The Boo Backit Brig

There are times when the best wee school in the world comes up with something that engages the whole family; times when we can forget those bits that rankle, infuriate even.
The project for The Biggies’ Class this term is to focus on our local community, and in this case to major on the town along the road, where the shops and the pubs are, the park and the library too.

Now our wee town has a bit of history.  And I’m not talking here of the bronze age arra’-heads from the fields in these parts, the ones now in the museum in The Big City; and not even of the jar of 400 Roman coins from the farm down by.  I’m talking of the castle that lies in ruins now, and the old town jail that once was; the buildings that were demolished  where there is now a road to take the juggernauts on their way.

And I’m talking of the Boo Backit Brig, for that is what Urchin the Elder has chosen to focus on for her first part of the project.  It’s been an education, for us all.  For there is history on the doorstep and we know little of it.

But the school has had us digging and delving, and scanning and printing, and imagining life in days gone by.

The bridge goes over the burn, hump-backed it is – that’s the bridge, not the burn.  And way back in the dim and distant, when that bridge would have been the only way to cross the burn that separates castle from graveyard, cross from jail; the only way to get to the inn where Claverhouse wined his troops the night before they got their comeuppance out here in the sticks; way back then the carts would go down Main Street, which is still there today, quaint and cobbled and narrow.  But the footsoldiers would avoid the carts, and go by Skippy.

Now there’s a name for a street, and a street still in use today, though without the ancient houses and the old wash house by the burn.  It leads straight over the bridge, an open and peaceful scene today.  But you can imagine it hemmed in, a sliver of light between hovels on the road down to the burn.

just like this one, still with the houses:

I’ll give you bush kangaroos – there’s only one Skippy, and I’d never heard of it till the school sent us scurrying into the archives.  Wonderful stuff.

And here’s the brig from the Skippy side, across open ground where once stood homes, and mills and who knows what:

And then there was Bauchle Raw, but that’s another story.

500 Days

The tumblers are counting down; getting close to the point where there’s a mere 500 days to go – for some reason I find myself humming 500 Miles as I type these notes.

Yes, it’s the referendum, and of course YES is the main word.  Seems a long time does 500 days, but you know things are hotting up when those pillars of society Have I Got News For You and The News Quiz get in on tha act, as they both did on Friday.

So we have sneering and condescension on the airwaves of the BBC.  But I don’t mind these ones for that’s what both programmes do, and do well.  I can put up with cockney gits playing to their audience, reading their scripts, and posh boys like Ian Hislop playing his role.  I didn’t find it funny, as it wasn’t, but irk me it did not.

But then they asked the audience – a wee show of hands as to whether we should be allowed to keep their pound.  Sorry boys, but it’s our pound too, bought and paid for.  And for all the gzillions of notes issued by Scottish-based banks in circulation, there is equivalent largesse deposited with the Bank of England.  But if you want us to remove those props from the BofE, and if you want to exclude all the oil transactions from the balance of payments that is so vital to sterling as a currency, then carry on.

It all just adds more votes to the Yes Campaign – so carry on sneering.

We can indeed bring back the groat.  Which takes us to something else small and round.  For on The News Quiz young Susan Calman was the most offensive of all, poking fun at her own.  For she is indeed a Scot, daughter indeed of Kenneth of that ilk, whose Commission in his name was the brainchild of the combined unionists, the one that was going to make Independence an irrelevance, and spawned the Scotland Bill which comes onto statute in 2016; unless, that is, we do something about it.

That said the father’s views are not necessarily those of the child, as I cringe at the thought of such a thought coming down my line.  But Susan is well known on our airwaves, not for being funny, but for not sitting on any fence at all.

Oh yes, it’s the BBC we’re on about, again.  And there’s a wee wander through Glasgow coming up soon –  a demand for a Balanced All-Inclusive Referendum Debate.

