Cracks in the pavement

My son is doing better, and I'm therefore feeling slightly less superstitious about things. I remember discussing why I'd become quite so superstitious with the psychologist I worked with following my cancer diagnosis. She attributed it to understandably falling back on the darkest, and most primeval of human fears. But I think Scots just have a greater facility to be pessimistic,superstitious and miserable, as in sad, than most.

Just listen to Annie Lennox singing the Saddest Song I've Got from the album Bare. She's a woman who understands the cracks in pavement thing.

A friend bought me
Don Paterson's "The Book of Shadows" for Christmas, see even that's a very Scottish thing to do! And I've been dipping into it as I've sat in waiting rooms, and beside hospital beds this last week.

I really like this, "Late winter thaw. The poor Earth and its cheap green coat, its thin brown shirt and shivering heart...Ach! What a talent the Scots have. We could pity the universe!"

See what I mean? A cheerful nation wouldn't write something like that, and yet we'd all be all the poorer for it.

The picture is of Chief Vitalstatistix in Asterix the Gaul. He's my favourite cartoon character, because the only thing he's afraid of is the sky falling on his head. But then he's a Celt too............

PS here's a link to one of Paterson's award winning Landing Light poems