Terrorist or Banker?

HOW DO WE JUDGE?

On what basis can you determine if someone is acting in a 'good' or a 'bad' way? Is it through their actions, or the motivations of those actions, or the resulting consequences? In legal judgements all three get taken into account, but usually the greatest emphasis is placed on the consequences, above the other two. This is especially the case involving crimes against the person. If you hit someone and they fall over you can be charged with assault. But if the same action results in them hitting their head on a sharp object and dying, the charge becomes manslaughter. And if there were any way to prove that the motivation for the action had an underlying intent to kill then the charge would be upgraded to murder.

But, away from the strictures of the law, how do we judge someone, according to our own personal morality and ethics? Does motivation play a greater role in determining our views?

These thoughts have been prompted by the novel I'm currently reading, A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks. Set in the week preceding Xmas 2007, it follows the lives of various characters who are all loosely connected in different ways. One of these, Hassan, is a young muslim man who has been radicalised and is now involved in a plot to carry out bombings in London. Another, John, is a hedge fund manager who has become extremely wealthy by exploiting loopholes in financial regulations.

Let's be clear, neither is a likeable character, and as the reader I find myself wanting to see each of them suffer some form on downfall as the plot reveals itself. As I write this I have only read the first quarter of the book, so there are plenty of revelations still to come. But what has already surprised me is the difference in my reactions to those two characters.

For John I have nothing but contempt and distaste. He is amoral, selfish, greedy, driven by nothing except his own advancement. Ethics are things for other people, less 'successful' people, in his world. On the page he comes across as a character without a single redeeming quality, and someone who has done a lot of damage to many lives.

But for Hassan I feel a great deal of sympathy. Given that he is involved in plans which may result in the deaths of innocent people this feels like a curious inversion of morality, and I had to ask myself why I should feel this way. On the face of it you would think Hassan the less deserving of any fellow feeling, given the possible consequences of his actions.

The answer lies in motivation. Hassan is performing his actions in the belief that they will help bring about a better world. He is utterly misguided of course, but also sincere. There is a sense of a decent human being lurking within, someone who, if removed from the pernicious influence of his mentor, could be persuaded, through reason, so see his mistakes for what they are. It would take much work, for has been very effectively brainwashed, and faith in religion can be hard to overcome, but the potential is there within him.

I see no such hope for John. He is not only convinced that he is right, he wouldn't care if his wrongs were pointed out to him. If they get him what he wants then they are not wrong, not in his eyes. John is the archetype of the legacy bequeathed by Thatcherism, the 'greed is good' mantra and the reckless profiteering that crashed the economy in 2008, and with it ruined, or at least made a lot worse, the lives of so many people who played no part in bringing about the problem

Of course Faulks is a fine writer and he knows exactly what he's doing in manipulating the emotions of the reader. This is fiction, not real life. In reality we react more strongly towards physical violence than to crimes (and here I use the word outside it's strictly legal sense) which enrich the few at the expense of the many. It's part of our genetic and sociological makeup to abhor brutality. Financial crime is often too abstruse to evoke genuine anger. It's the skill of the novelist to make us go against our natural instincts, to react in ways we didn't expect and thus challenge our own beliefs. And to recognise that motivation is often the best determinant of the real worth of a person.

The Fascists are still out there

YOU KNOW YOU SHOULDN'T....

But sometimes it's just so hard to resist.  You know it's all too easy, you should try for something more ambitious.  But you can't stop yourself giving in to temptation to have a bit of fun.

Yes, it's so easy to find yourself taking the piss out of far right loons who post gibberish on a public forum.  Especially when they are repeating, and actually give every indication of believing, something that's been discredited so many times you wonder how they can type when they must be in the foetal position out of sheer embarrassment at behaving in so crass a manner.  (Presumably Farage has a broom handle stuck up his back to prevent his spine spontaneously rolling into a ball whenever he says that 75% of our laws are made by the EU.... total bollocks of course.)

