Bryan Islip's Blog, page 25

Such stuff as dreams are made on ...

This is a recently dashed off painting depicting the  view over Loch Ewe from Kirkhill House's front porch - aka my studio. It's the smallest picture I've painted in oils to date - canvas about 20 x 16 cm.



What's missing is the NATO pier, jutting out into the Loch behind the nearside headland. I feel no compulsion to paint that which is ugly. The hillside immediaterly above that pier was hollowed out decades ago to hold a huge reservoir of oil, sufficient to fuel the fleet presumably. Why, who knows? Very seldom indeed are we entertained to a view of any warship drinking its fill. Ours not to reason etc ... last I heard the only enemy liable to fancy invading the UK is going to be armed with Stanley knives and the Koran rather than any ships of the line.



When Dee was well - last summer, 'though it seems a lifetime ago - we walked along this lochside to the Nato pier practically every lunchtime, rain or shine. There we sat on the remains of an old WW2 gun emplacement, partaking of our sandwiches, flasks of coffee or soup, perhaps do the Independent crossword, perhaps just watch the panoply of nature mostly in a contented silence.



And so we shall once more when she is better. It's been a long and rocky road since that day in September last when Dee's persistent pain in the back was finally identified as being a grade four lymphomy of the spinal bone marrow. Long? No, not really. You look out over the water to the distant Torridon mountains, reduced and re-shaped by the latest ice age. You see the tides creeping up and down that beach twice daily. We? We are, as Prospero has it, such stuff as dreams are made of ...



Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and

Are melted into air, into thin air ...



...We are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

The Tempest Act
4, scene 1, 148–158



  

Valentine

St Valentine - this is your day - here's one I did earlier ...


 

 

Delia mine

 

Holding my hand, my heart, she has
my mind

As glad a captive as the flower has
the bee;

A soft-lined cage above all other
kinds

Of chains, all other lovers, this is
she.

And when in time I leave this place
behind

Shall be in her the truth of what
was me.

 

She shares with me the tumult of
each day

In form or thought it matters not at
all

And then by night as down to sleep I
lay,

To hear soft music of her siren
call,

Touch on the moon as light my
fingers play,

Scent sweet, so sweet the flower of
her soul.

 

She combs her hair and I can see the
girl

With naked woman in her lifted
eyes

Then dressed and poised, the lady,
loyal

To one who never earned such royal
prize,

To one who usually from love
recoiled,

To one, more downs than highs has
realised.

 

Now with what courage calmly has she
walked

Along each rocky path to which I
led,

And at what danger has she
baulked,

Whoever's warnings did she
heed,

How tenderly deny the way they
talked,

How gently bring me comfort when I
bleed?

 

She's there in dark Mohamed's fiery
sun

In waves of warm liquidity beside
the waste

And leaning to a harsh and wintry
hill

The rain and tears of laughter on
her face,

And mirrored in the eyes of
strangers still

As soft into the crowd she sets her
grace.

 

Herself she sees reduced and I
increased!

I've found no way to turnabout her
lens

But then the truth can sometimes
matter least,

Does not create itself through sword
or pen

Whilst poor is he that, loveless, is
unblessed

To rise in truth above the
nothingness of men.

 

I know love is to know the final
dividend,

Without true love our struggles are
in vain

For love uplifts the time that we
here spend

Its timeless strength discounting
all the pain.

And so whichever way I go I go
content

To suffer any loss, much greater
she, my gain.           

 

Bryan Islip 
Feb 14 1994

Liberty, equality, fraternity

Darren, you asked what happened to that tripartite motto of the French revolution, Liberte, Egailite, Fraternite. (Please forgive an old man of but slight computer-literacy the absence of the correct accents.)



Allow me to correct you and to contradict M Robespierre. There were not, are not now and are unklikely ever to be any such qualities of human existence as Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.



'Liberty' consists of being able to do anything that does not harm
others. The exercise of the natural rights of every man or woman
has no bounds other than those that guarantee other members of society
the enjoyment of these same rights. Nonsense. When (if) I exercise my religion I, by definition insult that of others. You don't have to travel nearly as far as the desert sands of the Middle East to know the truth of that. Harm? When my bank hands me a million pound bonus that money comes not from fresh air. It is a part of the national cash pot. When I take from it a pound someone somewhere loses one, is therefore 'harmed'. Etcetera ...



