I don’t know what triggered it, but I had the strangest of memories last night while watching television. Ten or eleven years old and still at primary school, I’m sitting in the back of a taxi, jammed up against the window. It’s a proper black cab, the first time I’ve been in one. Mum and Dad are also in the cab, along with a bevy of my siblings. There are so many of us that Dad has to sit at the front beside the taxi-driver. We’re on Queensferry Road, heading home. We’ve just been to the Sick Kids Hospital in Edinburgh to collect my wee sister, who had been very ill for a long time. But now she’s wrapped in a shawl in Mum’s arms, looking tiny and frail. The inside of the taxi is a hubbub, but I’m oblivious to the noise. I’m too engrossed with my notebook and pencil, recording random numbers I see from the window. Car and motorbike registration numbers, the numbers of buses, the numbers on speed limit signs, the numbers of miles on signposts – they are all jotted down in the notebook. And all the numbers are building up into the shape of a rifle. An odd pastime, I suppose, but I’m contented. The numbers are coming together. And the wee sis is coming home.
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I realise this is not the cheeriest of subjects to be writing about, but it does suit the gloomy weather here today.
You see it occurred to me the other night that in almost every crime series on television there is at least one scene where the spouses/parents/offspring/siblings of the deceased go to the mortuary to identify the body. And every time I see such a scene I’m reminded of my own experience of the ghastly process when we still lived in Edinburgh. It began when Alison received a phone call from the Police to inform her that one of her nieces, a particularly troubled nineteen year-old, had hung herself from a tree in a wood near her home. The girl’s father was said to be too “upset” (i.e. drunk and incapable) to deal with the matter, but he did manage to nominate his sister as the person to go to. So it fell to Alison, with my support, to meet the CID’s family liaison detective, obtain the death certificate, arrange the funeral, and even make sure that the poor lassie was dressed for the occasion. But first of all there was the requirement to formally identify the body. So one afternoon the young detective (who you’ll not be surprised to learn really, really fancied Alison) took us into some nondescript building just off the High Street and led us along a dark corridor to the viewing window. The room on the other side of the window was empty, but moments later two wee guys clad in medical gowns wheeled in the body on a trolley. Now those two guys were probably the nicest, most caring people you’d ever meet, but from their clockwork-like movements, their fixed, glazed expressions and the way they jerked back the sheet to reveal the lassie’s face, I just couldn’t help but think that they resembled a pair of J F Sebastian’s “friends” from Blade Runner. And sadly to this day I’ve never been able to get that image out of my head. I wrote and posted the following the day after the Independence Referendum, which took place on this day seven years ago. I’m still angry after all that time. I still despise that dancing, cheering wee man. But I do live in hope again.
I’ve never been on an anger management course. If I had, perhaps today I would have a few more front teeth, a few less scars and an unbroken nose. I’ve a lot of wild Irish blood in me, you see, and on occasion that blood has boiled over, made me see red and landed me in trouble. I’m also Scottish born and bred. And right now my blood is boiling again. In the aftermath of the Independence Referendum, I’m very angry. I’m angry with the three ex-public schoolboys who lead Britain’s main political parties and whose last-minute, deceitful wheeze probably swung the Referendum result. I’m angry with the sustained, blatant anti-independence bias of the British media in its reporting of the Referendum. I’m angry with those NO campaigners who told elderly people they would lose their pensions, Polish people they would have to return home, and English residents they would be chased out of Scotland if any of them voted YES. I’m angry with my English relatives, friends and acquaintances, not one of whom gave their blessing to Scotland’s quest for independence. Last and by no means least, I’m angry with those Scottish middle-class people who sought to snub the Independence Movement with its working-class roots by sneaking along to the polling stations on Thursday and furtively crossing the NO box. In the case of that latter group, some adjectives come to mind. Adjectives I’m not supposed to use, because they might show that I’m a bad loser. Adjectives like spineless, gutless, sleekit and selfish. Anyway, you’ll understand that my anger has many targets. So many, in fact, that it’s in danger of exploding and landing me in trouble again. To avoid that, I’ve devised my own method of anger management. I’ve decided to channel all my anger, all my frustration, onto a single target. And my chosen target happens to be the chap in the centre of the picture at the top of this post. Let me tell you about the chap. He featured prominently in BBC Scotland’s live coverage of the Referendum results. Each time a NO victory was declared, the camera cut to a party being held for the NO Campaign, where our wee man celebrated by cheering at the top of his voice, grinning like a demented Cheshire cat and dancing a lively reel – a fucking Scottish dance, by the way – with his partner. As the NO wins mounted, latterly turning into an avalanche, the reel grew wilder and his expression more