In the goathouse yesterday, while it was raining:
Some goats have much longer horns
…than others.
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In the goathouse yesterday, while it was raining:
Some goats have much longer horns
…than others.
A Bad Guide
There was a telly show the other night about putting GPS collars on cats, and “cat cams”, so that the researchers could see what the wee blighters get up “outside the cat flap”. (Answer: it varies, but seems to include a lot of eating each others’ food.)
Anyway, you’ll see the way my mind is turning.
Yes, I can. Well, what do they cost, goat cams?
http://compare.ebay.co.uk/like/321119464430?var=lv<yp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes&var=sbar&_lwgsi=y&cbt=y&device=c&adtype=pla&crdt=0&ff3=1&ff11=ICEP3.0.0&ff12=67&ff13=80&ff14=63&ff19=0
I missed the girls =)
I would like to see more cam cams in use. These are cameras mounted on observers who watch the results of cams mounted on other observers. It’s would be very Luhmann-like: (n+1)-order observers observing n-order observers. Stuart observing Jeremy observing the goats observing whatever-goats-observe. The question is: would anyone be the wiser after all this observation ? Can one overdose on curiosity ?
As a kid I read somewhere an illustrated article that taught you how to internalize paranoia, i.e. behave properly without having to be reminded all the time. The article was about “watchbirds”. The text went somwthing like this: “This is a watchbird watching you. This is a watchbird watching a watchbird watching you …”
I now find that the author was a certain Munro Leaf. This must have been the cartoon series that ran in the Ladies Home Journal, to which my mother subscribed. The watchbirds don’t look scary now, and in fact they didn’t then. I just remember being incensed at this cutesy mutual surveillance scam, long before I had words to describe it. I believe I was a difficult child.
Munro Leaf wrote “Ferdinand the Bull” !! The real name of Dr. Seuss is Ted Geisel. Geisel means “hostage”.
Thats right, I knew i knew the name Munro Leaf. It’s a bit odd he’s not better known, really. I’m shocked that he would propose an idea like that.
Dearie, thanks. They’re cheaper than I would have expected. I have eleven days and some hours to think it over. It sounds like a good idea, worth a try. I agree with Stu that most of the time you’re probably not going to learn much. There’s a limit to the number of lives you can live at once in real time. In detective programmes there’s often someone who spends several days & nights looking for clues on a videocam, but on the show they always emphasise the clue and not the tedium (the kind of tedium that on TV is illustrated by open pizza boxes, bad lighting and cigarette smoke).
Fair point. Maybe the GPS idea is simpler to use: on the telly the data was just plotted out as lines on a map. But then I imagine that the goats don’t stravaig like cats.
I’m sure the goats’ days have highlights. They might be easy to spot if you fast-forward.
Collins English Dictionary
First we had ley lines, now cat lines and goat lines. I bet those with the most stravaiging are lady lines, as tracked in large department stores. Those with the least are gent lines, which just go back and forth between a case of beer and a TV, forming a furrow.
Grumbly, you sexist pig, we’re not supposed to say bad things about men anymore, in case they’re somebody’s father .
Oh Jesu, “the data were… “
Shouldn’t that be “O Jesu”?
Or, it’s vocative, “O Jesus”?
Oh yeah ? What about “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” ? dearie is a cultivated person.
Sorry: “O yeah ?”
Oh all right. Christ on a bicycle, the data were…
Been consorting with too many Americans recently, have we then ?
Jesus prune, is there no end to this madness?
Jesu is the old-timey German “vocative” form of Jesus. Sez here that the original title of the cantata is Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben. How prettily that trips past the lips, don’t you think ? Sort of like “snips and snails and puppydog tails”.
In olden times, educated Germans were hot on preserving Latin forms in German aspic – Wohl mir, daß ich Jesum habe, frinstance. There are intermediate forms too: the Ascension of the Virgin is Mariä Himmelfahrt. Mariae would be the right Latin form, but simple Germans might not know how to pronouce it. So we have Mariä, which in terms of spelling is neither a Latin nor German genitive form.
Don’t quote me on that derivation.
Very interesting.
So when, oh when, should I use O? When I feel like it?
Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben may seem crude in comparison with “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”. But I ask you, now: what in the world is a joy of a desiring ?