I am not and you are not at liberty to do as you please, whether or not your action 'harms others'. Big brother dictates what harms others when it really means that which harms itself, Big Brother, the system that forgot its origins in the Magna Carta. That is why there are damn near as many spy cameras as people. That is why we are all so encased within rules, regulations, papers, cyber identifications etc etc. There is no liberty.

'Equality' was defined by the 1789 French Declaration as: The law "must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes.
All citizens, being equal in its eyes, shall be equally eligible to all
high offices, public positions and employments, according to their
ability, and without other distinction than that of their virtues and
talents."  Ridiculous, Darren. Each of us is defined by our virtue and talent, the whole bundle of them being unique and different and therefore as unequal as is our physical appearance. Furthermore I recognise you because you look different to others and to me and are thereby unequal. In any case this legal definition is much, much too narrow.



On the other hand Thomas Jefferson's is much, much too broad: "All men are created equal" (American Declaration of Independence) No two members of the same species are born equal, even leaving out the obvious differences of gender. Was Einstein equal to Adoplh Hitler? Me to the genuine Socrates or to Usain Bolt? Jefferson's lovely phrase was and remains just a classic piece of crooked thinking. One in which he could not possibly have believed, himself.



'Equality of opportunity' is the latest political qualification of that 'equality' word. Realistically there can be no such thing. I won't be insulting you by explaining why. You know why. 



'Fraternity'. Lovely idea, Darren, but completely foreign to the human experience. Brother loves not brother nor sister, sister outside of the family context. We are regettably all much better at hating than loving, much happier to take up arms than to smoke the pipe of peace. Take a look at the jolly faces of those men in the trenches of WW1. Take a look at the satisfaction on the face of The Dear Leader, having just exploded his latest 'Weapon of Mass Destruction'. i.e. Device intended to bring about the deaths of many, many of your (so-called) 'brothers,'  perhaps including you and me. Fraternity?



Footnote: that real Democates of ancient times was purported (by these latter generations) to have conceived the 'democracy' under which we live and under which our governments invariably take shelter when setting out to kill or imprison thoser who disagree with them. 'One person one vote' etc. That real Democrates would have been most puzzled. The democracy that he suggested and that was adopted by his Grecian State was only equal amongst the ruling elite - the patricians. The majority of the populace, the so-called plebeians, had no vote and no status whatsoever. Just as, today, our votes are illusory, without meaning other than to keep us nice and quiet. Just as the vast majority has no real status, which may be just as well. So it would seem to me that the purpose of the French Revolution back in 1793 was also illusory.

December 2014

Below is is my final (December) oil on canvas for my 'Unique Picturebook Calendar 2014', due for launch around Easter this year. Below it is my subtext narrative and verse.



This current year (2013) calendar was produced as a joint effort including my landscape pastel paintings with my friend Eoghain Maclean's wildlife photographs. It proved very successful and was sold out to the shops by the end of August. However some folk said they would prefer one or the other, so for 2014 Eoghain is producing his and me mine once again; it'll be my sixth year of calendar production and I'll soon be putting it up for sale on www.picturesandpoems.co.uk.





I can think of two people who may recognise the viewpoint ...this is the verse to go with it ...










This
Winter world around Loch Ewe lies, still,



and
glorious the sky these north lights bring



then
you can feel the ages in these hills,



the
birth, the re-birth of all living things.



so
you just know this earth is living, too.



she
breathes; each breath a turning season long;



although
in ways unknown to me and you



she
hears and shares the rhythm of life's song.



but
yet how strong, how long north winds can blow,



(whilst
winter snows cloak those old Torridons,)



and
sometimes raging seas down sea lochs flow



through
long dark nights when little comfort comes.








It matters
not! how perfect our world is,



how
sweet her blessing, soft her bedtime kiss.




And this the narrative for December 2014 ...










