‘I don’t wish to go back,’ I said. ‘You will not turn me away twice.’
‘I will turn you away as often as is necessary,’ he said.
He raised his stick.
I considered my options.
I was afraid, but not as afraid as he was.
25 September
Census
A substantial majority of Scots, it has emerged, speak a language about which questions were asked for the first time ever in the most recent national census.
Figures released today reveal that 4.48 million people, or eighty-four per cent of the Scottish population, talk Pish some, most or all of the time. This means that Pish is second only to English in terms of common usage.
A spokesman for the General Register Office for Scotland said that it was important to qualify this headline figure as some significant statistical discrepancies underlay it. For example, while seventy-six per cent of people over the age of sixteen said that they could talk or write Pish fluently, and sixty-five per cent said that they could immediately identify Pish when they heard it, a mere twenty-one per cent admitted to being able to understand Pish spoken or written by others.
The council areas with the highest proportions of people who talk Pish were the cities of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Rural areas had the lowest proportions of talkers of Pish, but this might be due, the spokesman said, to greater distances between inhabitants and high levels of taciturnity among farmers.
Professor Ranald Fowlis Wester, Director of the Institute for Talking Pish, commented: ‘I have been talking Pish all my life, and it is gratifying to see firm evidence of what I have suspected all along, that I am not alone. Indeed, it is clear that most of my fellow citizens talk Pish to a greater or lesser extent. I call on the Scottish Government to give Pish official status, to legislate for the teaching of Pish in our schools, colleges and universities, and to oblige the BBC to broadcast Pish at least six hours per day.’
The Tory MSP Findo Gasket said: ‘These figures are deeply disturbing and no credence should be placed in them. If concessions are made to talkers of Pish the floodgates will open and we will have talkers of Shite, Bollocks and Mince all clamouring for equal representation. I talk Mince all the time but I don’t expect anyone to take me seriously.’
No Scottish Government minister was available for comment in any language.
26 September
Red Cloud Returns to Washington, 1875
When I was a boy we knew of the white man but we seldom saw him. White men had passed through our country before I was born, and we had let them pass. My people lived on the great plains and in the wooded mountains and if you had told me then that one day we would not live there I would not have believed you. We had the buffalo, the antelope and the deer, we had dogs and horses, we had the seasons and the land and the rivers. There was not one thing we lacked. Most of all we had freedom.
Our enemies were the Pawnee and the Crow. We did not know what was coming to us.
After the Americans had finished their great war, they turned their attention on us. That war was fought to free black people from slavery but when the whites came to our country it was to demand it from us and to enslave us. We refused. They sent soldiers to build forts and drive a trail through our country. We fought a great war against them and we killed many and sent the others home. We signed a treaty at Fort Laramie which promised that we could keep our country as long as the grass shall grow and the water flow. Those were the words. That was only seven years ago.
This is not the first time I have come here. I have met the President before. He has offered to buy our land, and to give us a new home in another place. But we are in our own place, and it cannot be bought and sold for money.
That is not why they brought us here. They wanted to show us their cities, their factories, their wealth and their power. The war we fought was a dogfight compared with their great war. We could never have imagined how many white people there are if we had not seen them with our own eyes. I am not a fool. I will not sign this new treaty, but neither will I fight against such numbers. We fought a good fight seven years ago. It is over.
27 September
John Muir Returns to Dunbar, 1893
It is a long time since I was here. When I was a boy this was all the world I knew, and for a while it was enough. I thought then that fighting and the harrying of birds’ nests were the greatest occupations a boy could have but then we left for America and my horizons opened beyond my wildest imaginings. I took my homeland with me: my father’s harsh faith, which I fashioned anew in the cathedrals of Nature; and the works of Burns, who has never failed me as a companion on all my travels.
War is the most infernal of all the calamities of civilisation. I would not willingly participate in it and so during the Civil War I went to Canada. That was the first of my long walks and I have been walking ever since. I have walked to the Gulf of Mexico. I have walked the length and breadth of California. I have walked in Alaska and now I have come home to walk these old familiar places once more. You might say I went out for a walk in the dawn and never came back till sundown. There is so much to see before it gets dark.
I have walked both alone and with others. There is great joy in sharing the beauties of the world, but when you walk alone you walk with yourself, and this is the finest journey of discovery.
Our help lies in the mountains. Once, high in the mountains, I climbed to the top of a Douglas fir because a storm was building and I wanted to feel what a tree feels in a storm. I clung there while the tempest raged, and back and forth it swung me, not noticing I was a mere attachment to that intelligent plant. Back and forth went the tree, small journeys it had learned to make in its many years, small journeys of survival. For as long as it bent with the wind, the wind would not break it or cause it to fall. And so it is with me. My journeys have been over greater distances, but have I any more wisdom than a tree?
28 September
Onset
for Helena Nelson
I had a dream in which I had forgotten almost everything. I knew what it felt like to be without memory, but not what the things were that I had forgotten.
I was in an empty flat space like a great grey blanket. I knew the word ‘blanket’ and what it meant. My feet sank into the greyness but only so far. It was a long way to go somewhere else. I was very tired.
