Off air for a while.

We have an attack of the hot steamies here and it's addled my brain. Much was going to be said but instead there has been silence. I start on my journey south tomorrow - today now - and am looking forward to seeing a bit of England again.

65

Wow! I made it to 65. I never thought I would. This is, naturally, the most flattering of a heavily vetted bunch. I look best full face and smiling - conceals most of the wrinkles and doesn't emphasise the dewlap. Obviously not full body either - too many lumps and bumps there. In my experience it is safest never to ask a man to take your photo once you're past a certain age - they take from under the chin. Not good.

Unless you're perfect.

Thanks for the good wishes Gillian, and thanks for the Kathy Reich Chillsider - I was going to save it for the trip but am half way through already. Of course I haven't read it. It was published in 2008. Much too recent to hit the shelves here. The card is brilliant too. Is it a hanging?

Festivities.

Well, our little toun just did itself proud and is full of pageant and fun for a while. Drummer & Town Crier passed solemnly up the street to declare Forres Week open. When he'd cried his words he was followed by the pipe band, and the 'Queen', a comely young thing from the Academy, and a procession of floats presented by the shops then a swarm of carnival creations, made by the school children with the help, mainly, of people from the Findhorn Foundation. Stilt walkers (actually at least one was on those bouncey bows that amputees use for running amazingly fast but hey..) Lots of tots dressed as 'Magic Midges' lead by Lois a cheery Lezzy friend of mine in wild wings and spangles, a huge head, a huge fox - not sure what any of them were representing exactly, a Samba band with belly dancers... etc... The parade is now on its way to the local Park where there is to be trapeze artists, bands, burgers and other such delights. I can't accompany them because my back has been hurting so much lately that I can't stand for more than 5 minutes at a time but I watched outside the door of the shop then waved C & S goodbye and came inside feeling rather left out. I forgot my camera so am depending on Sanders to have captured some moments.

The highlight of this week of celebrations is the RAF KInloss 70th Anniversary march through the High Street to claim the Freedom of the town. The Red Arrows are due to strut their stuff above the park. Nice of them to think of me - all that happens on my birthday!

The town will also be securing its boundaries by Rydeing the Marches, something that happens with more ceremony and much noise of pipes and drums in the border towns where the boundaries between Scotland and England were very jealously preserved yearly by the local worthies who rode around them on horse back. I've never heard of Forres Marches being ridden, maybe I've missed it, but this year they are being ridden on bicycles which seems a travesty to me but perhaps all the horses are busy. The Burgesses will also be chosen at some point. These men or women have certain inalienable privileges that have never been repealed, for instance they can beat their wives or husbands publicly. Oh good.

I found out this week that my mole-catcher book-seller friend is also a Drum Major. He is going to lead the Edinburgh Tattoo this year. As he told me that he'd be walking through those great gates ahead of the pipers 'Like a God' I suddenly saw the essence of this man, his pride and.. er.... to get too sentimental but I don't care.. inherent nobility.

He also told me that above the (very high, very wide) gates there is a timely warning to Drum Majors 'Mind Yer Heids'.

Sandy's photos

The second week in June.

It’s been a patchwork of time since I last added anything here. The utter boredom of shop-sitting then the pleasure of getting the g’son back happy from his ‘exped’ with his class. Three nights away in tents, orienteering, kayaking, gorge walking, climbing walls, raft-building etc. etc. on, according to him, half a beefburger a day and a few baked beans. We worried - would he cope? He coped wonderfully well being an outdoor sort of chap who is no stranger to being wet and cold all day. He’s not afraid of much the physical world can throw at him, is practical and great at organisation. By the time night came they were all so exhausted that falling asleep wasn’t a problem and as he was put in a tent with a boy who is claustrophobic he had someone else to think about other than himself.

Photos show him laced to a pretty blonde girl for the three-legged race.

So that’s all good.

Saturday C and I had a day that almost passes for sophisticated pleasure in this part of the world. Coffee and cake (gluten and dairy free for C) at Johnstons of woollen fame and usually the only shop I can walk into without wanting to buy anything because it’s bound to itch (yes, even the cashmere). This day, quite unexpectedly, a wonderfully huge necklace of blue painted wooden beads became mine. We browsed through children’s clothes wondering if they were a good buy for the naming ceremony in Cornwall. On the whole we decided no, the parents need the money more than Little Lord F’s. Pity though. I’ve decided money makes me happy and lack of it detracts from life’s pleasures, so sucks to the moralists.

