Bryan Islip's Blog, page 20

Polly take two

Here's my latest completed oil on canvas painting: Stac Pollaidh ('Polly') 70 x 70 cms square. It's my second painting to feature this mountain, the first being a pastel executed some years ago.





Stac Pollaidh is the far mountain, not the closer one on the right. Some thirty kms north of Ullapool, it's not a particularly high Scottish mountain, nevertheless an iconic one for serious hill walkers - rather than mountaineers.




I particularly liked the Autumnal colours and the remains of an old gate and fence. Usually I keep all signs of man-made artifacts out of my Highlands landscapes. Yes, I know they are thought 'necessary' but for me they spoil the wilderness. (Not sure I like that much used word. 'Wilderness' sounds too much like 'useless'.) But good to see such artificial restrictions in process of being repossessed by mother nature! A reminder that what we see was here long before us and will be here long after we have gone. My little verse ...













Here is a mountain,
unchanging, saw toothed,

reaching for an always changing Assynt sky;

a distant dare to
those who would endure,

or may enjoy the
hardships of this ‘wilderness’




She rises from her
rain-soaked moorland bed

by day a curve of
greens, rock-greys; by night

black bitch-face
howling at the yellow moon:

carved by that last
great icy age, it’s said

that scraped north Scotland
down to lesser height

skyline dancing jagged
to some piper's tune




From Polly’s crest
you’ll see the silver sea

across whose puny
waves lie Hebrides:

look down upon those
many shining lochs
breathe purest air where all things rest in peace.

Less people and more wellbeing

Over a month ago I snail-mailed Fiona Hyslop, MSP. I had to question the Scottish Government's assertion that more people equals greater prosperity for all. I have now received a response, not from the Minister to whom I wrote but from one Kim Smith, 'Migration and Citizenship, External Affairs Directorate, International Division, The Scottish Govrnment'. This is an expanded version of my e-mail in reply today ...



Thank you, Kim, for your letter dated 24th
September; a response to my letter to  of 12th August.




Whilst I am a supporter of the move towards
Scotland's independence I cannot think that the intention to match European population growth objectives via Scotland's 'Population Growth Purpose
Target' makes any sense. The future Scotland would do well to make up its own
mind on the serious issues of the day, basing its decisions on hard logic, thus
demonstrating a truly national and international independence of thought and action.  



By the way I am also a confirmed 'European', although one who believes
that an independent Scotland has quite enough inbuilt intelligence /
inventiveness, and sufficient strength of character not to need so slavishly to
follow Europe or any other bloc. Perhaps the other way around should be our ambition? But if we really want an example to follow on population matters, have a look to our second nearest neighbour, Norway. There we see population decline but individual wellbeing both economic
and moral on an incline. On the other hand If we need to see the miserable effects of escalating overpopulation we need look no further than many African and Asian countries.



Secondly, Kim, in all logic there can be no such a phenomenon
as 'sustainable growth' - an oxymoron if ever there was one! Nothing in
this world grows sustainably. On the contrary, according to science all life forms grow until they
are unsustainable and then they reduce and/or die. 'Population growth equals wellbeing' is a
myth spread for intensely selfish reasons by the West's recent financial mis-managers in concert with mass
consumer goods industries. 



Surely stability, together with intelligent high tech industrial development, all balanced with the interests of the environment, is the most natural way forward for Scotland? Not simply the quick-fix importation of more people to share in the nation's uncertain economic cake. And that applies world-wide as well as to Scotland.

With kind regards also to Ms Hyslop,
please.



Bryan Islip

Burns and Shakespeare chapter six

Scene six or chapter six

in which our poets awake within their pre-historic
world
Prospero:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such
stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.




William Shakespeare: The Tempest
Act 4, scene 1, 148–158

At this
point we should remind ourselves not to ask what our two heroes look like or what they’re wearing. They look as
you want them to look and they wear or do not wear what you are happy to see
them wearing or not wearing.
Also we must remember that most of the language
is here translated into modern English, or indeed any other language known to
or preferred by the listener / reader.  And
please remember that in a land of milk and honey neither time nor space exists.