Come to think of it, if there’s a different vocative form for Jesus, is it Christian nouns that have a different nominative & vocative in Latin? Is that why we had to learn vocatives? Nom. & voc. were always the same in the small amount of Latin I learnt. I never felt I got my money’s worth with the vocatives.
Data:
dearieme, I think it really is permissible to write “the data was …”
Just as it is permissible to say “I believe in Jesus” instead of “I believe in Jesum”, or whatever it would be.
Imeantersay, it’s an English word now.
According to my Latin dictionary, “Iesus” is nominative, -um is accusative and the other cases end in –u. However, “Maria” belongs to first declension. Why is it? Oh, God, I don’t know. I remember the famous proverb “Caesar, non super grammaticos” but I think that “Ecclesia super grammaticos” could be used in the first case.
All I remember of the vocative was our amusement at the idea of addressing a table. I also remember that the first potential sentence we could construct was “Amo mensam” (have I got that right?) which we sang in English, as we moved between classrooms, to the old Harry Lauder tune:
“I love a table, A bonny, bonny table …”.
Was your Latin teacher an antique dealer?
The Norwegian word for computer is datamaskin (data machine). Nowadays that doesn’t seem an adequate description of a pc, but then nor does computer, especially when we’ve also got ‘calculator’.
I like the Caesar & the grammatici saying. I could have used it the other day had I known it.
The first Latin sentence I learnt was also a bit odd (even absurd): “Puella nautas amat” (the little girl loves sailors).
Nothing wrong with little girls loving sailors. It’s the other direction that is frowned upon.
>Grumbly Stu
That’s right but when we translated it to Spanish, our verb “amar” could mean nearly the same. As you know, we usually only “amamos” our partners in personal relationship. So that sentence could also make us think about Lolitas in harbors. God!
Ahoy, Crown, I may have found you a project for the whole family.
http://www.sothebysrealty.co.uk/buy/property/-in-banff,ab45-for-gbp-400,000-ref-2342110/
What do you think? The goats would be happy, and Topsy and Jack would love it.
What about Betty, the Welsh cob? She’s still around. It’s got possibilities, dearie. I like the work that’s been done on it, but it could do with windows and heating. I have a bit of a hankering to live in the Outer Hebrides, but I suppose Aberdeenshire would be more social. The former owner, this Robin de la Lanne-Mirrlees, sounds a bit shady. “Rouge Dragon Pursuivant of Arms in Ordinary” is the kind of title they give themselves in the Ku Klux Klan.
Latin first- and third-declension nouns don’t have distinct vocatives (puella, puella; navis, navis), but many second-declension ones do (modus, mode; Lucius, Luci). Caesar, though, is one that doesn’t (Ave, Caesar!).
dearieme, I think it really is permissible to write “the data was …” Just as it is permissible to say “I believe in Jesus” instead of “I believe in Jesum”, or whatever it would be. Imeantersay, it’s an English word now.
I have taught you well, young padawan!
Woops, sorry, Caesar is third-declension, isn’t he? I never was much of a Latinist.
Also, I forgot to mention that my wife had a dream yesterday in which we had three goats in our garage, as well as a larger animal that may have been a cow. She didn’t know where the car was.
Goats quite like going in and on cars, so you could in theory leave it in the garage. But tell her the car’s all right outside as long as you don’t mind getting fallen leaves on the windshield. In fact, you really don’t need a garage unless you keep goats. You probably could keep a cow in your garage as well as three goats. Unlike with goats you need to be able to dispose of the poop during the winter. They would all enjoy the company, though.
I’m glad to hear about the 2nd-declension vocatives (glad they had some, that is).
>Languagehat
Speaking of second-declension, I sometimes joked about the Latin rosary with one of my grandmother starting it with “Granny: Domine, labia mea aperies”. Then she always answered the rest of that sentence, not the whole rosary thank God. She had it automatically as a reflex. Now I have a nice copy of the page of an illuminated book with that sentence hung over my bed.
As for “Caesar”, as you know: “quae sunt Caesaris Caesare…” :- )
>Languagehat
I’m sorry. “…quae sunt Caesaris Caesari…”
See, we all have problems with Caesar. No wonder he got stabbed.
>Languagehat
“Tu quoque, Linguapetase?” Well, maybe you spoke about the income tax. The night before last I sent my income tax return.
Didn’t Pharaoh once dream that he had seven cows in his garage?