In this case it was that old favourite of the desperate fascist, that Nazism was a form of socialism.  The clinching argument always being the word 'socialist' is part of the party's name.  I can only assume they also believe that the DDR was a fully functioning democracy and the TPA actually represents taxpayers.

But this nutter was taking it to another level.  His justification was just that bit more towards the fruitcake end of the spectrum.  He believes it because.... Hitler said so.  Which is perfectly reasonable when you recall the one thing we all remember about wee Adolf was his inability to tell a lie.  Or was it something to do with cherry trees?  I'm always getting those two mixed up.

When you're still pumping out this level of nonsense, even when a right wing historian writing in a right wing paper is able to point out why you're talking out of your anus, you really are outing yourself as a genuine fruitloop.  He compounds it with his ever-so-modest nomenclature, a Twitter persona of 'Richard Lionheart'.  No, nothing narcissistic or egocentric about this chappie, he has his feet firmly on terra firma.

So I gave in a took the piss.  Just a little.  And settled back.  Wondering if he would be daft enough.  Maybe he'd just laugh.  There must be somebody on the far right who has a sense of humour, I mean look at the illustrious line of famous right wing comedians we see so often.....

No, me neither.

Sure enough, the bait was taken.  Clueless as to what was going on, he followed the usual pattern.  Gets irate, becomes abusive, then puerile.  Followed by smug at having 'vanquished' another' lefty', and seeking the approval of his sycophantic fascist mates.  A kind of virtual mutual masturbatory session.

But out of this amusing little encounter I did have a more serious thought.  The main stream media will tell you differently, because it's not in their interests to say so, but possibly the greatest threat we may be facing right now, even more so than climate change, is the gradual rise of fascism in what we refer to as The West.  In some cases it's overt, with the likes of Golden Dawn in Greece.  In most it's far less obvious, coming in under some cloak of respectability.  I used to joke that ukip was just the BNP for people who didn't want the neighbours to think they were racist, but they have proved to be a more insidious influence on UK politics, dragging it towards the extreme right.  It's a relief to see support for them steadily falling, but that tendency towards fascism remains worrying.

There's no clearer illustration of this than what's happening in the campaigning to be the next US president.  Two men are commanding most of the headlines, both viewed as extreme by US standards.  On the one hand there's Donald Trump, becoming increasingly more racist, increasingly more outlandish, and increasingly closer to what we understand as fascist.  Although most of us over here would view him as a caricature, he's being taken seriously by an awful lot of people over there.  They seem to have forgotten what the fight in World War Two was really about.

For a country with their dark history of McCarthyism it feels like a huge leap forward that so many people are beginning to look at Bernie Sanders as a possible president.  An avowed socialist, he stands for many progressive values that have had little opportunity for expression at the top level of US political life.  Like we do in Europe, he believes that healthcare is a right of all, not a privilege of the wealthy.  Radical stuff by American standards, when they are so used to doing without many of the rights we enjoy here (or do for now, but that's a whole other story....).

And therein is the dichotomy that gives the lie that fascism has any link to socialism.  Trump's popularity is based on raising fear and hatred, of defining people as 'other' so that there is an enemy to focus on, obscuring the empty rhetoric behind it.  Whilst Sanders offers hope.  Hope of change, hope of a fairer society and a chance to start  reducing the exploitation of the poor by the wealthy.

Hope of hatred?  I'm with Bernie.


PS  Now, do I send a link to this post to 'Mr Lionheart'?  I know I shouldn't, but....

A Shop out of Time

M&S TIME WARP

I am not a Marks and Spencer kind of person.  Never have been.  We do go in there occasionally for food.  But if I was shopping for clothes it wouldn't be the first place I'd think of.  Or the second, third or tenth.  I don't pretend to be the snappiest of dressers - but M&S?  Please....

