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This is my first post since the Yes side lost the referendum. Truth be told, having done everything I could to help bring about what I believed would be a better society, I was pretty knackered. All my arguments were spent. I’d nothing left to say.
Since the referendum, a lot of what we Yessers predicted has come to pass. Britain is not a friendly place. But that’s not what I came here to talk about.
We’ve all been horrified by recent events as people pour out of Syria into the seas between them and us. For those who make it to dry land, their journey is far from over. But I didn’t come here to talk about that either.
No, the thing that’s moved me to write is the mass action that is taking place all around me. Disgusted by our government’s inaction in the face of the refugee crisis, ordinary people have taken it upon themselves to do all they can to help in a way I’ve not seen before.
Gill McArthur is a mum of two and runs a nightclub, Studio 24, in Edinburgh. During the week, her nightclub is open to accept clothing donations for refugees in Europe.Volunteers sort and pack everything with a necessary degree of urgency so the space can be cleared again for Edinburgh’s Friday night clubbers. As Syrian families are gradually allowed into the city, Gill has also co-ordinated the sourcing and distribution of household items such as beds, TVs, toys, buggies.
Emma is a young mother from Dumfries. I met her standing guard at a lock-up while vans arrived almost in convoy to drop off bags and bags of donations. Emma, having discovered the main organisations ship mainly to Calais where the majority of refugees are male, decided to collect women and children’s items for another volunteer organisation called Samos. Based in Brighton, they have sent containers of much needed items to Syria, northern Iraq, and Kurdistan.
Jan Currie is a pharmacist. Alarmed by the seeming rift between Yes and No voters, and dismayed by our current state of affairs, she, along with friends, set up an apolitical organisation called WomanKIND Clydesdale. In its infancy, the group has already co-ordinated the gathering of toiletries and handbags for refugee women arriving in Scotland. Along with Cristina Ertze of The Common Weal, the group has also facilitated the melting down of thousands of old and broken crayons to create imaginative welcome packs for refugee children. Artists across the world have donated sketches for a colouring book to sit alongside the crayons. Cristina reckons the entire project involved approximately fifty people donating their time to bring a smile to people they will never meet.
Myself and a friend, Stephanie Whatley, found ourselves collecting clothes to take through to Emma in Dumfries. I mentioned it in passing to my son’s head teacher, and before I knew what was what, the entire school was involved. We were left with a few items that weren’t suitable for shipment which we took to a local cash 4 clothes type shop, planning to donate to a Syrian charity. The man in the shop weighed everything and as he was counting out our cash, reached into his wallet and donated twenty pounds of his own.
Prior to posting this, I contacted the women above to check for corrections and seek their permission to publish. This is what came back:
I collected the aid over a few weeks, which I kept in the lock-up to then be passed onto an organisation called MOOL (Massive Outpouring of Love, also based in Dumfries). They helped me store the aid and their volunteers packed it in order for me to get it to where it needed to be. I want them to be acknowledged for the help they gave me. – Emma
Hi, it’s important to say due to the overwhelming support of Edinburgh and surrounding areas as far as Fort William, we have formed a not for profit organisation called Re-Act. Re-Act has sent over 210 tons of aid to Calais and beyond. With unwanted donations we’re now able to help many other local charities. So it’s not just me. It has grown. The generosity continues and couldn’t happen without so many people giving up time and items. – Gill
So many people in the chain, all of them trying to help, each of them lifting and putting others before themselves.
Politically, these are dark days. As we creep towards the winter solstice, the darkness lengthens. And I realise that this is why I’m writing; to remember the light of the people who work their asses off in the hope of their efforts achieving what their vote could not: namely, making the world a better place.