I recently dreamed of five meatballs arranged in a circle and held together by a loop of string. Upon awakening I realized that this was because I had been thinking about finite cyclic groups acting on spheres. Later that day I did make some progress toward a solution of the problem, but I can’t tell whether the dream helped.
Aren’t all Latin teachers antique dealers, in a sense?
>Empty
Yes, seven lean cows and seven fat cows, nowadays a very used metaphor.
As for Empty’s Ouroboros:
Your dream reminds me the famous and successful dream of Kekule:
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/16/science/the-benzene-ring-dream-analysis.html
I thought of that, too. But my string of meatballs may not be quite as useful as Kekule’s Ouroboros.
>Empty
Think of inventions as Teflon and post-it, for example.
>Empty
Your dream reminds me a bit a variety of melons that usually are hung in order to preserve it until the winter:
http://www.conmuchagula.com/2011/07/12/museo-del-melon-de-villaconejos-unico-en-el-mundo/
“Rouge Dragon Pursuivant of Arms in Ordinary” seems OK to me; it’s the claim that he was a “count” that seems odd. Very odd.
Maybe he just thought people were calling him a count.
It took me a whole day to figure that one out. “A count called to a count: Crown prosecutor takes on nobility”.
I don’t really know why there’s no title “count” in Britain. They have viscount, and countess for the wife of an earl. Somehow earl took its place.
Although I suppose earl is the same as the Skandinavian jarl, and so was already there well before the Normans arrived.
One can be Earl of a county, as in Earl of Suffolk.
Goodness, the current Earl of Suffolk (the twenty-first) succeeded on his father’s death in 1941. He must be quite a codger.
Ooh, he’s got two counties in his titles:
Michael John James George Robert Howard, 21st Earl of Suffolk, 14th Earl of Berkshire (b. 1935)
I like the list of Christian names. it reminds me of a book I read recently where the author remembered his upbringing between the wars in a country house: at one stage the servants referred to the sons as “Mister Rory, Master Denis, Michael and Wee Pat”.
I didn’t know there was an earl of Suffolk. The first earl was a son of the Duke of Norfolk, which is why they’re both called Howard. He was Thomas Howard, Lord Chamberlain under James I (- sorry, James VI). He was imprisoned by the Star Chamber for corruption, together with his wife and Bingley, “their crony”, whose job title was Remembrancer.
Apparently there’s still a remembrancer in Scotland: the QLTR or Queen’s & Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer who “deals with ownerless property”.
“Ownerless property” is an oxymoron.
If properties can’t properly be said to exist without being owned, then one cannot properly say that there is a property “redness” independent of red things. This was the view of some nominalists in the medieval debate with realists:
So are you talking about redheads or real estate ?
Sorry, that should be “bald redheads or real estate”.
“sorry, James VI”: no, he was James I for the purpose of the English Lord Chamberlain.
All property in Britain has probably been owned by someone since at least the Bronze Age. I dare say there have always been cases where it’s difficult to work out who that rightful owner is. In medieval Cambridge the identity of the Lord of the Manor had long been lost and yet the running of the big fields and commons trundled on perfectly well as far as you can tell from the College records. Presumably as long as somebody convened the manor court, or the town council took over its function, all was OK. If there had been a big mineral find then no doubt a thousand claimants would have presented themselves, waving parchments faked in monasteries.
“Umbrellas” prompted Spode, as if he were the King’s Remembrancer or something.
Grumbly, I can’t say that there’s a property, ‘redness’, without red things. The opposite, believing in something without any evidence of its existence, seems to go along with a belief in God.
dearie, property is a thing that belongs to someone. The QLTR must figure out the rightful owners of property, don’t you think? That’s not the same as ‘ownerless’.
Ø, I’m in awe of your remembrance of Wodehouse. Has everyone except me heard of the Remembrancer?
Surely “ownerless” is a term of art?
As you may have seen on WKPD:
In Scotland, Bona Vacantia deals with assets of dissolved companies, the assets of missing persons and lost or abandoned property; … The separate doctrine of ultimus haeres states that the assets of those who die intestate leaving no other person entitled to inherit pass to the Crown. Both of these rights, together with treasure trove, are administered by the Queen’s and Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer,
Ownerless property: I said earlier that the identity of the Lord of the Manor of Cambridge was long lost. Not to worry, the Town Council took the role. And then I found “Between 1841 and 1876 various attempts were made to resolve the problems caused by the overuse of the Cambridge commons by those who had no legal rights to graze them. A committee of the Town Council reported that “the legitimate right to use these commons at all was centred in comparatively a very few individuals [i.e. the commoners] and that such rights were rendered absolutely valueless by other people trespassing most unwarrantably upon that which does not in any way belong to them”. Attempts to trace the true holders of grazing rights proved too difficult.”