There was a good sign a few days ago when David Millar had a word with Labour’s Johann Lamont on Good Morning Scotland.  Coffee sprays on screens may have been many, for the woman is appalling, and proved herself a worthy successor to the much lamented Elmer Fudd.  Lamont is unable to think on her feet, work without a script.  And some see her as a leader of a nation.  Go on, listen in.  It’s the best thing on the BBC since Borgen, or since the final game of the Six Nations, or since, och I cannae think of any more.

And it’s not just the BBC, for just in, over at Wings, is this cracker; coverage in Canada.  But wait a minute it’s from Douglas Murray, a voice often heard on the airwaves of our favourite stae-funded broadcaster, famously in partnership with the totally offensive Ruth Deech.

Come on, time to Raise the Debate.  Time to march, again.  And don’t just take my word for it – here’s what Sir George Mathewson had to say.  And Craig Murray too, with a fine post.

Spookily

Sometimes there are coincidences, and we know not why.  You may begin to hum a tune, seconds before it plays out from the wireless in the corner.  Or it may be deeper than that.

Now I know I have been a little quiet of late, and you may be thankful for that.  But I have been reading, and I have been reading of writing.  It has been long and slow, much like my cycling, but I’m nearly finished now.  It was a book I started a week or two ago, just before I ventured into The Big City, to hear the sorceress of the essay and to learn of life with penguins.

I was going to tell you about that session with Gavin Francis and Sara Wheeler, for they were both excellent.  The Doc brought his skiddoo mitts, all snoticle encrusted, and his boots that wouldn’t be out of place on the moon or whatever lunar landscape NASA can find for their photos and flags and footprints.

But instead I’m going to tell you of the spooky bit.  For the book I’ve been working through was not my usual fare.  It was A L Kennedy, of whose marvellous fiction I’ve so far read not a single word, for I was reading her treatise On Writing.

We are indulged in a series from her periodic blogs for The Guardian.  Now that’s not a bad idea is it.  Write a blog, getting paid for it if you can.  Then pull the articles together in a book and sell them again.  But I do her an injustice for she gives us much more than that.

On Writing is the writer’s life, the angst, the hours of pain, and the poverty.  She delves into workshops, from the tutor’s angle, and the aims and achievements and sheer hard work.

But the spooky bit, where was I?  Oh yes, it was none other than said ALK, who has been gracing the bedside table for this past week or two, who was chairing that Antarctic discussion with Gavin and Sara.  And bloody good she was too, not that our intrepid travellers needed much encouragement to come out of their shells.

It was even worth missing half the the footie for.

Since then one of the things I’ve done is to add The Guardian’s Book Blog to my daily reading, throwing in a few comments on articles that grab my interest.  And having done that I’ve added a few more suggestions to the lists on your left hand side.  You might find some of interest.

Words not required

And credit to Wings Over Scotland who brought us this gem to brighten a dull day.  Now, not a word about ‘dirty money’ mind.

Aye, Write

It’s pretty much a local thing, the use of the double positive, sort of a reverse litotes.  But this one is doubly positive, for it’s a book festival, in Glasgow.  Aye, right I hear you say.  City of Culture not that long ago, so why not?

Anyway, there I was set up for a double-header.  Michael Jacobs was going to be telling me all about his travels in Columbia, perhaps even some tittle-tattle of high jinks with his neighbours in Andalusia.  Then I’d calm down with Kathleen Jamie, all Findings and Sightlines, and some poetry too.

But then the call came, no Michael Jacobs.  Ah well.  Still worth a trip into the big city , hoping that Ms Jamie has the same mesmeric effect as Ms Griffiths, even without the small and intimate setting.

We gathered in the Jeffrey Library, all wood panels and priceless tomes, cupolas high above letting in the evening light, and decorative cornicing in between.  Small and intimate is never an attribute when up to 150 souls gather, but it was sublime nonetheless.

She opened with an essay from Sightlines, Storm Petrel, and from there we were treated to birds and animals, to poetry and essays.  The authorial voice makes all the difference; that rich, rolling brogue, the pace perfect as it all comes to life.  From petrels to ospreys, stags and hawks, moths and spiders and bluebells; we had the works.