Click here to donate to Re-Act
Click here to find the donate button for WomanKIND Clydesdale
Click here to find the donate button for MOOL
Like every other Yes voter I know, I was heartbroken by our failure to win enough people to our side. Like every other Yes voter I know, I did not anticipate feeling this way. I’d gone to bed in the wee sma’ hours of the 19th with a very bad feeling, having seen the first two counts announced and having read ICM were 99% sure it would be a NO victory. When I woke in the morning and reached for my phone, it wasn’t just tiredness that made me want to stay in bed. And then the worst was confirmed. We’d lost. And properly, too. I wasn’t always a Yes voter. I lived in London for fifteen years. At one point I’d have laughed in your face if you’d told me I’d ever move back to Scotland. It was wee, parochial, limited, limiting. I was nineteen when I left, technically still a teenager. I realise now all those years I spent outside of and looking in on Scotland, I was looking through teenaged eyes. When I moved back I wasn’t alone. I brought a partner and a son. Work dictated our decision and it was the best thing we could have done. We came back when the Edinburgh Festival was in full swing, all our pals were up from London, and most importantly, one third of our little family wasn’t constantly working away from home. Very quickly my blinkers fell away. Scotland wasn’t at all as I remembered it. It was as I’d forgotten it: utterly gallus. But even then I considered myself British before Scottish. That thought is now so strange, so unfamiliar, that it may as well have belonged to someone else. The Yes side was accused of being rabidly nationalistic throughout the campaign, but of course the counter to this argument is that blind loyalty to the UK is its own type of nationalism. Don’t get me wrong – the notion of nationalism is as frightening as ever it was. I paid attention in history class. I’ve always been wary of flag waving and large crowds chanting in the streets. So why, having never identified as a nationalist, does it suddenly feel so important to say out loud: I Am Scottish and proud of it? Does that make me a nationalist? Why do I suddenly care? To my mind it’s very simple and nations and race have nothing to do with it. I wanted to elect people to power who were answerable to ME. And a few others, obviously. It struck me as an absurdity than anyone could use a line drawn on a map hundreds of years ago as a pin on which to hang their personality. It was only about power, surely? And the potential of that power to effect change in our immediate environment. Which leads any thinking voter to ask: what type of change do I want to see? So you look around and you see the food banks, you read about a diabetic man dying because he couldn’t afford to feed himself, you read about all the sick people who died within months of being declared fit to work, you read about people being made to work for no wages, about books being banned in prison, how much Trident costs and the moral implications of such a weapon, you think about how much our foreign policy costs, not only in money but lives too, you learn that our National Health Service is under threat, that the minimum wage doesn’t even approach the living wage for ‘hard working families’, and you find the answer to that question ‘what change do I want to see?’ comes very easily indeed. You imagine a future where your vote can actually influence the decision makers, a future where the decision makers have full control of our tiny country with its massive resources; you imagine a future where the poorest people are treated fairly and with respect, you imagine a future where we live in a society that recognises we’re all born equal, or should be, and that if we treat each other decently, we all end up living in a better world. But you wake up on September 19th and realise your message didn’t get through. You hope the No voters have the same dreams but a different way of bringing them into being because the vision you’ve held in your mind for so long – that spurred you to be the most annoying facebook presence ever, that led you down unknown roads to deliver letters, or talking to people in the street – has gone. Evaporated faster than that morning’s dew. What do you have left? Only 1.6 million friends, each and every one of whom you’re extremely proud. And you will hang on to that pride with a shocking fierceness. Because did you see the tears David Cameron almost squeezed out as he promised us more powers? Did you see how all those Westminster MPs looked so disconnected from ordinary people as they took to the streets of Glasgow? Did you see the bags of food left at impromptu food banks? Did you see what we actually achieved? Did you feel how we connected with each other and tasted the possibility of a different world? Do you recognise how, even as we concede defeat, none of us are prepared to settle any longer for what passes in 21st century Britain as society? Who could have anticipated this movement of the people, this incredible surge of energy, all of us working for the common good of our country? And that’s what makes me finally proud to call myself Scottish. And all those English people who campaigned for Yes, and the Welsh and the Mexicans and Italians and Germans and all the other nationalities that live on this small land – I’m proud of them too. If anyone wants to call that nationalism, I say it’s a new breed and it’s bonny.
