WINTER/SPRING2016 ISSUE 27 THE EILDON TREE Issue 27.FREE Winter/Spring 2016 1
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THE EILDON TREE NEW WRITING FROM THE SCOTTISH BORDERS & BEYOND 2 CONTENTS
GUIDELINES 3 The Bletherin Bawtie – Iain McGregor 18 Beside Myself – Tim Nevil 21 EDITORIAL 4 A Creative Dream – Raghu B. Shukla 24 POETRY The Case of the Coloured Kipper – Café Bar – Helen Boden 5 Louise Thomson 26 Grasping the Measure – Michael Davis 5 The Frog Down the Well – Olga Wojtas 27 Dead Wasp Haiku – Sean Fleet 5
Morning Crowds – David Hendry 5 INTERVIEW WITH PAT MOSEL 29 Invitation – Davy MacTire 5 THEATRE, FILM & EVENT REVIEWS 31 Scots, Scotch, Scottish – Philip Hutton 6 BOOK REVIEWS 33 The Bridge – Anita John 6 BIOGRAPHIES 46 Love of Two Oranges – Robert Leach 6 Moscow Hoodies – Robert Leach 7 Far Awa – John McCann 7 Roosting Aloft – Barbara Mearns 7 Swallows, Bonaly Reservoir – Ian McDonough 8 Clachtoll – Ian McDonough 8 The Last Home of Robert Louis Stevenson – LesleyMay Millar 8 15 – Jamie Norman 8 Stand at the Edge – Jane Pearn 9 Teacher – Penny Reid 9 Fox – Elizabeth Rimmer 9 Spindle – Elizabeth Rimmer 9 Last Borders Weaver Pantoum – Ian Richardson 9 Adolescence 1950’s – Chrys Salt 10 In the Merchant City – Finola Scott 10 A Hern i Langholm – Hamish Scott 10 The Dooble – James P Spence 10 Adam Smith – Jock Stein 11 Farewell to the Lums O’ Cockenny – Jock Stein 11 Wattie Suddie – Alun Robert 11
FICTION Flowers for Shirley – Douglas Bruton 12 Snowed In – Sean Fleet 13 The Cleaning Programme – Russet J Ashby 14 The Kelso Chemist – Jo Jones 15 Goodbye, Isobel – Vivien Jones 16 THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter/Spring 2016 3 CONTENTS WHERE TO FIND YOUR FREE COPY OF • If your submission is accepted for publication you THE EILDON TREE will be sent a copy of the work to proof-read before The Editorial Team and Arts Development, Scottish print. Borders Council thanks all venues and outlets for their • All contributors will receive a copy of the magazine. support in promoting The Eildon Tree. • If your submission is not accepted on this occasion, please do not be deterred from submitting Scottish Borders Council Libraries alternative work in the future. Borders College Scottish Borders Council High Schools Publications Submitted for Review u3a Groups Publishers and authors may submit publications WASPS Artist Studios, Selkirk Forest Bookstore, Selkirk for review. We do endeavour to review as many books Masons Bookstore, Melrose as possible but cannot guarantee inclusion in the Main Street Trading Company, St Boswells magazine. Please note we are unable to return any Langlee Complex, Galashiels review publications. Heart Of Hawick, Tower Mill Damascus Drum, Hawick The Editors and Arts Development Scottish Borders Council are not responsible for the individual GUIDELINES FOR SUBMITTING WORK views and opinions expressed by reviewers and TO EILDON TREE contributors. The Eildon Tree is available from all Submissions of new writing are invited for inclusion Scottish Borders Council libraries and a wide range in the next issue of Eildon Tree - Spring/Summer 2016. of local outlets throughout the Scottish Borders. The The Submissions Deadline is 18th March 2016. Eildon Tree can also be downloaded: http://www.scotborders.gov.uk/eildontree. Poems, short stories and non-fiction articles of local and national literary interest, as well as short novel The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily extracts, are all welcome for consideration. reflect Council policy or practice in the arts.
• A maximum of 4 poems, stories or articles up to 3,000 words. • Electronic format: Arial pt 12, single line spacing, unjustified margin. • Book titles and quotes should be italicised, but without speech and quotation marks, unless specified in the text quoted.
• Include a brief biography, maximum 40 words. CAROL NORRIS SARA CLARK • Please do not resubmit work which has been seen previously by the Editors. • For an informal chat please contact Arts Development Tel: 01750 726400 • Teachers submitting work on behalf of pupils should contact Arts Development for further guidance.
HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR WORK IONA MCGREGOR JULIAN COLTON By post: The Eildon Tree, Arts Development, St Mary’s Mill, Selkirk, TD7 5EW EDITORIAL TEAM By email: [email protected] Carol Norris, Sara Clark, Julian Colton, Iona McGregor
(Please note: All work should be sent to the Arts Development PUBLISHING TEAM and not to individual Editors) Susan Garnsworthy, Joy Dunsmore, Andrew Frost THE PROCESS • Your work will be sent to the Editors for GRAPHIC DESIGN consideration. Acceptance and inclusion in Graphic Design, Scottish Borders Council the magazine is at their discretion. • You will be notified when a decision has been made. Please be patient, we receive many submissions. COUNCIL CONTENTS 4 EDITORIAL
As you are reading this editorial, the dark Also testimony to the magazine’s growing days of winter are rapidly moving into the popularity was the incredible number of folk lighter days of spring. So much has been who last year entered our Waverley Lines happening in the Borders writing scene since writing competition to celebrate the return the last issue with an unsurpassed number of the railway to the Borders. Thanks to all of book launches, readings, open mic and who contributed and congratulations to the drama events all reflecting the rich diversity winning poets and writers who featured in our of writing voices from Scottish Borders and special Eildon Tree Waverley Lines anthology beyond. Just take a look at our Review Section published in September. It’s clear that, as a for confirmation of this fact. hive for writing activity, the Borders has never been busier. So look out for similar writing Over time an untold number of writers have opportunities promoted by the magazine in contributed original work, reviews, interviews, the future. and articles. Add to this Writing Festivals, workshops, CDs, writing competitions and Enjoy writing and keep sending in your performance events associated with ET, submissions. and the magazine can justly claim to have played no small part in a hard won victory to celebrate and raise the profile of contemporary Julian Colton writing in the area. Incidentally, a victory Carol Norris MBE shared by a fantastic support network of Sara Clark writers, Councillors, the Arts Development Iona McGregor team, editors, graphic designers, writing The Eildon Tree Editors. professionals and festival organisers inside and outside the magazine. You are all central to the current, and future success of The Eildon Tree.
The Eildon Tree has always endeavoured to provide a creative platform for eclectic voices and to engage the reading public’s attention in the region and further afield. In showcasing first time writers, widely published authors, playwrights, translators and poets, encompassing use of both Scots and English language, as well as representing all ages and abilities - this current edition reflects this assertion. The standard of submissions for this issue was incredibly high and for any writers who did not make the final selection on this occasion, the Editorial Team advises perseverance. THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter/Spring 2016 5 POETRY CAFÉ BAR MORNING CROWDS
In profile, in conversation Daffodils hang their yellow heads the fabrics of your clothes (linen, silk) In a shadow cast by a house, complement the sofa (indigo/slate). Surrounded by a white, soft frost, My glimpse of that keen glint from your eye, Which the sun is melting. gem set deep in a near-classical form - save for a bead of sweat on your temple People walk by on a pavement, featured by the angling of the lamp-shade Their footsteps clattering. along with incipient paunch, as you lean More people come then go, leave no in profile, in conversation -- Traces to show they’ve passed. is enough to recall how under less subtle light Is it sad to be among them, and wearing black you asked me to hold you These morning crowds that move like clouds after I again refused to commit, Along the street, gathering, forming, drifting, parting, and I refused that too, wanting at least Beside a garden, sun, shadow, flowers and frost. to look you in the eye, not over your shoulder, insincere: David Hendry the cinema stereotype, unable to promise to the middle distance, or to you, held ignorant INVITATION what I could never deliver. Come the winter Helen Boden where leaves rot and worms shrink in icy heaps. GRASPING THE MEASURE Come the winter when snows drift I’ve walked the Somme from Serre to Mametz, and willows break I’ve looked into the crater of Lochnagar. in frozen lakes. I’ve seen the countless lines of graves, Come the winter Studied maps and read the books, where medieval But I’d never grasped the measure of the Somme. is the tone and all the children One day at work Craig sat next to me; coming home Eyes shining with his zest for living. are wrapped Narrow framed and callow limbed, against the biting wind His boyhood not yet through its moulting, and numbing cold. Balanced at the cusp of promise soon becoming. Come the winter so I may at last And I recalled again that gently sloping field, grow brave and old Freshly ploughed, with rusting shells and bones and keep the world That marked the path of the Glasgow Pals: in sleep. And grasped then the measure of that day As being the death of twenty thousand Craigs. Davy MacTire
Michael Davis
DEAD WASP HAIKU
Antennae still twitch, Though your thorax has been crushed. You left me no choice.
Sean Fleet 6 POETRY
SCOTS, SCOTCH, SCOTTISH THE BRIDGE
I search for where it might have been, Fringe crowds take the summer hot on flesh. deep in the glen among tall sitka spuce, Sunburned faces cram our narrow Mile and find two wooden beams or fallen trees – moss coated, lichen stitched, two feet apart – of trodden cobbles, crowstep gabled heights. crossing from one side to the other. Heliotropics, sensation hungerers from Greece I would trust my weight to their strength in this green and eldritch licht France Italy Australia, Marrakesh, but I am neither child nor fairy-light. all the spectrum of americana, cameras and smiles Onwards then to Bowden Moor weathering their gentle senses, sunlit teeth with a growing sense of watching. exposed to saltire-daubing mountebanks and touts The moor shrouds itself in a thin-dressed haar and the silver threads of spiders’ webs for itsy-bitsy cuteness dunked in scotsiness. catch and throw the light so everything shimmers in obliterating brightness. All sound hushed save for the fragile chink Far off, a let-out into emptiness of a single bird in an unseen tree. on backswept spaces contoured high – As though, for a short time, I have stepped carved out husk of glaciation cycle - into a place where fact and myth have merged as one. Then the sun insists on burning off the fret empty slopes and scree-torn steeps – and my dream-like vision of Scott’s Rhymer’s Glen is gone. windcombed flattened whitened grass. Anita John This fort, sixth century, seventh, eighth they think, dissolved now to a stony ruckle, LOVE OF TWO ORANGES a lichen patched and hobble-nobble heap. Moscow morning: Pictish? Celtic? Scots? Brythonic? They only guess Tonnage of battleship clouds And hoodie crows stabbing at gutter litter. or freely name the vague and vanished folk. Between the Bolshoi and the Metropole Skyline crested, the viewpoint of a future state A Barents Sea of puddle, where a roaring truck, Remembering a long-gone war, perhaps, it blocks in foreground where the vision leaps Geysers up icy cataracts and hoppers-full to tribal turbines, leagues off, arcing into sky Of brown, stagnant, winter water, Which drench and souse and glaciate pedestrians. and leagues beyond them vanishing in smoke. At the theatre, a few actors Huddle up outside, heads in shoulders, A hybrid nation, Scotland Smoking. Each his own. A nod hooked on high-bred phantom spectres. Of recognition, and: ‘Kholodna.’ (‘It’s cold.’)
Trilobites to Jacobites as genotypes to phenotypes, I enter. On the desert stage call centres resonate with connoisseurs, collectors. Scenery seems arctic refuse. Even the dust’s too cold to shiver. Fossil prototypes determine archetypal choices Here I must rehearse, squeeze meanings From a sapless trunk. and infant phonemes croak ancestral voices. We keep our coats on. The play Petrifies like tundra. Philip Hutton THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter/Spring 2016 7
Sasha arrives. He’s late. FAR AWA Anger stirs behind my ice-box ribs. He puts his hands up. Yer a that far awa Not in surrender, though: he’s holding A they thoosands o miles Two oranges. Empty hoors on twa planes Though nae that lang ago We scamper to him, a tumbling playgroup, It wid hae been wiks Encircle him, hungry morning votaries An nae on a plane either. In a shadowy carnival ale feast. Our shared desire cracks our crazy-paving’d frost. Yer a that far awa Sasha’s silver knife blade slowly cuts, In the cauld and the dreich Opens a promised succulence. Greedy with goodwill, An fin the sun shines it We take the proffered slice, Aye feels a bit special Pleased to wait till he is pleased to give. Cos it winna last onywye Juicy freshness pricks our tongues, trickles Its naething like that o’er here. Down receptive rehabilitated throats. We are fifteen people, two oranges, one taste. I ken yir far awa Fin I finish my work This Communism works. An trudge up thay stane stairs Tae my ain foreign room Robert Leach An callin for prayers Fills the weet, burnin air. MOSCOW HOODIES Bit there’s aye the web A lone hooded crow Oor one-at-a-time texts Squats by the bun seller Sometimes stuttering skype In Alexander Gardens. Wi words detached fae mooth Til that final reid button Its foot’s broken, Pits us far awa again. Curled like a fish hook, And its two wings John McCann Don’t shut properly. Head tucked into neck, ROOSTING ALOFT It sits, drab with pain, And when it turns its round eye At ebb of day On me, its neck makes a fleet of swifts An arch of agony. dark, sleek, fork-ruddered silently rise, cruise thermals I have no crumbs. ride gentle airstreams, turbulent waves napping, yet mindful of wind-shift, drift and speed That evening – rain, steady as unwanted time, star-anchored, first to see bursting dawn Dusk, thick as borsch: circling on high till streets awake − A huddle of crows with black heads, descending a mile of empty sky And grey tattery shoulder cloaks, down, down, then swoop Cluster, and never a wink among them. like screaming pirates invade our town. They line the phone wires Like bullets in a belt. Barbara Mearns
Under my black wet umbrella, I hurry past.
Robert Leach 8 POETRY
SWALLOWS, BONALY RESERVOIR THE LAST HOME OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON Like the best paper plane you ever built swallows cut the sky I am Elena. into a thousand small blue pieces. I wear orchids and hibiscus in my hair. If I come back… you said, My clothes are the colour that’s what I want to be. of amaranth, alamanda, flame tree and red ginger. For me it would be an albatross, vaulting the heavens I heard the tales of Tusi Tala. between scraps of rock, He talked of places I would never know. an emblem of dry land, He built a house of red and peacock-blue a mote in the eye with rooms as high as trees, of the God of endless ocean. filled it with wild music.
Ian McDonough In rare moments, he liked to lie on the veranda of Vailima, CLACHTOLL breathing scent of ylang-ylang, dreaming of his other home, Remoteness brings the campers nearer, a grand house in the cold north. equal under the straight-talking weather. Their minds drift gratefully away Drinking Kava and smoking, from cold city strongholds of glass and steel he drifted back to childhood, the cut and thrust of the water-cooler. to the sounds of the old city. He sailed the ocean to reach us But always a single cord remains in the delicious heat of Upolu. tugging gently, firmly, even as a crimson gash of sun I cared for all his family, dips like some dazzling god-bird for travellers who came to hear him, underneath the edge of Avalon washed and smoothed their strange clothes: trousers, and long-sleeved shirts, Maybe the solitary diver, black-throated, stiff dresses and starched headwear. plundering the oily larder of the sea, may be immune. If so, it doesn’t know. I often heard unearthly shrieks of his women, his wife who talked of devils, fought We hunt for something lost the grasping lianas in the jungle. between the sea and ancient rocks, Tusi Tala was like the tallest tree fern camping on the fragile strand and he fed us with his words. among the divers and the sea-pinks In the silence of that night I to the hills will lift mine eyes, we gathered, fanned him, waited. I prepared his white shirt, Each of us huddles in our makeshift tent, wove a garland for his journey. clutching ourselves like jewels, pockets full of sand, LesleyMay Miller the very stuff of diamonds. 15 Ian McDonough After a single day Many a fisherman will quit The heron has yet to move
Jamie Norman THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter/Spring 2016 9
STAND AT THE EDGE FOX
The shore. The land’s frayed hem. Where unseen, no footprint, certainty is worn down grain by grain, but the bitter smell lingers where knowing (you thought you did) meets on the morning’s frost. unknowable (now you know that you don’t). Elizabeth Rimmer Stand at the edge of the seeming-solid world (but sands roll rub shift beneath bare soles), watch the perpetual restlessness of sea, SPINDLE feel its pulses echo at the wrist. Arrowy leaves, dull crimped white flowers It has its own life, its own reasons, until the summer’s done, and then a blaze (your life came from it) (your atoms will return) of pink and orange, molten red and bronze, it has no need of you. a hedgerow bonfire of leaf and fruit - Take a paint-box. Could you? Do it? Glass-deep this is the spinner’s tree, the dyer’s tree, the tree that spangles the humdrum green, blue of long summers-ago, silver of promises with softness, warmth, and colour. nearly-kept. Pigments to capture colours It ought to be exotic, its flaming leaves, that are not colours at all like (tones moods airs) its tri-lobed fruit, bright pink and glowing adventure, longing, pity, home. like a Christmas bauble, but it’s not. This is no grace and favour tenancy, How to depict the crump – hear it, feel it – No feral wanderer beyond its bounds, as waves fold over themselves it’s native, it belongs in this wild space too heavy for their own strength, here, like art, like passion, like the joy drive against cliff? in work that makes us rich and free. Find the wordpaint (can you?) for Elizabeth Rimmer how it would be to smooth your palm over the swelling liquid pillow, to stroke its curve’s expand and stretch. LAST BORDERS WEAVER PANTOUM
The last weaver that spins in the Borders For how it arches – a horse’s neck – along its length, With the bright silver thread of the Tweed shatters. A billion bubbles. For how Interlaced with his own Holy Orders each captures the sky, explodes He embroiders your every deed. with light, dies exhausted. For how
With the bright silver thread of the Tweed the foam’s shed skin returns to sea. Begins again. Fresh spun tapestry every day you arise He embroiders your every deed. Jane Pearn To give you an enchanting surprise.