delirious. At one point, I felt like Tam o’ Shanter at Kirk Alloway watching the De’il himself jiggin’ awa. Sadly, that image constitutes my abiding memory of the so-called “once-in-a-lifetime” Scottish Independence Referendum. And that is why the despicable, hateful, little man in the picture is today the focus of all my anger. Did I also mention that he’s spineless, gutless, sleekit and selfish? Oh, dear, I’ve probably landed myself in trouble again. It’s an age thing, probably. There I was minding my own business when suddenly I’m with Dad in West Register Street in Edinburgh. It’s the 1950’s, I’m only five, and we’ve just come from the Bus Station around the corner. We stop at the side entrance to Woolworths at the east end of Princes Street. I haven’t been there before. There are some steps leading down to a vast room that’s so brightly lit it hurts my eyes. I can see glass counters everywhere that all seem to be gleaming gold and silver. And there’s a loud hum in the room. It’s like a beehive, except it’s filled with people, not bees, who are the source of the hum. When we go down the steps, it’s there in front of us – a glass counter, behind which are trays, hundreds of trays, each one full of sweets. There are sweets of all different shapes and sizes and colours. The most I’ve ever seen before are in those big jars that Betty McGillivray keeps on her counter when we go to her shop in the Ferry for our lucky bags on a Friday after Dad has been paid, our weekly ration. But in here it is like an Aladdin’s Cave of sweets. I’m mesmerised. I’m transfixed. Nothing else exists except those trays of sweets. Then a lady behind the counter speaks to me, and I turn to look for Dad. He’s not there! I’ve lost my Dad! There are many people going back and forward, big people, giants, but no Dad. I’m all alone, tiny, lost. Tears are already streaming down my cheeks. I can feel a wail well up in me, but I stifle it when I see Dad’s face. It’s white and drawn. He looks as worried as me. I run to hug him. He hugs me back. I’ll never be hugged so hard in all my life. We stand like that for a while. And when we move on from Aladdin’s Cave, there are no words spoken. We’re both too relieved to speak.
Today being the 26th anniversary of our wedding, I’ve been thinking a lot, not about the wedding itself, but about the honeymoon that followed it. We rented a villa on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. We simply loved the island – its climate, its beauty and its wonderfully friendly people. But whenever we ventured into Nassau, the capital, there was much less to love, with so many reminders of the colonial and slavery past of the Bahamas. We were even reminded of the latter on the toll bridge that connects Paradise Island with Nassau. When we walked across the bridge one day, the chatty Bahamian lady who looked after the tolls came out of her booth to talk to us. She had a shock of flaming red hair. And she told us that she was the descendant of a plantation owner who came from – yes, you’ve guessed it – Scotland.
In Nassau itself, we visited a museum dedicated to the slavery history. There was a whole array of original contraptions that were used to shackle and punish the slaves. There were also accounts of slave rebellions and the mass executions that quickly followed them. All pretty harrowing, to say the least. And back on Paradise Island we experienced a more up-to-date reminder of that unsavoury past. Our villa was located a short distance from the big Atlantis Resort, with its casino and numerous restaurants and bars. We went there almost every night. That’s a photo of Alison in one of the bars. The waitress who had just served us with those piña coladas was a beautiful young Bahamian. Standing close to the bar were three young American guys in business suits. They all had Southern accents, were very loud and seemed to have been drinking a lot. The loudest, most red-faced and most drunk of them only needed to take a couple of steps to the bar to get himself another drink, but instead he waved his glass at our waitress, who was hovering at some distance away, and demanded: “Hey, girl, fetch me another one of these!” Well, you can take the laddie out of the Ferry, but you can’t… aye, you know the rest. I stood up immediately and made a beeline for the loudmouth. “She’s not your fucking girl!” was what I intended to tell him, but the lovely waitress stepped in front of me. “It’s okay, sir,” she said, “I’m used to it.” And then, after she had escorted me back to my seat, she whispered, “Thank you.” The good o’ boys left the bar shortly afterwards. It’s the Spring of 2007. I’m not long out of the hospital after the stroke. Alison and I have been going out for walks every day. Little ones at first around the neighbourhood. Then longer ones down to the Botanic Garden or up to Princes Street Gardens. Because I’ve been anxious about going into crowded places, we’ve usually gone home for lunch. But today I felt brave enough to venture into one of our favourite restaurants on George Street. Thankfully, the place was almost empty. We had a lovely pasta lunch, and I even drank some white wine. And the young waitress couldn’t have been more attentive, while completely ignoring Alison – is it ever so? Anyway, the combination of the walk, the meal and the wine had me feeling very tired by the time we returned home, so I went to bed. As I lay there, sleep almost overwhelming me, I was filled with contentment. The vileness that had triggered the stroke was gone. I was healing. I felt more able to deal with whatever problems lurked around the corner. And there was Alison, my angel, standing over me, holding my hand and smiling down at me.