In the afternoon we went to the private view of an artist who painted sky-scapes rather well, but I was much more moved by the Pimms and tiny cucumber sandwiches than his paintings. It’s SUCH a long time since I had Pimms and the newly rediscovered Jillian in Cambridge has been talking about the succession of luncheon parties she’s going to at the Cambridge colleges just now, Kings, Girton, Clare, Jesus, Emmanuel, etc. etc. quaffing champagne and toying with strawberries on each green lawn until I am wondering why on earth I ended up in this anti-cultural corner of the world where Pimms and cucumber sandwiches sans crusts hardly exist....

Bitter thoughts.

Back to the practical: the car now has four new tyres and its brake pads have been found to be safe (the warning light keeps coming on but that’s the wiring apparently). I’m 'good to go' for the Cornish expedition, which is going to include a detour to the Banksy exhibition. Just need to earn a few more shekels. A ‘new collector’ of old books helped toward that end yesterday, may his pocket book flourish.

To pass the time in the shop I’m reading Evelyn Waugh 'When the Going was Good'. I rarely, or never, read travel books but his has the Waugh style and he was less interested in the minor details of ruins and sites than in the vagaries of his fellow travellers or the local grandees. He’s always worth reading. There was a Waugh moment at the school sports day come to think of it, when the starting pistol failed to fire and the master in charge started fiddling with it, looking down the end and so on, then managed to get it to fire when inappropriately pointed at a child. No harm done, but I couldn’t help thinking of the master with the starting pistol in ‘Decline and Fall’ who shot himself in the foot which later went gangrenous and had to be amputated.

On the creative side very little has been happening. All writing is frozen at the moment. Sitting in the shop is draining the creative juices. The most I have done is set up a celebratory window for Forres Week which, amongst the usual tributes to a town that for the North of Scotland passes as quite pretty, displays the pages from the 1776 manuscript of the Edinburgh Synod as ‘Local Minister of the Gospel in Sex Scandal.’ Barry, the very agreeable minister from the church opposite has yet to spot it and comment.

It's been a dull week here so far. 'Dull' could read 'Peaceful' of course. Maybe I should be more positive about the lack of 'interesting' events.

I've read a Dick Francis (oh the shame of admitting it) also Malcom Bradbury 'The History Man' for the first time. Probably it was better (for me) to read it now and be able to see it in an historical perspective. The style is dated but none the worse for that. I re-read 'Jacob's Room' and 'Between the Acts' last week and thought I saw the forerunner of Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark and Margaret Drabble in Virginia's oddly dreamy, disjointed flow of thoughts and images. 'The History Man' had quite a touch of the early Iris about it (probably the university campus background had something to do with that), only with a more crashing finale. The themes - free love, the position of women, the balance of relationships in a marriage.... well, maybe I've just got old but they don't seem too relevant now. Is it sad that no-one is striving for ideals these days? Politics - maybe we've become too aware that human nature is going to take every ideology to its lowest common denominator in the end anyway. The position of women: things have changed and how much pay or authority or respect a woman gets - well it's become a personal battle and probably rightly so; not all women want the same thing.

There's always the environment I suppose.

The edition of The H Man I read was an excellent example of how not to set a book. A hardback copy put out by the 'Observer' which has virtually no prelims so one falls into the first chapter unaware. The typeface is too black and there is no spacing between the lines; not much white space around the edges either. It made for an unpleasant reading experence, very tiring at night. It's one thing tolerating the small type and lack of spacing in the older paperbacks, they were cheaper, but this seemed to me to be sheer lack of taste and discernment.

Junior Highland Games

This was the final parade, the Elgin Pipe Band leading the schools on for the prize giving. I wasn't there for the opening thinking that three hours in the uncertain weather was enough for me. As it happened the weather was perfect, not too hot, not too cold and not at all wet, apart from the area around the fire engine which was drenched from games with the hose. Poor Chloë, who gets cold very easily, found herself helping out at the ice-cream stall and by the time I got there she was looking rather blue. My contribution had been an enormous poppy seed cake (4 x the usual mix which caused this discalculiac multiplication problems and was very heavy to stir!)
The photos aren't very good but I thought I'd better take a few. I missed the most exciting bits according to Sandy, Tossing the Caber (surely they didn't have to toss real telegraph-pole sized ones? It was only the Junior School so all under 13 years.) Hurling the Haggis, ditto the Scots hammer, a tug-of-war and the greasy pole; also a Sea King helicopter dropped in.

Still, there was falconry, Tai Kwon Do, the brilliant Fochabers Fiddlers and a Fèis band, Highland dancing, an obstacle course and more tugs-of-war. Also Strawberries, cream and meringue for a do-it-yourself Eton Mess. And a tea tent in which we spent quite a lot of time it has to be said. We nearly died laughing when I won a round of golf for two on a posh course. I was a bit cheesed off that I didn't win the very nice whisky hamper donated by a local distillery or, for that matter, the £500 cash which would have been VERY welcome. I gave my winnings away to some enthusiasts who I hope will light a candle for me in golfers heaven.