TEACHER Fresh spun tapestry every day you arise Discovered mist filled in the dawn My job hurts. To give you an enchanting surprise It asks me to meet myself when I don’t want to. But the last weaver’s already gone. I try in my job to detach Discovered mist filled in the dawn to put efficiency, order and timekeeping first. Broken threads that he’s tried to repair But the last weaver’s already gone But my job turns inwards Vanishing webs of bright liquid air. and frantically I mould white knuckled vertebrae, Broken threads that he’s tried to repair press them urgently into young hands: Like the Bruce hidden on his way home leaving my own spine melting Vanishing webs of bright liquid air Penny Reid He still battens new cloth with his comb. 10 POETRY
Like The Bruce hidden on his way home A HERN I LANGHOLM Interlaced with his own Holy Orders He still battens new cloth with his comb ‘I am only that Job, in feathers, a heron, myself, The last weaver that spins in the Borders. Gaunt and unsubstantial’
Ian Richardson Hugh MacDiarmid Lament for the Great Music ADOLESCENCE 1950’S In Langholm toun A see I was the bee’s knees, the cat’s pyjamas a hern amang the deuks, smoking on the top of a Midland Red. an see yung Kirsty Grieve, My eyes mascara-ed to tarantulas, his thochts abraid i beuks; puffing on a fag I’d nicked from dad. than leukin efter me, My tits were early tulip bulbs just sprouting it’s Hugh MacDiarmid leuks; under a skinny sweater’s stocking mask. as gif afore tae scrieve, Pan Stick over spots, pink lippie pouting. can see the cumin cruiks ‘Over Sixteen’ if anybody asked. Hair back-combed to a busby, stiff with lacquer. Hamish Scott Suspenders, fish-nets, tiny mini-skirt that almost showed a glimpse of navy knicker. THE DOOBLE Stilettos I could hardly teeter in and hurt. The conductor took my fare and shook his head. ‘Does mum know you go out like that?’ he said. Ah seen yer dooble the ither day. Ah tell ee hae wus yer spit. Chrys Salt Same skinny, drink-o-witter figure, same toosilie hair aboot heez shoothers, IN THE MERCHANT CITY even the wey hae walked Ah wud say. I lounge at café table in cold They say awbodie’s got thir dooble, sun, sip bitter coffee, wipe froth from but Ah’ve nivver seen mines like. lips with snowy cotton, savour a cigarette. Acourse naebodie ivver sees thir ain. But this fella’s wus yer dooble aw aye. Jamaica, Virginia, West Indies, Barbados But Ah kent it wusnae you tho,
Faint at my back between colonnades jist sumhin, sumhin aboot him ee ken. a cane tap taps, Hae wus ower ferr away tae speak tae, gold headed. Voices mutter an the road’s that busy at that bit. of uncertainty Ah’ve nivver ivver seen him afore, of tides. Sugar Princes mull over the price of slaves, but nae doot hae wus yer dooble. the cost of cargo. Ah tell ee, ee suid’ve seen him. Capes swirl crimson above private Ee missed yersel the ither day. pavements. Chandlers, victualers, scrabble in gutters. James P Spence Downstream, out of sight, gulls keen, the river sucks greedily.
Spiers, Buchanan, Cunningham, Glassford.
In the Style City’s crystal galleries trade bleeds on.
Finola Scott THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter/Spring 2016 11
ADAM SMITH WATTIE SUDDIE
He thought well. He meant well. He lived well. Stood four deep around Mansfield Park grandstand packed with landed gentry, He deserves this statue by the City Chambers school masters, business professionals to the author of The Wealth of Nations. and those fortunate to have tickets
when brave young Wattie Suddie Is he not the father of free enterprise? wing three-quarter extraordinaire He has earned this jacket with eleven buttons, ran the oval ball for Hawick Greens this cloak, this curled wig, this reputation. en route to the touch line of victory
was clean and wholesome in spirit Now his eyes and lips are bronze, to match without recourse to trick or stratagem the hearts of those who cherry-pick his writings, honoured to represent his country no matter the conquest or the conflict. leaving out his checks and balances to power.
Great War enlisted then commissioned Jock Stein alongside officers of landed gentry, school masters, business professionals FAREWELL TO THE LUMS and those fortunate to buy position O’ COCKENNY where he drove courageous incursions Grey and white across the sky for the Lothians and Border Horse, fly shrouds and cirrus clouds; the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and finally for the proud Seaforth above the Firth, the Fife hills flit from west to east, and brush was respected by his squaddies a laid back, painterly horizon; wing, hope and prayers aplenty shore lines match this movement, running over the top for freedom en route to the touch line of victory picture framing work and living space. The vertical begins far down, where until taken just before Armistice Day hidden shafts lift coal from underground in the blood red of stray artillery to make a profit out of power. alongside other brave Border lads scattered deep around the trenches. Two chimney stacks take over, bound up and away, cock a Cockenzie snook at flat earth thinking, lift our hearts, Dedicated to the memory of 2nd Lieutenant Walter change landmarks to blue sky marks. Sutherland (1890-1918)
Alun Robert Sailors set their homeward way by them, golfers guide their forward play by them , locals spend their every day by them – but not for long. Already, pylons hang their empty cables in a sad catenary, without a whimper, let alone a bang. The universe tomorrow’s horizontal.
Jock Stein 12 SHORT STORIES
FLOWERS FOR SHIRLEY laughing, and wisps of her ash- than she needed to and fixing blonde hair was floating all ways me with her eyes and laughing. It was a Sunday and it was my day like silver feathers. Shirley’s eyes is blue, like the off work. Jesus, I was whacked, Shirley’s always asking me if woman dancing in the street, blue you know, and I was just walking I think she’s pretty and when she as a sky that hurts to look at too the streets, getting some air, and asks I tell her for sure that she is. long. that’s when I saw ‘em. Then she says as it don’t mean the Soon as we was done with It was just an ord’nary Sunday, same if she has to ask me all the school, me and Shirley, well then as Sundays go. Nothing different time, and maybe she’s right, and the two of us was running into ‘bout it. Just one of ‘em Sundays maybe I should make the effort to all our tomorrows and the days in April and near to May, when tell her more than I do. Thing is, after. We got a flat together up on the sky is clear and the air crisp as Shirley’s always been pretty and Minto Street, both of us feeling like biscuits. I’d had enough of Shirley I reckon she always will be. And, we was all grown up and nothing and her asking me all day to do well, this woman dancing in the could touch us, not ever. And if I stuff ‘bout the house – cos in her street, she was the same kinda remember right, we slept on the asking, see, Shirley was making pretty. floor of that flat for the first three a point ‘gainst me doing next to Then I noticed him and though months, or maybe it was six, long nothing all the time, which ain’t he was all crumpled and creased, enough till we’d saved up some exactly how it is. So, I jus’ took he was also lit up like the young and we could afford a bed. And myself out. I thought I might get can be. He wore a hat tilted high we ate our dinner off the one plate me a drink up at Coop’s bar, if it on his head, and maybe it was and drank our water or wine out was open. A few drinks maybe, ‘gainst his thinning hair or ‘gainst of the same glass, and we was and clear my head and feel good the sun that was warm for the always kissing and always touching ‘bout myself again. But then for no time of year. And when he stood each other, like we couldn’t really reason I just walked right on by. upright he stood crooked a little. believe we was so lucky. It was a couple of streets past But he was dancing, too. The two ‘Course, life gets in the way Coop’s that I saw ‘em. They was of ‘em dancing, like they was right then. It’s the same for everybody, I maybe in their sixties or seventies. out of some old Fred Astaire and reckon. We got us a couple of kids I ain’t so good at estimating that Ginger Rogers movie, shoes sliding now, a boy and girl, and though kinda shit. Older they coulda been. easy on the stone pavement, and I love ‘em both, love ‘em both to Old as train-timetables or history neither of ‘em looking where they brass bits, they’re a lot of work on books or hills, that’s what they was. was putting their feet and neither top of everything else. And me and But though they was real old, they of ‘em needing to. And though Shirley, well, we ain’t so wrapped was still sorta young, too. there was no music playing, I up in each other like before, there I’m always telling Shirley stuff swear that watching ‘em I could jus’ isn’t the time, and I guess like that, saying as how you is ever hear something, a rhythm at least. that’s only natural. But I wanted as young as you feel and not never Suddenly, I wanted Shirley to her to see this old guy and his lady as old as your years. That’s what see this. I don’t know why, but I dancing in the street, cos I thought these two was like when I saw ‘em thought it was sorta important, it was somehow important. in the street past Coop’s bar: young you know. I thought in what I was I followed ‘em for a while, though they was old. seeing was some great secret that keeping at a distance so as they The first that I saw ‘em they was Shirley needed to know. It was jus’ wouldn’t know. They was like dancing, really dancing, there in there and obvious. Jesus, I wanted two kids in love for the first time, the Sunday-quiet road, their arms everyone to see it. all silly and not caring that they flung wide like they could be flying, Shirley and me, we go back was; not caring neither that and dancing to no music as I could a fair way. Back to the year dot, other people seeing ‘em would hear or anyone else ‘cept them. I Shirley says, which ain’t exactly think they was silly. Maybe they must admit that she was the one true, but back to school days was on a second honeymoon or as straight off caught my eye, more anyways: me back then writing something. I heard people do that than him. She was pretty in a way, Shirley’s name in blue pen on my these days and it’s like starting sorta soft and slight and her eyes arm and pretending like it was over or starting new. Or maybe flashing and blue. I sucked in air a tattoo, which it is now; Shirley they wasn’t really married at all and my lips was puckered in a kiss. putting her hand down the front of and they was having an affair, And she was really light on her my trousers for a schoolyard dare though that didn’t sit right in my feet, light as a skipping girl, and and keeping her hand there longer thinking, not with how good they THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter/Spring 2016 13
was with each other, like they’d the corners of her mouth, like she began to paw the ground. As Tim danced together same as this all coulda heard what I’d said. approached, the dog looked up and their lives. He kept taking her hand Kids was sleeping just the same, whined. and I swear when he did he looked with Shirley, the three of ‘em all “What have you found, Winston?” a little taller with it, top-hat-and- curled up together in the one bed, A bright red object caught Tim’s tails tall, and straighter, too. And like puppies or kittens in a litter. eye. He crouched down to get a she kept laughing and skipping I quietly put the flowers in a jar closer look, but immediately leapt ahead of him a small ways, teasing of water and placed ‘em beside the back. The dog howled and resumed like, and ‘come get me’ in the look bed where Shirley’d be bound to digging. Tim dragged it away and she gave the man, then waiting for see ‘em when she woke. stared down at a huge gemstone, him to catch up, waiting for love to I switched the radio on in the attached to a gold ring, which was catch up. They was breathless and kitchen, low enough it wouldn’t still adorning one finger of a stiff, pale, like shades of people, but they disturb ‘em none. Then, with the frozen hand. was happy, too, overflowing happy door pulled to, I danced by myself, and happy like no one I ever saw pretending like I was dancing with The fingers projecting from the before. that old lady in the street and her snow were bluish-white, each one ‘See, Shirley. It is possible,’ I hair flying in smokey silver wisps tipped with a nail the colour of said out loud and to no one. all ways, her blue eyes flashing like freshly-drawn blood. Tim cupped They went into a hotel finally, sparks, and the lady laughing, feet his hands together and blew warm one of ‘em grand places with the sliding in time with mine on the air across them. He dropped to name all shiny brass letters and linoleum floor, or mine sliding his knees and grasped the hand. flags big as bed-sheets flying from in time with hers. It was easy It felt colder than the snow that the balcony and potted orange pretending, but I reckoned it’d surrounded it. trees in the windows. There was be a whole lot of something else “Dead, long since,” he muttered. a man there, standing for show with Shirley, and I thought Shirley He peered along the still-deserted out front, dressed in a long coat would just get it, and she’d laugh road. Fresh snow was beginning to with silver buttons and wearing and I’d laugh and like that we’d entomb the hand once more. Tim a peaked cap and ready to open have a little bit of what I saw in brushed the snow from the ring the doors with his white-gloved that man and that woman dancing and examined it for a moment. He hands. I didn’t think it was right to in the Sunday-street past Coop’s. twisted it and eased it off the stiff follow ‘em inside, even if I coulda finger. The dog began to bark and persuaded the man at the door to Douglas Bruton Tim grabbed its collar. He scanned allow me. Instead, I let ‘em go. the snow-covered landscape, then After, I bought some flowers SNOWED IN slid the ring into his coat pocket. from a roadside vendor and he “Come on old boy, let’s leave her in wrapped ‘em in pink crinkly paper, Tim eased open the front door of peace.” a whole sunburst spray of ‘em, the cottage and stared out at the carnations and dahlias and white snow. It had obliterated any sign of Emily was waiting for Tim as he michaelmas daisies, and he said the path and drifted half way up the made his way up the garden path. some girl was gonna be real lucky garden gate. He whistled to his dog. “You’ve been ages. I was just about this Sunday and he winked at me “Come on Winston, let’s get going.” to text you.” like he knew me. And I took ‘em Huge flakes began to fall as the “Snow’s really deep. It’s been hard flowers back to Shirley. I meant pair set out towards the main road going.” to fetch her in my arms and dance and the village. Tim pulled his The labrador squeezed past and her around the living-room a Parka hood close around his face trotted into the hall, and Tim breathless turn or two, just to feel and his mind turned to Emily; she stamped the snow off his boots and what it was like. was going to be really disappointed followed. Emily slipped her arms Shirley was sleeping when I with her Christmas present, but he around his waist. got home and pretty in her sleep, couldn’t afford anything better. “Oooh! You’re freezing. Come too, like angel-pretty or pretty as a and sit by the fire- I’ve made some picture. I told her so, my lips close The main road was completely mulled wine.” to her ears, close enough they was deserted when Tim reached it. The Tim watched the deep red liquid kissing-words. Maybe Shirley was black labrador trotted on ahead in flow into the glasses. too far in sleep to hear me, but I the direction of the village, then “It’s so romantic,” Emily thought I noticed a smile playing at stopped by the side of the road and whispered, “Snowed in on 14 SHORT STORIES
Christmas Eve.” Emily held out her hand to THE CLEANING A loud tapping at the window show off the ring. The deep red PROGRAMME interrupted Tim’s reply. gemstone looked dazzling, even in “What was that!” he cried. the dim early-morning light. Tim Mr Simon Brown, now retired, He raced across to the window. sat up. sat hunched in his old parka, on The trees at the end of the garden “W…where did you find it?” a cold park bench at 8:30 am, as were swaying in the wind and “It was in your coat pocket. I was his family finished their breakfast clawing at the sky. searching for the door key to let in their comfortably warm town “What’s up with you?” Emily Winston out. Look! I’ve painted house, just across from the park. laughed, “It’s just a blizzard.” my nails to match”. His daughter-in-law had taken him She squeezed Tim’s arm. Tim gazed at the shiny red nails. in when his wife died. Her gesture “Let’s get some supper and have an “Emily, it’s….. it’s not yours seemed generous. There was, early night.” Please….give it to me.” however, a problem. “What do you mean, it’s not mine. Simon had tried to get things Tim lay on his back listening to Who the hell did you buy it for?” right. He kept trying. Like the Emily’s deep breathing. He stared “I….I didn’t buy it for anybody…I…” morning when the twins had at the skylight above his head. It Emily turned and ran from the got up so very early. He saved was covered in a thick blanket of room. the day. Granddad’s Special snow and fingers of ice had spread “EMILY, LET ME EXPLAIN.” Cinnamon Toast was a winner. across the inside of the glass. Tim The front door slammed. Tim He followed HER rules and got listened to the wind whistling leapt out of bed and rushed to the kids involved, beating the through the gaps in the window the window, but all he saw was a butter, mixing in sugar and dusting frame. Then another sound caught shroud of thick grey mist. cinnamon on top. The cinnamon his attention; a whimpering even went up their noses they were outside the bedroom door. He was It was almost dark as Tim so good at the dusting. He carefully about to get up and scold the dog, approached the cottage. Heavy cut out bread shaped letters, T for when there was a loud crack above snow had continued to fall all day. Tom and D for Denny. They ate his head. Shards of ice rained Tim had contacted the police at every last scrap. down. Tim stared up at the small lunchtime and they told him to That was just before the robot rectangle of glass. The snow began get back in touch if Emily hadn’t arrived. The box lay in the hall. He to clear, as if being brushed aside. returned by nightfall. He turned to studied the label: deluxe model, The skylight creaked open and look for Winston, but the dog was multi-skirted, six armed cleaning flakes of snow floated down onto nowhere to be seen. He whistled. robot, programmable, with the bed. A hand squeezed through “Winston?” automatic timing. Cleans while the gap. Tim saw the bright red He was answered with a bark. The you play. nail polish and cried out. Emily labrador’s black form was just It was a dalek, with a skirt stirred. visible back along the road and that could widen and narrow as “Tim! What’s wrong?” Tim set off to fetch it. As he drew required. The six arms rotated, at Tim’s gaze was fixed on the nearer, he saw the animal pawing every angle, to lift, dust or polish. skylight. It was now closed and the the ground. He heard a sound It could fill the dishwasher in hand had gone. behind him and spun around. seconds. Under that skirt it hid “What is it, Tim?” “Emily?” he called. sponges and pipes. It could wash. “N..nothing…. a nightmare… I’m He peered into the gloom. There It could suck. The suction fired OK.” was nobody there. Tim knelt down everything to a tank in the garage. “Poor you,” Emily sympathised. to examine the place where the It was phenomenal. She snuggled down and was soon dog had been pawing. A red object The rule was he, Simon, had to asleep again. But Tim couldn’t caught his eye. He groaned. He eat breakfast at 8 am. The cleaning take his eyes off the skylight. He scraped away some snow to reveal programme started when SHE left decided to return the ring to its a huge gemstone, attached to a for work. Once he came down in owner as soon as it was light. gold ring, which was still adorning his night shirt, but SHE didn’t like one finger of a stiff, frozen hand. that. Tim felt a hand caressing his face Each fingernail was painted the On the first day he was late and opened his eyes. colour of freshly-drawn blood. he sneaked into the kitchen. He “It’s beautiful, my love, I didn’t kept below the robot’s radar, on his expect anything like this.” Sean Fleet THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter/Spring 2016 15 knees, but, in shock he watched as THE KELSO CHEMIST new duties ever since it had arrived the skirt raised and sucked in his yesterday morning and it always socks and shoes, followed by his From the Edinburgh Evening News and said the same thing. He had been toast and jam which fell from the the Southern Reporter, November 1877. stunned. This was the last thing plate as it was whisked from the A young chemist in temporary charge he had expected. In fact he had of J Massey Druggist, Kelso, was table to the dish washer. lain awake all night going over her found dead in Newcastle, having taken words, and this had done nothing One day he had tried resetting morphia. it, but it refused an