A Promise of Ankles (44 Scotland Street, #14)

by Alexander McCall Smith

These people, known for their worship of local crocodiles, had become accustomed to academic interest, and alongside their important spirit house maintained a lodge specifically for visiting anthropologists. This lodge, known in Pidgin as Haus bilong anthropology fella, had hot and cold running water and copious supplies of mosquito repellent. Anthropologists could stay there for as long as they liked, as the locals enjoyed talking to them and recounting ancient legends, many of which were made up on the spot in return for cartons of Australian cigarettes.

Her scholarly time was now largely spent on freelance editing for a number of anthropological journals, occasional lectures, and work on a project that she had long nurtured – a study of the networks and customs of Watsonians, the graduates of George Watson’s College who played an important part in Edinburgh life and whose influence extended into the furthest reaches of the capital city. This research was different from that which she conducted on the Crocodile People of New Guinea, but it had risks of its own. It was also a project that would require far more time to be completed – Domenica was thinking of years, rather than months – as access was an issue and the layers of association and meaning in Watsonian affairs required a great deal of semiotic analysis.

“Nobody talks about respectable people any longer,” said Angus. “Perhaps that’s because it has become unfashionable to be respectable.” “Respectable people disapprove of things,” mused Domenica. “And Edinburgh used to be very disapproving. Now it’s only moderately so.”

Ranald’s father had been subject to a significant Community Payback Order, imposed on him by Edinburgh Sheriff Court after pleading guilty to an offence relating to company accounts. It was not an offence of dishonesty as much as one of negligence, and the Sheriff had thought that community service would be a fitting punishment. With this he had imposed a period of two hundred hours of Scottish country dancing, and it was this sentence that Ranald’s father tackled each Friday evening when a variety of country dance enthusiasts descended on the Macpherson house in Albert Terrace and clocked up the necessary hours in the doing of “Gay Gordons”, “The Dashing White Sergeant”, and “Dukes of Perth”.

Local legend had it that it was in this bar that a friend had asked Fleming whether he had been to the doctor that day. “Doctor? No,” replied Fleming, and then said, “However, that gives me an idea…” Like most stories about such places, this was almost certainly apocryphal.

He was doubtful. “I don’t know…What’s that famous line? When I became a man, I put away childish things…?” Nicola smiled. “Yes, yes, Stuart, but I happen to know what C. S. Lewis said about that.” Stuart waited. If somebody threatened to quote C. S. Lewis to you, there’s not much one could do but wait. “C. S. Lewis said, ‘When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.’ ” She looked at Stuart unflinchingly. “And all I would add to that is mutatis mutandis in relation to the man bit.”

He looked at the portrait hung on the wall behind him. It was one of the gallery’s most popular pictures, Guy Kinder’s brooding portrait of the crime writer, Ian Rankin, sitting in the Oxford Bar, the haunt of his fictional Edinburgh detective. Ian Rankin was looking directly at Stuart, making Stuart avert his gaze.

This was considered to be all the more of an achievement, given the public campaign that had been waged for some time against the Scotch pie in general. This had been triggered by research revealing the total weight of Scotch pies consumed by the average adult Scot each year: fifty-six pounds. That, together with the figures for the volume of Irn-Bru drunk by that same average Scottish adult (sixteen gallons), had led to calls for health warnings to be attached to each Scotch pie. These moves had become bogged down in disagreements over the wording of the warning: there had been strong support for These pies will kill you sooner than you think, but the alarmist tone of that message had put some people off. This pie will damage your health was thought to be too similar to existing warnings for tobacco and alcohol, while Dinnae put this stuff in your gob, was thought to be too self-consciously demotic and perhaps a touch vulgar. The debate had been long and acrimonious, and as a result the initiative fizzled out. The Scotch pie continued to be sold to its consumers in rising numbers.

(Edinburgh dogs do not have owners – too prosaic a term – they have comptrollers.)

Cyril’s self-restraint was frequently tested almost to breaking point as he contemplated the ankles that he might so easily and deliciously nip. He did not bite; lesser dogs did that; dogs brought up in ill-disciplined homes; dogs with comptrollers who did not care what their dogs should do, or who excused it on the grounds that dogs will be dogs. Such dogs might bite, rather than nip, and were responsible for much bad feeling in the functioning of the otherwise seamless social contract between dogs and man.

The expression, a bit of drama, was used by Domenica to describe anything from Chernobyl to running out of Earl Grey tea, and so Angus was not alarmed by this portentous opening.

Scotch pie

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch_pie

“And so he thinks he’s entitled – or almost entitled – to call himself the Duke of Johannesburg,” James continued. “Secretly, though, he’s worried that the Lord Lyon and his people will catch him. He saw the Lord Lyon the other day in the supermarket in Morningside and he almost fainted. I was with him at the time. It was in the frozen products section and he had to stick his head into one of those big refrigerated displays so as not to be recognised.”

So it was that Angus’s story of the unsophisticated local politician who, having heard that certain people had made allegations against him, expressed a wish “to meet those alligators” could be repeated, savoured, and thoroughly laughed at, even on its sixth iteration.

Dear friends, of all the irritations of this life, Looking for things misplaced is perhaps The most common, the most wasteful Of time that might be better spent elsewhere, Doing other things that we would like to do; I have lost my keys and then recovered them Three times in one day, have searched Long and hard for the handkerchief That was always in my pocket, Have wasted hours trying to remember Where I read this or that, a memorable line Of poetry that isn’t where I thought it was. The hidden things we do not see Because they are plainly unconcealed, Not hidden at all, but as obvious As a really simple crossword clue, These things we need to learn