Burns and Shakespeare have no actual need
to sleep. They sleep only when and for howsoever long it should please them and
they dream their dreams at will, each to his own. Being asleep is therefore, for
them, pretty much the same as being awake: all- knowing, all-seeing, unhurt and
unhurting, untrammelled and without weight. Marvellous, you may think, but here
there are no marvels. How could there be in a world where nothing is unexpected,
everything is right, everything is perfectly understood?



So, to continue …



RB: (murmurs)  To sleep: perchance to dream … awake
now, he opens his eyes, sees the sky bright overhead, fronds of giant ferns twisting
and nodding before a gentle breeze. He hears the whisper of many great trees,
the calls and slap-slapping flights of leathery, feathery birds, the stentorian
cough and grunt of some malcontent giant, the rhythmic shush of sea on close-by
shore. He senses the movement of insects within the vegetation on which he lies,
re-closes his eyes the better to get the scent and the taste of it; of all of this.
To be all of this. Will, he murmurs, I would
like to know … Shakespeare interrupts …




WS: Yes, Rob?




RB: Truth. The truth set down in the
written word even when we knew the truth would  hurt people - even our very selves. For what
good reason?




WS: Everything of any good. Always I
tried to convey such a high degree of truth as to be truer even than reality. A
kind of magnification. I tried my best to set it within words within the music heard
only in my mind. As you say, the truth can be hurtful but people of any value still
tried not to lie, nor even to obfuscate. Not always with success, mind. Chuckles,
slaps his friend on the shoulder. I think that applied especially
to Robert Burns Esquire of Ayrshire in Scotland.




RB: Perhaps. Truth often appalled
the Edinburgh
high and mighty and therefore it did me no good. But telling in verse and song what
I believed to be the truth was so much easier than wretched dissembly.  




WS: Witness your, Ode on General Washington’s birthday … Here's freedom to them that would read./
Here's freedom to them that would write! / There's none ever feared that the
truth should be heard / But they whom the truth would indite!




RB: Mmmm … but this ‘perchance to
dream’ - your Hamlet’s far famed soliloquy? To
be, or not to be: that is the question: 
/ Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune, /Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, / And by
opposing end them? To die: to sleep; And so forth. Stands up, yawns
and stretches.




WS: Was there ever a man or a woman since the dawn of humanity who
did not sometime have such a private conversation with him or herself as did my
Prince of Denmark? Physical life: the single thing allotted to each of us at our
worldly birth. At certain times it seemed more a curse than a gift. Who didn’t sometimes
wonder: is not my life my own to maintain or to reject, either way of my own
free will? He too arises as a hirsute creature, seemingly half human,
half something else, obviously female, shambles out of the trees. She is short,
bent of back, well shouldered, heavy legged, bare of foot. Her body is
rough-clad in animal furs and her face is hairless, wide, flat and the colour
of ancient oak. But those eyes! Shining jet with such an incurious intelligence!
William waves his greeting then continues, for the moment content to ignore her
presence. Robert, to conduct such a monologue with themselves;
whether to go on fighting against their private sea of troubles or to fight against
the Laws of Man and his self-writ Law of God.




RB: That Vale of Tears could and
did at times seem so very desolate although there were heights on either flank
so topped with joys. For myself there were
times … However, although to give up one’s own life
may have been the obvious choice there was always the possibility of things improving.
Hope does spring eternal, as was truly said. And besides how could anyone alive
know that what comes after death is not worse, perhaps far worse, than ‘soldiering
on’, as they say. Those mythical flames, Will! All that church talk of hell and
damnation!




WS: Of course, even though we could
not know and still cannot. But you yourself had little public sympathy for the
taking of one’s own life, witness your little verse, the one entitled ‘On a Suicide’:  He quotes. Earthed up, here lies an imp of hell, / Planted by Satan's dibble;(seed planting
prodder)  /  Poor
silly wretch, he's damned himself, /  To
save the Lord the trouble. By the way,
talking of hell I wonder whether Signor Dante is here with us?