automatic for the headache which seemed to plague him these days. restart and rescheduled everything “Dear Donald – for later. Then the embarrassing “Dear Margaret” – crossed out. incident of the rubber chicken that “I must tell you that I wish to flew up its pipe and filled with air end our engagement. I am so “My Dear Margaret” - crossed out. like a balloon, blocking the flow. sorry, dear. I know how hard you He had taken the robot apart that have been working, too hard my “My Dearest Margaret, day, but the engineer had to be father says, and I fear that in your called out. Simon should have eagerness to better yourself you “I am astonished to receive your owned up. He knew that SHE have left behind those fine and letter. I understood that we knew it had been him. noble qualities I had so admired. Now he watched from the were most perfectly matched in ambition and temperament and back door as the creature cleared “I never see you. You are always that you would understand my everything from the table and filled working or studying or reading. desire to secure our future...” - the dishwasher, while the suction There are evenings in my company crossed out. from its skirt lifted every spec of when you can barely bring yourself sand from the floor. Then it began to speak to me, your concentration He stared at the sheets before the steam clean and more suction. on your books so complete and him. She should have understood He would eat in the garden. exclusive that I may as well not but evidently she did not. In He dashed in for a bowl, then for be there. I feel that you are on a fact, he had had many sleepless milk, then cereal, but the step was journey where I am not necessary, nights with his studies, all for their cold to sit on. The robot moved on or even wanted. to the hall. Simon padded over the benefit – for her benefit – and she was criticising him for not being warm damp kitchen floor in his “I have tried to discuss this, and as happy and carefree as he had socks. He threw his parka onto the many things, with you but your been when he was getting a proper hall seat and climbed the stairs. temper rises and I am reduced night’s rest! He was so tired now The high pitched thrum, as to saying nothing. We were so felt he could sleep for a week but the robot got stuck into something happy planning our wedding and for the minute he needed to stay big, alerted him and, from the our future together but now you awake and alert. He needed to do landing, he saw the last corner of are out of sorts all the time and I something. his parka sucked from view with a cannot remember when I last saw gut wrenching rip and burp from you smile. the machine. “Dear Miss Reid Then he knew – it was time “I am leaving in the morning and “I am in receipt of your letter of to move out. will stay with my aunt and uncle in 10th inst. and confess myself to Newcastle. I shall seek a position be astonished. You have said Russet J. Ashby there. I wish you well. nothing to me before of your desire to conclude our engagement and “With all my love, still, I had believed myself to be in the full process of preparing a secure Margaret” and happy future for ourselves. Poverty is a hard taskmaster and it Donald read the letter again. behoves all of us to work diligently And then again. He checked the to ensure that we and our loved signature. It was definitely hers. ones are not caught in its grip. He had re-read the letter whenever he could steal a moment from his 16 SHORT STORIES
“I was raised to understand the he would have to wait and he Whitehead’s lodgings and will be value of hard work for the benefit wouldn’t arrive in Newcastle until leaving at nine in the morning. I of oneself and one’s family and, after all decent men and women must get back to Kelso. I hope you indeed, my efforts have paid off of were in bed. will call on me before then. If you late; I have been tasked with the do not come, I will know that it charge of Mr Massey’s Chemist Sitting in the carriage he shivered truly is all over between us and I shop in Kelso on a temporary basis in his wet clothes. He could at shall not expect to see you again. and feel sure that further evidences least have stopped by the hotel of preference will be shown. and fetched his coat. Too late now Please come and, anyway finally, finally he was I hope that you will think long falling asleep. Your loving Donald” and hard about the benefits of my conscientious habits and He was woken in Newcastle and Nine o’clock came and went without willingness to improve myself, and turned off the train and he slept Margaret. He remembered the all that this would bring to our on the hard benches of the waiting morphia. marriage, and I await your reply. room. It was not an easy night and his head ached more than Jo Jones Yours faithfully ever when the morning came and the station was filled and busy. GOODBYE, ISOBEL D Campbell esq” He began to walk. Too late to see Margaret before the letter was It was raining of course. So the That should do it. And he would delivered. This had not been a whole thing passed in a mizzle of take a little of Mr Massey’s supply good idea. His thoughts went greys and blacks, a slow moving of morphia. This was not allowed, occasionally to Mr Massey’s shop procession, grouped in threes he knew, but he would make it up but it seemed that the shop and and fours according to friendship, somehow and with a good night’s his responsibilities belonged to family or other sticky relationship sleep he would be back to thinking another time. All that mattered to Isobel. If any of them could see straight. He emptied a little into a was Margaret. the body in the coffin they might packet and put it in his pocket. remark that they’d never seen her “I’ll be back soon.” He told his Eventually he was on the right in red before, never knew her to assistant and left to post his letter. street. It was dark. How long had wear red lipstick, certainly would He stood for some time outside the he been walking? He had eaten not have thought of her in red silk post box, undecided about posting nothing since the night before and knickers, but the coffin had been but in the end he dropped the he couldn’t even remember what closed with only her husband, letter in. As soon as it was done, he had eaten then. He needed to Dick, in attendance. If you looked he changed his mind. It was too think. He stopped at a lodging closely you could see the faintest of sharp, too formal. It did not say house and booked himself a room, smiles on his face but everyone else what he wanted to say. then called at Margaret’s aunt looked as glum as they should. The and uncle’s house. Only her uncle church sucked them in, coffin first, The rain fell steadily but he did was at home. Yes, Margaret had borne on the strong shoulders of six not notice. If he hurried, he received a letter that morning. No, hand-some young men who nobody might reach Margaret’s aunt and she was not at home. She and her actually knew, but mostly guessed uncle’s house before the post aunt were visiting her cousin but were far-flung nephews. There were was delivered in the morning. would be back soon. No, he could latecomers too, mostly men on their He headed for the coach – he not wait for her. Yes, if he dropped own, who may have been hurrying would just be in time – and, a note round, she would be sure to to join their wives after parking the finally realising how wet he was receive it. car. There was not much parking becoming, put up the umbrella he space close to the church. always carried at this time of year. At the lodging house a servant brought him some paper and a pen. At the back of the church there He missed the coach. He should was more whispering than the have started earlier, although he “My Dear Margaret, minister would have liked. It was had rushed as much as he could. the women - girls then - who Just another setback, and there I am sorry for my churlish letter. I had worked with Isobel in the was always the train, even though must see you. I am staying at Mrs department store after they left THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter/Spring 2016 17
school. They had not seen each a quiet existence, daughters of ever do anything differently? So other for years and had been a little the town doctor, not quite clever she drew up lists; of people, those surprised to have an invitation to enough for university, not quite who should speak (and those who the funeral in Isobel’s own hand. fibrous enough for independent shouldn’t) of music (lots, nothing Intimate, manipulative, very life. They were thirty and twenty dreary), of flowers (lots, as many Isobel, as they remembered her. eight. Millie worked in the library, bright colours as possible) and the She knew she was dying but there her sister in the book shop. Isobel shape of the reception. When he was something a little wayward was the most exciting person in queried the boys she said Don’t about those black edged cards in their lives. Had been. Millie thought be daft - we came to such a good Isobel’s unmistakable handwriting, she’s just like someone in one of solution. If I didn’t mind, why more like an invitation to a party the books now, still vibrant but should you? I’d like them to carry than a funeral. Except for the black unreachable. Where would I put me - they’re so beautiful, so well edges. All those years ago their her - romance, yes, adventure, matched. You always did have customers had remarked on her that too, autobiography, not sure, good taste, darling. Had he half- graceful calligraphy, the way she perhaps fiction would be more wished they’d say no? Isobel was wrote one blouse, ecru, silk and accurate. Millie knew they had certain they wouldn’t. No-one will chiffon, 29/6d, in a flutter of bold seen only a version of Isobel, the know except you and me and I curves, with her fountain pen. It one she was willing to share with won’t be talking about it. They were made the purchase more desirable, them, playful, fizzing with incident. standing beside him now, their more special. There had been four She looked around the church at sleek and fragrant presence exactly of them known by their first floor people she had never seen before, what Isobel had planned. A thought departments, ‘Hattie’, ‘Slippers’ people who had also been close to slithered down a Jehovah beam in and ‘Woolies’. Isobel had been Isobel in some way. Afterwards she the stained glass. How will ‘Separates’. They had all been would find out, they would talk over they explain themselves at the interviewed on the same summer tea, share their sorrow and stories reception? In all that milling around afternoon by three senior directors of life with Isobel. Millie stared and chatter, who will they say they and a personnel officer, told at the backs of the six handsome are? He felt a chill at the back of his how fortunate they were to be bearers, now standing with Dick, neck. accepted into a venerated family and wondered if she would dare Could Isobel have planned some business, and dispersed as the most speak to them. She was fairly sure dramatic revenge? Not really junior members to their various that Isobel had not mentioned them accepted their admission of actual departments. Being together again over tea. desires. Him and the boys, her and stripped the years away and made the hotel weekends. He’d kept his them prone to giggling, three Dick focussed on the coffin to part of the bargain, dressed her middle aged women stifling bring the tears the others would for a weekend away - surely she excitement in the back of the expect. He’d done his weeping wouldn’t... church. The minister continued to - at diagnosis, at treatments, at No, of course she wouldn’t. frown. remission, at reoccurrence, at final diagnosis, at disintegration - her The tall man had arrived just after Isobel’s two sisters stood close death had been welcomed by both they’d started, placing himself together. Millie was weeping, not of them. Not something you could quietly at the back beside some woefully but in a soft sorrow that easily say except in banal phrases. fidgeting middle aged women. was half good-bye and half glad ‘A blessed relief.’ That was the She’d said he could come if he liked. it’s over. She leant into her sister’s most common one on the cards Liked! He’d been thunderstruck by shoulder and was soothed with from those who saw her fade away. the pale word, had remonstrated wordless clucks and sighs. Both Since she had been open about it, with her. You’ll have to pretend if girls had loved to visit Isobel in sending chatty letters out from her you come. As if they hadn’t had to the big house, sitting listening to bed referring to her illness as a final pretend anyway. Isobel had been her stories. Had she really done all opponent who was out to get her, immovable on that. No public those things? very few of those assembled had gestures of affection, no threat to The sisters didn’t care. It was so been surprised. When she told him Dick, no slur on their position. It’s exhilarating to be around Isobel’s she wanted him to help organise a small village, and utterly animation, listen to her throaty her funeral it was he who found it merciless if you transgress. We like laugh as she unravelled another hard. Don’t be daft she had said it here. How hurt he’d been by that string of recollection. Theirs was I’m not being brave - when did I we. 18 SHORT STORIES
He’d been her lover for four years, arrangements with the minister aroond wi us in the schame. A at first suspecting he was not instead. ‘Slippers’ hissed at teepical fouthie toon bairn, wee- the only one but time had given ‘Hattie’ that they didn’t actually boukit for his years, fair avised, him confidence. They’d met in a know that Isobel had, well, you cowed blond hair wi fernitickles hotel. He was on business, had know, with the window dresser. roond his neb, an chowks sprittlet just finished a difficult meeting ‘Woolies’ agreed but said that wi plouks. A big ‘jessie’ the schame and decided to stop over on the ‘Slippers’ had always been prone bairns cawd him, for his ‘mummy Friday night. She’d been in the to gossip and make stuff up if and daddy’ didnae alloo him tae lounge, sipping Campari on her there wasn’t anything tasty going. gaun oot an slaister in the glaur own, relaxed and alert at one and ‘Woolies’ and ‘Hattie’ stood closer nor hiv troke wi ony o the coorse the same time, wearing a flowing together, a united front against veelege clamjamfrie, but whan he summer dress that the sunlight ‘Slippers’, who remembered they did blether tae onybody, he wis aye penetrated, showing the outline had always done that. Some very on a saipbox blawn his ain horn, of her fine legs. She had smiled at ancient grudges surfaced and yammerin on in his taffie-nebbit him. I’m Isobel. He’d not seen her soured the atmosphere. Isobel’s pan-laif Inglish, an wis aye heich- for a year. She’d insisted that she own sisters and brother coasted heidit an braisant. would phone him, never the other around the room enduring the Ambrose’s faither, Charles way, and she had, only occasionally lightest of exchanges, not really Bertram Fitzgerald wis nane the less than bright and chatty. Not so wishing to know more than that better. A richt nairrae-nebbit many phone calls in the last eight it was a ‘blessed relief’ and a cockapentie! A wee bauchle o a weeks and only one in the last ‘welcome release’ so, in a way. the mannie tae leuk it! Auld-farrant week. Goodbye then. And thanks. room was one circulating wheel of in his cast, oft seen weirin heich Once he settled enough to look platitudes and avoidance. sterched serk-necks, dreich broon around he could see there were tweed suits an a muckle lum hat, several men on their own standing Dick, faint with relief that people the speetin eemage o the gentrice a little apart from the nearest were filtering away without any langsyne. He wis the new appintit group. Men about his age, men fresh distress, remembered heid-bummer doon the oor veelage well groomed, well looked after. his manners. He touched the Coal Pit. Ordinar, maisters an their Once a month, let’s not get bored minister’s elbow. Thank you, nice faimilies wad hiv steyed apairt fae with each other. For no particular sermon. Isobel would have liked the wirkers, bidin in the pit Big reason he counted the other men it. The minister sipped at the sole Hoose, but wi watter sypin throu like him. Seven. Once a month for small sherry he had nursed all the ruif an bleck moold growein up four weekends and a day off. afternoon. I’m glad you liked it but the waas, replenishin it wis unner it was her idea. Dick was slightly wey. In the short tairm Ambrose, The service ended. surprised. Of all the fine detail she Charles an his guidwife, Florence had delineated for the funeral she bade in a tuim cooncil hoose in oor How Isobel would have loved the hadn’t mentioned the sermon to schame. A schame whaur aw the gathering afterwards. How she him. He thought she hadn’t liked wirkin men wrocht doon the Coal would have loved to eavesdrop the minister who had made short Pit, an aw the marrowless weemen on the introductions they made, dutiful calls towards the end. yoked thaimsels atween the the lies they told each other. Dick So, when did you... paper mulls an cairpet factories. hardly spoke to the boys, certainly The minister cleared his throat. Wi awbody prood but puir, an not as a group. They avoided her More than a year ago. We bumped neebors mair like stentit faimily, eight friends, possibly lovers, who into each other at a hotel... aw the veelage fowk war scones o avoided each other. Millie and her the same day’s bakin. Haein this sister got into a huddle with the Vivien Jones new hypocrite neebour leevin in women who had been girls in the the same schame wis bi-ordinar an department store with her and awbody wis suspeecious, nae mair were told even more madcap tales THE BLETHERIN BAWTIE sae thin masel, is thair back yaird of Isobel when she was ‘Separates’ an oor back yaird jyned, an a heich and had a romance with a married widd pailin fence spang the mairch. window dresser. This Ambrose Bertram Fitzgerald Efter scuil an ower the information made Millie so wisnae yin o oor sort! He didnae weik-ends A whiles caucht sicht uncomfortable she dragged her gaun tae oor scuil, weir the same o Ambrose daffin aboot in his sister off to talk about flower auld pookit day-claes nor daff gairden, makkin oot he wis haein THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter/Spring 2016 19
a guid time, wi a spleet-new bike “Ay, it leuks nae-baud! Did the a different repone, onywey he gied iz nor a brent-new toy. Aw the while jyners chairge muckle siller?” a deefie agane, syne rattled on in his breengin aboot an kickin up the “Three pounds ten shillings.” ain massie wey. Efter ten meenits stour tae enteece ither bairns tae “Bletheration! A cuid hiv ma heid stertit tae birl wi him gowp ower the pailins an bi jeelous. biggit ye yin fae widd A scroonged blowin his ain horn an makkit iz feel A kent athin masel thit whan the fae the cowp? Div ye ken whit mait like a glaikit nyaff. A telt him sum flourish an swither o the new- tae gie yer tortie?” whittie-whattie crack, an daundert farrant gemm wis by, Ambrose wad “Yes thank you! I bought a back ower tae ma bawtie hut. A bi lanelie an micht hiv wushed tae really spiffing book from the pet wis fair doon o the mooth efter yon bi oot wi the ither bairns makkin shop in Edinburgh, and they sell all veesit an thocht lang an haurd on deviltrie an gettin aw glaursel, gin it the food I need for my tortoise.” sindry weys tae saut Ambrose, aw wisnae for his sneistie mither. “A bet thay div! An chairge ye the while wushin A had bin mair This wis brocht hame yin muckle anaw! A hiv a tortie masel. eydent an heidie masel. A cuidnae Setterday fornuin whan A wis oot A wis gien it for nithin lest weik fae bide his heich-bendit mainners! in ma back yaird clappin yin o ma Bob Smith, a laddie in ma scuil- It wisnae tull the falloein pet bawties. Ower the pailin fence cless. He said he didnae hiv ony Setterday thit A thocht cam intae A seen Ambrose haiglin a tortie, time tae leuk efter it noo wi him ma heid on a wey tae pey-back cannie-like, it airms lanth, ower stertin tae winch daft Aggie! A doot Ambrose. A had tryst tae gaun ower the gairden an settin it doon on you widnae ken daft Aggie? Likes tae see Tam Airchibald’s racin doos the ruif o a new jyner-biggit widd cuddies mair is torties. fleein hame fae a race, an tae see box. This wis a strynge ferlie, for A “Why should I know this ‘Aggie’ his muckle siller cup he wun lest had jaloused Ambrose’s pauchtie person?” weik. Winnin ower tae the doocot A mither wadnae alloo him tae “Naw, A kent ye widnae ken wis taen-like thit Charlotte, Tam’s hannel sic a ‘mingin baist’, forby daft Aggie. She’s nae baud it sums dauchter, wis cawin the fleein doos allooin him tae keep yin! Efter A for a lassie?” doon, an makkin thaim eat peas fae had feenisht clappin ma bawtie A “My tortoise is female and the luif o her haund. Charlotte wis wis kwerious, sae A daundert ower when she lays eggs I could become eildit wi masel, an wis the bonniest tae the pailin fence, climed up the famous and rich! It says as such in lassie in the schame, wi her lang reid rails an stertit speirin it Ambrose my book?” hair an glossie pirls, plettit doon her aboot his tortie. “Bit div ye no need twae torties back like a cuddie’s tail. Her mither “A see you’ve gotten yersel a tae lay eggs?” maun hiv spent oors wi a kaim an tortie?” “Not my tortoise! She is very brush makkin the pirls ticht, for “Yes. I bought it from special, not like the ordinary one Charlotte kent she wis guid-leukin Perciville Fotheringham, a very that you have!” an wad thrum like a cantie baudron good friend at school, for five “Ma wee tortie cuid be speecial whan ony o the aulder weemen gied shillings. He’s off to America with anaw, ye ken!” A replied, raither pit her ruise. A wis fair taen-on watchin his mummy and daddy next week.” doon. Charlotte an the wey she wrocht the “He maun hiv seen ye comin, Ambrose set up his gab, doos, but it wis Tam A had come for you tae coff up five bob for a soondin like he spaik throu a ower tae see. tortie!” moothfae o speins an telt iz hoo “Hoo’se yer doos daein, Tam?” “I can afford it. My father gives wunnerfae he wis, bein a Ephor “Ay, nae baud. Whit fettle me fifteen shillings a week pocket- of his Academy an hoo he cuid yersel?” money!” screed aff a hail buik o Laitin. A “Ay, braw!” “Crivvens! A hail fifteen bob, a speirt at him whit wis the yaise o “Whit ir ye efter cadgin the day?” weik, tae yersel? A juist get a half- lairnin an gabbin in a deid leid like “A’m no aye on the skech whan croon!” Laitin? He swithert for a meenit A daunder ower tae see ye, ye ken!” “You must be awfully poor? syne pit-on bein deef tae evite the “Ay, A ken. A wis juist haein a Your family work for my father, speirin, afore he spaik back. baur wi ye. Sae whit micht A sell ye don’t they?” “Why do you always use that the day?” “Haurd-up, ay, richt eneuch!” common slang instead of using “Weel! Weel! A’m no buyin! A A siched. “Daes yer mither alloo ye proper English?” cam ower tae scroonge aboot half tae hiv a tortie?” A wis tongue-tackit, an it taen a dizzen doo eggs thit ye telt iz you “Yes she does, but I had to iz a meenit tae blirt oot thit A wis war takkin awa fae yer ‘doo-sitters’ promise her to look after it myself. spaikin Scots. Mebbies he didnae the day?” My father bought me a new hutch ken it wis Scots, nor wis expeckin for my birthday.” 20 SHORT STORIES