“Just stay there until I fall asleep,” I said to her. “Fuck off,” she replied, letting go of my hand. And I loved her even more for that. Before heading North and eventually landing up in Crieff, Alison and I lived for a couple of years in this 1930’s house in the Willowbrae area on the outskirts of Edinburgh. The windows at the front looked out onto one of a pair of semi-detached bungalows across the street. The bungalow occupied a corner site, was privately rented and had a large unkempt garden. The equally unkempt tenant was a big, beefy guy with a wife and a gaggle of noisy children. He didn’t work and simply hung out all day at the front of his house in t-shirt and shorts, greeting a stream of similarly dubious-looking visitors. And regularly he would amuse himself for hours operating a deafening strimmer round the edges of his garden. He really wasn’t a good fit for our rather douce neighbourhood.
So you’ll understand that we were delighted when he, wife, gaggle and strimmer disappeared overnight. The bungalow lay empty for a while and the garden grew even more unkempt until three young Chinese men appeared one day. The new tenants! They were very industrious, tidying up the garden and the front of the house, and clearing out the inside. We’d often see them loading full black refuse bags into the boot of their car – off to the tip, no doubt. We didn’t see or hear much of them after that, usually only late at night, so we figured that they worked in a Chinese restaurant or takeaway. But overall we were very pleased with our new neighbours. Then one morning, returning home from a walk round the local park, we stopped short when we saw that the corner site was surrounded by a bevy of police cars and vans and that policemen in forensic gear were emerging from the bungalow carrying full black refuse bags. Yes, you may have guessed it – our lovely new neighbours had turned the bungalow into a cannabis factory. And just for good measure, in order to heat and light their factory they had tapped into the electricity supply of the adjoining bungalow belonging to a frail old lady. Appearances certainly can be deceptive! I watched The Eichmann Show on BBC Two for the first time last night: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b050d2t9 It's the riveting dramatization of the quest to televise the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961. I was particularly mesmerised by the expressions on Eichmann’s face when a succession of survivors of the Holocaust gave accounts of the horrors they had experienced. After seeing it, I was reminded of an incident during my time as a social researcher.
It’s the early Nineties, during the heyday of City Challenge, the jolly jape invented by Michael Heseltine to force Councils to compete for a share of the Tory Government’s meagre pot of urban regeneration money. I’m in Hulme in Manchester, a decaying crime-ridden Council estate, one of the largest and worst in Britain, and a winner of the aforementioned City Challenge. I’m in a particularly bad part of the estate, there to give a presentation to local tenants of the results of a door-to-door survey of residents’ priorities for regeneration. It’s one of a series of disappointing presentations – disappointing, because hardly anyone turns up to them. And on that particular evening, only one person does turn up. He’s an elderly Polish gentlemen, a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Out of courtesy, the Council staff and I agree that I should go ahead and give my presentation to this lone man, which I duly do to an otherwise empty hall. The old man listens attentively to what I have to say, smiling and nodding throughout. Afterwards, he shakes my hand and thanks me for letting him hear the results. I like this quiet, dignified gentleman very much. The Council staff make sure he has a cup of tea and a biscuit. Then they escort him back safely to where he lives, one of the many half-empty, brutal, concrete high-rise blocks that dominate the estate, the blocks that the original wanker of a posh architect christened “streets in the sky”. But it’s the place he calls home. It’s been his community for over three decades, a community that has been systematically destroyed by the jakeys and dealers, the scroungers and scrotes, the thieves and thugs, not one of whom could begin to imagine the suffering he has gone through in his life. I remember one day just before the Christmas break at St Mary’s in Bathgate back in the Sixties when our whole year was herded into the gym hall to sing carols. Up at the front, Miss Plinky-Plonk, our music teacher, sat at her Joanna. And presiding over the event was the monocled, treble-chinned Deputy Rector, who also served as our French teacher and who could have come straight from the pages of a Jeeves and Bertie Wooster story with his penchant for referring to every boy as a “shady cove”.
