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They’re called by different names, some more acceptable than others. Child prodigies, gifted kids – in the USA they are simply nerds or geeks, and summer camps laid on for them are unashamedly known as “nerd camps”.

Whether you choose any of these terms or the more politically correct title of “able pupils”, things may be about to get better for children who have abilities beyond the normal range.

IT might have a Paisley postcode, but the island of Lismore, with its view of the west coast mountains of Morvern, is 150 miles from Glasgow. Home to just 160 people, it feels a world away from Scotland’s urban corridor; further still from Westminster. Policy wonks in the juice bars of Soho may be frothing about the coming general election, but from this distance their effervescence seems strangely flat. All the major parties are competing for the affections of a creature brought to life by today’s political myth-makers to encapsulate Britain in 2005. Where once they wooed Mondeo Man, now their quarry is Do-it-all Woman, who has a job, children and elderly relatives to care for. The election may not be the talk of Lismore’s one shop, but here, as everywhere else in Britain, there are many women – and men – whose lives are a patchwork of these different roles. So how does the prospect of a Labour third term affect them?

AS many as 10,000 trees would have to be cut down to make way for a golf resort on an estate, local campaigners claimed yesterday.

Felling has already started at the Archerfield estate in East Lothian, and the directors of the Duke of Hamilton’s holding company, Hamilton Kinneil, will today make a final decision on whether to sign over the lease of the woods for 99 years to Renaissance Golf Design, a USbacked firm, and Tom Doak, the course designer.

It may be freezing but “a simmering pot of volcanic ash” is hotting up and ready to explode across Britain. So said a spokesman for the protest group Fathers 4 Justice yesterday, angry about the government’s new child-access arrangements.
These men’s anger cannot be doubted. From scaling the walls of Buckingham Palace to bombarding the prime minister with powder, their protests have become increasingly fierce and desperate. Now the government in Westminster has offered some changes, which have been dismissed as mere tinkering by the group. In fact, that is all they are. The package amounts to little more than a restating of the existing position that the court must protect the rights of children. That is all very well, but it does nothing to address the men’s central complaint, which is that they say they are being systematically discriminated against.

BROADCASTER Sheena McDonald has revealed how the trauma of recovering from near-fatal brain injuries put pressure on her relationship with journalist partner Alan Little and drove her into a clinical depression. Ms McDonald, who was almost killed when hit by a police van driving on the wrong side of the road six years ago, told the conference in Edinburgh yesterday how her family and partner had also suffered.”Their trauma was psychological but it was perhaps even worse than mine because they were aware of everything that was happening. I don’t think they had any support at all apart from each other.”

Instead of getting Fran Healy of Travis to write a new anthem for Scotland, why not just stick with Why Does It Always Rain On Me? I kind of like the idea of the Tartan Army singing that before our ritual humiliation at football matches.

”Everybody’s saying everything’s all right, Still I can’t close my eyes I’m seeing a tunnel at the end of the lights,” might just about fit the bill, given our recent performances in the international arena. A majority of MSPs polled apparently want to commission a completely new anthem for Scotland – presumably from a Catalonian songwriter which will take five years to write and come in with 10 times the number of verses we expected.

Telling stories is one of our most ancient pastimes, reaching back long before reading. Way before the first scribes were noting the edicts of ancient Egypt’s great and good, hunter-gatherers were enlivening their flea-picking sessions round the fire with a tall
tale or two.
This great oral tradition managed to survive rather well in Scotland, where Burns was reared by two illiterate women: his mother and her servant. Although they could not read or write, or perhaps because of it, they had minds and imaginations well stocked with remembered tales and songs.

LAST Hogmanay, driving through the centre of Edinburgh after the fireworks, I saw a young woman aged somewhere between 12 and 18, standing in the pool of light from a street lamp. Dressed in only a sparkly party dress with no coat, she was clearly dazed from drink or drugs and perhaps alone and shivering as a tide of strangers jostled past her in the shadows. She looked so vulnerable that I pulled over to see if she needed help. But by the time I had made my way through the crowd to where she had been, she had vanished.  The vulnerability of the drunk amid strangers at New Year is not all on the female side – the previous year an assertive woman in her 30s from a naval family arrived at my house having walked across town, saying she had seen a young chap in a kilt on North Bridge.

Families refusing to turn their backs on local schools are reaping the reward, finds Jackie Kemp There is barely an inch of wall in David and Patricia Beveridge’s sitting room that is not covered with photographs of young people dressed in mortar-boards and graduation gowns, holding rolled-up scrolls. For the couple’s eight children are a formidable bunch, bristling with top-class qualifications. Youngest son Martin, 20, is no exception. Now in third year of law at Glasgow University, he left school with seven Highers – six As in English, French, history, computing, Latin, music, a B in maths and two Advanced Highers. So what did sea captain David and his homemakerwife Patricia have to shell out on school fees forMartin’s education? Or did they pay a premium to live in a leafy suburb near to a “good” school?

Nuala Gormley is expecting her fourth child in February. “When I said what date the baby was due, one friend immediately asked if I was planning to defer. At the moment, I’m just thinking about getting through the next year or so. But when it comes to it, I can’t imagine we would send a child to school at the age of four and a half.”