“Ay, nae bather. The ‘sitter’s’ “I’d better not. Mother would “Has nobody told you about the eggs juist gaun in the midden be most annoyed with me if birds and the bees?” onywey, whan the guid burds lay. she found me over talking to “Ay, oh ay, A ken aw aboot the Thare micht juist bi five eggs left ragamuffins like you. She say’s burds an the bumbees bit you war mind?” I should’nt fraternize with you’r gabbin on aboot torties. A dinnae Efter haein a leuk it the doos sort!” ken ocht aboot torties! A’ve nae fleein an respeckin the muckle “Weel, A’m no haiglin ma siller tae buy yon buik!” siller cup, A thankit Tam for the bawtie ower the pailins intae your “My tortoise has laid seven five eggs an cairried thaim back yaird!” eggs, two more than your common ower tae ma ain gairden whaur “Just hold on a minute and I’ll one!” A laid thaim in the box aside be quick.” This wis Ambrose makkin oot thit ma tortie, happin thaim unner Ambrose gied a sklent scance his tortie wis better. A kent it wis a a haunfae o hey. A cuid hear ower his shouder tae mak shair his lee, but A juist went alang wi it tae Ambrose makkin oot he wis haein mither wisnae leukin, syne climed tak the rouse. a guid-time playin some gemm ower the pailin fence an dreepit “Weel you’ll bi on yer wey tae or ither ower in his ain yaird, an doon amang the weet rhubarb makkin a bing o siller!” this gaed iz the inlat tae stert ma shaws, whaur yin shaw empied its “Yes. Can’t stay here all day, pliskie. watter doon Ambrose’s trooser-leg must dash, things to do. Toodle Hingin ahint the door , on a makkin him fair roused. pip!” roostie airn cleek in uncle Tam’s “Lord preserve us!” curst “Div ye no want tae hear ma tin hut war twae wee collars. Thay Ambrose. bawtie gabbin?” war makkit fae the tongue o ma “Ir ye aw richt, it’s juist a “No, probably wouldn’t auld buits jyned wi a serk-stud an puckle watter?” understand it anyway! Slang rabbit a wee lanth o raip. A taen yin collar “No! My trousers are soaking talk, what next?” doon aff the cleek, daundert ower wet, and it’s all your fault!” A wis richt prood o masel for tae ma bawtie hut an fessent it “It’s naethin tae dae wi me! A swickin Ambrose efter him bein roond the neck o ma white bawtie, thocht ye wantit to hear ma bawtie sae heich-heidit an impedent, bit like ye wad wi a wee dug. Syne A bletherin?” felt a bittie vext thit oo cuidnae be carried the bawtie oot the hut an “I’d better go home and change freens contrair tae oor differences. set it doon on the gress, keeping out of these wet trousers.” For the lave o the day A gied it haud o the lanth o raip. Juist is “Ay, weel, A’ll no mak the nae mair thocht, an keppit thrang Ambrose wad steer up a stushie tae bawtie gab for ye!” reddin-oot ma baists an gaun bi taen tent o, A did the self-same “What can it say anyway? tae the shops for ma mither’s bi daunderin roond the gairden wi Talk in that working-class slang messages. the bawtie an bletherin awa tae it language probably! It looks just It wis gray derk that same nicht, in a lood vice. It wisnae lang afore like a common rabbit to me.” the ile-leeries war winkin, the lift Ambrose taen the bait an A seen “A’ll show ye! Juist apen the wis hivvie an a cauld frostie haar him climin up his side o the pailin door o ma tortie hut an pou yon wis fawin ower the gairdens. A fence tae hiv a wee deek ower. hey tae the yin side, an A’ll shuv wis haen a sate on the stair-heid “Why have you put your scruffy the bawtie in an she’ll gab tae the juist ootby oor back door, blecknin rabbit on a lead?” speirt Ambrose. tortie!” ma shuin ready for the scuil on “Juist giein it a daunder roond Ambrose did whit A askit Monday, whan A was stertelt bi the gairden.” an poud the hey tae the yin side a stushie in the rhubarb, like a “I didn’t know rabbits went for exposing the five doo-eggs, an deleerit stirk in a muck midden. A walks!” immediately lat oot a yowl o cuidnae mak oot the makker o the “Ay, bit this is ma speecial surpreese. splore, nor whit sculdudderie wis bawtie.” “Crivvens … your tortoise has gaun on, sae A shuved ma shuin “It just looks like an ordinary laid five eggs!” tae yin side an hunker-creept doon rabbit to me! How is it special?” “Dinnae bi sappie-heidit, it the steps, haudin ticht tae the airn “This is a speecial heidie cuidnae?” raivel. Doon on the gress A steyed bawtie, it can blether tae ye!” “Look for yourself, there are athin the bleck shaddaes o the “I don’t believe you! Rabbits five eggs!” privy-hedge till ma een war yaised can’t talk! Can they?” “Ay, richt eneuch! A wunner wi the derk. It wisnae lang afore “Clim ower here an preen back whaur thay cam fae?” A said wi a the bumfly set o Ambrose wis plain yer lugs!” straicht face. is parritch an his bummlin gate THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter/Spring 2016 21
kythed he wisnae kenspeckle in the Fitzgerald’ brocht in five eggs thit The lift slowed and then stopped derk. Ambrose breenged straucht he said his son’s tortie had laid, an with a judder at an intermediate forrit tae ma tortie box, birlt the cuid thay pit thaim in a incubator floor. The doors opened hesitantly, sneck an apent the door. Syne for him? Eck thocht thay leukit creaking loudly as they did so. The he poud the hey tae the side an like ordinar doo eggs. Weel he man inside the lift could see no one ingaithert the five doo-eggs intae shuid ken, he’s bin haunlin doo’s waiting to enter. ‘Oh, come on,’ he a wee bowlie he wis cairryin. Is he an doo’s eggs aw his days! Is ye said, hammering at the ‘G’ button wis aboot tae hap ower the tuim ken, Fitzgerald’s yon stinkin new on the illuminated control panel. mak-up ‘tortie’ nest, he had juist heid-bummer doon the Coal Pit, Lifts didn’t make him nervous. He herried, the girnie chooks fae nixt sae Eck juist zipped his mooth an was always nervous – however door stertit a camsteerie stramash. said naethin. Hooivver, lest weik hard he tried to hide it. By way of Yin chook maun hiv drapt aff its the eggs birdit an juist is Eck had a distraction, he drew a passport- spaik, afore fawin tae the flair thocht, thay turnt oot tae bi doo- sized photograph from his wallet skraichin wi fricht. This set aff a swabs an no wee torties. Whan and glanced at it. The woman in collieshangie o dementit kecklin Fitzgerald cawd in the ither day, the picture was certainly attractive, an flaffin o weengs fae the ither he wis gien a flee in his lug for if not a little pensive looking - her chooks, lood eneuch tae wauken wastin thair time. Eck cuidnae smile concealing an exhaustion the deid. A cuid see Ambrose teeter lang-lug ony mair o the crack, brought about by overwork and not for a meenit an coorie doon in the bit whan Fitzgerald left he wis much pay. shaddaes tae evite bein seen. Syne gey crabbit-leukin an had a richt Just as the lift doors were whan the yammer sattelt an whan beamer on his dial!” about to come together, a man’s he wis certaint thit naebody wis Ambrose wad bi stammygasterd arm thrust between them, forcing gowpin oot thair windaes, he liftit whan the eggs turnt oot tae bi doo’s them open again. ‘I’m so sorry. a leg back ower the pailin fence eggs an maistlike taen a flytin that Just caught it in time. Ground haiglin his ill-gotten eggs. nicht fae his faither, but A’m shair floor?’ asked the man as he stepped A steyed in ma hidie-hole his rummlegumption wadnae alloo inside. He was smartly dressed and in the sheddaes o the hedge, fair him tae say he stealt the eggs fae appeared relaxed despite having dumfoonert! Sic a unnerhaun wey ma tortie box. Whit ham an haddie clearly rushed to catch the lift. tae ack! Ony thochts A had thit crack he telt his faither maun hiv Without looking at the oo micht bi freens went oot the bin a lee, is juist him an masel kent newcomer, the anxious man windae, an ony thochts o giein the truith, an A nivver telt onybody. responded. ‘Yes. Ground floor.’ Ambrose a bittie hey nor a laittuce This wis oor saicret, an is the auld The lift resumed its journey. for his tortie tae eat, wis by. Ma freit says - It was not until the relaxed man birse wis up, reekin A wis it whit A “Oo lat that flee stick tae the waa!” turned towards him that the had juist seen, but cuid dae naethin anxious man was able to take a aboot it, bein juist ma wird agin Iain McGregor good look at his fellow passenger. his, an whae wad believe a wee tike He could not believe his eyes. like me! ‘Aaargh!’ The scream merged BESIDE MYSELF with a loud crashing noise from ***** above as the lift ground to a halt ‘Where did it all go wrong?’ The between floors. It wis ower fower weik fae the thought was like a pestering voice The anxious man slowly time A played the ‘gabbin bawtie’ inside his head. He would often peeled his fingers from his eyes. pliskie on Ambrose an the mindin hear it at mental downtimes such He thought for a moment that o it had gaun oot ma heid. Yon as queuing at the supermarket the mirrored walls of the lift were wis tull yin mornin while A wis checkout or waiting for the traffic playing tricks with his vision so haen a blether wi Charlotte on the lights to change. he looked sideways at his own scuil-bus an the nem ‘Fitzgerald’ Travelling in a lift was another reflection. His worst fears were wis brocht up. A priggit ma lugs an necessary but time-wasting confirmed. Standing next to taen tent o whit Charlotte telt iz: activity which left his mind open him in the mirror was the image “Ay, ma brither Eck has left to invasion. ‘I’m in the wrong job, of himself, albeit somewhat the scuil noo an has gotten hissel living with the wrong woman. I feel better dressed and smarter in a job doon the ‘Poultry Research as if I’m living someone else’s life appearance. Station’. Weel ye ken whit? Thray, entirely.’ ‘Haven’t we met before fower weik syne a ‘Mr Charles somewhere?’ said the other, with 22 SHORT STORIES
an air of relaxed calm. looking at the other with disdain. ‘I small investment firm offered me ‘I must be imagining this. It bet you’ve never had to worry about a position straight from school. isn’t happening. This just isn’t anything! Where the next penny’s Maybe, if I’d taken it, I’d be solvent. happening,’ exclaimed the anxious coming from… Women. Women! More than solvent. Like you.’ man. I bet you don’t have any problems ‘And maybe if “I” hadn’t taken With the manner of someone with women. You probably operate it…’ The relaxed man’s words were whose daily routine regularly a queuing system!’ interrupted by a loud noise from included being trapped in a lift with ‘Well, not exactly,’ said the within the lift shaft. his doppelganger, the relaxed man relaxed man, laughing. ‘But hey, ‘What was that?’ asked the scanned the lift control panel for an you look like me. You obviously anxious man, gasping for air. alarm. can’t have any problems in that ‘Maybe someone’s trying to ‘This should fix things,’ he said, department either.’ reach us,’ responded the relaxed pressing a red button. The anxious man looked directly man with a note of uncertainty in ‘Shouldn’t there be a sound - like into the eyes of his double. ‘Oh, I his voice. a bell ringing, or something?’ asked may look like you but I’m not you. They both stared at the ceiling the anxious man. You’re me! You are the person I in anticipation of another noise but Without responding, the relaxed wanted to be when I grew up.’ He the lift shaft remained silent. The man reached into his inside pocket became increasingly irate. ‘Instead, relaxed man looked at his expensive and produced a mobile phone. I have a crap job, a girlfriend who watch. ‘I’m going to be very late.’ ‘Hmmm. No reception,’ he doesn’t love me…’ He started to cry. ‘A business appointment?’ asked said, with only the slightest note of ‘I bet you spend more on a haircut the anxious man, trying as hard as irritation. than I earn in a week.’ He slumped he could to remain calm. ‘What do you mean, “no to the floor and sat with his head in ‘No… I was supposed to meet reception” ?!’ screamed the his hands. my girlfriend - well, fiancé, really. anxious man. ‘I’m stuck in a lift The relaxed man sat down She usually only waits for twenty with my complete double, and I’m beside him and looked up at the minutes or so before she storms off claustrophobic!’ ceiling. ‘Where did it all go wrong?’ in a huff.’ ‘Yes, I know,’ said the relaxed ‘You’re not married, then?’ man. The anxious man looked at him asked the anxious man. ‘How do you know?’ disbelievingly. ‘What did you say?’ ‘Not as such.’ ‘Well… I can tell these things ‘Why would you be? All that about people,’ he responded. The relaxed man responded. ‘I money, all those women after you. ‘People? People?! But you’re… just wondered… Where did it all go Why settle down?’ you’re me,’ insisted the anxious wrong?’ The relaxed man smiled to man. ‘I’ll tell you exactly where it all himself. ‘Life isn’t as simple as that.’ In an attempt to pacify his went wrong! I wanted to study, to ‘I bet it is for you,’ said the increasingly distraught companion, follow a career. “You should take anxious man, sarcastically. the relaxed man acknowledged the opportunities whilst they’re ‘How long have you been with their startling similarity. there”, they said. “Grab life with your partner?’ asked the relaxed ‘Well, I’ll admit we do bear a both hands”, they said. There was man. resemblance…’ a time when your parents wanted ‘Ten years - one year of bliss ‘Resemblance?’ spluttered the you to stay on at school and get a followed by nine years of “when are anxious man. ‘Look at us both!’ university degree. Now it’s all about we going to get married? When are The two men looked into the quick money and security - and we going to have children?”’ mirrored wall. children.’ ‘Well, if you’re so unhappy why ‘Look! We’re the same!’ ‘So you didn’t take the don’t you leave her?’ The relaxed man studied the apprenticeship?’ ‘I was going to. I had it in my other’s clothes and hair. ‘Well… not ‘How did you know about that?!’ head that I’d tell her today. I was quite.’ ‘Well… if your parents were going to meet her this afternoon,’ ‘But look at our faces!’ worried, there must have been said the anxious man with a hint of ‘Well, you could be me but… we some kind of opportunity you regret. seem to have lead – how should I missed out on.’ ‘You were? But not now.’ put it? – very different lives.’ The anxious man studied the ‘I just don’t know if it’s the right ‘You’re telling me!’ shouted the other man with suspicion. ‘Yes thing to do,’ said the anxious man. anxious man as he staggered back, there was,’ he said, hesitantly. ‘A ‘If I were in your position, I’d try and make it work.’ THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter/Spring 2016 23
‘Oh, would you,’ he responded, the anxious man who was now toolbox whilst the woman stood cynically. attempting to prise the control directly in front of the lift doors ‘Yes, I would. You say she panel from the wall of the lift with waiting for them to open. She doesn’t love you but she’s his fingernails. looked more relaxed than she had clearly determined to stay in the ‘So now we can be friends,’ said appeared in the wallet photograph relationship.’ the relaxed man with a reassuring - less anxious and visibly more ‘She only wants to stay in the smile. affluent. She wondered how her relationship because it’s too late The anxious man began beloved must be feeling after such to find someone else to have kids thumping the lift doors with all an ordeal. She gave a broad smile with.’ his remaining strength. ‘That’s it! as the lift doors finally opened. The relaxed man looked at the Someone get me out of here!’ ‘You waited,’ said the relaxed other directly. ‘Sounds like she’s too Undeterred, the relaxed man as he stepped out of the lift. good for you.’ man continued. ‘Or rather, we ‘Of course I did, Darling,’ said ‘What do you know about it?!’ can live the rest of our lives in the woman as she put her arms ‘My fiancé wants children the knowledge that, whichever around him. too. And I was thinking of… well, decision we made, we’re both The man in overalls peered moving on.’’ alive, healthy and have someone behind them. ‘Just you in there, ‘Well, why haven’t you, then?’ who loves us. Now that’s not a bad Sir? Thought I heard voices,’ The relaxed man became result is it?’ ‘Just me,’ said the relaxed man, philosophical. ‘You don’t know what The anxious man paused. ‘I his gaze fixed on the woman’s you have until you no longer have think I’m going to be sick.’ face. They took each other’s hand it,’ he said. ‘Okay, I know it sounds and started along the corridor Another crashing sound struck corny…’ said the relaxed man. towards the exit. overhead. The lift creaked and the ‘No. I think I really am going ‘Tell me, Darling,’ asked the two men felt a slight downward to be sick.’ The anxious man fell woman, ‘I know you don’t like to shift as the lift rocked from side to to his knees and threw up. At talk about it but how on Earth did side. the same moment, the lift began you manage in there with your ‘I don’t think I can stand this to descend smoothly and quietly claustrophobia? You must have any longer,’ said the anxious man, as if its journey had never been been terrified.’ succumbing to his stress. He stood interrupted. The relaxed man smiled. ‘I was up. ‘Help! Help!’ The relaxed man quietly beside myself.’ The relaxed man winced a little. exhaled and waited patiently for ‘Just try to keep calm. Someone will the lift to reach the ground floor. Tim Nevil find us.’ Just as it did so, he put his hand ‘Not before I’ve gone completely on the shoulder of the kneeling out of my mind!’ figure beneath him. ‘Think ‘Or mine…’ said the relaxed about what I said. It may mean man, under his breath. ‘You know,’ something to you one day.’ he continued, ‘I’m starting to see The anxious man was this encounter as an opportunity - a inconsolable. ‘Wake up! Please chance to put to rest some ghosts wake up,’ he muttered to himself. from the past,’ The lift came to a halt at the ‘What do you mean?’ asked the ground floor. There was a brief anxious man, manically prodding pause before the doors began to the buttons on the lift control panel. open. ‘Well, you see me as all that you ‘Where did it all go wrong?’ might have been had you made a The unsolicited thought returned. different decision when you were ‘Maybe it didn’t. Maybe… all is as younger,’ suggested the relaxed it should be.’ man. A smartly dressed woman ‘Yes. And?’ and a man in overalls had been ‘And… Now we’ve met.’ waiting at ground floor level for ‘If you think we should be the lift to arrive. The man was taking this nightmare hallucination carefully replacing tools into his seriously, then yes, we’ve met,’ said 24 SHORT STORIES
