagged bid, conveyancing, damp, Dennistoun, flat purchase, French, Glasgow, home report, life, mortgage, offer, ownership, property, rent, Scotland, title deeds, triathlon, West End | Leave a comment

In den finstern Zeiten wird auch geschwommen werden: Camus’s Verfremdung and Brecht’s absurd

Posted on 31/05/2026 by alasdairflett

Since Charlotte, another C has occupied my thoughts: Camus.

The book group read The Plague, or en francais, “La Peste” in April. It’s a novel of 1940-something (literally “194—”). A 1940-something set in an alt-reality without the war, but with the absurdity that war forces us to confront.

Set in coastal Oran, a town at the northwestern extremity of Algeria, the sea plays a key role in the highly allegorical novel. Oran faces away from the sea. It is turned in on itself. Ignoring the source of its own wealth and life.

Towards the end of La Peste, there is a scene in which Dr Rieux and Tarrou, at the height of the pandemic, decide to take the afternoon off and go swimming.

The sea they swim in is the Mediterranean. Full of autumn’s cached warmth of the summer.

In den finsteren Zeiten
Wird da auch geschwommen werden?
Da wird auch geschwommen werden.
[In] den finsteren Zeiten

(Reworking of Brecht's epigraph to the Svendborger Gedichte, a collection of poems written in his Danish exile from 1933 to 1939)

À la Bertolt Brecht – “In the dark times, will there also be swimming/There will be swimming/[in] the dark times.”

It is a text that rhymes with Brecht’s contemporary writings on several levels. Another example is Rieux’s disavowal of heroic actions during the plague. This has strong echoes of Brecht’s “unglücklich das Land, das Helden nötig hat“ form Leben des Galilei (Life of Galileo), written at the end of his Danish exile on the outbreak of the Second World War.

Its sentiment is broadly that the necessity of exceptional individuals is a sign that things have gone badly wrong. If your system requires the emergence of such exceptional people or actions, then it has failed to function as a system of morality.

Camus’s Dr Rieux concludes that the answer is to stoically do one’s duty, and to find inherent value in healing the patient in front of him, regardless of its potential futility as an answer to the voracious and incomprehensible pestilence, which cannot be reasoned with at an individual level. It is a continuation and development of Camus’s philosophy of the absurd, present in all his works. Life and work must be given meaning, despite life presenting itself as meaningless and incoherent. We must give life coherence in the full consciousness of its fundamental insolubility.

The Brecht of the early 1930s would no doubt take issue with this stance. His intractable position was that the world could be changed and that human beings have the power to change it if they recognise its inherent mutability. Being a Marxist, he had less interest in a philosophy of daily life, less still one that recognised a fundamental unpredictability of events.

That probably remained his official view throughout the 1940s and into the early 50s. I like to think, though, that, if he ever read La Peste, he would have recognised some resonances with his thinking as shaped by the catastrophes of the death camps and the brutality of total war.

Coincidentally, a new adaptation has recently been released of Camus’s L’Etranger directed by Francois Ozon. In stylish black and white, it remains both faithful to the text and to the real historical setting of Algiers, which it captures in a wonderfully immersive fashion.

It is extremely French, with hundreds of cigarettes smoked over its two-hour runtime. At the same time, it captures the sense of worlds living in parallel; French and Arabic cultures side by side. We have grand colonial facades, vibrant postwar European cinema juxtaposed with minarets, calls to prayer and coffee habitually drunk from bowls.

One thing I liked about the film is how it captures Meursault’s domestic situation. His flat and its surrounding environs are rendered incredibly vividly. We watch and can indulge in the careful details of the protagonist’s domesticity. We see him washing, shaving, dressing, cooking eggs, doing the dishes and going out for groceries. These active silences foreground the mundane, giving them as much significance as the aberrations that open the film and conclude its second act.

The central event of both the novel and film has a subversive text-against-itself insertion in the adaptation. Of course, the existentialism and the philosophical crisis precipitated by the protagonist’s fatal shooting of an indigenous Algerian are still present. However, the film introduces a backstory for the victim and gives him a sister, who is intertwined in a subplot concerning Meursault’s “friend” and neighbour.

This does not dilute the philosophical aspect of the film; I would say it enhances it because the alternative, non-philosophical view is strengthened by being given a human face. It shows how it is not possible to fully abstract oneself from one’s own life. Every decision and response to the consequences of that decision is not simply the working out of philosophical principles in the real world, but choices that upend whole lives and whose effects cannot be conceived of.

Posted in Review | Tagged 1940s, Albert Camus, Algeria, Algiers, Bertolt Brecht, books, Brecht, Camus, Denmark, film, Francois Ozon, French, German, heroes, L'Etranger, La Peste, Literature, Marxism, morality, philosophy, religion, Review, Second World War, swimming, the absurd, The Outsider, The Plague, The Stranger, Verfremdung, World War II | Leave a comment

“Giant propensitites” and “Calvinistic doctrines”: Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Jane Eyre’ reviewed

Posted on 01/03/2026 by alasdairflett

Subjectivity is often hailed as the great modernist innovation in literature. To place the “I” at the centre, to consider life as interpretable only through the subject, the beholder, not the beheld, to be True – that is the modernist project.

Yet Jane Eyre is the beholder of Charlotte Brontë’s novel of the same name of 1847, and Jane Eyre spends much time beholding Mr Rochester and he her.

There is an extended sequence in the middle of the novel where the protagonist is simply left to watch.

After abandoning Thornfield with no indication as to when his sojourn will end, Mr Rochester suddenly returns with an entourage of aristocratic guests: ladies, predominantly, not lords. These ladies dedicate themselves to days of diversion, plays and games. Somewhat cruelly, given Jane’s disposition and deep self-seriousness, Mr Rochester insists she be present for all, except she takes no direct part.

A desperate erotic tension pervades these scenes, reminiscent of any awkward adolescent’s experience of watching a dance floor and lacking the will-to-self-abandonment necessary to join in. Jane’s apartness is her subjectivity – her separateness is inseparable from the idea of the novel itself.

Jane Eyre today is considered to be a novel of blind spots. The most obvious of these is the so-called ‘Mad Woman in the Attic’. For those of you unfamiliar with the text, I would encourage you to go away, read it, and return.

[…]

You’ve returned, good. Mr Rochester, it is revealed, keeps an estranged(?) wife on the third floor of his ancestral home under lock and key, and the stewardship of his faithful, though occasionally boozing, servant, Grace Poole.[1] She is consistently referred to as “the maniac” and, often, even deprived of the dignity of a personal pronoun.

Her racial origins are somewhat ambiguous, but it can be reasonably inferred that she is of mixed ethnicity, and that that mix is likely African and European, though perhaps not first generation – she and Rochester were introduced to each other in Jamaica. In the pivotal Chapter 26, we have:

“Her mother, the Creole”

And further clues in—

“’Ghosts are usually pale Jane’ [Mr Rochester] […] ‘This, sir, was purple, the lips were swollen and dark. [Jane]”

Jane, the narrator, is directly callous towards Mrs Rochester, giving such descriptions as:

“The clothed hyena rose up and stood tall on its hind feet.” (338)

There is only one instance where Jane considers the possibility of empathy for Bertha on page 347 of the Penguin Classics edition:

“’She cannot help being mad.’

‘Jane, if you were mad, do you think I should hate you?’

‘I do indeed, sir.’” (347)

This passage is a glimpse into a text behind the text that enables it to be read against itself, beyond any authorial intention. And, indeed, it has been with a novel of the 1960s, Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, re-imagining the events of the novel from Mrs Rochester’s perspective.

Really, though, Mrs Rochester’s role is symbolic. She has been seen as an anti-Jane, a physical manifestation of what she could fall into were she to give in to all the worst worldly temptations. Mrs Rochester represents all that is “intemperate and unchaste” (Chapter 27).

In this, there is a hint that her “excesses” and “giant propensities” go beyond partying and a taste for the finer things in life (though even this is never made explicit) and include a sexual component.

