Now resting proudly on one of the walls of our TV room at home is a picture that used to belong to my mother. It was given her by her Uncle Jim, my great uncle. In 1970 I really got to know Jim Tolmie. I lived with my Grandma in the town of Nairn on the Moray Firth. I was a van boy for an organisation called ‘The Nairnshire Laundry’. After my grandfather died in 1965, my grannie fulfilled her promise to him to look after Jim. He became her lodger. Time, Dear Friends, tinkers with memories and ‘truths’. But the way I was told the story was that Jim had been a stone mason all of his life apart from the 4 year old interlude of the Great War, soon to be called World War I. The Tolmie family grew up in Loch Flemington, a small hamlet near to Inverness. As the main wage earner it fell to Jim to help fund his brother, Peter, in his quest to become a medical doctor. Peter Tolmie headed off to Edinburgh to master the skill which would see him operating on the wounded behind the front lines in that terrible onslaught.  He came back to the UK, found himself in practice in Yorkshire where my mother was born, before retiring back to his roots in the north of Scotland.  He never forgot what his brother had done for him, hence the arrangement which saw 90 year old Jim moved from the small community of Ardersier to Hazelbrae, Viewfield St, Nairn.

                                                                Jim was a kind man, a gentle man, a quiet man but with a twinkle-eyed sense of humour. He and I got along very well. He loved to watch boxing on the TV and somehow managed to draw out the removal of his boots in front of the TV after my grannie had forcefully ushered him off to bed at a ridiculously early hour. Often when he and I were alone he would ask me, ‘Peter, where’s the landlady?’ and when I told him he would endeavour to make himself scarce.  Dorothy, my grannie, wanted him to transfer his pension from Ardersier to Nairn. He refused . Every week he would walk into the town, meet his friend who drove the butcher’s van and go off with him on his rounds which included a stop in Ardersier, some 7 miles away, whereupom he would line up at the post office to pick up his pension. He would then take the slow road back to Nairn as his friend the butcher completed his deliveries. It was a wonderful day out for him.  Being 18 or 19 years old I would occasionally disappear to go to the pub on a Friday night.  Jim would look up from filling his pipe.  “You be careful out there at night, Peter, the gorrygocks will get you. Look out for the horny golochl”. He would shake out his match, puff vigorously on his pipe to make sure it was fully lit and through the clouds of smoke I would see the twinkle which was ever present.  Time came when I was to leave and head back home to Somerset. Jim walked with me the half a mile or so to the bus station carrying one of my bags.  He shook my hand. His eyes spoke. He offered no words of advice but he tilted his head, looked me in the eye and said, “Aye, well, Peter.” I found a window seat, the doors closed and we were off. He was filling his pipe as we moved away but he looked up and nodded his head at me and smiled in that mysterious way of his. I never saw him again. He was in his early 90s then and died at the age of 96 a few years later.

“When a man has experienced the inexpressible, he is under no obligation to try and express it.” Samuel Johnson

  When I arrived home my mother asked me about my journey. I let slip that Jim had helped me carry my luggage to the bus station. She was not happy about that and berated me for allowing it to happen.

“Jim was at Gallipolli, Peter, he was gassed in the war! How could you let him do that?”

I shrugged with youth’s insouciance and thought no more of it.

                                                                   My mother died in 2023. In her house she had a painting of a highland croft, a cottar’s dwelling place. I told my brothers and sister that that was all that I wanted as a keepsake from my inheritance. George, my brother, as is the wont of somebody of his kind thoroughness, went ahead and had the contents of her house evaluated. The painting is worth the paltry sum of 15 pounds sterling but, Dear Reader, of course that is not the point.  Of course we could have paid money to have it shipped from there to here in Western Canada but, I thought, that I would just pick it up on my next trip over. Two months ago, I was staying with my brother, Bill, and his wife, Murdina, in Somerset. How was I to get this painting home without damaging it? Murdina and I spent half a day flitting from store to store trying to find a case big enough but to no avail. Rona, their daughter, it was who came up with the winning formula. She, who was in the north at the time, ordered a bag through Amazon, one of those which one might use for storing extra bedding. Meanwhile I popped into Hobden and Sons Removals locally where the son of my old friend, Nigel Hobden, bubble wrapped my picture.  The bag arrived the day before I was to return to London. I packed the picture, ensuring that there was the padding of much of my clothing around it. I was still worried that the canvas would be damaged in transit.  It went on the plane oversize and it is safe on our wall now.  My Great Uncle Jim gifted this painting to my mum many, many years ago. You can see it as the banner to this blog.

                                                          As I type this I am surrounded by family pictures, achievements of our children, one of my father-in-law’s wartime regiment.  There is also a Burns quote which my young colleague, Grant Harder, carved for me in wood.  There is some indigenous woodwork. There is a Bruce Springsteen poster of when his ‘Born to Run’ album came out.  There is a brown paper grocery  bag which Irene found in an old cist that she was restoring. It had been in the chest for over 65 years and was the property of “John Grant and Sons, General Merchant” in Methlick where I spent the first 8 years of my life.  It is framed and sits above my computer. There is a picture of a leafless tree in winter which has the quote by Carlyle on the bottom:- “A life of ease is not for any man”. I gave it to my father on the day he retired. I claimed it back after his death.

                                                  Dear Friends, my point here is a statement of that which is quite probably bleeding obvious to all of you. Other people shall come to own my memorabilia or throw it out unaware of what it has meant. Some of it will find itself at a Saturday garage sale, a roup, where the seller will be holding out for 25 cents when the buyer only wants to pay a dime. But, of course, as with all of us, the memories attached to such a serendipitous cornucopia, such a miscellany, are absolutely and unequivocally priceless and exclusively ours. Each item can never be matched. My mum’s old picture will always provoke, always nudge, always flash back.

He saw a rock by the loch.

“A perfect rock!”, He said.

“Nice,” She said.

He threw it.

Eons later, that was still the rock’s favourite day!

There were a great many favourite moments with my Great Uncle Jim but, like the rock, they cannot be comprehensively shared. They rest deep in a place that is mine alone.

Thanks for reading.

Temple Meads Station in Bristol is a building that was built at the dawn of the railway age. Like everything else it has had to adapt. As the technology has advanced so has the station. Yet that which could remain has done so with the result that the old and the new are become the now. Getting aboard the train to Penzance on an April day in 2008 was, Dear Friends, a beginning. It was the start of some months away from the routine of work and regularity. It was the start of a walk along the coastal trail towards Land’s End then round the corner and up the coast back towards Bristol and beyond.  Land’s End is land that juts, an iconic peninsula on the edge of the English Channel, the last piece of the English mainland that points west into the Atlantic and looks back east into the stretch of water that the French call ‘La Manche’, the sleeve.  Many have set off from Land’s End have started on trips to walk, cycle, drive from this point to that furthest other in the north of Scotland, John O’Groats.  Our daughter ran it virtually during Covid. Looking at her certificate on the wall behind my computer desk I see it measures 874 miles.  Apparently one eccentric once swam it using the gimmick of a large towable water tank which one of his mates was pulling behind a lorry.  Many charities have teamed up to do the journey and raise money for a laudable cause.

                   I reached Penzance and decided that I would begin my walking tour with a Cornish pasty and chips. It says much for multicultural Britain that one can now munch on a curried pasty. Indeed when I worked in London it was true to say that on a Friday night I could eat a better curry in Southall than I ever ate in India. I ate seated on a park bench on the sea front, keeping my lunch close because I had read so much about predatory, fearless seagulls.  Finding the entrance to the path, I rummaged my way behind back gardens until I found myself on a lonely promontory looking out to sea. I pitched my tent and watched in the evening as the Scillonian ferry arrived in port from its journey back from the Scilly Isles, western habited islands which are more into the Atlantic than anything on Mainland England.