A CREATIVE DREAM The next moment I awoke present day problems. in confusion. Yes – I had just C (connect, craft, conflict, clarity, Even in my wildest dreams I experienced a very unusual, credibility) hadn’t expected to encounter such oppressive and mischievous − Writing is all about making a vision! Multifaceted, strange, dream. connections – connections creative. Over the following weeks between different events But this did happen on the I read an assortment of books happening at different times. morning of 21 October, 2014 – the about dreams but got nowhere. The other four form the kernel dream came to me barely an hour I wondered if some dreams are of good writing - craft being before waking. It was vivid and a reality. The memory of the most important, as the others powerful: lamentable experience lingered in stem from your writing skill. I was standing in front of an my mind. Should I adopt a laissez- D (be different, diary, dialogue) audience of about thirty or so faire attitude about the entire − Readers welcome something members of Borders Writers’ episode – or should I do something different. If your interest Forum – at the Holy Trinity about it? extends beyond run-of-the- Church premises – hardly a mile No, I can’t take it lying down, mill topics, you could write from where I live in Melrose. I I resolved. Not doing anything about subjects like the was giving a talk entitled Tips for would have amounted to accepting paranormal, the afterlife or Aspiring Writers. defeat. The least I could do was metaphysics. Remember, During the talk I was repeatedly to write a resume of my talk. The Helen Macdonald’s H for pointing towards the back of the audience, not least the fledgling Hawk was awarded not hall, the area where most of the writers, must have been eager to only the 2014 Costa Book of enthusiastic newcomers were learn from it. the Year award but also the sitting – everything was going very Here is, then, the A-Z of Samuel Johnson prize. well. important pointers to creative − A diary forms the building About halfway through the writing. Some of the tips are self- block of ideas and helps in meeting, a woman sitting in the explanatory and hence are not formulating anecdotes, travel front row suddenly got up. Waving elaborated on: writing and memoirs. her hands in the air and facing − A dialogue brings the the audience, she announced: “I A (agent, avoid, artistic license, characters to life thus making am sick and tired of his antics,” anecdotes) the story natural and readable. pointing at me. “He is virtually − It’s not essential, but it E (e-publishing) addressing only the people helps if you can afford an − Writers now have a choice: sitting in the back rows – as if agent. with the advent of this we in the front don’t exist. This − Avoid libellous writing and revolutionary way of getting is the height of rudeness. Don’t copying from others. published, one does not have you think so?” She then looked − Anecdotes make writing more to depend on the mercy of around, as if expecting approval – interesting and readable. traditional publishing houses. but none came from the startled B (books, browse, bibliotherapy) F (flashback, foreign words, audience. In fact, she was totally − Extensive reading is the key to freelancing) ignored. Huffing and puffing, she good writing. No writer should − Do explain the foreign words if then picked up her handbag and be without the Writers’ and you have to use them. stormed out of the building. Artists’ Yearbook – the most G (grammar, graphic novel) But who was that truculent important writing resource. − Writing a graphic novel is woman? I had not seen her − Make a note of good book- not every writer’s dream. But previously. There was now an titles, browse blurbs and if interested, make a foray into awkward silence - I was too observe cover designs. this interesting adventure. shocked to utter even a word. With Prospective buyers have only H (humour, help) all the confidence I could muster, a few minutes to make a − Humour is the spice of writing I found myself unable to resume choice. They usually look at – use it. my talk. Soon, I was surrounded the title, the blurb and the first − Help is almost always at hand. by my colleagues, who thanked me few lines. All you need to do is ask a for my calmness in the face of the − Why not make a foray into trusted colleague to help you provocation. bibliotherapy? Be a literary (with editing, for example). healer by writing about THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter/Spring 2016 25
I (illustrations, interviews, O (organise, observe, orthography) − Tweaking – for best results, inspiration) − Organise your writing routine. final pruning of the text − Consider illustrations a part of Writing in fits and starts is not should not be forgotten. your writing. a sin. Keep a record of articles V (verse) − Interview or seek advice from sent - to whom, when and − We writers learn a lot from established writers. A few where – with telephone reading poetry: it helps in years ago I arranged to meet an numbers. Be observant while choosing appropriate and eminent Scottish writer to critically analysing people’s powerful words, share in his writing skills. day-to-day activities. metaphors and rhythm. “Life’s not always about love, P (photographs, professionalism) Inclusion of a poetry piece happiness and enjoyment, − Photographs are immensely should be seriously considered ” he emphasised. “Do not helpful, especially if you are in any prose-work. forget horror, sadness, planning to write your memoir W (write, words, what if, writer’s betrayal and life’s other posers. (never forget your roots – your block) posers.” roots come to your rescue if all − Write what interests you: − There are several sources of else fails). fiction, non-fiction, poetry. inspiration but the best one R (reading, resources, rejections) Be a playwright, an illustrator is the encouragement - − Read regularly, often critically. or a translator. And, if there if it comes your way - from Don’t judge a piece of writing is no financial consideration, established writers or by its title. Recently I read a write something which will publishers who are well- piece about a Bentley endure and be remembered versed in the tricks of the trade. convertible (of no interest to for decades and centuries. K (knowledge, of) me) but the article’s The writings of Homer, Proust, − It is helpful to have some enchanting prose, packed Fitzgerald and Twain are understanding of the workings with conflicts and several shining examples. of the complex world of twists and turns, was an − Use clear and weighty words. publishing: copyright, interesting read. Read − Writer’s block does exist. If contracts and libel issues. translated books of foreign you are afflicted, slow down − Be acquainted with the tax languages - we live in a global or even stop writing for a you would have to pay on your village, after all. while. After a period of rest, royalties. − It’s unnecessary to reply to any resume writing slowly. − Know how to sell yourself rejection letter. You need - sometimes, selling your peace of mind to get on All literary rules can be broken books can be more difficult with your writing. Don’t allow if necessary. All said, the bottom than writing them! a rejection slip to rankle. line is this: to write well, you need L (letters) S (secrets, seeding, self-publishing) to read regularly and extensively; − Private correspondences and − Seeding: for the sake of the and your pursuit should be letters are invaluable for credibility of the story, underpinned by passion and skill memoir writing – as an aide- forewarn the audience for writing. memoire. delicately about crucial M (mystery, music) impending events. It’s not the It’s now early October 2015, − Interest in music enhances same as revealing a secret - almost a year since I had that one’s writing skills. Writing just the opposite. A secret dream. But somehow I don’t is interlinked with music and should be kept as long as it is envisage an unpleasant edge to it. painting. possible to do so. It’s ironic, then, how our thoughts N (networking, novel: − It’s worth attending national and feelings evolve, reshape or even counterfactual, non-fiction) or local workshops on self- alter over a period of time. − Networking is important - it publishing. can help resolve niggling T (technical, time-management, Raghu B. Shukla issues more easily. tweaking) − Write a counterfactual novel − Do ask for the help of an if you are adventurous and appropriate professional if you well motivated to do so. are including material you − Market research is a must in are not well-versed with. non-fiction writing. 26 SHORT STORIES
THE CASE OF THE I dummied up; I figured I wasn’t be orange but he’s been suspicious giving anything away for free. Her COLOURED KIPPER of me ever since. More so since I sultry eyes narrowed. I could see (with apologies to Marlowe, made him take out the special life she was enjoying the muscular Hammet et al.) insurance.’ twitching of my shoulders. ‘How much?’ The melancholy building was ‘Oh Mr Trowel, Archie thinks I’m ‘Three hundred thousand – in two storeys of nothing in particular trying to poison him, but I swear case he died of fish poisoning. Oh that had got itself stuck between the kipper was already orange. If Tam,’ she gasped, ‘help me, you a cut price suit emporium and an only I could find out how they had gotta find out who dyed the kipper!’ Asian drapery, with a dark narrow coloured it. I offered them money ‘But what’s in it for me?’ lobby as dirty as a chicken yard. but they wouldn’t tell!’ ‘Anything you want,’ she Etched on the grimy glass panel ‘Take it from the beginning whispered, but I grabbed her of the third door was “De’Seesed babe,’ I suggested. handbag removing her of five and partner” except De’Seesed was ‘Well, you’ve heard of the golden thousand sheets. deceased – he’d retired two years Shakudo Nanako Goto?’. ‘This’ll juice the boiler, get me a earlier with a donated .38 slug in I shook my head. new bean-shooter and some shells,’ his blades. I let myself into the ‘It’s a valuable tsuba….Then I grunted. ‘Oh, bye the way - how smoky room and snarled a good it disappeared for nearly five does the golden tsubu tie in with morning to Kitty Rapture. She hundred years until it turned up the kipper?’ leaned over and switched off the last August where a second-hand ‘It doesn’t,’ she sighed, twisting smoke machine. book dealer named Steele sold it to the rock on her finger, ‘I just put ‘Well you look like something my husband. that in for glamour!’ my cat brought up,’ she said. Her ‘….And now it’s gone,’ I finished. I leaned out and grabbed her tongue was sharp, but her figure ‘No,’ she said, ‘well at least it wrists and pulled her towards was round and did things to men. wasn’t an hour ago when I left me, ‘I always go for dames named I kicked open the bottom drawer home.’ Pocahontas – it was my mother’s of her desk, trickled two inches of I leaned back on my stool and name,’ I said. bourbon down my tubes, kissed studied her legs. She had a pair ‘Where’d you learn my name?’ Kitty on her lush red mouth and of gams to tighten any man’s ‘I haven’t been a private snoop set fire to a cigarette. I looked at throat. The big rope of oyster fruit twelve years for nothing, babe.’ her ears, liking the way they were shimmered round her neck. I ‘I thought you said it was nine?’ joined to her head. inched along the wall and took a ‘It just seems like twelve,’ I held ‘Any customers?’ quick gander out of the window. A her until she went blue on the lips, ‘A dame called McClumphy thin man was reading a newspaper and then pushed her out the door. came to see you. A looker. Had a outside a shop two blocks away. He Then I slipped a pint of corn-juice big rope of oyster fruit round her was wearing an Armani beige coat, in my pocket, picked up a deck of neck. Said she would be back’. an Armani beige hat and Armani luckies and went to look for a book- I shimmied to the inner office beige trousers. He was a one man dealer called Robin Steele. I knew where I lay down on my bunk and Armani. he didn’t have anything to do with took another snort of the red-eye. I let my cigarette burn down my the kippers, but in my business you Five minutes later an ash blonde fingers until it made a red mark. I don’t overlook anything. with eyes the colour of split peas studied her legs again – this was The thin Armani man had taken crashed in. Her chest was heaving going to be trickier than I thought. the slip by the time I got outside, and she looked good that way. ‘Last night I brought home so I hired a hack to St Boswells, ‘Mr Trowel?’ she gasped. I made kippers for Archie’s dinner - from cut over to Newtown, bussed a noise that could have been ‘yes’ Tesco’s. You know them?’ to Kingsknowe then hitched to and waited – I wanted to play it ‘Bits of fish, yellow in colour?’ Selkirk. Somebody could be tailing safe. Her eyes darkened, lightened, got me so I doubled back to Newtown ‘Mr Trowel,’ she panted, ‘you – darker again. ‘How did you know?’ and hopped a crate to Gala Bank you’ve gotta help me.’ ‘I haven’t been a private op nine Street, where the second-hand ‘Call me Tam,’ I said as nicely as years for nothing sister! Go on.’ bookshop was. I could. ‘I knew something was wrong as A greasy sap with a cable ‘Tam,’ she said rolling the sound soon as Archie screamed and threw sweater told me his name was around her kisser. ‘I don’t think his plate at the wall,’ she sobbed, ‘I Steele. His eyes became twisted I’ve heard that name before. Where tried to tell him it was supposed to when I asked if he had anything on you from?’ THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter/Spring 2016 27
fumousus heringus or the common up against my beezer. It was a outside come on, then off, then on, kipper. Derringer multi-barrel rotating then off and on again. I soaked my ‘You got the wrong handle mister striker with a .357 Magnum pipes with some giggle juice and – you’re tooting the wrong ringer,’ cartridge. made for Kitty’s desk outside. She he squirmed. ‘Get them up gum-shoe!’ scowled at me from her copy of ‘Maybe some spinach’ll smarten Pocahontus McClumphy’s voice ‘National Enquirer’. you up,’ I said as I folded a blue was colder than an icebox but her ‘Need me any more tonight note and scratched his chin with Armani dress was smokin’ hot. ‘So boss?’ it. ‘There’s more of this for anyone - you found out about the tainted ‘Nope,’ I answered and who knows why Pocahontus kipper?’ she sneered. dropped a pair of C’s on her lap. McClumphy’s kipper was orange.’ ‘Yeah – easy. It was Sunset ‘Here - buy yourself some new glad His eyes got small, big, then smaller Yellow E110 with Tartrazine. rags and ice for those fingers.’ again. And all you had to do was add a ‘So Tam - you figured out the ‘I might talk for a tenner.’ He slug of nux vomica commonly red-herrings?’ Kitty sneered, nodded through to the back. I took recognised as a member of the folding the bills down into her a step forward. Four seconds later Loganiaceae family, or Strychnine cleavage. my head went off like a Harlem - to your husband’s fish. You ‘No red-herrings babe,’ I smiled, sunset. When I came round, I was knew it wouldn’t show up when ‘just an orange kipper…….’ licking the floor with my kisser and the croaker did the post-mortem! big Jock from Lothian and Borders It would be masked by the Louise Thomson was leaning over me. monosodium glutamate allergy ‘Someone coshed me,’ I grunted. your husband had! Then you and ‘Yeah, his name was Oxford. playboy Chris Tobalz would collect THE FROG DOWN THE Oxford unabridged and he held up a on the policy and lay low in Peebles WELL copy of the dictionary. ‘You tripped, till the heat died down. But you and this fell on your brain cage.’ He didn’t count on me!’ pointed over to where Robin Steele ‘You,’ she laughed, ‘what are you Sally-Ann Higgins was a witch. lay slumped over a sweaty pile of gonna do about it?’ Hugh knew she was because she westerns. ‘He passed out cold when ‘This.’ I snarled as I twisted had told everyone in her posh he saw you take a fall.’ the rug from beneath her and she English accent. I covered up, letting Jock play went down like a fish. The bullet “And that’s why you have to do his game. I wasn’t showing my whinnied past me into the roof as I what I tell you, or I’ll turn you into hand until I knew what game scissored over the desk and pinned a frog and throw you down the I was playing. I sidled off to her to the wall. well.” Macarie’s where I spent the next ‘Tam.’ Suddenly her body was She had a book of spells, twenty minutes shooting caffeine soft and the voice was limp. ‘Don’t a jotter she had taken out of and thinking. I was sitting next turn me in. You cared for me – Miss Macintyre’s cupboard one to a punk who could have been once.’ playtime, and decorated with Northern Latvian, but wasn’t. I set ‘Too bad Pocahontus. You’d only coloured stars. fire to a gasper and headed out. I double-cross me again.’ I said. She was in the class above Hugh, needed to get to a horn. I found ‘Oh darling, don’t you see we’d but at playtime every day she would an empty blower booth and put be real good together. Don’t call come and find him and make him a call through to a geezer I knew copper!’ hand over his lunch money. Hugh over Grundison Heights. Worked There was a silence in the room, would try to hide himself in ever a small delicatessen counter in only broken by Kitty’s breathing more secret places but there was Morrison’s. It took a while to get against the keyhole. I picked up always someone scared enough or the juice because it was a bad line the blower and dialled through to treacherous enough to tell on him. and the dick had been dead two the Lothian and Borders Police Then one day she said it wasn’t years, but I don’t give up that easy. clubhouse. enough. By the time I got back to the “I want £5 tomorrow.” office, via Earlston and Charlesfield For ten minutes after they Hugh felt hot and prickly. “I to cover my tracks, all the pieces carried her away to the cooler I haven’t got £5,” he said. were in place. Or so I thought sat alone in empty silence, only “You’d better have by tomorrow. until she appeared from my wall broken by Kitty’s breathing against Or I’ll turn you into a frog and cupboard with a heater pressed the keyhole, watching the lights throw you down the well.” 28 SHORT STORIES
That afternoon, Miss Gordon Hugh was hiding behind some together and saying the magic asked Hugh if he was feeling all bushes when Sally-Ann Higgins words. Then he sat and waited, right. He shook his head and found him and pocketed his lunch heart thudding. she told him to go and lie down money. Suddenly there was the frog, on the settee in the staffroom. “And where’s my £5?” she said. hopping along, and he threw his Hugh seized the opportunity. He Hugh was shaking. “I don’t have jacket over it. searched in the cupboards, in the it,” he said. “Sally-Ann Higgins,” he said, “I’ll desk drawers, behind the cushions. “Right,” said Sally-Ann. She throw you down the well yourself.” But all he found was tea, coffee, produced her book of spells. a bottle of milk and a packet of “Wait!” said Hugh. “I can get Olga Wojtas digestive biscuits. you something better. I can get you When he got home, he told his my mum’s jewellery. I’ll bring it in mother he needed £5 for the school tomorrow, honest.” the next day. Sally-Ann stared at him. “I don’t His mother laughed. “What, are want your mum’s scabby jewellery. you buying it?” I’ll give you one last chance - £10, “It’s for our summer trip. Miss tomorrow. If not, you’re going Gordon said.” down the well.” “You mean five shillings.” After playtime, Hugh, who was “No, she did say £5, and I’ve got normally top of the class at mental to take it in tomorrow.” arithmetic, got all the answers “Oh, stop looking so worried! wrong, and then when they went She’s made a mistake.” on to English, he failed to parse a “It wasn’t a mistake!” said Hugh. single sentence correctly. He hardly “I’ve got to have £5!” even noticed Miss Gordon telling “Don’t be silly. I’ll give you five him off for daydreaming. shillings.” At lunchtime, he concealed The only hope now was his himself where he could spy on father. Hugh stayed awake until Sally-Ann and her gang. She was long after his parents had gone scaring a group of infants, showing to bed. Then he crept down the them a daisy-chain and telling hall and started feeling through them that she was slitting the his father’s jacket pockets. The daisies’ throats. The infants began only things there were a packet of to cry. Sally-Ann and her gang cigarettes and a lighter. started to chase them, herding Scarcely breathing, he slipped them in one direction and then into his parents’ room, just able another, making them cry even to make out shapes with the louder. moonlight coming through the Hugh sneaked round to the cotton curtains. He made his way bench where they had left their to his father’s bedside table and schoolbags. He retrieved Sally- patted his hand across the surface Ann’s book of spells and then left to find the wallet. Something fell school by the back gate. He had with a crash and his mother sat up. never played truant in his life “Hugh? What’s the matter? Tom, before, but then his life had never wake up!” been at stake before. She got out of bed and switched Out of sight in a hollow beside the light on. the river, he looked through the “Hugh, what’s wrong?” book and found the spell for Hugh stared at her wordlessly. turning people into frogs. It was “Come on now, you’ve been sleep a potion made of dog’s pee, cow walking. I’ll get you back to bed and dung, pond scum, nettles, and tuck you in.” spit. It took him a while to collect everything, but he followed the * * * * instructions precisely, mixing them THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter /Spring 2016 29 INTERVIEW It must have been a challenge working for the Anti- Apartheid Press in South Africa.
It was tough and sometimes heart- breaking seeing racism close-up. It was like an extension of my participation in student protest against Apartheid, only on a professional level.