Yet the other day I found myself in an M&S Outlet store.  Only because Barbara wanted to go in and see what they had on offer, since the prices are a fair bit cheaper than in the normal stores.  To pass the time I had a wander around the men's clothing.  And, as I'd expected, found little to interest me.  I'm only a few months off turning sixty myself, but everything in there looked like it was aimed at old men, much older than me.  Or at younger men who are prematurely middle aged (Tories?).

No surprises then.  In fashion terms M&S looks locked into a bygone era.  But there's another reason, besides appearance, why it felt like going back a few decades.

I'm not especially tall, around six feet two.  However I am disproportionately short of torso, long of limb.  Gibbon like.  Thirty and more years ago getting sleeves that were long enough and, even trickier, jeans and trousers that didn't expose my ankles, wasn't straightforward.  I always had to shop around a lot.

As I've aged the problem has reduced greatly and finding the requisite leg length - thirty four inches - is simple enough.  Hell, even Primark have that as size 'long'.  Evolution has moved on and in today's generation my gangly build is far more commonplace, and the clothing racks reflect that change.

But not in M&S.  To this day it seems they still think 'long' equals thirty three inches. Or, as I like to think of it, far too bloody short.  Not only they do produce clothing that surely only the terminally conservative would want to wear, but they don't seem to have realised that shapes have changed too.  Didn't I hear they were losing business?  It's not hard to see why.

Oh, and Barbara, who has past the sixty mark, felt that most of the stuff she looked at was for old ladies who wanted to look like old ladies.  I don't think either of us are M&S kind of people....

David Bowie's dead

ON THE BOWIE BANDWAGON

I noticed that David Bowie died today.  I couldn't help but notice really, since all the news programmes and all my social media timelines have been about little else.  Big event, eh?

Well it seems to be for a lot of people.  Cue much wailing and fearfulness and a great gnashing of teeth.  Or something like that.  His death is a sad event, but all deaths are.

OK, I sort of get it.  Most people have songs or albums from their past they associate with particular moments in their life.  Sometimes they feel the artist was talking just to them and helped them through some difficult patch, usually in their teenage years.  And Bowie did turn out some good songs, and was amazingly long lived as a pop star.

But that, when all is said and done, is all that he was.  A pop singer.  An influential one perhaps, but he's still just someone you either liked or didn't, or just found to be a background noise to your life.  And if it's the former you shouldn't really expect everyone else to feel the same way you do.  Yet I suspect many will find my words objectionable.  (I saw one tweet that linked to a video of his last gig and said that everyone - yes, everyone - had to watch it.  Or maybe I could make my own mind up?)

I looked at one article that claimed to list his seven most important songs.  Right enough, I'd heard of six of them, and really liked a couple.  The seventh meant nothing to me.  It's noticeable that the latest of the six was recorded in 1983, round about the time I realised I no longer felt any need to pretend I was taking an interest in pop music.  Much as I think Space Oddity is a great song, some of Bowie's stuff I found a bit annoying.  He had, to my ears, that slightly whiny quality you get with some London accents, and that could be off-putting.  So I was never going to be a fan, was never tempted to buy his music, even though I was fully aware of who he was.  Many people weren't, and what's wrong with that?  Yet there are articles out there on the internet wondering how anyone could not have heard of him.  It's not that hard to figure out....

A few days ago there was a similar, albeit far lesser, outpouring about the death of another singer called Lemmy.  (Sorry if you're a fan of his, but I'd genuinely never heard of him.)  If someone dies who was an important part of your formative memories then such events are upsetting.  Shortly before that I heard of the death of a singer who was important to me when I was developing my own musical tastes - Andy M Stewart.  I'm well aware that hardly anyone who reads this will have a clue who the guy was, but he mattered to me.  Bowie didn't.

We're all different, we all have our own tastes, memories and heroes.  Let's not expect everyone to share them.

Ironically, from what I do know of Bowie, I think that's a message he'd have approved of.