My feet were far away. One moment I was a giant, the next I was an ant. I did not know what an ant was. I only knew the word and that it meant small.
I had clothes on but had I dressed myself or had somebody dressed me? The clothes did not feel right. Perhaps they were not mine.
I thought if I could only meet someone who knew me, they would help me. They could say my name. ‘Hello,’ they would say, and then a name. That would be a start.
I thought if there could be a start I might be able to remember.
But I did not know if anybody knew me. I saw faces but I could not give them names. Faces came at me and went away without saying ‘Hello’.
I wanted to sit but the greyness would not let me. It made me sick. I had to stand. I was so tired I stood with my eyes closed.
Sometimes you wake up knowing you have been dreaming even though you can’t remember the dream. When I opened my eyes I did not know if I had been dreaming or even asleep, but I remembered having forgotten everything.
This frightened me. I decided not to move until I was sure I was awake and not still dreaming.
I watched the ceiling, the bedside lamp, the white sheet, the painting of trees on the wall. I watched them until I was sure I had not forgotten them.
I called out. Nobody came and then somebody did. I don’t know if they knew me. They helped me get dressed. ‘Hello,’ they said.
I am waiting for them to say a name. That will be a start.
29 September
Jack and the Minister
Jack had never quite been able to grasp the concept of the soul. If it was part of
you how could you not see it when you looked in the mirror? If it was in you how could you not feel it as you could feel your heart? Yet the minister said from his pulpit that without it you were dead, an empty shell.
To Jack, your soul was like your shadow. It belonged to you and you could not be parted from it, but you could not always see it and even when you could you never paid it much heed.
One day when he was out Jack met the minister coming the other way.
‘Aye, Jack, and how are you?’
‘Braw, thanks,’ says Jack. ‘How’s yersel?’
‘I am well too. And how are you in your soul?’
As usual, Jack had forgotten until that moment that he had a soul. Cannily he keeked over his shoulder to see if his shadow was there, and it was, so he says, ‘Aye, ma soul’s braw, tae.’
‘Why did you look behind you when I asked you that question, Jack?’
‘I was just checking,’ Jack says. ‘Sometimes my soul is there and sometimes it isna, but today it’s there.’
‘Foolish boy,’ the minister says. ‘You cannot see your soul.’
‘Ye can sometimes,’ Jack says. ‘Sometimes it’s afore ye and sometimes it’s ahint ye.’
Then he pointed out to the minister a tree’s soul, a flower’s soul, a cat’s soul and a gate’s soul.
‘These things don’t have souls, Jack,’ the minister says. ‘Only people have souls.’
Just then a big black crow flapped by overhead. As it passed above them its shadow flew along the ground, now a wee bit behind the bird, now a wee bit ahead of it.
‘What’s that if it isna the craw’s soul?’ Jack asks.
‘That’s its shadow, Jack,’ the minister said with a laugh. ‘Not the same thing at all.’ And on he went.
Jack shook his head. There was his own soul, attached to his feet, stretched out on the ground. But as for the minister’s soul, Jack could see no sign of it following at the minister’s heels.
30 September
Training
‘Pick a card, any card,’ the man said. I’d seen him coming and had hoped he’d miss me. No such luck.
‘I’m busy,’ I said.
He leered at me like a pilot upside down in a small aeroplane. ‘No you’re not. You’re reading a book, that’s all. Pick a card, any card.’
He’d been working the room, not very successfully it seemed, but that was partly because there was hardly anybody in. I suppose it was bound to be my turn eventually.
‘Is this what you do?’ I said. ‘Go round the pubs annoying customers?’ I nodded towards the bar. ‘Did you get permission?’
‘Once round and out,’ he said. ‘That’s what they allow. Single roses, evening papers or card tricks, makes no difference. Once round and out again.’
He had a narrow, shaved head and a wide nose with a fair amount of shrubbery at the nostrils, which were otherwise open to view. He pushed the fanned-out pack under my face. ‘Come on, pick a card, any card.’
‘What if I do?’ I said. ‘Do I have to pay?’
‘You can if you want,’ he said, ‘but it’s not compulsory. I’m on a scheme. Trainee magician.’
‘Who’s training you?’
He gave me a severe look, as if I’d crossed a line. ‘Il Maestro,’ he said, stretching the syllables out like pasta. And then, ‘Just give us a break, pal, eh?’
I sighed, closed my book, pointed at a card.
‘Not that one,’ he said.
‘You said any card.’
‘Aye, but not that one.’
‘Trainee magician?’ I said. I pointed at another card. ‘All right?’
‘Great.’ He slid it onto the table. ‘Pick it up and look at it.’ I picked it up and looked at it. ‘Now put it back in the pack.’ I put it back. ‘Now you take the pack and shuffle it.’ I shuffled.
He took the cards from me and went through them. Very slowly.
‘That the card?’ he said eventually.
‘No.’
‘Fuck. You sure?’
‘Aye. Mine was the nine of clubs.’
‘Fuck.’
He stood there, looking pensive.
‘What are you reading?’ he asked.