RB: Dante? I hope so, but perhaps
directed into his own Inferno. We must call to him, Will. Hemingway definitely is
here although he took his own life as did his father before him. Ditto fine old
Socrates. Enough. Let us introduce ourselves to our Earthly ancestor. He
turns to the humanoid: Good day, lady. Who and how are
you?




Neanderthal: Voice as the quiet
growling of an anxious cat: I am Nukk and I am well.
As well as is the rising of the sun and the falling of rain. I am better than
my mother as I hope my daughters and my son will be better than I. Would you
like to meet them, strangers, and also my male? They are not far.




WS: That we certainly would, mother.
How kind.




Neanderthal: Kind? What is kind?




WS: Come here, mother. She
comes close. He kisses her on her protruded mouth. She is astonished but
evidently not frightened. Please lead on.




RB: You kiss her well for she is
indeed your mother, William. Two thousand nine hundred and twenty generations
removed.




WS: (Grins) And yours, but two thousand nine hundred and twenty nine generations since. They follow
her into the forest, talking together and walking - or in her case shambling -
single file along a well trodden track. Part of the way they are accompanied by
a whirl of brightly coloured, chit-chattering butterflies. Once, a train of
stag beetles larger than the rats of their own times scuttles out of their way before
stopping to face them in salutation, impressive claws raised high in greeting.
Skirting a freshwater lake they need to step over an eight metre leather-plated
crocodile, her jaws held wide open to reveal all her dreadful ivory, her baleful
eyes slow-lidding and unlidding. Soon enough they come to a cliff rising high
above the palmate trees. In the base of the cliff is the mouth of a cave, woodsmoke
trickling out.




Neanderthal: Come. She steps
inside, calls out, Mhod, Shik, Gugg, Hrrr, Hiss, mother
Shap; we have visitors.




RB: His eyesight adjusting
itself to the gloom; Greetings good folk.




WS: And from I, good family.




The figures crouched or sitting around the flickering orange
glow of a fire look up. One of them is considerably bulkier. He, obviously a
male, is in the act of napping a shard from a knobbly flintstone. He nods his shaggy
head, on his face what might have been a smile. The others growl soft their own
hellos but show no other interest. There is one more, evidently a very old female
lying in a corner of the cave on a bed of animal furs and fresh vegetation. Yet
another, a younger woman is working on the smooth stone wall of the cave. In
one hand she holds a flaming stake of wood, bound around with bulrushes. With
the other she uses what seems to be a piece of charcoal to describe the outline
of a wild animal, possibly an antelope in full flight.  




WS: Ah, a painter of caves at work. Very
good if I may say although I am by no means an artist.




RB: No more I. But look! The girl has
recreated a virtual menagerie of the creatures of the day. This one (he points) seems to be pursued by a small man with a spear.




Neanderthal male: Speaking
as if from somewhere deep inside that cavernous chest,
That one is myself, I am Mhod the hunter. And our daughter Hrrr is the one who
makes pictures. Nukk, who may be these two?




Nukk: They are of our spirits from
another time, my Mhod.




Mhod grunts, stirs the fire
into renewed life with a sharp pointed stick: They come
from our times gone by or do they live in times to come? They can speak?




WS: We can speak. You have heard,
Mhod. We are - that is, we were in front of you. Many many seasons ahead. Many many
of our fathers and sons. I am William and my friend is Robert. We are free here,
free to alight anywhere and at any age within the world of our kind - we call
mankind - without restriction or of any danger of hurt.




RB: On earth in our times we were
poets.




Mhod: You should sit. The girls shuffle up as the
two of them join the family, getting down to sit cross legged on palm fronds
mats around the fire. Poets? But you are men? What
kind of a hunter man is this ‘poet’?




RB: A different kind. A hunter of
words and music and feelings, perhaps.




