It's that man again

My friend thinks Michael Gove will be axed at the next re-shuffle. I think he is a flag-bearer for old-Toryism and the darling of the bank-benchers and will survive - just like cockroaches survive atom bombs.

I don't normally take any interest in the fate of the likes of Gove - he has nothing to do with education in Scotland, thank heavens - but I'm a bit put out at his claim that my view (your view, awbiddy's view) of the first world war is shaped by TV programmes like Blackadder and films like O what a lovely war!

I don't need entertainments like Blackadder and O what a lovely war! to tell me about the so-called Great War. (And these are meant as entertainments, not documentaries*.) My grandfather fought in that war. The only photo I have of him from that time shows him at Trafalgar Square with my grandmother (on the right) just before he left the army:

She was a nurse and never talked about what she had seen but he had plenty of stories about his time in the war. These are what are referred to by historians as 'anecdotes.' Anecdotes are suspect. I used to work for a man who said: Don't tell me stories - give me the facts. But the facts are often hard to come by, especially in the confusion of wartime, and I have a theory that a whole lot of wee stories add up to a pretty good picture of history. 

So as a child I heard stories about British horse-drawn guns miles from the front being blown to bits by accident by their own side, leaving not so much as the horses' reins behind, never mind the men, just a hole in the ground. Or the poor bloody infantry in Gallipoli going hungry because someone in Whitehall had forgotten to send enough provisions. I should also say I knew just what the ruling classes of the time thought of the men who had served their country. As his reward my grandfather, a career soldier, was sent to Ireland after the war to be shot at by Irish nationalists. My grandmother bought him out of the army - the only way then he could be released other than as a casualty.  

This is all part of the social history of the working class. My father's generation - and here he is aged 20 the day he gave up his safe job in a Glasgow shipyard and joined the Royal Navy in 1940 - they added to my knowledge of the how working people are exploited in time of war. I knew exactly why people like him couldn't wait to kick out Churchill and move the country on to a better future. We owe this generation a lot: the NHS and the welfare state for a start.

All Blackadder and O what a lovely war! did was confirm what I knew. And when I get the chance, I tell the younger generation what their grandparents and great-grandparents did in these wars. Whether they want to hear it or not. 

*Similarly, I don't think Allo! Allo! gives a faithful picture of life in occupied Belgium in world war 2.

Happy...

Okay, this is the first, last and only time I'm going to write this here: Happy New Year.

Now that I'm old and time passes so much faster than it used to, a new year isn't so much something to celebrate as an event that makes me ask: What, again? Already?

I'm quite happy to say goodbye to 2013. I was never comfortable with the year because it had a 13 in it. Not that I'm superstitious. But I am a teeny bit OCD. My number obsession includes counting stairs as I go up them (but not down - that would just be weird). I also like doing sums involving dates but any sum involving 2013 was just too hard. So the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. That's...well, em, a while ago - too hard to work out in my napper.

Newspapers are, like me, obsessed with people's ages and years of birth. I once read an article that began: "Hillary Clinton, 57..." What, given who she is and what she's achieved, that's the most important thing you can say about Hillary Clinton - she's 57? I do like doing wee sums to work out how old people are but when it got to working out: Barack Obama was born in 1964 so in 2013 he's how many years old? the only answer I can come up with is: quite old but not as old as me.

I'm happy to admit I'm mainly a word person, having been put out of the Maths department at the end of fourth year, after which I happily took refuge in languages. However, I loved arithmetic (90-100% in the O grade). Hated Maths - 50-55% in the O Grade). I could see the point of algebra but geometry? Trig? Pah!

There's something very satisfying about numbers (especially even numbers in my opinion). Years of listening to Maths PTs in meetings waxing lyrical about Advanced Higher calculus made me want to ask them: You guys (and gals) just love numbers, don't you? But I never dared in case they denied it and left me utterly disillusioned.

So a Happy New 2014 to you all. And if that number doesn't please you, don't worry - 2015 will be along in no time at all.

It's all in the name

I was a bit surprised to read there's been a sudden increase in the number of wee boys called Jesse. Not Jesse as in 'Man up, ya wee Jesse' but as in the name of the hero of some TV programme on Sky Atlantic that I haven't seen.

It worries me, this fashion for picking names off the telly.

Not that I like my own name which is bog-standard Scottish and has caused endless confusion in French-speaking countries. My name dates from a time when families felt it was a tribute to relatives to name a child after them. So I am named for my mother and her mother and my father's auntie. My brother is named for his father and both grandfathers and my sister for my mother's sister. In any family gathering, this causes chaos. But it simplified things for my mother who was terrible with names: all she had to do was go through a basic list of 3 till she reached the name of the person she wanted.

