I should know better

I took myself off to see SKYCAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW and was enchanted by a nice litle homage to thirties "speculative fiction", in tasteful muted colour and sepia.......great efforts to get the atmosphere and visuals right, and a very precise sense of thirties futurism. Gernsback would have loved it. The plot was irrelevant, but it was good to see the Brits credited with the best advances in technology..

I`ve always been fascinated by the thirties. It comes from growing up in the forties. Adults, wrestling with post-war austerity, credited the previous decade with everything that was luxurious and right, and painted a picture of carefree secure lavish life. Nothing would be as good again. "Pre-war" was a universal term for quality.......(.the last time I heard that spoken was in Larbert station in the seventies, when the old stationmaster told me to hurry on into the Ladies`Waiting Room - "I`ve got a nice big pre-war fire going in there".) And the thirties vision of the future was progress without end, science working for humanity`s greater good, no more wars - a precious innocence.

Enough of that. Times change. Optimism decays. Yesterday I went to a guinea pig show in Dunblane. Queen St. Station was hoaching with kilted Scots queueing for the Edinburgh shuttle, heading for the opening of the new parliament building. I met friends heading for this caper, who invited me to come with them.

"No, I`m going to a guinea pig show."

"A guinea pig show instead of the opening of the new parliament building?"

"Spot the difference."