Looking down on the Graves

LIFE ABOVE DEATH

And that's a year gone by, living above 'our' cemetery.  We had all the jokes about it being the dead centre of the city, the neighbours are dead quiet, people are dying to live here etc etc ad nauseam.  But the reality is that it's been not just peaceful, but surprisingly interesting as well.

With so many tree varieties out there the view changes greatly across the seasons.  There's the odd bit of wildlife as well, with many birds, a few squirrels and the occasional fox.  But it's human activities to the forefront.  Funerals of course, because it remains an active graveyard, visitors to gravesides and out of general interest (there's a historic memorial on the far wall), plus the people involved in the general upkeep of the place.

This is Rosebank Cemetery, just a mile or so to the north of the city centre, it's over a hundred and sixty years old, and I have to admit to finding it fascinating.  To illustrate the changes that tkae place over a twelve month period I'm kicking off a new weekly photo blog.  This will contain weekly pictures taken from our fifth floor vantage point - some standard views each week, then anything of additional interest I come across - so I can look back at this time next year and see how the sights from our windows advance across the course of 2016.

The new blog is called A Year in the Life.... of Death and I will be trying to post every Friday (or the nearest day possible if I'm away) throughout the year.  Do have a look if you think it might be interesting.  Or even if you don't.

2015, the best bits

BEST OF THE YEAR

What were my favourite entertainment moments of 2015?

From a purely personal perspective 2015 has been one of the most enjoyable years of my life.  It's wonderful to be back living in my home city again, not least because there are so many things to do.  Whilst I've had fun posting in this blog over the past twelve months, it's been the other blog I began in February which perhaps best reflects how much there has been to relish in the twelve months just gone by.

Go Live gave me a chance to combine two of my favourite hobbies - writing, and going to see live performances.  Since I get pleasure from the former, and spend a great deal of time on the latter, why not try my hand at writing reviews?  I don't claim it to have been any great success, but I do love the challenge and have no plans to stop anytime soon.

At the start I thought I'd write about every live event I went to, plus any films I saw in the cinema.  At first I included reports of ice hockey matches, but this was soon dropped.  I don't think I have any future as a sports writer!  (And hockey now plays such a big part of our winter lives that it would dominate the blog if I let it....)  So the blog concentrates on music and comedy gigs, plays and films.

The very first post was actually, bizarrely, two totally unconnected reviews in one.  Not a mistake I've repeated since.  I came closest to breaking the pattern in August, when I saw over 60 Fringe shows and simply finding the time to write the reviews became a problem on occasion.  But they're all there....

Today it's time to look back over all of those reviews and recall what were my favourites - in Comedy, Music, Drama and Film.  In doing so I see I've reviewed 51 comedy gigs, 45 music gigs, 27 plays and 31 films.  (And 7 ice hockey match reports.)  Oh, and one oddity that doesn't quite fit into any of the above.

1) Comedy
The easy answer would be Mark Thomas who once again demonstrated his genius for combining radical politics with gut wrenching laughter.  But I'm going to go for someone who I'd never seen before and who has stuck in the memory like no other.  George Egg : Anarchist Cook was a stand up show like no other as he produced a delicious three course meal before our eyes using cooking implements that can be found in a hotel room.  Imaginative, instructive and hilarious.
Mind you, there have been so many other great comic moments from the likes of Mark Steel, Stu & Garry, Sarah Kendall and our mate Aidan Goatley that the choice wasn't as simple as I make it sound.

2) Music
As with comedy I could simply choose my all time favourite band, Lau, and the two magnificent performances they gave in London and Edinburgh.  But, as above, I'm going to go with an act that was new to me and left a big impression.  So I'm choosing Himmerland who were one of the most original outfits I encountered combining Danish folk, jazz and Ghanaian rhythms.  Superb entertainment and great studio album too.  (Plus, bizarrely, reviewing them resulted in my words being translated into Danish.  A surreal experience.)
Other great bands I saw this year?  Dallahan, Dean Owens, Viper Swing,Woody Pines.... it would be so easy to go on and on.