The up-beat side was that I met some very interesting people, such as Nadine Gordimer, Ayn Rand, Gary Player and Margot Fonteyn. I was also the only reporter on night ©Marianne Bailey duty in a large newsroom when word of the North Sea oil find came INTERVIEW WITH through, never guessing that one I left my homeland when I PAT MOSEL day I would live in Scotland. Author, Editor and Former was eighteen, to go to uni in Grahamstown, Cape Province, Journalist You now live in the Scottish South Africa. And apart from Borders. Have you worked in working during my vacations for Pat wrote her first short story at the journalism here? And what newspapers back home, it was only age of nineteen while studying for a other writing projects have much later that I went back to visit Bachelor of Journalism degree. She you been involved in since the newly independent Zimbabwe. continued to write fiction alongside then? her newspaper career, her arrival You gained degrees in in Britain from Africa nearly forty Lots. For some time I was self- journalism and English years ago, and while living in employed, running my own Literature from South African different parts of the Borders since freelance editorial company. I’ve universities. In what ways do 1980. To date, she has published been involved in the production you think that your work as a two novels and numerous pieces of of brochures and newsletters; journalist has influenced your journalism, and short stories. have written many a press release fiction writing? and magazine feature article. I’m In this interview with Iona very proud of the fact that I wrote Although I trained as a journalist, McGregor, she talks about her the Bedrule section of The Third I think it fair to say that my first literary career. Statistical Account of Scotland, love was always English Literature which is in the Borders library and I have a BA Honours degree in Let’s start with a little about system, along with my two novels. English Literature. yourself. You were born in I contributed to a Borders-focused Zimbabwe and you lived in book, a limited edition, called A Although journalism has given South Africa. Celebration of Nature through the me huge and varied experiences, Seasons. I also began to edit other in some ways, journalistic style Yes. As on my birth certificate I people’s manuscripts, and this I hindered my progress as a creative was born in Southern Rhodesia, still do. which became Rhodesia and, writer because a news story is succinct and usually has an at Independence, gained the What made you move from acknowledged structure. It’s hard name Zimbabwe, deriving, as I journalism to fiction writing? to believe, but there was a time understand it, from the name of Your first novel was Ruth. when I wondered whether I ever a marvellous stone enclosure, What influences do you think would write at length! remaining evidence of a very played a part in the writing of ancient civilisation in the heart of this novel? Can you tell us a the country. little about the book? 30 INTERVIEW
I think you are talking about the because out of a germ of an idea from her comfortable home differences between factual writing grew the character of Jerusha and in Edinburgh. She takes a bus and fiction, and the challenge she led the book. I consider her ride into the countryside and is of combining the two in one fun, with her outsize figure, her befriended by two adventurers book. Apart from the historical playfulness, her determination and a retired psychiatrist. While framework, Ruth is such a mix of to be herself even whilst shifting her family is desperately worried fact and fiction that it would take an her own goalposts. She is positive and the police search for her, for expert to separate warp from weft. and optimistic. As one character a brief period she experiences the says; ‘Jerusha would celebrate the excitement she craves. For instance, I describe Ruth as a blossoming of a single daffodil if young child dropping a tiny African she could.’ I have more ideas for fiction but baby on the floor. This did happen, have not yet decided which to but the consequences were not so I chose to include a gay couple as follow first. I am in the process dire. It is meant to encourage the people with their own ideas about of writing a non-fiction book, the reader to look at guilt as a thing that relationships and sexuality. In the subject of which is under wraps at can be fabricated, especially amongst background, I was also working the moment. children. I hope that my novels can through in my mind the controversy be read on both a superficial level about the ordination of gay priests What do you think is the main and at a deeper level. in the Church of Scotland. The purpose in writing? book explores the idea of love as In the book, I also wanted to counter conqueror in both a light-hearted To communicate. For instance, some of the rumours and illusions and serious manner. I believe that a novel is only about Rhodesia as a country. Clearly, complete when it has been read. it was grossly undemocratic to deny What genre are these books? the African the vote, but there was For the most part, you have You have had a very interesting no ‘holocaust’ under white majority chosen the Scottish Borders as literary career. Have you any rule and slavery had been abolished your setting. Why? advice that you would like when Rhodesia was founded. Often, to give aspiring writers and, servants were treated as part of the They can both be described as in particular the younger family. whodunnits, but, more than that, generation of writers? they are crime stories that hold up a The concept of reality plays an mirror to society. The old adage holds good: if you important part in this novel. want to write, read. Read as much Several readers have told me as you can. Read the books you I think it very important that people they especially like reading about like. Cultivate curiosity. Collect learn to ground themselves. This the Borders. Jerusha’s Tricks is experiences. Observe people. Hold is not the same as differentiating set in an imaginary village near on to your dream but be prepared between truth and lies but it more Abbotsford. Ruth is set in a part to work hard. There are plenty akin to coping with virtual reality. of the Borders that I came to of creative writing courses that With our background of movies, know well as I lived there for over will give you some rules of prose television viewing, marketing twenty years. Who could fail to writing, such as show don’t tell or and media bombardment and the be enchanted by the undulating the ins and outs of point of view. constant evolution of technology, countryside of the Borders? One of the best pieces of advice I we need to keep a grip on the real. got was to let the writing drive you In Ruth, we have to decide whether That having been said, some of my rather than you drive it. or not a ruby-studded pistol is short stories are set in Africa and You might want to try writing in actually possible. some of my future writing may well longhand first, as I do with creative be set in the continent of my birth. writing, not for journalism. It’s You have published a second old fashioned and slower, but it is novel Jerusha’s Tricks. Was What other writing projects do a different thought process. You this a more difficult book to you have in mind? write with your hands as well as write? your head. I have just submitted a radio drama I wrote Jerusha’s Tricks after I to the BBC about a woman with You can buy Pat’s books on wrote Ruth but published it first. problems who, on the spur of the Amazon or reach her on her It was, in effect, easier to write moment, decides to go missing website www.patmosel.co.uk THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter/Spring 2016 31 THEATRE, FILM & EVENT REVIEWS ARABIC THEATRE AND posyl, stoika and tormoz and we all were shown how to build a movement with these four parts and then MEYERHOLD BIOMECHANICS enacted these.
In the Spring 2014 Issue 24 of The Eildon Tree, Robert The point is that every movement of the actor requires Leach reported on an International Theatre to be : 1)Exact 2)Efficient (Expressive) 3)Aesthetic Festival held in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan he – thus conveying the Illusion of Reality. It needs to attended, emphasising the importance of physical express a Goal, and Achievement of Goal – The Full performance - the body of the actor - in bringing truth Stop (Stoika). to performance, as exemplified by the great Russian Theatre Director Vserolod Meyerhold. A member of The Actors role is improvisation based, but Meyerhold’s the judging jury in that event was the Director Fadil system is based on the tempo of music, crescendo, Jaf, who recently came to the Borders to give a talk and largato etc, musicality is the essence of his system Workshop about this. and stylisation, taking the essence of the scene, leaving the details. The Études, therefore are set to music, Fadil Jaf is a theatre director, trainer and teacher of related to Eastern movement forms similar to Tai Chi. directing and movement. Former Dean of Fine Arts Meyerhold was also a trained ballet dancer appearing College Salahaddin University in Erbil, Kurdistan with Nijinski and Focine so his knowledge is firmly he currently teaches in the drama departments of based in experience. Sallahadin, Duhok and Ishik Universities. Dr. Jaf is one of the Trustees of the Arabic Theatre Institute, a The word plasticity in relation to the actor is explained theatre researcher and an adviser to The Ministry of thus – imagine a simple yard long stick - this can be Culture. He has directed Shakespeare, Strindberg, used by an actor to fundamentally change perception Mrozek, Koltes, Beckett and has conducted workshops – it can be a weapon, a stretcher, a ladder – simply by in Meyerhold’s biomechanics in several drama schools how it is used. Other small props such as masks can in Sweden, Finland, Britain, Morocco, UAE, and Iraq. similarly be used. He is fluent in Arabic, Swedish, English, Kurdish and Russian and holds a Ph. D. in St Petersburg, Russia The importance of using body language is fundamental and an M.A. at London University, Goldsmiths College. in Meyerhold Biomechanics, using this the actor plays Interestingly, born in Kirkuk, his first studies were in into the Superobjective of the character. Baghdad, in film, theatre, arts and music which gave him a holistic view of theatre at the commencement of One practical benefit from actors using this system his career. is that rehearsal times become much shorter as the character has been fully delineated beforehand. Arabic Theatre has a centuries old history, originating Of note also is that the great Russian Film Director in story telling such as The Arabian Nights, shadow Eisenstein was profoundly influenced in his work by and puppet plays - the latter is recorded as being seen Meyerhold, whom he revered. by Salahaddin during the Crusades. In the 19th and 20th Centuries Arabic playwrights of stature emerged, It is work and theory that seems rather off piste to particularly in Damascus, Cairo, Beirut, Morocco and many in the West, but we had a day showing us a Tunisia with influences from French, Italian, Spanish different way of theatre, full of fascination and impact and English Theatre. Morocco and Tunisia producing like no other. the most radical theatre with Syria producing strong political theatre by Sadallah Wanus who was influenced Carol Norris by Bertolt Brecht. Peter Brooke was impressed with theatre he saw in Iran describing this as Holy Theatre in his influential book Empty Space which speaks of Immediate and Rough Theatre, following Meyerhold’s WHY DID JONAH SWALLOW THE concept of Straight Line Theatre, Playwright – WHALE? Director - Actor, where the Spectator is the 4th creative or dimension present. A Film In Memoriam
The workshop covered theoretical aspects of A short 8 minute film by Joy Parker Meyerhold’s theatre, his method of acting, his method of directing and movement and biomechanics. The You Tube link: https://www.youtube.com/ practical part included the principles of movement, watch?v=ftmGGMr3sG0 plasticity, the relationship between body and space and Meyerhold’s Études including The Handshake, The Scottish Borders Filmmaking Initiative supported by Slap and Throwing the Stone, The Parade. The études Visual Artists Award Creative Scotland, SBC & D&G (exercises) all have four stages of movement, otkaz, Council. 32 THEATRE, FILM & EVENT REVIEWS
The title of this film are the words of Joy Parker’s PERFORMANCE POETRY AT STOWED OUT grandmother recorded in her case records at some point during her 45 years inpatient stay in Bristol The Stowed Out Music Festival has been going from Lunatic Asylum where she died. strength to strength over the last few years; and with 2015’s addition of a new spoken word stage, there was This film is a concluding piece of a two year more opportunity than ever for Borders writers to project undertaken by Joy as a commemoration get involved, with a total of sixteen poets performing of her grandmother’s life. An earlier performance over the course of the event. Curated by Borders poets of Gertrude at the Eastgate Theatre Peebles was Thomas Clark, Bridget Khursheed and Sara Clark, the reviewed in The Eildon Tree in Issue 25 Winter 2015. spoken word stage saw some of Scotland’s top poets Although very short, this is a masterly, truly evocative perform alongside the best of local talent. film, fully conveying the tragedy of this life with a quality of restraint that results in profound stillness, It was a real year of firsts for Stow; the first trains to contemplation and peace. pull into Stow in many a long decade; the first spoken word festival event; and to kick everything else off, Beginning with words from Emily Dickinson: the first ever poetry slam to be held in the Borders. The Stowed Out Poetry Slam was held in the Mac Arts One need not be a Chamber to be Haunted Centre in Galashiels in the run up to the festival, and One need not be a House gave talented locals the opportunity to compete for The brain has Corridors surpassing cash prizes and, more importantly, a reading spot at the festival itself. Material Place Eight poets from across the region turned out to We experience a beautiful soundscape. Hymns strut their stuff in the highly innovative slam format, Gertrude played on the piano, here played by Dorothy which sees tight time limits adhered to and poetry Alexander, water falling in fountains, trickling in performances judged by members of the audience. streams & down the overflow from a bath drawn in With only three places at the festival up for grabs, the asylum, floating on which is a glass holding a competition was fierce, and the standard very high. flickering candle moving with the overflow, the sound After almost two hours of top quality poetry, the poets of sea surf, as water rises in the asylum corridors, who came out on top were David Hendry, Stuart Jones echoing the continuous flow of incoherent speech, a and, winner overall, Calum Bannerman. All three case note entry read by Rob Hain. would go on to reprise their winning performances to a bumper audience at the festival itself. A seaweed filled rock pool, we see grapes, a lemon, a halved pomegranate, a banana & an apple emerging And they were sharing the bill with some fantastic and slowly decaying and disintegrating with names. Dorothy Alexander, Anita John, Bridget infestation of insects with time lapse photography, Khursheed, Thomas Clark… some of the best poets a graphic image of Gertrude’s deteriorating mind. the Borders has to boast of. But in its headline acts, Becoming more demented the case note says towards the festival was able to offer up poetry from three of the end. the most well-known and exciting performers in the country today. Award-winning Scots writer Rab Wilson An inconspicious green apple appears in shots treated the audience to some rousing performances throughout, clearly a symbol unifying the course both from his upcoming collection “Zero Hours”, whilst of Jonah and Gertrude herself. Colin Will, one of Scotland’s most well-travelled and seasoned festival performers, for the first time linked I have religious mania was the diagnosis and Jonah up poetry and sax in a hauntingly beautiful sequence and the Whale was part of this obsession. Robert of lyricisms of the seas. All this before the spoken word Leach reading, juxtaposes text from the King James event was concluded with a fitting bang by the amazing Bible ending with and vomited out Jonah upon the Harry Giles, one of Scotland’s brightest and busiest new dry land. talents.
This is a superb example of integrated All in all, a fantastic start to what will hopefully be a interdisciplinary working and is poetry in film. regular feature of the Stowed Out Festival; and, almost as importantly, with the next festival set to benefit from Carol Norris the reopening of the Borders Railway, one which has put the Borders firmly back on the performance poetry map!
