My mother, Jimmy Shand's band and The Proclaimers : an email exchange

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From Noel Howard : 28th September, 2016

Hi Charles,

There used to be a programme on Irish radio in the 50s called Scottish Requests and invariably “The Road to Dundee” featured as well as “The Northern Lights”, and "Sweet Alice Ben Bolt”, among other “hits” of the day with Jimmy Shand always a favourite.

Oh for such simplicities!

Noel

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From Charles Sharpe : 13th October, 2016

Dear Noel,

I was interested in your recollection of the Irish radio programme which played requests for Scottish songs and airs. 

You mentioned Jimmy Shand who - though he spent most of his childhood in the village of Auchtermuchty in the Kingdom of Fife  -  became in the 1930s (after a spell in the coal mines), a rent collector in Dundee and he used this job as an opportunity to earn extra money by selling accordions on commission for a local music shop. This was at a time when he was also trying to establish himself as a musician assembling his own band. When he came by my grandparents’ tenement each week to collect the rent he’d let my mother practice on the accordion he brought with him and after a few weeks of this she seemed to be showing promise as an accordionist. 

You can guess what happened. Jimmy approached my Granda Jackson and said “John, ye’re lassie’s a braw player. If she were tae ha’e  an accordion I’d be happy tae ha’e her in my band.” My mother who was 12 or 13 at the time, was very excited about this but Granda Jackson couldn’t afford to buy an accordion, so Jimmy didn’t get his sale or any commission and Chrissie, my mother, didn’t get an accordion and never became the only woman to play in Jimmy Shand’s band. 

That’s how the story’s told in our family anyway.

It may only be coincidence, but Charlie and Craig Reid, the Proclaimers, though born in Leith spent most of their childhood in Auchtermuchty.  There may be something in the air in Auchtermuchty if you can afford your instrument.

Best wishes,

Charles


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From Noel Howard : 13th October, 2016

Really recalling those simpler times of childhood and aspects of it, like the radio programme Scottish Requests, always makes me grateful for the memory of the simple security that such occasions huddled around the radio brought as a family.

Keep in touch. 

Noel

Crimes, misdemeanours, ancestry and pride : Forfar 1940s

From the age of six months until I was almost 5 years old, my memory is that I reigned supreme in Forfar. I seemed to be able to do what I liked. The polis never touched me.  

While living in our wee 'but and ben' at 9 Green Street I stole our next door neighbour's baby's full milk bottle from the pram and sucked ecstatically from its teat, I pee’d into a brand new zinc bucket displayed with other goods outside the ironmongers, declaring what a good boy I was, I lay in the middle of the paddling pool in The Greens  to stop my mother (who hated going into ponds, lochs, rivers and seas) fetching me in for my tea (thence, putting me to bed and hated sleep). 

It was even said that I ran off with the tinkies following the carnival after sampling a frothy amber brown liquid they had. I now understand this last escapade as an exercise in getting back to my roots, since years later my mother told me that on her mother's side we had tinkie ancestry. I have always been proud of this.

An omnipotent boy in Forfar with his younger sister , J, and the tail end of their dog,  Darkie, so called because his right eye  was surrounded by a black patch. This name was given in the days when social sensitivities were not as highly tuned as they are - rightly in most cases - in current times.

Auld Reekie Blues

I was ill the whole month I was in Edinburgh this August. There were good times baby sitting for our beautiful granddaughter, and meeting up with her parents was OK too. Nevertheless I was knackered all the time and the only escape was to sit on the Esplanade at Portobello, look at the wonderful skies there, see the changing light over Fife and watching people passing by walking, jogging, scootering, skateboarding and cycling. It's great to witness all these things but even they wore me out in the end. And, for once, the charity bookshops in Stockbridge failed to offer up solace.

Portobello Beach before the Cockenzie Power Station was knocked down so that TV pictures of the Open Championship at Muirfield looked prettier,

What's more I couldn't bring myself to get up to Dens Park to watch the famous eleven. "You're just sorry for yourself!" you say. Right first time. I'm wallowing in misery.  Things have got to get better and they will if I can get up to Dundee on October 1st to watch the Dark Blues beat Celtic. October 1st is my birthday by the way but don't bother sending me any cards, they might make me cheer up.