A friend's sister found names easy when she moved to Australia in the 80s. She was a primary teacher and all the wee boys were called either Wayne, Dwayne or Shane. In Islay for a while in the 80s, we seemed to have a lot of girls called Arlene, Marlene and Charlene.

It all went wrong from the 90s. Then we got parents seeking original names and not finding them so now we have a few poor souls called Kylie, Chardonnay and Pocahontas and even, I believe, a Chlamydia or two. Scotland now seems to be full of weans called Sophie and Jack. Not traditional Scottish names - and I admit I really like traditional Scottish names.

The trouble is: a lot of names give your age away. They also get copied all the time. So we think we have the only Sebastian in the village and it turns out there are 3 in primary 1.

But the saving Grace (nice name, that!) is that you can change your name. And I'll bet there are a few folk who are glad of that.

Come back, Tom Shields!

It's no use. The Old Buffer sprung his retirement on us on 9 November 2013 and I'm still opening my copy of the Herald wondering: Is this a Tom Shields day? 

The golden days were when Tom was writing the Herald Diary and his columns at the same time. I still have the books published using the best bits of the Herald Diary and I have his collection of columns from 2012: 57 Varieties of Tomato. Both treasures. (All available at good bookshops. Buy them there - not from Amazon. Please.) He had some kind of meltdown early in the 2000s and reduced his workload. Good for  him but sad for us. He started splitting his time between the West End and the community allotment in Barcelona, and that brought a wee gleam back to his eye. Then he cut back to 3 columns a week and it's been downhill ever since. 

I've nothing against any of the people now occupying his slot (left centre page, bottom right). They're just not Tom Shields. They write a lot about themselves. Frankly, who cares about them? Tom Shields rarely wrote about his life but had plenty of insights into life in the west of Scotland and Barcelona and, well, life in general. 

So, if you don't mind, Herald editor, could you get him back, please? He said on retirement he'd be doing occasional pieces for the Sunday Herald but I haven't seen any. So lean on him or offer him money or loose women, but find some way to let us celebrate Ne'erday in style, with a Tom Shields column. 

For these err may mounnn-tains

On my wasted journey round Silverburn tonight, circling the great temple of Mammon but never actually getting anywhere near a shop, I had time to flick through a few radio stations while I sat in the long, long queue of cars heading for the exit.

I don't know who's filling in for Steve Wright on Radio 2 but dear me, their taste in music is beyond bad. Clyde 1 only seems to play Avicii or Nicholas MacDonald. I've not idea what Real Radio was playing - Rehab figured in there somewhere - very suitable for this time of year - I didn't pause long enough to find out. Smooth Radio was playing some of its 500 best something or other tunes, none of them very good, but the DJ was waxing furious about Paris Hilton who has apparently made it into the list of the top 6 DJs in the world. His argument seemed to be that Paris knows nothing about music or DJ-ing but is just playing at it. In his opinion, it's a bit like you or me thinking we could just go off and be a doctor or a dentist. What a nerve, eh? Myself, I wouldn't put being a DJ quite at the level of medicine or dentistry but I switched stations before I could hear any more. And someone was singing:

"For these err may mounnn-tains end this is may glen" and my wee heart sank. For I realised it is New Year! New Year, the time when anyone who lives in Scotland and loves Scottish music crawls into a corner and waits for us to get past Ne'erday - no, make that get past Burns Night.

O the times I've thought: just shoot me now. One of my friends sang The Road and the Miles To Dundee at a Ne'erday party in my house. I've never heard a more dreadful song, but I was told you can't say that because it's Scottish. She sang it in a semi-English accent. I toyed with the idea of going home but I was home. I sat through a rendition of Ca' The Yows Tae the Knowes - or Call the Yows To the Knowes as the singer called it, enunciating carefully - in a school hall and had to dig my nails into my arms to stop myself screaming: "Yer Scottish - gonny jist sing it Scottish!"

At some point, the accordion will appear, and the bagpipes. There will be a fiddle orchestra too. All introduced by Jackie Bird. It will mostly be poor quality stuff intended for an audience living furth of Scotland. And I just know all my exiled Scottish friends will be in ecstasies.

And no, it's not 'Scottish' music I dislike. It's bad Scottish music. I like the Proclaimers, Julie Fowlis, Karine Polwart and many others. They have some great songs.

There's a terrific list on Wikipedia if you're interested:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Scottish_folk_singers

You just won't hear much from them before the end of January.

Moving - let the fun begin

I've only just started getting ready to move house and it's doing my head in.