3) Drama

Seeing Jonathan Pryce as The Merchant of Venice at The Globe was certainly memorable, but the story was too weel kent to make any real emotional impact.  So my choice is a far less ambitious production staged in a square box of a room in a modern Edinburgh University building.  Hannah and Hanna was a simple, low budget, two hander with a powerful message.
Honourable mentions go to The Driver's Seat, Hotel Paradiso, Tracks of the Winter Bear and all ten of the productions in the A Play, A Pie and A Pint series.

4) Film

Only one winner for me here.  Hector has stayed with me like no other big screen experience this year.  Peter Mullan is magnificent, the story life affirming, a tale that needed telling.
I also loved Welcome to Me, 13 Minutes, Suffragette and Still Alice.

5) Book

No, I don't do book reviews, but I do read a lot.  Forty three this year, down from previous years, but maybe because I've been out so much!  They cover a wide variety of genres and periods, although only one was non-fiction.  The most memorable of these was The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan.  Telling the story of Anais, a teenager in a young offenders institution, it's a powerful reminder of how easy it is for anyone to become one of society's outcasts, and how little we try to understand the people our systems fail.
Other memorable novels have been Learning to Lose by David Trueba, The Kiln by William McIlvanney and Alice in Exile by Piers Paul Read.

6) Hockey Match

I might not write match reports any longer, but I couldn't refrain from comment on what's become such an important part of my life.  At it's best live sport can provide all the drama of a Shakespeare - heroes and villains, elation and despair, ugliness and beauty, uncertainty and commitment.  All of these were fully delivered in the Edinburgh Capitals match against Cardiff Devils on 4 December.  The Welsh side took a one goal advantage from the first period, dominated the second with another score early on before making it three just before the hooter went.  There was little more than 10 minutes left on the clock when Caps got their first, a maiden EIHL goal for young Sean Beattie.  They got a second with less than 3 minutes left, and the equaliser came with only 28 seconds on the clock.  There's drama for you.  Overtime saw Caps complete an unlikely comeback with a Jacob Johnston goal after only 24 seconds.  What a night.

And finally....

Just in case you think that everything I get to see turns out to be wonderful I should maybe mention some of the turkeys of the year.  North v South was a tedious film to endure.  Sparrow Folk weren't as funny as they thought they were.  Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour was a musical drama that never got my interest.  And In the Pink didn't seem to know what they wanted to be.  But the bin bag of the year award has to fall to 'comedy' show Relatively Normal, an hour of my life I have no wish revisit.  Dire.

Here's to a hugely entertaining 2016.

You're never too old....

THE SINGER, NOT THE SONG

The years we spent driving frequently between Southport and Edinburgh taught me that the best way to make the two hundred plus miles pass more quickly was to listen to a decent audiobook. Something not too complex to follow when your attention also has to be elsewhere, but sufficiently well written to maintain the interest. Most times we were both able to enjoy what was coming through the speakers, but occasionally Barbara would decide it wasn't for her and she'd stick her earphones in to listen to music.

One such occasion never fails to make me laugh when I recall it. Barbara, as you do, started to sing along to the track she was listening to. In saying 'sing' I am being extremely generous. There were noises, a few of which resembled something like a tune. Which tune was impossible to say until I heard a fragment of lyric, words I recognised, and bust out laughing that what I was hearing was in any way connected to the song I knew so well.

Fast forward to the present. Back in April Barbara joined a local choir. No auditions, just find the vocal range that suits you best and away you go. Just for fun, have a good laugh, enjoy yourselves. Except. They sometimes get asked to give public performances, perhaps three or four times a year. And then it becomes more than just a bit of fun, when there's an actual audience going to be there.

The choir provides the lyrics and the music, broken down into the various voice types, for people to download and practice at home. So Barbara has got into the habit of taking her phone into the bathroom in the morning and singing along to the songs they are currently learning.

Guess what (part 1)? She loves it.

