Big Treeza

That's what Janey Godley calls her, as she rips the piss out of her:

https://twitter.com/JaneyGodley/status/858277070601932800

So today, the PM was in Scotland. The media outlets were very coy about where she was going beforehand and even more coy later about where she had been.

Turned out it was here:

Deepest Aberdeenshire, between Aberdeen and Stonehaven. In a village hall, apparently booked 

as a children's party. Nobody knows who the audience were. Local Tories? The people she spoke to in Leeds last week, some of whom were allegedly recruited from the local Jobcentre, poor sods?

What is going on with Theresa May, for heavenssake? She is the Prime Minister, and has a mandate to govern on behalf of the Tory party, although it seems she distrusts her party so much she wants a personal mandate and is putting us all through a general election (costing 128m quid) to get it. In this general election campaign, it seems she will do just about anything except meet the voters. So while every other candidate in the forthcoming general election is out canvassing, she's in hiding. Have there been attempts on her life? Or threats on her life that prevent her going out in public? Or is she just feart and  not very good at dealing with people? I know which one my money's on.

Do we really have to settle for sound bites in which the words 'strong' and 'stable' appear in every sentence, even when the question asked has nothing to do with strength or stability? Could we not have a proper grown-up discussion of EU issues? Do we have to settle for Treeza accusing the Labour Party of planning a 'a coalition of chaos' with the SNP - or is it with the LibDems? There is absolutely no evidence of such a coalition ever having been suggested, despite the fact that some of us are peching for a coalition of some sort, to rescue Labour, if nothing else.

And still the Tories' poll ratings are high. Brexit ratings maybe not as high as they were. In Scotland 92% of Brexit voters want to keep freedom of movement.

That ain't going to happen unless the UK can come to some sort of accommodation with the 27 states in the EU - and that's not looking hopeful. The EU is going to play hard ball. It will want UK debts settled before any trade deals are agreed. Maybe it will even want to settle the issue of UK nationals in the EU and EU nationals in the UK - I hope so - before anything else happens.

It's still a mess. A Tory mess. It beats me how anyone could vote for this party seeing what they've done to the UK.

You mugwump!

I don't know what a mugwump is. I don't care really. It's a word used by Boris Johnson, the UK Foreign Secretary. This job was once held by Robin Cook who used it to project his views of an ethical foreign policy. But now mugwump is the word used by Boris Johnson in a UK newspaper to describe the leader of the Labour Party. It's meant to be insulting and he put the words 'boring old' in front of the word mugwump just to make sure we understood how bad Jeremy Corbyn is.

I'm guessing Boris was paid to write the article. He usually is. That must make it easier to write this kind of guff.

He's been very quiet recently, has Boris, in spite of the fact that he is apparently a "very popular UK politician." I don't know how Boris earned this reputation with the public - or how it began to decline. But decline it has. It may have to do with photos of him in the press in which he has hung about at international meetings of NATO, the UN and the EU looking like a knotless thread and contributing nothing. It may be to do with that infamous EU bus, which proclaimed that massive amounts of money would be brought back to the UK, although we now know they won't.

Now he's been called back to the UK to help his Tory colleagues in the battle against the Socialist enemy, the outrageous left winger. the weird, isolated, irresponsible, enemy of the people Jeremy Corbyn - the man oddly elected just last year to the post of leader of the Labour Party with - what? - 150,000 votes. Hated by his MPs. I have to ask: if Corbyn is that bad, why are the Tories massed against him?

Boris was described tonight on Sky news as an 'attack dog.' No, he's not. He isn't one who hides his light under a bushel. There is no bushel. He's just thick. Any day now, he'll be gone from politics.

Nimbyism

This is from a report on East Renfrewshire in today's National:

The chairman of the Newton Mearns Community Council told the  Eastwood Extra: "East Renfrewshire has changed in a single generation from a leafy, community-spirited, commuter conurbation to a crumbling urban sprawl with overstretched infrastructure."