Mhod: Music we have from all
around, from the ancients, from land, water and sky. Daughters, come! The
three girls sitting alongside him get to their feet, begin to hum a kind of
musical drone in time with the slow, ultra precise rhythm of their arms, hands
and feet. Ignoring them, Mhod continues … Words?
Talking with words needs no hunting. And feelings? What is that? He shakes
his shaggy head. They are conscious of the immense thickness of his neck, body
and limbs. But I ask, what did you hunt and kill to
eat so as to fight and kill your enemy, so as to make your progeny? And how take
care of your aged?




RB: I grew crops for myself and for
others to eat. And I raised food animals, also for my own and for others. But it
was forbidden to kill your enemies.




Mhod: Forbidden? By what
forbidden? Crops? Animals ‘raised’? What, then, is this?




WS: Smiles. So many questions, my friend. Myself, in my youth I actually
did hunt the wild deer and other small food animals. But I was then hunted in
turn by the man who claimed to own all such for himself alone.




Mhod: What a time is this that you
lived in! How can that be? I am a hunter. I go into the forest to kill for food
and to protect myself from being killed. That is the nature. I hunt by my power
and my skill and my courage as well as with the weaponry I have made. Turns
around to pick up from behind a green leaved bough as thick around as Rob’s forearm.
He snaps it across his upraised knee to feed the fire.




WS: Looks to Robert, much
impressed. Yes, Rob. I have learned in centuries - later
than my own or yours - that Neanderthal Man had skulls with greater brain
capacity that ours. And that they had much greater physical strength. That much
is now very evident.




Nukk: Do not worry, Mhod. We are
their dream. In their dream no thing living is killed or hurt or is hunted. It
is for them normal. Soon, whenever they wish, they shall leave us and we shall
forget that they have ever been. This they have told me.




Mhod grunts. Hrrr comes to the fireside, examines them in
the brighter light of the newly fed fire then returns, still in silence, to her
drawing wall. The girls are still at their dance, that special weave of sibilance,
rhythm and slow movement, their unwashed feet slip-slap-sliding across the cold
stone floor.




RB:  Mhod, Nukk, know that my friend and I can go
back in time to when we began, and forward to the moment that the last of our kind
was no more. We know nothing about our world before, nor about what happened
after our species died away.




Mhod: Died away? How is this?




RB: Evidently, Mhod, in many ways by
our own hand perished.




WS: As your verse, Robert: For all his many joys and tears / Man pays
his dues and all this / And yet how few the bounteous years  / As on his branch a man sits / Saws it away
just for today / Whilst singing songs so jolly / Unheeding of another way;  / Oh reckless, feckless folly!




RB: Unpublished, that one, and
unfinished. Chuckles. Unlike its author. But
when it was writ I was thinking of the ganging dry of the seas and the melting
of rocks in the sun.




WS: And I shall love thee still, my love, ‘til the sands of time have run.




Nukk: What is it with this, this
drying and melting?




RB: When I wrote it I thought it
nonsense. Shakes his head. No longer.




Mhod: This is all beyond
understanding. And this ‘love’? Suddenly changes tack. You will take meat with us before you go?




WS: Thank you kindly sir, but we
have no need for meat or drink.




Mhod: Then you are indeed not
living. All things alive have to kill and eat others that live.




Nukk: Except the plants and the trees,
Mhod. These live but eat no life.




Mhod growls, stabs at the
fire with his stick, clearly unappreciative of being corrected by his woman. Hrrumph! Picks up the flintstone, re-commences his tap
/ crack spear-head manufacture.




Nukk: But I would like to know
about this ‘love’.




