HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF SHITE

It's a long story, which I won't bother recounting here, but in her 3rd and 4th year we sent our daughter to a fee-paying, all-girls school. As usual at these schools, you're expected to fork out for every piece of equipment but, knowing my daughter like I do, I never ran out and bought stuff straight away since she was notorious for not sticking at anything. When she joined the hockey team I didn't even bother to buy a hockey stick, which was just as well since she only played three games and then got fed up.

Anyway, one of the games she played in was against another girls' school. One of the girls from that school was quite a dirty player, tripping people up and shouldering them so hard that they ended up face down in the grass. My daughter being what she is decided to retaliate and sent the girl sprawling in the mud with a well-timed shoulder. There was a sharp intake of breath from everyone on the field and my daughter was substituted quickly before she was sent off. It was then that she discovered what she had done wrong: "You can't do that - don't you know who that is? That's JK Rowling's daughter!"

Like mother, like daughter it seems. I don't know how Rowling behaved on a hockey pitch but she seems to suffer from the same syndrome as her progeny: I'll do and say what I like but start yelling if anybody dares to answer me back. That's what she seems to be like on Twitter; she makes snide comments about the SNP constantly and is actually quite nasty to anyone that pulls her up for it. If they have the nerve to reply in kind then she starts screaming about 'Cybernats' to the papers and, similar to what happened with her daughter, everyone's there to point the finger - "You can't say that to JK Rowling!"

Nicola Sturgeon gets dog's abuse on her Twitter account, as do Charlotte Church and lots of other folk. I've had a few 'Cyberhuns' have a go at me as well. If you're going to stick your neck out and state your opinions then you have to expect that there are folk out there that are going to disagree with you. Unfortunately, not all people have been blessed with a decent education and the most coherent, and intelligible thing they can write is something along the lines of, "Fuck you, ya fanny!" It's hardly anything to get upset over. It's when you start getting death threats or when things get libellous that you need to call in the law. Both Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond received online death threats and, in Salmond's case, one bam even tried to carry it out, but nobody seems concerned about this. It appears that threatening to strangle Nicola Sturgeon is nowhere near as bad as calling JK Rowling a "fud". But...but...but...it's JK Rowling!

I've enjoyed reading Rowling's books but the whole Harry Potter series is imbued with a sense of Noblesse oblige that I found frankly nauseating. Contrast Harry Potter, from an old, aristocratic wizarding family, and his caring attitude towards the fawning elves etc. with the uncaring parvenus, the Dursleys. It's like Dickens's novels, harking back to some imagined bond between the aristocracy and ordinary people that was broken by the evil industrialist middle class. Rowling is like some old imperialist, to whom we natives are supposed to bow and scrape and be grateful that she's deigned to live in our country. We're supposed to agree with everything she posts online from her Merchiston enclave, saying, "Yes, Bwana!" If we don't then, apparently, we're anti-English. Most of us are just scum anyway, coming from the background of the folk that the Dursley's were going to force poor Harry to mix with when they intended to send him to - gasp! - the local comprehensive! A fate worse than death, indeed!

Meanwhile, the DR has taken the opportunity to lambast Nicola Sturgeon for the abuse meted out by the so-called 'Cybernats'. Isn't it funny how the sectarian and racist singing and chanting by the Huns is never the fault of Sevco, who, it appears to me, have done relatively little to stamp it out; in fact, it seems to be encouraged if anything. And, yet, Nicola Sturgeon is supposed to take action because somebody said a bad word to JK Rowling! So when individuals post abuse on Twitter it's a 'concerted campaign' but when thousands get together to sing 'The Famine Song' or about being 'up tae wur knees' it's 'a minority of fans'.

Staying with Sevco and I see that Rob Kiernan is no longer 'a journeyman'. Now, according to Level 5...I mean, the Daily Record, he "has served one of the most far-travelled apprenticeships in British football". For God's sake; do they honestly expect folk to swallow this guff? They're even saying that his "days of wanderlust are over", as if all those loan spells were his idea! Surely even The Peeppul aren't thick enough to believe this shite? Then again...Monti - insert catchphrase here:

I'm swithering about my new book about Sevco. I've reached the present day so should I just wrap things up or wait to see what else happens? I'm at about fifty-odd thousand words at present so it would be a slightly shorter (and cheaper, Monti!) volume than Clash of the Agnivores. If I stop now it should just take a couple of weeks to edit and format and then it would be ready. Or maybe I should just wait to see what Ashley's going to do next or how the season-ticket sales go. Shit. I'm in two minds here. What do you think?

At least I've got the main part of the cover ready, as I unveiled on Mick's blog yesterday. So I'm raring to go!