Lugubrious Machinists Jolted by the Tocsin,

After taking around 6 months to finish reading the book reviewed previously in The Bellyaches, I managed to finish Exit Music by Ian Rankin in 5 days; this is due to a combination of spare time, nice weather and the way the Rebus series is written – I can rattle through them at quite a rate if I wanted to.

The final page marks the end of Rebus’ career in CID and leaves me wondering if it was such a great book. The murder of Russian dissident and poet, Alexander Todorov, whilst some Russian businessmen are in town then the murder of Charles Riordan, a sound engineer who worked on recording projects involving both parties, leaves Rebus a race against retirement to solve the case. Rebus’ nemesis, Big Ger Cafferty, is also thrown into the mix for good measure.

I will try not to ruin the book for The Bellyaches massive, however, in posing the question I want to, I fear I will. Is it the way of a great crime writer to make loads of neat connections between all the characters and allude to certain potential perpetrators before plucking a seemingly random one out and naming them as the guilty party? I can’t decide is Rankin was amazingly skilful or just annoying, he forced me to build up a dislike of certain characters and in the end, when they weren’t convicted of anything, I was left disappointed. I suppose that’s what is called ‘a twist’.

Rankin leaves himself options for the future. There is scope to continue the series with DS Clarke at the helm, there may be enough flaws in Rebus’ underling character to write more compelling crime stories. Rebus may never fully retire from detective work, there is the possibility that he may work with a team of other retired CID officers who work on cold cases. I don’t think Ian Rankin is finished with crime writing just yet.

Tarriers Who Cite Reconnaissance as the Reason,

This week’s holiday hasn’t been great; it has been tragic, confusing, and irksome and characterised by listlessness. My philosophy is that when the weather is nice, do nothing and vice versa, thus I have done nothing with my days off work until today; the weather forecast was poor so I decided I would head out. This was, of course, a major effort, not least on the part of my dislike of driving. However, I decided that I should practice driving again before next week.

I headed west, where we were promised better weather. If I had been in one of my extravagant moods, I would have headed to Glasgow, or even Stirling, to purchase numerous duplicates of the possessions I already own. As it was, I didn’t fancy having to find space for any new stuff or worst still, answering comments like, “Where did you get that?”, yet I headed to the vicinity of Stirling, and to Dollar Glen. I’d heard about this place before and a walk was just what I needed to burn off the weight that I have acquired whilst eating bar after bar of chocolate in the laboratory over the last few weeks.

The road to car park is narrow but thankfully no cars came down the other way, I would have been rather rusty in pulling off some sort of manoeuvre. The trail starts at the first car park but it is possible to drive further up the hill to the car park of Castle Campbell. The first thing that strikes me about the place is a real sense of all three dimensions; walkers are encapsulated by sights and sounds above and below. The sky is barely visible from the path, the river gushes over waterfall after waterfall below and the trees go on and on up to the summits of the steep-sided glen, it must be like being in the rainforest. There were no other walkers at the time and it was nice just to be surrounded by nature for a while, of course, the paths and bridges were man-made but without them, there’d be no walk. I chose to walk the path in the anti-clockwise direction, up the east side of the glen first, this is quite fitting since I like loosening screws more than I like tightening them.

The trail leads past Castle Campbell, which had no visitors, but I was not interested in it. I have come to resent castles, I see them as a symbol of the aristocracy and monarchy, and from my lowly status, I cannot connect with those who have lived a privileged life. The castle only breaks through the tree line briefly, it is shrouded by the glen, the trees and the mountains, I’m sure it would be a lovely place to read a book in but for me, it was a sideshow. It was near the castle that I became lost, the path split in three, why I wondered towards the cows and was subsequently scared by them is a mystery, I should have studied the boards more carefully. Thankfully, I did not have to walk through the cows, should I have had to in order to complete the path, I think I’d have gone home. Cows remain a threat; we don’t know what they’re going to do next.

The walk took around 90 minutes; I followed all the detour paths as is typical explorative bogtrotting tradition before retreating to the main trail. One sidepath was signposted, “Route to viewpoint only, 120 mts”, this baffled me, my first conclusion was that it would take 2 hours to reach the viewpoint so I continued on the main trail, however, I soon backtracked when I worked out that the viewpoint through the a particularly spectacular narrow chasm was only 120 metres off the main path. Someone should fix this: “mts” means “mountains”, “m” is the abbreviation for metres.

I did not pay particular attention to wildlife; I concentrated too much on the scenery. Should I have stayed in a specific locale and studied all around me, I’d surely have come home more pleased than I was already having spotted a jay for the first time. I’ll be more observant next time, I imagine it would be nice to visit in the glen in the rain, although I would need better footwear than my sandshoes.

Indefinitely Suspended World Eyes,

I was drawn to the book In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz by Michela Wrong because of my favourite band, My Latest Novel. On a whim, in the bookshop, after seeing the title of this book, I decided that I wanted to make sense of their song, The Job Mr Kurtz Done. I probably could have used the internet at home if I had ever cared to find out who Kurtz was beforehand ( character from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which I will read soon), however, Michela Wrong earned a sale and now, a fragmented review, which may be barely more than a reference.

Michela presents a well-researched history of the turbulent history of Congo/Zaire as it strives to succeed in a post-colonial era. Unfortunately for the nation’s people, for the majority of the time since independence from Belgium, they have had to endure poor leadership – mostly that of Mobutu Sese Seko. Through his powers of manipulation and his bureaucratic ability to creat disorder and confusion amongst those ranked below him in the government and in the military, aided by the short-sightedness of the international community, he clung to power for almost three decades.

Michela Wrong spent a great deal of time in the country; as a result, the memories and opinions of people from every stratum of society have been collected and presented in an unbalanced way. Insight from those closest to Mobutu (his son, his generals and aides) to officials from foreign government agencies to accountant from international financial institutions, like the IMF and World Bank make this a fantastic book to read for those interested in modern African history.

I may be being naïve in comparing Mobutu to Mugabe but after reading this book, I feel I have better understanding of the struggle faced in removing a dictator. Once a dictator reaches a certain age and fragility, they are no longer a force but a face; it is those that they have bought who control the country. To us, thousands of miles away, the beneficiaries of these evil regimes will remain nameless, but they will be manipulating the figurehead and committing their own crimes against the people they are meant to serve – those will be the people who will be hardest to remove.

Persons More Fortunate Than Someone Else,

Sometimes things are hard to accept or understand. Words chosen to explain or contextualise might never be good, substantial or plenteous enough. As long as everyone behaves in a befitting manner, things have to eventually seem alright.