RB: Ah yes, Nukk, as would we. We
have written many, many times and many, many things about love but have learned
so little about what it is or where or how it is to be found. But this we know;
it is the one good reason just to be alive. As my good companion had it … Good shepherd, tell this youth what ‘tis to
love. / It is to be all made of sighs and tears:- / It is to be all made of
faith and service:- / It is to be all made of fantasy, / All made of passion,
duty and observance; / All humbleness, all patience, and impatience; All
purity, all trial, all obeisance …




WS: Grins. Love is a many
splendoured thing - at least, according to Messrs Fain and Webster. There
was a saying, I quote in the vernacular; It’ll
draw you further than dynamite‘ll blow you. And according to this other good
companion here: As down the stream they
took their way,  / And through the
flowery dale;  / His cheek to hers he oft’
did lay,  / And love always the
tale:  / 
With "Mary, when shall we return, 
/  Such pleasure to renew?"  /  Says
Mary- "Love, alike the burn, / I’ll always follow you."




Mother Shap: She is sitting
up on her bed of fur and foliage, naked, her hairy body etched orange, scrawny
sharp in the flutter of firelight. Yes, this have I
heard, even from the animals.




RB: Yes? You hear the talk of
animals, mother?




Mother Shap: Do not we all? Do not
you, who say you know so much?




WS: Now we are able to talk with
other than our kind. In life on earth we were not able so to do.  




Mother Shap: Then listen to me. I
shall speak to you as I have once spoken with my little son. Mhod
grunts, cracks off with violence a particularly long and especially sharp ponted
flint. She continues: He who made this world allowed all
creatures to talk without sound to those of their own kind. But He made only Humankind
able to understand all others’ talk without sound. No other creatures can do
so. In this way we hear without ears that which they are in silence saying to
each other. Un this way we can prevail and survive above all creatures of the
Earth of whatsoever more strength or cunning than ourselves. You understand?




WS: We understand, mother. At least
we do now. He looks at Burns:  That explains so much, Rob. John’s unspoken parts of Paradise Lost and all.




RB: Yes, struck deaf and dumb to
all others, expelled at last from this at first, The Garden of Eden! And for
what?




WS: For our misuse of that great
gift. The one that passeth all understanding. Sighs mightily. Time to move on, Rob? What say you?




RB: Yes. They stand up. Farewell friends, and thank
you. Especially you, mother. Remember - or rather do not remember, for we are but
stuff as dreams are made on, forgotten when we awake. 




They wander out of the cave into a forest floor of  dappled green and gold. Paradise
re-found, they wander for an ever of happiness through their Garden of Eden.
Here, Shakespeare and Burns meet the animals, talk with the animals, apologise
to the animals for all the hurt, all the wrongs inflicted over the millennia by
Mankind on them, the animals. Coming across a small brown, long-eared jump-runner,
Shakespeare recites Burns’ famous The
Wounded Hare …




Inhuman man! curse on thy barb'rous art,

And blasted be thy murder-aiming eye;

May never pity soothe thee with a sigh,

Nor ever pleasure glad thy cruel heart!



Go live, poor wand'rer of the wood and field!

The bitter little that of life remains:

No more the thickening brakes and verdant plains

To thee a home, or food, or pastime yield.



Seek, mangled wretch, some place of wonted rest,

No more
of rest, but now
thy dying bed!

The sheltering rushes whistling o'er thy head,

The cold earth with thy bloody bosom prest.



Perhaps a mother's anguish adds its woe;

The playful pair crowd fondly by thy side;

Ah! helpless nurslings, who will now provide

That life a mother only can bestow!



Oft as by
winding Nith I, musing, wait

The sober eve, or hail the
cheerful dawn,

I'll miss thee sporting o'er the dewy lawn,

And curse the ruffian's aim, and mourn thy hapless fate.




RB: Nicely said, Will. Nicely said.
Crouches to offer the hare a particularly fine stem of rye grass. Do you not agree, Mister Hare?




Hare: Takes the grass,
hops, skips and jumps in a tight circle. Yes, he
pipes. Oh yes.




WS: So shall we now move on? Where
to next, my friend?




RB: Athens, say 400 BC. We shall speak there with
one Socrates.




WS: Socrates; oh yes, there was a Man. Another who took
his own life and yet is with us here. But we will meet with him in his life on
Earth.

