Social Affairs

Football is generation game for Hibs Family

Evening News October 4 20010. by Jackie Kemp.

THERE have been good times and bad over the years but, up or down, win or lose, there are few games that John Rudden has missed at Easter Road since he first walked onto the terraces holding his dad’s hand on a Saturday afternoon in 1936.

Not many of the familiar faces he first saw at games are still there, but the 79-year-old lifelong Leith resident is now joined by a new crew of fellow season ticket holders – two of his grandsons and two great-grandsons.

Social Affairs

A good egg

Mail on Sunday magazine Hens adore mushroom risotto. They are also keen on asparagus stems and the tops of strawberries. They are more curious than the cat and make a…

Travel

Travel Delhi

Herald Saturday mag August 9 2010

“Mum, it’s fine.” Even on the other end of a mobile phone I can tell my 13-year-old daughter is rolling her eyes. “What could happen?” What indeed. She and my friend’s 12-year-old son have jumped in an auto rickshaw and headed across uptown Delhi to go shopping – without permission.

Travel

A la carte camping your way

 From the Herald 25 Jul 2010

It is camping, but not as we know it.

The French may not yet be talking about ‘le glamping’, but they are certainly au fait with the concept. From gypsy caravans to an atmosphere-controlled plastic bubble with a clear view of the sky to a sumptuous two-bedroom treehouse, where breakfast is hauled up each morning in a basket on the end of a rope, the campsites on France’s Atlantic coast offer an a la carte choice.

Social Affairs

SpongeBob takes the curriculum by storm in Scotland.

What should be in the curriculum? Thanks to a cutting-edge initiative at a Scottish school, SpongeBob SquarePants, Dr Who, The Titanic and Famous People are currently taking top billing in the classroom.

From the Education Guardian, June 15 2010 with added material which did not appear in the published article.

 Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian.

Children at St Mary’s primary in Leith are surrounded by artefacts relating to SpongeBob

St Mary’s primary in Leith, Edinburgh, is taking advantage of wide freedoms under the new Scottish Curriculum for Excellence to allow the children to choose their own topics as a jumping-off point for learning.

The use of topics as Trojan horses for smuggling maths, literature and science into children’s heads has been popular since the 60s, but in the recent past much more detailed national curriculums both north and south of the border made it harder for schools to do this and gave them a more limited choice of themes.

Social Affairs

William Dalrymple shares his impressions of modern India

From the Herald Saturday magazine, June 14.

A travel writer who, after 25 years of immersion in Asia has graduated to a historian, William Dalrymple is fired up about his next project. “It’s about the First Afghan War: 2,100 East India Company troops march into Afghanistan in 1839, one single Brit rides out three years later,” he says, with obvious relish. Dalrymple has recently returned to India from a month in Afghanistan where he is excited to have found five previously untranslated Dari chronicles about the war. This, he feels, will enable him to “give the Afghan perspective” on that forgotten imperial adventure.

Social Affairs

Dougie Campbell; Musician and blacksmith

Published on 8 Apr 2010. Dougie Campbell, who has died aged 65, was a businessman leading light of Glasgow’s folk music scene as the bandleader of The Last Tram tae Auchenshuggle, which played at the weddings of supermodel Kirsty Hume and actor John Hannah and twice won the world ceilidh band championship.