Bloggus interruptus...

"And lo, the contagion spread across the land (though the hardy worpressers, the plague diminished not, nor troubled). Each by each, blogs were laid low. Paralysis, the affliction brought on, paralysis then attenuation. Comments and posts, all likewise were devoured by its ravening hunger. Great was their lamentation, sorrow their blogfellow. Those who were spared its wroth praised unknown powers for their final deliverance."

The Less-Venerable Bede, from his account of the Great Blogger Plague of 2011...

Last week's vexing blogger outage coincided with a certain creative listlessness on my part.  The Peat Worrier's ink is frozen, his mental fibres knotted under his bargain-basement goathair peruke - and his quill held immobile in a sclerotic fin. He has even lapsed into the third person. It is frankly, concerning.  After an election result that exploded through Scotland's synapses, leaving little birds singing and stars blinding Nationalist opinion and leaving the blinking Unionist parties staggering - there is plenty that is worth saying. Enjoying a post-election pint with a defeated Labour activist, he noted that broad good cheer despite, I appeared to be approaching the idea of an SNP majority in Holyrood with a discernible sense of trepidation.

The young man in question was, I think, highly perceptive. Triumph has a terrible edginess, bearing its promise and its risks, particularly for folk who feel thirled to the dominating political outfit in question. Philosophy might have told us that responsibility is often as not a predicament as it is a pleasure, but abstract lessons are not always so easily learned, I find.  I am reasonably reconciled to my ideosyncratic tendencies, but suspect I'm not alone in the broadly pro-SNP camp, who feels the sense of promising danger about the election result.  The phrase is infelicitous, but I'm struggling more clearly to articulate my dominant sensation. Fear not. I haven't been imbibing the dregs of Labour election literature, nor am I in any respect trying to imply that Alex Salmond's re-election is in any respect a "danger" to any cove, covess or covelet. The idea of a hazard perhaps captures the sensation best, with its mixter-maxter combination of opportunity and danger - an apt formulation for the Maximum Eck himself, you might think, who notoriously scrutinises the world with the calculating gambler's eye. For those who know it, the dappled bothness of Gerard Manley Hopkins' poetry captures in broad strokes the notion I'm fumbling for.

Having argued that the SNP (and other nationalists) ought to be the cartographers of a new Scotland - finally the party has made landfall, with a hearty, hardy crew of lively mates.  The jaunty craft has weathered the storm of the election not only undamaged, but finds its crew significantly reinforced. With unexpected electoral gains, and unanticipated tribunes taking office, you generally have to brace yourself for entering unhappily into the losing poker-faced game of I'll see your numpty and raise you a numpty. Certainly, there are signs that Labour may not have its numpties to seek. One peaty source described one of their newly elected list MSPs as "a turnip". Having reviewed the credentials of the Nationalist cadets, however, I'm thoroughly encouraged. Certainly, there will be patches of questionable articulacy, but there is much in the biographies of the SNP's new recruits to be buoyed by.

The collegial rubbing of rinds may be encouraging - but these new and eager parliamentary auxiliaries hop off the good ship SNP in an intellectually-challenging tight-spot.  A jungle of independence detail no longer ominously haunts our horizons; it erupts at our very feet, trimmed of its existentially reassuring distance. It is not surprising - indeed it is entirely proper - that dissent about which star the political movement ought to navigate by finds a voice. Such disagreement is considerable - and is potentially productive. While the press is desperate to discipline disagreement, implying that any deviance from the Cap'n's canon represents disaster - this is a contemptible prospectus for thinking men and women and perhaps worse - is laughably bereft of intellectual humility. As the Burd suggests, when unpicking knotty questions, we want little of the tyranny of the captain, and much more of the credible self-reflection that is able to concede the obvious point, that life is difficult, problematic and untidy.

I'm not sure if our public sphere is quite prepared for such a bracingly honest approach, but if we allow ourselves to be tethered by the impatient and unworthy thesis that disagreement, complexity and nuance is a problem, we're fucked.