Jimmy’s First Blog

                                 26/4/2020

    My book is a memoir, an autobiography. As I was writing it, and now drawing close to my 68^th birthday, it was a time of reflection and now, of course, isolated as we all are, a time of greater reflection.

     I guess that the hard thing about writing about oneself is making it interesting. The trouble is that it is invariably interesting to the author. Living an experience is not the same as conveying the living of that experience.

      On Friday 20^th March, just over one month ago now, I walked into the Aberdeen Arms Hotel in the village of Tarland in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. The bar was open so I entered there to register for my 28 day stay. My wife, Irene, was going to join me from our home in North Vancouver, Canada, on April 1^st. There were two guys sat at the bar, in their working clothes, having a couple of pints before home. The TV was on. I introduced myself at much the same time as Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister, was announcing the closure of bars and pubs. The landlady, Shona Robertson, told me not to worry as they would not be throwing me out. I was shown to my room above the bar. I was the only guest. There was due to be a wedding at the hotel on the following Tuesday, the ceremony was due to take place at the prehistoric stone circle on a hill about a mile above the village. All the guests had had to cancel, because of the pandemic. Now there was to be the bride and groom with Shona and her husband, George, the only witnesses.

      Settling in for the night, I was aware that I should not have been there. The day gave way to the weekend. I watched and listened as Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister, pleaded with people not to leave the cities and seek a weekend escape in the Highlands and risk spreading the Coronavirus. Too late for me, I was already there. I watched with increasing alarm as a local on the Glencoe ski hill was beside himself with anger at the influx of visitors at such a bad time. I knew then that I had to curtail my trip. I would not be receiving the friends and relatives with whom I wanted to hike the hills. Irene would no longer be flying to join me. I drove to the lovely wee village of Ballater to do some grocery shopping. The middle aged cashier was telling one of the customers that she expected a tighter lockdown soon. The Chemist’s shop was locked but opened up to allow one customer in at a time. There was a queue outside the Butcher’s Shop.

      I decided to walk over the bridge across the River Dee and head up the path by the side of the ‘B’ road to Glen Muick. There were mountain bikers out and about and the occasional walker. It was not a long trek. The weather was clear but a cold wind chilled. The mountain tops on the Cairngorms were still snowy white. The peak of Lochnagar stood out, a sentinel for the glen. It was as beautiful and as serene as I had always known it. And yet, and yet there was no place for me at this time in this place.

      So our daughter, Alison, managed to get me a flight from Glasgow to London and from Heathrow home to Vancouver. It is out of place here to mention the harrowing three hour drive to Glasgow, the cancellation of one flight, the rebooking of another, the nervous day at Heathrow watching flights being cancelled and the relief with which I eventually took off for home.

     In a different world and in a better time, this tale may form the basis for an interesting enough story. As our 32 year old son, Grant, said yesterday he had never lived through such a strange time as this. At 67 years of age, I explained that it was the same for me. But, of course, at this time this brief tale of trauma and personal angst pales into significance compared to the suffering and loss which so many other people are facing.

          And, by the way, that Tarland wedding never did take place.

       Thank you for taking the time to read my first blog entry. Stay safe and stay healthy in these difficult times.   Peter Davidson