It is not possible for a novel of the 19^th century to expand upon this. In some ways, though, it is the more powerful for its merely being alluded to. Viewed from the 21^st century, it is not so difficult to imagine someone being considered “mad” due to their sexual identity or the way in which they conceive of and express their gender/sexuality. It would take a century (or two) for this idea to be explored more straightforwardly in print, however.

The perceived madwoman whose perceived madness/badness stems grossly from her promiscuity is an idea developed and ruminated on in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, which is to a great extent a tribute to Jane Eyre and likewise masterfully plays with suspense (exceeding it in my opinion).

It also appears in Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things, also including an altar scene in which the existence of a secret spouse is revealed (General Blessington). In Gray’s novel, as with Brontë, the madwoman’s personality appears to have been irreparably severed (Bertha Mason/the “hyena” and Victoria Blessington/Bella Baxter).

Astonishingly, the novel has two further acts to play out before the conclusion and here we are offered another reminder of why this is no ordinary tale as Jane receives a kind of vision telling her, “My daughter, flee temptation” and she sets off across the moors with all her worldly possessions, which she promptly forgets in the back seat of the coach in her distress.

She is “absolutely destitute” in a sequence that recalls David Copperfield’s escape from wretched London employers in Dickens’ later novel of 1849/50. Some critics have seen the alleged influence of King Lear here in Act 3’s exposure on the moors…but nature is not all hostile. Jane’s first bed for the night is the heath itself “dry…yet warm with the heat of the summer day […] Nature seemed to me benign and good, I thought she loved me, outcast as I was […] Tonight, at least, I would be her guest.” (p372)

Act Four of the novel is, to me, where it becomes the most alienating to the 21st century reader. Its concerns are not our own, and it is charged with a religious seriousness that is very rare in modern media.

At first, we have a somewhat idealistic portrait of a domestic life in which Jane experiences the childhood she never had when she is taken in at the point of expiration by the Rivers family. She gains two adopted sisters and a brother, who seem to resemble the Brontë family unit of Charlotte, Emily, Anne, and Branwell. Her existence is dedicated to reading and learning German; a language, I theorise, more suited to her nature than the superficial French of her governess days.

Jane’s tranquillity is challenged by the “Calvinistic doctrines” of her “brother”, St John, who turns out to be her cousin. She inherits a fortune from her uncle, lately of Madeira, which she divides between the “siblings”, and St John somewhat despotically turns her from German to “Hindusantee” and tells her, “A missionary’s wife you shall be and must be.” (464)

Her final flight of the novel comes after her realisation that “our natures are at variance” (471). Jane’s mind is not entirely made up, however. Ostensibly, what prevents her from moving to India with St John is her lack of closure surrounding Mr Rochester, whom she fears has gone to the continent and returned to the life of his apparently roguish youth.

Jane finds Rochester maimed and blinded by a house fire set by his estranged/incarcerated wife, who has perished in the blaze. He asks Jane to marry him, which she accepts partly, it seems, because she “like[s] [him] better now when I can be really useful to you than I did in your state of proud independence.” (513)

This is a somewhat disappointing ending to a text that seemed to present such a strong-willed female protagonist whose “mission” in life, for want of a better word, seemed greater than this marriage of seclusion from the world. Rochester gets some comeuppance for his treatment of Jane(?)/his wife(?), but his treatment of Mrs Rochester is never fully addressed beyond page 347.

Ultimately, the gaps in the text and significant allusions have had to be filled in by the criticism and the novels Jane Eyre has inspired.[2] Whether this is its weakness or its strength, you can be the judge.

[1] I believe the character of Jeyne Poole in A Song of Ice and Fire to be an oblique reference to her, or perhaps it is just a coincidence.

[2] My other theory about Jane Eyre is that it inspired Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. An orphan is treated abominably by her aunt and cousin, is imprisoned as part of this (Red Room/cupboard under the stairs), is sent to boarding school, where she doesn’t get to go home during holidays and ends up in an establishment where there is a mysterious presence on the third floor (corridor). I think it checks out.

Posted in Review | Tagged 19th century, allusions, blind spots, book-review, books, Brontes, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Daphne du Maurier, David Copperfield, fiction, gaps, German, Jane Eyre, Literature, Mad Woman in the Attic, Mr Rochester, race, Rebecca, religion, Review, sexuality, subjectivity, Wide Sargasso Sea | Leave a comment

Cultural Highlights of 2025

Posted on 29/12/2025 by alasdairflett

In 2025 I qualified as a solicitor. Practically, this has little substantive effect other than 1) being able to call myself a solicitor and 2) being able to be sued in my own name for professional negligence and complained against via the SLCC.

I was pleased to be retained by the firm I trained with and have remained in their employ since qualifying in September.

In terms of international travel, I left the UK but remained firmly British while visiting Jersey. I then got the ferry from there to St Malo, half-and-halving it for a week in the Channel Islands and Normandy.

Internally, I took my longest ever train journey from Glasgow to Cornwall in June for H—‘s sister’s wedding in June, and in November we took the ferry from Kennacraig to Islay.

Gig highlights included Japanese Breakfast, Geordie Greep and Maruja.

My best gig of the year was English Teacher at Barrowlands. This was on a Wednesday, and Monday saw me stricken with perhaps my worst cold of the year. I had warned H— I might not make it, but I lemsipped up and got on my bike.

Their 2024 debut, This Could Be Texas was a late discovery for me at the start of the year. It combines verbose half-sensical lyrics with intricate instrumentals, often adding stings and horns/woodwinds to the standard bass/guitar/drums setup. They build on a musical posture pioneered by Black Country New Road, except punchier and punkier (in my opinion). In some modes, though, they emulate The Smiths as on ‘I’m Not Crying You’re Crying’. My favourite, though, is ‘Nearly Daffodils’ with other highlights being ‘R&B’ and ‘The World’s Biggest Paving Slab’.

Another autumnal gig with a harrowing backstory was Haim at the Hydro in October. I had put off going until the night itself because everyone had Halloween plans and I felt I couldn’t justify the ticket price just going myself. Yet at the last minute, I checked Ticketmaster resale and got one at £20 less than face value.

Again, I decided to cycle. In order to get to Finnieston, I go along Lynedoch Street and turn right onto Lynedoch Terrace. Unfortunately, on the night in question, there was a rather large pothole close to the centre line, which I entered and which caused me to dismount unexpectedly.

A graze to the right knee and shin, and some moderately cramped up hands, which I put out to try and break my fall, were the toll of the physiological damage. My bike’s handlebars were bent out of shape, but could relatively easily be remoulded to their original configuration. A passer-by helpfully shouted, “You’ve got to watch out for potholes!” as he looked on. The offending hazard has since been filled in.

I regathered myself and continued on my journey. At the Hydro a loading bar informed us of the progress to stage time. A rolling text LED bar above the stage (i quit themed) was deployed at various intervals through the show. Occasionally self-indulgent, it was fun overall.

My real challenge was to come post-gig. When half-way home, the chain decided to fully misalign, obviously having been knocked off centre during the pothole incident. This was not only such that the bike was incapable of being pedalled any distance, but that wheeling it by hand caused a horrible grinding and clicking noise for the duration of the highly conspicuous 25-minute walk home.

Happily, my bike was restored to some of its former glory the following Sunday when a few turns of the Allan key brought the chain into temporary alignment, and it was retuned the following week with the proviso that in bending back the part, there was a risk it would snap (it did not).

I have continued to enjoy Magdelena Bay in 2025, who have been releasing singles throughout the past couple of months and at this rate should be putting out a new album in 2026. Another late to the party pick would be the Australian act GUM who released Ill Times in 2024, alongside King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s Ambrose Kenny-Smith.

Mac DeMarco treated us to an album this year, simply titled Guitar. A few fewer tracks this time around compared with the post-Covid One Wayne G comprising 199 songs. While last year ‘Holy Holy’ was my song of the year, in 2025 ‘Holy’ comes close to claiming the crown. Geese too had a new one, a lot looser and more through-composed compared to 3D Country but enjoyable and rewarding on repeated listens.

