Thus you shall go to the stars

I had a meeting today down at the offices of the Scottish Commissioner for Children and Young People, which are on Holyrood Road, just round the corner from Parliament.

On my way back to St Andrew's House I passed the Scottish Poetry Library, which has this stone at shin-level embedded in the wall. I've never been inside (I was "on the clock" today so couldn't really justify the detour) but I will soon.

The carving reads sic itur ad astra - thus you shall go to the stars - which is a line from Virgil's Aeneid, Apollo to Aeneas' son Iulius.

I can't think of a more apt epithet for the poetry library.

And from poetry to music. I picked up a couple of folk albums today - Emily Smith's Traivelling Joy and Rachel Newton and Lillias Kinsman-Blake's Dear Someone. Looking forward to listening to those, but this evening I've been listening to older tracks and I'm not sure how to classify them (if indeed they need to be classified!) - as country or folk. I was listening to some Jimmy Nail - Big River and Crocodile Shoes. These take me back to my schooldays in Durham. In fact, they filmed scenes for Spender at my school while I was there.

Big River is a gorgeous song and one that always brings a bit of a lump to my throat, as it evokes Newcastle as it was before and during the closure of the shipyards, from bustling wharves of the 50s to the empty, almost soulless Quayside of the 90s. I'm tempted to say this is one of the best folk songs to come out of the north east in decades.

Walking on cobbled stones,
Little bits of skin and bone,
Jumping on a tramcar for a ride.
I can remember then,
I was just a boy of 10,
Hanging around the old Quayside.
Now all the capstans and the cargo boats
And stevedores are gone
To where all the old ships go
But memories just like the seas live on.
'Cos that was when coal was king
The river was a living thing
And I was just a boy but it was mine,
The coaly Tyne.