Of Mince and Men..........

Hullo ma wee blog,

I had a dream last night. It was one of those oddities where, while not being a nightmare, you're not sure if you're exactly comfortable. Oh, I know exactly what triggered it alright. That's right Mornings Minion, it's all your fault!

The other day she posted a story from her 'family history' I suppose you'd have to call it. An innocuous wee tale of a young lad illicitly dipping into some of his Mums home-made mincemeat which had been stored away for Christmas and, having taken too much not to be noticed, he then had to stand and own up to it rather than watch it all thrown away as having been 'got at' by mice and therefore possibly be unfit for eating. Rather than lose that delicious stuff, he 'fessed' up like a man and ultimately all was well.

As I read that story yesterday I remembered clearly the impact of being a young lad with - shall we say - 'intimate knowledge' of some nefarious deed and standing in line with my brother and cousins in front of a Granny who was trying to puzzle out what had happened and who should be held responsible........

Don't get the wrong impression of me by the way. I wasn't a bad kid - just....... well....... unfortunate!  {That means I usually got caught.}

Never a particularly good liar - even now I almost cave in at the merest security question at an airline check in; Did you pack this yourself?  'Yes' I say looking at the ground. { in reality my lovely G does the packing and I generally just throw in a book or two. What can I say - she's a control freak! - or if you're reading this sweetheart - an amazingly talented and organised suitcase packer.} Could anyone have tampered with your luggage? - No! {Actually almost anyone in the queue could have tampered with it because I've been bored out of my face for the last half hour standing in your bloomin queue, but probably not as many people as could tamper with it after YOU'VE got your mitts on it Mrs bloomin airline!} I know I know! I'm the only one in class who would have failed my  'Ordinary grade' basic terrorism exam caving in at questions like that!!!

My childhood tactic of trying to look cool and collected and as innocent as a baby in those rare {ha} situations would be given away by an over reactive blushing mechanism when under pressure and the unfortunate tell-tale sign of a perspiring forehead and upper lip even before I had the chance to let the story excuse explanation lie trip pure and sweet from my childish mouth. In any case I usually had forgotten to get rid of any offending article, wash my hands clean or empty my pockets/hands/mouth of all incriminating evidence or even to make the most basic preparation such as get the story straight in my head before the grilling began.  Granny Robertson had undoubtedly one of the most penetrating looks I had ever come across in situations like that. Her eyebrows would gather together and her nose would wrinkle, she would lower her head and stare at you over the top of her glasses with eyes that could look into the soul of an angel and find dark secrets there, or make that angel feel there was darkness to be found. She would match her inquisitorial look with folded arms and a soft and beguiling tone of voice that almost hypnotised you into believing that if you only told the truth all would be well. {and that was a lie if ever there was one}  I'm sure at one time or other she trained the secret service in interrogation techniques, and she probably taught old Obi-Wan Kenobi that "This is not the droid you're looking for" trick.  Sometimes I would find myself standing there sweating, face on fire, ready to blurt out an admission to stuff I hadn't done, just to get it over with.  The effect was increased when there were multiple potential miscreants as she would line us up and scrutinise each one in turn until the criminal broke down and gave himself up. Grown men would have thrown themselves howling at her slippered feet and begged for mercy rather than endure more than a minute or two of Granny Robertson's patented torture treatment for misbehaving young persons.

 Mere children had no chance.

But no matter how bad it was, it was never so bad that after a certain length of time, you didn't think that next time you would do much better and after all it wasn't really that bad anyway. Yes, next time you would be able to stand there and fool the lie detector on legs that was my dear old Granny. No question about it at all!!!

But believe it or not, that's not what this story is all about. I merely pass on this wee glimmer of the woman that was my Granny by way of hinting at the kind of impact she had on my formative years.

And my backside.

This could be my early life -

right down to the poem beneath....