Okay my wife was ill some of the time and I should mention that she put up with me and I give her credit for that. She has borne her own and my troubles with fortitude. What a miserable, wretched creature I am. Just like my father, a crabbit brute.

By winning the American Open Tennis championship Andy Murray could deliver me from this brown study and I suppose the Scotland fitba team overcoming the mighty Malta offers the possibility  of lifting a few clouds.

Winning and losing in football and in life

     Competitive sport is predicated on winning and losing. It’s good to win but if you lose you know there will be another day, so I know though I am feeling in a small way triumphant  (if that’s possible)  that last Saturday Dundee enjoyed a 3-1 victory over Ross County, I can, without guilt,  savour it because I can remember the dismay of recent defeat at the feet of the same opposition, and to use the old cliche, after a sporting defeat, “Nobody died.” In life however if you lose your livelihood, if you don’t have the money to feed, clothe and shelter your kids, if you cannot stop an aggressor destroying your home, if you are the victim of terrorism or criminality then there may never be a return to happier days. In this kind of defeat, something does die.

     It's a shame that as a human community we have allowed an economic system, the capitalist system, to predominate. It too is predicated on winning and losing but unfortunately the losers in this game give up in the despair of acceptance or remain impoverished, or seek out new places to live and new ways to earn money. 

     
     Unfortunately the ones with power, the ones determined to win at all costs do not welcome these initiatives and ensure that the losers are crushed.  In turn this leads to further poverty or in some cases violent revolution. Whichever happens,  the consequences are always catastrophic for the poor, the meek, the crushed and the helpless. 

     Our human community needs, and must begin to construct a new selfless way of looking after and caring for each of its members. It can be done. I believe that from 1945 to 1951 the Labour government in the United Kingdom made inroads into achieving this by setting up a welfare system which protected our most vulnerable, a health system which was available free to all, and a national education system which provided schooling for every child. 
     The success of these initiatives was not welcomed by those powerful economic forces which persuaded subsequent governments that there was no possibility of making a profit out of services which were provided for the people by the people.  Gradually over the passing years governments of every ilk have allowed capitalist adventurers  to invade our welfare, health and education services and to rob us of those parts of our services from which they believe they can make a profit while leaving ordinary, modest and relatively poor folk to support - by paying their taxes - those services which have no possibility of profit. 

     So the result of this match is “Capital 1 Community 0” and the result will be the same every week for it is difficult to see where even a drawn match in any future fixture would come from, never mind a win for the human community. 

     I suppose I've been kidding myself to think sport is any different. While things remain as they are,  Dundee Football Club, though it may occasionally enjoy the better of a little skirmish, will aways lose to the likes of Manchester City and Real Madrid. Is that fair? or should I, a sheep among the flock, accept it as the way of a selfish unjust world?

"Keep on Rockin' in the Free World"

'There’s a warning sign on the road ahead,

There’s a lot of people saying we’d be better off dead

Keep on rockin’ in the free world

Keep on rockin’ in the free world.'

I'm desperate! Dan

But where is the free world, Neil ?

Is your irony lost on me?

I no longer act  -  too numb to feel.

I guess I’ll go back to bonnie Dundee

Where D.C. Thomson publishes reactionary tripe

Twixt couthy lines frae The Broons and Desperate Dan

That scramble my mind and fog up my sight
Of the devil and detail of a usurer's scam.

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The first stanza is taken from Neil Young's "Keep on Rockin' in the Free World" to be found on his 1989 album "Freedom."

My photo caption is extracted from the script of Alan Bleasdale's "Boys from the Black Stuff" (BBC, 1982).

The statue of Desperate Dan created in 2001 by artists Tony and Susie Morrows shows the great man striding the High Street, Dundee.



Postscript added 14th July, 2019

Just back from London after listening to and watching Neil Young and Bob Dylan. It was a great gig and both men impressed in their own way. Let's not forget, they're both in their seventies. Not that it was a competition, the two men are friends, but Young edged it. Though staying to listen to Dylan's full set paid dividends for you gradually began to understand where he's at now.
Apparently difficulties with the management teams meant they couldn't sing together on a song, though the folk who saw the show in Kilkenny were treated to a brief joint performance.
For me it was fantastic, I'd never heard or seen Bob Dylan live, and of course Neil Young is one of my heroes. It was great how he knocked Barclaycard "oot o' the game".
I'm well over seventy years old too and this was probably the last time I'll be standing on my feet for seven hours.
"Why not sit down?" you may ask. Look, if I sit on the ground these days, there is a good chance I'll never get up again. 