The only album I bought on vinyl this year was Preoccupations’ Ill At Ease, ‘Focus’ being a particular highlight. Spotify, however, claims my top album was Clarity of Cal by Vulfpeck (undoubtedly accurate in terms of plays on that platform. I also unashamedly enjoyed Lady Gaga’s latest, MAYHEM, following unexpectedly attending a launch party in Polo with friends. Additionally, in that kind of vein, I was a fan of PinkPantheress’s new record this year.

2025’s biggest music news for me was King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard removing their catalogue from Spotify. They have done so in response to the CEO investing in military tech companies including drones and AI for warfare. According to an interview in NME, Stu Mackenzie explains the decision to come off Spotify more as a “straw that broke the camel’s back” situation, citing the funding mechanism for musicians as a factor militating in favour of the move.

In personal music news, 2025 was the year my mp3 gave up holding its charge, and I got a new phone that can only work with Bluetooth headphones. Yes, I have joined the airpod masses. In fact, they are drolly called ‘NothingEar’ with bright yellow buds and transparent stems.

This has meant that my streaming consumption has increased, and I’ve been downloading far less. Before I did partially justify my continuing to purchase from iTunes on an ethical basis. Another factor was the utility of having a separate place with all my music without having to rely on wifi and without the distraction of a phone that can do everything and which notifies you every 10 minutes.

I discovered the existence, now, of such things called Dedicated Audio Players. Apparently, there is a market for the kind of experience I had carved out for myself. Except now phones are just as good as most MP3s in quality and can store just as much. The only selling point is truly lossless audio or pre-amps within the device. This pushes the price of something truly better than a phone to approaching a grand.

Of course, another option would be to mod an iPod Classic, which a few people do successfully. Apparently, this has superior quality to most phones and streaming, but it does seem like quite a few extra steps.

So, in 2026 I will look for a way to listen to music that is somewhat more ethical and compatible with enjoying the art form of the album in the way it was intended to be heard.

Other cultural highlights include, in film, The Phoenician Scheme directed by Wes Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another – an Anderson double victory for this medium, and featuring two very winning performances by Benicio del Toro. The other del Toro film released this year, I have already reviewed extensively.

While it would be uncontroversial to say that Frankenstein is Mary Shelley’s magnum opus, this year I read another of her novels The Last Man, which is set in the then far future – the 21st century. Unfortunately, I was rather disappointed about the lack of imagination in terms of future technology and societal relations (they still travel on horseback, and lords continue to have real political power). It was probably the classics book group’s worst read of 2025.

That being said, it was good to get the opportunity to re-read Poor Things and Anna Karenina. My personal highlight was probably Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley, which I experienced as a kind of Walter White narrative (obviously not what she had in mind in the 1950s but death of the author and all that). I am also geared up for an informed criticism of the upcoming Wuthering Heights adaptation.

In contemporary fiction, which I did have some time for, I had my first experience with Sally Rooney in Intermezzo; I must conclude that the hype should probably be believed. I also read Butter by Asako Yuzuki, which is an intriguing insight into Japanese society and its expectations of women, as well as being memorable for its vivid descriptions of cuisine with which its protagonist becomes obsessed. This sparked a bit of a culinary journey for me, and I started following Andy Cooks and Joshua Weissman on YouTube – many a fine dinner was had on the back of their tutelage!

Let me end this epistle by wishing you all the very best for 2026. See you in the New Year!

Posted in Entertainment, Life, Music, Personal experience, Review | Tagged 2025, Anna Karenina, books, culture, English Teacher, film, Frankenstein, Geese, Geordie Greep, Glasgow, GUM, HAIM, Intermezzo, Japanese Breakfast, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, life, Literature, Mac Demarco, Magdalena Bay, Maruja, Mary Shelley, music, One Battle After Another, Phoenician Scheme, Poor Things, Review, rock, Sally Rooney, Scotland, Spotify, The Last Man, The Talented Mr Ripley, Wuthering Heights, Year in Review | Leave a comment

Fairy cows and ferry nous

Posted on 30/11/2025 by alasdairflett

My first drive onto a ferry was not in Orkney but at Kennacraig. We were taking the boat to Port Askaig in Islay where we would be staying for three nights on a last gasp long weekend before the close of the year.

Much like the boat to Mull, the ferry traverses a sheltered stretch of sea, the first third being an estuary cutting into almost the full width of the Kintyre peninsula and the last third being the island’s sound, flanked by Jura to the north.

On disembarkation we were bound for the south of the isle to check into our log cabin accommodation. But before depositing ourselves there, a trip to Carraig Fhada lighthouse was in order, to make the most of the fast-fading sun. Pleasing parallels were drawn between our arrival in Jersey and Le Corbière of that late afternoon.

The lighthouse is not the typical round tower you would usually see, but a pleasing cuboid with an almost Aegean understated flair. Unexpected fauna populate the rocky beach foregrounding it – there is an abundance of free-roaming goats with impressively flamboyant horns.

Sirius, the dog, who is with us on this trip, worries them ineffectually and even squares up to the big billy goat, who is thankfully unbothered by his boyish enthusiasm.

Friday is our first full Islay day proper. This is really our first road trip and we share the driving. H— has been kind enough to allow me to be added to her insurance and to take control of the Vauxhall Moriva, known affectionately as Timothy. Although this holiday, he seems to have been rechristened “Timmo”. We’ve been watching the original Mad Max films and seem to be going through an Australian-inflected phase.

Perhaps arrogantly, I had assumed that this was tourist off-season and a distillery tour would be easy to hop onto at short notice. Not so. Laphraoig – our closest and most recognisable bet had only one spot free. Port Ellen, whose glass front exposed awe-inspiring stills and gadgetry, offered tours to people with too much money, starting from £750.

There was only one option open to us – Ardnahoe, located near Port Askaig and with a stunning view of Jura’s iconic Paps – two hills that dominate the landscape and which can be seen from anywhere on the east side of Islay. Much like I thought, the Hoy hills in Orkney’s West Mainland.

Before venturing to the very north, however, our first stop of the morning was Finlaggan, the ancient seat of the Lords of the Isles. This eyelet in the middle of a loch is accessed by a (modern) wooden causeway and is surrounded by an amphitheatre of heather-clad hills. The perfect place for a kingsmoot if ever there was one. Remaining are the ruins of a settlement inhabited up until the 16^th century. The church still has medieval graves; the stone effigies of noble warriors are still clearly visible and covered only by a rain-bespattered pane of glass discreetly bolted atop. As we were to discover, these were not the sole medieval effigies exposed to the elements in Islay.

Packed lunches hurriedly consumed (i.e. stomachs lined), we descended from the Paps viewpoint to the Ardnahoe Distillery. We entered the seemingly deserted visitor centre. Our plans were almost dashed when the Geordie receptionist couldn’t see the booking. All the staff were out to lunch. No tour today.

Our hearts were teetering on the precipice. Were we to be defeated? Surely the last distillery in town would not refuse us?

The page refreshed. Praise be – our booking is there. We are the only two on the tour and are instructed to wait in the café for the guide.

Before we begin, yes, I am doing the whisky part of the whisky tour, toute seule. In my defence, I did the morning driving, AND this was implicitly on the proviso that a gin experience might be had in Jura the following day.

A few minutes later, our host appears. She is Rose from Chateau du Lait (Castlemilk). We are ushered into a small, windowless side room and given a potted history of the distillery. It’s pretty new – founded in 2016 by a Glaswegian who worked in the industry before starting his own venture. His ethos is to create something that people actually enjoy drinking. Sounds like a good plan to me.

There is also a brief overview of Islay’s whisky heritage with some amusing anecdotes about excisemen coming ashore and perennially dodged court citations. As a man of the law, I am bound to condemn such goings on, but I think enough time has passed to allow the faintest twitch of the lip.

The tour is relatively unscientific. Though started in 2016, they use a 100 year old machine to [insert process here]. Only one man knows how to fix it, and his arrival on the island is greeted with a reverent hush.

Next we got to what’s probably the best room, where the grains are fermented with yeast and water in four giant wooden barrels. Rosie lifts the lid at each stage. The liquid is fizzing with activity; almost boiling but with no mechanical excitation – only biological.