It's not a mile off my Granny that's for sure

Granny Robertson was one of those women who would rightly be called a Matriarch. She was, for my entire childhood, the glue which held my family and indeed my universe firmly together. She was babysitter, confidante, refuge, hospital, historian, maker of sense for all things perplexing, storyteller, fount of all knowledge, knitter of multitudes of embarrassing jumpers,socks and, most cringe-worthy of all, 'Balaclava's, as well as being the family's chief-cook-and-bottle-washer and as described above, 'Witchfinder General'. She would also sometimes be consulted by village folk outside the family on local or more delicate private issues - always accompanied by a pot of tea and - infuriatingly for inquisitive wee boys - behind closed doors. She was the scourge of any authority figure or family member she felt was performing beneath reasonable expectation. As a result she was well known, probably with some of the same trepidation I felt, by our local councillors. I remember standing beside my Father at her funeral and the local councillor saying to him " Nell would be pleased. This is the biggest turnout for any woman's funeral that I've ever seen." {He was probably there mostly to check that she had actually gone!}  Sure, she could be intimidating for a small boy or a local politician, but to think of her as just that would be selling her way, way short. Although her decisions were like edicts pronounced from on high and the merest hint that Granny was looking for you meant that you better run as fast as you could either towards the house or away, depending on your recent activities, most of the time she was a benign power, a happy, beaming and forgiving, Buddha like figure.

 As my Grandfather was bedridden due to injuries from WWI  and she needed help with some aspects of his physical care, we spent a lot of time as a family or as individuals, at her house.  Hers was the place where any far flung family would come to visit and hers was the place where we would all congregate for special - or even ordinary - occasions. She had the main care of my brother and I during school holidays as both my parents worked - something I remember as being somewhat of a minor bone of contention between her and my equally strong willed mother - and we would all eat at her house once, twice or more often each week through the summer and at least once a week during the rest of the year.

She was the most fantastic, and I mean  just fantastic, cook and baker. This could become the longest post in history if I began to wax lyrical about all the incredible stuff that could be produced en masse from her wee kitchen and primitive stove, but I still yearn - really yearn - for her sublime potato and leek soup, her roast chicken or her Irish stew, or those amazing potatoes boiled then rolled in oats and fried until nutty and crispy and her supreme gift to a hungry child - her clootie dumpling. Just writing this, more than 40 years later, I can almost physically smell the soft yet dense aroma of fruit and spice that rose as steam as it lay on the hearth by the fire still wrapped in the cloth that gave it its name and held it together as it cooked. I can feel the cloth in my hand as I would turn it every few minutes, supervised by a satisfied Granny, to help dry the cloth and form its skin. What an exquisite torture for a hungry wee boy that was!  I can still feel the wonder of trying to imagine where the hidden thruppeny pieces, or that one shiny silver sixpence that she always included in the mix, would be.

But the clue to this post is in the header. Granny Robertson's mince was - to use a Scots parlance - MINCE. It was a dish that now, as an adult, I can see was formed in her own upbringing in rural poverty and perhaps honed in the times of the great depression after the first war, when food had to be eked out to go as far as possible,  waste was unforgivable and every morsel had to be used to provide sustenance. None of that occurred or mattered to me in the sixties and early seventies when faced with a steaming mound of Grannies indigestible mince. I was always a fussy eater in my childhood. My parents and grandparents all worried that my physical development would be affected by my lack of appetite and limited range of foods that were acceptable. {By the way SNB, I can hear you say " That must have changed!" and I will get you for that. lol} It was, as I'm sure you will understand from all I've written about Granny Robertson above, a major cause of antagonism between us and an ongoing battle that we were both equally determined to win. But, dear reader, I digress.

Grannies mince was appalling. It had a secret ingredient - added no doubt for all the right reasons and as I said above - for all the deep seated traditions and conditioning of my Grandmother's upbringing. It had beaten egg stirred through it. Now maybe it's just my imagination, but I can hear you go "Is that all?" but please, this was disgusting. It came to the table in huge quantities and to me it looked yellow, a horrible greeny yellow flecked with mince and studded with diced onion, carrot and turnip. It was without question the foulest concoction known to man and the worst thing anyone has ever EVER put in front of me. The mere sight of it would be enough to reduce me to a quivering tearful wreck in acknowledgement that this would be yet another interminable battle of wills between me and Granny. I would cry, I would winge, I would howl and I would beg my brother and sometimes my cousins quietly to take some off my plate to no avail as they all felt the same. I would try and attract our dog across to my feet where I would try and get her to scoff some, but even that gluttonous canine, faithful friend and defender balked at Grannies mince, leaving me with soggy dog-sniffed handfuls of the stuff. It was very much a case of "You're on your own pal".

