Mothering

On one of my many maunderings around the Museum of Scotland, I saw a young pregnant woman who was wearing, stretched across her gravid abdomen, a blue tee-shirt.  On it was printed a rotund cartoon character swaddled with bandages and plasters, beneath which I read, Mr BUMP! Oh, how amusing, I thought, and went off in search for another of my 26 Treasures to write 62 words about, to coincide with my birthday (which was last Wednesday) and Mothering Sunday. 

And here it is: an architectural stone from a church in Kirknewton, depicting a mother giving birth, firmly supported by another person. Presumably, the father. But if the last blog-entry is anything to go by, you can never be too sure.

      Voussoir

The Medieval Church took childbirth

   more seriously than we do now.

Call it ‘gravitas’ – engraving a gargoyle

   on a wedge; carving out an entrance

on a jutting, stone protuberance

   the contorted, grotesque, strangled

limbs of a woman in the throes of her travail.

   I marvelled at their chiselled pain;

the mortal immortality of giving up a life…

   while I sculpted a sestude.

Sackcloth and Ashes

Lent has arrived, and with it, following the daubing of ashes on the foreheads of subscribers to the anglo-catholic traditions of Christianity, a season for which to repent of many hundred years of hard-wired hypocrisy that is The Church.  As the tale behind this Gown of Repentance suggests, men have got away with it for a long time. Women, on the other hand, have not. 

Those convicted of various offences by West Calder Kirk Session were required to appear before the congregation in this gown. Jonet Gothskirk appeared on successive Sundays for many months.’ There is no record of any punishment for William Murdoch.

A Prickly Issue 

Back in '77, when everyone wore brown,

and papered the lounge with paprika hessian,

William invented a word to describe

another unpleasant fibre;

that prickly, scratchy acrylic wool.

Called it “sprangie*.”

To wear a jumper, tank-top or cardigan

without a vest was a punishment

worse than wearing a sack-cloth gown.

But William never committed adultery.

It’s the women you need to watch.

*NOTE: 
To pronounce this word, think of a mixture of tangerine and spongy.

Drinking In Edinburgh

Last week, I saw a tweet, asking the Burghers of Edin where there might be a convivial cafe to sit and write.  Suggestions spewed forth, with Black Medicine in Morningside seeming to top the bill.  The next day I sent a similar teaser: in which Edinburgh pubs and bars do people choose to write their memoirs?  Several were the same as my own favourites – but I’m not giving anything away here. What a strange thought that, when I sit with my little black book, pen in mouth, contemplating words, I might not be entirely alone.

In the days of Scottish Enlightenment, not long after the Union with our Southern Neighbours, Gentlemen (ladies, take note) met in Convivial Clubs and Drinking Establishments to discuss Matters of Importance.  It was then that the term 'alcoholism' was coined. The idea that this could be considered a disease, but drunkenness, disorderly, seemed to be enshrined in the attitude that drinking was a middle-class pursuit; getting drunk was common.  Commoners gambled, while the upper echelons wagered.  And the difference between Taverns, Inns and Bars was clearly class (or money, which is usually the true distinction) oriented.  

When I saw this silver Quaich in the Museum, inscribed with the motto of an 18th Century Convivial Club, I imagined two gentlemen gently ribbing each other: an Englishman and a well-to-do Londoner, come to visit his newly-acquired cousin Edinburgh, engaging in persiflage over a dram or two.  And this is a 62-word fragment of what, perhaps, they might have spoken at the time…

The Wager

‘There are some things I would’nae place a bet on,’ said Edward Lothian, in an affected Edinburgh accent. ‘One is that you’ll no’ find a rhyme with “silver quaich”.’

            ‘You may well be right,’ replied the Englishman convivially.

            ‘Yet I’d put a hundred to one,’ continued Lothian, ‘that you could’nae pronounce it.’

            He had a go.  But it came out as “quiche.”

A quaich was a shallow drinking vessel unique to Scotland. This silver example was made around 1750 by Edinburgh silversmith Edward Lothian. It is inscribed 'A hundred to one' which was possibly the motto of an Edinburgh betting or convivial club.

The Morning After

Thanks to our National Poet, we have another day to add to the drinking calendar!  Appropriate, then, that I should post on the day after Burns Night the second of my 26 Treasures.  For this piece, I wanted to find something associated with The Bard.  Unfortunately, the item that took my interest wasn’t actually on display, so I had to look online for a picture. 

Perhaps I should design my own family crest, as Burns did, to illustrate my piece.  But no, there isn’t time; I shall pilfer the picture instead, in the spirit of my little poem (which also steals a joke told to me by a friend who passed away a few years ago, so at least he’ll not chase me for it.)

Stock-and-horn – from a Chanter, owned by Robert Burns

If I could remove the rampant cat

   from my family crest; replace it

with a stock-and-horn, perhaps

   I’d filch affinity with Burns.

Would I choose a bird, or bush

   – Twisted Hazel, Song-Thrush –

swap the mottled tartan; maybe

   something more exotic, or plain?

I’d pilfer, for a motto, ‘What

   defines a courteous Scot?

One who kens to play the

   pipes… but chooses not.’

Unlucky for Some

This year I have set myself the task of coming up with my own version of the 26 Treasures project which is taking place at the National Museum of Scotland.  The project so far consists of a trail through the Museum of 26 objects, each paired with a writer who was asked to pen a 62-word response to their given treasure.  