So far, so beer. Apparently, with each flip of the barrels’ lids a waft of overpowering aroma is produced. I say apparently because the trip began on my recovery from a bit of a nasty cold, the consequence of which was that I was almost totally deprived of my sense of smell for this frustratingly olfactory experience.

Next, the actual distilling process. Evaporation and condensation. Twice or thrice, I think. Here we get the classic stills as you can picture. Great copper kettles funnelled to a point. Leaning on them sort of feels wrong, like touching dalekanium, but lean we do. They are radiator warm on what has been a chilly day. Most enjoyable for me is the spectacular view of the Paps from the floor-to-ceiling window, which forms the distillery’s logo with the still nestled between.

Also highly enjoyable is the terminology. The condensers are known as wormtubs – a coil spiralling to a nub and dunked in two more massive barrels exposed to the heavens and constantly replenished with rainwater.

After this, the drams. A peaty one and a smoother sherry cask one, I think. I preferred the latter. Then a cask strength, which certainly was. I probably left the tour without the requisite knowledge to start a distillery of my own but it was a very enjoyable experience and a holiday highlight.

To round off the day we headed west to Machair Bay. All dunes, grass and sucking sand. A bracing stroll against the wild Atlantic. Nothing here between us and North America. Wind and wave were all we had to contend with for the majority of the excursion until the rain began to spit, then splutter and just before the car stab in hard, sharp pellets. Thus begins a night of heavy rain preceding the island Walk Highlands rates as having a 4/4 bog factor.

An 8.30 ferry takes us across the sound. Jura basically has one long road, and we drive half away along it to the foot of the Paps. It was hard walking. Bog all the way. Much dramatic leaping from grassy patch to patch. At one point, Sirius was fully submerged in a particularly deep slough.

To cut a long story short, we found ourselves on the wrong side of a river in full spate from last night’s rain, and our plan to summit had to be deferred to another day.

A pie and a toastie from the Antler’s Bakehouse revived me and H— respectively. We were ready to brave the next challenge – Barnhill, the house where George Orwell wrote 1984 from 1946 to 1948 while suffering from the tuberculosis which would eventually claim his life in 1950.

Barnhill is at the very north end of the island. To get there you need to drive to the end of the public road whose extremity becomes little better than a dirt track. It’s second gear all the way for the last few miles until you come to a big white sign saying NO MOTOR VEHICLES.

We dutifully did. So begins the four-mile walk along yet more dirt track to the remotest of literary residences. Of all my journeys to writerly shrines, this seems most like a pilgrimage.

Just as the sun’s decline casts the landscape in its most glorious gold we round the corner and behold the white harled homestead, perfectly situated in the embrace of the glen and overlooking its own private bay. It is the ideal writer’s retreat.

In comparison to its cultural significance, the conception of 1984 is of relatively minor note. Some texts do, however, enchant the landscape in which they came to be. For me, 1984 has that effect on this utterly secluded refuge from modernity. It is the same, or similar feeling I got when visiting the shores of Lake Geneva (Le Lac Lèman) and contemplating Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

H— and I ponder such writer’s retreats – Frankenstein famously being born out of one. Surrounded by stags and does, we consider the role of nature in Orwell’s vision, and the contempt he would no doubt have had for our contemporary world of social media and AI.

Before the ferry back, although the gin distillery is closed for the season, we stop off at a pub and H— samples the local Lussa – a hit. Back at the cabin, it’s pesto pasta followed by House of Guiness – a very enjoyable period drama/advert for the black stuff.

The final day squeezed in Kildaton Cross – an 8th-century Celtic stone crucifix within a kirkyard housing medieval graves and 20th-century headstones side by side; a book fair within a distillery (2 paperbacks for £2) and deep-fried oysters (only I partook).

Overall, Islay and Jura were fantastic off-season. While all the museums are closed in November, this is a small price to pay to have the place virtually to yourself. One tip would be to book the distillery tour in advance, and if you’re bringing a bike, Islay is doable and has the infrastructure, as does Jura, as long as you don’t have to go too far north.

Posted in Life, Personal experience | Tagged 1984, adventure, bog, Carraig Fhada, dog, Europe, Finlaggan, George Orwell, Islay, Jura, life, Literature, Machair Bay, nature, Scotland, the paps, travel, whisky | 1 Comment

“Victor, you’re the monster!” Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein reviewed

Posted on 09/11/2025 by alasdairflett

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel that always brings me back. For me, it is the very best of what literature can be.

I first read it for a university class. In the end, I don’t believe we discussed it in the tutorial. Romantics, for a week or maximally two, would have been more poetry focussed, and more male.

The novel isn’t really the primary mode of expression for the Romantic era, except perhaps Goethe’s Leiden des Jungen Werther. By the time we get to Mary Shelley in 1818, the literary movement seems to have crystalised somewhat and is actually obliquely referred to in the novel itself.

In the second letter of Robert Walton, captain aboard a vessel trying to discover, implicitly, a Northwest Passage through the Arctic sea ice. Walton’s character is bound up with the poetic impulse, which in this era has much in common with scientific pursuit, as brilliantly expounded upon in Richard Holmes’s book The Age of Wonder. In particular, he makes reference to Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

For Romantics like Walton, what is key is not the breadth of reading but depth:

At that age I became acquainted with the celebrated poets of our own country; but it was only when it had ceased to be in my power to derive its most important benefits from such a conviction that I perceived the necessity of becoming acquainted with more languages than that of my native country. Now I am twenty-eight and am in reality more illiterate than many schoolboys of fifteen. It is true that I have thought more and that my daydreams are more extended and magnificent, but they want (as the painters call it) keeping; and I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind.[1]

Poetry’s “most important benefits” are not easily discernible and cannot be accessed without delving deeper. One’s languages and vocabulary can only get you so far; to go further is the Romantic approach to poetry, to derive the deeper, less immediately accessible meaning.

The other occasion on which the word “romantic” appears is in the mouth of Frankenstein himself, and here it is really used as a synonym for “picturesque” in relation to Edinburgh,[2] which he visits briefly after a letter of introduction to the leading lights of the Scottish Enlightenment in furtherance of his project to create a female Creature. Edinburgh, by contrast, is a key location of Guillermo del Toro’s new screen adaptation of the novel.

Yes, instead of Geneva and its environs providing the stage for most of the action, del Toro’s Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) lingers in the Athens of the North. Here, he is introduced to his benefactor, Heinrich – a character entirely unique to the adaptation, played by Christopher Waltz.

Whereas Shelley’s novel has Victor as the lone genius, del Toro’s protagonist assembles a crack team and is endowed with infinite resources by his patron. In a seeming nod to the heavily Frankenstein-inspired Poor Things, Heinrich makes a shocking request of his beneficiary. He wishes his brain to be transplanted into the body of the man Victor is assembling from the corpses of fallen soldiers.

Rejecting this as absurd and unconscionable on practical grounds, Heinrich has syphilis, infamously a disease that, in its late stage. affects the brain. Victor ends up in a physical confrontation, which leads to his addled sponsor falling to his death. While adding human drama and spectacle to the plot, this is just one example of many which rather confuse the clarity and purity of Shelley’s original story than enhance it.

It takes a long time for Frankenstein to make his Creature in this film, both in terms of screentime and diegetically – his work-in-progress sits slumped unnaturally on his laboratory table with its spine exposed to better access the lymphatic system, apparently key to achieving re-animation and, in del Toro’s case, perpetual animation.

Broadly, the film does take the same structure as the novel. We open on the arctic wastes. Unlike in Shelley’s novel, the Creature is almost instantly revealed. Surprisingly, the ‘Horisont’ is manned by Danish sailors, and a good 10 minutes of the film is exclusively in that language.

Another change is instantly apparent in the setting in time. Instead of a vaguely 18th-century setting – Shelley leaves it at 17—, the action is transplanted to the mid-19th (1857 to be precise). Gone, then, are Walton’s direct connections to the English Romantics and the Enlightenment throughline of Shelley’s work.