Donald's 'Boats Badachro'

Yesterday I mentioned stopping off with Dee at Badachro for a meal, a think / re-think and a talk. We were on our way back from that final clinic in Raigmore Hospital.



I've had some wonderful e-mails in response, including one that included this, courtesy of a brilliant local photographer called Donald Mackenzie. This is the Badachro Inn overlooking a sheltered bay, off Gairloch  ...

Miracles and that old grizzly

Almost a year ago I wrote about going to the corner shop for a loaf of bread and being confronted by an eight foot grizzly bear. What an incredible shock! I was and am referring of course to Dee's grade four lymphoma diagnosis.



Monday last we attended the usual clinic at Raigmore hospital. Dee always writes down her questions in advance of these meetings. Bear in mind that her pain was at least as severe as ever it had been. This was her first question Monday last ... I was diagnosed a year ago and since then have had extreme chemotherapy, two sessions of radiotherapy and an operation on my spine. Can we assume now that my cancer is in remission? 



The doctor shook his head; I'm afraid not, he said, not in any way unkindly, Your recent blood tests indicate that the lymphoma has returned and is growing. Later ... I'm sorry, there's nothing more we can do here. 



Dee took the verdict as calmly and with as much stoicism / courage as she has displayed throughout her illness. I, for once in my life was virtually dumbstruck. Even though we both knew that things had not been going according to plan, for the first time we were hearing in effect that the grizzly bear had beaten us - and bigtime..



After leaving Raigmore Hospital (for the last time?) we automatically carried on with the day's plan A: lunch in downtown Inverness, my eyesight test, bit of shopping :etc. Driving in beautiful weather back the 80 miles 'across the hill' we spoke little. There didn't seem very much to say. I was sorting out my own feelings and I'm sure Dee was doing the same. But we stopped off halfway at a friend's house for a cup of tea and a chat and that helped us, in an odd sort of way to get back on to something of an even keel. Then on the spur of the moment I diverted from the main highway to the village of Badachro, by Gairloch. There's a great little pub/restaurant there, one we used to frequent on our holidays in the area before we migrated to live permanently in Autlbea. .



Looking out over the boats and the calm waters of the loch and with a superb meal in front of us it was time to talk. Talk about all the important things, some of which most of us would rather not. Things I will not talk of here. But the next day I wrote an e-mail for our 'children' - all of them well grown up these many years but to us still our children.



One of the things I wrote was: We will take each day as it comes , live it to the fullest of our ability and hope for a miracle. Miracles do happen.



Yes, they do. That old grizzly bear hasn't won yet.

A Wester-Ross sunset

I've just completed another painting commission, this time a sunset view down past Aultbea and Isle Ewe as seen from the lay-by above the NATO pier. (Although you can see some of the pier from up there I have left out all ot it. This place does not deserve such a man-made excrescence.)



It is an oil on canvas, size 100 x 70 cm.





.

And this is the verse to go with it ...










A Loch Ewe Hogmanay  (why the 'Hogmanay' when I painted it in August? Artistic license)




Another tide climbs slow up Loch
Ewe’s shores

that wind from Aultbea up to
Mellon Charles;

and as this year sinks down behind
the Hebrides

I find the time to look, to
breathe, to pause.




To stop awhile, to think of what
has been

here, and that ancient race
whose warrior clans,

fought tooth and sword for this
un-barren place:

this wonderland, MacUrtsi* poet’s dream.




Transmuting skies wash the slow-changing scene

in glorious sunset’s blood-red afterglow;

incoming dark will for me hide no foe

‘though starry night will be where light has been.




Some creatures rest; those
talking geese will sleep

upon a crofter’s field or stony
shore

but others, wide-eyed hunters,
hunt once more,  

search out their rightful prey,
in silence creep.




For me life’s constant super-pace
has slowed,

soothed by the touch of nature’s
gentle hand; 

for me and those who this place
understand  

no more is reaped than that
which has been sowed.




I see the lights down in the
village hall

where, later, folk will dance the
night away

and Hogmanay will bring a New Year’s Day

and hoped for peace on earth, and joy to all.