             The days were windy but warm as I trundled along the trail westwards, stumbling into coves where villages nestled where sometimes there was little more than a boat ramp. One place had and has an outdoor theatre on a sea viewed promontory.  It is wrong to say that I was looking forward to seeing Land’s End because I knew what to expect. It is true to say that I was looking forward to turning the corner there and heading north. It was misty and dreich as I approached the final 30 minutes or so.  I stood by the signpost which indicated distances to various parts of the globe and looked down on the turbulent seas angrily attacking the rocky escarpment beneath. I looked at the sorry looking tea shop and wandered up the road past the garish, trashy tourist ‘attractions’. What ‘Doctor Who’ has to do with a place of nature I will never know.  Humankind has come along to something iconic and made it ironic. I could not escape rapidly enough from a place of wonderful natural forces which some greedy tourist board has done its best to destroy. Such were my thoughts as I walked through the gloomy car park as a drizzle started up. As I neared the end of the tarmac and was about to enter the trail again, I was hailed by a middle aged man who was seated outside his car brewing up a pot of tea on his stove.

       “Wanna  cuppa tea, mate.”

I hesitated.

     “Sure. Why not? Thank you.”

    The small talk that accompanied our introductions subsided into a silence which was relaxed and easy.

“Can I offer you a ride somewhere?”

I looked at the weather that was getting worse, saw that there would be little in the way of a view that day and said,

“Yes please.”

He was happy to take me where I wanted to go so I suggested St. Ives and off we went. Narrow roads and hedgerows are the roads of the Cornish countryside. We wound our way slowly towards the village. On the way he told me that he was taking this holiday as a sort of pilgrimage. His wife had recently died and he was reliving places and sights that they had visited on their honeymoon some years previously. He talked and reminisced, sometimes laughed as he shared a memory, other times welled up when a moment or an old scene snuck up on him.  He had loved his wife and loved her still.  I am naïve and frequently don’t understand how to behave. But on this day, during this time I did ‘get it’. I was to listen and speak only when the conversation stalled. I was to laugh when I should, ask questions when I should. I was to be the shoulder for a stranger, the barman leaning on the bar hearing tales of woe and joy, problems and solutions and then moving away to serve the next customer.  We knew that we would never see each other again. He was obviously not the type to seek help from a therapist or a psychiatrist or any such professional, he was too proud for that. But a complete stranger fit the bill. He dropped me in the town. I could have offered him gas money, taken the opportunity to offer to pay him back with a pint and a bite, but I sensed that he would not accept. More than that I think that he would have felt insulted. Favours had been given and taken between us that day, my ear for his ride. I sensed that I had more than payed him back for the cuppa tea. Indeed I think I had accompanied him on a journey that was more his than mine.  Sometimes we have to step back from our garrulous tendencies, our habits of trying to upstage a story with a matching one of our own. Sometimes we need to set aside our egos, our solipsism of self, and just be there and just say nothing. I don’t do that easily but am proud to say that on that day, on that journey I did. Something good did come out of the depressing manmade mess of Land’s End.

“If you don’t grieve for the dead, how can you love the living?” John Le Carre

                             Thanks for reading.

                 I don’t know, Dear Friends, whether this New Year started with a bang or a whimper. I am talking from both a geopolitical point of view and a personal one. I have long been of the view that politics and governance should be boring. I like to create my own excitement, I don’t need somebody else doing it for me. Belgium and Spain, at periods in their recent history, had spells where they managed without a government. In Belgium’s case this lasted for about 18 months. And yet, and yet, both these countries still exist.  I think I like my government to be tedious and nondescript. How much do I like it getting involved in foreign affairs? Well, I like it giving aid to poorer countries, I like it voicing and supporting a reasonable point of view that fits with humane norms. I do take an interest in history and geography. I have fallen off my goal of reading a biography of an American president every year. I will try to get back into it in 2026. There is an excellent argument for reading history through biography, I believe. I think it is fair to say that I am a fan of democracy as a way of life. I like the ability to have ideas and to express them with impunity. I think, Dear Reader, that most of us do. So, with my smattering of knowledge of the American Constitution, the ethical outline of rules for a democracy, I think of it as being one of the finest documents  created on how to rule. The Declaration of Arbroath and the Magna Carta are other paragons for a fairer world.

          So, Friends, 2026 started with the most powerful nation in the world barrelling off to Venezuela and carting their president and his Mrs away from home and hearth and into an American holding cell. So, by all accounts, Maduro was a brutal dictator and a drug dealer. If I am honest  I would be hooting and hollering with joy if the Americans had done this to Putin. But they didn’t because they couldn’t and they did because they could.  Sometimes American interference is welcome. Ask any European and they will tell you that the two world wars could not have been won without them. Also ask them about the importance of the Marshall Plan in saving Europe, particularly France, from communism. Ask my recently deceased relative about the sigh of relief he and his mates breathed when the atomic bomb ended the war in Japan. This hideous event stopped them having to be deployed to the Far East.  (The ethics of dropping the thing are unconscionable, I know, but I did like my 99 year old uncle, Jim Davidson, whose funeral is tomorrow. RIP Jim Davidson). But then look at the imposition of a Shah on Iran, the Vietnam War, the removal of Allende in Chile, the justification for the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the return of the Taleban to Afghanistan and the implications of that on women’s equality. In their own country the witch-hunts of McCarthy, the failure to follow up effectively after the Civil War so that emancipation was slow to come and Jim Crow was there for years afterwards. To me, looking from afar (I have not been down to the US for over 25 years), the USA is a country with wonderful laws, an excellent balance between state and federal jurisdiction,  a tertiary education system which is responsible for innovation and innovators. It is brimful of kind, generous, welcoming people.  It is not perfect but it has checks and balances which many  countries do not have and, I suggest, envy. It is still a country where many people in the wider world would like to live.

         But as an immigrant to Canada, I do not understand why “Liberal” and “Communist” are pejorative terms in the country beneath us.  Communism, it is true, has not a good track record around the world but when it morphs into Scandinavian socialism it really is pretty impressive. Many experts now believe that Vietnam was more about a country wanting independence from imperialist masters than the domino theory of communism setting the casus belli of American intervention.  I do, I suppose, understand the antipathy towards taxes but, personally, I like living in a country that has them. What I object to often is how they are being spent.  By and large, I believe that taxes are a power for good. I also believe that a politician is elected to serve ALL of her country’s citizens not just those who voted for her.  Of course, criminals have to be brought to justice but the rest of us need to be given a chance to pursue and voice an idea even if that idea is likely to be rejected. Picking on people because of ethnicity, gender bias or sexual persuasion is truly asinine. It really means that one is not allowing certain groups of people to reach their full potential when their full potential is something which a country and the world needs.  I hope that the cure for cancer is discovered by a gay, African American woman who is partially indigenous and if they can add being transgendered to the mix so much the better.  I hope that that person is honoured to the highest level. I hope that she is modest, generous of her time and gives of her innovation without avarice.  I hope that they (singular) give as much attention to the homeless person in the street as she gives to her boss in the office. I hope they raise her children to be kind, aware and to place ‘pro bono publico’ as the most important of human qualities.

      Dear Friends, I have to be careful because I am rambling. Like you I could diatribe for hours about current leadership in our world.  It seems to be at the moment that leadership cares little for the grass roots, the plebeian masses, the great unwashed. It is inconsequential. It needs to understand that if it is going to create rough seas it also needs to understand how to calm them.  It doesn’t. It understands how to destroy but not how to create. It is good at riding roughshod over people but truly awful at raising them up. It has a master’s degree in cronyism, nepotism, cowardice, egotism, bullying and dumbness. There is a small part of me, a molecule, which feels sorry for a short inadequate Russian who thinks it is good to bring his dog to a meeting with the German Chancellor when he knows that she suffers from a canine phobia. Very childish. There is a scintilla of Davidson, a mere morsel, which feels sorry for a man who received only conditional love as a child and, as a result is vengeful and so inadequate that he always has to toot his own horn.  There is a nano second of sadness for a man who sees his state as only an homeland for Jews to the detriment of the Palestine people who have as much right to be there.  There is a passing thought for a man who thinks his country has the right to conscript the island of Taiwan into being part of his mainland, when actually cooperation on a peaceful level would benefit them both.