Sometimes on a cold, clear, windless night between November and
February the famous Aurora Borealis will appear in our northern skies. We leave
the curtains open, just in case, but have seen a proper one only four times in
the ten years we have lived here. There’s no telling which of all the colours
will predominate or whether the roll-down sheets, flashes and the ethereal glow
will consist only of a single colour. Whatever, you can imagine the effect on
our ancestors who didn’t have our present day understanding of its background science.
I thought to end our journey through 2014 with this night time scene because
the nights here in December last for eighteen hours - and because there can be few
sights on earth more splendid than the full blown Aurora Borealis.



Thank you for coming along with me
through a cycle of seasons in the Scottish Highlands. By the time you’re reading
this I hope I’ll have completed another twelve paintings and another twelve
little verses for my ‘Unique Pictures and Poems’ calendar 2015. As says
the poet, “Come on along o’ me for the best is yet to be’. Well we can all hope
so!







 

The madness of Westminster

Those who the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad. Euripedes, c. 450BC.



The Greek philosopher, poet and playright would have nodded sadly, wisely at the goings-on in the Court of Cameron this day. And I, like he, have nothing more to say about the legalisation of same sex marriage nor about the stultifying political correctness underlying it.



Our spiritually bankrupt (and financially ditto) government appears hell-bent on the destruction of the very institutions that have over recent centuries underpinned the greatness of Great Britain, or rather, the great moral comforts of life in these islands.



They are now in the process of killing the greatest institution of all - greater even than the Churches - that of the Mother of Parliaments itself.  Having sold off the family silver (i.e. manufacturing industry) they have failed totally to embrace the challenge so clearly anticipated in Europe by their spiritual leader, Winston Churchill, (no, not bloody Thatcher) in favour of those in the square mile and parasites abroad who toil not, neither  wishing to do any hands-dirty, hands-on spinning.



Somebody once said tht, if you are born British, you should thank God on waking up each morning. I would endorse that. But given a choice of who should govern me I would vote (1) Edinburgh (2) Brussells (3) Washington heaven forbid (4) Westminster nowhere without root and crop reformation.

Terrorism, Darren?

Dear Darren



Yesterday on your TV you say you watched a man with a couple of sharp knives outside a royalty-less Buckingham Palace being tasered down by police. As ill as probably he was / is, you felt sorry for him and you e-mailed me with two linked up questions: "What," you asked, "Makes a person a terrorist? What is terrorism?"



Then you added your own answers; "I think the powers that be label as a terrorist anyone or any cult or any society that wants to inflict pain and death on others that they hate on grounds of race, religion or their profession of superiority."



Like you, Darren, I have come to detest the constant use of that 'terrorism' word. Even in your short lifetime it has been a convenient cover for various leaders to make a misery of the lives of countless millions in the The Balkans, the Middle East, The USA, Europe and, perhaps most of all, on the continent of Africa.



In my own lifetime the Germans labelled the fliers of our WW2 air force as terrorists and we Brits have labelled and taken up arms against dozens, perhaps hundreds groups as disparate as Egyptians, Kenyans, North Koreans, Malayans and a sub-normal individual on an airplane with an ounce of explosive within the heel of his shoe. It could indeed be argued that any bearing and use or attempted use of arms by nation A within the territory of nation B constitutes an act of terrorism.



I have no idea of the cost of our so-called 'anti-terrorism' in terms of money, I doubt anyone in government knows or wants to know. It is conveniently beyond scrutiny. What a great and well-tested electioneeering tool is the threat of attack by those wishing to inflict terror on an electorate! We huddle together in face of terrorism, sheltering behind our incumbent leadership in much the same way as sheep confronted by wolves will huddle together behind the protection of their shepherd.



Fot terrorism read hatred, Darren. In my own view, hatred is the ugliest, most difficult to eradicate and certainly the most destructive part of our human genome, and one day it will destroy our species if left unchecked. But it can be checked, if not by politics or by any kind of a decree.



