Let them eat cake : the Queens Hotel, Dundee, and Frank Sinatra, 1953

Recently we flew up on a Saturday morning from Exeter to Dundee to go to Dens Park to watch the famous eleven defeat Dumbarton 2-1 and so win the Scottish Professional Football League Championship and gain promotion to the Scottish Premier League. To give ourselves time for any possible post-match  celebration we had arranged to stay overnight at the Queens Hotel, an elegant Victorian establishment which first opened its doors to guests in 1885.

An interesting, but not elegant part of Victorian Dundee

The match score tells you there was a happy ending at Dens Park. Paul Hartley and his team triumphed.  We enjoyed the after-match celebrations at the ground and then took a taxi back to the Nethergate and the Queens Hotel where later in the evening we were to dine with two friends, a couple, who live just outside Dundee.  During what was an excellent meal,  I talked - which I almost incessantly do  -  about my childhood memories of Dundee. I paused briefly to catch my breath, and one of our friends swiftly breached this momentary gap in my lengthy blethering, to inform us that for all the years she had lived in and around Dundee she had never set foot in the Queen's Hotel and yet in the early 1950s her mother had worked as a chambermaid there. Her mother had told her stories about many of the famous show business people who stayed at the Queens in those days. It was a convenient resting place for them because it was situated close to the Palace Theatre and was not so far away from the Caird Hall. Our friend's mother had said that one of the occasions which remained clearly in her memory was the time Frank Sinatra and his then wife Ava Gardner had stayed at the Queens when he was appearing at the Caird Hall. 1953 was  a time when the singer's star was temporarily on the wane. Young fans had fallen in love with newer, younger crooners and the ticket sales for the show were poor. When the show started less than 500 people occupied an auditorium built to accommodate well over 2000 souls. Apparently Sinatra was not best pleased with this and felt  his show had suffered from poor pre-publicity and he vowed never to return to Dundee. He kept his promise.

Ava and Frank bided here in Victorian elegance

As for the poor pre-publicity well certainly I was unaware that Frank Sinatra was in Dundee on July 7th, 1953 but at the time I was 7 going on 8 and was much more interested in following the Ashes test cricket series on the nine inch Bush television which my father had bought us in May so that we and everyone else in the street  could watch the coronation. In fact I didn't get interested in music until we were hit by  Rock n' Roll  in 1956 when allegedly, well, according to my Mummy at least, the Teddy Boys were planning to rip up the seats in the Astoria Picture House in Lochee where "Rock Around the Clock" was about to show. I was already well over 10 years old and certainly I did not understand why I was not allowed to go and see "Rock Around the Clock."

A 1953 App for cricket and coronations

And another thing, now that I come to think of it, my Mummy and Daddy did a very good number on my sister and me over evening television programmes. Everyday the television service closed down at about 6 o'clock after Andy Pandy and Muffin the Mule and all that stuff had been shown. I mind it stayed on until 6.30 pm when the cricket was on which was lucky for me because Daddy did not come home from work until about that time. I think  Mummy let me watch the cricket not only because Daddy hadn't got home yet but also because it kept me quiet.

Well, to get back to that number that was done on us over the TV, when the television service closed down in the late afternoon, our parents successfully conned us into believing that  television broadcasts were off the air until the following afternoon's children's programmes started again.  After a few months I became suspicious about this not only because I had not experienced any other aspect of life which was so loaded in favour of us children but also because I thought I could hear talking and singing in the living room and it wasn't Mummy and Daddy and it didn't sound like the radio.  So one night at about 8 o'clock I decided to do something about it and went downstairs into the living room intending to say I had a headache. I caught them at it. Yes, there they were in the dark watching the TV.

 I said "I thought there was no TV at night."

"Well it just started the night,"  my Mummy replied.

"And it's on too late for you to watch. It doesn't start until half past seven," my Daddy said as a reinforcement. Actually I thought that was fair enough but why had they kept it a secret ?  At that time I sometimes wondered about parents. I continue to do so.

Anyway at about the beginning of 1955 things got better. I was in bed one February night and heard crowd noises and the voice of a commentator coming from the living room. The crowd sounded just like those I heard at Dens Park. So I quickly developed a sore throat and went downstairs for comfort. When I entered the living room which my parents always kept dark when the TV was on at night so it was just like the pictures,  I saw there was a football match on the TV.  I asked if I could watch it. My Daddy was about to say, "No !" when my Mummy intervened and said "Och, Chic, let him watch it you know he's football mad." He relented and I watched the match sitting on the floor. It was from Brockville Park which was the only stadium  in Scotland with floodlights. Falkirk was playing the Army, whose side had a lot of professional football players who were doing their national service. Once the match was over and I was told to go to bed, I did so immediately for I hoped it was the start of a good thing.

And it was. I was still not allowed to watch TV on ordinary nights but if there was football on I could stay up and watch. This was a favour not afforded to my younger sister. I don't how she felt about that. I guess I just thought it was fair enough because I was older than her by a year and I didn't think she was interested in football.

 I watched some great matches including a series of floodlit friendlies between Wolverhampton Wanderers (who were the English league champions at the time) and Moscow Dynamo and  Moscow Spartak as well as the Hungarian team, Honved, that had Ferencz Puskas in it. He was one of the Mighty Magyars (not to be confused with the Maryhill Magyars) of the Hungarian national team. These matches were big news, coming, as they did, before European club competitions had really got underway. International travel was still a minority experience, and though my Daddy had been abroad on business a number of times, I had not, so teams from as far away as Moscow and Budapest seemed excitingly exotic.


These peregrinations have taken me away from the story told by our friend's mother who had also related to her daughter that while most of the show business guests would, at the end of their stay, leave a significant monetary consideration to be shared among the Queen's Hotel staff,  Frank Sinatra left them a small, round, and undoubtably delicious, Dundee Cake to share because he "was sure they would really like it."  Well I've been brought up to believe that as far as gifts are concerned, "It's the thought that counts."

I did it my way

I don't know if the hotel staff saw it this way. Was a gift of a Dundee  confectionery icon an exercise of unmitigated altruism ? or an expression of downright meanness ? or even an act of ignorant naivety on a Marie Antoinette scale? We may never know, but we can be sure "ol' blues eyes" did it his way.

Seldom Spotted Edinburgh Tram captured in its nesting place in St Andrews Square, May 2nd, 2014

Tram twitchers throughout the world have been anticipating  this sighting for eons. A seldom spotted Edinburgh tram was glimpsed in St Andrew's Square Edinburgh today.  Yes just 58 years since the Dundee tram migrated never it seems to return, a living breathing Edinburgh tram, long thought extinct, has now returned to its ancestral breeding grounds. Their human piloting systems are not quite integrated but as soon as they are acclimatised to their Edinburgh grooves, they'll be flying everywhere.

There it is : but not without its down side

Of course not even a miraculous and epoch-making happening like this comes without problems. That usually much loved creature the commonly spotted Auld Reekie Taxi Driver will have to find something new to squawk about.


And what about our Dundee trams ?

Incubating in a Machinassic Park ?

 Is there a chance that a colony of them may be hiding in some uncharted foreign part,  preparing for its return ?

A Parcel of Rogues : why Scotland has a right wing, London biased media

The Conservative Party and its misled, confused and sorry compatriot in the United Kingdom government, the Liberal Democratic Party, hold 12 of the 59 Scottish Westminster parliamentary seats. The Scottish National Party and the party formally known as  - but no longer representing -  Labour,  hold the remainder.  In the Scottish Parliament even with its proportional representation system the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats hold merely 20 of the total 128 seats. Known for never getting anything absolutely correct, I accept my figures may not be immaculately accurate at the time of posting but they do not misrepresent the general situation.  It is evident the majority of the Scottish electorate holds left of centre views and this, if I may be holier than thou for a moment, is to its credit, and leads to Scotland being a civilised country which wishes to care for those in its community who are vulnerable and integrates this tendency of concern for the less well off and the suffering into government policies much against the wishes of the government of the South East of England at Westminster in London and against the desires of the self-interested Scottish media.

 So given the clear political leaning of the Scottish electorate why does it  suffer from such an overwhelmingly right wing and London biased media ?

As if the Scots haven't suffered enough over these last three centuries when even the English (British?!) national anthem regales against the Scots with a stanza about an imperialistic road and bridge building member of the English military and prays to the Almighty,

Lord grant that Marshal Wade
May by thy mighty aid 
Victory bring.
May he by sedition hush and like a torrent rush,
Rebellious Scots to crush.
God save the King ! 

Well forgive me for noticing that the BBC in Scotland is, like the writer of this abominable song, a Londonophiliac in nature, and intent on belittling what it is to be Scottish at the same time as being  determined to crush the Scottish spirit.  The BBC is inhabited by a significant number of people in awe of the "loadsa"  money, power and influence which they believe exists in London and though they don't like it as much, Manchester. The idea of a smaller SBC world holds no attraction for them.  Faithful to that "dross called gold" and not to the communities from which they came, as soon as the whiff  of golden life beside the Thames wends its way up their nostrils, they are lured south.

As for the printed press, with one or two exceptions such as The Daily Record and sometimes The Herald the  predominant left of centre view of the Scottish electorate is not well represented and  there certainly isn't any significant representation of the views of the many people in Scotland who favour independence. Newspapers in Scotland are it seems also in thrall of the "high road to England."* Their owners and editors fantasise that toadying to Westminster and to the wealth of the City of London will somehow save their failing publications.

A Parcel of Rogues in a Nation : the signing of the Act of  Union 1707

Three hundred years on it would seem important that Scots, at least this time, each with a vote to prevent it, should not be sold out by another parcel of self serving rogues.**



Sources
* "The noblest prospect a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England!"
From James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, LLD.  Published 1791.

** Such A Parcel Of Rogues In A Nation  Poem by Robert Burns
Published 1791

Freedom of Speech : the views of the late John Tunnock

A few weeks ago I picked up a paperback in Blackwells, at the junction of  South Bridge and Infirmary Street, Edinburgh, in the same building where the late lamented James Thin Booksellers once traded. The book was a risky purchase. I was fearful it would be too esoteric because it was not on the "Buy two and get a third one free" table. My fears proved ill-founded. It turned out to be a "profound, funny and thundering good read" and offered what for me were a number of pearls of wisdom. The book contained the collected papers of one John Tunnock, a schoolmaster who bit the dust some years ago in Glasgow. I thought Mr Tunnock's idea about freedom of speech was worth - if I might be allowed a little indelicacy - chewing the cud over.
     In the following short excerpt from his memoirs Tunnock recollects his thoughts as he is about to join a demonstration in Glasgow to protest about the Anglo-American war with Iraq.

"I approve of people publicising their ideas on peaceful protest marches, whether workers who don't want their industries shut, or pacifists who want nuclear missiles banned, or even Orangemen who think the world's worst menace is the Catholic Church. Freedom of speech needs everyone to openly show what they believe, even if those ideas are stupid and wrong. Without public discussions and demonstrations the only alternative to being governed by millionaire politicians is terrorist bombings".*

Old Men in Love  Alasdair Gray

    I think Mr Tunnock is saying that differentiating the right of freedom of speech from the privilege of public action is significant. Freedom of action should require a genuine consensus of all the members of our community. Disagree with me if you will but please don't get out the water cannon and I hope those millionaire politicians are listening. 

                               

*An excerpt from page 94 of the novel, Old Men in Love John Tunnock's Posthumous Papers by Alisdair Gray

We're no' daft : Holyrood or Westminster - nae contest

Now I may be wrong about a lot of things but if you have a look at that Prime Minister's Question Time daytime show that they have on Wednesdays on the television from Westminster and then using your dit-dit you click on to the television channel that covers the Scottish Parliament and you see the way business is carried out there at Holyrood in what is a very forthright yet respectful way, you will begin to understand why so many people in Scotland will opt to be governed by their own kind. We're  no'  daft.

At Westminster  a parcel of performing rogues is to be found, while at Holyrood is discovered the kind of gathering you would expect to be dealing with the issues of an enlightened, outgoing community and  nation.

Nae contest.

Dundee Football Club, John Brown, Scot Gardiner, Barry Smith, Sandy Davie and my football career at Liff Road School

I would say that I had nothing against John Brown. As a fellow human being I am sorry that he has been eased out of his job as manager of Dundee FC.  I never saw him when he played for Dundee.  It was at a time  when I couldn't get to Dens to see the team.  What I was upset about and  ashamed of was what had happened before John Brown was appointed, in particular the way his predecessor was dismissed.

I remember that at one of the his first engagements with the media after his  appointment as manager to our great club John Brown said,  "Scot Gardiner. and I go back a long way."  I didn't quite understand what he meant. Quite fancifully, what came to mind was that they were distantly related or that they had belonged to a male society whose members identified each other by the nature of their handshaking.  It turns out that I am completely wrong,  or, if either was the case, none of those things helped Mr. Brown keep his job but you've got to admit that Mr Gardiner is a very powerful man. He's the sort of champion who has the wherewithal  to run a side like Rangers. Of course a man right enough for Rangers may not be right for Dundee.

At Raith Rovers : New Year, 2014 

As an aside I was sorry not to be at Dens Park last Saturday to see again that good man and good football coach, Barry Smith.

This particular blog carries with it the warning that my views on matters of football are in all probability - actually in all certainty -  worthless and most would rightly count me a football  naif even though I played at outside left for Liff Road School on three occasions during the season 1956-57. Firstly I played against our local rivals St Mary's School, Lochee, who then had a great team which that year  had vanquished  all before them. The result of the match was 1-1 or "one's up" as we used to say.  I was kept in the team for the next game against St. Mary's School, Forebank, which we lost 2-0,  and finally I played for the side in another local derby against Ancrum Road School at Lochee Park. We lost 5-0 or as we would say at the time,  "five nothing."  After this disaster, our manager, coach and school heidie, Mr Dalgleish, dropped me forever.  I was so distraught that next season I went to the Harris Academy and took up rugby.

Mind you I'm a person who always enjoys shining in the reflected glory of others. So, let me tell you, our goalie in the Liff Road side was a boy named Sandy Davie who went on to have an illustrious career in football, even if he did play for that other unmentionable middle eastern team. Unfortunately this fact did not turn me into a good player.

Still, despite all my disappointments in life and football, I'll be taking an early train from Totnes to be at Dens for the Hamilton Accies match on Saturday. A good match to win !  What a club I support !

Khat to be banned in the United Kingdom : we're saved from Armageddon !

That magnificent moral band of people called the United Kingdom government, inspired by our wise Home Secretary, Theresa May, is to ban the mastication of khat, a bunch of twigs and leaves which if chewed upon makes the chomper temporarily unproductive and leads him to carry out acts of terrorism. You've got to admit, as a form of reasoning, it makes watertight sense. Furthermore, our government believes it is a practice that if not banned sine die will accelerate the coming of Armageddon.

Now, for all you liberals out there  - I mean Liberal Democrats not real liberals  -  this is great news. We are really beginning to get to grips with assuring an end to all the nasty behaviours in which the immigrant poor indulge. That's why Mr Clegg acquiesced meekly when Mr Cameron  explained to us how he would stop the activities of those devious Bulgarians and Rumanians from the far east of our continent who step on to our sceptred isle and by cunning alchemy convert all the taxes we Britishers pay from our very own pockets into welfare payments which end up in THEIR pockets. Of course you'll find propagandists  out there from the centre left  -  not from the Labour Party of course, but from the real centre left   -  who claim that these foreign deviants are in work, paying their taxes and are not taking our welfare benefits. Well, if you believe that sort of rubbish you probably imagine that the NHS is a good institution. What a laugh !

Anyway back to the subject of those worst ever drugs that all the Johnnie Foreigners in our country are ingesting 24 hours a day.  Let me tell you,  all you people from East African countries living in our welcoming country who might be assuming that the consumption of your drug of choice is being singled out and picked upon, that this is just not the case.  Hold back on your prejudice.  Next week the United Kingdom government will  announce an immediate ban on the intake of nicotine and the imbibing of alcohol.*

* "OK officer, I'll come quietly, and I will learn to appreciate that my last sentence was unpatriotic, traitorous and most significantly, an anti-capitalist lie". 

Free Scotland in 2014 : a sense of my own worth

I hope that on September 18th, 2014, the voters of Scotland choose to make their country an independent one. Others have demonstrated that there are many compelling economic, political and philosophical reasons for Scotland to choose to be independent but for me as a Scot living away from his country, the attraction of freedom is emotional as much as it is rational.

Behind bars on the Scotsman's stair

     A healthy indicator of the nationalist movement in Scotland is its internationalism. In the first instance, it has a wish to be understood as European as much as it is Scottish. Informally, the Scots have a long tradition of this, not only in the development of  European thinking, but also in the way the Scottish diaspora has disseminated and in turn implemented its ideas about science, engineering, medicine, construction, democracy, government, education and etc., throughout the world. 

     What impacts more powerfully upon me is the evocative and provocative sense of a free Scotland. Being Scottish connects me to a place where I belong, where I come from and where I spent my childhood. If Scotland votes for independence  I will be pleased not to feel - in a very embarrassing way - churlish when I insist that I am Scottish at those times when it is assumed that by being British I must be “English.”  For certain, I love where I live in England and I love English people. Yet, why is it that perhaps 6 or 7 times a year I find myself in a situation which impels me to protest that I am a Scot ?  Some will not understand this. After all, Belgians don’t get called French, Dutch people don’t get called German, Portuguese folk don’t get called Spanish and English people seldom experience - directly or by implication - being  called Scottish. For most people my anxiety may seem childish. It is. It runs deep. It is primitive.  It frets over my sense of my own worth  - not in pounds sterling  -  but as a human being. 

Edinburgh, January 1st,  2014.

OECD : Office of Essential Capitalist Dissemination and thoughts on China and Sri Lanka, Oh! and Andrew Mitchell

It would be good to know more of this very clever  -  much more clever than any of us, you know  -     international body called the OECD which last week told us our useless kids and their useless teachers are trailing light years behind those hard working and nice non-hoodies, Korean and  Chinese schoolchildren, in the pursuit of doing sums. To tell the truth I am pleased about the success of children from far Asia, because for so long my generation was told that people from those countries  were either technologically neanderthal or copycats and certainly they were, we were informed,  culturally rather backward.

How things have changed, for while our UK prime minister, David Cameron, MP sniffs the posterior of  Chinese government and Chinese industry and their gold, he feels rectitudinally big enough to exercise his cane on the backside of the Sri Lankan government which has treated some of its people rather poorly. I am sure, because here in the United Kingdom we are a respectable and fair people with a respectable and fair government, that our prime minister will  provide us with evidence that the Sri Lankan government is nastier to its people than the Chinese government is. There can be no doubt that if this were not so, our noble and very wealthy prophylactically helmeted leader, our top Etonian, would be courting the world media to report that China is not too hot on human rights and so maybe we oughtn't to make trade deals with it.  It is mere happenstance that the Sri Lankans don't have the financial muscle of the Chinese and it would be cynical to think the relative poverty of Sri Lanka, and the less attractive trading opportunities it offers, allows our government the "moral strength" to front up to the human rights violations of the Sri Lankan government and, at the same time,  to wipe out from our collective memory some of the human rights atrocities that have occurred in China in recent decades. Actually when I come to think of it we're not too good on treating people humanely. As well as giving the nod to a little bit of torture here and there, our interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya have hardly lessened the suffering of humankind, and as for the way we treat our own poor.......

"Well, that feels better. Got rid of a lot of stuff there."

Getting back to the OECD, I think it tells us that China is on the right lines and how it is going to be the greatest economy in the world soon - indeed it may already be so. And well, well, well the OECD isn't holding out much hope for the Sri Lankan economy.

It is an irony, though perhaps rather small beer,  as we simple folks try to make sense of all the big issues which are far beyond the thinking capacity of our little minds,  that the OECD is now telling us, that we, the United Kingdom gas consumers, are sadistically wounding and bankrupting those deserving shareholders of the energy companies who blithely, merrily, happily, verily and rightly stitch up, and keep cold, the poor and the less well off. You'll understand now that it's not right to vote for wee Ed in the next general election because he'll put a stop to their rightful and justified profiteering.  What an undeserving economic disaster that would be for "them thar"  paragons of energy  -  what with Christmas coming up so soon too.

I do hope I voted for the OECD. I am sure I must have done because its proclamations are delivered on the BBC daily and nobody seems to provide a dissenting voice. So that proves OECD must be right.

Us plebs  -  sorry Andrew, I am, in some measure, so sure you didn't say that word even if you did say f**ckin' -  have got to break free of our negative and fallacious obsessions about the selfishness of the important people  -  who are, let's face it, so much more worthy than you and me,  -  represented by the  OECD. We are drowning in our envy and the OECD is saturated in its altruism.


"OK, I'll come quietly officer. Oh ! don't tell me I've got it all wrong again. No, I don't necessarily support the OCCUPY movement.  I was only......................"

Three cheers for the increased support to children in foster care ! Now let’s do it for those in children's homes

My lack of sympathy for the current United Kingdom Conservative-led coalition government is a secret I have tried desperately to keep, though not, I confess, entirely successfully. It is a government which has not altogether covered itself in glory in its treatment of troubled families and troubled children and so the announcement made today, December 4th, 2013, by the government minister for Children and Families, Edward Timpson, that children being looked after in foster care in England will continue, if they so wish, to have their foster care and support funded until the age of 21, is one to be welcomed. This is something that foster carers and others involved in the care and education of children looked after in the care system have long called for. 

Mr Timpson, whose own family fostered nearly 90 children, stated that the government would pledge £40m to this initiative over three years and the measure will be introduced during the third reading of the Children and Families Bill next year. I congratulate Mr Timpson. His intention will give us something of which, as a community, we can be proud. 

There is of course another smaller, though significant, group of looked after children. These are children in children's homes and they are perhaps the most vulnerable group of young people in our community. They are children who for a variety of reasons are not available for foster care. Too frequently their difficulties are seen as 'more problematic' rather than - as they should seen - ‘different.’ So the residential care they are provided with becomes, quite wrongly, understood as a  'last resort’ sump of care when it is clear that for these children it is a ‘first resort.’ It is what they need. Let us hope that within a very short period of time the government will announce a similar level of support for children and young people who are in residential care beyond the age of 18 years. Their needs for further support may well be different, perhaps more expensive, but if such support is provided it will be a further welcome sign that as a community we are attempting to edge towards becoming civilised. We will have demonstrated that we are as determined to establish, as much as we can, positive future prospects for young people in residential care, which are equal to those now being put in place for children growing up in foster care.

Comments

John Stein writes : 
I agree with your comment about residential child care being 'first resort' rather than last resort. I couldn't agree more. (Except that I strongly prefer the term, 'residential treatment' to residential care). Virtually every child I met in residential placement needed coordinated treatment in the life space. 'Care,' especially here in Louisiana, implies 3 meals a day and a roof and a bed with an adult with no more than a high school education to look after them. After all anyone can care for kids. That attitude is all too pervasive in our social work profession here, and it runs the programs.

The Dens Road Market

I was up seeing the Dundee match against Falkirk last weekend  and instead of getting a bus or a taxi from the station up to the famous stadium, I walked through the Wellgate, and then up the Victoria Road and round the bend on to the Dens Road to get to Dens Park. And what do I find on my way ? The Dens Road Market is closed. 

A closed Dens Road Market, Saturday, November 16, 2013

Of course this may be history to people living in the town but it was news, and sad news for me but I guess everything under the sun has its day and goes.  It says on a notice that its moved tae the Hulltoon or something but surely it cannae be the same as it was in the glory days of the 70s and the 80s. 
So, so many great second hand bargains and first hand memories.



Comments

Joyce Billingham writes

Never to be forgotten .

R.I.P.

Jennie Thomas recounts
That's very sad - my man and I bought our first furniture together at Dens Rd. I also have happy memories of stovies and bingo from visits there as a child.

Stuart Russon remembers

Yeah, its sad.... My memories are similar, I can hear the bingo caller's tuneful number calling even now. I used to opt for the mince roll rather than the stovies and I remember buying a Madness LP at the record stall. Following the trip to Dens Road Market we would have to sit and wait in Grandad's Volvo whilst Grannie and Grandad went round the Cash & Carry. Our patience would then be rewarded with sweets and a drive up the Law Hill.

My Wee Pal,"Me", the BBC, Democracy, the "Most Powerful Man" in Britain, and a Gable End in Leith

   I was watching the TV last night and a BBC reporter on the six o'clock news,  while commenting about a new investment programme to create even more nuclear based energy, referred to David Cameron as "the most powerful man in Britain,"   and here was I not thinking that along with every person who has the right to vote in this country, I was the most powerful person in Britain? I mean that's what the politicians and the media like to tell me to think when they are talking about free speech and letting me know what a great privilege it is to live in a "democracy" like ours. Up to now I've always really tried to believe this last noble bit of their message.

Sunshine on Leith : pictures of some of the people whose labour made Britain powerful.

   Perhaps you'll say that in accepting this vision I was just being too much of an unweaned bairn not to see that the world of media and politics is busy being fed by and feeding off the members of its own small clique, while they give each other bigger and bigger helpings of power and wealth. You'll tell me I can hardly expect them to have time to be concerned about being of service to my fellow citizens and me, even though, according to the romantic myth of democracy they dole out to us,  each one of us has equal rights. True of course until that is we turn up with tuppence and they turn up with a tenner.  Well I just can't swallow their fake food any more.

18 years of age : old enough to vote and die but certainly not to drive

The United Kingdom  government  -  which these days doesn't very much like many of the citizens it is supposed to serve - is thinking of not allowing young adults to drive until they are 18 or 19 years old and even then they may not be allowed to hold a full licence. Government ministers are due to publish their proposals in a Green Paper following a report by the Transport Research Laboratory.

Of course everyone wants to see a reduction in the number of road accidents with their potential for destroying lives and this should be addressed by looking again at the way driving is taught. Nonetheless questions of  equal rights and equal privilege are raised when a government declares an intention to withdraw a privilege from a certain section of our citizenry. This appears to be what is happening with the proposal to prevent 18 years old adults holding a full driving licence. Should the voices of these adults be heard before any legislation is prepared ?

I imagination these are the same 18 years old adults who are old enough to vote, who for two years have been old enough to get married and who are old enough to be killed when serving in the United Kingdom armed forces. 

Apparently the statistics show that the plan to ensure young adults are well and truly off the road is valid and reasonable. Did you know that drivers between 17 years old and 24 years old cause 20% of the serious accidents on our roads ? The rest of us cause the other 80%  so we'd better watch out or the government may catch on to that. I'd be devastated if I wasn't allowed a driving licence until I was 69. Still maybe it would really be fair enough -  since the likes of me have been causing 4 out of 5 of all road accidents. 

Finally, a message to young adults :  I would warn you not to protest about these proposals. You know what happened when those badgers moved the goal posts.

Sources 

No driving licence until 19?  Richard Wescott, BBC on 10.10.13 at   http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/24481574

 Driving test age rise considered for teenagers, BBC 11.10.13 at 

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24485792

Comments

John Stein writes :

I read with dismay your piece on driving licenses for young people.  My personal experience here in Louisiana, where kids were able to get learners permits at the age of 15 (they require a licensed driver in the car), was that kids who started driving earlier learned to be responsible, while kids whose parents didn't let them get a license until later, like the age of 18, went right out and had an accident very soon after getting their license. 

I'm not convinced that waiting helps.  I think teaching responsibility and safe driving is the better way to go.  The younger they are, the more likely they are to learn.  At 15 (they could get a full license at 16), it is a REAL privilege.  Only a few years later, it becomes a right.

But, just my opinion from a different place and a different time...

Friday nights started at Frankie Davie's

Friday nights started at Frankie Davie's Café just after school with an ice-cream soda in winter, or a bowl of strawberries and ice cream in summer : the compliments of my Grannie Jackson. I used to think this was my treat because I was very special. My younger sister never came with us and my youngest sister was still a toddler. My mother put me right about this some years later, letting me know I was a very exhausting laddie and she wanted me “out o’ the road” so that she could spend some time with my sisters.  My Daddy never approved of my jaunts with Grannie, frequently reminding my Mummy how “ Your mother is turning my son into a spoilt brat.”  Nonetheless from early 1955 until late 1957 this sweet 4 o’clock indulgence marked the start of an end of the week ritual for my Grannie and me.

At a quarter to five when I had cleared this 'paternally frowned upon' confection out of the way, Grannie and I left the café and took a tram from the terminus in front of Lochee West Church, at the back of Liff Road School. The tram swung and bumped us all the way down to the Nethergate where we got off and paid a visit to a sweetie shop where Grannie bought me a quarter pound of boilings which I sooked and crunched my way through for the next two hours. Grannie always tried to insist that I sook them but I couldn't resist the temptation of gambling even further with  my teeth's long-term health and so after an initial sook I crunched them anyway.  When she saw me do this Grannie feigned to skelp me and would say, “N’ dinnae tell yer Da Eh bocht ye’ them or he’ll murder us.”

Once in receipt of the sweeties we'd go to the Palace Theatre which was just by and behind the Queens Hotel near the place where Dundee Contemporary Arts now stands.

We were at the theatre to watch the six o'clock performance of the variety show, which took place there twice nightly from Monday to Saturday. In exercising my memory back those 50 years and more, I enter a 10 years old boy's mind for detail which demands me to inform you that as well as the nightly performances there was a matinee performance on Wednesday afternoons. Wednesday was half day closing for the stores in Dundee and the matinee allowed frustrated shoppers and those who served in the shops of Dundee an extra opportunity to see the show. I know this because I had asked Grannie what a matinee was.

When we got into the theatre we'd go to the box office where Grannie bought us the cheapest tickets which gave us seats up in the gallery. I've heard people call the gallery of a theatre "the Gods" and certainly being up there felt like being an all seeing god. Usually we were the only people in the gallery and from where we sat it felt to me as if we were unseen onlookers who were secretly spying on everything and everyone.  It was thrilling to be looking down on the stalls, the orchestra pit and the huge shiny dark red damask curtains that hid the stage. We were always early and I enjoyed watching as members of the audience  arrived in ones and twos to take their seats in the stalls.

A few minutes before the show was due to start the members of the orchestra would appear from what seemed the bowels of the earth and climb up into the orchestra pit which itself was at a lower level than the stall seats in the auditorium.  I use the word ‘orchestra’ in a loose sense since most weeks the orchestra's complement was a very old female violinist, an even older male piano player of considerable girth and a younger male drummer who had slicked back Silvikrinned or Brylcreemed black hair. For the shows headlined by the bigger stars such as Jimmie Logan, Johnny Victory or Lex McLean the orchestra appeared to grow with the addition of a trumpeter and sometimes a trombonist. 

