Today we are at 1884 Bo’ness. Readers will be aware that from time to time, we go to the cinema. More often than not we go to the Hippodrome in Bo’ness, Scotland’s oldest picture palace. And, more often than not, we go in the morning, just because we can! We are not quite sure why, because on the face of it it is a perfectly normal thing to do, but it still seems vaguely sinful. It’s not so much going in, it’s coming out when it’s not even lunchtime!

Anyway, us sinners went to see Mike Leigh’s Peterloo today and we had no worries about coming out before lunch. At two and a half hours, it’s something of an epic. It’s all about democracy in 1819 and the British government’s attempts to drown it at birth. They did not want common folk getting ideas above their station like the dastardly French. Four years earlier us Brits had given Napoleon a jolly good thrashing at the Battle of Waterloo and, sadly, our ruling classes looked on the Peterloo Massacre of its own people in a similarly triumphant light. This was amply illustrated by the fact that it actually took place at Petersfield in Manchester but was adapted to Peterloo as a warning to other potential upstarts.

Democracy

Anyway the take home message of the film was that we’ve not come very far in the intervening centuries. The UK is still the least democratic of all European states and, of course, democracy has yet to be discovered in Scotland.

After almost three hours of fairly intense viewing however, sustenance was definitely required. Just a short distance from the cinema we came across 1884 Bo’ness, a new café /restaurant. It had only opened a few weeks previously. The rather ancient looking exterior belies its nice modern welcoming interior. It does everything you would expect of a ‘kitchen grille’ but, of course, scones were the main attraction for us. When we asked why it was called ‘1884’, we were told it was because it was carved in stone on the outside of the building. It’s construction date. As good a reason as any and for brother and sister owners, David and Kirstie Stein it’s become rather habit forming. They also run very successful businesses, 1807 in Linlithgow and 1912 in Bathgate.

We decided on a fruit scone and opted for their offer of it being toasted. It was wonderfully warm when it arrived and came with plenty prepackaged jam, butter and whipped cream. It would have been nicer to have had a dish of jam, a pat of butter and some clotted cream but that wasn’t to be. Sadly, no topscone but we enjoyed everything about 1884 Bo’ness and would certainly return on our next cinema visit.

1884 and all that

While this building was being constructed in 1884 there were other things happening elsewhere.

• Here in Scotland, in scenes that must have been reminiscent of Peterloo, Royal Marines and police arrived in naval vessels at the tiny village of Uig on the Isle of Skye to help a landowner evict crofters from his Kilmuir estate.
• Otto von Bismarck declared South Africa a German colony.
• In the US, Alaska became a US territory and on Coney Island the first roller coaster went into action with a thrilling top speed of 6mph.
• Batchelor, Grover Cleveland became President of America in spite of admitting to fathering a child in his youth. It gave rise to the chant used against him “Ma, Ma, where‘s my Pa? Gone to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha!”.
• John Harvey Kellogg, patented “flaked cereal” (cornflakes) which he intended as a ‘healthy, ready-to-eat anti-masturbatory morning meal’!
• In France the Statue of Liberty was presented to the US and Claude Monet painted “La Corniche near Monaco.”
• In the UK, Greenwich was accepted as the universal time meridian of longitude though France refused to accept it for another thirty years.
• The Gaelic Athletic Association was founded in Ireland
  

Cornflakes

From this list we can reasonably deduce that the world has always been slightly mad. Though perhaps not quite as mad as it is today. The EU has sent Theresa May packing. Her attempts to bring about an acceptable Brexit deal  seem almost as futile as Kellog’s ambitions for his breakfast cereal.

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