It can be checked by that which we recognise as beautiful. In short, by the arts' that is by the written word, especially that which we instinctively recognise as real poesy, and by that great pictorial art, 'painting', that can move us joyfully into the outer reaches of wonderfilled human experience. And perhaps most of all by music. Real music. The ancients spoke of 'the music of the spheres'. Everything spoke music, from the stars above to the movement of a leaf on an ash tree. Everything was in harmony. There was no need nor any excuse for hatred, therefore for the terrorism that  now you are querying.*  The ancients, long before the Greeks, knew stuff that we have forgotten. Milton's Paradise Lost catches a whiff of it. We had better start remembering it and regaining it before it's all too late.



And that begins with you, young man.



Your aged friend,



Socrates



* At the risk of pre-advertising, my novel in progress provisionally called just "THE BOOK" addresses and elaborates on this music of the stars harmonics thing.

 

After 60 years

Someone asked me about how I started writing fiction and verse. This is how (composed in the early 90's when I was asking myself that very same question) ...










After
sixty years





 



Focussing
on right now



I found
the two fine walkers



Coleridge
and his friend



Mr
William Wordsworth,



Had a
brief skirmish with



That
other wondrous set,



The
dreamer Keats, the



Poetic
mister Shelley



And the
bad Lord B,



Went
backwards in time



To that second of all most 

powerful wordmen Robert Burns 

(Whom I had got to know, and love,

When I was very young, in love,)

Through
Swift and Pope



And
Dryden to blind Milton



In his
metronomically



Agonistic
anti-Paradise



To find
my friend John Donne,



A
love-struck island to himself,



The
whiff of something



Of
great meaning thus



Becoming
ever obvious;



Oh yes like
incense



As the
swinging starts.








Breathless,
reading much of



Elizabethan
stuff and such



I
circled Shakespeare,



But
warily, for a long while



Keeping
nervous distance



Unsure
about this Everest



Or
maybe of my ability



To
climb it or find the light



That so
many others find,



Went
back a long stride



But
Chaucer was too tough,



Loved
Spencer's Faerie Queen



Then
fell on Tamburlaine,



From
reckless Marlow and,



Ah!
Here it is, (I thought,)



The
source! that river



Of
sweet scented mists



Still
coiled and flowed



And
thrust and heaved



And his
words lived



And in
his halcyon shade



I lay
and took my rest awhile



And
read how Shakespeare



Was
perhaps Marlowe someone said



Come live with me and be my love



They or
some one wrote.



Although
to me it mattered



Only
that these words were.








And
then in Winchester



In the
dust-silent attic



Of that
antiquarian book shop



Logan Pearsall-Smith's



Jewel
of a treatise,



On Reading Shakespeare,



Lay
opened in my hand



As when
something flashed



Brightly
in a muddy field



And you
stooped to pick it up



And you
were looking



Into
the bright sun-colours



Of a
diamond.








And so
the good professor



Opened
up the door



Switched
on the lights



And
there for me that wondrous treasury



Of
works to brighten up my days



To hold
an explanation for my nights.:



Thus,
in the beginning,



Was the magic of his Words.

The Immortal Memory

Should you have an interest in Robert Burns, there follows the script for my 'Immortal Memory' as delivered last evening in Gairloch on the occasion of our Wester-Ross Burns Club Supper. Ignore the block capitals. These are just sub heading to remind me where I was (not all that easy after the required (by me) volume of wine and not a little Uisce Beatha. The red lettered words are all quotations...

 

1.
INTRO








Ladies
and gentlemen, good evening: The Immortal Memory  should be long-winded enough to remind the
guests that this isn’t the office Christmas party, yet not so long as to induce
cramping, dry-mouth, or ringing in the ears: about 25 minutes. So says the Robert Burns website. 25 minutes! That’s
a long time, even for a lover of Burns. Perhaps for a lover of any kind, even one
as accomplished as The Bard himself.








Here’s
part of Rabbie’s letter to his younger brother William, who had gone off to work
in London and in May 1789 had become ensnared in some difficulty of the heart: 'I am, you know,’  advised our Bard, ‘a veteran in these campaigns, so let me advise you always to try for
intimacy as soon as you feel the first symptoms of passion; this is not only
best, but is the best preservative for one's peace of mind. I need not caution
you against guilty amours — they are bad everywhere, but in England they
are the very devil.'






2.
WHY ME?








Why
am I, kilted here though born south of the border down London town way - why am I privileged to
propose this toast to the immortal memory of Robert Burns?








