What is in Kelvin's Head?

Vile, vile, vile

18/08/2012

Oh, vile was the journey home from Edinburgh last night.

Every now and then there is hand wringing about how few the number of people are who make the trip over from Glasgow (city of light and beauty) to Edinburgh (town of dark pleasures and dug-up roads) for arts events in the Edinburgh festival. Indeed, this year, they’ve installed a useful ticket booth for the Fringe in Queen Street station, pour encourager les autres.

That’s a good idea in itself, but access to tickets isn’t the primary reason that people don’t make the journey.

I can understand why they might want to encourage more people. After all, I’ve been at two of the top notch events in the official festival in the last week and on each occasion there have been many empty seats all around me. (Funny, isn’t it that empty seats at the Olympics are a national scandal whilst empty seats at the world’s premier arts festival cause no headlines.)

[In passing, I would also note with a slight grump that the Festival is now refusing to give a companion’s ticket to reviewers these days despite having all those empty seats to fill].

A big part of the reason for people not wanting to go to Edinburgh at night from the land of plenteousness in the West is that the journey can be just so vile.

You don’t want to drive to Edinburgh because in Edinburgh you can neither park nor drive. All roads in the centre are likely to be dug up or congested due to the long-running tram debacle which would be better described as a piece of performance art than a transport policy.

And the late night trains from Edinburgh are just so horrible.

Last Saturday night there was terrible overcrowding on the trains. They know that the Edinburgh festival is on its way presumably every year. And though there is the odd extra train very late at night, the capacity at 1030 pm just isn’t good enough. Corridors are full of people and toilets are full of…. well, never mind what they are full of.

Last night I thought I got lucky by getting a seat in the front of the train. However, that feeling of pleasure and delight was soon dashed from the castle ramparts above Waverley station as Glasgow’s generic, belligerent, loud, smelly, objectionable drunk decided to sit at my table. After announcing to one and all quite how p….drunk he was, he then proceeded to keep up a commentary on everyone else in the carriage. Young women were lampooned for being too fat for him, too thin for him or wearing the wrong clothes. Every man was a threat that made him nervous and tetchy. Anyone with a briefcase was subject to questioning about what they did and whether they had any money in the case.

Dozens of people had a miserable end to whatever kind of evening that they had had.

I chose the line of least resistance and feigned sleep. However, closing your eyes to such bad behaviour is hardly any easier than keeping vigilant watch.

Scotrail supposedly have a no alcohol and no drunks policy on late-night trains. If they are going to come anywhere near enforcing it then they need some staff on the trains. Last night there was no sign of a guard, conductor, ticket-wallah or whatever the whole vile journey.

Quite ghastly and bound to make one think twice about making the journey again.

drunk, Edinburgh Festival, Glasgow

11 responses to “We should be wary of declaring martyrs”

Eamonn

08/04/2015

Agree totally. I find myself in a comparable position vis-à-vis the mass canonisations of the ‘martyrs’ of the Spanish Civil War, which assume that all those worthy of commemoration were on the same side.

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Michael Russell

08/04/2015

Anyone killed for professing their faith is a martyr. ISIS is an equal opportunity martyring machine. The various faith communities targeted, including Islamic ones, should build common ground to dismember ISIS. I simply fail to see the point in quibbling about who is a real martyr and who is not.

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1. Kelvin
  
  08/04/2015
  
  Is it your view that someone is a martyr for Christianity because they cannot recite a verse from the Qur’an?
  
  It seems to me that whilst some men and women of violence are being claimed to be martyrs if they should be shot by law enforcement agencies whilst pursuing paths of terror that there’s a huge amount to be gained by determining who is a martyr and who isn’t.
  
  Reply
  1. Bro David
    
    08/04/2015
    
    Not being able to explain a quranic verse was merely a way of discerning if someone was not Muslim. However, is it not just as great a presumption to think they weren’t martyrs, as to think that they were.
    
    The early church seemed to accept that all who were crucified or sent to the lions for their Christianity were martyrs. Perhaps not all did so as a statement of faith, but were nominal Christians caught up with the rest. But the church didn’t seem obliged to footnote who didn’t qualify.
    
    I’m not sure that I understand why your are hesitant. It seems a quibble. I don’t think anyone is leaning toward canonization here, just speaking of them as a whole.
    
    Reply
Jo

08/04/2015

The SEC still keeps the feast of Charles, King and Martyr. I don’t think we get to be too narrow in defining who is or isn’t a martyr.

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1. Kelvin
  
  09/04/2015
  
  Actually, Jo – that’s not quite right. The SEC keeps the commemoration of “Charles I, King, 1649”
  
  There’s no mention of him being a martyr in the calendar (and the current calendar superseded and replaced the one in the prayer book). There are plenty of people who are named as martyrs such as Agnes the week before Charles or indeed “Charles Mackenzie of Central Africa, Bishop, Missionary, Martyr, 1862” the very day after Charles.
  
  It would appear that rather careful thought was given to whether to describe Charles as a martyr and though he is included in the calendar (not least for founding one of our dioceses) any notion of martyrdom is absent.
  
  Reply
  1. Jo
    
    09/04/2015
    
    Thanks for the correction, I hadn’t realised there was that detail of difference between the SEC and CofE.
    
    Reply
Father David

10/04/2015

Of course, King Charles was a Martyr and is commemorated as such on January 31st each year. The trouble is that Anglicans have no real mechanism for declaring people to be saints or martyrs. Having referred to two recent horrific incidents on the African continent where Christians were slaughtered simply for being Christians, I wonder what the Provost of Glasgow thinks about the Ugandan Martyrs of the 19th century and would you personally regard them to be martyrs? As you know 23 Anglicans and 22 Roman Catholics were killed by the Kabaka for refusing to submit to King Mwanga’s corporal intimacies. The Roman Catholics were beatified in 1920 and canonised in 1964 but what of our Anglican Ugandan brothers – where they equally to be regarded as martyrs, or would you deny them that honorific title?

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1. Kelvin
  
  10/04/2015
  
  The Scottish Episcopal Calendar is again very clear: “Charles Lwanga and his companions, 1886, Janani Luwum, Bishop, 1977, Martyrs of Uganda”
  
  I have no idea why anyone would say that the SEC has no means of declaring someone to be a martyr. Not only do we have such a mechanism, we use it.
  
  Reply
Father David

10/04/2015

It would be interesting to know how this mechanism works in the SEC in deciding who is eligible to join the noble army of martyrs? Bishop Edward King of Lincoln is widely regarded as a saint South of the Border. I think it was Archbishop Lang who was asked how it was decided that Bishop King had reached sainthood status and the answer was that he was given a Collect, Epistle and Gospel to commemorate his saint’s day – 8th March, the day of his Heavenly Birthday.

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Harry Campbell

19/04/2015

“We strongly condemn such atrocities, whether they are Ethiopians are not,” the Ethiopian communications minister Redwan Hussein told AFP.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/19/isis-video-purports-to-show-massacre-of-two-groups-of-ethiopian-christians

What a shame the Archbishop couldn’t have said something similarly inclusive about the victims of the Kenyan massacre, and all such massacres, without caring about what their religion affiliation may or may not have been.

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