Poor Sanders had to wait in his itchy gear till the very end to do his bit in the clearing up detail - quite a business. I heard several parents of day pupils having to be fierce with their bored off-spring who wanted to escape early. Not acceptable in any case, leaving more for the others, but here almost a sackable offence since the whole ethos of the place is on service to the community, doing ones bit etc. etc.

Strangely enough, when he got into the car to come home he said 'That was quite a good day actually.'

Young Sanders hates wearing his kilt because like me he can't bear any wool within an inch of his tender skin. For the boys it also involves thick ribbed woollen socks. Torture. They have to be worn at all official occasions and all day Fridays when there is a an end-of-week Service. Cruel and unusual punishment. The Highland Games was a kilt day so a day of enormous suffering. His mum has tried surreptitiously lining it with heavy silk and I bought him cotton socks to go under the itchy ones but he still suffers. The girls have a better time of it and evidently enjoy them more, wearing these full length swingy-when-you-walk ones with a bit of attitude.

He can't be entirely unusual because the wearing of the kilt full-time is brought in as a punishment. A female pint-of-poison in Sandy's class blacked a boys' eye last week and is doomed to wear her kilt for a month!

Profits from the Games went to raise money for the forthcoming Fèis Mhoireibh (A teaching festival of music, song, drama and dance), and for the the Moray Gig which, I'm proud to say, friends of mine were involved in bringing into existance. It's moored in Findhorn Bay in the summer and gives a lot of pleasure to a lot of people. As it takes a crew of 13 there is much emphasis on team-work.

All afternoon the warning howl of this fire engine was sounding as happy devotees were allowed to set it off. Games with the hose were also popular. The engine belongs to the upper school who keep a trained crew ready for real local emergencies. I suppose they would have had to go blaring off if there had been one during the day but luckily it didn't happen.

and on the fourth day...

“According to Genesis, the sun, moon, and stars were made on the fourth day of the creation week. There have been many attempts to stretch the creation days into vast periods of time in order to accommodate Scripture with secular science.”

Sitting in the shop on the fourth day of its re-birth I keenly felt the rift between science and my perceived reality. God would have had plenty of time to throw together a few planets and stars between each glance I gave the clock. Æons passed but only a minute was recognised by its hands.

I can read, but am not comfortable sitting - my preferred position for reading is supine. I can write, but the problem is the same. Even a laptop, if I get one, would not solve this conundrum. Sales assistants definitely don’t lie down to serve (well not in normal retail circumstances).


Thursday was always a dull day in the shop on the High. It’s neither the beginning of the week when messages have to be gathered to fill in gaps created by the weekend, nor the end when they are bought in preparation for the weekend. The morning was terribly dull. The afternoon picked up though and the complete works of Madame Blavatsky, may her name be great, was tucked under a happy arm and left the shop. I did have to listen to a lecture on the interconnectedness between her works and those of Alice Bailey. Both ladies channelled the same being and what he said to one has to be studied alongside what he said to the other. Good thing they weren’t entirely contradicatory.

So I am back in the situation where I learn a little about a lot. (I did know most of the Blavatsky-Bailey stuff having had a passing interest at one time but most of it had slid out of the other ear).

All-in-all Thursday was better than Wednesday. I had to close early to pick a friend up from hospital in Inverness but that left time for the customer who wins my ‘Most Unwanted’ award to come through the door.

I didn’t recognise him when he marched in, a white-haired well-kempt gent in his late 60’s at a guess. He asked me if I was the ‘normal’ person in charge.

'Not necessarily normal but certainly usual,’ I chirped.

‘Well, listen this time and let’s see if you can get it right.’ (Alarm bells begin to ring loudly)

‘There’s a book about the Normandy landings. I heard it on Radio 4. I don’t know the title and I don’t know the author. Now can you find it for me?’

‘I would need my computer for that and I don’t have it in the shop now.’
‘Why not. You used to have it.’
‘There isn’t really room for it.’ (There are other reasons but I don’t feel I need to elaborate.)
‘Where is it?’
‘Upstairs’ (No business of yours... )
‘And you can’t be bothered to go upstairs to look?’
‘..er... well, ‘ (I’m always wrong-footed by people like this) ‘I’d have to leave the shop unattended.’
‘I’m here.’
Thinks: ‘I don’t know you though do I.’ By this time I’m getting rattled. I should have just cut to the chase and said that if I don’t have it I don’t have it, and that’s that. I’ve made a resolution not to order books for people. All this is going on in my head when a customer in the shelves chimes in to say that he has heard of the book, doesn’t know the details but it’s a new book of quotes from people who were present at the landings.
“Are you listening to this?” Mr. Nasty demands.