Perhaps
because I have always amused myself composing poetry, perhaps because I have
had a lifelong interest in the poetry of the greats, but perhaps because a couple
of love-struck nineteen year olds as long ago as 1953 were wondering how to
fill the time on that last morning of their week’s holiday in Ayr. I and my
future wife Joan had barely enough cash left to get ourselves back to York,
Joan to her home and her job, myself, the National Serviceman, back to that Yorkshire
RAF camp. In the end we walked out to the village
of Alloway, there to visit the
birthplace of Scotland’s
national poet.








I
don’t know why we chose to take that particular holiday together in Ayr, nor, on that last day, why such an unlikely rush of
culture set amidst the incandescent fires of youth. Each of us had left schools
at age fourteen, mine at Abingdon in the south of England
and the girl’s in the city of York.
Neither of us were from families with a particular interest in the arts.
Neither of us were of Scots ancestry and neither of us had visited Scotland
previously.







 



3.
AE FOND KISS








Anyway
as I mentioned, Joan became my wife and the mother of my four children before
passing away after decades of suffering the ravages of MS. But for many years
she kept in her handbag the words to one of Burns’ songs, first heard of that morning
in Alloway … I read now the second and third verses from ‘Ae Fond Kiss’. It was
meant for his friend, some will say his lover, the unhappily married lady he
called ‘Clarinda’. Whether physical or no, the two of them were undoubtedly in
love - and being in love is more wonderful even than the making of it.








Clarinda’s
actual name was Nancy Macelhose. At the time of receiving Burns’ Ae Fond Kiss she was to join her errant
husband in Jamaica.
The lyrics must have told her - as they now tell us - so much about the searing
heat of Robert Burns’s feelings and his talent … I’d really like to have sung it
but not without benefit of a bottle of Lagavulin … as would you!








I’ll
ne’er blame my partial fancy: (pause between lines)



Naething
could resist my Nancy



But
to see her was to love her



Love
but her and love forever.



Had
we never lov’d sae kindly,



Had
we never lov’d sae blindly,



Never
met - or never parted-



We
had ne’er been broken hearted.  








Fare-thee-weel,
though first and fairest



Fare-thee-weel,
thou best and dearest!



Thine
be ilka joy and treasure



Peace,
Enjoyment, Love, and Pleasure!



Ae
fond kiss, and then we sever!



Ae
fareweel, alas, for ever!



Deep
in heart-rung tears I’ll pledge thee,



Warring
sighs and groans I’ll wage thee








Burns
of course composed many love poems and many love songs, and addressed them to
many of the female gender other than his Clarinda. My own favourite has to be the
one with the wondrous lines, ‘til all the seas gang
dry, my dear, and the rocks melt wi’ the sun. Yes, of course, ‘My Luve Is Like a Red Red Rose’








At
any rate that first contact with Robert Burns was probably a contributing
factor in the decision by my second wife Delia and I, ten years ago, to
relocate from distant Hampshire to Wester- Ross. As many of you know, Dee cannot, for reasons of ill health be with us tonight.
But it was she to whom I first read over what I wanted to say and she who suggested
I cut it in half -  therefore being deserving
of all our thanks!  








4.
BURNS, THE MAN








What
is so universally compelling about this Rabbie Burns? His appearance was
striking enough, although according to Maria Riddell as soon as he spoke, his
features and dress were forgotten. Maria was the unwitting cause of some
serious trouble for Robert in his later years, but she said of him after he was
gone:








“His voice alone could
improve upon the magic of his eye: it was so sonorous … and what he had to say
was always worth listening to.”  Then she
added, “By nature kind, brave, sincere
and compassionate to a degree, yet he could be proud, irascible and even
vindictive.”