Sitting on the kerb between the cundie and the lamp post in Clement Park

It's no secret that I have become very agitated by the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. I have attempted to slacken the tension by speaking with or writing to friends sympathetic to my views but I am sure their patience will run out soon. It seems I find the possibility of not having influence on the future unbearable. I have come to the conclusion that in part my anxiety can be explained as an unavoidable characteristic of my journey into old age. At first I was not conscious of it but now I see that I am beginning to understand, and to confront, my limited life span. I no longer have the physical capacity to do all the things I used to enjoy nor is there the time left to say all the things I wanted to say. The span of years, months and days which remain to shape the world in my way, is inexorably diminishing. This may sound pompous but my guess is that most of us have at least a vague notion of how we would like the world to be and after all we have no reverse dimension that allows to undo those things we wish we had not done.

My desperation is reinforced by the realisation that I will fail in my aim. This awareness seems to have crept upon me stealthily and unseen, but there is a sense in which I’ve known it all along. On the night of my 40th birthday I was working in a children’s home in the north midlands of England and while I sat on the upstairs landing waiting for the children to settle, it dawned upon me that I would never have the time to do all the things I had hoped to do. This was nothing to do with my abilities but more to do with spatial and temporal limitations. I couldn’t be in two places at the same time. 

How different from the prospect I had one sunny summer's day in the mid-1950s while sitting on the kerb between the cundie and the lamp post in front of our house in Clement Park. It was about 8.30 in the morning and I was waiting for JL and FJ to finish their breakfasts, hoping their mothers would soon let them out to play. There were so many possibilities for the day. We could play fitba', or catty and batty, play Gerries and Britishers, or cowboys and indians or we could play Kerby or make a den or we could….….... The prospects for adventure were endless. The future could be thought of without fear.

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John Stein comments : Your post really struck a chord with me.  I got the anxiety, and the wish I could do more.  I have written two letters to the editor of our newspaper, one about our fascination with guns, the other about police shootings, one near here in Baton Rouge.  I did not send them.  Those who already agreed with my points, well, they don’t need to hear from me.  Those who don’t agree--their beliefs would not be influenced in the slightest.

And then your letter about Jeremy Corbyn.  Sad to see some of the same dynamics in Britain that we have here.

My wife’s favorite quote:  May you live in interesting times.  Ancient Chinese curse.

Dear fellow members, re-Jeremy Corbyn and PLP Labour MPs who abuse power.

Here is the text of a letter I sent on July 1st, 2016, to the secretary of my local constituency Labour Party in Totnes, Devon, in response to the proposed agenda for our next meeting. It may be somewhat emotional in nature but I think the message within it is a reasonable one.

Dear fellow member,

I am rather saddened there is no agenda item to discuss firstly, the behaviour of those Labour MPs who are attempting to ride roughshod over the wishes of a substantial majority of the Labour Party’s members and secondly to consider what to do about their inhumane humiliation of a decent man. Like many people I did not rejoin the Labour Party last year to be under the screw of self-important Blairite media sycophants, who take the stance that they know much more about things than us ordinary folks and who feel it is their right to bounce us into doing what they decide must happen.

I also knew when I rejoined the Labour Party that a number of Labour MPs did not like the members’ decision to elect Jeremy Corbyn. You’ll remember for instance the nuances of Ben Bradshaw's* contribution at the meeting for new members that was held around Christmas at the Royal Seven Stars Hotel, in Totnes. Certainly at the time of that meeting it was clear there were people at Westminster who would work against Jeremy whatever he did.  In my view the attack against Jeremy Corbyn has been orchestrated by a number of Labour MPs for some time and the referendum result offered them an opportunity to do this when the entire community was in disarray. The funny thing is Jeremy Corbyn had a very good referendum campaign being perhaps the only leading political figure on either side who was honest and did not manipulate figures in order to generate fear. I can’t actually remember any great contributions made by other leading members of the parliamentary party, though no doubt there were.