Sara Clark THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter/Spring 2016 33 BOOK REVIEWS The characters are very well drawn. The leading protagonist is Kate, making a living for herself and the children as a wisewoman and herbalist, though not averse to carrying out a bit of surgery. She comes across as a forceful person –perhaps a feminist before her time, concerned with domestic abuse and access to higher education. Her children as they approach adolescence and want their independence are also well described. The men appear to be more of their period, with their ABOUT RUSSIA A HOUSE DIVIDED concerns about property, trade by Robert Leach by Margaret Skea and their position at court, though well prepared for physical action Q.Q.Press (Collections) Rothesay Sanderling, 2015 or subterfuge when required. Isle of Bute ISBN 978-0-9933331-0-1 First Published 2015 478 pages The pacing of the book is ISBN 978-1-909289-12-3 Historical novel excellent. At the beginning some Pamphlet £8.99 scenes are rather slow- especially 31 Pages those expressing boredom - but £4.00 Readers of Margaret Skea’s first the pace quickens in Parts 2 and 3 In this timely collection of 21 novel, the Turn of the Tide were and is well maintained. It becomes poems by Robert Leach, the left in suspense at the end when a real adventure story and there Foreword states: the main protagonist , Munro, are vivid descriptions of fights, chases and escapes. It is, however, has to leave Scotland in a great For generations, Russia has been not all action since there is also an hurry. In this sequel, we can catch demonised and denigrated by examination of the psychological upon with him and his family politicians in the west who have tensions felt by various characters some six years later, when Munro an axe to grind, an agenda to (and shared by the reader) as (who finally acquires a Christian pursue. name on p466) is with the French to what course of action to take, army and his wife Kate is being as when Kate is swithering over Like any country and any people, sheltered under an assumed name whether to go to France with her Russia and Russians are complex, by the Montgomerie family in husband or to the King’s court at and we need to respond to a Ayrshire. The action is specifically Holyrood, which could have fatal reality, not to the devious fantasies dated to 1597 a tumultuous consequences for her. of propagandists. period in Scottish history, with the reformation well established, The book finishes with the I have spent several periods with extensive witch hunts, when Munros’ problems apparently of time in Russia over the last the south of the country was resolved but we must hope there forty years. These poems offer a effectively lawless with family are more adventures to come in a personal view of that fascinating feuds and reiving and when subsequent story. There is enough country and its imaginative, Scottish soldiers were fighting of the backstory given in this book artistic peoples. with the French in their war with to make it a good stand-alone Spain. All these themes are picked read, but to get the full benefit Robert Leach is not a Russian up in the book, which shows the readers would be well advised to apologist, he has a clear eye on the result of the author’s intensive read Turn of the Tide first. problems and wrongs emanating research into this period, not from both past history and present just into broader political and Peter Hoad times and his poems are not military events but also the details propaganda, but resonate with of surgery and medicine and the a truthful account of his actual conduct of witch trials. experiences living in the country in several different times. 34 BOOK REVIEWS
Of the poems, three refer to The clanking slowdown episodes in history, the two World Approaching stations big with Wars, 1918: The Comrades Return, Carved peasants, and the the last verse of which: Traipsed wetness, smeared like Till Petrograd, tears, And the grey news sheet Across the fake marble platform- proclaiming it’s Hope The crammed-in people with Then 1945 Love and Revenge and heavy greatcoats, End Of War from which: The scarlet-lipped and fur – collared women, By his clumsy boots : The men with parcel, briefcases AUTOMATIC WRITING A few dandelions, a few pouched by John Brewster Curls and squirms And baggy as their faces, Of green. Just spring Cultured Llama The pale students with their ISBN: 978-0-9926485-8-9 Which happens every year. Endless webs of spidery Cyrillic 74 Pages And Hitler’s dead. Poetry On thin yellow pages - it’s On the day of Stalin’s death, also Automatic Writing is a as it happened, The Day Prokofiev Osterezhno! Dveri zakryvaetsa! deceptively simple title for this Died, we have: (Take care! The doors are quietly complex first collection by Fife based John Brewster. It’s a closing!) Koba (nickname for Stalin) was lively mix of poems about real life gone. And the train lurching off again, concerns – childhood, love, death, Accelerating into darkness. sex, loss, and religion, as one But if you listened hard enough, might expect from a poet with a We have in this short pamphlet, a First in Divinity from St Andrews You might have caught that day highly literate author and a poet, University. The squeak of a gulag gate bringing his human observation Opening…very faint, very far away, to Russia from direct experience Real life situations are of the country, in a sequence of delivered in well crafted, subtle The other 17 poems are from his apposite and thoughtful poems, verse. Sometimes there is a own witnessing as Memoire. lacking the cast of cynicism and preoccupation with extremes prejudicial thinking which has so – death by suicide for example In Memories Of Moscow - the last marred many previous offerings – and occasionally the narrative verse: about Russia. is lost in private meanings which are somewhat difficult to I construct this ragged cloud Carol Norris fathom. Still, Brewster writes with lyrical musicality, particularly Which drags across in colloquial Fife Scots, and The moon of memory. he comes at his subjects from unexpected angles – see Glass Eye In another poem In Search of for a glass-eyed view of a one-eyed Happiness (the Title of Victor man - that reward effort on the Rozov’s 1960 play, later filmed as part of the reader in piecing it all Noisy Days) - together. The author finds a tear wets his eyelash, the cause is: When I am not in his head I am in the velvet box. THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter /Spring 2016 35
His head is not as forgiving from where Tait’s reiving ancestors …I move the warm shaking but it keeps me in place. can be traced. This collection’s body gently off the tarmac & onto terrain is instantly recognisable to the grass by a hedgerow hoping I have a friend beside me many Borderers: the underpass it feels more natural & I sit on who squirms at such confinement. mosaic to Kinmont Willie in the road talking quietly until his (Glass Eye) Carlisle, the chippy in Amble, the breathing stops & with a heavy pit and steel communities, untold heart I’m hoping that I’ve given If this is ‘automatic writing’ it’s football grounds and football the fox some comfort in it’s final automatic writing with a great teams such as Ashington and moments & though I’m not a deal of poetic thought, originality, Alnwick, right through to a piece religious man I’m wondering if humour and depth behind it. set at Galabank Stadium where in some Shamanic way the foxes With a select glossary of Scots this reviewer spent a year of his spirit has been released & a few words with which to steer the footballing life toiling for Annan days later as we drive around the uninitiated, this stands as a highly Athletic. Tait generally writes in bend on the road & I’m retelling enjoyable, thought-provoking first a bluff, straightforward, lyrical the story to the brunette girl collection. foregoing, no nonsense prose style behind the wheel I just catch a and at times it can feel like you’re glimpse of the white tip of a red Julian Colton getting a lecture from Billy Elliot’s tail darting into the thick green big brother as this Postal Worker gorse bushes on the hillside . . . union rep highlights strikes and (Cosmic Gratitude) scab labour, football brawls involving Man City fans (nowt Collections like Barearse Boy to do with me this time), rave might be currently considered culture at home and abroad, pub unfashionable, but it takes a great life and the daily grind of making deal of skill and nerve to pull off a a crust by good working class collection like this. folk. It can be a bit unrelenting, particularly in the storytelling Julian Colton more enjambment prose style set pieces where ampersand is often substituted for the word ‘and’. But if for some this might come across as stereotypical flat caps and whippets pontificating, they’d be wrong. While Tait admittedly has BAREARSE BOY a romanticised view of Scotland by Jon Tait and the Scots, his love for northern working class life and its people is Smokestack Books. palpable. Well before the end of the ISBN: 978-o-9929581 collection Tait’s almost novelistic 124 Pages personal portrayal had won me Poetry over. Beneath the apparently disposable, almost primitive style Less a modern take on Scott’s there is a great sophistication at Border Minstrelsy, as suggested work here. Tait might attempt by the blurb on the book’s cover, DALRIADA to give the impression he’s a Barearse Boy is more by turns a by Christopher Harvie working class Jack-the lad, beer lament and celebration for a fast swilling, pill popping, ball hoofing disappearing, still enduring male Edinburgh, Capercaillie books, 2015. slob, which indeed he might be, working class world stretching ISBN:978-1-909305-66-5 but he’s also a kind of Northern from Northumberland through £8.99 working class beat poet who has Cumbria and Dumfriesshire and a wonderful empathy with nature on up to the Scottish Borders. A Romance of Invention, says the as displayed in his brilliant and The eponymous Barearse is the very exact subtitle. Christopher touching prose piece Cosmic settlement near Town Yetholm Harvie has a distinguished record Gratitude: of fact and the interpretation of 36 BOOK REVIEWS
fact, and it has stocked his mind fluency in the verbalising of Toni Parks has written these three richly with character and incident English, Scottish, German detective/thriller novels from which spill into romance and speakers. John Buchan is an 2013 to 2015 after he retired to invention, though (like Scott) acknowledged influence, and the Scottish Borders, which is the he anchors his invention with Harvie (like Buchan) catches not setting in part for this Trilogy, a number of “real” historical only the individual quirks of a though there is outreach to characters, real events, above all speaker’s language, but the social London, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, the looming disaster of the First pointers which tell you about that Naples & hinterland, and Rome, World War. character’s background. in the course of the narrative. The story involves three main No other writer could have Dalriada is a challenging read in characters, Emma, a heroin addict, pulled off this fizzing plot which the sense that the reader has to and prostitute, from a deprived reflects, or refracts so many of be on high alert. But the reward council estate in Edinburgh, a Christopher Harvie’s interests – of keeping up with it is real scatter brain, who is very irritating early twentieth century history satisfaction. Those who know the in Vol 2, The Dizygotic Twins, anchored in England, Scotland, author can hear his restless energy when travelling around Europe Germany; the industrial landscape in every page and appreciate the with her newly discovered twin of Scotland in the early twentieth width of his erudition as well as sister, the academic & expert in century as Europe gears up the success of this new foray into a psychological profiling, Jessica. for war; a plot which takes in romance of invention. They both are escaping from both sides of the Atlantic quite crime syndicates, enabled by accurately reflecting the massive Professor Ian Campbell the Spiy Web of Prometheus build-up of influence, long-range Conglomerates, a Mafia like set ordering and political decision up, facilitated by an Internet making which the imminence of surveillance system, which follows war involved. A historian of such the hunted girls using email eclectic interests is well equipped connections and card purchases to show the preparation for war in across Europe. this kaleidoscopic way. In Vol 3 Cause and Effect But Christopher Harvie’s interests the scatter brained addict is inform this extraordinary book amazingly rehabilitated from her in other ways. A knowledge dangerous lifestyle by near death of German is almost assumed, experiences and the love of her though the book works perfectly newly discovered twin sister, but well without it. A keen interest also, importantly, a medically in railways is a help, right down discharged Police Officer DI to the hot bearings which can Barnham, who has been involved immobilise even a polished heroic throughout the Trilogy. 1) Blood Is Thicker steam engine of the early decades. Published 2013 Perhaps the sound effects of a The characters of these three 2) The Dizyogotic Twins cable car in Edinburgh are a little main protagonists are well drawn Published 2014 misjudged (people tended to hear especially in Vol 1 and 3. 3) Cause and Effect a rumble all the time under the Published 2015 street, not just when a tram was The plot is carefully drawn and elaborated over the three Volumes coming). But the dazzling breadth by Toni Parks of the historian’s interests, his and though far-fetched is gripping fluency in languages, his interest Double Elephant Associates, – especially the discovery of the in unusual people, his imagining Orchard Cottage. Lanton, Jedburgh, identity of the Serial Killer in the of the reality of a period in its Roxburghshire TD8 6XS Borders - The Breakfast Killer - as complexity is outstanding. The £7.49 Vol 1, £7.99 the Media would have it, in Blood plot loops so much that to say Vol 2 & 3. Is Thicker (Vol 1). much more would be to betray the IBSN: Vol. 1 978- 0- 9926261- 0- pleasure of reading it. 26261- 0- 5, Vol. 2 978- 0 Language, too, is caught with -9926261- 2- 9, Vol. 3 978- 0- 9926261-3-6. THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter/Spring 2016 37
The dialogue between the an introduction by Richard, Duke native Scots tongue? Perhaps characters, though, sometimes of Buccleuch, the book collects an understandable fear of being seems heavily laboured and together the poems written by marginalised and being pigeon unrealistic, peppered with cliché Wilson during his stint in Ettrick holed might be the answer, but and corny comments as well as and Yarrow. Never less than the more nuanced, poetically a seeming imperative to list all enjoyable, this collection most tuneful Scots pieces, often in the names of all the Designer saliently highlights what an Wilson’s favoured default sonnet products each character is wearing exceptional poet Wilson is when form, lift this collection above the or carrying. This is irritating and writing in Scots. Unlike some level of localised historical and detracts from the books’ overall Scots practitioners his writing social reportage. Sometimes the experience. is natural and unforced and has tone of this collection is perhaps great linguistic depth and density. just a touch pawky and there are It is best to read Vol 1 Blood It doesn’t matter if you’re English a few pat endings, but Wilson’s Is Thicker before Vol 2 The like me and don’t always get the command of Scots is such that Dizygotic Twins for understanding precise meaning of a word or term one can only conclude his already the characters more fully and or don’t have a Scots dictionary firmly established reputation is set empathetically. readily to hand. Often the joy to soar even higher. of this collection is contained in Overall, an interesting series teasing out the general feeling of Julian Colton of three books as a trilogy, a particular piece or revelling in especially for residents in The the writer’s skill in making the Scottish Borders, who will find the Scots words rub off each other venues and characters especially in a very lyrical poetic manner, interesting. which in turn leads to an overall apprehension of meaning. Carol Norris Oan a plinth, the fuit of Chapelhope Hill,
The Shepherd sits and views the braes o hame,
This statue biggit tae his fawmous nem
Richtly celebrates poetic skill. INTAE THE SNAW By Thomas Clark Ae haund hauds the cruik that kept ye siccar, Lighthouse Pamphlets 48 Pages Fordin burns in spate at lambin ISBN:978-0-9928573-7-0 time, Poetry HAIRST by Rab Wilson Body waarmly hapt in plaid o Lang socht fir hus indeed cam at rhyme, last! This byordnar wee slim green Friends of Ettrick School and volume o poetry in Scots aiblins Weproductions Yer ettle aye to be ‘Jamie the hansels in the vanguard o a new ISBN: 978-0-9550987-0-3 Poeter’ generation o young Scots poets Poetry (The Hogg Monument) scrievin in Scots. Thomas Clark haes produced here a collection o This short collection of seventeen As the more ‘English’ prose style owersettins in miniature o some poems by the first James Hogg poems don’t quite match the Scots o the greatest poets an poems Creative Residency Fellow Rab pieces, this reviewer couldn’t tae be haunded doun tae us frae Wilson is tastefully produced by help but wonder why Wilson antiquity. An bauldly settin oot Border artist Helen Douglas. With doesn’t write exclusively in his his stall frae the first he states that 38 BOOK REVIEWS
nae glossary is provided til the roon ma cairt. reader – an believe him, ye dinnae Honour an riches ah’ve chase’t lik need it! These gems sing lustily in fleetin cloods; their ain leid! Ah leukt awa, an twinty springs haed past. Ah’m writin this review in a week whaur an ex-leader o the SNP hus Frae Ouyang Xiu caa’d fir programmes in Scots oan BBC Alba – an why no? Scots is Ootside the windae, wind blaws bi faur the greatest o the lesser straucht the snaw; used languages (ah despise that Howdlin wae the stove, ah’ll EBLUL term!) spoken in Scotland. waucht ma wine; Sae why dis it no get its share o How like a fishin-boat, caucht in airtime? quate onfaw, Ah sail, in sleep, doon throu Tammas Clark gangs some wey autumn rain. tae explainin this in ane o the best setten oot essays oan the Scots Frae Du Mu JERUSHA’S TRICKS leid ah’ve read in raicent times By Pat Mosel in the introduction tae his braw Bede’s Deein Wirds collection. He taks the language Author House, 2013 is a dialect with an army and a Afore that gastrous, hertscaud oor paperback navy airgument an expands it When aw are cawed, unwillint, ISBN: 978-1-4918-0086-7 in surprising directions; Scots, tae be judged, 498 Pages like most other languages has a Think smairtly oan it, mon. Ye voice of its own. It’s a tough but needna pit oan Scottish Borders readers will tender language, pugnacious Ye hivvnae gied it thocht – is it enjoy this intriguing novel written and practical. And few native upstairs, or doon? by local author, Pat Mosel. Set in speakers would consider having Cause tak it frae me – houiver the imaginary village of Kirkfield, their marriage ceremonies black yer hauns near Abbotsford, the story begins conducted in Scots. Why hae They’ll no get any cleaner wance with Jerusha Burnett, thrice we Scots alloued oor leid tae be yer gaun. married and now a widow living taen awa frae us? Julius Caesar in her late husband Hamish’s kent that ane o the best weys tae Frae Epistola Cuthberti de obitu spacious property at Kirkfield destroy a people wis tae tak awa Bedae House. The delightful, curvaceous its language. But Clark gaes oan; and forty-something, Jerusha a badly mauled an eroded Scots shares her home with a gay At some point has to contribute Likesay, timeless, auncient, an couple, James and Oswald. She meaningfully to its own upkeep. yet... they souch in oor lug as gif loves playing practical jokes and He then states: This collection, they wir whispert frae leevin tungs! on April Fool’s Day 2010 she I hope, can be a down payment buries a dressmaker’s dummy in against that. An certes, it is! Here is yer leid! Vieve an alive! Tak the garden fully aware that both it tae yer hairt! James and Oswald are watching The poems theirsels sweep across from an upstairs’ window. the millennia o human existence; Rab Wilson However, the practical joke goes race, creed an nationality. Frae horribly wrong when the police the pre-Columbian city-state uncover a skeleton of Hamish’s of Texcoco to the Tang dynasty first wife, Françoise Burnett also of China tae the early Christian buried in the garden at Kirkfield Anglo-Saxon o The Exeter Book, House. the poems speik auncient an The novel has an impressive cast timeless truths... of characters all of whom are both believable and entertaining but Aw ma life ah hiv luved this toon. the star has to be Jerusha who A cuirious thrang haes gaithert changed her name from Mary to THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter/Spring 2016 39
Jerusha, the perfect wife. She now Another poet who is no stranger wants to be the perfect widow but to the pages of The Eildon Tree with the uncovering of the body is the excellent craftsman poet in the garden after a fourteen year Robin Lindsay Wilson. This fine cover-up, who is to blame? And collection, which often thumbs was it murder? its nose at precise meanings and definitions, best realises its full This is a contemporary novel potential in the moments when which poses some interesting Wilson shakes off the almost possibilities, all of which keep the entirely abstract and allows real reader guessing to the last page. scenarios, actions and emotions The dialogue is particularly well to drive or underpin these always done and there is a fair amount interesting well-constructed of humour throughout. There are pieces. Here there are no wasted plenty of day to day mundane words or images and the poetry events which help set the scene emerges almost effortlessly in and add realism to the novel, unpunctuated sentences that run LOVE SONGS TO THE for instance, visits to various into each other as if by second NILGIRI HILLS Galashiels coffee lounges and nature: by Robert Leach the local shop at Kirkfield; walks along the Tweed; Melrose and of The shower curtain Dionysia Press course, the attempt to hide the grows a bacillus – 76 Pages ‘murder’ of Françoise as a suicide it caught the spores Poetry at Coldingham Beach. by falling in love ISBN: 978-1-903171-47-9 with a plastic bath This novel is an appealing one and To see a world in a grain of sand, a real page turner. its kiss drying And heaven in a wild flower, is the sagging pace Hold infinity in the palm of your Iona McGregor of parting and loss hand, (The Cooling of Water) And eternity in an hour. Of course this effect is the result of much working and reworking. It rarely comes by accident. This timeless quatrain from Other strong pieces proliferate William Blake’s Auguries of including: Vocation, Nemesis, The Innocence serves as the perfect Threatened Bride, Learning to introduction to Robert Leach’s Buy Flowers, Holding Flowers, Love Songs to the Nilgiri Hills, a Skye Blues, Grudge Match poetry collection in three sections and The Problem with Girls to which equals far more than the mention just a few. Wilson sticks sum of its parts. Not a word is to his writing principles and reaps wasted in this dazzling collection the rewards of a collection which of poems which juxtaposes images finishes very strongly. Myself of nature with the encroachment and Other Strangers warrants a of man, and thereby blurs the line second reading just to sniff out between the two. the nuances and connections MYSELF AND OTHER one might have missed the first More than once in reading STRANGERS time around, ideally on a warm Leach’s poetry I was reminded of by Robin Lindsay Wilson summer’s day on a café terrace Wordsworth. His worlds are real, with a glass of wine to hand. almost touchably so, and he resists Cinnamon Press the temptation to simply describe ISBN: 9781909077836 Julian Colton nature – instead he places us 73 Pages right in the midst of it. There are Poetry no clichés in his portrayals of the natural world. He sees it with fresh 40 BOOK REVIEWS
eyes, the eyes of a wise, amazed On the basis of this collection, into the English city of Ipswich. child - and whilst at first glance you Robert Leach stakes a claim to be Here, lonely and desperate to could be forgiven for thinking his one of the best English-language make a connection with a woman, themes familiar, to do so would be poets in the Scottish Borders, any woman, Alex had a series of a grave mistake. His is a natural, and certainly establishes himself adventures, all of which are vividly conversational and observant style, as being amongst our leading described and going on in his which masterfully captures the lights. Any serious collection of head. smallest details with a painterly modern Scottish poetry would be eye - the ebbing of life from a dying impoverished without this volume. The opening lines set the tone fish as it wriggles in his hands, the and much of the subsequent shocking contrast of a dead fox’s Sara Clark descriptive prose is poetic: tail against the tarmac. Leach’s use Looking out from the black of metaphor here is as skilful as emptiness beyond the glass, it’s it is effective. Take, for example, hard to believe there’s a garden A Walk on the High Moors, in out there… which a plastic bag snagged on a fence morphs into an animal to be As the story is written in the rescued, an invader to be removed first person, I feel this has added from the landscape. greatly to the immediacy of the action and this technique brings An orange plastic bag the reader into the drama and Shrieks, slaps the barbed wire cleverly into the mind of the fence it’s snagged on. unfortunate Alex. It rattles like a Gatling gun, At the end of this thoughtful It flaps like a trapped bird. novel, I was left pondering the existential loneliness that modern Leach seems particularly interested life, in particular technology, has in the porous nature of boundaries, SUMMER’S LEASE imposed on those fragile beings a theme to which he makes by Sara Clark who are unable to cope and frequent recourse. The grey areas are consequently inhabiting a which exist between the natural FeedARead.com Publishing 2015 fantasy world with all its possible and the manmade, the human 167 Pages psychological dangers. and the animal, wakefulness and ISBN: 978-1-78610-175-4 sleep, even between one moment This is an impressive debut novel and another – these are rich This is a novel written from the from a very gifted writer. spaces in which much of Leach’s point of view of Alex Warren who most fruitful work is done. In this is forced to sell his family home Iona McGregor collection, memories are things after living there all his life with so vivid that they step right out his dysfunctional and controlling of the poet’s past and into the parents (now deceased) and his reader’s present – the first puff of a agoraphobic brother. cigarette taken by a child long ago lingers in our own throats through Clark carefully weaves a poignant the poet’s skilful invocation of its story around the memories that bitter redolence, the sound of a come into Alex’s mind starting steam train shudders forth from with the funeral of his father the furthest reaches of his memory. who was buried in the back Boundaries, as the poet sees all too garden of the family home. Alex, clearly, are simply connections of now completely at mercy to his another kind, and the connections irrational fears, recalls his one day Leach makes between one image of freedom when, aged thirty- and another are surprising, four, he managed to escape the intuitive and, for want of a better confines of this house located in word, poetical in the truest sense. rural Suffolk to follow his father THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter/Spring 2016 41
and white and we THE MAGICIANS OF standing there SCOTLAND watching. by Ron Butlin (Down on the Beach) Polygon Yet there were reservations. ISBN: 978-1-84697-291-1 Despite an endorsement on 109 Pages the book’s cover highlighting Poetry the humour, tenderness and compassion, I wasn’t always The Magicians of Scotland is feeling it. Much of the collection intended as a whistle stop tour felt somewhat sanitised - too of Scotland’s past, present and inoffensive and slickly vacuous, future taking in selected seminal occasionally bordering on figures, events and places, some glibness. In particular I would well-known and others a touch THE GREEN DRESS WHOSE single out the following: 26 One more obscure and unexpected: Word Poems; the concrete poem GIRL IS SLEEPING Skara Brae, Roman Occupation, Star; some less than engaging by Russell Jones the Balmoral Clock, the Loch haikus; and The Bang, a dialogue Ness Monster, Wilfred Owen, between Alice and Atlas (two Freight Books Elizabeth Blackadder, Professor opposing protons in the Hadron ISBN: 978-1-910449-37-0 Higgs, the Lockerbie Bombing Collider). It’s only as the collection 71 Pages and the Scottish Referendum. All draws to a close that the true Poetry get the idiosyncratic treatment as extent of this poet’s potential Butlin comes at the subject from For much of The Green Dress surfaces, as emotion breaks unexpected directions. He writes Whose Girl Is Sleeping this through like a tsunami when the with such an engaging, easily reviewer admired the beautifully poet writes about the death of his assimilated and winning style that written and deftly paced work Nan, his sister’s experiences in it is easy to overlook the fact that on show by the talented and Afghanistan and real people such the collection does at times skim extremely promising Edinburgh- as war veterans or the homeless, over subjects rather than drill based poet Russell Jones. Here presumably in and around down to their core. In particular, were wonderfully constructed Edinburgh. The Green Dress the first of the collection’s three sonnets, all manner of Whose Girl Is Sleeping is Jones’ sections, Magic Places, appears to observations on religion, science, first full poetry collection and this be mainly project work which the love and daily life with flashes of promises to be a poet capable ex-Edinburgh Makar, and erstwhile writing brilliance delivered in a of producing something really Hightae village resident, has readily assimilated, easily digested remarkable in the future. seemingly collated for the purposes pleasing voice. Even when the of this book, including poems subject gets deep, as in a reflection Julian Colton for the passenger stops on the on a seabird drowning in oil in Edinburgh tram route and pieces Down on the Beach, Jones’ is a inspired by the Commonwealth consummate stylist: Games in Glasgow.