Not that this adaptation is really grounded in a historical time period or actual locations. Its characters are an American fantasy of the European aristocracy (I know del Toro is Mexican, I mean the continent). In del Toro’s adaptation, the only connection to Switzerland is Victor’s mother’s ancestral seat, and that is in reality only a nod. Victor’s childhood home is basically Versailles, and his father is vaguely Prussian, as can be deduced from the unsubtle uniform. Barring the fact that Victor is not of noble birth in the novel – his father is a syndic, a type of public officer bearer – neither is he identifiably Swiss. This seems to be an obvious omission in a novel so embedded in the Confederation.

See Chapter 6’s letter from Elizabeth:

The republican institutions of our country have produced simpler and happier manners than those which prevail in the great monarchies that surround it. Hence, there is less distinction between the several classes of its inhabitants; and the lower orders, being neither so poor nor so despised, their manners are more refined and moral. A servant in Geneva does not mean the same thing as a servant in France and England. Justine, thus received in our family, learned the duties of a servant, a condition which, in our fortunate country, does not include the idea of ignorance and a sacrifice of the dignity of a human being.

The family arrangement in the film is reconfigured with Elizabeth (Mia Goth) being Heinrich’s niece and not Victor’s adopted sister, which does remove the strange incestuous tension and psychosexual subtext inherent in their relationship. All that it nicely reduced to Victor’s fancying his brother’s (William is aged up in the film, as is Victor) fiancée. Frankenstein of the novel has no hint of desire for Elizabeth. He weirdly appears to go along with the idea of his marriage to, effectively, his sister in fulfilment of his mother’s dying wish, despite both his father and Elizabeth herself giving him opportunities to extricate himself from the arrangement.

There is an amusing scene in Edinburgh’s St Giles Cathedral (whose interior is in fact Glasgow Cathedral!) where Victor none-too-subtly hints at his feelings to Elizabeth in a confession booth, notwithstanding the presence of such a facility being an egregious anachronism within the seat of the Scottish Reformation.

The character of Elizabeth in the film, instead of being the quasi-angelic and remote presence of the novel, is the film’s moral core in a way. One of the most striking differences is the aftermath of the Creature’s immediate genesis. Unlike the novel, where Victor’s reaction is instantaneous revulsion, del Toro’s Frankenstein keeps the Creature in the bowels of the colossal watchtower-cum-laboratory where he has been manufactured for an extended period. He attempts to teach him to speak, but the Creature can only utter one word, “Victor”.

Del Toro gives Victor a more explicit psychological motivation to create and treat the Creature as he does. There is a clear link between his mother’s untimely demise and his desire to create life/conquer death. There is also a rather obvious repetition of his father’s own brutality towards him, inflicted on the Creature during their lessons.

To me, this is another example of muddying the waters, where the novel is much clearer as a thought experiment. Shelley’s Frankenstein is motivated by science first and foremost, the Enlightenment drive to uncover the secrets of nature. Her Creature does not suffer his direct abuse and torment.

Del Toro’s Creature, by contrast, does not at first attempt to reason with Victor. Instead of their re-encounter taking place high in the Swiss Alps in a mountaineering hut, it happens on the wedding night, not of Victor, but his brother William. The Creature’s tale, the final third of the film, is told in the presence of the Danish Walton equivalent aboard the Horisont while becalmed on the Arctic ice.

For me, the most egregious thing is this speed-running of one of the book’s most fundamental thematic notes and plot points – the Bride of Frankenstein.

In the film, the Creature asks Victor to create another being of his nature of the female sex. Here Victor’s refusal is instant. The ‘race of devils’[3] line is said, and so begins the chase that has its fast-forward termination on the ice sheets of the frozen north. Couldn’t more time have been spent on the crucial nature of this betrayal out of the film’s two and a half hour runtime?

One of the novel’s most disturbing scenes is when, on the cusp of completing the task of creating a female Creature, Victor observes his living creation watching on, and he destroys his work.

As I looked on him, his countenance expressed the utmost extent of malice and treachery. I thought with a sensation of madness on my promise of creating another like to him, and trembling with passion, tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged. The wretch saw me destroy the creature on whose future existence he depended for happiness, and with a howl of devilish despair and revenge, withdrew.[4]

Del Toro lingers on the macabre and introduces plenty of body horror, which suits the visual medium, yet he fails to adapt this most crucial of scenes. This is not to mention that he leaves out my direct connection to the novel – the location of the second creation is an unspecified island of Orkney.

To conclude, let us discuss the Creature himself. One element that del Toro introduces unnecessarily is the idea that he is immortal. Not simply more resistant to harm than an ordinary man, but immortal in a Captain Jack Harkness sort of sense. To prove this, in what is, in isolation, an impressive scene, the Creature attempts to blow himself up with a stick of dynamite, unsuccessfully.

Whereas Shelley’s Creature has more-than-human strength, speed and stamina, del Toro’s creature is to all intents and purposes a demigod. Prometheus, if you will.

Stylistically, this doesn’t really work. There is abundant cartoonish CGI of him literally ripping through dozens of Danish sailors, throwing them aside like ragdolls. A clear image of the Creature’s violence in Shelley’s novel is the black marks left on the necks of his victims of asphyxiation. A careful and powerfully employed image is here substituted with gratuitous computer-generated clobbering.

Besides stylistically, though, when you have an entirely artificial being imbued with intelligence but then also add in immortality, you have a whole host of moral questions that come up in addition to those already posed. Shelley’s Victor is on a quest to destroy his creation after he fulfils his promise to render his life a living hell and murders his bride. Here, we know that this is not possible. The Creature cannot make the same bargain to fly to the remotest corner of the earth and live out his natural end in the jungles of South America.[5] Thus, the ending self-immolation after Victor’s death from terminal fatigue is debarred.

What we have, instead of the Creature arriving too late and delivering his final speech to Walton, is a deathbed reconciliation with the Creature forgiving and Victor naming him his son.

It all feels so fundamentally unearned and lacks the pathos and finality of the novel. The film’s final frame is the Creature out on the wastes once more, and we are left to wonder what will become of him. The implication appears to be that he will return to the benevolent Father Christmas figure he adopted as the ‘Spirit of the Forest’ for the family he tends to following his escape from the lab. But why would he do so without any hope of reconciliation with humanity? An eternity of loneliness?

The story presents itself as if it were as wrapped up as one needs to be for an arctic expedition, but really, we are being set up for The Adventures of Frankenstein 2. In this age of the eternal revival, valuable IP cannot be allowed to die.

[1] Letter 2

[2] Chapter 19

[3] Chapter 20

[4] As above

[5] Chapter 17

Posted in Review | Tagged bride of frankenstein, Creature, Edinburgh, film, Frankenstein, Geneva, Glasgow Cathedral, Guillermo del Toro, horror, immortality, Literature, Mary Shelley, Orkney, oscar-isaac, poetry, Review, Romantic, science, spirit of the forest, St Giles Cathedral, Swiss Confederation, Switzerland, The Modern Prometheus, Victor | 1 Comment

Admitted and discharged

Posted on 20/09/2025 by alasdairflett

A historic week for the family Flett (the one commencing 8 September). It started with the 30^th anniversary of my parents on Tuesday, was sandwiched with my qualification as a solicitor on Thursday and ended with the birth of the first of the next generation on Saturday 13^th September 2025 at 3.22am.

Naturally, I was on a train to Aberdeen on Sunday morning. Two titles now acquired, uncle being foremost in my mind. One a seven-month anticipation, the other a culmination of five years’ work.

Laterally, in terms of the legal traineeship, though, it has been more a question of waiting out the time, meeting the requirements and allowing the two years to pass. Up until now, I have never really had a five-year goal. It makes me wonder what the next will be.

The gaining of my restricted practising certificate towards the end of last year and admission to the roll of solicitors (ceremonially confirmed this summer) felt like more of a milestone for me. This allowed me to do everything a solicitor does insofar as I am acting for my employer and not calling myself a “solicitor” while so doing. The formality is discharging my traineeship and the subsequent removal of the prefix “trainee” on my signature.