And did it work.  Poetry often doesn’t chime with me, but when you hear a reading by the author suddenly it all makes sense.

And there were surprises too – for she’s not a big fan of St Kilda – but wouldn’t turn down the offer of a return – and her toes curl at the term ‘nature writing’ – for it is all natural.  And the writing itself, well it comes naturally too – you just do it.  But you have to persist, and reading aloud is essential.

Birds are important, and it was a 40th birthday thing – bit early to be a mid-life crisis these days – that decision to learn their names, to put behind her the WBJ thing.  And so she writes with authority as that knowledge opens a new world, eyes raised ever upwards, demanding identification.  Barnes comes back to mind again, Bad Bird-Watching.

And so there’s hope for us all; reading, reading more, drafting and editing, and speaking out.  But there’s only one true sorceress, for it all comes so naturally to Kathleen Jamie, and I’m glad she shared it with us.

And there’s more, for on Saturday I make a major concession, missing the first half of the footie, and telling Urchin the Younger he has to miss it all.  But with both Gavin Francis and Sara Wheeler talking about Antarctica I really don’t mind.  I’ve heard Sara on Antarctica before, but adding Gavin’s experience of spending more than a year with the penguins will bring a new dimension.  Looking forward to that one.  Aye, right – no I am, honestly.

Beyond Austerity Unionism

I have deliberately held my wheesht over funerary matters in recent days.  The television and radio has been off, as I simply could not stomach witnessing the waste of money and the gushing sycophancy.  But it is over.  This morning I read this:

Beyond Austerity Unionism.

It’s a fine article, especially when you consider the author to be a mere 26 years of age.

And of course the other ongoing rumpus is on the Dirty Money propping up the unionist campaign to keep Scotland funding Westminster, to haud her back so to speak.

Despite Labour MPs badging the source as manky when it topped up Tory coffers, Darling seems intent on keeping the dosh for the BT campaign.  Good, for that is a gift and every day the Yes campaign can legitimately raise the funding question.  It’s not just the dodgy source, but also that it comes from one without a vote – the category that both sides said they would limit to £500.  I guess it’s a simple matter to move the decimal point – what’s a scruple when half a million’s on the table.

Here’s the latest state of play at Wings Over Scotland on the subject of the deals behind the money, and what we can or can’t talk about.  National Collective meantime, are back on-line, heels dug in.  And NC have a petition running to try and ensure a fair referendum.  Sign up here.

Now did you notice the good news buried yesterday?  Unemployment figures – down in Scotland, but rising eleswhere.  Growth in the economy too.  Does that sound like Bad News to you.  Thankfully Rev Stu’s on the case, for some media outlets just cannot be relied upon.

And finally, just to lighten the funereal gloom, some biting satire from Newsnet’s wee dug.

Have you heard of

….. Fawzia Koofi?

It’s a name you’ll be hearing more frequently.  In fact I see she was on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour recently.

It was a name I chanced upon in a certain bookshop; a purchase I was thinking of making until my loyalty card was stamped and it was added to my bundle.  And am I glad; not that I didn’t directly pay for it, but that I read the book, The Favoured Daughter, for it is one that must be read.

Koofi grew up in a mud hut in a remote Afghan village.  By the age of five her father had been assassinated.  He only spoke to her once in that short time, and that to tell her to get away.

She is still under 40, and was born into a male dominated society, the seventh daughter of the second of her father’s seven wives.  But the tendrils of the extended family came back to support her in quite a way.

Life has not been easy; through the carnage of Russian occupation, the mujahideen uprising that evolved into civil war, and then the Taliban.  But she was lucky, for she started on education, even though her medical studies were to come to an abrupt halt as the burqa and the ‘womens’ place’ were enforced.

A murdered brother, and another hunted; the death of her mother; and then the tragedy of her husband’s early loss after arrest and imprisonment and torture brought tuberculosis.  But she was only to give her husband two daughters and even he could not throw off the yoke of the son being valued so much higher.