It’s almost beautiful in its end Which brings one to wonder if, as the water strips away when writing these, Butlin had its feathers to make a coat been swayed by project aims and flapping in the wind. the interests of stakeholders, or if he is simply reflecting Scotland’s We watch the light die as it fails current inward looking self- to dive, to float, to fly, to fight. absorption? Most Scottish writers Its robust call wanes under are prone to it at the moment. our slick dark gaze, until It’s only when the second section, it’s sharp movements slow, Magic People, unfolds that this shake and sink and stop – wide-ranging and ambitious beak down, eye wide collection really starts to 42 BOOK REVIEWS
accelerate, and assumes proper THESE ARE THEY, substance, as Butlin nails his THAT’S THEM political colours firmly to the mast Poems, Paintings with thoughtful well-written set- by Philip Hutton pieces on Burns, James Simpson, Chopin, James Hutton, Prophet Self-published Peden and Flanders fields. The ISBN: 9780956288417 later political poem Trident 72 Pages Mantra, in the final section Magic Poetry For All, makes its point forcefully. The collection does dwindle away Regular readers of The Eildon somewhat into less engaging and Tree will be familiar with the slightly indulgent, more prose poetry of Peebles-based writer type pieces such as How To Save and artist Philip Hutton. His The World. This takes the form written work, and These Are They, of an on-line questionnaire, and like other poems in the collection That’s Them is no exception, is TONGUIT by Harry Giles wrestles with the issue of our a pleasing mix of ruminations increasingly digital age. on art, artefacts, photography, childhood, philosophy, travel Freight Books 68 Pages Butlin persuades more with clear, and all manner of quirky subjects Poetry lucid writing and conceptual which capture his literary fancy. ISBN: 978-1-910449-36-3 imagination than by turn of His poems are generally quite long phrase, image or force of rhythm. and photography is an appropriate Remember when you were at high Whatever the reservations one has pre-occupation as Hutton likes to school, and you were made to for the cogence of some elements get up close and personal to his write these essays about whether, I of The Magicians of Scotland, it subject matter. Lavishly worded dunno, euthanasia should be legal has to be conceded that by the and layered, maybe sometimes or something, and you dutifully set conclusion Butlin’s intelligent overly rich like magnificent out the arguments for both sides and thoughtful writing flair wins – then, when you got to the last through leaving the reader with confections, ex art teacher Hutton paragraph, you still didn’t know the feeling of having experienced has such a pleasing, likeable what the right answer was, so you a coalescence of disparate parts, narrative voice that the reader just wrote something like as you as if by magic, into a unified, rarely objects to being taking on can see there are many different immensely readable and enjoyable a cultural journey or listening sides to this argument because collection. attentively as the poet imparts his you were embarrassed that you knowledge and personal wisdom. didn’t know what to think and, in Julian Colton Illustrated throughout by Hutton’s fact, that you were having to think
own artwork, this book will be about it at all? appreciated greatly by those who know and admire his work and Pedagogies of uncertainty is what
offers a fascinating entrée for those they call them in academic-speak, coming to it for the first time. those uncomfortable spaces that we sometimes venture into where Julian Colton we don’t know everything, and we know we don’t know, but we still have to take action anyway. Unsettling though they may be, those are the places where we do most of our actual living; and, not coincidentally, the places where Harry Giles seems to do most of his writing. THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter/Spring 2016 43
All of which kind of makes a review Tonguit is the best new collection return to the Borders of a wonder of Giles’s debut collection Tonguit of 2015. unseen since the childhood of gloriously beside the point. It’s even its older residents, many not that it isn’t good; it’s that it’s Thomas Clark of the pieces here should have a so good that discussing its merits nostalgic feel to them. Anita John as poetry just seems a bit limiting contributes two very different but and, well, daft. It would be sort of equally moving poems on past like reviewing a lion maybe, or a journeys, whilst Robert Leach’s waterfall. similarly impressive triptych is equally effective in recalling And it would be easy to get all experience through the wise eyes of reductionist and glib and say the present. that these are poems about the Scottish political landscape or But the anthology covers the the personal psychodrama of gamut, and not all of its pieces are consumerist lifestyles or what set in the past. Bridget Khursheed have you; but it also would be is particularly adept in Borders dumb and unfair and utterly miss railway, perceiving the opening of the point of Giles’s work, which is the railway as the (almost literal) that what something is ‘about’, be closing of a wound, a healing it a poem or a book or an entire process in which the doctors nation, should not be so simple WAVERLEY AND OTHER are workmen in high-vis vests, to define and so facile to discuss RAILWAYS a quotidian detail reminiscent as we routinely insist on making by Borders Writers’ Forum of Larkin. Christopher Harvie, it. Describing what Giles’s poems meanwhile, implements the past are ‘about’ is a bit like sewing a ISBN: 978-0-9567128-3-7 as a launchpad for what is yet suitcase handle onto a Rembrandt; 88 Pages to come, using the biography of it can be done, but why would you Anthology engineer Sir James Brunlees as a want to? Unless what you value in kind of blueprint for the future. For art is, I dunno, portability. The Eildon Tree’s Waverley those of us who live here, it is easy Lines competition was just the to think of Edinburgh as the end Although, having said that, these tip of the iceberg when it came of the line. This collection reminds are poems which you carry with to celebrations of the reopening us, time and time again, that the you. Your Strengths, a list of of the Borders Railway last true terminus for the railway is questions compiled from DWP year. Amongst the many artistic here, in the Borders. capability assessments which expressions of joy at the return of winds up instead as a heart- our train service was the Borders It’s impossible to cover all the breaking chronicle of human Writers’ Forum’s very own pieces here which are worthy frailty and those who would anthology, Waverley and other of your attention, but what this exploit it; Supercut, a stitching railways. attractive collection really does together of all the death scenes bring to light is that, with the in the Game of Thrones series Comprising a fairly even split of opening of the railway, another into a Tarantino-like sequence of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, this fantastic creative community has gorgeous but ultimately numbing eclectic collection approaches the been linked up with the rest of violence; Brave, a questioning, concept of railways from a number the country after a long period on quixotic navigation of the myriad of different directions. The Eildon the sidelines. In celebrating the contradictions of modern Scotland; Tree’s own Carol Norris covers all Borders Railway, this anthology these are poems which become the bases with a beautiful poem really winds up celebrating the part of your mental furniture. Still, on the view along the East Coast Borders itself, and proves itself a unlike most of the things inside our line, as well as a reflective and worthy ambassador to be sent on heads, Giles’s poems don’t wind up often amusing consideration of the up the line, bringing news of our there just because they look nice, service bus journey to Edinburgh achievements to Waverley - and or because they really tie the room which has now, at a stroke, been beyond. together. They’re necessary. They rendered a thing of the past. Sara Clark make their own space. It is only natural that, with the Full programme to be announced in April
Border Traditions CD series The Scottish Borders boasts a rich musical heritage, as well as a cracking contemporary scene. From the Border Ballads to our very own Border pipes, the Eildon Hills and all around are alive with the sound of music. We’ve the finest fiddles, accordions, harps and pipes, as well as songs and sangsters.
Songs and Folk hero Bob Dylan revealed the secret of his phenomenal success – Ballads the Border Ballad! Like many, he has drawn inspiration from the ‘Minstrelsy of the Scottish Borders’ collected by our towering literary genius, Sir Walter Scott. Whether in song, story or drama, those ballads are still a lively part of the Borders cultural scene today. The Borders Sangsters CD showcases that special place where music and poetry meet.
Accordion Whether it’s weddings, sessions, gigs or country dances, the accordion is right at the heart of Border life. It goes without saying that we’ve plenty of traditional players who can turn a great tune.
Hear the magic of the beautiful box on the Borders Boxes CD
Pipes The Border pipes are unique to this area. These cauld wind pipes have a warm, sweet sound, with just a hint of wild and wistfulness. That sound is being rediscovered and taken to new heights by Borders players today. A wonderful four days of talks, The Borders Pipes CD showcases a rounded mix of established figures and new talent and features bold and at times stunning arrangements. Wonderful discussions, food & drink, live music, music to enjoy! The Borders Young Pipers CD is packed full of good tunes and inventive arrangements.. In Chris Waite and James Thomson we have young musicians comedy and more for all the family who are clearly at ease with their own tradition.
Dr Fred Freeman has been the driving The Borders Traditions CD series is an Arts Development Project produced by force behind the Borders Traditions Dr Fred Freeman. Series by bringing together some of the All CD’s are priced at £11.50 area’s area’s finest musicians, singers and (including postage & packaging) song writers. Fred is a highly respected Please contact: authority in the traditional music and Arts Development, St Mary’s Mill, Selkirk TD7 5EW song scene in Scotland with a long standing career as a researcher, Tel: 01750 726400 lecturer, arranger and producer. His recent accolades include Email: [email protected] becoming an Honorary fellow of the Scottish Association for Scottish Literary Studies and being appointed as a visiting Lecturer of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
Eildon Tree.indd 1 2/2/2016 10:16:59 AM THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter/Spring 2016 45 Full programme to be announced in April
A wonderful four days of talks, discussions, food & drink, live music, comedy and more for all the family
Eildon Tree.indd 1 2/2/2016 10:16:59 AM BIOGRAPHIES
RUSSET J ASHBY ANITA JOHN full collection Clan MacHine was Russet J Ashby is a new writer. She Anita John is a poet, short story shortlisted for Scottish First Book is developing a writing style and writer and creative writing tutor of the Year, and his latest collection writing skills through short stories who has run courses for Edinburgh published by Mariscat in November and aspires to completing a novel. University, the RSPB and Abbotsford 2014 – A Witch Among The She is part of the Kelso Writing Group House. “Child’s Eye,” her debut Gooseberries was runner up for the and she writes as part of Women Who collection of stories and poetry is national Callum McDonald Award. Write With Elves. available from Amazon. She is a lead poet for the ongoing Scott’s IAIN MCGREGOR HELEN BODEN Treasures Project and blogs at www. Iain has lived in the Borders for 38 Helen is a Yorkshire-born, Edinburgh- anitajohn.co.uk. years. Writes mostly short stories in based writer, editor and teacher. She South/East Scots. Widely published has poems in New Writing Scotland, JO JONES in the Lallans magazine. Winner of Butcher’s Dog, Mslexia and Dactyl, Jo Jones moved to Kelso earlier the 2013 Robert McLellan Cup for and has collaborated with a number of this year from Canterbury, where best short story written in any Scots visual artists. helenbodenliteraryarts. she lived for over 20 years. She is dialect. wordpress.com. originally from the Lake District and specialises in short stories and BARBARA MEARNS DOUGLAS BRUTON poetry. Editor for A Rocha International, Douglas Bruton has been published Barbara has written three in many nice places, including The VIVIEN JONES biographical books on pioneering Eildon Tree, Transmission, The Vivien Jones has two short story naturalists. She spends as much time Delinquent, Grasslimb Journal, The collections and two poetry collection as possible recording dragonflies, Vestal Review, Ranfurly Review, in print. She is one of three editors of moths, butterflies and birds in Interpreter’s House, Flash Magazine, Southlight, another literary magazine Dumfries & Galloway and is working Brittle Star Magazine and Fiction from the south west of Scotland, and on a collection of peatland poems. Attic Press. He also does well in has a role as a Literature Animateur competitions. in Dumfries and Galloway - East, LESLEYMAY MILLER charged with encouraging new LesleyMay Miller is an artist and MICHAEL DAVIS writing. poet. She combines her words and Originally from Plymouth, Michael visual art in ArtistBooks, sculpture now lives in the southern uplands of ROBERT LEACH and in soundscapes. She created her Scotland with his partner and springer Robert Leach has written plays, sculpture garden in St. Boswells. She spaniel. He currently works as a civil poems, travel books and theatre now draws inspiration in living by servant in Glasgow. books. In the last months he has the coast. published two new poetry collections, SEAN FLEET Love Songs to the Nilgiri Hills and TIM NEVIL Sean Fleet enjoys writing poetry, short About Russia, both reviewed in this Tim Nevil is a writer living in the stories and non-fiction for adults and edition of The Eildon Tree. Scottish Borders. Having worked children. He has been spending much on TV scripts and factual features, of his time on a renovation project DAVY MACTIRE Tim now concentrates on writing in Berwickshire, but hopes to devote Myth is history, recalled only in fiction and is currently working on a more time to writing in the near distant memory. Here is my history collection of short stories as well as future. as far as I can remember. The name his first novel. I write under is Davy MacTire. I was DAVID HENDRY born in 1959 of Scots parents and JAMIE NORMAN David studied at Aberdeen University, educated mostly by my sisters. Jamie is studying towards an and works as an IT consultant. He MLitt in creative writing with the lived in south east England until he JOHN MCCANN University of Aberdeen. Originally was fourteen, but has spent most of Retired from a career in education, from Kelso, he loves haiku and his life in Scotland since then, in the John McCann lives in South concrete poetry and is primarily Borders since 1999. Lanarkshire where he continues to concerned with traumatic, Scots and build a garden. Recently he could palimpsest poetry. He tweets from@roflnorman. PHILIP HUTTON be found working in Oman. He Philip Hutton was born in Peebles and maintains a daily photographic blog, has lived on the High Street for thirty- enjoys the challenges of creative JANE PEARN three years. He studied painting at writing and has made contributions Jane moved to the Borders from Grays School of Art, Aberdeen, and to various local readings. the Isle of Man in 2005. Individual has exhibited and taught art in the poems, stories and articles appear Borders. He is a participant in the IAN MCDONOUGH in print or online from time to time School of Poets, based at the Scottish Ian McDonough was born and and she has two poetry collections Poetry Library. brought up in Brora on the East published – Matters Arising and Coast of Sutherland. His first Further To. THE EILDON TREE Issue 27. Winter/Spring 2016 47
PENNY REID RAGHU B SHUKLA Penny Reid is ‘Emerging Poet’ for Senior Editor of an internationally Appletree Writers, mentored by Roy contributed book on comprehensive Moller with her first collection to care of the elderly; short stories be published in 2016. Publications published in Candis, Borders include ‘Speak Out’ 2014, Raum#2 , Writers’ Forum Anthology and performances at the Edinburgh and Sarasvati (Indigo Dream Fringe Festival : Spoken Word Publishing); A Writer’s Handbook Sundays. awaiting publication; currently writing his memoir; writing and long IAN RICHARDSON walks are lifelong hobbies. After winning Waverley Lines Ian was encouraged to write more poetry JAMES SPENCE and has had three pieces published. Originally from Jethart, James Ian has enjoyed many holidays in the wrote recently published, Scottish Borders. Recently he was delighted Borders Folk Tales; has three poetry to find that his grandmother’s family collections out, and was included farmed at Newstead near Melrose. in Border Scots poetry anthology Jorum. Scots translation work ELIZABETH RIMMER includes graphic novel Unco Case o Her first collection Wherever We Dr Jeckyll an Mr Hyde. Live Now was published in 2011 by Red Squirrel Press. Her second JOCK STEIN collection The Territory of Rain was Jock is a preacher, piper and poet, also published by Red Squirrel Press who began his working life in the in September 2015. Sheffield steel industry, and is now She blogs at www.burnedthumb.co.uk. retired and living in Haddington.
ALUN ROBERT LOUISE THOMSON A Scots born prolific creator of I write silly stories to raise a smile, lyrical verse. He has achieved recent A librarian to trade (have been quite success in poetry competitions, been a while), included in anthologies and featured The high school in Selkirk is where in the web. Influences extend from I’m found Burns to Shakespeare, Kipling to A grand wee school – the kids are Betjeman, Dennis to Mazzoli. sound! I’m not very serious - writing is fun, CHRYS SALT I’m an open book (excuse the pun) Chrys Salt, has authored four full To just raise a giggle is my goal, collections and four pamphlet For laughter is medicine – it heals collections and was awarded an MBE the soul. for Services to The Arts in 2014. www.chryssalt.com OLGA WOJTAS I’m a journalist and writer in Edinburgh, and won a 2015 New HAMISH SCOTT Writers Award from the Scottish Hamish was born in Edinburgh Book Trust. I also read one of and now lives in Tranent, East my stories at the Edinburgh Lothian. His poetry in Scots has been International Book Festival under published in numerous outlets and the auspices of the City of Literature his third collection Wirds for the Day StoryShop. is now available.
FINOLA SCOTT Finola Scott’s poetry and short stories have appeared in anthologies and journals in the UK, including The Lake, Hark, Dactyl, Raum. Her work has won & been placed in UK competitions. Finola is delighted to be one of five poets selected for this year’s Clydebuilt scheme.
48 CONTENTS