    So, Dear Reader, my hope for 2026 is that a pandemic of reasonableness, cooperation, kindness and thoughtful common sense breaks out. It is difficult to be a fence sitter at this time, trying to be impartial between the firefighter and the fire, really isn’t an option? I think, Friends, that more than ever people have to be engaged. We have to flood the world with kindness and acts of generosity . My hope is that, in the process, we speak truth to power and give power back to truth.

Burns Night approaches with the annual celebration of the poet’s birthday on the 25^th January. He said it best:-

                                                                             “Then let us pray that come it may

                                                                            As come it will for a’that,

                                                                             That sense and worth o’er a’ the earth

                                                                            Shall bear the gree an’ a’that*

                                                                               For a’that and a’that,

                                                                                 It’s comin’ yet for a’that

                                                                         That man tae man the warld o’er

                                                                          Shall brithers be for a’that.”

                       Thanks for reading.

*’Will win the prize’

                          Dear Friends, it was a good plan. I brooded on it for a few minutes. I decided it fitted into my lazy modus operandi. And, what is more, my poor work ethic for once would have purpose. Admittedly it was late in the day. Maybe I should have begun to initiate it a month before when I was strolling pointlessly around the UK. But here I was and there on my email was the request. Would I be Santa Claus again this year at Norgate School? I would be honoured and delighted. So, rather than don the white beard, I would set aside shaving and grow my own. I already had the white hair, I had the Claus paunch, the aging ‘Ho, Ho, Ho” and now I would become even more of a real deal. The Santa voice and the questions of the wee takkers would come on the day. But if any little devil decided to pull on Santa’s beard because he suspected it was false then he would be in for a rude awakening. And then, ho hum,  Dear Reader, sadly, the Davidson thinking went a bridge too far.

               Vanity and self-absorption raised their ugly heads. I could become professorial in demeanour. I could leave the beard to a certain length so that I could double as an Oxford don, ‘Professor Davidson’ had a lovely pretentious ring to it.  I would trim it if it became logger like. That would not do. I do not own a plaid shirt and braces. I would not attempt to become Seumas Davidson, the Norwegian arborist. The sound of a chain saw has me searching for a green party membership form.  Yes, Dear Reader, I would become the academic with corduroy jacket and elbow patches. Why, I would even smoke a pipe. I would pontificate with world weary wisdom with every wrinkle in my well worn face rueful in its grinning know-it-all condescension. In short a new growth of white beard would raise me to the status of an insufferable bore. I would drive people away from me. Friends would  be seen at a distance, swerving suddenly in a different direction.  And I would not care because I would be confident in my arrogance, arrogant in my confidence. I would become content in my hermit like existence. I would live in a pie in the sky.

      The beard grew but not quickly enough. By Santa Claus Day it was a thin, pale, pathetic paucity of what was needed. But after I had been photographed with many children and their parents and had discarded Santa for another year I could have shaved the thing off. But my dream of professorial pretence continued morphing into the possibility of becoming an artist of Bohemian lifestyle inhabiting a garret in a three storey Amsterdam house. It would be a place of pallets and easels, dirty dishes and empty whisky bottles. The floorboards would creak with memories of decadent debauchery. I would be in there for days delivering wide brush strokes on blank canvases; moulding stunning busts of famed celebrities; working towards an ever decreasing deadline on a royal commission. But, Friends, I would stop short at cutting off an ear!

   Absolute rubbish, Dear Reader.  The story of my life has never been one of stunning brilliance. Every attempt at dressing a part has always been doomed to an almost instant return to what I really am. I am a scruffy mess. So now dressed in my state of dishevelled dishabille with my unkempt beard I have added to my look a new level of inverse snobbery. What once was scruffy is now scruffier. Now when I put forth opinions, stun people with my knowledge, branch out into eclectic fields, suggest that I am a true fraterniser with renaissance thinking. Now, friends, I am become the old bore at the end of the bar who is tolerated but ignored. People are kind. They pass the time of day. They nod wisely. They smile agreement. But they are gone very quickly, anticipating that they may see me later crouching in a shop doorway. One should always accept who one is, don’t you know. There is no point in stepping up to a plate that isn’t yours. Of course, friends ,there is every point in taking a risk, otherwise one never does anything, trying something new but there comes a moment when one needs to return to what one is and where one has come from. So cometh the new year, departeth the old one, there will be a Davidson who sits down with himself, views whom he has been, where he has been and will try to be a better version of himself but realising at the same time that there is much he cannot change.

        So this new year, this 2026 I am on a collusion course. I am not going to make resolutions. I am determined to collude and not collide. I am minded to recognise finally who I am and understand what I should never and could never be. If you called me a wit you would be halfway correct. I am big and friendly and I try to be kind. I have some very weird ideas on how the planet and society should conduct itself.  I see the world through spectrums of spontaneity and round-the-next corner curiosity . I should render unto Pete that which is Pete’s and leave the rest to others. My New Year’s resolution is to let Pete be Pete until wiser heads prevail and the march of his folly is headed off at the pass. ‘Wiser heads’ will likely be wife and offspring and most other people who stumble across my path.  But here, Dear Friends, in my joyful aloneness, my solitary dreamscape,  I have been looking about to find quotations which might help me fit into 2026 and help me to understand better what sort of people rule our world. These are ambiguous thoughts at the moment but, I think, I am reassured enough by the wisdom I have found in what I have read to suggest that the wise and the thoughtful over hundreds of years have seen it all before. They have put wholesome thoughts into a clarity which I don’t have. Here, Friends, be quotations which I am going to take into the beginning of 2026 and nudge me into believing that all is not lost.

“Very little is needed to make a happy life, it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”  Marcus Aurelius.

“The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.” Marcus Aurelius

It is always relatively easy, Friends, to find a quotation to suit one’s needs. Old Marcus Aurelius always seems to come up with the goods.

So here at the beginning of 2026 it has not escaped my notice that we are entering the second quarter of the century. We are not only entering a new year but also a new quarter. In the first part of the century we seem to have forgotten a great deal that humanity learned in a period spanning several previous millennia!

“Speaking what is true, is not speaking what is desirable.” Albert Camus

“The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men or women he has around him,” Machiavelli

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.” Ernest Hemingway

“The power of books—-J.K. Rowling became a billionaire writing books—Jeff Bezos became a billionaire selling books—-Warren Buffet became a billionaire reading books. “

“In a world where anyone’s meaning becomes as valid as everyone else’s, meaning therefore becomes meaningless.” Melanie Phillips

“Respect for religion has become a code for fear of religion. Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire and our fearless disrespect.” Salman Rushdie

“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. “ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers.” Charles W. Eliot

“It is interesting to cut yourself to pieces once in a while and wait to see if the fragments will sprout.” T.S. Eliot

“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.” JRR Tolkien.

“Arrogance is asking a god who wouldn’t stop the holocaust to find your car keys.” Ricky Gervais

“Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles.” Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.’ Voltaire.

“Never in recorded history has a 4 year old found his father’s loaded book and accidentally killed his younger sister. Yet we ban books.”

OK, Friends, enough already. I am the adult who taught the child to begin to spell ‘banana’ but never how to end it! There is so much that is good and quotable out there but if I carry it on you will still be reading into 2027! 

Thanks for reading.

 An Happy and Prosperous New Year to all of you.           (Think I’ll have a shave).

                                              Several moons ago, Dear Reader, I was out toddling the neighbourhood on my ‘jack jones’ aka ‘alone’ when I stumbled across two of my walking companions, one of whom accused me of ‘wandering aimlessly’.  As we went off in our various directions I pondered upon that accusation and decided that it is true. I do wander aimlessly. Indeed it would be a worthy criticism if I failed to ‘wonder aimlessly’ in the process. But I combine both so I regard the accusation as a compliment rather than a slur.  On Sunday, 30^th November I arrived home after 35 days strolling around the UK. It was not entirely aimless because I did want to visit our daughter, Alison, visit my two brothers and my sister, introduce myself to two bairns who have arrived recently and watch four rugby games involving Scotland at Murrayfield in Edinburgh.  I also managed to touch base and enjoy the hospitality of old friends and, in the process, meet new acquaintances.