So the identity of the commoners had been lost too. Brilliant: the identity of the owners of both sorts of property rights on the commons, i.e. landowner and commoners, had – at different times – been lost.
Now the law is, for Midsummer Common for instance, that persons residing, owning or occupying land in the City of Cambridge have the right to graze geldings, mares and cows from 1st April to 30th November in each year to a total of 20 beasts. Moreover the Council is allowed to prescribe the procedure for the registration of commoners entitled to graze animals, to set the number of grazing animals, and to make a reasonable charge. So, on average, Cambridge commoners may graze approximately two ten-thousandths of a beast each on Midsummer Common. Hurray!
Moreover “In 2007 a commoner introduced a small herd of Red Poll cows to graze the Common”. That’s our vet’s wife, that is. And lovely creatures they are, Red Poll.
Ok, that sounds like ownerless property. Red Poll look like Illawarra Shorthorn, except for the horns of course.
What about the property ownerlessness?
Oh well, I suppose that’s all right.
You mean, if nothing is ownerless then ownerlessness is still a property? But my point was this: something has to be ownerless, because if nothing is ownerless then ownerlessness is ownerless.
Doesn’t that assume that ownership of ownerlessness is a possibility? If ownerlessness can’t be owned then it can’t be ownerless.
empty is playing the Russell-paradox card. It’s possible he won’t own up to it, since It would be ownerous to explain here.
Grumbly I changed my mind about the nominalists. It seems pretty reasonable that you could have redness without red things. That was silly, I got it mixed up with God & co.
I can see that I went astray in one way:
When a property is a piece is a piece of real estate, then we may say that it is owned by somebody. We can debate whether it deserves to be called a property at all if it is not owned by anybody.
When a property is something like redness we don’t usually say that it owned by red objects, do we? Maybe we say that red objects have that property. We can debate whether redness deserves to be called a property at all if it is not had by anything.
So maybe I should have written about “haverlessness” instead of “ownerlessness”.
or “possessorlessness”
I’m sorry, Ø. You’re really playing against the B team, but no one else seems to want to chime in.
If nothing is possessorless then posessorlessness is possessorless? That’s not really a paradox if you just say “possessorlessness is the only thing that’s possessorless”.
We can debate whether redness deserves to be called a property at all if it is not had by anything.
You have to allow the possibility of redness to exist (to be called a property) without any evidence, otherwise you can’t speculate on the existence of other things that would depend on redness existing. Scientists wouldn’t get anywhere if they couldn’t make a hypothesis.
No, I’m the one who should be sorry, but look, there really is a paradox here (a tired old paradox, but a paradox nonetheless).
Look, assume that possessorlessness is the only thing that’s possessorless. Or even just assume that possessorlessness is possessorless.
That is, possessorlessness has no possessor.
That is, there is nothing that possesses possessorlessness.
That is, there is nothing that is possessorless.
There is the contradiction: by our assumption, possessorlessness is possessorless.
Really my main interest in bringing this up was that I wanted to say words like “ownerlessness” and “possessorlessness”, and now that I’ve done that I’m happy to drop it.
But then we’ll be possessorlessnessless.
I think I can cope with possessorlessnesslessness. Or do I mean “possessorlessnessless”-ness?
Well, all right. But it’s moot, a) because there are plenty of things that are possessorless. The sun and the moon and the planets: you can’t say they’re ‘possessed’ by the solar system, and b) ultimately because of Grumbly’s point that you could never rule out the possibility of possessorlessness even if it had never been spotted.
Gosh, I hope I didn’t actually make any such bold statement, if for no reason other than that I can’t quite figure out what it means. My position is that words/notions/phrases such as “property”, “have/posses a property”, “exist”, “real” etc. are of no use at all outside of everyday life. In everyday life, either you understand what is meant when someone says “that flower is red”, or you don’t, but there is no judicious discussion of “properties”.