But I tried. Really I tried.......

For each closely scrutinised scrap that I put in my mouth I would need a huge gulp of lemonade or milk and then I would manfully gag it down before sobbing my way to the next tiny, tiny smear on my spoon. I quickly would run out of lemonade and would ask for more which sometimes I would get, sometimes not. I would mix it with the veg on the plate or with the mashed potatoes in the hope of masking the flavour, but all I succeeded in doing was making the mash and veg taste like the mince and the plate appear more full of the noxious stuff than when I had started. Granny was a great believer in no one leaving the table until every scrap had been polished off and plates were gleaming clean; for which purpose bread and butter were generously provided. It was hell on earth and for many years cancelled out all the good memories of the amazing things that she could produce. One particularly bad day I found that every time when Granny wasn't looking or had gone to the kitchen or through to Grandpa as she often did, and I bent down to try and force the dog to eat some, my brother and my cousin who was with us that day, would each spoon some of theirs onto my plate while I wasn't looking. For ages I couldn't understand what was going on. I was eating the stuff, even the dog seemed to be more obliging than usual and yet the pile on my plate wasn't getting any smaller. {Gordon had a different strategy to cope with this meal than I did. He would scoff the dreadful stuff as fast as possible and then wash it all down at the end with a whole glass of lemonade. It worked for him but the only time I tried it I threw up!}  As I screamed my dismay at finding out what was really going on that day long ago I attracted an annoyed Granny back into the room and made sure her determination to see me finish the plate was burning brightly. No amount of accusation or explanation could make her see that I was the victim of an enormous injustice. Who would have believed that two such innocent souls such as my conniving brother and swine of a cousin could do such a thing. No, it was terrible that I was prepared to accuse them of such things when they at least had finished their plates like the good boys they were. Absolutely smug, grinning little B's more like. { Even now my teeth are clenched at the memory. GRRRRR}

And so manfully I struggled on, weighed down as much as by the injustice of it all as the heavy weight of at least a pound of Grannies incredible inedible mince in my stomach. The plate was eventually finished without the assistance of any more lemonade and tearfully I was allowed to leave the table but only after having to face the further indignity of seeing my brother and cousin get my dessert which was forbidden me as further punishment for my bad behaviour. What a pair of absolute gits! They even managed to get out of the washing up and escaped my retribution by zooming off on their bikes before I managed to get away from the house to barf up my lunch and go hunt them down.

Even all these years later I hate mince unless its done as bolognese or chili. I am still occasionally haunted by memories of Grannies mince and egg hence the dream that wasn't quite a nightmare at the top of the page. A couple of years ago I had my cousin Elspeth and her husband come to stay with us here for a holiday and as we hadn't seen each other for many years, spent time reminiscing as you do about past times and things fondly remembered. Despite all the great memories of Granny and the fabulous times we had growing up there was one over-riding negative memory we shared.

Guess what that was boys and girls?.............

see you later.

Listening to The Waterboys, 'All the things she gave me'

In the footsteps of others.........

Cloth Hall, Ypres, Belgium.

Hullo ma wee blog,

I looked out of the car window from my seat in the rear as we drove across Belgium to Ypres and Paschendaele. For mile after mile the country all around was flat and open, gently undulating, the road occupying a consistent slightly raised position as it crossed a land which was fertile and full of farmland, a throwback to early history perhaps when roads had developed on the higher ground as the drainage was better and open view helped wary travellers see any approaching threat.

