It’s Millar time

When the comic book master Mark Millar – the man who almost single-handedly saved Marvel by reimagining their heroes – sold out his company for £25 million to Netflix (and became a top executive), he bought a castle in the Borders. And why wouldn’t you?

Not long after he moved in a man in a long red coat appeared at his door. It turned out to be the master of the fox hunt. He explained that for 130 years the hunt – the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable, as Oscar Wilde put it – had started from the castle grounds. And that the laird had always launched proceedings by giving the huntsmen and women a nip from a quaich before they tally-hoed. “So I presume,” the master presumed, “that this will continue under the new laird.”

Millar responded that he was a working-class boy from Coatbridge, a Catholic and a socialist and if he allowed such a thing his family would cast him into the outer darkness with nary a superhero to save him. The master quietly removed his presumption and himself.

Breaking the ice

As young people (and old) throughout the world protested over climate change, the largest and most ambitious research project into how it is affecting the Arctic had its quiet launch. The German icebreaker Polarstern set off from Tromso in Norway on Friday for the Laptev Sea, north of Siberia. When it gets there it will cut through the ice and into an ice floe where the engines will be switched off and the boat, and the scientists onboard, will be frozen in place for at least a year as they all drift towards the North Pole. And they say there are no great expeditions left.

Scientific teams from 19 countries – including the UK, US and Russia – are involved in the £100 million MOSAiC project (Multi-disciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate). They will rotate, each spending two months on the boat. One of the first tasks when the ice takes hold will be to set up a perimeter fence with alarms and fireworks because this is polar bear central. Each person involved has also undergone firearms training (I think there’s the germ of a Millar movie here, where one goes mad because of the isolation and sets off a killing spree, polar bears break through the wire, although I’m struggling with the love interest).

Polarstern left from Norway to commemorate the Norwegian researcher and explorer Fridtjof Nansen who did something similar in a wooden boat, the Fram, 126 years ago, although he didn’t manage to make the target, the North Pole. The present adventure is a much more hi-tech affair, a huge ice city will be set up, planes and helicopters coming in and out and, hopefully, the bears staying on the outside.

After more than a year in the epicentre of global warming the scientists will have unprecedented information about what’s going on and what needs to be done to preserve the Arctic and us. If Trump’s still in the White House you can bet he won’t accept the conclusions.

Mean city

People make Glasgow what? My elder daughter was out in the city last weekend with a few girlfriends celebrating the birthday of one of them. It was early in the evening when her friend tripped in her high heels and fell, badly splitting open her head. She obviously had to go to hospital so the others half-carried her a few yards to the nearest taxi rank, outside Central Station. There was a long queue.

As a taxi drew up they asked the waiting people if they could jump the queue, take the cab and the blood-drenched girl and get her to the Royal Infirmary. Extraordinarily, they were loudly refused so they had to call an Uber and get her to A&E where she was stitched, later diagnosed with severe concussion and signed off her work for a week. I just hope that if something like that should happen to any of these refuseniks they meet a better class of Glaswegian.

Small wonder

In a ghastly but much more serious shadow of this, a former schoolmate of theirs, Gavin Robertson, was punched in the head at a cashpoint in Ibiza on August 28, suffering bleeding on the brain and then a serious lung infection. He was put in an induced coma and only came out of it a couple of days ago.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t taken out medical insurance so his family and friends gathered round and set up a crowdfunding page to pay for the lengthening medical bills – one branch of Brownings the bakers raised £5,000 in a matter of hours.

A couple of days ago, one of Gavin’s pals who has been involved in the fundraiser was at work when he was approached by a young lad, just 10 years old, who asked him if he was Reece Poole. When he said he was the boy handed him an envelope, saying he had raised £110 running a 5k with his dad to “help bring your friend Gavin home safe”.

As Reece says, “the little guy is inspirational”. The little guy is called Miller Stewart. What a wee hero.

Tight spot

Another one, of an older vintage, is 61-year-old Rhona Renaud who was confronted with a masked robber armed with a knife at the Anstruther shop she was working in. The robber demanded money from the till, Rhona told him he was a “p****” and was getting nothing. She was sure she recognised him under the black stocking on his head, she knew there were CCTV cameras everywhere, and when she saw one leg of the tights was hanging loose she grabbed it and whipped it off George Blackwood’s head.

“I had a quick look at them before I threw them on the floor. I reckon they must have been 70 denier,” she said, adding, “it’s the first time in my life I’ve taken tights off a man.” Blackwood is currently serving a 25-month prison sentence and no doubt the immense ribaldry of his fellow cons.