Better Together in Aberfeldy- A Memoir of the '14

Better Together in Aberfeldy

Once a year, in May, a distinguished professor of political theory invites a group of friends (and some friends of those friends), mostly 60 –plus in age, to 2 days’ canoeing down a river. After 3 years of the Wye and the Severn, in 2014 the group gathered by the Tay in Scotland.

Apart from one airport-to-convention hotel-back- to- airport trip, I had not been to Scotland since I was 10 or 11 years old, taken by grandparents to Edinburgh on the sleeper. (I vaguely remember a coach trip to Loch Lomond and being fascinated by the sight of a man in a kilt, not because of the kilt but because of the dirk in his stocking.)

The base for this Third Age in a Boat adventure was Aberfeldy. As well as its charms of a Highland nature (here of the geographically lowish sort), it is notable for its association with two influential English exports- the C18 General Wade and the C21 JK Rowling, whose country residence is hard by; one major denizen of the Scottish pantheon, Robert Burns, who wrote a poem above the town (the Birks of Aberfeldy, celebrating the impressive gorge and waterfall of the tributary Moness river); and one Anglo-Scottish hybrid, the Black Watch.

Baggini on Free Will

“I am determined to make my own choices”

Baggini on Free Will

In his book, optimistically entitled “Freedom Regained – the Possibilty of Free Will”, Baggini seeks to update a compatibilist version of free will (compatibilism being the, or a, school of thought which holds that human free will is “compatible” with a deterministic model of the universe; which entails that the universe is, without exception, governed by physical laws such that all that happens, or has happened, happens inevitably from a set of initial conditions, including what all that happens inside us. Incompatilists argue the opposite, either in despair of free will or because they hold to some variety of indeterminism, whereby the physical laws don’t necessarily apply to all or an important element of human action).

Regent's Park on Friday Afternoons

REGENT’S PARK ON FRIDAY AFTERNOONS

Regent’s park draws many people for many purposes. It is contained within a circle of dominating, mainly residential, Georgian buildings, sinister in their vastness, elegance and general plutocratic blankness. It contains, since 1955, the US ambassador’s stately residence, set in 12 acres of grounds behind high gates, which are patrolled by police armed with sub-machine guns (but usually police of a bobby-like cheerful demeanour at odds with their weaponry). Of course, it also contains the famous Zoo, of which the passing public may see, gratis, the giraffes. Once, you could stroll past the wolves’ enclosure, separated from a nightmare pursuit only be a wire fence. No more; the pack was packed off up the M1 to the Zoo’s country residence at Whipsnade.