So,
evidently a complex character, just like the rest of us. And he knew it. In his
mini-poem ‘Remorse’, addressing the
Almighty he wrote: Thou knowest that thou
hast formed me / With passions wild and strong / And list’ning to their
witching voice / Has often led me wrong. Š Oh yes! And then again,
unashamed, even revelling in his



reputation
as a lady’s man, in his ditty ‘The Belles
of Mauch(ccccccchhhhhhh)line’ he wrote: Miss Miller is fine / Miss Murchland’s divine / Miss Smith,
she has wit, and Miss Morton is braw. / There’s beauty and fortune to get wi’ Miss
Morton; / But Armour’s the jewel for me o’ them a’ . Jean Armour, of course; his lover, the mother of his many children,
eventually to be his wife. Š



Robert
Burns was brought up to be a farmer, from a very early age helping his impecunious
father to cultivate the difficult, undernourished soils of south Ayrshire. By
the age of 15 he was labourer in chief and it was in this engagement that he
fell in love, perhaps for the first time, with his co-harvester, little Nelly
Kilpatrick. And this is the first little verse of his very first poetical
outburst …



Oh
once I loved a bonnie lass



Ay,
and I love her still!



An’
while that virtue warms my breast



I’ll
love my handsome Nell.



Not
bad for a 15 year old. This ‘Handsome Nell’  was the first
creation of Burns’ astonishing portfolio of 557 poems and songs.








I
have often thought about what extra immensity of riches he would have left us
had he been blessed with sufficient of the family wherewithal to be a full time
poetical dreamer the likes of Byron, Shelley, Keats etc. Or had made his
fortune by becoming a full time professional in the arts as was Shakespeare. So
had no need to till the hard, hard land through his early life or to collect
taxes for the Revenue through the years leading up to his death, aged but thirty
seven years.



 



5.
THE LOVER








Reading
of his life, and leaving out for a moment his poesy, some may conclude that, if
Burns was not a hundred percent committed to life as a farmer he was a long way
above average in the love stakes. This is the final verse of a poem written in
reference to his affair with Elizabeth Paton, the outcome of which was yet
another miniature Burns - this time a baby girl. In it he points out that it’s
unfair of the church to censure him, for he is certainly in the very best of
good company …








Your
warlike Kings and Heroes bold



Great
Captains and Commanders



Your
mighty Caesars famed of old,



And
conquering Alexanders;



In
fields they fought and laurels bought.



And
bulwarks strong did batter,



But
still they grac’d our noble list



And
ranked as Fornicator!!!








He
chose that last word as his title, unafraid as always to call a garden implement
a spade. It was the truth, as always with him, and it still is today. Witness
so many celebrated individuals from royals to political leaders to those of
stars of stage and screen.



 



6.  A MAN’S A MAN








Yes,
Rabbie Burns was indeed unashamedly a man for a’ that and for a’ that.



All
that love-verse,



all
that lyricism,



all
that tenderness,



all
that comedy,



all
thaqt fantasy,



all
that well barbed incisiveness,



all
that nationalism,



all
that internationalism,



all
that honesty,



all
that self-awareness,



all
that kindness both to man and beast



Above
all, all that poetic perfection.








There’s
a fair example in the final stanza of Burns’ epic saga, The Vision’, 46 verses each of 6 lines - 276 lines of exquisite
poetry in which a lovely young woman is extolling the beauty of the Scottish
countryside and the virtue of Scotland’s writers and heroes along with - in
typical Burnsian fashion - the nobility of Scotland’s less celebrated mortals. Most
of his works were composed quickly, many for a purpose here and now, but he
composed The Vision, mainly in standard English, over some three years. In the
final verses I feel that Burns is actually addressing himself through this
Visionary lady of his …



‘To give my counsels all in one



Thy tuneful flame still careful fan;



Preserve the dignity of Man,



With soul erect:



And trust the Universal Plan



Will all protect.








And wear thou this’ - She solemn said,



And bound the holly round my head,



The polished leaves and berries red



Did rustling play;



And, like a passing thought, she fled,



In light away.








And, like
a passing thought, she fled,



In light
away.



Marvellous.








 7.
THE WORKS NOT THE MAN








I
have spoken mainly about the man but of course it is not so much the man as the
Works of the man, ladies and gentlemen, that we are gathered here this evening
to remember and to celebrate.








Even
in this, our age of shallow and fleeting celebrity we should remember him not so
much for what he was but for what he did; For the phrases, lines, verses and
songs that were the product of a great heart, a noble mind and all that their
creator came to experience here on earth: the good, the bad and, yes, the ugly.








