Olympian of the Day

There is an argument rumbling on about elitism in Olympic sports. Rowing and sailing are castigated as pursuits for toffs; even the Prime Minister says it is shocking that so many of our athletes come from public schools. The toffiest of all is, of course, the equestrian. Horses are often seen as posh by default, the province of the huntin' and shootin' classes, ridden by red-faced imperialists, dreaming of the golden days when people knew their place.

This has enough anecdotal truth in it to harden into stereotype. And horses are a much more expensive article than a bicycle or a pair of boxing gloves. My fear is that, as the show-jumping enters its final, nail-biting phase, this argument, which should be had, risks taking away some of the gloss of achievement. So just to show that not every person who achieves equestrian excellence is born with a perfect canteen of silver spoons, my Olympian of the day is the young Scott Brash.

He is twenty-six years old, and he is a builder's son from Peebles, a small town in the borders of Scotland. As I write this, he has one of only six clear rounds in the Olympic final. He came not from green acres and high privilege. He is where he is through his own marvellous effort. (He is also very funny. When asked what winning the team gold meant to him, by Clare Balding, live on BBC1, he said, drily, that he hoped it might improve his pulling power with women. The quote went viral as the best line of the games so far.)

Wherever he finishes today, he has delighted a whole community. Peebles is currently en fête, fired with pride in its native son. I know the town well, having friends who live just down the road. I have shopped in its chemist and eaten chips in its chippy. I love the idea of it hanging out more flags.

There is a lovely article about him in the Daily Record here - http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/other-sports/london-olympics-scots-showjumper-wins-1229983.  It is really worth a read.

So here is to Scott Brash, and his lovely, brave horse, Sanctos:

Photograph by Markus Schreiber for AP.

Interesting Scottish analysis of the day

Is from Alex Massie in The Speccie. I am still struggling with the arguments for and against independence. He brings up an element of the debate I had not yet thought about. . Read it here.

Oh, and the takeaway, as the political bloggers say, is that Mr Salmond is not persuading the ladies. Interesting.

Any excuse to put up a picture of a highland coo. This one is from Wikipedia:

PS. I was going to say that Massie gets bonus points for using the word 'trumed'. I assumed this was from some marvellous Scottish dialect, and carried a subtle meaning that only those north of the border would truly understand. Having not found it in any dictionary, I went back and looked at the context, and realised it was just a plain old typing error. It should have read 'trumped'. Still, I think trumed sounds beautiful and am going to attempt to make up a meaning for it, and get it into common parlance.

Landscape of the day

My hill:

When I say my hill, I do not of course mean this literally. I did not stomp down to the village one day in my boots, point at the peak, and say: 'That hill? I'll take it.' (Imagine if you could just put a hill on your credit card.)

I think of it as mine because it is the thing I see every day from my house. I lift my eyes up to it as I walk the dog. Even when it is obscured by cloud and weather, I know it is there, and it acts as a temporal anchor. When I was young, I could take or leave a hill. Now I move into middle age, I have a Rousseau-like passion for the miracles of the natural world. And a blue hill does feel to me like a bit of a miracle.

Hills

View across the Dee Valley, looking south.

Taken last night, at about six o'clock.

On the other side of those blue remembered hills is Perthshire.

 

 

The first thing I saw this morning

 

Well, not quite the very first thing, obviously. But when I went downstairs, I found a blue, still day.

Looking out of my front door, to the south, I saw this: