1. Why do you think me a celebrity? Is it because some of my writing is in university textbooks and translated into Chinese?
2. Am I therefore fit to be among the rich usurers, politicians, research chemists, footballers, actors and popular entertainers who are 95% of the other celebrities your QUANGO is approaching? Are a few disinterested writers and artists needed to give other worshipers of the Bitch Goddess respectable company?
3. Are you prepared to tell the school children you seek to indoctrinate that many of the world’s greatest people have died – like the majority of the world’s poorest – in a state of miserable neglect? Jesus is the most famous example, tortured to death as a criminal by the Romans, his last words a despairing cry at his abandonment by the God of Love he had wished for all mankind. Herman Melville’s first two books brought him early money and fame, but when writing Moby Dick – America’s greatest novel – he told his wife’s parents that this book would NOT succeed, and wrote into it that, It is failure, not success, that tests the truly great hearts. Melville died neglected and forgotten by all but a few, not knowing that his last great work Billy Bud would ever be published. I will not add John Clare, Van Gogh and countless others who were treated as failures in their own lifetimes. Before he died even Leonardo da Vinci despaired of having finished anything worthwhile.
I make your firm a free present of this letter. If school children read it along with the other results of your celebrity questionnaire, I may not have written in vain.
“Yours truly etcetera. Email it Sarah. Here comes another.
“To the Manager of the Co-Operative Bank,
Mingulay Street Branch, Glasgow
Dear Sir or Madam,
I opened an account with your bank in 1952 on receiving my first education grant through your Sauchiehall Street branch, a service I expected to enjoy for the rest of my life. I wish now to transfer my account to the Airdrie Savings Bank for two reasons, both connected with my hatred of banks and lawyers who advertise and tout for business like car salesmen, travel agencies and other greedy huxters who nowadays pollute radio, television, film theatres, street hoardings and every other means of communication. In my youth British bankers and lawyers did not do such things. I liked the Co-Op Bank because it was then part of a marketing scheme for the working classes created by nineteenth century socialists. And I liked you declaring an ethical investment policy that would stop the Co-Op Bank profiting from weapon and torture-instrument making, and from support of undemocratic governments. Here is why I have changed my mind.
1. You started sending me leaflets illustrated with the faces of handsome young men and women looking full of happy wonder and astonishment by the easy terms on which you were prepared to lend them money. I come from respectable working class people who believed that getting into debt was a crime that would lead to eternal damnation. I no longer share my parents’ religious faith, but still share their attitude to debt.
2. At the same time other leaflets came from you without pictures, but in sober, even stately prose it suggested I invested my money in close consultation with a Close Brothers Group of Wealth Managers in the city of London money market, Close Brothers who promised to increase my money by investing it in safe ways not run by your less wealthy savers. I know as well as you and these Close Brothers that the only safe money market is managed by bastards who depend on warfare and drug dealing, and have invested the pension funds of our university teachers and probably most other institutions in them.
3. Moreover,” says Gumbler, and falls silent. His secretary types that. After a while he says, “Delete marginal numbers and Moreover. Last paragraph coming up.
“I am therefore transferring my money to the Airdrie Savings Bank, founded in 1835 the only independent savings bank left in our disUnited Kingdom. When every other Scottish bank united with the Trustee Savings Bank and then floated on the London Stock Exchange, Airdrie did not. It survived obscure and local until 2010 when six merchant bankers each put a million pounds in it. They must have thought that a way to protect their money when the present capitalist system collapses in the near future. Yours truly, etcetera. Check these details with Wikipedia before sending it off, Sarah. Next letter.”
“To the Rates Department
Glasgow City Council
Dear Sirs and /or Madams,
I have received your annual rates demand along with a leaflet headed Pay Up For Glasgow, which is quite unnecessary since for many years I have paid automatically by standing order. I write to complain about an even more useless pamphlet with a beautiful scenic view of a Scottish loch which turns out to be an advertisement for a private company now owning the Scottish water supply and which, through an international grid, also supplies England with water and, less directly, France. Glasgow civil servants (like our ruling Labour Party councillors) are likely too young and ignorant to know the history of our municipal water supply, which was once an inspiration to every intelligent citizen.
“Loch Katrine in the lonely heart of the Trossachs mountains became Scotland’s main tourist after Walter Scott made it the setting of his poem The Lady of the Lake. In 1859 Queen Victoria crossed it by the steamer Rob Roy to the mouth of a tunnel where she turned a handle. Water started flowing through seventeen miles of tunnel past Ben Venue and Ben Lomond to the great reservoir above Milngavie from which it descended to the whole city of Glasgow. This steady supply of pure water had been achieved by a Liberal local government against three sorts of Tory opponents.
1. Share holders of private water companies who said a single municipal water supply would undermine their profits and the principle of free competition.
2. Prosperous citizens who found it cheaper to rent pure water privately than pay rates to a municipality that would supply everyone cheaply.
3. The British Admiralty who, because Loch Katrine’s overspill was a source of the River Forth, feared the Firth of Forth might silt up, thus depriving the Royal Navy of its most important dock and harbour north of the Humber.
On the other side the Liberals argued that:
1. The steam engines Glasgow exported needed more pure water than private companies could supply. Muddy water in a workman’s tubes might kill him, but labour was cheap. Muddy water in an engine’s tubes could break it down, and machines were dear.
2. Typhus, typhoid and cholera epidemics began among the overcrowded and poor who could seldom pay for good water, so maybe God was punishing them for that, but the diseases often spread to respectable householders.
3. The Admiralty was wrong.
So Glasgow became the industrial city with the best municipal water supply in the United Kingdom and escaped the 1866 cholera epidemic that attacked the rest of the country. For decades a local Liberal government made Glasgow the world’s foremost city in public water supplies, public lighting, transport, libraries, hospitals, almost everything except housing. Only when the Scottish Independent Labour Party got a place in the London parliament while also taking over Glasgow were the first and best local housing schemes created.
“You have grown up in a completely privatised world, but as public servants you have no right to be distributing an advertising brochure for a private company that has grabbed all of Scotland’s great municipal heritage. Your only job now is to police it and ensure it is providing the public service you have relinquished. Do you really think the brochure proves the company is doing its job well? Are you fools who don’t know that EVERY private company pays smart agencies of copywriters and artists to persuade most of us of its wonderful achievements, while blinding us to its crimes and failures? Or are you scoundrels with shares in Scottish Water? I am eager to be informed. Yours etcetera.
“Do you think that letter will have more impact, Sarah, if I address it to Glasgow’s Lord Provost instead of the rates department?”
She says, “I think it will all come to the same thing Harry.” “In that case leave it. Fifth letter. You will have to consult the internet to find the addre
ss of this firm which is either in Austria or Germany.”
The Business Manager
Rotring Pen Company
“Dear Sir,
Since my days as an art student I have used, and come to depend upon the use, of your once excellent pens, which for I was delighted to see never changed their style of manufacture for over half a century. Twenty five years ago you made pre-filled ink cartridges available, but I ignored these, finding it both cheaper and more convenient to fill the interior reservoir by hand. Whenever a pen was lost or a nib damaged I had no trouble replacing these from one of Glasgow’s two main artist supply shops – until recently, when the shopkeepers started spending more and more time searching through drawers for what I needed. I attributed this to modern shop servants knowing almost nothing about what they sell.
“Recently I bought an 0.5 nib which stopped working after my first session of using it. Neither weak solvent (hot soapy water) or stronger (refined spirits of turpentine) unclogged it so I bought another, which seems to be the last in Glasgow. It too stopped working. I feel bereft of an old and useful friend. Can you advise me on this matter? Yours truly etcetera. Please find the maker’s address. I think it is in Germany.”
After some Googling his secretary pointed to the screen and asked, “Is that the pen you like using?”
He peered at an image and said “Yes indeed.”
“They’re still making it. Perhaps the last two you bought had been lying a long time at the back of a drawer. I can order some more online.”
“But where would I pick them up?”
“They would be delivered by post.
After a long pause Gumbler said gloomily, “Abort that letter. Please order three Rotring Isographs with 0.3, 0.5 and 0.8 nibs. Last letter.
“The Sales Manager
Serious Reading Lamps
Dear Madam,
I was pleased by your reaction to my phone call last week when I explained that the standard lamp I had been using for a great many years had failed for no explicable reason, since the bulb lit up when transferred to other lamps. You told me your firm would replace it with a new one, if I returned it to the courier in the box wherein the new was delivered. On receiving the new lamp yesterday I was delighted, had the old lamp removed, as agreed, so was flabbergasted last night to discover the plug would fit no standard socket in my house! The prongs are far too large, and instead of being metallic, seem composed of a thick white plastic. I find it almost impossible to believe that your firm expects every user of your most recent lamps to have the electric sockets of their homes renewed to fit. Such a requirement is commercialism gone mad and cutting its own throat…”
“Excuse me Harry, but could you show me that plug?” said his secretary.
“Why not?” says Gumbler grumpily. Leaving his chair he brings the lamp over from a corner and hands her the plug. She removes the white plastic sheath that covering the metallic prongs, drops the sheath in a wastepaper basket and hands the plug back. Gumbler sighed deeply three or four times then said, “I see. I see. Thank you. My problem is being too old. There is no point in sending the other letters either.”
LATE DINNER
SHORTLY BEFORE MIDNIGHT only two tables are still occupied in this small expensive restaurant. At one table a couple sip coffee and liqueurs and the man says, “It will be a stormy meeting tomorrow. All kinds of people will be trying to wriggle off hooks.”
“That won’t be our problem,” says the woman, and he agrees with her.
At a nearby table set for two, a woman with a glass of wine beside her is reading a magazine. A waitress tells her, “I’m sorry, but the chef will be closing the kitchen in ten minutes if not told to start the meal you ordered. Surely you’ve waited long enough?”
“I certainly have,” says the woman, closing the magazine. “My friend has never been as late as this before so tell the chef to – no – wait a bit, Mr Big is finally arriving.”
A quiet, penetrating voice reaches them before the speaker saying, “And Starky was hanging about your office today. Why? Sorry I’m late Proody. That last remark was not for you, Mrs Russell. You want to get to bed as it is near midnight. I am about to order a late dinner, first tell me why you let Starky natter to MacLeod for nearly twenty minutes.”
Mr Big is over six feet high, handsome, middle-aged, with a convincingly young manner. He sits opposite the woman he calls Proody, listens to his phone then says, “I see. You did not like to interrupt Starky and MacLeod because they are old friends. That’s bad, Mrs Russell. MacLeod is useful, Starky a waste of time which is why I fired him. When you don’t interrupt a chat like that you too are wasting my time. From now on I’ll be watching you. This is a friendly warning. Go to bed and sleep on it. Goodnight.”
He pockets the phone and murmurs across the table, “Sorry Proody. Tough days don’t bother me but this one has been very tough. I must shut my eyes for a bit.”
He leans back in the chair and does so. The waitress, interested by his performance, looks questioningly at Proody who begins to say that the kitchen is soon closing, but he interrupts her without opening his eyes: “Tell them I want the main course you’re having, with absolutely no starters.”
“Certainly sir,” says the waitress. “Another risotto of summer greens, Grana Padano, truffle oil. Anything to drink?”
“Tell her,” he murmurs to Proody. “Give her the recipe.” She tells the waitress, “A black velvet please – half pint of Guinness with an equal measure of champagne in a tankard or tall glass.”
“But that means opening a bottle of champagne!”
“He’ll pay for it and may drink the rest later,” says Proody, exchanging an O these men look with the waitress, who leaves. Proody reads her magazine again.
Voices at the other table become audible. The man says, “There is no real backlash against audit. The backlash is against terms that audit employs.”
“Yes,” says his companion, “but there must be such a thing as real information about issues that need to be addressed. Am I wrong?”
“Not wrong, but how can you get the right people to address issues on a local level when they are fed nothing but fashionable trends from the upper level?”
“Who are the right people?”
“Those who have most impact on the public services.”
They are startled by a groan from Mr Big, but resume their conversation more quietly after staring at him, for his laid-back figure gives no sign of having heard them. A distant cork pops. Soon after the waitress arrives with a tray and places the contents on the table saying, “Your black velvet, sir. The amuse bouche tonight are smoked salmon with crème fraiche and lemon puree.”
“I distinctly said I want no starters!” says Big, sitting up and glaring.
“Amuse bouche are not hors d’oeuvres sir. They are a free gift from the management for which customers are not charged.”
“Don’t try to blind me with your French,” says Big, “there is no such thing in the world as a free gift. This unasked-for rubbish will not con me into thinking I am getting something for nothing. The management makes customers pay for it by increasing the price of what they really want. Remove this trash.”
“I’ll keep mine thank you,” says Proody, closing her magazine and taking a fork to a small plate as the waitress removes the other. Big tastes his black velvet, looking brighter and more wide-awake for his outburst. “Are you always rude to underlings?” asks Proody in a pleasant way. He answers pleasantly, “Only when they don’t give me what I expect. I’m not rude to people I trust.”
“Were bosses rude to you when you were an underling?” “The efficient ones were, at first. As I climbed the company ladder they saw it wasn’t necessary.”
“I’ve decided to leave you,” she says.
He murmurs, “Ah.”
They are silent for a long time. The main course is served and they start eating.
At the next table the woman says, “There is surely such a thing
as real information, information on a national basis.”
“I don’t deny it,” says the man, his voice growing loud again, “but we are not really making things change because we have not pulled the right levers. What we do in a detailed way should depend on a better understanding of topic selection. Until you have the right concept in place you are basically incapable of setting up an effective hub.”
“So where, practically speaking, are we coming from?”
“Hard to say. We used to have the Institute for Improvement and Development behind us, but it was disbanded a month ago.”
“But somebody must be responsible for improving things, surely?”
“Yes. Us.”
“Us? That’s a terrifying idea.”
“Because we lack a concept of a new hub of values that will respond to levers we can actually, basically, handle.”
“Bullshit!” says Big loudly for the first time. “They’re drowning us in the stuff.”
“Are you talking about us?” the other man demands fiercely.
“No. Only about you,” says Big. “After a hard day’s work your drivel (which I could not help hearing) is intolerable. In my business words have precise meanings. Your jargon is more destructive of sensible thought than the noise of a pneumatic drill or a modern pop group.”
“You know nothing about my business,” cries the other, “nothing about what we were discussing.”
“You are obviously something in local government,” says Big, “someone with no real power nowadays, so you try to hide the fact with meaningless speeches. You can’t admit that the levers controlling Britain are handled by real businessmen like me. Every year we buy hundreds of you. M.P.s and local councillors and the police cost most. The rest of you are comparatively cheap.
Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012 Page 79