Look at how quickly the discussion here got tangled up in misunderstandings, ever-longer words and (thank goodness) a few jokes. The history of philosophy adequately illustrates the pointlessness of judiciously discussing “properties”. Yet there are still people who dissertate on qualia, universals etc. etc.
Notice that I didn’t express a preference in the nominalism/realism issue. That’s because I don’t have one.
I was just fooling around. In my fooling around I was never trying to argue for or against the idea that a property is nothing without things having the property. Rather, I was, as Grumbly says, playing the Russell paradox card (which is about designing something which cannot have a certain property except by not having it and vice versa).
In fact, I think I agree with Grumbly’s second and third sentences above. That expresses my common-sense way around such paragraphs.
Didn’t Noetica tell us that qualia were a kind of marsupial?
Qualia is an Australian resort.
Qualia had a bloody fine match at scrum-half on Saturday.
What position did you play, dearie?
In this discussion we have reached a stage where it seems natural to reflect on whether “properties” are worth discussing at all, and in what ways. empty at least agrees to some extent with me that they are not worth discussing in high-flown terms. Of course he may mean that he feels he would have to read more philosophy before flying into a sage discussion of properties. My opinion, based on not a little philosophical reading over the decades, is that this discussion already provides good clues as to why “properties” are not worth talking about, except with one’s real estate agent.
That’s just my opinion about “properties”. But remember that I threw out “exists” and “real” along with the properties bathwater. empty has shown reluctance to follow me there. A lot of people give me flak about such views. They themselves seem to hold only one view of each kind, each one held essentially unchanged until the day they die. They know what they know, and that’s that.
Nothing wrong with that, of course, as far as it goes. I feel the same way, only for shorter periods of time. I change my views more often than my underpants, which I have been told is a Good Thing.
But it does all remind me of the 16-18C period of European history when more and more writers gradually dared to express materialistic, godless views. Nowadays, materialistic and godless people are pleased to believe that those writers were some kind of progress vanguard, and that the Christian thinkers opposing them were reactionaries who entrenched themselves behind useless old Trinities, Words of God, geo- and other excentricities.
Perhaps one can more accurately imagine the position these Christian thinkers found themselves in, by comparing it with the position of those people today who find it impossible to understand the view that “reality” could be discarded as a useless notion – or dare I say useless belief ? To the heart of a modern, career-oriented, scientifically-minded, politically concerned citizen, what is dearer than being realistic ? What would happen to public morals if “reality” were not there to guide us ? Unthinkable.
In this discussion we have reached a stage where it seems natural to reflect on whether “properties” are worth discussing at all,
Let me rephrase that: it seems natural to reflect on whether discussing “properties” at all is proper.
When I wrote “That expresses my common-sense way around such paragraphs” I was the victim of a cut-and-paste, or rebut-in-haste, error.
What I had meant to write was “That expresses my common-sense way around such paradoxes“.
I would never never try to get around Grumbly’s paragraphs; I prefer to go straight through them as best I can.
Hat, I’m pretty sure Grumbly once denied taking the view that “nothing is real”. Now he says that he has thrown out “real”. That’s at least close to a contradiction; but I forget that his views are to be understood as constantly changing.
Grumbly, when you change your philosophical underpinnings do you then put them through the wash so you can wear them again next week?
Number eight usually but also second row. Once in a Great Selection Emergency, I had a couple of games at scrum-half. Golly, I liked that. After my second game I trotted off the pitch in Glasgow and a spectator approached me to divulge that I was the biggest effing scrum-half he’d ever seen. “Not bad, though, eh?” says I. “Aye, no’ bad” says he. Yowser!
P.S. A tip for selectors everywhere: if you play your number eight at scrum-half, you should not be surprised if you win much less ball at the tail of the line-out. I suspect that the lesson generalises.
empty: when you change your philosophical underpinnings do you then put them through the wash so you can wear them again next week?
Hard to say. It seems you didn’t read my sentence carefully enough: “I change my views more often than my underpants, which I have been told is a Good Thing.” That says nothing about how often I change my underpants.
I find it rather disgusting that so many people stay in the same sweaty, outworn philosophical underpinnings they’ve always worn. I prefer fresh views.
Not many players get to experience all that, dearie. It must have worried the opposing team too. Who played no. 8? A threequarter?
What game is this ? Rugby ?
Yes.