 I write this all because these issues are not addressed in the agenda, in a very middle class English way it seems almost to have been denied, "Let’s ignore dirty things like an attack upon a properly elected leader of the Labour Party by those who seek influence in an  undemocratic way." Meaning: let's not pull out our Blairite roots, let's cultivate them."

As for the referendum, I believe there should never have been one. It came about as a consequence of the difficulties the Prime Minister was experiencing within the Tory Party and yet such is the power of the Westminster/ politico/media clique, and some elements of the Labour Party it ends up that the person who is targeted for  humiliation by this - is, an honest man, our elected leader.

I hope to be at the meeting on July 7th.** My temperature may have come down by then!

Best wishes,

Charles Sharpe


Notes and post script.

* Ben Bradshaw, Labour Party Member of Parliament for Exeter

**  September, 2019. Since I sent this letter a motion deploring the action of the MPs of those Parliamentary Labour Party MPs who openly oppose Jeremy Corbyn has been placed on the agenda for our next constituency meeting on July 7th.

*** September, 2019, David Cameron in his memoir For the Record claims he did not call a referendum to save the Conservative from breaking up. I don't believe him, any more than I would believe that other smootho Tory Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

On my son's 50th birthday

It's my son's 50th birthday today. It was a wonderful day when he was born. I could tell you lots of stories about him but there is one which epitomises a quality, among a number of good ones he has, and that is, determination.

At about the age of 15 or 16 my son told me he intended to be a journalist. I said to him, "Och everyone wants to be a journalist when they're young, I did too. Why don't you just forget about that for a while, go to university, get a degree and then you can decide what you want to do ? Being a journalist right now is a bit of a romantic notion." He listened to me. He didn't respond. I was sure my wisdom had gotten through.

A couple of weeks later while reading the sports pages of two of our local newspapers, I found in one a report on local golf competitions and in the other a report on a local rugby match. Both publications described the author of these articles respectively as their golf and rugby correspondents. The byline of these articles had the name of my son as their author.  What a man.

Last train fae the Tay Brig Station

D'ye  mind when we rode oot some days on the tram and sailed o'er the Tay on the Fifie?
That wiz in the non-pc days when ye ca'd a woman a wifie.
Eh recall oor mulk was fae the DPM,  and oor links fae Alex Munro.
When flush,  tae the pictures at the Greens Playhouse, when skint tae the fleapit, Rialto.
Oor  hair was trimmed  by Chic Reid or R.S.Peters,
Oor favourite fae Soaves was tuppence worth o' fritters.


Ach but that's a' awa' - change is the nature of the cosmo
Nae mair Aberdeenies  fae Macdougall's , nae fags nor papers fae Kosto's.
Cox's chimney may still stand but there are nae workers in the mill -
Whit's the guid ?  jute, watches, cash registers
Nane'll come back for time has the determination
No ' tae  stick at '57 when the train left the Tay Brig Station.


Last train fae the Tay Brig station
Last train fae the Tay Brig station
Ye'll catch this yin
'n  ye'll never be coming back again
Last train fae the Tay brig station.


O'er the brig the carriages are rollin'
O'er the brig the carriages are rollin'
Doon tae England, doon tae York
whaur noo oor faither diz his work.


60 far years 'n Eh'm still oot there travelling,
60 far years oot there still unravelling,
Whit it signified, Eh couldnae master;
South o'er the brig, och, whit a disaster.

I am an anarchist : telling lies about our prisons

In the days leading up to yesterday's Queen's Speech, the UK government's pronouncements about our "failing prisons" not being "fit for purpose" (very selectively reinforced by the recently government appointed head of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons, ex-counter-terrorist policeman, Peter Clarke) left me with the impression that some uninvited, unidentified foreign body had invaded the prison system and was responsible for the devastating assault that has been made upon it in recent years. Yesterday Her Majesty, instructed by the Prime Minister, David Cameron on the advice of Michael Gove, our Minister of Justice, told us that her government is now going to make right all that is wrong in our prisons by putting into place rehabilitation and education resources which will make Nirvana of our institutes of incarceration.