                                       Dear friends, amongst the wide diaspora of British acquaintances I have, there are some who will never return to ‘Blighty’ as the UK is endearingly known. “It’s not the same, Pete”.  “Where is the same and why would we want it to be so?’ I am tempted to reply. So now I think of myself as being weird for enjoying every moment of my 5 week stay. But with vast amounts of hither-and-thither  things were going to go awry and, inevitably, they did. Let me give you an example.

                                      Travelling down from one of my weekend sojourns in Edinburgh to see Alison and Brother George in London, it was recommended that I NOT travel back up the following weekend on the east coast line because of weekend repairs. Instead I was to travel Euston to Glasgow Central changing at Carlisle for a train to Edinburgh.  So I have booked a window seat and am aboard  a train that  is over half full. The window seat is not a window seat but is where a window would have been if the design had permitted one. It is a blank piece of beige plastic. The train leaves on time. People read, people check their phones, people watch sport on their i=pads, some engage with the strangers sat next to them. An apologetic voice comes over the comms. “We apologise but due to a broken rail, this train will terminate at Preston.” The apologies are profuse, sound sincere and feel frustrated.  Personally I have never been to Preston. I have heard of Preston North End FC but have no idea why.  The reaction of the people on the train is a deep philosophical sigh.  The young couple next to me, smile with a strange open faced joy as if this is the best thing that could happen to them. The train is approaching Preston and now that the seat next to me is vacant I lug my case from the luggage rack and place it beside me, ready to disembark. The train pulls in but just prior to its arrival an happy voice announces that the rail is fixed and we can now continue to Glasgow so now a cheer goes up and people clap. I would have done both but now I am desperate to return my baggage to the luggage rack so, like President Gerald Ford whose legend included the fact that he couldn’t chew gum and think at the same time, I am now confronted with new passengers who are blocking my passage. All is not lost. A friendly Glaswegian takes my case, places it and plunks himself down next to me. Train moves. We have a nice chat (his son plays on the wing for Leyton Orient FC in London). He expects to stay on the train now all the way home to Glasgow. I expect to detrain as the original plan at Carlisle.  All is good for me but sadly not for my new found acquaintance. The driver gets on the intercom and explains that he is happy to continue to Glasgow but due to Health and Safety and the fact that he has already exceeded his hours of work he is not being permitted so to do. We feel for him, we sense the slump in his shoulders, we imagine a quivering of his bottom lip but now all Glasgow- bounds are off the train at Carlisle with we Edinburgh travellers. So the Carlisle platform is full of disgruntlement and crowds. But all is not lost because a Glasgow train arrives, admittedly crowded, admittedly about to receive another mass which it will struggle to accommodate ,But on they get.  They are a horde, a standing army of proximate body odour, a sweaty mass of humanity with armpits not their own, hale halitosis invading privacy, anything closer, Dear Friends,  would involve sex or murder. They once were a people like me, they once had room, they could breathe an air which was exclusively theirs. Alas no more, my heart goes out to them. Meanwhile on the platform I am observing the congregation of Edinburgh bound folk of which I am one. I am now deciding that I will not be getting aboard the next Edinburgh train and take myself off to the café where I grab the last white bread toastie on offer, slices that may well have curled at the ends some hours before and a flat white coffee which would too have curled at the ends if liquid could do so. Similar on the Edinburgh train. Mass joins mass. Civilized nuance gives way to cheek by jowl. I am left with stragglers on the platform as it lurches out. And then 30 minutes later I am seated on an half empty Edinburgh train, reading my book and texting my friend that I am three hours late.  So why are you being burdened with this story? I guess it is because that I am surprised at what I have become in old age. The truth is that I enjoyed every minute of this disruptive debacle. I know that I spent most of the time smiling and some of the time laughing as people shared their experiences with me.  It would be wrong to say that this was the highlight of my trip, there was much, much more that was better than that.  But I guess that such events make me feel more than ever that I am at home even though I have lived in Canada since 1991. And I always say on the rare occasions that I am asked that we never left the UK because we were unhappy rather it was for a new experience, a new adventure and so forth.  So to this day, it is a joy for me to return. There is a lump in my throat when the lone piper begins the anthem at Murrayfield and 80,000 voices rise in support. There is a tranquillity of calm as I sit beside a dirt path on an azure day by a loch of my youth with a cold wind blowing, miniature white caps doing their best to impress and in the distance, the island with the Wolf of Badenoch’s ruined castle (the one from which he set off to burn down Elgin Cathedral all those centuries ago). Lochindorb is my youth. Nor can I sneeze at the pathetic wee trek I make uphill through mixed woodland in the Trossachs. The day was glorious, the breeze was vigorous. I brought along my arthritic right knee for the ride. It too wanted to continue upwards but hinted occasionally that I had to bring it down hill again and that it liked going down a lot less than going up. Age curtails but doesn’t remove all pleasure. The heather clad peaks held a dusting of snow, an urge to feel it crunch underfoot but the realisation that it would not be possible. A light hearted limerick of an outing would become an epic of Odyssey proportions, a pathetic attempt not to grow old gracefully. It would have been foolhardy of me to have continued so I had to be content and content I was.

                   Friends, there is always a temptation for me to epiphanize (there is no such word I know) when I go ‘home’. Strange that I should call it that after so many years away. But, Dear Friends, even if I had wanted to I cannot shrug off what the land and people gave to me all those years ago. The humour, the newspapers, the TV, the book shops, the countryside, the narrow roads, the accents, the eccentricities, the many different cultures, following the route of Robbie Burns, sniffing around the building where James Barrie created ‘Peter Pan’, climbing the Wallace Monument and seeing Bannockburn and Stirling Bridge below, understanding the feeling that every situation is desperate but not serious, the occasions, the events (The Constable/Turner Exhibition at the Tate, The ‘Secret Maps’ display at the British Library and, of course, rugby at Murrayfield), not to mention the wind. How I love a wind on my face, a breeze in the trees, the sound of the sea in a storm, the lap of a loch in a gale. A cold breath  on my face, a dyke or a tree or a hill to shelter behind, a temporary escape from an element which can still be heard, an attention seeking friend which dogs every step until one has had enough and shuts it away behind a car door or an hotel entrance. The wind always greets me like I’ve been away too long.

                 And yes, my friends, I know that not all in the garden is rosy; that homelessness and helplessness walks the streets; that not far away brutal wars are being fought; that dictators are laughing at democratic dithering and threaten us all.  But, Dear Reader, I cannot help but clutch at the straw of joyfulness and fun not because I am naïve (Although I have my share of gullibility), nor because I convince myself that I should. It is simply who I am. I am so grateful to be able to still do those 35 days at the age of 73 years when so many of my friends and acquaintances no longer can because of sickness and ill health or because they are no longer here. For that short time in the old country it was wonderful to feel a part again. So thanks to our daughter, brothers and sister, sisters-in-law, Sadie and Iris and their proud parents ,Holly and Chris, Matthew and Nicola. Words to for Audrey in Edinburgh, Malcolm and Elaine, Vikki and Helen, Peggy and Fiona and every stranger who bought me a Guinness, every youngster who gave up their seat or lugged my case upstairs at tube stations, the one employee who told me to ‘run’ because she was not going to charge me for the breakfast that she was ashamed of, the Romanian receptionist who found me a phone repair shop at Kings Cross when I needed it  and every varied vignette of friendly  customer service who told me that the broken sat nav was not my fault, or that the painting that I had inherited was safe in the hands of Air Canada. (It is now on our wall,)

                                                   ’All that is gold does not glitter,

                                                  Not all those who wander are lost,

                                                   The old that is strong does not wither,

                                                  Deep roots are not reached by the frost.”      J.R.R.Tolkien   

             Seasons greetings to you all.