Basing myself on the sentence “I had a couple of games at scrum-half”, I’ll now guess that scrum-half is a playing position. Yesterday I was still wondering whether it had anything to do with Halbzeit in soccer. I felt pretty sure that the game was not cricket, because “scrum” sounds too rough and naughty for that.
As you see, I know zilch about rough and tumbly games.
I know you’re an expert chess player, though.
No way. I can’t even win often against Fritz 8 (a commercial chess program) set to calculate 3 moves ahead. Jim and I are equal. I won only by nerves, i.e. by playing the fogey gambit – cling to the tree like a cat, and wait until the whippersnapper gets cocky and makes one incautious move.
“Who played no. 8? A threequarter?” A forward promoted from a lower XV. All I remember of the pack was a paucity of ball from the tail of the line-out, otherwise I have to say I was absorbed in my own predicament of never having played as a back, even in training (except for thirty minutes at full back in a school game when our full back was injured). Anyway my brief flourish in the backs was well received and next season I captained our second XV, had one game at number 8 with them, and then was promoted to the first XV where I played my first game at loose-head prop!!
That was a success so they kept me in the firsts but moved me to second row, and eventually to number eight. At bloody last. I can’t complain too much because I was on the selection committee (as nominal captain of the seconds).
I suppose one reason for risking a lumbering fellow like me in the backs was that, at school and later in my club, I tended to surprise people when I played seven-a-side, showing a bit of skill with the ball, an eye for the try-line, and a side-step of which I was very proud.
I know rugby and cricket are completely different, but when I read things like that I can’t help but think of this.
Hee. It catches the air of “coarse cricket” very well.
I played in my school rugby first XV for two-and-a half seasons; the season lasted from the start of September to the end of March. I can remember incidents from only five of those games, plus one Possibles vs Probables game and two training sessions. The best incident was one that explained what had theretofore been a mystery to me, namely why a sizeable group of girls regularly turned up to watch our home games. At one point somebody threw a “hospital pass” to our hooker, who was instantly buried under four large opponents. A wail of concern went up from the touchline “Oh, Lachlan!” To give Lachie his due, he had a lovely head of hair.
I played far more rugby afterwards, and the games I remember are only (i) the one where the referee penalised me for punching one of my team-mates, (ii) the one where the referee didn’t penalise me for punching one of my opponents, but thanked me sotto voce (iii) the one where I asked the referee why he had penalised me, replied to his explanation with “Did I really, sir?”, and had a chorus of my team-mates shout “Yes you did!” (iv) the ones on the Stadium pitch at Murrayfield: it was heaven to play on a good surface (v) the ones where I was played out of position (vi) a tiny number of others, e.g. where the opposition pack fell about laughing when I put to my own pack the proposition that we were meant to be rugby forwards not a bloody debating society. It must have been the way I said it.
The best moment of humour was when we played Edinburgh Academicals and one of our centres scored a fine try. As he trotted back to the half-way line, a disgruntled opponent said “If that was a try, I’m a Dutchman”. Our lad responded instantly “It was a good try, van Accie”. No’ bad, eh?
Who are those people? I thought for a minute it was Monty Python, but I don’t recognise any of them.
What is “coarse cricket”? And what were you doing playing at Murrayfield? I was the open-side wing forward on our school’s 5th XV (I don’t think they’re called wing forwards any more). I was a fast runner but otherwise pretty hopeless. I used to enjoy visiting other schools and getting fried egg & chips after the game.
By “coarse cricket” I mean the form of cricket that’s analogous to “coarse rugby” and “coarse acting”.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Coarse-Rugby-Michael-Green/dp/1861050011
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Coarse-Acting-Amateur-Dramatic-Society/dp/0573190291
Those books had me weeping with laughter fifty years ago. As an example, I’d reckon that the inter-lab cricket at Cambridge is ‘coarse cricket”. Did I tell you that I once …? No, enough!
“And what were you doing playing at Murrayfield?” The first time I was a “ringer” playing for The Royal Dick Veterinary College vs The University of Strathclyde. We won, but my real memory was the turf – I realised I had never played rugby or football on a decent surface before. What a difference.
The second and third time I was turning out for my club. The kick-off of one match was delayed so we sat in the stand to watch the end of a Ladies Lacrosse match, Scotland vs NZ. We winced at the uninhibited violence of it all.