Guess what (part 2)? The noises coming out of that bathroom sound pretty good (albeit a bit odd, as there seem to be a lot of passages that are more ooooh, dum dum dum and aaaah than actual words). They sound like songs.

To date she's taken part in three live performances. The first two were outdoors, so the wind played a role, and the rehearsals didn't seem to have been taken all that seriously, so nerves were there in abundance. Last weekend the choir performed in the National Museum, and the preparation for this one was much more thorough. Even I could tell, just from listening to those toilet rehearsals, that it was going to be better for Xmas.

And so it proved. They might not get invited on to the BBC, but they entertained a sizeable crowd (even if most were friends and family!). More to the point, they looked like they were having fun. People singing with confidence sing better and look like they're having a good time. So everyone else might as well too.

Is there a moral to this tale? Well, sort of. There's an 'old dog, new tricks' vibe going on here, don't you think? Or is just to say that you should ignore the laughter of your life partner and go and do what you want to do anyway....

And just in case you don't want to take my word for it, here's some video footage of the event. (It's not very good quality, and there a few slightly odd audience noises at times, but you'll get some idea of what it was like.)

Do They Know It's Christmas 

Roar 

I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing 

Just The Way You Are

Angels 

All I Want For Christmas 

Merry Xmas everybody, and an excellent 2016.

Should we bomb Syria?

THERE DOESN'T SEEM TO BE MUCH POINT IN TEACHING HISTORY ANY MORE

So it looks like we're going to war.  Again.  In the Middle East.  Again.  David Cameron tried to make his case for this action earlier today.  He even managed to cover all the relevant topics.  Although the actual answers he provided were few in number.  Credibility was lacking throughout.

Because, from both a humanitarian and a pragmatic viewpoint, only one thing really matters.  If we've learned nothing else from Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya - and the Treat of Versailles almost a hundred years ago - mass killing of your opponents, and the inevitable slaughter of the innocents which comes as a part of such action, comes to nothing when your opponents are driven by a fanatical ideology, unless that ideology itself can be discredited.

So it doesn't matter what the military strategy is (although the lack of a credible ground force to secure territory does look like a huge gaff), if you haven't thought through the endgame fully then the chance are you're going to make things even worse than they were before.

There's one question that has to be answered in full, and that's what this action will do to benefit the most important people in the whole affair - the poor buggers who actually live in Syria.   Make genuine improvements to their lives, on their terms, not ours, and you might just have a war worth fighting.

Is it time to apply some common sense to the Climate Change debate?

IS THERE A COMMON SENSE APPROACH?

The United Nations says that while world wide actions to reduce the causes of climate change are working, but remain inadequate to stave off potential disasters.  Climate change deniers scoff at these views and say that there have always been natural changes in climate and always will be.

I'm not a scientist. You probably aren't either. Even if you are, you probably aren't someone with the expertise and experience needed to make some sense of the vast array of data available on the subject of climate change and then derive sensible conclusions.  There aren't many such people in the world.  And they are far from unanimous in their interpretations of the possible causes or outcomes.  A large majority continue to say that the risks are real, the potential consequences enormous and devastating for the human race.  But others say this is nonsense and the earth's atmosphere is perfectly capable of taking care of itself.

Of course there is a wide continuum of views available, with extremes at either end of the spectrum.  An intriguing aspect of this is the ways in which a scientific subject has found itself reflected in political extremes as well.

By and large the left of politics want to take action to prevent further global warming, whilst the right think that will harm economies. For the far right, such as ukip here and the Tea Party in the US, the latter position has become a matter of faith and they seem to have become fully immunised against any facts or new information which might make them rethink their views.

This is a crazy way to approach a subject where millions of lives are at stake, one where the science matters far far more than politics. Shortsightedness could prove disastrous.