           “Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.”

The wind blew off the North Sea. The family had decided to camp in the shelter of the dunes. The husband and wife team put up their two tents and realised that it was almost impossible to find real shelter, the wind was howling and the sand was angry. But eventually the tents were pitched and they retreated to the car where their two children were asleep in the back seats.  They organised the sleeping bags and the cooker and set the interior of the tents ready for the night’s sleep. Mother and daughter were to be in one tent and father and three year old son were to be in the other.

It was with difficulty that the meal was cooked.  Heating the water was fine, keeping the sand out of it was a challenge. They managed to complete all of it including the washing up just before the rains came.  With the showers came a colder wind so it was for the best that the children were kitted and ready for bed and finally in the shelter of their tents.  The father reached for his son’s favourite bedtime read, ‘Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy’. They were both comfortable and warm in their sleeping bags. The rain pattered on the tents, the wind caused the canvas to bend and shift but they remained dry. Time for the lad‘s favourite dog story.

“Out of the house and off for a walk went Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy.”

“Daddy, where’s my sheetie?”

An old bit of sheet, cut from a tattered sheet and given to the wee boy about a year previously had become his bedtime comforter. He never slept without it.

“It’s around here somewhere.”

“And Hercules Morse as big as a horse”

Back to the story with emphasis. Laddie searching for words.

“Daddy, my sheetie.”

Rummage around the tent briefly with no luck.

“Bitzer Maloney all skinny and bony”.

“Sheetie, Daddy”.

“Doesn’t seem to be here. Never mind, listen to the story.”

“Bottomley Potts all covered in spots.”

“Daddy?”

“I think it’s in the car, son. Don’t worry about it tonight. I’ll read the story again.”

And the wind blew and the storm raged and the little boy was searching for words, until finally…

“Get it Daddy.”

Inner groan, battle out of the sleeping bag, manoeuvre into waterproofs, rest on elbows, undo inner zip, muster on walking boots, unzip outer, step into the weather, realise car keys are back in the tent, unzip again. Voice from the dark.

“Sheetie, Daddy.”

Unlock the car, rummage in the trunk, find it on the floor of the back seat, reverse the process, give the boy his sheetie, get comfortable again. Deep sigh, prepare to sleep.

“Daddy”

“Yes, son.”

“I need a poo.”

Before I had children, my picture  of parenting hung level on the wall, it didn’t take long for the picture to become crooked.

                         ____________________________________________________

I had a friend with whom I played rugby. He had served in the British Army. There is a period in recent Irish History called “The Troubles”. Protestants were pitted against Catholics in the streets of Belfast. British troops were sent in to keep the peace between two factions which, at the time, didn’t really want the peace kept. So there were soldiers on the streets of Belfast and they were vulnerable. My friend was one of them. Of course, soldiers are taught to obey orders, but sometimes, Dear Reader, sometimes discretion says, “No”. On one street in the early 1970s, my friend’s unit was on patrol when they came under fire from a rooftop. They were sheltering behind parked cars and garden walls. The sergeant came up with an idea. My friend was ordered to run out into the open so that the sniper would take a shot and be exposed.  Understandably there were a few thought processes which occurred to him at the time. Making himself a target for an IRA marksman was not why he had joined up. Eventually he responded to the sergeant’s request.

“Sarge, there are three hopes in this world, Bob Hope, some hope and no hope. I’m not running across this street.”

No charges were ever brought as part of this breech of discipline, it was never mentioned again. As ever I return 2000 years to seek advice on such a matter.

“Be wary of the man who urges an action in which he himself incurs no risk.” Seneca

Take note, Trump and cronies.

                      _________________________________________________________

“Take the laser for a sail, Pete, it will be fun.”

Thus spake Wattie Davidson, so I trekked down the road to the beach at Rock in North Cornwall where my father’s little sailing boat was moored.  A laser is a smidge larger than a sailboard, It has a tiller and a sail and one can sit in it.  I was never a very experienced sailor having been away from home when my dad gave full vent to his hobby which had always been a passion of his. But I could rig the boat, I knew a little bit about how to use the wind. So I was confident when I launched into the River Camel. Everything began well, the boat responded well to my actions. Eventually however it was slow to respond. It went from slow to sluggish to the extent that I no longer had control of it. The tide and wind were pushing me up the river. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get the craft to return to the Rock side where my parents had their holiday cottage. I was floating past Padstow, heading towards Wadebridge and inevitably I was going to be beached on the far bank. Sure enough I drifted onto the shore. Nothing left but to derig the beast, make sure it was camouflaged and somehow find my way through the undergrowth for a path or road to walk the few miles to the town of Wadebridge.  Luckily I found the disused railway line and was able to walk along it with some ease. Nevertheless it was dark when I eventually arrived at the holiday cottage in the community of Tredrizzick.  It turns out that a laser has a hollow hull. To prevent water from filling it up one has to screw in the plugs otherwise the boat becomes a bloated blob of lard subject to the whims of the sea. I did not know this.  These plugs were ‘the unbroken heart of a well-rounded truth’ as Parmenides would have it.

 Dear Reader, I relate these three wee vignettes because they are ‘failures’, one of which I heard related and two of which are mine. I forgot my son’s sheetie in the car, missed checking for plugs on the boat’s hull. I had nobody to blame but myself. At the time I met these minor events with a muttered expletive and “How could I be so stupid?” But all of these incidents and there have been many more in my long life are useful lessons in humility which were good for me. And, Dear Reader, I did enjoy my friend’s company for many years, a part of my life and his which might not have been! To finish:-

“There is strife in a churning world but existence will always carry with it the seeds of its own redemption.”

‘How to Be’ by Adam Nicolson

Thanks for reading.

Anybody who trolls technology these days, does not totally understand what is true and what is not. I am a “Facebook” user, I watch TV. I try to be careful not to fall down the rabbit hole of believing nonsense. Sometimes I fail and spout rubbish to friends, stuff which I believe but which may have no basis in fact. I am a travelling gullible, Dear Friends.

When I was a young boy, something under the age of 8 years, I remember my father taking me to a house in rural Aberdeenshire. He was a General Practitioner based in the village of Methlick.  I was confused to find myself sitting on the edge of a complete stranger’s bed where this other young boy was obviously sick. I can’t remember what was wrong with him but it was likely German Measles, mumps or chicken pox. Whatever it was we left there and some days later I was laid up in bed with what he had.  My Dad wanted me to get the disease while I was young so that I would have a lifetime immunity. It worked. But advocating for that in this day and age might involve social services and, at the very least, would be frowned upon by mainstream society. In any case it would not have been necessary because there is a vaccination for most of these aforementioned. From a young age I, like everybody else I knew, was vaccinated against smallpox and polio. The vaccines worked. Not simply for me but for millions of others. The days of the iron lung and leg braces for polio victims are behind us.

My maternal grandfather lost two wives, one in late pregnancy and the other through pneumonia, three days after my mother was born.  My other grandfather went up to fix the leaky roof in a storm at the mill he owned , got soaked through, contracted pneumonia and died. He had four children aged 8, 6, 4 and two years. This was in 1929. My gran never remarried, brought those 4 children up on her own and died in 1989 having been a widow for 60 years. Had any of these illnesses happened today antibiotics would have stepped in and they would likely have cheated death.

Whenever I am back in the UK, I take time away from the crowd to visit graveyards. They reveal so much about what life was like in the past. They show names that were common to the area, sentiments commensurate with the period of their death and of course, lifespan dates. But what strikes me most is the prevalence of infant mortality. 4 children dead before the age of five. A litany of lives cut short, mostly in the Victorian era.  A lifetime of grief for the parents,  years of wondering what might have been had their children had full lives.  We know that infant mortality rates are nowhere near as bad as they were 100 years ago and more. Here are some extracts from Michel de Montaigne’s diary as summarised by Sarah Bakewell in her excellent book about his life, titled ‘How to Live”:-

28 June 1570 Thoinette ‘This is the first child of my marriage and died two months later’.

9^th September, 1571 Leonor was born.

