Dougal today
For insertion after Paragraph 4 as previously advised.
And this one after Paragraph 5.
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I am a Scot. This means. of course, that I am inured to disappointment. It’s what we do!
Particularly and especially for me on the field of team sporting prowess, supporter-wise. I seem to have an uncanny knack for picking losers. When the Sharks got thumped by the Hurricanes yesterday. I thought that I was in for another weekend of despair. So. it’s all been a bit strange today.
The morning started well with ‘my’ cricket team retaining the Number 1 spot by thrashing Sri Lanka. Sir Arthur C Clarke, your team took a Hell of a beating!
A bit of a dip when Canada beat us at the extra end in the curling but we’re creaming the Swedes/Turnips as I blog. Bergmans, whether Ingrid or Ingmar, most of Abba, the chef from The Muppets and Alfred Nobel, your team is taking a Hell of a beating! We’ll be back tomorrow for the Final against the Canucks again and I personally believe that Michael J Fox, Celine Dion, Greg Rusedski, William Shatner and my close friend Barbara should brace themselves for defeat (and a Hell of a beating).
The football was mainly satisfactory, My teams, in alphabetical order, Chelsea, Cheltenham, East Fife, Heart of Midlothian and Saint Johnstone only dropped two points between them. Mind, East Fife got 4 when playing Forfar so I would nor have minded if the said Forfar had scored 5 instead of 1 just for the sake of the symmetry of it.
Anyhow, moving on to the purpose of this post. Today at Murrayfield, Embra played Toulouse in the 1/4 final of the Heineken Cup. 50-1 against and playing a team that has won the Cup 4 times and been runners-up twice.
Asterix, Charlemagne, Pepin le Bref, Louis Quinze, Napoleon( un autre Bref), Zinedine Zidane, Sarkozy le tres Bref and MoO. Your team took a Hell of a beating!
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Long ago, when I was a callow and averagely lustful First Year student, I was dispatched to Perth by the hierarchy of the Uni of Embra Tory Club to pick up a speaker. Obvious choice. I came from Perth and knew where the railway station was and how to get to and from there.
Now, I blog here as a Mackie but that’s only half the story. My other half is MacLeod and I made the mistake of telling said speaker this. He was an MP and the younger twin of the heir to the Chieftain of Clan MacLeod of MacLeod, Dame Flora. I remembered, too late, that the whole of the Chieftain’s family were heavily into Moral Re-Armament
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/391743/Moral-Re-Armament-MRA
For the remainder of the drive to Edinburgh, I was lectured and hectored about my need to stay absolutely pure in thought, word and deed and to try to avoid any carnal thoughts of any sort until I was safely married. Regular cold showers were advised to ensure that I did not stray and shame the good name of the Clan.
Needless to say, I eventually ignored these admonitions in their entirety but they did put me off for a couple of days. And I am now wondering if I have a Moral Re-Armament Clan relative working in Embra Zoo.
It would seem that our resident pandas have failed to ignite the spark of passion in the brief 36 hour window open to them, despite the best efforts of all concerned. I just can’t help feeling that there might have been an MRA keeper in there sabotaging it all by whispering ‘Don’t do it. You’ll hate yourself in the morning. You hardly know each other. Have you thought about having a cold shower or some nice bamboo instead?’
On the other hand, maybe they’re just true Embrans and are taking their time. There’s always next year.
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Now that Dougal has joined our family, we are having all sorts of new experiences.
Last weekend, we decided to have a dog-friendly hotel and pub practice in preparation for the planned Welsh summer holiday. So we went for altitude training in North East Perthshire.
The thing about coming from Perth is that I have never really done that part of Perthshire if you know what I mean. It was always there just up the road if I ever felt the need. I had, of course picked berries in Blairgowrie, caught chickens in Coupar Angus and delivered wine and spirits throughout the area for gainful employment in my school and student days but I had never, until now, holidayed there. Continue reading
In due time, I came to realise that Heath was a seriously flawed individual.
Didn’t grasp that straight away. In the first full flush of my fervent commitment to the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, I joined up, aged 14. Originally, of course, because both of my parents were Tories but very soon thereafter because my own developing intellectual rigour led me to believe that I was probably not wrong in my choice.
The joys of libertarianism and the superb speeches of Rhodes Boyson, Enoch Powell, Sir Keith Joseph and Slightly Grumpy’s Dad lay in my future. But, in that happy dawn, I was old enough to know that Sir Alec Douglas-Hume was clearly a charming chap but probably not a lot more.
So, I shed no tears when he lost the 1964 election, believing that a brighter, better, more meritocratic future lay ahead of my Party. I genuinely thought that Heath was part of that despite the fact that he had chosen to serve under Sir Alec unlike the truly great Iain Macleod and the aforementioned Enoch.
I personally do not think that Heath was ever the best of speakers but it was clear that he had a fine mind and that he believed in what he said. That is why I have always been able to forgive him for his unswerving devotion to a United Europe. He was the product of his time and of his World War.
He served his country in that war, living through times which I have been lucky enough never to know. His speeches showed that he really believed that it was necessary to mesh the countries of Europe together in such a way that another war could never happen again between those countries.