I've already lost the rag tonight because of Google's idiotic blog system which locks me out every couple of days - not a good idea when I wanted to get into the blog for a good rant!

Every agency I have to deal with has a form to fill in to do with change of address. And no, you can't fill the form in online and email it back. You have to print it off, fill it in by hand and post it or take it in. I know what that means before I even start: forms will get lost in the post, cheques for forwarding mail will get lost. I may start off thinking being there in person will prevent chaos breaking out but I'll bet it doesn't. The phone will be just as bad: messages will be garbled, names misspelled, information will not be passed on.

In the case of the Royal Bank, there are 3 separate forms for me to fill in. I've already decided I'm going to the branch to do that because experience tells me that way I'll at least get somebody's name and can then hold him or her to account when it all goes t*ts up. As it will.

The factor doesn't have a procedure for finalising my account and refunding my deposit (£500) and, given how bad they are at responding to any letter, it'll be a miracle if I get my money by summer. Of course, despite the fact I pay these bandits £120 a month in maintenance, I'll probably end up owing them money, so the deposit may never materialise.

The council tax form from East Renfrewshire Council is 5 - FIVE - pages long. I can't imagine how people without a degree manage to fill it in.

The Virgin Media website says I can transfer TV, phone and broadband online. I'll bet I can't.

Everything needs proof of identity. Renting the house across the road was bad enough. I have a passport but I don't have a driving licence with a photo - yes, I'm that old. Nor do I have printed bank statements - I bank online. Nor can I find 3 utility bills dated in the last three months - Scottish Gas is between quarters. But at least I know my credit is good, since I had to pay the letting agent to get a credit check carried out.

And, of course, despite my OCD tendencies and my endless list-making, I just know there will be one vital bit I forget in the move. And it will take me months to sort out. I wonder what it will be. Suggestions on a postcard...

Nigella

Years ago, I used to listen to talks by John Diamond on Radio 4. He was a great talker, soft-spoken and very clear. He was also a very good writer, with a fine wit and good insight and a sharp turn of phrase. I vaguely remember reading then he had a wife and kids, although he never mentioned them in his talks. I was grateful for that because I hate writers who raid their own lives and lay them out in the media for the world to see.

When John Diamond got sick with cancer and had to have most of his tongue removed, I remember thinking how awful it was for him, a radio person, to lose his ability to talk. I also thought how unfair it was on his kids, who were very young.

It was years before I realised his wife was Nigella Lawson. She is the daughter of Nigel Lawson, one-time Chancellor of the Exchequer under Thatcher. I thought then: it takes a special kind of narcissist to make up a name for a child based on his own. When Nigella Lawson began appearing on TV in cookery shows, I also remember thinking it was good she was able to support her kids. I didn't know then she was already in tow with Charles Saatchi.

I don't watch cookery programmes - the less time I spend in the kitchen these days the better it suits me. That said, I do watch the Hairy Bikers but that's more for the bikes and the scenery than anything. I suspect Nigella's audience is mainly men, most of them staring right down her cleavage. She's done a good job of creating the Nigella brand. She's got TV shows in the US, I believe. Or at least she had until the Grillo girls and Charles Saatchi stepped in last week.

You have to hand it to the Grillo girls' defence team: it was a master stroke to depict Nigella Lawson as a cocaine-addled nutjob handing out drugs to her kids. And I suppose you have to hand it to Charles Saatchi too for fuelling the doubts about Nigella's reliability by adding yet more information about the drug use. So the Grillo girls got off and Charles Saatchi got his revenge on his ex-wife. He strikes me as a man you wouldn't want to beat at Scrabble unless you had your running shoes on and, of course, he's going to get his revenge on the Grillo girls too by suing them. Well, he's rich. He can afford to do it and, as a friend of his put it this week, he couldn't care less what anybody thinks of him. And Nigella? Well, chances are, given the squeamishness of US television people she'll lose her contracts there.

Of course, she also has the press and TV to thank for the publicity she's received over the past weeks. I switched off BBC 'national and international news' last night because the main item was Nigella Lawson. But ITV and Sky news were the same. Is there really nothing else more important happening
in the world or have we become so obsessed with 'celebrities' we're in danger of disappearing up our own erse? Or could it be that the media hate successful women, especially the ones who don't fall over themselves to bare their souls - or anything else - in the press?

I googled Nigella Lawson and read a wee bit about her. Her mother was a depressive and probably a drunk and battered her kids. If they hadn't been a politician's kids, they'd have been whisked off to a place of safety by social workers. In addition to losing her first husband to throat cancer, she also lost her sister to breast cancer. No much luck in life so far. And it doesn't look as if things will be getting better any time soon.