There is suffering and pain, personally, societally and culturally.  But more than that we get to look in depth at an alien culture in a way that no other of the many works on this torn country have been able to provide.  Set aside those travel classics; put away those eye-witness reports from aid workers and womens’ rights campaigners.  This is a look through the eyes of a woman who belonged, who survived, and who succeeded.

Afghanistan goes to the polls again next year, and Fawzia Koofi will be competing with Karzai for the presidency.  I wouldn’t back against her.  At one stage she was the only Afghani working for the UN.  She was elected to the first parliament in the modern era, thanks in no small part to that wide and extended family network.  Her election was not on the rota to ensure sufficient female representation but on merit, and she became Deputy Speaker.  None of these things were meant to be, for she was a daughter, a girl, a wife, a mother – she was a woman, not worth educating, always replaceable – unlike the goat or the sheep that fed the family

It is an uplifting tale, through much heartache, shaped through letters to her daughters in case she was never to return, for her life is always under threat.  You’ll hear more of Fawzia Koofi, I’m sure of that.

The political system in Afghanistan is bicameral – it has two houses, upper and lower, much like Westminster, but more like Washington – the upper chamber is elected, democratic – one day……  And I was minded of local politics, Glasgow in particular, with one passage on cronyism and nepotism, bribes and corruptions.  “Tha last thing on their minds is the welfare and happiness of the people they are supposed to represent.”

It’s a fine insight and a deeper understanding.  I hope she succeeds, and her daughters  and their daughters benefit from her work.

Tales of Trees

That book of essays I mentioned recently is so good, and so aptly named, that I thought I’d bring you the full text of Salley Vickers’ Why Willows Weep; and here it is:

Long ago, when the world was still quite young, the trees and plants ruled all living things.  I say ‘ruled’ but there was no need then for rules; rather they were the caretakers of creation as it emerged out of that obscure and uncharted place from which what is called ‘creation’ emerges.

The birds were the first comers into the new world, that is to say, the world after the dinosaurs were done in and done for.  Except, of course, those which survived in an aerial form and reinvented themselves as birds.  Having had enough of being the ruling species – for they felt, maybe rightly, that to be so was to invite hubris – the birds abdicated their position to their gracious elders, the vegetable world of trees and plants.

In time, other creatures emerged: mammoths, sabre-toothed tigers, great apes, and finally humankind lumbered into existence.

Humankind took its time, moving from a low lolloping into a rolling walk, half hands and feet, to hunch over, almost upright, making tools and weapons.  It found how to make fire and began to burn wood, only the dead wood, for that burned easiest.  And the trees saw to it that this new creation did no real damage.  True, it liked to feed on other creatures, as well as on the fruits and seeds of the plants and trees.  But it was not alone in this.  The sabre-toothed tigers were also creatures of prey.

Now, the way the trees worked their benignant overseeing of the new world was through a patterning of subtle sounds that entered the spirits of the humans.  One particular tree held the root and branch of this gift.  If any violence was observed, beyond the ordinary necessities of living and feeding, this tree would sigh and sough and whisper so that the creatures were calmed.  If any human creature wanted to kill more than it could eat, or fairly feed its family on, for instance, then this same tree let out a sigh which touched the heart of the malefactor and returned to it a sense of fellow-feeling with the other inhabitants of the world.

One day, a young female human creature was sitting by a river leaning against this tree.  Across the way, she noticed a young male lifting his spear to throw at a running doe.  The deer was heavily pregnant, and as the hunter raised his arm the female creature heard the sound of a great sigh very close to her ear.  Behind her head, she felt the trunk of the tree shiver slightly and then begin to shake.  The hunter’s arm stayed poised, the spear still straight in his hand, as the deer vanished swiftly into the undergrowth.  ‘This is some magic,’ she thought.

Drawn by what she had witnessed, the female human creature came each day to the riverside, and more and more often heard the tree expelling its strange sound.  After a time, growing bolder in her fascination, she addressed the tree, ‘Tell me, why do you sigh?’

Although the trees were then blessed with the means to speak, none ever did except in private to another.  But surprised by this sudden question, the tree answered, ‘I sigh at the sight of humankind’s wrongdoings.’