So there we were attempting to sing Adeste Fideles in a variety of tones, depending on the extent to which our voices had broken and ranging from deep baritone (broken) to grating croak (half-broken) to girly squeak (unbroken): ♫ Adeste fideles læti triumphantes Venite, venite in Bethlehem ♫ When suddenly with a stentorian roar one of the big boys at the back burst into the chorus of The Quartermaster’s Store: ♫ My eyes are dim, I cannot see ♫ And spontaneously some of the other big boys joined in: ♫ I have not brought my specs with me ♫ By which time all the rest of us joined in, creating a sound that would have been the envy of a Welsh Male Voice Choir: ♫ I have not brought my specs with me ♫ Meanwhile, Miss Plinky-Plonk had stopped plinky-plonking and Bertie Wooster, his gown flapping around him, was rushing to the back of the hall in search of the culprit. “Which one of you shady coves is responsible?” he was demanding. Although I was brought up by the sea in South Queensferry and spent half my boyhood “doon the shore”, I never learned to swim as a laddie. Scared, to be honest, especially after a traumatic experience during a PE lesson at the most brutal of public swimming baths in Bathgate. Then I met Alison, who had been awarded all sorts of swimming medals at school. And when we went on our first beach holiday, the lessons began. The lassie was a miracle worker. See, that’s me in the photo during our honeymoon in the Bahamas, swimming like a boss at last. I was only 45. And it did help that we had a wee private swimming pool. Aye, it’s never too late.
Sight of this beautiful whisky decanter today had me reflecting on the twenty years I spent as a consultant and researcher, during which I travelled to every corner of this dis-United Kingdom, making presentations of my findings to audiences ranging from a handful of people to several hundred. Out of all those presentations, the most memorable venue was a dungeon-like cell in the Tower of London, with Beefeaters standing sentry outside. And the funniest was a meeting room above the swimming pool in a leisure centre somewhere in Northumberland while a bunch of old ladies took part in a synchronised swimming lesson. I can still remember trying to make myself heard over the blaring pop music, the instructor’s shrill whistle and the ladies’ fierce splashing.
Yes, lots of memories from those presentations. Like the time in the Kensington area of Liverpool when I swore at the Bishop of Liverpool. Or when I was surrounded by a squad of suspicious, rifle-pointing soldiers in West Belfast. Elsewhere, I was threatened by druggies in Hulme in Manchester; propositioned by prostitutes in Manningham in Bradford; drowned out by disgruntled Scousers in Kirkdale in Liverpool; and confronted by White racists in Batley in West Yorkshire. And the whisky decanter? A wee token of appreciation from West Lothian District Council after my last presentation to the Council – followed by a standing ovation, of course! I watched this movie last night. Beautifully filmed and acted, and deeply moving, it’s the true story of a conscripted Austrian farmer who faced execution for refusing to swear loyalty to Hitler.
Afterwards, I was reminded of the wonderful holiday that Alison and I spent in Vienna in the summer of 2000. We saw stunning architecture. We heard beautiful, beautiful music. And yet, despite the hot weather, a coldness crept into my thoughts from time to time. All around us were reminders of the Second World War, of the Nazi regime, of the Holocaust. I experienced the same feelings when, later, we holidayed in Prague; indeed, the hotel we stayed in was said to have been used as the Gestapo headquarters in the city during the Nazi occupation. On one morning during the latter holiday, we took a taxi to Terezin, the infamous garrison town that was converted by the Nazis into a concentration camp and Jewish ghetto. Acting on the taxi driver’s advice, we made the mistake of visiting the Terezin Small Fortress first. A short walk from the concentration camp, the fortress was used as a prison by the Gestapo. The photo below shows its entrance. In one of the buildings, we saw a row of tiny, half-dark cells, some with manacles still screwed to the walls. Political prisoners, mostly Russians, were interrogated and tortured in them. As we left the cells, a bunch of very noisy American kids entered them, oohing and aahing and laughing while taking pictures. Beyond the row of cells was a long, narrow tunnel, along which prisoners were led to the execution courtyard, where they were shot against a wall. We were halfway through that awful tunnel when we heard the American kids come up behind us. I was already filled with trepidation, but now I froze; I couldn’t take another step. I had never felt so spooked in my life. After pleading with Alison, we turned back, saw the rest of the prison and then walked over to the concentration camp. The whole experience was a harrowing one for us. When we returned to Prague, we found a bar and got quietly drunk. It had not been a good day. I just love this photo. It was taken in the 1950’s at the back of our house in the Ferry. The cheeky chap with the gap in his front teeth (and a lisp to go with it) is me, of course, with three of my sisters.