Artwork by Paul Rodger
Once upon a time, I took the word ARRANGEMENT and decided to DERANGE it. This poem uses eight letters and was published in Valve Journal.
a gent meant rent
rag net tent
gem ramen tea
arranged
agreed
rear gate rager
drag tear area
ten ten tenner
arranged
agreed
man mean meaner
ret tern rennet
garnet gannet
arranged
agreed
germ dag dagger
dagga dagga danger
gangrene gamer
arranged
agreed
Quite dark, huh? I love free-flow creative writing, but it’s sometimes fascinating to see what turns up when you write within a set of strict parameters. I also had fun playing with the arrangement of my deranged words; I think each stanza looks a little like the tip of a dagger.
Anyway, that’s enough sunshine and fairies for you. Away and play. Ciao.
A few years ago, I wrote a play called King of the Gypsies. I interviewed people from the Roma community, researched their history, and visited Appleby Common when the Gyspy fair was on.
I was fortunate with the timing of this play; Nick Griffin was at his highest point and Labour was on their way out. We seemed to be swinging enthusiastically to the right and, through King of the Gyspies, I hoped to play some small part in slowing it down.
Almost four years later, the Roma are in the press again. It was discovered last month that the daughter of a Greek couple was not in fact their biological daughter. An international search for the child’s mother began. A couple of days later, a Roma couple in Ireland also had their daughter taken into protective care because she did not look sufficiently like her parents. DNA testing proved otherwise. Fear is contagious and prejudice thrives on it.
I thought I’d take a look through my old notes and make a list of Gypsy facts for you.
I sometimes feel we’re on the brink of slipping backwards; it’s not always easy to recognise the signs when you’re living slam-dunk in the middle of something.
I’d like to leave you with this quote I took from an elderly Romani man. I’ve changed his name to protect his identity.
“I feel very proud of England. I love England. And most of the people that’s in it. The same as you do. You don’t love them all, do you? There’s some you want to know and some you don’t. I love most of the people in England and I’m very proud to born in England and known as being English but I’m 70 years old and it’s still them and us. The non-Gypsy and the Gypsy. Friends of mine…they think I’m a nice person. I’m a gentleman and I’m classed as a gentleman. I can go into the Midland bank today and they all call me Mr Smith. I’m a gentleman just the same as any man in your walk of life would like to be called a gentleman or treated as a gentleman. So I feel, when people say to me, ‘Good morning, Mr Smith’, and stop to have a word with me when I go into the town – I’m treated like a gentleman. But there’s a certain amount of people who think we’re all vagabonds and thieves.’
If you’re interested in learning more, an excellent book is We Are The Romani People, by Ian Hancock. I wrote a review here.
A few weeks ago my parents-in-law paid us a visit, and we all partook of a walk. The PILs are keen walkers and, as we crossed a field, doing our best to dodge the very many country pancakes, they regaled us with tales of recent exploits, one of which had seen them inadvertently share a field with a bull. It was a brief cohabitation, but a memorable one.
We were chuckling merrily at their adventures when suddenly, over the crest of a hill, appeared a herd of cows. We clung to the edge of the field, but the cows were sharp and they spotted us. They moved, as one, in our direction. Do cows have a hive mind? Anyway, they move a lot faster than you’d think; pretty soon panic was in the air. Father-in-law urged us be calm, but mother-in-law, chastened by the afore-mentioned recent events, ran. Mr Lynchpin and I couldn’t run, as between us we were shepherding our three year old. I can’t tell you where the nine year old was at this point. Probably choking in the cloud of dust kicked up by grandma.
The cows were so close now, I could smell their milky udders. I’d speeded up a good bit by this point, reasoning that Mr Lynchpin, at a full foot taller than me, was far better placed than old midget-drawers to protect our youngest.
We made it to the next field, literally seconds to spare. Two dozen cows eyed us with sinister intent from behind their barb wire fence. Father-in-law said they were only after their feed bin which, granted, was right beside them, but why, I had to wonder, did they look after us so longingly as we continued our trail? I made a mental note to google cows, fields and countryside.