And then it all went pear-shaped for me. Heath lost the 1966 election and Winnie Ewing, SNP, won the 1967 Hamilton bye election. Cue panic from the Labour Government and bigger panic from the Heath Opposition. It was alleged that it was necessary to draw the Nationalist sting by offering a measure of devolution to the revolting Jocks. Thus arrived the Declaration of Perth by the blasted Heath.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Perth
In the Autumn of 1967, when the ‘What do we do about the Nats?’ kettle was seriously boiling over, I attended the SCUA Young Conservative Conference in Leith (E Heath present). Inevitably, the subject of Scottish Devolution came up. Speaker after speaker came to the podium and lauded the concept. I seethed, put up my hand and was called.
In essence, all I said was that my country, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, had a proud history and did not need to be fragmented. I have never been so disparaged, dismissed and derided as I was by the Right Honourable Edward Heath in his summation of that debate. Basically, he said that I was too young to grasp the facts and should keep my mouth shut until I had learned better.
I still believe that I was right and that he was so wrong.
In 2008, I did a 50th anniversary tour of places that had meant a lot to me when I was 8. My Dad got posted to Wiltshire in 1958 and I spent two happy years amongst my English brethren. Despite being a staunch Presbyterian (now agnostic), I acquired a deep and abiding love for Salisbury Cathedral. Four years ago, I went back and strolled the place for a good hour, just savouring. Then I got to Heath’s memorial stone in the central aisle. I am ashamed to say that I jumped up and down on it and did a quick pas de basque to remind him that one can be proud of being both a Jock and a Brit.
I will never forgive him for being a man who was happy to feel free to tear my country apart by encouraging nationalism for the sake of political expediency. Especially when it was in direct opposition to his deeply-held belief in the need to suppress the nation state for the sake of the greater good when it came to Europe.
He’s now old enough and inoculated enough to be allowed out into the big wide world so we took Dougal down to the Forth on Sunday. A popular spot for Embrans on a sunny, mild day which is what we had. My sympathies to any snow-bound shiverers down south.
He was obviously completely enthused about the whole idea.
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Eventually, we were able to persuade him into the car and off we went. He did love it when he got there and met lots of new chums.
That part of the foreshore has always been one of my favourite bits of Embra. Looking west over Dougal and Mrs M, you can see a wee bit of the Forth Rail Bridge sticking up behind Cramond which is where the Romans landed as part of Emperor Antonine’s building of a wall across Scotland between the Forth and the Clyde.
Anyhow, he had a great half hour jumping in and out of the water and exploring everything and everybody. We put him back in the car and he was fast asleep within 30 seconds. Result!
On the way home, we passed the Scottish Executive facility where they store the hot air for Sleekit Salmond’s speeches. As you can see, it is somewhat depleted at the moment but he’ll be back, more’s the pity.
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There are very few times in my life when I have thought that I had got it right. Marrying Mrs M, of course. Mostly, I have had doubts about any other rightness on my part. Until tonight when another possible example hoved into view.
It seems that one of my fellow Jocks is starting to pall. Billy Connelly is, apparently, getting grief on his current tour for not having new material. I truly did try to warn him.
When I was young, I was a folky. Big for my age and happy to take advantage. By the age of 14, I was strolling unchallenged into bars and, more relevantly, into the Perth Folk Club in the Plough Inn. Where I drank deep of Matt McGinn, Hamish Imlach, Dave and Toni Arthur, Eric Bogle, Martin Carthy, Dave Swarbrick, Alex Campbell and many others. You had to be there.
One fine night, we had the Humblebums. BC and Gerry Rafferty at that time. Mind duly blown. So much so that I raved to all my friends at school. Two weeks later, the Humblebums were booked into the York House Hotel (also Perth) and I dragged along everybody that I could persuade. Bloody brilliant but a lot of the same material.
Moving on another two months, said Humblebums were booked to appear in the prestigious Salutation Hotel (Perth again) on a Friday night. I did the ‘You have to be there’ trick with my chums again.
The end of the first half and the wrong side of two bottles of Carlsberg Special, I was not happy. They had done the same material again. At the break, there I was at the urinal when BC walked in and started to relieve himself beside me. Seventeen years old, slightly pissed and seriously disappointed, I turned to him (while still pointing ahead, of course) and said:-
‘I think you are great. Really funny. But, I’ve heard you do the same material three times now in the last six months. If you don’t try to get some new stuff, you’ll never go anywhere.’
He zipped himself up, turned, looked at me and, with that unique and instant wit that has made his humour a byword throughout the civilized world, Weegieland and New South Wales, said:-
‘F*** off, ye fat wee bastard!’
Three years later. I was at the Uni of Embra and, as it so happens, Entertainments Convener of the oldest purpose-built Students’ Union in the world. A serious budget of at least £500 a year. We (I) thought that a folk concert was worth a try. I booked this group called the’Boys of the Lough’ for their first gig in Jockland. A bit of money left and the agent offered me a newly solo Billy Connolly as a support act.
Magnificent evening and both they and he were brilliant. We adjourned to the Committee Room to pay them and to feed them drink. Obviously, I reminded BC of our shared night of magic in that Perth urinal.
He looked at me and said:- ‘I’m glad to see that you’ve grown a bit taller.’
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