Once they'd got to their places the musicians seemed to fidget around to settle into their playing positions before beginning to tune their instruments  in a desultory way until, without signal, but with a precise urgency, each player took up a poised attitude:  the trumpeter with his trumpet to his lips, the violinist sitting upright with her instrument under her chin and her bow suspended in the air ready to brush the strings, the pianist, both hands poised in the air staring intently at his keyboard  and the drummer leaning forward holding still his cymbal.  The chatter of the audience decrescendo’d to anticipatory silence.  The auditorium lights went down and momentarily plunged us into darkness. The cymbal smashed and the  orchestra struck up with "Happy Days Are Here Again" as the stage lights came up and the curtains rose and there in the spotlight was a troupe of dancers, the Moxon Ladies, kicking up one leg after another in unison. The magic had started and the show rollicked on for almost two hours through a series of performances by  jugglers, acrobats, a duo of balletic dancers, a middle of the bill comedian, a magician, a solo female singer, a male crooner  until finally the star of the show, usually a comedian like Johnny Victory would do his main turn. Often the show was interspersed by comic sketches acted out by the star and some of the other performers. For the grand finale the dancing troupe would return and each of the performers would in turn take their bow all to the tune of "There's No Business Like Show Business" and we in the audience would clap our hands in applause until the curtain came down. If there was a big audience the applause would continue for a while longer and the stage curtain would rise again and the entertainers would take another bow. We'd continue clapping until the curtain was lowered again but that was that. The orchestra fell silent and the artistes did not re-appear. Grannie told me they never did more than one curtain call for the early show because they needed a rest before the second performance went on at about 8.15 pm.

 Afterwards Grannie would take me to the Deep Sea Fish Restaurant nearby where she'd have a fish supper and I would have a dressed white pudding supper. Just to let you know, a plain white pudding was fried without batter on it but a dressed one was fried with batter. 

A Dundee institution : The Deep Sea Restaurant

After this feast Grannie would take her 'stuffed to the gunnels but well entertained' grandson home on the tram back to Lochee. From the terminus we'd walk up to Clement Park. She'd knock on the door and I went in and would go straight upstairs to bed. Grannie would never come in if my Daddy answered the door. If my Mummy answered the door she’d usher Grannie into the kitchen for a cup of tea and tell her to “hud yer wheesht, Ma, Chic’s in the living room.”  My Daddy would be listening to the radio or watching the television there.

After an ice-cream soda, strawberries and cream, a quarter pound of boiled sweets and a dressed white pudding supper I was, as my Daddy invariably predicted I would be, sometimes sick. When that happened he would say to my Mummy, “Never again,” but there was always an again even after the last tram left Lochee for the Nethergate in 1956. From then on Grannie and I went 'doon the toon’ on a number 20 bus until in December 1957 our Friday evenings came to their end when my last train left Dundee for England.

 The site of the tram terminus : photograph of Lochee West Church on the only day it rained in August 2013 .

Down and Out in Coventry, April 1941 and 1968

"Where were you at the bomb blast
when the cathedral bell tolled its last
and the inner bishop said, 'You're bound for Hell' ?"

"I was in mother's womb before I fell."

Of Badgers and Men

     It is interesting that leaders of western democracies seem to want to kill people in the middle east. They always say they are doing it for the good of the inhabitants of the countries they attack and yet after completion of their military campaigns they leave each country in a worse state than it was before their intervention. After exercising their "kinder, cleaner machine gun hand" our democratic leaders leave behind them a trail of chaos, violence and fear.  This is true of Iraq and Libya and soon it will be true of Afghanistan. Many would argue that it is already true. Now it seems that the people of troubled Syria may require our leaders' special kind of supportive gesture.

     I disapprove of the Assad regime and it may well be responsible for a deadly poisonous chemical attack upon some of its own people and if this can be proved to be the case then a decision upon action which insists that justice be done, preferably diplomatically rather than militarily, might be considered.  And so,  it's difficult to understand why the leaders of the western democracies are unwilling to wait for the UN investigation team examining evidence of the use of chemical weapons in Syria to file its report.  This impatience does not rest easily with democratic principle. It is as if they are saying, "It is more expedient for us to shoot to kill now and answer Joe Public's questions later." 

     Well here in the UK our political leaders have not yet been able to give themselves permission to rub out those of their citizens they don't like, so they have diverted their aggression toward badgers who they are gunning down because they may be a cause of the spread of bovine tuberculosis - though the scientific evidence for this is far from convincing. 

     Those responsible for leading the cull of the badgers say that if shooting the badgers takes too much time, then, in the name of efficiency, they will turn to using poisonous gas to speed up the process.



Postscript

8 pm August 28th : the Labour Party has forced the UK prime minister David Cameron and the  coalition government he leads to climb down from its intention to initiate immediate military action against  Syria. No further decision will be taken on this issue until the UN investigators have completed and presented the report of their investigation. Good news for the time being but sadly no good news for the badgers.