Whether
or not the peoples of the this land, these islands and the entire world always
realise it, Burns’s   honesty, truth, humanitarianism and
egalitarianism reach out to touch us; to colour our lives, politics and experience
to this very day.








Immortality indeed!








 8. THE FOUR LIGHTS








So what is this thing we call immortality? I have
long since developed a conviction that we are, each of us, born into this world
pre-wired with four lights. The first-light is that sense of a power so immense
as to be beyond all human knowledge or understanding. Some choose these days to
ignore that one, even to switch it off in favour of secularism, materialism, consumerism,
call it what you will. Not Burns. He may often have poked fun at - even ridiculed
- his ecclesiastical oppressers, but never did he switch off his sense of The
Almighty.  








The second is that of nation, whether born to or
adopted by, and race. It is a light much dimmed these days. Although Burns spent
the final years of his life serving His Majesty the King of The United Kingdom as
Customs Officer, the man could never be thought of as a conformist and would most
certainly have detested this so-called political correctness of ours. However
intensely, however genuinely he respected all races and all people of both
genders and allowed their own nationalism, his own nation and his own race were
always a source of pride; for him a guiding light that always shone strong, true
and clear.








Our third light, according to my belief, is the light
of love for family and today it is as strong as ever it has been. It certainly was
for Burns, who loved and often tried to help his siblings. And he loved Agnes, his
quietly musical mother who outlived him by some 24 years, and his father William,
the farmer man - perhaps thwarted intellectual who pre-deceased him, worn out
by an unequal struggle with the land. There was a great and obvious love
between them, and mutual respect, even though William Burns was by no means always
appreciative of his first born’s casual waywardness.








But then there is this all-powerful fourth light - that
of our selves. It cannot be switched off in life. It is the private bundle of
talents, proclivities, characteristics and behaviour that lightens each our way,
and is a piece of DNA so far undiscovered. It is as unique and as exclusive as our now so well known physical DNA. This
fourth light cannot be prematurely switched off, and it is not only for me - or
yours for you - but it can and does illuminate the way for others, now or in
future who come to learn of that which we do or have done.








After
we leave this place the dying of our fourth light takes time. It can glow for a
matter of weeks or months or for a few years. But sometimes, if very rarely,
this fourth light shines with such a truth and such a strength that it cannot
be extinguished for so long as the foot of Man treads the face of mother Earth.
It is immortal.








Such
a unique, brilliantly everlasting fourth-light was most surely possessed by Robert
Burns of Ayrshire in Scotland.






9.
CONCLUSION: 








People
of all nations are remembering him and at least some of his words tonight -
especially the words with which we commonly see in a New Year, the ones that
will conclude Burns Suppers over all the world as well as our own, here in Gairloch,
Wester-Ross. Of course I’m referring to the most widely sung first line in the
history of poesy and music; ‘Should auld
acquaintance be forgot’. It hardly matters that the rest of it is so often
a beautiful jumble of dialect, the true words and their exact meaning known by
relatively few. We know what we mean because we know what it means - yes, the
whole world knows what Robert Burns meant by it.








For
last year’s Burns Supper I wrote my own small tribute to the Bard; its last lines
… He is never lost to memory: - this man of rock,
this poet shall / within my time abide with me; / tell in ways and words
ethereal that / to live is more than just to be. And finally, in my
imagination I see this, carved on the hard rock of The Bard’s native Scotland:
Here is a man
who lived, For a’ that and for a’ that, For his nation and all nations: And
still he lives.








Ladies
and gentlemen, it has been a rare honour to be allowed the privilege of this
address. It is another one to ask you, please, to be upstanding for the toast …
  The immortal memory of Robert Burns.




If you've got this far you won't mind me adding a personal footnote - on two fronts. First, this was my first adoption of Highland regalia and, as Dee remarked, the first time my knees had appeared in public other than on a beach. I found it very comfortable but will be returning it to the hirers in Inverness on Monday. 




Second, leaving Dee behind, tucked up in bed proved very hard. As you might know and as mentioned in the speech she is unfit to travel right now. I realised as did she that this was the first time I had been 'out' on a social without my lady alongside me. 