In terms of non-directly career-related active self-betterment, I have resumed French classes again after the summer break. This provides useful structure for my learning, but I do think I need to get serious if I want to make serious progress. There is only so far a syllabus can take you.

I also don’t want to let my German fall into abeyance. So perhaps I’ll see if there’s a conversational meetup I can join to get me up to scratch again and hopefully surpass where I was post completion of my degree.

Last year was perhaps the fittest I have been physically, with the Loch Ness Marathon in September 2024. I have resigned myself to the fact that a PB may well be out of my reach in the Great Scottish Run at the beginning of October, but I am having a much better time training for that than the 26.2 miles. No injuries/total exhaustion are a blessing.

As I was saying, I was on a train on Sunday morning. Terminus, Union Square, that between place of ages. A train at one end, a bus the other … and a ferry at a not-so-burdensome stretch.

I beelined for the Foodhall and picked up a pizzetta (the first knowingly eaten and called so) and ginger beer. No sit-down meal for me. A lift (in a red Tesla) from a grandad of less than 24 hours (the dad’s dad) to the maternity ward without delay. Well, there was some delay as a multi-storey car park was unnecessarily ascended and descended before I was safe in the passenger seat.

In no time at all, we arrive. Summerfield Ward, Room 7 is our destination confirmed by text 20 minutes ago. The atmosphere is hushed; the air itself pregnant.

Blue curtains shield what lies behind. The new being within knows not what lies beyond.

The blue veil marks the threshold across which all will change.

I am entreated to wait there for a moment. 22 hours into existence the baby tries to feed … it’s not happening this time, and I’m invited in.

A pink whisp-haired head pokes out from beneath blankets, at rest on a pale chest. I cannot hug one without embracing both; they are one and inseparable on first encounter.

I begin to investigate more closely after passing on my congratulations. Her lids are closed to the external world, but my proximate curiosity wakes her from her shallow drowse and L— flickers into life.

What eyes. Out of proportion to her tiny body. Curious and searching. Curious as I am to find out the who of this newly pressed talisman of potentiality. Tracking this way and that, the deep blue irises are restless to discover too, or so it seems.

Before we can be properly acquainted, the grandparents and auntie (dad’s side) make their way out, and I am ushered too. The feeding has been challenging and the attempt must be seen through. I decamp to a café, then to an Aldi to buy grapes to bestow on my return.

When I come back, the new mother is triumphant. Feed 1 complete.

A vomit and a change later I am passed the precious product of an arduous labour. She is so light and completely reliant on me, even to hold her remarkably untensioned head up.

My bag was left in the footwell of the Tesla, so the new father drives me to retrieve it and to check into my accommodation. After some outfit upgrades and a Wetherspoons meal, I went back to say goodnight, this time bearing gifts for the newborn (perhaps not yet age-appropriate). At the beginning of the week, I found myself in the Baby & Toddler section of Waterstones and picked up two classics, Spot the Dog by Eric Hill and The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr.

After 20 minutes with L—’s crown in the crook of my arm, I bid the new parents farewell and left them to establish their household.

Posted in Life, Personal experience | Tagged birth, family, Law, life, running, Scotland, solicitor, uncle | Leave a comment

Excursion sur les Côtes de Normandie, en Bretagne et à l’Île de Jersey

Posted on 02/06/2025 by alasdairflett

On the flight out, I had a window seat and could peer down at the port of Southampton and the Isle of Wight—the end goal of my August 2023 trek along the English leg of the Camino de Santiago from Reading Abbey. Going over Guernsey, I had a false alarm, having mistaken it for my ultimate destination, but soon, the sandy strip of Jersey’s “five miles by nine” came into view. The airport is large for its diminutive square mileage, but understandable given its population of over 100,000.

After landing, a half-hour walk took us to our accommodation in St Brelade, one of about a dozen settlements named for saints on the island. Having deposited luggage and sufficiently caffeinated, we set out for the itinerary’s first objective—the lighthouse of La Corbière.

Most of Jersey’s place names are in French. Well, in fact, a local language variant called Jerriais. Up until well into the 19^th century, Jersey was francophone. La Corbière is Jerriais for “the crow” and is cognate with le corbeau en francais.

Le Corbiere is everything you want a lighthouse to be. Functional and beautiful, the rocks which enthrone it look particularly dashable upon as far as ships are concerned. It is actually situated on a tidal island and accessed by a causeway. My itinerary not having factored this into account, we were lucky to arrive at low tide.

Along the way to the lighthouse are scattered outcrops within which are nestled German pillboxes from the Second World War. These are the first signs of Nazi occupation during the 1940s that we came across and set out a recurring theme over the rest of our trip. The D-Day landings passed Jersey by, and the island was only liberated after the unconditional surrender of Germany, on 9 May 1945. They had recently been celebrating the 80^th anniversary of this and bunting was ubiquitous wherever we went. According to Jersey law, the union jack cannot be displayed without equal prominence being given to its own flag, hence alternating patriotic triangles/rectangles. It seems to me that this is more of an all-year-round thing, with even the public transport being named “Liberty Bus”.

By the time we start to head back, stomachs are rumbling and a slice of toast is required before venturing out again to La Brise at St Brelade’s Bay, another item on my list. The view is gorgeous, the salmon burger less so, but I enjoyed my first sip of Liberation Ale on the panoramic veranda.

On day 2, we hire bikes at St Aubin, pronounced like Oban according to our host, but no ferries these days, unlike its namesake – the capital, St Helier, which has taken over as the main port in modern times. The American émigré distributing the velos suspects us of being colleagues. He is not corrected as such; we just happen to share the same accommodation and have not requested that a second bed be made up.

It was to St Helier we were bound, at least at first, and we stopped on the seafront to enjoy some Co-op bought pastries. Sadly, a seagull snatched H—‘s pain au chocolat from her grasp before she could take a second bite. This was a low light from a day whose challenges were only about to begin.

On the outskirts of St Helier is the power station La Collette, and also a snack van where we sampled by far the best coffee of the trip at Henri’s.

Next stop was the Neolithic chambered cairn/passage grave and late medieval chapel of La Hougue Bie. This required a deviation from the cycle path and onto the winding, narrow lanes inland.

A clue was perhaps in the name La Hougue (meaning hill) that inclines would be involved. As the afternoon wore on, I began to feel slight guilt that I had strongarmed my companion into a cycling holiday (at least partly) when she hadn’t ridden a bike in a decade or more.

By the by, the summit was accomplished anyhow. Now for some more strongarming – we were convinced to get Jersey Heritage passes for a week. With me paying full at £48 and she half at £26 (student discount for continued veterinary studies at Liverpool, obtained sans carte). This was perhaps sore to part with, but in the end was just about worth its value as we ended up doing everything on the pass except the country life museum…or something of that ilk, which was essentially a petting zoo, so I am not too upset about that.

I may be biased (well, I am certainly), but Maeshowe for me is much superior. The Hougue is higher, I will grant it that, but inside the cairn is comparatively chaotic. It does not give off that eeriness evoked by Stenness’s symmetry and lacks the monoliths arranged cathedral-like and purposeful.

A bonus was the exhibition of a coin hoard discovered in 2012. 70,000 Roman coins were buried on the island in the first century AD. One theory was that these were interred for tax avoidance reasons; different millennia, same problems, amarite?

From La Hougue Bie we set out east, not quite catching Mount Orgueil castle’s last entry and thereafter taking in St Catherine’s Bay, pristine and strewn with scallop shells. Two were retrieved as souvenirs before we left for the breakwater, Jersey’s easternmost point.

We had now put about as much distance between us and our accommodation as possible, and the sun was beginning to set. The pedal back to St Helier was probably the most challenging of the trip, involving some significant gradients and the busiest roads we were to encounter. We made it back, however, and collapsed into a pizzeria just before the kitchen closed. A slow winding up through an unlit cycle path in forest-shrouded darkness later, and the Airbnb was achieved.