Naturally, I have entered the competition which runs with this project, and the rule that you can enter as many pieces as you like, in any style means that I’ve not stopped at only one piece.  So my plan is to post my work on this here blog, every fortnight: starting today, the next on the 26^th of January, and for the rest of the year until I have my own set of 26 Treasures.  Sounds ambitious? Let’s see.

For anyone who is just a little superstitious, today of all days: wish me luck.

Spot the Witch

‘Unlucky for some,’ she said.

I, for one

would rather not have seen

that silver mounted evil eye

– crystal and turquoise –

winking at me as they

dooked me at Bonar Bridge.

What a curse!

Did you ever catch me

dragging a rope across your

cowfield, all for

a paltry pail o’ milk?

I hope your butter sours,

you scrofulous, lying auld bitch.

And the Winner is...

Well me, of course. When I offered a prize back in April to whoever could name the location of the phone box pictured in that month’s entry, it was a hollow offer. Being an anonymous blog, I can hardly identify the person who left a comment with the correct answer. But having ‘moderated’ it, you will find it by clicking 'April' (right.) And if you are reading this for the first time and want to know what this waffle is about, you might like to start in January (click 2011 and Ctrl+Pg down), and follow the phone-box trail, while I tuck into my crème egg, twisted.

The real winner, however, has to be my Dad, who (for those who follow this waffle top-first) is thankfully on the mend, and managed to escape hospital in time for Hogmanay. Having posted on here some of the black-and-white snapshots that make up childhood memories, it seems that certain elements of his formative years have caught up with him in old age. Or is it too easy to say that a childhood in a deprived area of a large city, with malnutrition, economic depression and impending war should result in osteoporosis some seventy-five years later? Probably – but who knows?

As children, we like to blame our parents for the way we turn out; conversely (or do I mean; likewise) our parents shoulder a disproportionate responsibility for the things we do, be they right or wrong: parental pride and shame go hand in hand it seems. Maybe it was my ancestors who were responsible for clearing their own people off the land that was theirs; an act for which all Scots ought to be ashamed. This is the ever-deepening coastal shelf that Larkin speaks about (I took his advice and never had kids myself), or the crumbling spine that links my father to his apparently ‘deprived’ childhood. I’ve never, in stories of his youth, heard him describe it as such.

Everything changes, as the poets and pop-song lyricists say. Some put it this way: we plant trees for those born later. Others say, they took all the trees and put them in a tree museum. But a third, on the subject of growing older, said ‘Every day won from such darkness is a celebration.’ The same poet (points if you know who) said ‘God punishes regret.’ I took these lines to my heart from the second I read them, and they have been a mantra every bit as meaningful as the prayer for serenity attributed to Thomas Aquinas (the only ‘prayer’ I have ever heard my father attempt to quote)

My dad’s old secondary school is now a pub, something of a museum itself, with memorabilia, old photos, and a host of accoutrements that reflect the past, just as the mirrors behind the bar show us just a little bit of who we are as we order our beer, before our eyes get too misty or maudlin with nostalgia or alcohol – or a heady mixture of all four. This is the trouble with the past. Some dismiss it as irrelevant; others resign it to history; but there are those who spend each day regretting it, trying to re-write it, wishing they could scrape the slate and start again.

So I end this year’s bloggage with the final photo from my dad’s Glasgow Schooldays Calendar, ‘The Old Schoolhouse Pub,’ with a tinge of sadness that, although I chose this picture for the month of his birthday, he hasn’t seen much of it from his hospital bed. Furthermore, I can’t help but regret that the phone box in front of the building is not the one that may or may not have stood there when he sneaked in through the side gate (to avoid the prefects reporting him ‘late’) but one of those I most despise (or dislike).

If I could be bothered, I could do a wordpaint-job and turn it into a tacky picture like they sell in TK-Maxx, with red phone-boxes, routemaster buses, or pillar-boxes super-imposed on black-and-white pictures. Sometimes, you just have to accept things as they are. My dad has never needed God to give him that serenity. I don’t know where he gets it from; it would be like asking someone ‘what is jazz?’ As the great Satchmo said: if you have to ask, you’ll never know. Of the many things my dad has taught me over the years, it is for the most inexplicable that I remain eternally grateful. Here then, as this year turns into the artificial past, is a ‘prayer.’

Teach me, Dad, serenity…
to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.

What is Normal?

This year I’ve made a distinction between ‘normal’ and what I call ‘posh’ schools.  I don’t wish to qualify this, except to say that neither ‘public’ nor ‘private’ schools can be described as ‘posh’ any more.  Both are exclusive, in that they exclude those who do not (or cannot) choose to use their money to improve the education of their offspring.

I think my views on how tax is spent on warfare, to the detriment of decent education, public services and healthcare for all make my position clear when it comes to what I see as ‘normal’ schooling.  But this, like the nomenclature of privilege, is just a name.

What’s in a name?

My dad’s old school was indeed called The Normal School (it was thus, on the front of the tram whose route the Normal School was on.)  It is now a business centre.  And my alma mater, which moved several years ago (to a former Naval College – a fine location despite all that); the old building where I studied is now a School of Economics – surely the antithesis of an Arts Conservatoire?

I am of the type of personality for whom ‘normality’ is strange, and ‘ordinariness’ is at best a watchword; at worst, an area of utmost avoidance.  Yet I’m glad my dad went to a ‘normal’ school.  Being ‘ordinary’ doesn’t mean, lacking unintelligence, or talent, or ability.  My dad has this and more.  I just wish he didn’t have to spend the end of this anniversary year in hospital, at the mercy of an under-privileged National Health Service.