A couple of days later, I’m packing for Texas. I’ve planned to visit here: http://www.nps.gov/bibe/index.htm
They have snakes and lions and bears.
Oh, my.
And no, my drawers aren’t really midget sized.
We’re coming in to land at Dallas and already I’m overwhelmed by the scale of Texas. Out my window, all the way to the horizon, all I see is green and brown and a murky, snake-like river, winding for miles and miles. I’m wondering where are all the people? Where does Texas keep them all? Don’t they need houses to live in?
My snaking river opens out into a massive lake. The shape is utterly bizarre, as though one of the pterodactyls who dominated these skies millions of years ago crash landed into Earth, leaving a splat shaped crater to be later filled in with water. Pterodactyls that big, though? Hell yeah, everything’s bigger in Texas.
I dare to think I’m beginning to appreciate the size of the place. My twelve days are going to be epic, frantic, fruitful. The pilot announces tornado warnings have been issued. We land in a hurry.
I’m in a motel. It’s 1am. I’ve a few blog posts in my notebook that I’ve not been able to upload so I’m going to hit you with a triple retrospective whammy.
I was recently awarded a £1500 prize from Sceptre publishing for my as yet unfinished novel. I decided to use the money to take me to Texas where the book is set. There’s a reason it’s set in Texas instead of somewhere more geographically sensible, but I won’t go into that now.
So, yes…Texas.
Let me put this into perspective for you. For four years I’ve been at home raising children. Four years of nappies, nursing and neurosis. Ok, there was that one year I went to university, or holiday camp, as I Iiked to call it whenever out of earshot of my in laws, but essentially my world has been very small. A solo trip to Texas is a bit of a leap.
Anyway, I say goodbye to the family without any tears (well done, me) and fly to Newark. My connecting flight to Dallas is delayed by two hours. That’s two hours off my itinerary. My trip’s shrunk by one hundred miles and I haven’t even started yet. Never mind, back home it’s bedtime and it’s not me wrestling a stubborn child into his pyjamas. I go for coffee. I fart around with my new phone which is supposed to help me stay in touch. I mosey out of the cafe to double check my flight details – holy shit! They’ve brought my flight forward! But that’s ok because my gate’s right there – holy crap! They’ve changed the gate from 82 to 95! You just know those bad boys ain’t parked together and I run. Well, I say I run. I run, mindful that this is the US and I could be brought down any minute by armed police. Plus I have a very big bag. But anyway, if you could just picture me running for dramatic effect…
I arrive at the gate, breathless. The queue isn’t moving. I’ve made it. I join the line. The PA switches on and a flight attendant says: ‘yeah…uh…the aircraft is still real dirty so y’all can sit back down again.’
Naturally, I go to the toilet. On my pet donkey’s life, I’m away no longer than three minutes. When I come back the line is moving. Also, very short. I join the back and as I near the front it becomes clear that the display board behind the man checking our boarding passes does not say this plane is going to Dallas. It says this plane is going to Cleveland.
I look around for the other gate. The real gate. The gate I was at. The gate that I could have sworn was right here. I could run. I want to run. I should run. I want to get on the Dallas flight. But there’s nowhere to go so I stay in line, and when I get to the front I say, with a wobble in my voice: This flight’s for Dallas, right?
With the big red lettered CLEVELAND sign behind him, boarding pass man replies: It sure is, m’am.
I’m almost having a stroke by this point. I take my boarding pass back, meekly grateful. As I walk down the gangway to board the plane, the couple in front of me are talking. I hear him say the words: poopy diaper. These are my people, I think. Kindred spirits. I stick close for comfort.
What is Thursday to you? Last day of the week before Friday, probably. Remember when it used to mean cheap drinks at the student union? Blue Bols and Cider? Beyond student life, and if you were an unemployed actor, as often I was, it meant cheap club night in London before floating home as the sun came up. It meant double episodes of Friends, followed by ER, accompanied by Chinese take away and a tub of Ben & Jerry’s. Thursday nights were the best.