When I saw the photo again today, it occurred to me that when I go completely bald the scars will be visible. I can’t remember all the times I had to have stitches in my head when I was that wee laddie, but here are a couple of notable occasions. Some workers from the Council came to the house to paint the rone-pipes. One of them propped his ladder against the wall you see in the photo. Then up he went with his paint-pot and brush. And up went the bold Brendan after him. But I didn’t get very far before I toppled backwards and cracked my head on the brick path below. Stitches. Lots of stitches. I was playing in the swing-park at the end of our street when it was invaded by a gang of big laddies from the Ferry. They were amassing there because they had heard that a rival gang from the neighbouring village of Dalmeny was on its way. Some of them decided to take a shot on the swings while they waited. I was watching one of them swing higher and higher when I noticed what looked like a coin on the ground below the swing. Just as I darted for the coin, the swing came zooming down and a pair of tackety boots connected with my skull. Stitches. Multi-stitches. My poor oul’ mother. What she had to put up with. A few feet down the hill from my house is a derelict little cottage. It has a front door on the street side and a back door opening out to the alley that separates my house from the cottage. The back doorstep has the following inscription carved into it: RIVER STAY AWAY FROM MY DOOR.
Ever since coming here some eight years ago, that inscription has intrigued me. There are lots of underground streams in Crieff (I’m sure there’s one running under my house and under the little cottage as well), but the nearest river is way, way down the hill. So I think the prospect of flooding from a river is rather remote. After telling a friend about the inscription earlier this week, I took this photo of it and decided to Google it, wondering whether it was an old local custom or something like that. But it turns out that River, Stay Away From My Door is a song that was first recorded in 1931 and made famous by Paul Robeson that year and then by Frank Sinatra in 1960. Here are some of the lyrics: ♫ Don’t come up any higher I’m so all alone Leave my bed and my fire That’s all I own I ain’t breaking your heart Don't go breaking my heart River, stay away from my door ♫ So that’s it. I guess the inscription was put there by a Frank Sinatra fan. Right, I’m off to carve I DID IT MY WAY into my back doorstep. Another wee memory that came unbidden last night...
It’s a winter’s evening in the Ferry in the early Sixties. As usual, some of us older kids are hanging out in the big kitchen while the rest of the family watches television. Wull knocks on the back door. He is Aunt Betty’s younger brother. He lives in Fauldhouse and comes through to the Ferry regularly to see his sister. Like tonight, he always pays us a visit when he’s through. We’re barely teenagers. Wull is a few years older than us. With his faint West Coast accent and his American High School jacket, we think he’s a real cool guy. Tonight he’s carrying his dansette record player and a bagful of 78 rpm records. We’re in for a treat. After setting up the dansette, Wull puts on a pile of records, mostly Elvis Presley’s latest hits. When those are done, he puts on another record and says, “Just listen to this.” And out blasts Jerry Lee Lewis with Great Balls of Fire. We are mesmerised. Suddenly we’ve been transformed from mere rock’n’rollers into worshippers of the Devil. She and her husband turned up unannounced at our door one Saturday morning. After seating them in the drawing room (well, we were in the New Town of Edinburgh, dontcha know) and offering them coffee, I went to announce their arrival to Alison, who was still getting ready. When I was returning to the drawing room with a mug of coffee in each hand, I could hear our uninvited guests talking.