At one extreme are those who fear that climate change is largely man made and will have cataclysmic consequences in this century. They are advocating that humanity greatly reduces it's reliance on fossil fuels and develops alternative energy sources as soon as possible. Other thoughts are to reduce our meat consumption and move more towards a vegetable and cereal based diet which is far more energy efficient.

On the opposite side the extremists say alternative power sources, such as wind, are bad for the economy, waste resources and ruin the countryside. Their first priority is the short term goal of economic prosperity.

I don't know who's right. My instinct says the answers are somewhere between the two, but how far along that continuum, and in which direction, I have no idea.

But applying some common sense to the discussion it's hard to avoid one conclusion.

If the climate change deniers turn out to be correct, but we've invested vast resources in new energy technologies, and other green policies, nothing disastrous will happen. We might be a bit poorer in the short term, but most of what we do will not be wasted. One certainty is that fossil fuels will eventually run out and we have to replace them at some point. In the long term energy renewables make more sense than nuclear from which the dangers can never be fully eliminated.

But if the fears of those who say climate change will dramatically increase sea levels and make vast swathes of the earth uninhabitable could come even remotely true, yet we've done nothing to stave off the outcome, the results would be the greatest disaster ever to face mankind.

Looked at from that perspective, isn't the obvious conclusion to do everything we can to implement those Green ideas?  Not to do so is to play Risk on a grand scale with the lives of future generations.

Coming to the hockey

IT'S NOT ALWAYS LIKE THIS....

As I explained at the beginning of this year one of the big changes in my life, our lives, since moving north has been an increasing addiction to ice hockey matches and a passion for supporting the Edinburgh Capitals.  The strength of the resultant feelings continues to surprise me, and the story has moved on since.  This season we are proud to be season ticket holders at the Murrayfield rink, and I now find myself a member of the Supporters Club committee.

There's no going back now.  I'm even in danger of becoming a hockey bore, with a tediously (?) evangelical approach to encouraging others to come along and see what they're missing.  And when people from our old life down south come up to visit they are firmly told that if they come up on a weekend between September and March that will be taken as tacit agreement that they want to go to a match....

Two couples have been up here recently and both experienced hockey for the first time in their lives (well three of them did, one woman recalled going to games at Wembley in the sixties!).  It turned out that they picked their times wisely.

The first match was against Braehead, with the Caps putting in a storming performance and coming up convincing 6-2 winners.  Our friends saw some great goals and were sitting with some very happy fans.  I had to tell them it isn't always like this....

The second took place yesterday, and this had a bit more drama thrown in.  A woeful looking Capitals team (and some, ahem, 'controversial' refereeing) found themselves four goals down to arch rivals Fife Flyers.  Our friends were enjoying the experience, the speed and excitement, and the occasional gentile bout of fisticuffs that broke out on the ice.  They also felt a bit sorry for us, watching a drama unfold that might not leave us in the happiest of moods....

What followed will remain with me for a very long time, and certainly gave this southern couple something to remember from their visit.  A late goal in the second period kept the fans' hopes of a recovery warm, like a sighting of land from a lifeboat.  It turned out not be a mirage.  A change of tactics, and our North American pros earning every penny of their pay, saw two goals early on, and screamer of a shot from Ryan Hayes to equalise with five minutes to play.  Finishing up with a Caps winner in overtime.  No script writer would dare come up so implausible an ending in this cynical age....

And guess what?  I had to tell my friends that it isn't always like this....

It might be the top level of British ice hockey, but the resources available to the teams in this league vary enormously.  With Caps being firmly towards the lower end of the wealth scale.  You become a Caps fan and you become an aficionado of disappointment, a connoisseur of misfortune, someone used to dealing with the blows.  It's a very Scottish feeling, that underdog status, and one to be savoured like you'd been given the chips and no fish.  You learn to enjoy what you have.

Then there are those nights, like last night, when you not only get the full fish supper, but peas, bread and a decent bottle of wine thrown in.

No, it isn't always like this.  But when it is it's one of the greatest feelings in the world.

If you're in Edinburgh you should come along.