My, but how times change. My most recent Thursday night was spent at one of the many concerts/plays/recitals/talent shows that invade your life post-children.
Before I go on, let me just say I do actually love these nights. I really, really do. I’m one of those parents always on the brink, always threatening to embarrass their child with tears of pride. Hell, it doesn’t even have to be my child. I’m completely impressed every time by the bravery of these teeny-tiny beings standing up to do their thing in front of a crowd of grown-up strangers. Most adults couldn’t do it.
However, as I enter my tenth year as a parent, a certain question arises. Why have I never, ever managed to bag me a front row seat at one of these things? Can someone tell me what the hell time you need to turn up to get one? On Thursday I was the earliest I’d ever been, a good fifteen minutes before curtain up, and still I was relegated to the back row. Like so many times before, I endured the walk of shame up the centre aisle past all the smug earlies. Do these people camp out in tents after morning drop-off, amusing themselves by pretending to be in a queue for Bros tickets or something?
Anyway, vertically challenged as I am, it turns out the back row is the best place for me because I can stand for a good view when the important children come on stage. (I know, I know, they’re all important – whatever.) As an actor of some professional experience, I was dismayed to see so many parents waving at their child as they arrived on stage. Godammit, don’t they know there’s no surer way to break an actor’s concentration thus potentially ruining the entire performance for everyone? My own child doesn’t appear till the very end, by which point the show is well established so it makes no difference whatsoever that I wave. Plus, demented waving from the back row is not nearly as distracting as a wave from a smug early down the front.
The show’s title, The Key Master, is written across the stage in huge letters, for which I’m immensely grateful because from the back row it sounds like the little darlings are singing a song called The Gay Master. Now wouldn’t that be a fabulous show, sweetie?
Inspiration for new hit musicals aside, the absolute BEST thing about school concerts is they’re so inclusive. Every child has their big moment in the spotlight. This is fair and good and righteous, if a little time consuming, but we, the audience, applaud each and every sentence or song enthusiastically, sans bias. Unless you’re in the back row, of course, where you can occasionally rest your eyes…or make notes for your blog.
The second best thing about school concerts is the interval because then you get to visit the tuckshop. The modern tuckshop is not what it used to be, namely, all cola-bottles, Wham bars, highland toffees and chelsea whoppers. These days everything is freshly juiced and Fair Trade. Still, a chocolate bar’s a chocolate bar, and as I’m here on my own tonight I get the whole thing to myself. Who’s smug now?
Returning to the auditorium after our ‘comfort break’, I realise what an overheated, stinky sandshoe of a room we’re in. It turns out we’ve been lied to – all the available windows are NOT open – and people are frantically pulling back curtains to let in fresh air. These windows, at twelve feet off the ground, may be a health and safety school inspector’s wet dream, but they are not practical for the suffocating parents, some of whom I believe to have not left the room at all for fear of losing their precious front row seats. I positively breeze up the centre aisle to resume my undesirable back row pew, noticing, or possibly imagining, the envious looks from the now not-so-smug earlies towards my dinky carton of refreshing apple juice. Mmmm yummy, I think – out loud.
The lights dim. We’re approaching the main event in the form of son number one’s two line solo. He was over the moon to be chosen and he’s practiced so hard I hear the melody in my sleep, find myself humming it in the shower. There’s been much excitement in our house because of this two line solo but I’m not nervous for him because he performed it last night and it all went well.
My anticipation builds as the intro plays. But wait, something’s not right. Unbidden, my professional actor training kicks in. My instincts are practically on fire. No, no, no! He’s almost fully hidden behind the microphone stage left! That’s no place for a solo! And then I see him nod almost imperceptibly to his friend standing centre stage; a friend who was desperate for a solo but the teacher had denied him. It’s as though time slows down. Probably fair trade apple juice is running down my chin. And then the friend opens his mouth and sings the solo.