“Look at the size o’ that,” she whispered loudly to her husband. “Compared tae the totty wee thing they gave us. Cheek o’ it!” She was sitting beside a small coffee table, on which was placed the big cat in the photo. Made from Murano glass, Alison had brought it back from one of our trips to Venice. The “totty wee thing” she was referring to is also in the photo, a Swarovski Crystal cat. Alison bought two of them during another trip abroad, one especially for our complaining guest. Each one was twice the cost of the big glass cat. As I put down her coffee on the table, I wanted to say: “It’s no’ the size that matters, you moron.” But I bit my tongue. Rome. The summer of 1996. We’re staying at a hotel on the Via Vittorio Veneto, where much of Fellini’s classic movie La Dolce Vita was shot. A fake-blonde fake-tan English lady about the same age as Alison is also a guest at the hotel. She’s rather loud and she always seems to be swanking about the place, demanding attention, as if she was Anita Ekberg in the movie. On the evening when the photo was taken, Alison was in that stunning dress, which she had purchased from Marks & Spencer’s summer collection just before we left Edinburgh. We were heading out of the hotel when we heard our fellow-guest descending the marble staircase, clattering in her stiletto heels and humming gaily to herself. But the clattering and the humming stopped abruptly when she set eyes upon Alison. Yes, you’ve guessed it, she had on exactly the same dress. Alison simply smiled demurely at her. It was a smile that said: “I look better in mine, hen.” Aghast, the wannabe movie star scrambled back up the stairs to change. Ciao bella!
My granddaughter will begin her first year at secondary school on Tuesday. With all the precautions that she and her teachers will be taking because of the pandemic, I’m sure it will be the strangest of experiences for her, if not worrying and perhaps traumatic. But I’m also sure that she will take it all in her stride.
My first day at secondary school back in 1962 was also worrying and traumatic, but for different reasons. I and the other laddies from the Ferry who were destined to begin at St Mary’s Academy in Bathgate that year had heard tales of the horrors that befell first year pupils on their first day. It was a tradition, we were told. So on that rainy September morning we all sat quietly with white nervous faces during the two bus journeys that would take us to our fate. When the second bus arrived at the school, the Ferry kids, along with several hundred other pupils from elsewhere, were herded into the gym hall, where a local priest said Mass, which was also a tradition on the first day of a new school term. The problem with observing Mass in a hall is that you have to do a lot of genuflecting – taking the knee, they call it nowadays. And the bigger problem with genuflecting in a packed hall where everyone is wearing wet coats and carrying schoolbags is that there’s a lot of bumping and jostling. On one occasion when I was taking the knee, an older pupil was so close to me I could smell his rancid breath. And then he whispered in my ear and my body froze: “Wait till playtime. We’ll be comin’ tae get ye.” I spent the next part of the morning in a daze. We were allocated to our classes, introduced to our form teachers, given timetables – all that sort of thing. But soon enough the school bell rang to signify the morning break; it sounded like a death knell to me. With much trepidation, the first year pupils filed out of the school and into the playground. I hung back as long as I could, but eventually I had to step out. What greeted me was like a scene from Dante’s Inferno. Some bands of older boys had formed circles so that they could toss the first years they captured screaming into the air. Other bands were dragging their captives into the shunkies (the outside toilets) where their heads would be shoved down the lavvy pan and the chain pulled. Still others were in hot pursuit of their weeping prey. And those first years who had been “initiated” were limping and whimpering back towards the school. The common factor among all the victims was their school uniform – the bright blue blazer with gold braiding that their parents, including mine, had gladly and proudly spent half a week’s wages on and that now turned their sons into shiny new targets for the mob. I, too, was such a target. Desperately looking around for some way to escape, I spotted three big boys from my class – by big, I mean six feet-plus big – standing in a nervous huddle. Instinctively, I knew that their bigness was keeping them safe. I didn’t know the boys from Adam, but suddenly I became their BFF. Being the size of tuppence, it was easy for me to slip into the huddle and be screened from the cowardly bullies. I was safe as well. They say that Fifers are fly. Well, this wee Ferry laddie was just as fly that morning. My Irish grandparents Patrick and Mary Kate Lane, together with all but one of their children, including my dear oul’ mother, are long gone from this world. They’re gone, but they’ve left a legacy – a whole army of cousins, some from Scotland and most from Ireland. Thanks to Big Sis Ann Marie, I have this week had the pleasure of meeting four of the latter cousins on Facebook. Their unanimous opinion is that I’m definitely a Lane in appearance. “Sure all the Lanes are good-looking,” my late Uncle Michael Lane used to say, and who am I to disagree with him?