Later in the same report, a Tory councillor says: "We are absolutely overloaded and the frustration is that the majority of people who come to live in Giffnock come for a specific reason and that's the health and wellbeing that we have around here."

Yes, the Nimbys are out in force in East Renfrewshire in these days leading up to the council elections.

So let's just clarify: East Renfrewshire is not crumbling. It's still leafy and it's definitely still community-spirited. People move in here and don't leave for a very good reason. The health and wellbeing of residents remain intact. What some people see as 'urban sprawl' is in fact houses being built so that people who were born and brought up in East Renfrewshire - like my nephews - can afford to live here. And the number of houses being built is finite because it's limited by the amount of land available to build on.

These comments remind me of the people living in leafy suburbia in places like Surrey who oppose on principle every single building initiative because it will change the place. The result of that attitude - and the fact that councils are forbidden to use the money they made from selling council houses to build more - has been to leave the UK short of one million houses. The population has grown and demand for homes has increased because the shape of households has changed over a couple of generations, with more and more one-person households. Thatcher's infamous phrase 'the property-owning democracy' and the Nimby attitude have resulted in a runaway house market in the south east of England, a massive rise in 'buy to let' properties, and renting at extortionate prices by people who will never be able to buy a home. The worst possible situation for anyone trying to get on the property ladder.

We in Scotland - at least so long as we have our own parliament - can do things about the infrastructure being 'overstretched': local councils can require builders to improve the infrastructure if they want to build houses; they can demand a mix of private and social housing on every new estate; they can insist on buyers being resident in the country (so property is not sold to overseas residents for 'buy to let'), as they do in Scandinavia; they can tax second and third and fourth homes. What none of us can do is stop change happening.

I heard someone make a comment recently about East Renfrewshire being taken over by 'schemies.' As a former schemie, I take exception to that kind of snobbery. Glasgow is a warning to us all. What kept Glasgow a vibrant community right up to the 1960s was the mix of people who lived there. People from all over came to live in Glasgow. What has destroyed a lot of Glasgow is the loss of that mix of people: now we have 'poor' areas, so clear to the eye as you pass through them on a bus that writers of Scottish noir novels can write about their heroes going looking for drug dealers in certain areas, confident they'll find them.

East Renfrewshire is not that like that and people like the two above should be ashamed to suggest it is.

Facebook Scams and Bams

I was unwell for a few days last week and stayed off the computer. When I came back online this morning, I noticed that I had - as usual - some friend requests. I quite often get two of these a day. Usually from middle-aged men who have apparently been in the services in the USA. I suspect the word single in my profile is attracting these weirdos (or algorithms or whatever they are) and I must take steps to change that.

Because I'd been offline, there were 5 requests, so I did what I usually do and started rejecting them, except when I got number 5 I got distracted by something else on my newsfeed and accidentally clicked on 'accept.' Within a minute, 'Frank' had sent me a greeting on my message board. I ignored it. Then came another 2 in as many minutes. I went onto 'Frank's' message and wrote that I had made a mistake and that I only ever accepted people as friends if they had friends I knew - and he didn't.

Besides that, when I checked his FB profile, he claimed he lived in Liverpool, although his first profile had said he lived in Damascus! Then came what sounded like a phone message, which I ignored. And then two further messages, the last of which asked: Are you angry with me? I blocked him.

I suspect my 'mis-click' may have allowed some b@st@ard somewhere access to my friends list. If that means you get unwanted messages, I apologise. And if you get a request to 'friend' me, ignore it.

But if you stumble on a Nigerian prince who really has got $15million looking for a home in a bank account, don't forget I'm your friend!

Klaize

I saw a photo of a shop in Glasgow with Klaize as its name. I like that.

I haven't been clothes shopping for a while, having been poorly. Mind you, I'd be hard put these days to say where I could go to buy clothes. I went online tonight and searched for Elvi. It used to have a lovely shop in Newton Mearns selling over-priced clothes for fat women. The clothes mostly came from Germany. I'd never noticed in Germany but German women obviously have huge bosoms, because the tops and dresses rarely fitted us pigeon-chested Scots. The company was bought over about 10 years ago and the new owners decided to sell online. I can see that hasn't gone well: I got directed to websites selling 'elvish' clothes, but no Elvi.