Wednesday was the worst weather day, but largely confined to the morning, and less travel was required as the capital was mandated by the itinerary. Elizabeth Castle was stop number one. Again, this was accessed by tidal causeway or, more significantly, by amphibious bus/ferry if the tide was in. Driving down the beach, its wheels retracted and a propeller began to spin, carrying us across the waves to the late 16th-century-built fortress. It was named for Elizabeth I of England, and Walter Raleigh served as its first governor, though he stayed there only 13 weeks.

On arrival, we were told that the musket demonstration would start in a quarter of an hour. A redcoat in full dress gave us the lowdown and fired warning shots across St Aubin’s Bay in anticipation of a French force landing in an attempt to take the island from the British in 1781.

As well as featuring its own WWII era defences, Elizabeth Castle has, sitting at the start of the breakwater, the hermitage of St Helier for whom the town is named. Specifically, it has a medieval chapel constructed on top of the rocky outcrop from which the 6th-century saint devoted himself to prayer and fasting, alongside providing a community function in warning islanders of any approaching raiders. It is said he succumbed to such a raiding party in 555 AD when they beheaded him, giving rise to St Helier’s double-axed coat of arms.

After finishing Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities on the flight over, I began Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre-Dame, which remained my companion for the rest of the trip. At the museum that afternoon, before buying some reblochon at the Normandy market, accepting only Euros, I discovered that Hugo was briefly a citizen of Jersey. He had come to the then-French-speaking island as an exile from the Second Empire of Napoleon III. His stay was short-lived, however, as he was swiftly booted out and had to commence a further exile in Guernsey after publishing a critical piece on Queen Victoria.

The next morning, we killed an hour or so in the excellent Jersey Maritime Museum, which features a hyperabundance of animatronic contraptions and interactive exhibits, and then departed on a DFDS ferry for St Malo, Brittany. I am introduced to the card game cribbage, which I consistently lose at for the remainder of the trip.

Coming into port, we have little time to linger as we must make la gare in time for our train to Caen, which will be used as a point de depart for our stay in Normandy. The lady at the desk is very proactive in explaining the delay to us when we arrive in rapid French and advises us not to stray too far when it increases to 25 minutes. Luckily, it’s a regional service that stops a while at every station, so it makes up the time, and we get in before 10. Not many places are open for food at this hour, but in another turn of fortune, there is a kebab shop round the corner where we have our first experience of cuisine a la Normande. With our level of hunger and travel fatigue, this ends up being a culinary highlight!

On Friday, we pick up a croissant at the boulangerie before boarding the train to Bayeux. Today we will take in the tapestry and, I hope, manage to commemorate my great, great uncle’s involvement in the D-Day landings of 1944.

Arriving in Bayeux, the first thing you see upon leaving the train station are two Norman cavalrymen astride a roundabout on the short walk into the historic town. Already, the high medieval tone is set. Paired with Lübeck in Germany, it rivals its Teutonic counterpart for charm and beauty, though here is more Harold and Hastings than harbours and Hansas.

I encounter French customer service at the ticket booth for the Bayeux Tapestry when my attempt to pay over the asking price for the ease of change is scoffed. We pick up our two audio guides en anglais and begin the tour. The contemporaneous depiction of the story of the Battle of Hastings remains a powerful piece of Norman propaganda that leaves you thinking that perhaps William the Conqueror did have a point. It has been theorised, nevertheless, that it contains subversive messages, woven in under the radar, about the brutality of the fighting – beheaded horses, ransacked corpses, etc.

It is in Bayeux that we discover that Normandy is a cider region and have two glasses with, respectively, a crepe and a galette for lunch, dining out on the street below the streaming sun. Having accomplished the tapestry, we plan to catch a bus to the beaches of the debarquement. The scheduled bus never arrives. A minor crisis precipitates until I check my phone and find that my ancestor is, in fact, according to the Commonwealth Graves website, buried on the outskirts in the specially dedicated military cemetery.

The first thing you see as you approach on foot from the town centre is the sandstone monument to the 1,800 Commonwealth soldiers, sailors and airmen whose remains were untraced. Their names are inscribed under their regiments.

Across the road is an arc of headstones of simple white marble. 4,648 in total. The ends of the arc are flanked by two enclosed shelters, each containing a folder with the name and address of the interred. Flicking past Fletcher, we find Lance Corporal John Norman Johnston Flett of Quoyloo, Orkney, who died aged 25 on 19 July 1944.

Our final full day in France sees us depart Caen by Flixbus for the Mont St Michel. As someone who is interested in pilgrimage, this seemed like an appropriate continuation of my Camino journey, which ended, as stated above, in Southampton.

The Mont St Michel is not a port, however, but is situated in a pristine estuary landscape whose lack of features makes the Mont all the more impressive, standing alone on the flats, a walled city carved into the granite tidal island with the dizzying abbey spire at its apex.

A shuttle bus is available, but who would, having legs to walk on, deny themselves the glory of the approach?

Le Mont throngs with tourists. Perhaps, in hindsight, scheduling this for a Saturday was a poor idea. Nevertheless, the bustle adds something to the chaotic yet picturesque density of the narrow streets within.

Forgoing the audio guide this time, we circulate through the abbey sans interpretation. By the time we’ve rounded the last bus to Pontorson is unobtainable. Milder panic than the Bayeux crisis descends, but we resign ourselves to the remarkably indirect route back to port via Rennes, and bag another regional capital while we are at it.

After a night in St Malo, we reverse our progress and return by ferry to St Helier, then fly home that afternoon, but not before making use of the full gamut of our Jersey Heritage pass and paying a visit to the interior of Mont Orgueil to top up our earlier exclusion.

I would thoroughly recommend Bayeux as a pretty and authentic-feeling medieval town with an outstandingly ornate cathedral. As for St Michel, it is a must-see, but I would try to avoid the weekends if at all possible.

Jersey is a fascinating place with its own distinct culture, if having a bit of an unreconstructed affection for the British Empire.

If you can get past the sort of hyperreal UK-ism, there is a wealth of history to discover and beaches aplenty. If you’re looking to truly “get away from it all”, I wouldn’t pick Jersey, however, as its dense population and urbanisation don’t as such lend themselves to escape, albeit affording more choice than you’d usually get with an island holiday.

Posted in Life, Personal experience | Tagged Bayeux, Brittany, Europe, France, French, history, Jersey, life, Mont St Michel, Normandy, St Helier, travel | 1 Comment

An update: professional and personal

Posted on 05/05/2025 by alasdairflett

Time for an update. Professional and personal.

I learnt in March that I am being kept on at the firm I’m working for after the end of the traineeship. That means that from September I will, at last, be able to call myself a solicitor and practise unrestricted in all of Scotland’s sheriff courts, plus I will get to continue in the job I already have for a not insignificant pay increase. It marks the closure of a chapter in my career and the gaining of responsibility (I can be sued in my own name for professional negligence and will inevitably have higher expectations placed on me) and identity (people kind of know what a solicitor is and don’t require the post-amble that comes with the trainee prefix).

At the end of the month I will be attending an “admission ceremony” at the Signet Library in Edinburgh. I will be “admitted” to the roll of solicitors. Really, this is of no practical effect until my traineeship is discharged in September (and I am on the roll anyway, just as one with a restricted practising certificate), but it is nice to cap off my long apprenticeship with some sort of occasion to mark it.

As for personal developments, I can categorically affirm that I have met, and am meeting with, someone who has given me her permission to be referred to by me as my girlfriend.

We met on Hinge at the end of October, and then on a Tuesday night at a cocktail bar once a certain level of rapport had been established.

Her name is H—. She is a vet of the equine variety, is from Motherwell and lives in Quarriers village.

We see each other at weekends and sometimes an evening midweek too. We enjoy books, walking, nature, gigs and cooking. I have had to become a dog person to a certain extent due to her adoption of a rather exuberant (to put it mildly) labrador puppy shortly after our own introduction. So far, he has only been capable of being tired out by a 10-mile walk from Paisley to Lochwinnoch (leg 2 of the Whithorn Way). It’s a new lifestyle, and far from an unpleasant one!

Later this month, I will be visiting Jersey and taking the ferry to France to explore Normandy/Brittany. In a fit of spontaneity, I asked H— whether she would like to accompany me. Dear Reader, she said yes. Goodbye solo traveller, hello couple’s sojourn.