So it’s been a good week so far. And now I’m writing this on a rainy afternoon, while listening to Anne Shelton sing my mother’s favourite album, with a wee tear in my eye because I realise that after all these years I still miss that soft lilt of Mum’s. And I come to the conclusion that although I love Scotland dearly it’s Ireland that is my spiritual home. Which sets me thinking that maybe one of these days the Big Sis and I, with the help of our cousin John Lane, will finally discover the location of grandfather Patrick’s long-neglected grave. Then maybe, God and viruses willing, all the cousins can come together to celebrate the Lane legacy. Maybe. I read today that lots of parents have been finding it difficult to home-school their children during the current pandemic, which reminded me of the one and only time my Irish mother attempted to home-school me. It was in the 1950’s. I was the wee smout in the photo attending the RC Primary School in Winchburgh. Although my mother hadn’t received much of an education in the clergy-ridden rural Ireland of the 1930’s, she could read and write (but not spell) and she could do sums. For some reason, she took it upon herself one evening to teach me sums. She wrote down a number of simple sums on a piece of paper and invited me to fill in the answers. But there was one sum that bothered me. It contained the figure 5, except the hat on the 5 wasn’t attached to the rest of the figure. Sitting out there on the left of the sum, for all the world that hat looked like a minus sign. I protested: “But Mum, we’re no’ daein’ take away sums yet!” At which she gave me a slap across the face. She wasn’t a very patient home-schooler. And there ended the lesson.
On my way up to Alison’s Tree on Wednesday, I stopped at the well on the cinder path to read the Jesus Said notice again. As before, I didn’t understand a word of it, but it did immediately remind me of my Dad and the jokes he used to tell. When I was a wee laddie, Dad was an eternally cheery young man, always smiling and whistling and singing, and forever telling jokes. That was before all the trouble, the debt, the illness – but that’s another story I’ve written down in The Bookie’s Runner, my wee biography of him.
Anyway, I used to sit in the kitchen and watch Dad having a wash when he came home from the dockyard. He would be stripped to the waist, his six-pack stomach on show (gained not from working out, but from hard labouring day after day), covered in lather, and singing his heart out as if he didn’t have a care in the world. And when he was finished washing he would tell me the latest jokes he had heard at the dockyard that day, although I’m sure he always left out the more risqué ones. The conversation would usually begin with Dad saying, “Want tae ken a joke?” When I nodded, he would always respond with, “Jock, the coalman”, and I would always laugh out of politeness. Then came the real jokes. Which brings me to the Jesus Said connection. One of the jokes he told me was about a man who stopped him in the street and declared, “I’m the Son of God!” And when Dad asked him why he thought that, the man explained, “Well, when I went intae the pub the day, the barman stopped whit he wis daein’, looked at me and cried: Jesus Christ, it’s you again!” Kinda funny, I suppose. But there was a better one which I still laugh at even today, because it reminds me very much of some folk I’ve come across in my life. It’s about the man who goes to the doctor complaining of piles. (By the way, it was only years later that I learned what piles actually were.) So the doctor gives the man some pills and says, “Put one of these in your back passage every night for a week.” A week later the man returns to the doctor and tells him, “I dinnae have a back passage. Just a wee lobby. And I did whit ye said and left a pill in the lobby every night for a week. But for aw the guid that did me, I’d have been as well stickin’ the pills up ma arse.” Boom! Boom! as Basil Brush would say.🦊 As a result of my current obsession with the music of the Glenn Miller Orchestra, the song I’ve Got A Gal In Kalamazoo is never far from my head. And every time it reappears there I’m reminded of the first proper job I was given as a clerical officer for the Scottish Special Housing Association (SSHA) some 50 years ago (in addition to filing and tea-making, of course). At that time, the SSHA, as a major landowner in Scotland, was obliged to pay feu-duty to the hundreds of original owners of the land, ranging from individual people to large institutions like the Church of Scotland. Conversely, it also had to collect feu-duty from the many individuals and organisations to whom it had sold land. I was put in charge of issuing cheques to the former group and sending invoices and reminders to the latter, as well as banking the subsequent cheques and postal orders. Feu-duties became due on each of the Scottish Quarter Days, which I still remember as Candlemas, Whitsunday, Lammas and Martinmas.