‘What is “wrongdoings”?’ asked the young woman, who knew nothing of right or wrong.

‘Harm to other living creatures,’ the tree told her.

‘What is “harm”?’ she asked again.

‘Taking what you don’t need, giving pain or causing fear needlessly,’ said the tree, pleased to have encountered this eager-seeming pupil.

‘You sigh because you are……?’

‘I sigh because I am sad,’ the tree told her.  ‘But more than that, the sigh helps to stem the harm.’

The young woman went away and thought about this.  It seemed to her a great magic and she began to want it for herself.  When she next visited the tree she asked, ‘Will you teach me your gift?  I could help maybe to do your work and stem the harm with my sighs too.’

The woman was young and slender, with wild brown hair.  She looked not unlike the tree herself and the tree thought it might do a great good by teaching her how to sigh and to calm her own species.  So it bent down and whispered the secret in her ear.  At that, all the magic flew from the tree but all that entered the woman’s heart was a great sorrowing at the apprehension of the harm humankind could do.

And from that time, some among humankind know right from wrong and sigh for the wrongdoings that are done.  But the willow tree that lost its magic can only bend its head and weep.

Beuatiful isn’t it?  And there’s another 18 of them.  What’s your favourite tree?

N n n n n n n n…..

Nineteen.  No, we’re not back in the 80s again.  It’s much better than that.

19 Essays, fables even

19 Authors

19 Native Trees

Why Willows Weep is just one of those tales, and gives us the title for a book of Contemporary Tales from the Woods.  The list of authors on the front cover itself draws the eye, among them being William Fiennes, Philippa Gregory, James Robertson and Maggie O’Farrell, to name just 4 of the 19.

Woodland Tales

 

Open the covers and you’re in for a real treat.  How can you resist titles such as Why Birches have Silver Bark; or The Music of the Maple.  It’s like a thousand and one nights in your own garden, or down by the burn.  And each tale is beautifully illustrated by Leanne Shapton, with a leaf.

Why the Chestnut Tree has White Candles

 

The tale of The Cuckoo and the Cherry Tree had me starting the day with a smile, no it did, honest, hard to believe as it may be.

Don’t just take my word for it; here’s the opening lines of Amanda Craig’s Red Berries:

There was once a young man and his wife who lived together in a high stony land where no trees grew.  They dug a well, and built their home to stand against wind and rain, but there was one thing missing.

‘We need to plant a rowan tree,’ said the wife.  ‘The house isn’t safe from evil till we do.’

Her husband scoffed at this.

‘Surely you don’t believe such nonsense!’ he said to his wife.  But he was wrong, for the rowan has many uses, both against evil and as a cure for weakness and sorrow.

And if you want to find out how that ends…….

Why Willows Weep is a delightful work, filled with little gems; autumn leaves and buds of spring.  I’m away now to read Why the Yew Lives So Long, by Kate Mosse.

Oh, and for every book sold the Woodland Trust will plant five native trees as part of their quest to double native woodland in the next 40 years.

It’s Quite a Day

There has been much debate on the radio in the past few hours, following the announcement of the passing of Baroness Thatcher.  I remember the 80s well; and I see today the legacy of the Right-to-Buy and of Capitalism.  There is precious little social housing.  Our utilities are largely foreign owned.  And a nation of share-owners and property speculators drove the bankers into bust and bust.  I’ll say no more.

But take a moment to view the different ways the news is highlighted over across these isles, all from our favourite broadcaster:

The English News

And in Norther Ireland

The Welsh Version

And finally those chippy Jocks:

Maggie Who?

As always I’m indebted to Rev Stu at Wings, but please, for your own sake, do not visit Guido Fawkes who is fawning even more than you might expect from former cabinet colleagues and right wing press.  And you can be assured that I’ll be giving the ceremonial bun-fight a wide berth.  I remember clearly watching the State Funeral of Churchill, mainly as it was the first time the school had been gathered together round a TV screen.  But my memories of Maggie are best not aired at this time.