Gordon and his wife were in the front of the car, the lovely G and I in the back. The holiday had initially been planned as a boys get away, something we have done for a couple of years now, and originally intended to have been a battlefield tour following in the footsteps of our Grandfather who had served here in WWI, but our plans had changed to include our wives and we curtailed our plans to a broader itinerary. This trip was going to be our one chance to spend time in Belgium looking at Grandads history, although we also spent time looking at  a few WWII sites in the part of Holland where we were staying.

From my viewpoint in the rear I could look out windows either side and noticed that even from a minor elevation such as the roadway the view was extensive. Given the reason for our visit I was struck by the defensive advantage of even the slightest higher ground.  A difference of even 30 or 40 feet would have been highly significant. It very clearly brought home why this had been a machine gun dominated killing ground. I felt chilled in recognising this so casually as we passed through at 90 kilometres an hour, thinking of how it must have been obscenely obvious to those stuck out there all those years ago. The thought of climbing out of cover and walking across those flat expanses towards machine guns, barbed wire and infantry filled trenches just doesn't compute within my modern mind and sensibilities.

Our Grandfather had enlisted early in 1915 when aged to do so and after basic training had been sent to Gallipoli as part of the ill fated attempt to open up a second front in the Dardanelles as a means of breaking the deadlock in western Europe. A simple country lad he found himself in an alien landscape in Mediterranean heat in the same thick woolen uniform that the troops in France and Belgium had been given. It must have been awful. Two days after landing his regiment was sent into the line as part of the 52nd division, almost 11,000 men. Within 10 days five and a half thousand of them were dead or injured and the rest found themselves hopelessly outnumbered and pinned down in a relatively small area, backs to the sea, a situation that would remain for almost 9 months. Existence in those fetid, fly blown trenches, where dysentery quickly broke out due to the inability of men to maintain any semblance of personal hygiene or sanitation, exposed to constant fire as they were due to being completely overlooked by the enemy positions, was a hellish experience. Shot himself during one attack on enemy lines,  he recovered and was returned to the trenches until the troops were withdrawn in January 1916.

The remains of the two battalions were split, some to Palestine, the rest - including our Grandfather - were sent to the western front where he would spend the rest of the war in and around Ypres and Paschendaele, amongst other places. In total he spent 3 years in front line trenches and survived being shot a further twice, returning to the front line each time.

Gravestones, Paschendaele New British Cemetery

As we reached the outskirts of Paschendaele we stopped at the New British Cemetery, where newly excavated and identified soldiers are re-interred. It looked small and well tended as we parked, but it wasn't until you entered and looked at the information plaque that it became clear that there were three thousand British and Commonwealth graves in this small and carefully tended space

Items recovered during trench excavations.

The excavations which have taken place have also brought to light some of the everyday items used by soldiers, some heartbreakingly familiar even today as I immediately recognised the branding of a favourite marmalade that often sits on our breakfast table. Poignant signs of an attempt at normality in the middle of war where there was little chance of  a normality of any significance. 

Various styles of gas mask

After spending time at the museum in Paschendaele we moved on to the beautifully restored town of Ypres. It's one of those places which casts a spell over you and the lovely G and I agreed it's somewhere we would like to visit again, despite the constant reminders of the destruction of man and place that are all around. We spent the afternoon exploring the town and, while the girls left to do some shopping, Gordon and I headed into the enormous and powerful museum and exhibition which is contained in the Cloth Hall in the main square

Tyne Cot Cemetery

There are places where you can feel physically assaulted by the effect of history. I first came to understand that when The Lovely G and I visited Auschwitz concentration camp a few years ago. The reality of an immense and obscene wrong pressed heavily down on you and replaced curiosity and historical interest with a real sense of sadness, tragedy and deep foreboding of what 'civilised' man is capable of. I left that dreadful place mentally and physically exhausted with a heavy heart and a solid headache, glad to have been but not wanting to ever return.

I felt the same when we visited Tyne Cot cemetery, one of the largest in the battlefields. Unspoken need saw us peel away from each other and walk in solitary contemplation around what is literally a field of fallen. 12,000 graves and the names of 35,000 missing men inscribed on wall plaques confront you with a reality that's impossible to ignore. Boisterous teenagers brought to visit on school trips fell quiet after a few minutes and walked silently on. The path to and from the cemetery to the visitor center contains hidden speakers which softly list the fallen by name and age, an endless chain of reminder and remembrance. 