Evans went the same way: a few shops but mainly an online 'presence.' Debenham's stopped selling clothes for fatties at all years ago, as did Dorothy Perkins which I loved, and M&S assistants give assurances in Silverburn that 'you'll find larger sizes on the rails' but they lie.

I looked at Marina Rinaldi's range. Just too glam and, dearie me, the prices!

So I'm left with M&Co's overpriced Scandinavian collection and Asda. The sister and I hit Asda in Toryglen last weekend, having looked in Asda in Newton Mearns and decided what was on offer was horrible. What was on offer in Toryglen was equally horrible. I saw tops with weird sleeves: long sleeves - not that useful in summer - with bits cut out from shoulder to elbow or with tight bits at the elbow and layers of frills at the wrists. And all in hellish prints that resemble nothing so much as 1950s curtains.

And yes, I could order online. But, as I've said, I'm poorly and I suspect I'd have to be going back and forth to the post office or the shop returning stuff that didn't fit. I'm not up to that yet. And - as I've found when ordering night clothes from M&S online - you really can't tell what the material is like from a photo, so you could be rejecting stuff a lot.

You may be thinking it's my own fault for being fat. In fact, I have two friends who are always up for meeting me for lunch but cannot get through the starter without mentioning my weight. It's not even the elephant in the room - I'd settle for that rather than having to listen to them telling me how important it is to take exercise and eat right. I tell them I have CFS which affects my gut, but I try to keep the rest of my vital signs normal: my liver and kidneys are working well, my blood tests are fine, my cholesterol is 5.1 without statins (I'm allergic) which even the GP says is fine.

And day after day, my ears are accosted by radio and TV comments about the obeeeesity problem, with people who are built like (as the late Terry Wogan used to say) racing snakes telling off the rest of us because we are obeeeese. Not that they understand that the word 'obese' has a particular meaning - and it's not just 'fat.' Sometimes they say anyone who is overweight is 'morbidly obese.'

Meanwhile is there any way I can treat myself to some new tops, and some cropped trousers for the summer? I'm glad to say I can now buy properly fitting shoes: Clarks have opened a shop in Silverburn that stocks a range of rather nice D and E fitting shoes, so I am now back to my real size of 5 1/2 for the first time in years.

Clothes shops take note.

Being poor

About an hour ago, I read a post on Facebook about a Tory MP who thinks food banks are used by 'alcoholics, drug addicts and' - I can't remember the third set of people he named. I can't find it now - bloody Facebook newsfeed!

I wonder if this man is mentally separating people - into two categories in the 19th century style: the deserving and the undeserving poor. It also crossed my mind to wonder if this man had ever been anywhere near a food bank.

I am enjoying a decent old age, not because anyone paid me big bucks in my job, but because my parents gave me an education and I was able to make provision for myself. But when I was young, I was poor. And I'm here to tell you it takes a lot of backbone and resourcefulness to get by when you're poor. I used to reminisce with a friend, who had also been born poor, but in the country rather than Glasgow, that when things are that bad you don't actually need a few thou to manage. A tenner a week will do. And the desperate thing is, you just don't have it. She grew up in a family of 9 and saw her siblings do well in life, as she did. But they had a rough start. That was in the 50s. Nothing much has changed as far as I can see. And things are getting worse.

You need to be organised to survive poverty. Drug addicts and alcoholics tend to live chaotic lives and often don't survive. The people I've met at the food bank usually have no illnesses. They're just poor. Sometimes fallen on hard times. Sometimes poorly educated. Sometimes working part-time but not getting enough money in to keep their families. Some are ex-service people. A few are asylum seekers but not that many. The homeless don't appear. What would be the point in them getting cans and packets of food?