I’m in an emotional tailspin. On the one hand, this is highly undesirable behaviour from my son, spawn of two actors. If his father and I have taught him anything it’s that the understudy only ever comes on in the direst of circumstances. I cannot condone this wanton disregard of directorial vision.
On the other hand, as I look at the beaming friend revelling in his glory, I have just found out my kid doesn’t need a song in order to rock.
And then I won the raffle.
*misleading title, so sue me.
How much have I struggled with this blog post? I’ve been sitting on top of it ever since the coalition voted through equal marriage a couple of weeks ago. Since then, the news has gone crazy. The pope resigned, lightning struck the vatican (someone’s not happy), meteors crashed into Russia, and we’ve all been eating horsemeat– does anyone actually remember what the equal marriage thing was in the first place?
Marriage has never appealed to me. Even as a child, it felt like something I ought to do rather than something I might actually want to do. I remember the order it should all happen in: school, university, job, marriage. No-one actually spelled it out for me – I just knew. Children tune into the societal vibe very easily.
Coming from a strong Catholic family, it was pretty radical of my parents to stop taking me to mass when I was eight. You couldn’t not feel guilty about it though, especially at school on a Monday when the teacher asked you to put your hand up if you hadn’t been to mass on Sunday. This was the late 1970’s, y’all, and I never put my hand up. Maybe I was heathen but I’d be damned if I was stupid.
Growing up without religion doesn’t mean you grow up with no faith. In a world of recession, divorce and poverty, we do need faith. Sometimes it’s required just to get out of bed. It takes faith to look at someone and dare to say I love you. It takes faith to look at someone and say let’s make a baby. It takes faith to look at someone and say I hate you but I know we can get through this. It takes faith to commit to spending your one lifetime with one person, through thick and thin, sickness and health, richer or poorer.
We need faith that we all have, essentially, the same desires and needs; to love and be loved, to look after our children, to live our life the best way we know how. Faith that our loved ones will be there for us even when our choices disappoint them. Faith in people. We all need to have more faith in people.
This is not the blog I originally wrote. I’ve struggled to find a way of expressing my thoughts without upsetting people. The problem is there are some people in my life who I love but disagree with over the issue of equal marriage. For years we’ve rubbed along just fine but with equal marriage so high on the agenda it’s not so easy to pretend we’re all on the same page. Consequently, it’s all gone a bit pete tong lately.
Reader, I’m a tough-as-old-boots, gobby, thirty-something Glaswegian who isn’t even gay, and I’ve had a shitty old time of it, largely due to the hold religion has on our society and the influence it exerts over the state. I’m coming from a pretty privileged position where I have loads of friends and family who back me up and agree with me but still, it’s been a properly shit year so far.
It makes me think of the other families up and down the country that are struggling in similar ways. What of the gay children being told in church on a Sunday that they’re somehow less? Because make no mistake, that’s what it boils down to – children being taught they’re not equal, that gay people don’t deserve the same rights as everyone else. I guess you can believe that if you like – no thought-police here – but don’t force it on all of us.
What of the people who have already grown up and had their views shaped by the teachings of their religion? Surrounded by a majority voice telling them they’re wrong, how can they change their thinking overnight? If they have gay family members, how do they reconcile their lifelong beliefs with the love they feel for those close to them? Do their consciences prick in the long nights between Sundays?
The media has been saturated for so long with this debate, we’ve almost forgotten about the hurt that’s spread in the name of God. What’s flying beneath the radar is the personal; a thousand sad stories of damaged families up and down our land. The impersonality of the internet makes it easy to vilify and mock but there’s no value in this. Shocked, confused and hurt at finding themselves so out of step with the mainstream, people either retreat or attack. We don’t need more isolated souls in the UK, and there’s no shortage of worthwhile fights still to be had. This argument is already won so let’s be gentle with each other while equal marriage is made law. Then, perhaps, we can all move on and make these stupid, sad tales of family breakdown a thing of the past.
lynchpinpauline 