“Yes and I hear that it’s a new book. I only stock secondhand books so I’m afraid you’ll have to go to shop that sells new books.’ I name a few, all in other towns unfortunately.

‘I don’t know why I bother to come in here. Last time I came in I was shown the door.’ This is said for the benefit of the helpful browser. ‘She wouldn’t look for a book I wanted about owls.’

Then I remembered. 'I did try. You told me what it looked like and that it was about owls. I tried hard but nothng I came up with was right.’

‘The chap in Nairn found it. He knew it right away. ‘

‘That’s wonderful. He does sell new books though so he knows what’s on the market. I don’t.’

‘I shall go to a proper bookshop next time.’ He flung out.

Please do. PLEASE do!

It was less horrible than the owl occasion because there was only the helpful browser who was entirely sympathetic. Last time he flung out the shop was bigger and there was further to fling, he told bewildered customers that I wasn’t interested in books and they should leave immediately.

It makes me laugh thinking about it now but it gave me a hard time on the drive to Inverness.

Day Two...

.... went as well as Day One but I had even more trouble staying awake. I bought the Independent to help that situation but had finished reading the interesting bits, the quick crossword and the easier sudoku by 11.45.

After that I put back Stevie and took out Dorothy Sayers who, despite being a rabid Christian is/was much more fun.

I loved the furore caused by her plays on the life of Christ, 'The Man Born to be King' written for the BBC, originally for children but as she refused to write 'down' to them that has, as far as I can tell rather been forgotten. Certainly whole families listened to them and either hated or loved them. When the man who was to produce he play left town and his female secretary read the earlier episodes this foolhardy woman commented to Miss Sayers that a particular sentence would fly straight over the heads of the children and indeed of most adults. D replied, acerbically, that it would certainly fly over adult heads and she was well aware of what the assistants reaction would have been to it, but that children 'are still open and sensitive to the spell of poetic speech... the thing they react to and remember is not logical argument but mystery and the queer drama of melodious words...'

Dorothy seems to have thoroughly enjoyed the bagarre. When the plays went out they were called blasphemous by some and even accused of causing the fall of Singapore. It was feared that Australia would follow if they were not stopped immediately.

The performances were broadcast live before the 6 O'clock news on a Sunday which meant the cast often found themselves having to read faster and faster toward the end in order to be done in time for the chimes of Big Ben.

And to top it all...

.... the two sides of Harald Hardrada. I'm told he has a prolapse, poor chap.

Instead of bluebells.

Photos of bluebells didn't turn out well - just not carpety enough, so here is a replacement embellishment. I give you

'Spine.'

As great a work of art as is to be seen anywhere IMO.

The beginnings of a discussion on Art and Beauty with an artist friend had to be abandonned because we were moving two shelves of heavy oversized art books from my shop to her house down the road and I was out of breath. She was buying the books for the new Art Centre but rejected a book of pics of Franko B on the grounds that the Centre is dedicated to Beauty and FB is not beautiful( this isn't necessarily her view but the view of the voting majority.) Humph! Sophie met Franko and says a more gentle, delightful soul you could not hope to find. If he feels that the only way he can express his perspectives on life is by chaining himself naked in a cellar and inviting the audience to come down one at a time to ask him questions and watch him bloodletting (all very hygienically I belive) then who are we to call that ugly?

Discuss.

Quotes from Wikki. "His work focuses on the visceral. Franko uses his own blood as a medium. He makes his body into a canvas in an attempt to portray "the pain, the love, the hate, the loss, the power and the fears of the human condition"."

Stevie Smith

The biography of Stevie Smith by Frances Spalding is somewhat dull and I'm not sure if that's the fault of the biographer or of Stevie. Once Stevie moved from Hull to a suburb of London her love of that suburb, Palmers Green (it was a suburb at the time), grew by long acquaintance and little distraction, so she hadn't much to measure it against. For the biographer not a lot happened therefore much had to be made of what little there was, but still I think she's a bit dry and dull with her statistical details of the economics and social history of the area.