To access the food bank, for a start you need to know when you can go. Twice a year. You have to know which agencies will give you a 'pink' (actually, it's red) slip that entitles you to collect provisions. It can be a doctor or the social work department, etc. Then you have to get to the food bank. Usually on foot. I met one woman who had walked from Knightswood to Ibrox because she had no money for buses. She collected her bags of groceries and was about to set off to walk home when one of the volunteers offered to run her back.

You can turn up without a pink slip but all you'll get a day's provisions and a recommendation to go to one of the agencies for a pink slip.

I'm ashamed to be living in a society where one million people depend on food banks. And even more ashamed that there are politicians in this society who think they can dismiss people as 'unworthy' because they are poor. To repeat the old saying: people don't need a handout; they need a hand up.

North Korea

I know nothing about North Korea. Until recently, I'd swallowed the idea put forward in the UK and US media that Kim Jong Un is a bit of a joke. That haircut. Those clothes. That tendency to kill people who threaten him, like his uncle and his half/step brother. Now that I see North Korea has attracted the attention of Donald Trump, I've been having a look at them online.

I've occasionally wondered how North Korea made any money. This is a mainly rural society and it seems they are proud of being self-sufficient. But, of course, they're not. They depend on an export market of $4bn. And just over 75% of the goods they export go to China. Their exports are made up of "minerals, metallurgical products, manufactures (including armaments), textiles, agricultural and fishery products, coal, iron ore, limestone, graphite, copper, zinc, and lead," according to Wikpedia. So North Korea provides the raw materials for the huge Chinese manufacturing industries that are fueling Chinese expansion as a trading nation.

In other words, as far as I can see, North Korea is a puppet state of China.

Does this trade with China finance North Korea's nuclear capability which is baby-sized but growing? And if it does, does anyone plan to call out the Chinese on why they are allowing this to happen? Oh, I know: independent state, can't dictate how they develop, etc. But if anyone should be alarmed at the rise of North Korea as a nuclear state it should be its next-door neighbour China. So why aren't the Chinese bothered? And at what point will China be bothered? When North Korea successfully tests nuclear missiles? An atom bomb?  Thermo-nuclear power? And points them at China?

And why should we be worried, over here in distant Europe? Well, it's the domino effect, innit? And the fact that the USA now has a nutter for president with the codes to the bombs. In the past, the USA and its military 'managed' threats like North Korea. Now they seem to be happy to ramp up the aggression, by dropping the Mother of All Bombs (why is it female, FFS?) on Afghanistan?

Is there anyone left with a bit of sense? The UN maybe? We pay them a lot of money to run a huge organisation. Maybe it's time for payback.

Local Elections - wow!

I just got my postal ballot paper in. I signed up for a postal ballot last year because local polling stations don't allow for parking nearby and I wasn't up to walking then.

In my area, there are 9 candidates for the council. And that would be the end of the good news, folks.

All the candidates here are men.
1 is SNP
1 is Labour
2 are Tories
1 is LibDem
3 are 'independents'
1 is Scottish Libertarian Party

1 of the independents is a suspended Tory and the other 2 are local businessmen with who knows how much or how little political experience. Never mind what their agenda is.

I have to rank these guys in order of popularity. The only candidate in favour of independence is the SNP man. I'm a Green so I want at least one councillor who is pro-independence and has sympathy with Green policies of social justice, equality, etc. I'll vote for him. Then what? I'm not voting Tory. They have 2 official and one unofficial candidates but I can't even find their manifesto for the Scottish council elections online. Nor am I going for the Scottish Libertarian, who I think is a Tory/UKIP by another name. The Labour guy has been around for yonks and does his best, although the introduction to Labour's manifesto for local government begins with an attack on Nicola Sturgeon over cuts to local government budgets. I wish the Labour Party in Scotland could understand who holds the purse strings - and it ain't Edinburgh. I've voted LibDem in the past (locally) to keep the Tories out but they are anti-independence, although their manifesto says they are campaigning on local government issues, so that's something.

Whatever I do, there are only 3 candidates I can possibly vote for.