5^th July, 1573 Unnamed daughter. ‘She lived only seven weeks’

27^th December, 1574 Unnamed daughter. “Died about three months later, and was hastily baptised under pressure of necessity.”

16^th May, 1577 Unnamed daughter; died after a month.

21 February, 1583: “We had another daughter who was named Marie, baptised by the sieur de Jaurillac , her uncle. She died a few days later.’

Bakewell then writes.

“Montaigne wrote that he had lost most of his children ‘without grief, or at least without repining’, because they were so young. People generally did try not to get too attached to children while in their early infancy, because the likelihood of their dying was great.”

Leonor was Montaigne’s only child to survive to adulthood.

So here, Dear Reader, Davidson could go down the rabbit hole of dangerous industries in the Industrial Revolution, how miners underground were continually at risk and had their lives abbreviated by a disease they called ‘black lung’. But the risks to them were not as challenging as that of their wives who were three times as likely to die in childbirth as they were in a mine accident.

So, Dear Friends, I guess this is not the cheeriest blog from Davidson and nor is it that well researched.  I could read more and rummage around and find statistics to support my arguments.  But then an anti-vaccer could also find numbers to support his argument.  Facts matter greatly when lives are at stake.  So in the United States there is an health department run by somebody it seems to me who has little knowledge of the facts; somebody who is happy to abandon the views of experts and risk child lives by denying the efficacy of vaccinations and women’s lives by denying them an abortion.  Mr. Kennedy is rivaling the Catholic Church in his foolhardiness. This would be the Church which would not allow the use of condoms for their African faithful thus increasing the risk of AIDS and premature death.

I will conclude with a story which I wish was true but is more likely a myth but it could have been possible.

Over 150 years ago a man was out walking on a Scottish moor. He ventured where he should not and found himself floundering in a morass of quicksand.  Exhaustion was setting in and drowning seemed inevitable when his cries for help reached the ears of a passing ghillie.  Through innovation and determination and not a little courage, the ghillie was able to rescue the rich landowner because that was what he was.  So grateful for his life was the wealthy man that he offered rewards and compensation to the man all of which he turned down, embarrassed that his human act should be seen in a mercenary light. Eventually he could hold out no longer.

“OK, my lord, will you educate my son?”

Years later Winston Churchill, before he became the famed wartime leader, contracted the death sentence that was pneumonia.  The administration of penicillin saved his life and the rest is history.  Except that if Lord Randolph Churchill had not nearly drowned in that bog and not been rescued by a ghillie called Fleming, then his boy, Alexander Fleming, may not have invented the antibiotic in time to save Randolph’s son, Winston’ life.

Of course this may be an urban legend but it is not beyond possibility I think you’ll agree, Dear Reader. Had penicillin been around earlier then I might have had a maternal grandmother and a paternal grandfather whom I would have known. Grace Tolmie and Jim Davidson might have bounced me on their knees.

So you know where I have gone with this and know where I am going. Kennedy is an antivaxxer. Most of the people I know had COVID vaccinations. Some of us caught the disease, all of us survived. I don’t know what the long term repercussions of putting something foreign in my body will be. I may become autistic, I may develop heart disease, something may creep up and get me and shorten my life as a result of these vaccinations. Time will tell.  What I have to tell you Mr. Kennedy is that I don’t care. I am here now and I might not have been.  It is fine for parents not to have their child vaccinated but if they don’t then don’t send the child to school, to hockey practice, any other child’s birthday party, anything that involves a gathering. Such acts are inconsiderate and irresponsible.

Just to finish this rather angry rant. My wife’s family have a long history of kidney disease. In the past she lost uncles and aunts way before their time.  Due to medical advances, our son has a kidney transplant, Irene’s disease is closely monitored and managed. Our daughter has MS. She too is closely monitored and managed and has been the beneficiary of medical innovation and research.

In short, Dear Friends, I have no time for people who cut funding for scientists and researchers who have proven their worth over the years in extending and saving lives. The annual Terry Fox Run has just been completed here in Canada. A cure for cancer has not yet been found but hearsay informs that the type of cancer Fox had 45 years ago would have been cured today. Apparently in the present day he would not only have survived but would not even have lost a leg.  That may be hearsay but personally I would rather hearsay than the heresy that is currently putting lives unnecessarily at risk. There are something like 5000 measles victims currently in North America and certainly most of them will recover but not without a sigh of relief from parents and medical staff. Get out of the way RFK and allow research scientists to innovate and experiment and to continue to increase our quantity and quality of life.

I shall try to be more positive in a fortnight.

Thanks for reading.

“The best laid schemes o’mice and men gang aft agley.”    ‘To a Mouse’ by Robert Burns.

Sorry, Dear Friends, but anybody who knows Davidson must realise that at some point they are going to be hit by the poetry of Robert Burns.  This occurred to me recently because I have just come across the Ancient Greek word,  ‘medomai’ which means ‘I plan, I act’ The reason I was struck by this meaning is because, like you, I understand that planning and acting in our society are two separate things.  But the way I read this ( possibly wrongly!) is that in the ancient world planning and acting were the same.  It was impossible to have one without the other. It was an assumption that those who sit around a table and discuss ideas for, let’s say, the building of the Parthenon, will only rise when dates are set for construction and the building is begun.

Here in British Columbia, I often hear about committees, inquiries, assessments, boards and so forth. The cynic within me believes in years and years of boondoggles where nothing ever gets decided.  This goes someway to explaining why in town squares there are no statues honouring committees!  There are no stone sculptures of boards sitting heroically around a table, snoozing or checking their phones. Perhaps there should be because nothing becomes a statue more than pigeon shite!

Like many of you I continue to be appalled that there are Native Reserves with no fresh water. Last time I looked there was no shortage of water in this country. How can this be? Here in North Vancouver if we have no water for a morning, it will be fixed by the afternoon. Also here in North Vancouver we are having a new sewage plant built which local government messed up so we are now paying for their mistakes through our taxes.  There are incompetent politicians who make decisions with no insight, draw conclusions outside their wherewithal with no consequences to them. So there are no engineers, hydrologists, politicians, companies who are practising medomai,  because the hot air and waffle of committees produces a skeleton of a plan with no action.  The Greek Empire, along with every other great empires of the world, was built, I believe, because people planned and acted.  Of course, empire and colonialism are not good actions. But, Dear Reader, nobody can say that empires were built without a plan and an action, exploitative though they were.

Hmm, pals o’mine, like most of you I love the fact that I live in a democracy. But I don’t love bureaucracy and red tape. But it seems that we can’t have one without the other.  Authoritarian governments do plan and act but in the process run roughshod over their own people. No doubt that if China decided to build the Belt Road through North Vancouver, there would be a great deal of unhappy residents who would not be adequately compensated.  The dictatorships of the world are not renowned for their plebiscites, referenda and delays. Meanwhile in the UK millions are being spent on discussions about the building of a third runway at Heathrow Airport.

All of us have to plan at some point. There is always a deep sense of satisfaction when a Davidson plan works because so many of them haven’t. But those of you who have read my drivel over the years will understand that I have an out of proportion respect for the wisdom of the ancients.

For example, I have camped at the oceanfront campsite of Glencoe Village on many an occasion. It is near the site where the Campbells massacred their hosts, the MacDonalds, in 1692. About 200 yards offshore there is a grass-ridden island with a couple of trees on it. There is room enough for about two people to sit and chat but not much more. Legend has it that if two MacDonalds had a dispute they were to be rowed out to this apology of an island. They were to come to a mutual decision which was binding and only then were they picked up.  Knowing the midges that appear out of nowhere, or the rain and wind that can come in from the sea loch or the winter snows,  sitting around debating for hours would not have been pleasant.  Shaking hands and getting away would be the order of the day.  To me this works.