It was a place of sobering impact that left me thanking my lucky stars that my generation never went through anything like that. I think all politicians should be made to walk round somewhere like this every couple of years and consider what benefits any one of those men could have brought to humanity. How many doctors, inventors, thinkers, scientists or artists lie all around in a place like that. Perhaps then there would be less conflict in the world. {or perhaps conscription to front line forces of politicians sons and daughters would be needed to reinforce the effect}

Tablet at the entrance to Ypres Museum.

My thoughts then and since have often drifted back to think of our Grandfather who came home a changed man from that who had gone away nearly four years earlier. Caught injured and exposed in an artillery bombardment while a medical station he suffered from what's now called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but was then called by the more graphic and in his case more accurate 'Shell Shock'. By what little margin did he avoid lying there in Tyne Cot or one of the hundreds of other cemeteries that mark the extent of battle. That thankfully he did allows me to write this today.

He returned to his job as a country postman but very soon began to suffer increasingly frequently from episodes of shaking and traumatic hallucination which confined him to a wheelchair by the time of the Second World War, and ultimately to being completely bedridden. By the time I came to know and love him as my grandpa he could barely speak and shook constantly, something as a child I accepted as being completely normal and just him.

He died in 1967 having lived with the effect of the horrors of those trenches for almost fifty more years.

To read more of him and my recollections of him go here

See you later.

Connections, Coincidence and Claret.

Wood panelling, Barns Ness Hotel.

Hullo there ma wee blog,

I don't have a clue what to call this post as it feels like it might be a bit of a ramble due to it being a late night - currently nearly 2am - and, sitting at my usual place at the kitchen table, I have a wee Singleton of Dufftown single malt whisky by my side. Don't worry though, like me its old enough to be out on its own at this time of night.........almost.

Ah, actually I know now where this is going and why..........

On Monday past we were invited out for a quiet informal meal and get together by some friends in Dunbar. We went to a hotel called "The Barns Ness". In the hotel is a small plaque explaining that the wood on the walls of the dining room came from a ship called the 'Mauretania' which was the sister ship of the 'Luisitania', which was torpedoed at the start of WW1 with horrendous loss of life. The beautifully carved wood was recovered from the ship when it was broken up at the end of its working life.

Nice story, nice meal, nice evening out right?

Aye it was, but it was more than that too.

As I have a bit of spare time on my hands at the moment I have been doing a fair bit of reading. As usual, I don't just read one thing at a time, so currently I am reading Stephen Fry's 'Moab is my washpot', Titania Hardies 'Rose Labyrinth' and John Buchans 'History of the Royal Scots Fusiliers'.

John Buchan, who is best known for the novel 'The thirty Nine Steps' wrote this history, in memory of his brother, an officer who - like my grandfather - served in the regiment. Alastair Buchan was killed in action on the western front, April 9th 1917. This was part of the battle of Arras. 38 Scots battalions including RSF took part in the attack. In British terms, a predominately Scottish affair, with more Scots involved than at Waterloo and many times more than involved in the battle of Bannockburn.

My grandfather survived being shot on 3 separate occasions, was returned to action each time and spent the best part of three and a half years in the front line, first in Gallipoli and then in The Western Front. Family history says he finally badly twisted his ankle on duckboards in a trench and while lying alone but for a couple of others in a tin shed at a field station, suffered an artillery bombardment of several hours. My Grandmother believed it was this episode, incapacitated, cruelly exposed and incapable of finding shelter, that left him with the condition which in those days was known as 'shell shock', but is now known as PTSD or 'post traumatic stress disorder'. From the accounts I heard as a child which were heavily sanitised, he came back a changed man and although was able to function in his previous job as a local postman for a few years, had to undergo increasingly long periods of hospitalisation and ultimately, complete incapacity. All the years I knew him he was bedridden, shaking constantly. Like many others he never received any war disability pension or recognition of his condition as being war injury related.