I covered the book, put a pound coin next to it.
‘You tell me,’ I said.
OCTOBER
1 October
Varieties of Madness in France, 1665
after Sir John Lauder
One night we happened to discourse on madmen and the causes of madness. They told me of a man at Marseilles who believed himself the greatest king of the world, and that all the ships in the harbour, along with their wares, were his. Of another they said that he believed himself to be made of glass, and cried horridly if anyone came too close, for fear they would break him. His friends, on some doctor’s advice, took a great sandglass and smashed it over his head as he thus raged. When he saw the glass falling at his feet he cried more hideously than ever, that his head was broken in pieces. After he had calmed a little they desired him to consider that the glass was broken, but that he was not; and consequently that he was not glass. On this remonstrance he came to himself, admitting the truth of what they said.
We cannot forget a story from the bedlam in Paris. Two gentlemen came out of curiosity to see the madmen, but the keeper of the hospital having some business to attend could not take them round. Whereupon he instructed one of the inmates to accompany them, and show them all the madmen and the natures of their madness. This the man did, pointing out with remarkable knowledge one who was mad for love, another made witless through drunkenness, a third who was hypochondriac, and so on. At last, as they were about to leave, the inmate said, ‘Gentlemen, you have marvelled at the folly of many you have seen, but yonder is one more foolish than all the others, for that poor fellow believes himself to be the beloved apostle Saint John. Now I tell you that he is utterly wrong, and the reason I know this is that I am Saint Peter, and I never opened the gate of Heaven to him yet.’
The gentlemen were surprised to find their guide, so credible until that moment, so deeply deluded. They were informed that he was once a doctor in the college of Sorbonne, and had been reduced to that state through too much study. Which is a lesson indeed.
2 October
Ways of Dying Gently in Scotland, 1790s
after Lord Cockburn
Dr Joseph Black, the noted scientist, was a tall, thin, cadaverously pale person, feeble, slender and elegant; his eyes were dark, clear and large, like deep pools of water. He glided like a spirit through the mischief and sport of local boys, respected and unharmed; and when he died, seated with a bowl of milk on his knee, in ceasing to live he did not spill a drop of it.
Dr Robert Henry the historian, having been declining for some while, wrote from his Stirlingshire home to his friend Sir Harry Moncrieff: ‘Come out here directly. I have got something to do this week, I have got to die.’ Sir Harry arrived. Dr Henry was alone with his wife, resigned yet cheerful. Sir Harry stayed with them three days, during which Dr Henry occupied his easy chair, conversed, was read to, and dozed.
At one point, hearing the clattering of a horse’s hooves in the court below, Mrs Henry looked out. To her dismay she saw that it was a wearisome neighbour, a minister, who was famous for never leaving a house after he once got into it. ‘Keep him oot,’ cried Dr Henry, himself a minister, ‘don’t let the cratur in here.’ But already the cratur was up the stair and at the door. The doctor winked and signed to the others to sit still, while he pretended to be asleep. The visitor entered. Sir Harry and Mrs Henry put their fingers to their lips and shook their heads: the slumberer was not to be disturbed. The visitor took a seat, to wait till the nap should be over. Whenever he tried to speak, he was instantly silenced by another finger on the lip and another shake of the head. This continued for a quarter of an hour, with Sir Harry occasionally detecting his friend peeping through the fringes of his eyelids to check on the state of play. At last the unwanted guest was ushered out, at
which the dying man opened his eyes and had a tolerably hearty laugh. This was followed by another when the sound of departing hooves assured them that the danger was past. Dr Henry died that night.
3 October
Scottish Dietary Prejudices
after Sir John Lauder and John Kay’s Original Portraits
Sir John Lauder, on his travels in France in the 1660s, was not a little amazed to see his hosts one day preparing among other things for the daily meal ‘upright puddock stools’, which they called potirons or champignons. They rose overnight, he noted, and grew in ‘humid, moisty places’ as in Scotland. The French fried them in a pan with butter, vinegar, salt and spice, and ate them greedily, surprised that he did not eat as heartily of them as they did. ‘But my prejudice hindered me,’ Lauder rather ruefully admitted.
More than a century later, Dr Joseph Black and his friend Dr James Hutton, in the service of free and objective inquiry, set out to overturn a similarly narrow dietary prejudice. It was surely inconsistent, they argued, to abstain from the consumption of hard-shelled creatures of the land, while those of the sea were considered delicacies. If oysters, why not snails, for instance? Snails were known to be nutritious, wholesome and even to have healing properties. The Italians, like the epicures of antiquity, held them in high esteem. The two philosophers resolved to expose the absurd objections of their countrymen to the eating of snails.
Having procured a quantity, they caused them to be stewed for dinner. No guests were invited to the banquet. The snails were served – but theory and practice were found to be separated by a great gulf. Far from exciting their appetites, the smoking dish had diametrically the opposite effect, and neither party felt much inclination to partake of it. Disgusted though they both were by the snails, however, each retained his awe for the other; and so began with infinite exertion to swallow, in very small quantities, the mess that was prompting involuntary internal symptoms of revolt.
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