What is love, what is sex? asks Darren

Dear Darren



When I was your age the last thing I wanted was someone older than me trying to tell me about sex, so am surprised by the veiled enquiry in your letter just received. Once, many years ago, I was asked about sex and love by a young American lady named Cindy - the question was posed in front of her parents, I hasten to add! "How would I or anyone know?" I responded. "It just is". But then , whilst driving back across the desert to Riyadh from Al Khobar I thought more deeply about it. Several headline answers came to mind and I turned them into a short poem that evening. This was it ...










A Question of Love




" I want to know what
love it,” starts the song

And then goes on, “I
want you to tell me,”

But the answer may in history only be;

With just the question's echo left so some

Feel cold the vacuum when replies don’t come.




“Come live with me and
be my love,”  he wrote

Went on; “And we shall
all the pleasures prove:”

Four hundred years ago that poet's * love

He saw reflected in his lovers eyes

And truth, pure love now with the poet lies.




But there are many kinds of love; “Ask not,”

He** said, “What my
country does for me, just

Ask, my country, that
I love, what I must

Do for thee?”  Golden words that burn so hot -

What greater than for love, to die and rot?




“I love (whatever,)”
some car windows say

Thus take that truth of brightest human light

De-value it and make it all so trite:

Less truth, less love can we the pain defray

Of nothing at the dying of the day?




And He so loved the
world...” It tells of blood,

The Book; and of the life that’s here on earth

It’s only we who’re blessed to know from birth

The joy the strength of love so fine and good,

Thus reach we out to touch the face of God.




“I want to know what
love is,” still you ask:

And yes, it could be all that you can feel

Or need to feel or all of life that’s real

Or nought for you or once just now and gone

Or yours to have and hold from this day on.




Bryan Islip 

November 96




*Christopher Marlowe

** President Kennedy












And whilst we're on the subject, Darren, this is another one - a verse (one of thirty or so) from my 1992 narrative poem A Walk Downtown. The narrator is a played out man of violence going home drunk along the banks of the Liffey, expecting retribution with every step ... the whole poem is included in my anthology of short stories 'Twenty Bites'






What
purpose has that urge that blots all other things,

And
drains the mind of all except a certain she?

That
has you risk your life to find that old glory,

Grows,
some fresh pink rose in thorny secrecy

To
prick you, have you bleed no matter what you give?

This
agony, it moves from just a thing of glands?

‘Forsaking
all others’? But a rose that’s not your own,

Is
a fire by which the cold and lost may warm their hands?

Questions
like your shadow leap ahead across the way.

The
answers swirling in chaotic shades of grey.




As you can see Darren, there's many more questions than answers, even looking back across some 70 odd years of sex and love, in that order. But keep seeking and ye shall find.




Love (yes!)




Socrates

Freedom

Not sure if I put this one up before. Anyway its now finished and framed. Oils of canvas 64 x 40cm. But this is a representation re-proportioned for our Pictures and Poems cards, calendar, prints etc. I call it 'The Ramblers'; I painted it not far from one of the laybys between Poolewe and Aultbea.



One of the figures (no, they're not Dee and me) is pointing to a skein of geese, probably the pink-footed species common to these parts but perhaps on their way to their breeding grounds in Iceland.



I especially like the way sunlight and clouds casts their shadows over the hills. Here now, soon gone or at any rate soon changed. There is seldom any constant in the light - or the weather - of the Scottish Highlands.



When we relocated ourselves from Hampshire to Wester-Ross in 2002 we brought with us Sorosh and Mati, our pair of Hungarian Vizslas. Until their simultaneous death from the by-products of old age in 2009 we walked the trackless hills daily. Not long walks, just a one to two hours or so, but never on pathways. So we often 'discovered' places that became dear to us. All four of us, actually. I shall always remember them, even if I am no more to go those ways. These spaces, these lovely places are there for those who want them, not so far off the beaten paths but where no boots tread and no wheels roll. The closest we will ever come to the freedom of the skies enjoyed so vociferously by those lucky pink-foots.



p.s. The Ramblers will feature in our calendar 2014, month of May.