It does bear out the truth that in order to be a great novelist or poet it isn't necessary to travel far from home or live through exciting times. I'm quite fond of the work of George Mackay Brown who rarely left his home on Orkney. His close-lived knowledge of the skies, the seas, the winds and the people hold a multitude of dimensions - they hold and voice all his thoughts. For Stevie the house she lived in with her mother and grandmother is a 'being of warmth' and it's perfectly obvious this isn't just a clever image she has imposed on the house, it has been given to her by the house itself over the long years of their partnership. She uses a cast of characters and even animals to express her thoughts so although her books are autobiographical they never feel as if they are . Spalding says 'Her writing upholds the importance of inconsistancy and paradox' which I thought was a shoo-in for Pseuds Corner until I let it wash around a bit.

I also like the quote from Yeats that Spalding chose to emphasise what she wanted to say about Stevie: 'A poet is by the very nature of things a man who lives with entire sincerity , or rather, the better his poetry the more sincere his life. His life is an experiment in living and those who come after him have a right to know it.'

Spalding substitutes the feminine gender but I have no problem with the original wording.

Re-opening day.

20 minutes of sitting and I was £20 better off which heartened me. All 'old' customers and pleased to see me back, encourage me and so on. It's so long since I bought any stock it's like money for old rope. I had been very grumpy about opening and made a grumpy sign with the lion from the Bad Child's Book of Beasts saying 'No mobiles, No food or drink.' My friend suggested I should put: 'No Customers.'

Point taken.

With no computer to play on there's no temptation to trawl the net so I finished James Patterson 'Along Came a Spider' which was darkish but, it has to be said, the man can write. Then I moved on to a biography of Stevie Smith since I am sitting down by the biogs. More of that later. By 11.55 I was pretty bored, even with Stevie. She didn't have a very exciting life.

I'm finaly utilising only the official shop which is a very small space but gives the rest of the house more privacy and I don't have to worry about customer conversations unsettling Chloe's patients. On a hot day it's cool with its thick stone walls, north facing windows (no worry about fading) and a good through draft. I still felt fidgety and trapped after a short while. People kept coming in and actually buying so that pinned me to the seat until coffee time. By the end of the day I've taken enough to pay for some the framing of three b&w phots by an Irish photographer, Giles Norman, as gifts for Sophie's Nick ( sullen looking Johnny Depp look-alike in Paris in slouch hat and trench coat) Sophie (a blissed-out cat in a shaft of sun in a Venetian doorway) and Chloe (a shaggy horse grazing unfettered in the garden of an abandoned cottage in Ireland. They're brilliant photos in a book brought back from Kinsale by C&G from their honeymoon. The book sits on a shelf with no-one looking at it so I've carefully sliced out the three pics. They can now go on walls and be enjoyed.

Yesterday was hard work. Lots of changes to be made so the stock in the shop can all be half price or less. The earnest worthies of the poetry, plays, philosophy, music, lit.crit. and reference sections have given way to erotica (inyerface just inside the door) sci-fi, westerns, psychology, psychotherapy, self-help, New Age, blah blah. C,I and S cycled 6 miles down to help me under the cruelly beating sun. Most noble of them. They did the heavy slogging whilst I directed and fluttered, but I did cook them crispy duck (breasts thrown in the oven skin side up for 1 hour, my latest delight) & new potatotoes which we ate with salad in the cool with chilled wine, pear cider, and smoothie.


I'd a pleasant walk on Saturday with K. She promised me bluebells. They are discouragingly hard to find en masse as I remember them from childhood, gathering arm-fulls to take home to glow briefly in the living room window of the tiny cottage where I grew up. A few scattered here and there along the wayside are pretty but don't offer the same nourishment to the soul. England is blessed with oceans of bluebell. It must be the soil.

We didn't find oceans enough to slake my thirst but there were smell rivulets of blue and the scent was beautiful. The estate these treasure almost-thrive on is one of the smaller and less kempt in the area. The owners put most of their energies into all things horsey but from time to time the laird (if he can be so grandly designated) has an idea. We walked past several of these ideas. A pond scooped out and lined with black plastic then forgotten until it is entirely green with duck weed. Another larger pond, almost a lake, distressingly square and man-made which spooked me with its darkness and lifelessness. A Japanese garden in which a bridge spans nothing and weeds grow in abundance. Even the walks which he has been helpfully developing so folk can browse through his acres were weirdly sprayed with weed-killer along the edges. If giant hogweed had been growing there I could have understood it but the poor dead plants had been foxgloves. All rather depressing.

I can hardly talk. My own estate is a riot of growth at the moment, most of which shouldn't be allowed to get above itself in this way. Either it's too hot for me to be outside and I would rather be by the sea or it's rainy and I'd rather be curled up with a book. Really a nice apartment somewhere with a gardener employed in the communal gardens to keep the shrubs neat and the lawns manicured would be more in my line.