Bryan Islip

September 2013-09-02




*  The MacUrtsi used to be the title given by
the MacRae

to its clan poet, that
title being passed down the generations,

father to son.

Vanity, vanity

For some reason but perhaps because 1945-49 seems so long ago, I remember
very little of my secondary school life. I know not what Abingdon offers its (in
my time all male) boarders now but in those days the regime was hard,
expectations high, the pecking order absolute and any deviation or attempt to
bend the rules punishable with much pain, both moral and physical.

I was not the keenest of students; most probably like the second in
Shakespeare’s seven lives of man …And
then the whining school-boy, with his satchel / And shining morning face,
creeping like snail / Unwillingly to school. And I therefore was not unduly
disturbed when my father’s money, or his desire to spend it on me ran out. Whatever,
my fees became unaffordable and I had to leave. I was at that time fourteen and
threequarters years of age. Welcome to the world, not that the world seemed to
notice my arrival.

But one thing you had learned very early on at Abingdon, without being specifically
taught, was how to comport yourself. Good manners uber alles! However proficient
you happened to me scholastically or on the sports field, or from however
elevated a family background, you must not under any circumstances indulge in the
slightest sign of self-glorification. Unspoken pride, yes OK; professed vanity,
no. You took care not to take overmuch care with your looks or your dress for
that would be ungentlemanly and ungentlemanly behaviour put you in that dreaded
position of being ostracised. You would indeed be ‘beyond the pale’.

I remember one manifestation in particular of this. My class, or form as it
was known, of twenty five or so were told to write a single page essay entitled,
‘Myself as others see me’. The English Master (I’ll call him Mr Chips) then
gathered together the boys’ literary efforts, shuffled them up and read out the
first one without revealing the author’s name. Horror upon horror - it was my
own! With a great effort of will gave no hint and joined in the general,
subdued snigger as my written words received their very first public airing.

Mortar-boarded My Chips reached the end, looked up and all around the now
silent gathering. He then invited us to stand in turn and declare who he
thought had written it.  One by one the
boys declared, mostly of them include myself with the name of our quietly acknowledged
leader; Harris, the boy we all admired the most. To my private mortification
nobody named me.

I absolutely dreaded the next bit, but Mr Chips said he was not going to
reveal the author’s name, nor the names of any other contributor. However, if
the author of this ‘rather nicely written one’ would care to stand … ?

Did I stand and ‘confess’? Yes, if only after a lengthy silence during which
my face must have grown redder and redder and all eyes had turned to me.

Do I recall the content of that essay? Yes, in large part I do.

Will I write them here? Absolutely not. That would be vanity and although
self-glorification seems now to be the essential order of the day it still is
not for me.

Robert Burns's (?) 'To a midge'

Very exciting! Whilst work on the new sunhouse addition to the 100 years old Kirkhill House was proceeding, the builders discovered a piece of paper handwritten with what could be (or could not be) an unknown poem by the Scottish Bard. As near as I can to reading the much faded script, this is it ...




To a midge on a
summer’s day






Ye flittin’ fleein’ unseen thing

Risin’ like some spcck o’ dust

Borne up on microscopic wing

Come light on me, come do your worst




My red red bluid’s tae drink is yours

I shall not miss your drap o’ it

Whilst walking wi’ my lass outdoors

Some verse in mind as yet unwrit




It’s yours, this heath’ry, grassy land  

Just now nae breeze blaws ye away

Still, bonnie Jean I’ll tak her hand

And lay her doon amangst your hay




Ye midgy ticklin’ friend o’ oors

That needs the bluid to procreate

Ye are the smallest price to pay

For love sublime, I speculate




But stay! I didna count on this

One thousand of your kith and kin

To interrupt our lovers’ bliss,

Sharp needle points unwelcome in




Ye buzzin’ clouds o’ miscreants

Ye’ve frightened off the lovely girl

She’ll no return despite my wants

Around my face you bastards swirl




I’m hoppin’ roon, myself to dress

I’m wavin’, slappin’, cursin’ loud

Ye’ve had your fill to vast excess

Awa ye go ye nasty crowd




Ye flittin’ fleein’ unseen things

Risin’ like some storm o’ dust

Borne up on microscopic wings

Awa! ye’ve done your bluiidy worst.