Which brings me to my next questions:

Where are all the women? Not selected? Not coming forward?

Where are the young people? (same questions as above)

We're less than 3 weeks away from the elections, so where is everybody?

I'm thinking back to the general election of 2015, the Independence Referendum of 2014 and the EU referendum of 2016, when the streets were flooded with people campaigning for their parties, there was lots of information and everyone had an opinion. Maybe it's true: we've run out of puff - been over-consulted and have slipped into apathy. The problem is that the 'big boys', the Tories are using their UK-wide organisations and a lot of cash to promote the idea that these local elections are not local at all but a way to tell the SNP we don't want a second referendum on independence.

I know the Greens are engaged in the local government elections but have to pick their targets carefully because of lack of funding, but where are the rest of the parties?

The Clark Family

I watched a documentary last night about a family of up to 17 kids who were split up and scattered across Scotland from the 1940s to the 1960s. It was truly awful what happened to these children. Five or six died at or shortly after birth - nobody seems to be sure how many. A few were adopted and did okay. Others went into care and didn't do okay. A couple suffered so badly that they remain damaged right into their 60s and 70s. What was more amazing than the brothers who got involved in drugs and alcohol and sleeping rough was that the rest didn't but became fine, upstanding citizens who went looking for the rest of their brothers and sisters.

The 'crime' committed by these children - the reason for them being taken from their parents - was that their parents weren't up to the job of raising them, at a time when there wasn't much help on offer. There were a whole lot of reasons for that, I'm sure - lack of education, their own poverty-stricken backgrounds - but mainly the problem was poverty.

All the way through the documentary, I kept thinking about the mother of these children. What the hell kind of life did she have? She had 17+ pregnancies. That means most of her adult life she was pregnant. At one point, she was jailed for 'neglect' of her children. And that raises another question: these children had a father. Where the hell was he? There wasn't even a photo of him. Did he get the jail too? If not, why not?

And still in the end this mother kept hold of one child, Andrew. Could she have been that bad a mother if she was still allowed to keep her youngest child?

It's impossible to estimate how many damaged people we have in our community as a result of the awful treatment they encountered when they were young. The one thing we know is that the damage gets passed on generation by generation. We should ask what kind of upbringing this mother had herself - not to mention her husband. And could there have been some kind of intervention that would have saved the parents and their children?

I had a friend - she took her own life 5 years ago - who was part of a large family in 1960s Glasgow. Her mother died when she was 6 years old. Her 3 brothers stayed with their father. Her two older sisters went into Nazareth House in Glasgow. Their experience was bad but at least they had each other. Another sister went to relatives. My friend was on her own. Her stories of how she was treated were  awful: beaten by a nun for wetting the bed and for crying for her mother.

Somehow, we have to break the cycle that leads to so many children suffering. Children have to be rescued because they are our future - and they deserve better.

Well, d@mmit!

I know quite a lot of sweary words in quite a lot of languages. That's what a good Scottish education does for you. I grew up in a family where people worked in factories and shipyards where cursing was rife and folk sometimes had to be reminded not to swear. We had aunties that acted as censors: 'That'll do, Willie!' is a phrase I remember from family get-togethers in my childhood, when my father's shipyard language would get out of hand after a few beers.

When I studied languages and lived in France and later Russia, it was part of the fun to pick up sweary words - and to use them, sometimes wrongly. That's the trouble with foreign: you need somebody to tell you which sweary words you can drop into everyday conversation and which are best kept for your own circle.

Even if all you speak is Scots English or the Doric - given how few folk have even tried to learn a foreign language in the UK - you can have a great time peppering your language with sweary words.

And I do.

There are Scots words and phrases I learned in Glasgow when I was growing up. Some are incomprehensible to non-Glaswegians. Others I learned in Islay that I can drop into conversation and nobody will have a clue what I'm saying - unless I'm with Ileachs who know them all. Among French speakers, there are times when I've been known to exclaim: bordel! or putain! But I have to be pushed pretty far to come out with these. I have one Russian sweary word and I only use it in extremis and sotto voce. 