Much loved, he died in 1967 having lived with his condition for fifty years.

I was eight  - and devastated.

Joining up in early 1915, he sailed from Liverpool on board the 'Mauretania' on 21st May and landed in Gallipoli on June 6th. His battalion of almost 900 men was part of the 52nd division which was approx 10900 strong. The 2 battalions of RSF were immediately put into the line where between July 3rd and July 13th, losses were 4800 men. Early 1916 the campaign was abandoned as a failure.

The regimental history records this episode as follows:

' The losses for the 52nd division were such that for the Scottish Lowlands it was a second Flodden. In large areas between the Tweed and Forth scarcely a household but mourned a son '

and

' Unless one has seen it there is no imagination that can picture a belt of land some four hundred yards wide converted into a seething hell of destruction. Rifle and machine gun bullets rip up the earth, ping past the ear, or whing off the loose stones; shrapnel bursts overhead and leaden bullets strike the ground with a vicious thud; the earth is rent into yawning chasms, while planks, sandbags, clods and great chunks of ragged steel hurtle through the air. The noise is an indescribable, nerve racking, continuous, deafening roar while clouds of smoke only allow intermittent view of the whole damnable inferno '

It cost Winston Churchill, whose idea it was, his post as first lord of Admiralty. {Ironically he was made Commander in Chief of the Royal Scots Fusiliers}

The 2 battalions split, some to Palestine and the rest, grandfather included, to the western front.

Grandpa's story as described to me as a child trying to understand was simply that he was hurt in the big war and that we didn't talk about it. Much later he was described to me as a very brave man who had "gone over the top" on several major engagements. Who knows in reality what his experience was. Not me for sure. But I did experience the impact of that experience. My father helped his Mum look after his Dad every day as we lived nearby.

So before work - like his dad he too was a postie at first - he would go and wash and treat his Dads bedsores. Before he came home he would again go in and take care of any needs that might be required. At least twice a week I too would go to see Gran'pa and while there I would be given the task of shaving him with an old Phillips three headed electric razor. We all had things we did with Gran'pa and shaving him became my role. Being very small, at least when I started, I would have to climb onto the bed beside him and reach around his face while I shaved him, taking great care not to move the wooden frame that held the heavy blankets off his legs. Although by that time Grandpa couldn't speak more than two or three words at a time, I remember well his voice as he ran his damaged hand over his face and found a wee bit I had missed. "Here,"  he would say and I would go back and do that bit again and he would sometimes chuckle, a rumble deep in his chest and his jaw waving back and forth showed me he smiled. Sometimes he got me to go over bits again and again as a bit of fun I think. Job complete, I would carefully dismantle and clean the razor with its special miniature brush and show it to Grandpa for approval before putting it back together with small hands and sliding it back into its case.

Shaving an adult is a highly serious thing for a wee boy you know.

Being so close physically to him so often I remember every crease, nook and cranny of that old man's face. I remember the look in his eye as he watched me shave him or give him his tea in an odd china cup with a spout on one side and a lid on   {In fact I have it still - just a magpie really!}  He seemed able to look right into a wee boys heart. I remember his skin, his hair and his smell; how his face felt as small hands patted after-shave on;  how he would try and hold me as I reached across him at the limit of my balance as I shaved him; how he would wince if I fed him tea that was too hot. I would sometimes lie on Grannies bed across the room from him and we would read silently together, him with a book on a darkwood frame, beautiful and specially made for him by one of my uncles, and me with my book propped on bare knees.

I remember spending a night, being very young and sleeping in Grannies bed, in the same room as Gran'pa, and hearing him moan and occasionally shriek during the night until Gran got out of bed and went across to murmur something to him for an unknown while before coming back to bed with a quiet but commanding "Now, now, you. Back to sleep. Nothing to worry you here. Just Gran'pa dreaming. Just a dream," as she got back into bed herself.

And thats why I found myself thinking of him and of years past on Monday night and silently raising a glass in that wood panelled dining room of the Barns Ness Hotel.


See you later.

Listening to;