PS by me:  Some say that, were it not for the midges, for Wester Ross read Milton Keynes

Robert Burns's 'To a midge'

Very exciting! Whilst work on the new sunhouse addition to the 100 years old Kirkhill House was proceeding, the builders discovered a piece of paper handwritten with what could be (or could not be) an unknown poem by the Scottish Bard. As near as I can to reading the much faded script, this is it ...




To a midge on a
summer’s day






Ye flittin’ fleein’ unseen thing

Risin’ like some spcck o’ dust

Borne up on microscopic wing

Come light on me, come do your worst




My red red bluid’s tae drink is yours

I shall not miss your drap o’ it

Whilst walking wi’ my lass outdoors

Some verse in mind as yet unwrit




It’s yours, this heath’ry, grassy land  

Just now nae breeze blaws ye away

Still, bonnie Jean I’ll tak her hand

And lay her doon amangst your hay




Ye midgy ticklin’ friend o’ oors

That needs the bluid to procreate

Ye are the smallest price to pay

For love sublime, I speculate




But stay! I didna count on this

One thousand of your kith and kin

To interrupt our lovers’ bliss,

Sharp needle points unwelcome in




Ye buzzin’ clouds o’ miscreants

Ye’ve frightened off the lovely girl

She’ll no return despite my wants

Around my face you bastards swirl




I’m hoppin’ roon, myself to dress

I’m wavin’, slappin’, cursin’ loud

Ye’ve had your fill to vast excess

Awa ye go ye nasty crowd




Ye flittin’ fleein’ unseen things

Risin’ like some storm o’ dust

Borne up on microscopic wings

Awa! ye’ve done your bluiidy worst.










PS by me:  Some say that, were it not for the midges, for Wester Ross read Milton Keynes

Less power to the fracking people

Much heat and light of late about this thing termed (courtesy of the ever more power huingry USA) 'fracking'.Fracking is short for fracturing the rock bed on which our island nation rests along with all its naturally balanced animal and vegetable 'wildlife'. And yes, that does include us, its native humanity.



A classic instance of sawing off the branch on which one sits, or so it seems to me. And to judge by the howls of protest north and south to a great many others also.



But the benefits of fracking to a government with eyes and mind fixed firmly on - and no further than:-




The upcoming general election.(as outmoded and farcical a process as that may be)
The chances of continuing soft and lucrative political self-employment that can stem from it
The blessing of our real government ('The City' just down the road from 'The Mother of Parliaments')
The 'growth is good; growth is for ever' fallacy

-  any risk is worth taking. Heads we win - more power for the people to squander; tails we lose. But hey, we'll (probably!) be long gone so who the hell cares about losing? Strangely akin to bankers playing their foir self-profit games with money belonging to other people or money that does not exist.



I've said it before and now I'll say it again: I look out of the window and see the rolling seas. I see the tides twice daily moving untold trillions of tonnes of salty brine, back and forth, back and forth. I see the trees (only small ones this far to the north) bending before the movement of the air. I know as do you that this whole possible source of clean power, its harvesting once invented, can satisfy the most power hungry of human societies and will last for as long as does this Earth and the universe from which it was spawned.



We human beings, uniquely amongst life on Earth, are inventive. So get inventing, people! Harness your environment. But with kindness, with respect. Do not seek to fracture and destroy it.



Yes, time and money is needed for such grass root invention. Take the money from wherever it exists as an unnecessary expense. Yes, banks and social services included. And for the time it takes to bridge the gap between now and a successful then, resolve and learn, above all,  to switch off your lights, your central heating, all your myriad squandertings of energy .



Or go on as you/we are and take the fracking consequences. 



.