The records for all of this were kept in two large leather-bound loose-leaf ledgers – one called Payable and the other Receivable. Each ledger was half the size of wee skinny me. Together, the two of them weighed more than me. And I had to lug them along a corridor every time a transaction needed to be recorded. Every. Single. Time. Even the apparently simple process of opening one up to insert a new page was a Herculean task, involving a large piece of wood and a hammer. Those ledgers were my nemesis. And, yes, you’ve already figured the Kalamazoo connection – the bastards were made there! Fortunately, because feu-duties were abolished in 1974, I didn’t have to put up with the ledgers for too long. They probably still exist, lurking on a shelf in a dark, forgotten basement somewhere in Edinburgh. Menacing. Indestructible. But the song is indestructible as well – and sweeter. Just listen to that orchestra starting up and that voice announcing: ♫ A B C D E F G H – I’ve got a gal in Kalamazoo ♫ It’s April 1946. My Dad is a twenty-year-old Able Seaman aboard the aircraft carrier HMS Vengeance. The ship left Singapore a week ago after acting as the venue for the Japanese surrender of the territory. Today it anchored off the coast of Japan, close to where the first atomic bomb was dropped. Tomorrow Dad will go on shore leave, during which he will stand on the rubble of Hiroshima, an act that more than likely will lead to his death some twenty years later. But this evening he is writing a letter to a potential sweetheart back in the Ferry. The letter came into the Big Sis’s possession after its recipient passed away. Not all of it survived, but even from this opening page you can tell that Charles Gisby (aka Derry McKay) was a bit of a charmer. I don’t know if he and Mima got together when he returned to the Ferry. I do know that he met and married a beautiful colleen who was in service to Lord Rosebery at Dalmeny House. Was Mima heartbroken by this turn of events, I wonder? Or did she have her own sweetheart by then? Whatever the case, she hung on to the letter for the rest of her life; it must have meant something to her.
Cairo. The summer of 2002. Late morning. After a fascinating couple of hours spent in the gloom of the Egyptian Museum, we emerge blinking into the sunshine. While we stand there wondering where to go next, a skinny Egyptian guy approaches us. He happens to look a lot like Alison’s older brother. “Wanna buy some papyrus?” he asks. He’s carrying a papyrus scroll which he opens up to shows us. Alison is hooked. “Okay, let’s have a look,” she says. The skinny guy indicates that we should follow him. He leads us down from the museum to a main road. There are eight lanes of fairly fast moving bumper-to-bumper traffic. It’s a daunting sight. Suddenly, he plunges into the traffic. “Walk like an Egyptian,” he shouts with his back to us. We hurry to catch up with him. We copy his confident zig-zagging, skirting the oncoming vehicles by mere fractions of an inch. We reach the other side of the road, unscathed and oddly exhilarated. Further along the road, the skinny guy takes us down some steps and into a papyrus shop. He leaves us there to go look for more potential customers. We spend a while in the shop. Alison purchases three papyrus scrolls of different sizes. When we come back up the steps, we decide to walk like an Egyptian again. And again. And again. Crossing and re-crossing the road, experiencing a buzz every time. Until we figure it’s time to behave ourselves.
Anyway, Alison had the three scrolls framed when we returned to Edinburgh. They now adorn my study here in Gisbyland. Seeing all those photos of the flooded Basilica in Venice has reminded me of the time Alison and I met Elvis in Piazza San Marco. It was a Saturday night. We were coming out of Caffè Florian after a nightcap and heading back to our apartment when we were stopped by a thirtysomething American man who looked awfully like Elvis: the same thick, swept-back, jet-black hair, the same chubby face and sallow skin. He also sounded awfully like Elvis, his words tumbling out from somewhere at the back of his throat.
“Pardonmesirandmaam, can you tell me if that there building is a church?” he asked, pointing to the floodlit Basilica behind us. “Yes, it is,” we replied in unison. “Saint Mark’s Basilica,” added Alison. “Me and the family are staying just round the corner,” explained Elvis, “and I have to make sure the family goes to Mass tomorrow morning. So do you know if this Basilica does Mass… Catholic Mass?” Alison looked to me for an answer; brought up Catholic, supposedly I knew about that sort of thing. “Yes, it does,” I said. I remembered reading a notice outside the Basilica about the Mass services. “But you’ll have to get there early. People will be queuing up from first thing.” “That’s no problem, sir,” smiled Elvis. “Thankyouverymuch. Thankyouverymuch.” “Where are you from?” Alison asked as he turned to go. “Memphis, Tennessee, ma’am.” Spooky. “We’re from Scotland.” “Scaatland. Yeah, I was there once a long time ago. But it was only a stopover at some airport.” Even spookier. |
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