What I won't do, because I hate this in people who swear in English, is use a lovely and useful part of a woman's anatomy as a cussword. For me this is the final frontier. I find myself telling people off on Facebook for scattering this word around.

I try not to be sexist about this. I don't think I've ever referred to a man as a pr@ck either.

The Farrago

Did you hear Farage yesterday 'talking' at the EU Parliament?

He told the legally elected representatives of 27 nations that they were behaving like the Mafia towards the UK Brexit people, and when challenged only conceded that since there were 'national sensitivities' he would change his description of MEPs to 'gangsters.' Despite his years of working in politics, it seems it never occurred to Farage that there are things you shouldn't do at all in the EU Parliament. And insulting the members of the Parliament is among them.

You've heard of sore losers. Farage and co are sore winners.

Despite having done a lot to ensure the UK leaves the European community after the referendum, Farage is still not happy. Like a lot of other 'Brexiters' I've heard and a few I've spoken to, he thinks the EU Parliament, the press, the UK government (who have to deliver Brexit) and, ach, who knows who else? are against leaving the EU and will do anything and everything to stop the process begun by invoking Article 50. It's not true, of course.

Believe me, Mr Farage, if there was a legal way to do it, the 48% of voters who wanted to remain in the EU would have found it.

The problem the Brexiters have is that the rest of us keep asking questions. We want to know what's going on. What is the plan? A decade or two from now, what will the UK look like? Who will the UK be trading with? What chance is there that the UK will still be the 5th or 6th - depending on which newspaper you read - wealthiest nation on the planet. It looks as if no one - I repeat, no one - can assure us our earnings and our savings will be safe. Brexit remains a leap in the dark.

And the great thing about being Nigel Farage is that you are not going to be held to account for the success or failure of the Brexit process. No, the chumps in the Tory Party will have to not just get the UK out of the EU but forge new partnerships with an indifferent world and then explain to the electorate why things are going badly.

Meanwhile, Farage is still there in the EU Parliament earning, I'm told, £84,000 a year + expenses of maybe the same amount or more.

I just can't imagine anyone in Scotland voting for union with that lot. If you're a Unionist, I have to ask: how bad does it have to get? How far removed from Farage and the grinning eejits in UKIP, not to mention the right wing of the Tory Party, do you have to feel before you decide it's time to find another solution?

You can't go back

I'm having one of those nights. Sleepless, I mean. So to pass the time I've googled places I've lived - 14 of them - in my time and found Gortan on Islay.

It's as beautiful a building as ever - still, I hope, listed as a place of special social and community interest. I got it listed about 1980 because I was convinced some bureaucrat from Dunoon would come along, look at the crack in the gable wall and order it to be pulled down.

I lived in the right hand side. The photo above shows my aunt and uncle outside the house round about 1979. I bet the view from the dining room window is still magical.

I first saw Loch Indaal from the front doorstep of Gortan: the day I arrived from Glasgow, there were blue skies wall to wall except for a wee patch of cloud in the middle of the loch where rain was pouring down. That's what life in Islay is all about in a nutshell.

Gortan is now a holiday home. £650 a week in the high season - and it's pretty well fully booked this summer.

I notice from the online photos that the fuchsia bush at the front wall has gone. It was the bane of my life, that fkn bush. It took over the whole front garden. I tried digging it out. No luck. I cut it back so it wouldn't obscure the view. It grew back bigger than ever. The only use I ever found for it was as a place for my mad cat Thomas to hide.

I tried making a garden round the back and ended up knackered. But I found wild orchids and got them recorded by the Scottish National Heritage people - and I hope they're still there. 

If Dunoon had sold Gortan to me in 1982 it would still be occupied full time as a family home. I would never have moved. But it turned out the then director of education had written the lease for school houses himself and had included a clause that stipulated that the rent could only be raised if both parties agreed. On the instructions of our family lawyer, I didn't agree to the next rent rise but asked if I could buy the place. The man in Dunoon said it wasn't for sale. I waited a while, still paying a ludicrous rent of £104 a year and then got fed up and moved to Bowmore. He was a vindictive little b****** the man in Dunoon and I wasn't surprised to find Gortan was for sale shortly after I moved out. 