I used to have a colleague, Dr. Len Sampson, who as a school principal used to conduct staff meetings with nowhere to sit rather like, I believe, the Privy Council in England.  Winston Churchill once said,

“Jaw, jaw is better than war, war.”

So I suppose that is the counter argument, If we can keep people talking then at least they are not beating three bells of wotsit out of each other.  Maybe then a way can be found that defies death and destruction.  There is, I believe, almost always a non-violent way to solve a problem. If one discovers a scorpion poised on one’s genitalia, one is going to think very carefully about a non-violent solution.

Oh dear, Dear Reader, I am in danger of countering the premise with which I began.  Filibustering a motion can almost make a bill die in the water. It often seems to me that getting a project off the ground in Canada is like a walrus giving birth to old farm machinery.  It is painful, it is long and when it is completed nobody has a use for it any more.

I believe, Dear Reader, that not only do we have a wonderful education system in this country. We have created a population that shows initiative and innovation. We have given them the freedom of speech to express themselves in a diligent and forthright manner.  We do need to be aware of people’s sensitive issues, we do need to protect the environment and we do need to employ excellent Health and Safety.  But please, oh please, set deadlines for completion. We cannot expect an Olympics or a World Cup to be ever present, outside agencies setting closure for a project, but we can be better than we are.

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bush was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”   Anaia Alia

It is time, Dear Reader, for Canada to plan and act, we need to blossom.  May all of your medomai be successful.

Thanks for reading.

It being Labour Day here in North America and the beginning of the School Year on September 2^nd, I thought I would touch on the topic of ‘beginnings’. I don’t have these sort of beginnings any more.  I retired seven years ago and since then, in the words of Ian Crichton Smith, have become

“A vague wishless seaweed floating on a tide.”

About 15 years ago I was seated in my classroom early in the morning waiting for the first of my new intake to arrive. Like the rest of my colleagues, I had spent the previous week getting ready for the school year to begin. Even after years of experience I still was nervous about the beginning of the academic year. The last night of the summer was not a relaxed night’s sleep.

A shy face at the door as I looked up from my desk and an anxious mum gently knocking, she and  her daughter were a smidge early.  I mustered a smile, outstretched a hand and introduced myself.

“Hope you don’t mind, Mr. Davidson, but you are the first boy teacher that Emma has had and she’s a bit anxious.”  Mums have their beginnings too.

In my experience of this, the Emmas of the world, the nine year olds crossing a new threshold are not the nervous characters coming into the room. It certainly looked this way as she immediately wanted to find her desk and locker.  With my arthritic right leg, the hemi-facial tic in my left eye,  the paunchy stomach and the white hair, not to mention the wrinkles which time had ploughed , I was just happy to be called  a boy teacher. Boyhood in my case had slipped its moorings about 30 years previously and was unlikely to return to port.  That was a beginning never to begin again. Any rate Emma was happy and smiling, delighted with her locker and ecstatic about the little girl she was going to be sat next to.

The opening of the Edupak was going to be the busy part of the morning.  This package is what the parents had ordered from the school. It included binders, pencils, paper, note books and sundry other things essential to the smooth running of an educational programme. Of course, It was my job to ask the children to label the various binders, add the appropriate coloured note book to the correct binder.  For some this was an easy task, for others not so.  Certain characters were neat and done quickly, for others there was still a mess on the floor. The balance was to give the early birds an educational worm while I helped with the rest.

Lunch was always interesting on the first day. I was moved by the wee laddie’s lunch bucket which, when opened, revealed slices of cut apple in a smaller container and sandwiches cut in the shape of a heart and a loving letter from mum wishing her son luck. Such moments like that were always uplifting.

Being a fan of Malcolm Gladwell I always played with my ‘Blink’ moments during the school year.  As the year wore on  I really never needed to call the morning roll. I knew who was there and who wasn’t but always called the pupils’  register to which they were supposed to reply with a simple “Yes”. To me, that three letter word spoke volumes about whether that particular student had a good or bad start to his or her day.  It would be a signal to me that I may need to keep a special eye on Eric because he was not in the best frame of mind.  Dear Reader, it didn’t always work, of course. Sometimes I swooped down like a flock of seagulls on a spilled garbage can, only to cause alarm and shock to a very happy child who just wanted to go quietly about her school day without being bothered by some foolish adult who had it in his head that she had a problem.  She had started her school as a happy go lucky, joyous wee learner and left at the end of the day a nervous wreck because her teacher thought she needed special attention!? There are some who thrive best when they are left alone.

‘The problem is not the problem but the problem is your attitude to the problem.” Jack Sparrow

 There are some beginnings which are best left locked in the cupboard.

“If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders,”  Abigail van Buren

On that first afternoon we would play some form of ‘getting to know you’ games. ‘Ice breakers’ for want of a better term.  As the day neared its end, we would usually trek on outside the building and expend some energy, trying to send the children home feeling that they had just been given the new puppy they had craved for years. Smoke and mirrors was an early part of my teacher’s training.

There was probably a team meeting for Grade IV teachers after the children had gone home but most of the administrivia had crossed our paths the week before the children arrived.

There are always new initiatives for teachers at the beginning of the school year. I was always interested in professional development. Actually, Dear Reader, what am I saying? I wasn’t really interested. I was always interested in the lunch that was inevitably provided on such days. And I will admit I always tried to take at least one thing from such occasions some little gem that I could use in the classroom.  But sometimes, Dear Reader, sometimes I was beset  by flashbacks and found myself with a ‘new’ initiative ( What am I saying? All initiatives are ‘new’ except that some of these weren’t!  Head shake.) which had crossed before Davidson some decades previously.  

Sooo, pals o’ mine, if there is any point to this blog whatsoever, I suppose it is to empathise with all of you who, I think, remain friends and are now ex-colleagues because you will have a beginning again on Tuesday, 2^nd September. I had 43 such nervous nights, butterfly-fluttering, toilet-taunting mornings before the children arrived on their first day. Some of you will be the same, some will shrug their shoulders and wonder what the bloody hell I am talking about.

“All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage, taking young children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.” Emma Burbeck

But  I suspect, Dear Friends, that after about an hour of that new beginning, it will feel like you waved goodbye to summer an age ago.That last water ski across the lake, that last barbecued sunset, that last European cultural journey, all that was yours so recently now seems a decade ago. School, in short, will feel  like you’ve never been away.

I wish you all a happy and productive  beginning to your school year.

I am off up to Sun Peaks for a few days.

Thanks for reading.

The wind blew across the escarpment. Every so often the clouds scudded away from the hills above revealing the shark’s tooth of the rocky cliff, awesome in its magnificence, awful in its bleakness. The man shuddered when it appeared and yet was drawn forward, a siren luring him ever upwards. The peaty heather crunched underfoot, clinging desperately to the hillside but even its dwarf-like status could not escape the wind.  The gale increased, the rugged tufts waved the walker ever upwards. Wet sleet suddenly appeared from the west, rain with an identity crisis. It did so want to be snow but October forbade it.  So now he was wet-faced, wind-borne and windswept.  His feet were dry, his hands were gloved, his bonnet sat on his head, his flask of hot tea nestled in his back pack, his cheese and pickle sandwiches were buried deep in its dry.

Why had he made this trek on this day? His thoughts returned to the beginning of the day, the moment in the youth hostel when cyclists and walkers, day trippers and touring groups were rethinking their plans because the day promised only cloud and mist, dreich and gale, a six foot view of everything the same. But this man on this day was going to try to suborn his dark mood, his disillusionment with the world at large through physical exhaustion.  It was quite simple, his black dog had been an ever present for weeks now. He refused to medicate, was adamant that he was not going to burden his friends,  despised the idea of professional help.

As he approached he knew that the stark, threatening rock face hid a secret. If he could find his way round the corner to the south he knew there was an easier, well-trodden path to the top.

“My grannie could do it,” he muttered to himself.