No doubt I will be writing about my experience in the Channel Islands/Gaul in detail during and post-trip, so I will save divulging my motivations and aspirations for that entry. Suffice to say, I am very much looking forward to it – both part 1 and part 2.

Mostly out of my own interest, but partly due to this upcoming trip, I have begun a course at the Alliance Francaise (AF) in Glasgow that convenes on a Tuesday night. I decided to choose a B1 intermediate class with the goal of working my way up from there. Regular readers of the blog will know that I am a fan of French literature and culture, as well as languages generally. The highlights of last year’s book group repertoire were, respectively, Emile Zola’s Germinal and the short stories of Guy de Maupassant.

The Francophilia continues with our reading list for June and July, although in the case of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities phobia might be more accurate. July’s text is Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame which I found in an abridged A2 version within the library of AF at less than 100 pages to the full novel at over 600. For this reason, the French original is almost certainly too ambitious an assignment for the c. 6 weeks I’m allowing myself to get it read.

For having lived in the heart of the West End of Glasgow for nearly three years now, it is astonishing that I’ve not once frequented the Alliance Francaise or the Goethe Institut (which share the same building in Park Circus) when both are virtually on my doorstep. While I did go to a couple of events in the German film festival run by the Institut last year, that has really been the extent of my interaction.

I resolved to get a bit more serious about learning French at the beginning of the year, i.e. move beyond Duolingo. My first step towards this goal was attending a meetup in a pub in January. Most of the participants were Scottish, but there was at least a concerted effort to keep the conversation Francophone. I mostly listened and nodded. One thing I did pick up was that several of them had done or were doing these courses at the AF, so it was on their recommendation that I looked it up. Classes also suited the level of commitment I wanted to make and would provide a structure to things that mere conversation doesn’t lend itself to.

So far, I’m in week 2 of an eight-week block. The first was a bit scary, not knowing whether I’d picked the correct level and being exposed in the limited class size (small enough that you know you’ll have to speak, but big enough for that prospect to be a tad daunting initially). However, I’m enjoying it. It’s a good mix of 50-60 somethings and one or two other folk my age, and the teaching is professional with a balance between fun and the discipline I’m looking for.

I’ll get two more classes in before gracing the coast of Brittany. Without a guide as I had on the shores of le Lac Léman, I will have to take charge of navigation and negotiation. With a companion, the stakes are higher if I fail or falter. Mais, je crois que je suis plus ou moins prêt pour le défi – c’est parti !

Posted in Life, Personal experience | Tagged Alliance Francaise, blog, career, France, francophilia, French, languages, life, teaching, travel, update, walking, writing | Leave a comment

Egoless autofiction or the self-erasing memoir: Nan Shepherd’s ‘The Living Mountain’

Posted on 16/03/2025 by alasdairflett

In The Living Mountain Nan Shepherd inverts her eye, but it’s not her mind we see but Mind itself. It is a theory of the mind from a particular mind mode. Mind minus ident and the idem from the idiosyncratic.

It is a book of perception. Perception and perceiving. It is not a lens through which to view the world but an endorsement of the unfiltered. It is a call to make conscious that which lurks, hums or bristles below consciousness. Not the unconsciousness internal that is the recess of the repressed but the body’s background; that which is ordinarily tuned out so we may engage with our assigned, necessary functions undisturbed and with minimal emotional or intellectual involvement. In Shepherd’s words:

“The body is not made negligible, but paramount. Flesh is not annihilated but fulfilled. One is not bodiless, but essential body.”[1]

Who is Nan Shepherd? It is hard to say. For a work so unique her own Self is hidden from us. There is a distinct voice but it is rarely personable or inclined to disclose much of her beyond what is necessary to bring her manifesto closer to clarity.

There is also little sense of Shepherd as a woman. Not that there need be, but there is a notable leaning-in to humanity in general as “man”, the general singular “he” invariably. Of course, this is a work first penned in the 1940s; a, thankfully, quite different time than our own. But can this be attributable solely to the era in which it was written?

It is not just the archetypal human being who is “he”. Most creatures are, which surely are divided in a roughly 50/50 split like us?

Crucially, too, is “the mountain” itself. When Shepherd speaks of the mountain, she does not describe a single peak but the entire range – “the plateau” as she calls it, which contains tops but in her conception represents a unified, unitary landscape. Shepherd’s relationship to and with the mountain appears to have a gendered aspect.

The book, indeed, has much latent, and frank, eroticism. The mountain’s maleness is one aspect of this. It reveals itself sporadically and urgently in places. Most vividly in the penultimate chapter ‘The Senses’, where she pronounces, unprovoked, “smells excite me”. She continues—

“On a hot moist midsummer day, I have caught a rich fruity perfume rising from the mat of grass, moss and wild berry bushes that covers much of the plateau. The earthy smell of moss, and the soil itself, is best savoured by grubbing. Sometimes the rank smell of deer assails ones nostril, and in spring the sharp scent of fire.”[2]

From the same chapter:

“after rain I run my hand through juniper or birches for the joy of the wet drops trickling over the palm, or walk through long heather to feel its wetness on my naked legs. […] The hands have an infinity of pleasure in them.”[3]

The Living Mountain is not a memoir. Its protagonist is the mountain or the mountain as experienced but the experiencer is almost invisible. The personal anecdotes are as impersonal as it is possible to be. People are to be observed, almost ethnographically and provide Shepherd with the technical vocabulary and knowledge that enhance her mountain worship. But she does not linger with them; human interactions are fleeting, even transactional. Yet she likens the mountain to a friend:

“often the mountain gives itself most completely when I have no destination, when I reach nowhere in particular, but have gone out merely to be with the mountain as one visits a friend with no intention but to be with him.”[4]

Though mentioning Buddhist pilgrimage at the conclusion of the book, Shepherd is an anti-summit sherpa. She eschews the peaks as incidental and not to be reified at the expense of the totality of the landscape. Note the use of the gendered personal pronoun here.

In the decade prior to Shepherd’s penning The Living Mountain memoir was turned to political ends in the works of George Orwell. Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia are all rooted in autobiography and deeply political. The Living Mountain is more treatise than memoir and in our age where over-disclosure is expected, refreshing and welcome. There is a lack of self-deprecation and irony; Shepherd is deadly serious. Her joys are sincere: worked at but not contrived.

Orwell certainly would have taken issue with Shepherd’s sentiment in this passage (he was virulently anti-bohemian!):

“Walking barefoot has gone out of fashion since Jeanie Deans trudged to London, but no country child grows up without its benediction. Sensible people are reviving the habit.”[5]

The Living Mountain is a political book, though probably not in a way that Orwell would have recognised. It is about how to be, how to observe closely, to trust one’s senses even if they do not accord with expectation (in this way the sky may be green, water essentially white and haze afford more definition than brilliant sunlight). Echoing, or rather anticipating, Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, it is also about respect for the brutality of nature with vivid descriptions of the discovery of hikers caught out in treacherous conditions and found days later abraded and frozen to death.

Shepherd wrote The Living Mountain during the Second World War. This context is not directly referred to and only seeps in at the edges of the text. The wrecked warplane, flying too low in the all-enveloping mist, and the redoubled forestry to supply the front with timber are two such incursions.

There is a plausible interpretation of The Living Mountain as Shepherd’s method of processing the horror and brutality of the total war. The mountain, here, is a synecdoche for the external, the beyond humanity. It bypasses and is distinct from the human day-to-day and interpersonal or political conflict. In a broader sense, it is the Not-We. The Not-We imbued with consciousness. God?

[1] The Living Mountain, p106

[2] The Living Mountain, p98

[3] The Living Mountain, p102

[4] The Living Mountain, p15

[5] The Living Mountain, p103

Posted in Review | Tagged autofiction, being, book-review, books, Cairngorms, eros, gender, hiking, Literature, memoir, Nan Shepherd, nature, perception, philosophy, pilgrimage, politics, Review, Scotland, Second World War, senses, sincerity, The Living Mountain, walking, writing | Leave a comment