Change is inevitable wherever we live. Schools - so important to their local communities - close, merge and re-open under another name all the time in the Central Belt. It is often traumatic. Can you imagine how difficult it is in the scattered communities of Argyll and the West Highlands to hear that your local school has been 'mothballed'? Worse still, that the school will close and not re-open? You may be lucky and have a village hall but these too are under threat. Sometimes the school is the only place in the village with a big enough space to host a visit from a travelling theatre company or to host a local Mod performance. 

Fragile is the word often attached to these communities. These are also often the communities where Gaelic is strongest. It doesn't take a genius to work out what we need to do. 

Here's to the US of A

I've been listening to Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's First Minister, talking at Stanford University today. She talked about nationalism and internationalism, and also about independence and interdependence.

Whoever wrote the speech for her did a great job. Yes, I'm sure Nicola made a contribution but some bright spark of a civil servant put together all her ideas and condensed the whole thing into a 30 minute talk. Kudos to him or her.

I thought about Nicola's invitation to everyone in the room to come to Scotland: to work, to study or just to visit. Will this be possible in the future? I ask because there's some pretty weird stuff going on these days. Brexit for one thing. We already have in Scotland about 120,000 EU citizens seriously worried about their status. Some have already been refused 'permission to remain' and some have even been told to make arrangements to go 'home' even though they've lived, worked and paid taxes in Scotland for 20 years. I've already seen one American friend sent back to Louisiana after spending 5 years and who knows how much of her own money getting a Scottish education. (In other words, just as she was getting to be useful to the Scottish economy, she was kicked out).

And then there's the USA's paranoia about foreigners (especially Muslims). This despite the fact that the USA's terrorists are as likely to come from - where else? - the USA as any other country.

I have visited New York, California, Kentucky, Georgia and Tennessee. At some point in the future, I would like to see Washington DC and maybe New England. But I doubt if it's going to happen. The USA is just too hostile to tourists these days. The USA immigration authorities were always over-zealous, even before 9/11. Now I think they're out of control. 'Profiling,' that cute American word for racial stereotyping is now being used on all visitors. I refuse to play that game. When I hear that Canadian schools which usually take kids to the USA on school trips are cancelling their visits, it's a wake-up call for me.

Maybe the USA doesn't need tourists. Maybe the USA just doesn't know it needs tourists.

Either way, for me it's going to be Canada, Iceland, Mexico - in fact, just about anywhere. Just not the USA.

Does anyone know?

I inherited my uncle's desk over 30 years ago. I cleared it of most of his stuff but there were a few things I left lying in one of the drawers because I'd no idea what they were and didn't want to just dump them. Tonight I was looking for picture hooks because I plan to put up some family pictures and I came across a wee pendant. It's about 3.5cms long x 2.5cms wide. I know it's a pendant because it has a ring to attach a chain to. It's silver - and I know that because it has a hallmark which (at the moment) I can't make out. And it's quite heavy.

Here's one side of the pendant:

I think that reads: KSB - or could it be RSB?

And the other side is: 

My father's mother Margaret came from a large family, as most people did in the late 19th century. One of her sisters was called Charlotte and she married a McGown. The story we were told was that he came from Ayrshire farming stock, although he became a seafaring man according to family legend. Charlotte and her husband had a daughter called Irene and her husband is the person my desk belonged to. Complicated, huh? I'm guessing the J in this inscription stands for James which is the English version of Seumas. 

But what is this a medal for? Attendance - I'm guessing perfect attendance - for what? School? Sunday school? Where was attendance so important that it merited a silver pendant? This was almost a century ago, after World War 1, when money was tight.

I'd love any thought from people. If this is a historical artifact, I'll happily hand it over to a museum which can record it and keep it safe.