The walker, like Montaigne, ‘refolded his gaze inward’, thought about his emotional journey over the past few years and suddenly knew with scintillating clarity that every pathway he had taken then, every step that he was taking now was inevitably an inescapable part of who he was. In his life it was impossible to stray from the path because there was no path.  And that thought brought him up short because he realised that this was the same for everybody. Carlisle said,

“A life of ease is not for any man.”

“Or any woman either.”   He voiced woke-ish acceptance even here where only the wind heard and the heather waved and the sleet fell and the rugged rock stood stalwart and indifferent.

Trying to make sense of where he was in the world was not going to be accomplished in a day. But he knew that the deepness of his being had a form of survivor’s guilt. The weight of freedom and privilege lay heavily about him. Luck and good fortune had been ever present and become a burden. He saw war, pestilence, death and starvation; he saw floods, drought, landslides, collapsing glaciers, polluted waters. He felt powerless. His days should have been ones of joy and gratitude but somehow they weren’t. He should have no frowns but only smiles. He wanted the world to heal but knew not how to make it so. He needed a purpose.

He reached the point where the heather met the bare rock and began to skirt the base, now going steeper upwards but still on the path, edging the edge,  ever rounding the corner where he would leave the greenery and find the path through the scree and rock fall. As he curved the bend, suddenly there was no wind. The blowing sleet adjusted its approach from sideways to vertical. The clouds still raced above but the calm was welcome here below. Now he could hear his own breath, he noted the sound of boot on rock, the sudden onset of warmth. He smiled to himself. He had an unfounded feeling of unbounded joy. It was good to be here and to be alive. There was no better place in the world to be than right here right now.  If he had had strength to skip or breath to shout he would have done so but the straightening of his back, the upping of his pace, the flow of his eagerness was enough.  He was about an hour from the peak but suddenly time did not matter.  The now mattered, not the past, nary the future, just the flow of now. He was at peace.

50 yards from the top the wind suddenly found him once more, the sleet began again to slant into his eyes. By this time, his shoulders and back were feeling the weight of his sack, the muscles in his legs were beginning to burn. And suddenly he was there, afoot  the small plateau that had flattened out a welcome mat for his achievement, a receipt for his purchase. The man-made cairn signified the top. He found the leeward side, took off his pack and sat for a moment to savour.  He knew that below him to the west swirled the Atlantic Ocean, but he could not hear the break of its waves because of the wind. He knew that on the eastern side where he sheltered would be the glen and the narrow strip of roadway where he had parked.  But all was invisible to him.  He stretched out the moments that he sat, elastic and strong. He knew that darkness and danger would arrive all too soon and that he would soon have to move.

He was careful on the downward scree but as soon as he hit the cushioned peat he strode with confidence.  His knowledge of the terrain was good but about half an hour into his descent he decided that he would take a short cut to where his car was parked.  He set off well enough but soon found himself in wet moss and, further still, leaping from solid ground to solid ground, making slow progress through a bog then sinking and floundering helplessly as he missed his footing and had to extract himself again and again from the peaty morass. And the sleet turned to rain and the wind blew and he lost his way. And his legs burned and his feet and calves were soaked and muddy and every step was a gamble and a strain  But he knew roughly that the high ground was on his left and that he just had to keep bending right and he would hit the road. But like most short cuts he had taken in his life, his descent had turned into a long epic haul. ‘Why use a teaspoon when a hammer will do?’ should have been his motto. There were easier ways but they weren’t his and they never had been.

 Some two hours later a barbed wire fence appeared and a farmer’s track and half a mile beyond that he saw traffic moving on the road. He was delighted when he reached the tarmac but by this time he was on his chin straps, his mouth hung open and he knew he had to walk some distance back down the road to his car. He had long since sought the safety of his head torch. He was not hungry but he forced some trail mix down his throat, he was not thirsty but forced some water.  The muscles in his legs quivered like jelly. There were sore bits forming on his shoulders and waist where his pack was starting to take its revenge. He stumbled on and forwards. The road was an eternity but suddenly he turned a corner and there was his car.

He had at least prepared a bit for the wet. He rummaged and found a pair of dry socks and some shoes. Comforted he managed to fold his stiff body behind the wheel in the driver’s seat.  As he drove the 5 miles to the nearest village, he suddenly felt ravenously hungry. He could not believe when in the centre of the village he saw the welcome of a ‘Fish ‘n Chip’ shop and saw that it was open. Pie, chips, fish, mushy peas, lashings of salt and vinegar and he was sat in his car outside the shop and tucking in.  He had rolled up his chip papers, was walking back to the chippy by way of the rubbish bin, when it came upon him again. Quickly he was back inside and ordering the same.  Finally his hunger was sated. He drove back to his hostel. He showered and changed and vowed not to lie on the bed but to head down to the local public bar for a couple of beers.

After the first gulp of his pint, he sat back and surveyed the scene and, in the process, surveyed himself.  There was a calm that settled over him.  There was a smile that he knew was playing about his lips. There was a soreness to his body, a stiff muscle here, a forming blister there, an ache in places where there should have been no ache.

And yet, and yet, the black dog of the depression which had been his companion for days, was gone. His grumpy intolerance was no more. The irritating behaviours of people no longer irritated. Instead he saw in the faces of his fellow patrons and bar staff only a pleasant joie de vivre, peopled with ripples of laughter and friendly bonhomie. In those moments the world was a wonderful place, sweetness and light radiated. The beer worked its magic, he saw only good, thought only good, felt languid and lucky, part of a wondrous place and time. He saw only beneficence, only kindness, only personality in those who were having their weekly night out. He realised what a boon physical exhaustion is. There is the calm-contented soporific sublimity; angst is gone; social nervousness rests elsewhere; there is sweetness and light; conflict and condemnation have fled the coop.  In short, all the worst elements of his inner being had left on the wings of physical exhaustion, excessive exertion. Not only did he slip gently into rest but was accompanied on the journey by peace. There was mellifluous milk where there had been putrid poison, kindness where there was anger; a current of altruism washing  away selfishness and vindictiveness. The bitter hole, the empty shell,  had become a better whole.

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Dear Reader, I have read much about how the motion of walking can bring us towards the solution of a problem. Not for nothing did monasteries have cloisters around which the monks could stroll. Nor should it be a surprise that the Australian Aboriginals go ‘walkabout’.

“We shall not cease from exploration,

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.”    T.S.Eliot

Sadly it is too late for the autocrats, tyrants and dictators of this world to take these solitary walks. Had they done so when they were younger they might have walked the badness right out of themselves, they might have been able to look at their fellow human beings with some humility, they might even have wanted the best for them.  Is it too much to hope that world can replace the balance of power with the power of balance? Dear Friends, I am an optimist in that I believe that life is cyclical, that events evolve as they revolve, that what was at the top drops to the bottom and vice versa. However,

“A frantic casting about is everybody’s lot, it’s the spirit of the time.”

                                                                                       ‘Dr. Zhivago’

                                                                                                        by Boris Pasternak.

In general, I believe, that most people know what good is.  They know when and what is right. Yes, Dear Reader, there are nuances and the occasional bout of unawareness. But if there is a duck and her babies crossing the road most people will slow down and allow them across. Nobody will ever admit that they are in a position of power other than to serve others. Like many of you I wish that Trump was nothing more than a bit of a torn plastic bag caught in a tree but, sadly, nasty pollutants tend to cling. I remember this wonderful piece of philosophy but I can’t remember where I heard it:-

“Where do you hide a tree? In a forest. How do you hide outrageous behaviour?  With outrageous behaviour”.

Looking at the news at the moment, nothing seems truer than that. The so called leaders of the world, a misnomer if ever there was one, are very good at offering quids with no pro  quos

The only relevance in my particular story here is that during the few, but wonderful, times in my life I have been pushed towards physical exhaustion, then the juices flowing through my body have made people and the world a much, much more beautiful place and, albeit temporarily, made me a better person.

‘Solvitur ambulando’  Diogenes.