Who can disagree with this ?  Well, in all this what is not mentioned in any of the headlines is that the travesty that now fills the space of our formerly good, if far from perfect prison service, was brought about by Michael Gove's predecessor, Christopher Grayling, who, with David Cameron's approval, took the decision to cut the staffing levels of our prison service, in the face of an ever-growing prisoner population, by more than 30%. Yes, 30%.  The Conservative led coalition government and the current Conservative one have, with their drastic chopping of staff during the last 6 years, destroyed the very services they  now claim to be "introducing" to the prison service.

The period the government has spent wrecking rehabilitation and education resources in prisons has seen increasingly inhumane living conditions for prisoners, as well as a dramatic downturn in the morale of the service because the growing pressures on a speedily decreasing number of officers have made it impossible for them to be as effective as they would wish in helping prisoners. Will our government give back to the prisoners these 6 years of deprivation? Will it admit liability for the way it has failed the prison service?

The spurious presentation of issues and information is a characteristic of our government and indeed many politicians.  The nature of their behaviour is accurately represented as dissembling and  disingenuousness as they deny any responsibility for their failures. People who are less prolix and less pompous than me call, this "Telling lies."

If this is government, I don't need it. I am now an anarchist.

Greatness, Andy Warhol, Andy Murray et al and my Mother.

Apart from the apogee of my well documented  rugby and footballing playing days my achievements in life have struggled to reach even a modest level. 

I may have missed out on greatness for myself, but I have taken substantial consolation  -  if in not quite touching shoulders with 'the greats' - in being in places associated with or visited by some of the great heroes. This is particularly true of hotels where I have taken a room. 

Last year I stayed at the Walcott Hotel in Manhattan in order to attend a family wedding in Central Park. Almost 60 years before I rested my head on a pillow at The Walcott, it offered lodging to Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers when they were recording at the nearby Beltones studios. A little earlier in 1904, the hotel was the New York residence of Mark Twain. 

I have not always so widely missed the target of being in the same hotel at the same time as one of the colossi of our culture. Some years ago when I stayed at the Puente Romano Hotel in Marbella where the concierge informed me I had missed Sean Connery by only a week and that Prince Charles was due the following week. (I accept I may not have universal support for counting our future king as a cultural icon).  

Apart from an event I will describe later, the closest I ever came to being  engaged in company with one of my heroes while at the same location, was when I saw Vaclav Havel in El Quijote, a Spanish restaurant in Manhattan then used by the guests at the Hotel Chelsea next door. The Hotel Chelsea, where for about a week I was once in residence, had at one time or another been a resting pad for Arthur Miller, Dylan Thomas, Bob Dylan, Shirley Clarke, Andy Warhol, Willem de Kooning, Patti Smith, Brendan Behan, Jasper Johns and many more cultural titans. I should not forget in this Chelsea list the tragic Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious.  

I am relating these arguably non-events at hotels because -  as part of my recent 70th birthday celebrations (?!) -  my children generously provided us with a night's stay including dinner and breakfast at Cromlix House, a country hotel near Dunblane. The hotel is owned by Andy Murray. The rural setting of the hotel was magnificent and though the hotel was full, the atmosphere was so relaxed and peaceful we decided to stay for an additional night.  

To be sure that we shared the ether with greatness, on our first evening we slept in the Sean Connery Room and on the second evening we slept in the Arthur Conan Doyle Room. The major disappointment of our stay for me was that Andy did not personally wait upon us at the dinner or breakfast table. Furthermore despite there being two superb tennis courts in the hotel grounds, he couldn't find time to work out with me over a couple of sets. He seems to have been too busy enjoying parenthood  as well as playing in a tournament in Miami.

Even so I don't think I'd be telling you all this if I hadn't noticed this morning in the pages of The Scotsman (a newspaper I  infrequently read) that the Cromlix House Hotel had been voted "The Most Luxurious Hotel" in Scotland. Further on in the article I read that Balbirnie House Hotel in Markinch, Fife had been voted both Wedding Hotel of the Year and also the Scottish Hotel of the Year. This is noteworthy because it was there in 1994 my sisters, my brother in law, my wife and I enjoyed a family lunch with my mother to celebrate her 70th birthday. This was an occasion upon which I truly shared with one of 'the greats'.

For all kinds of reasons my mother is a legend. More of that another time.

Happy times: my playing days with Dundee Football Club and the Scotland rugby team.

A great deal of frustration together with the exercise of tolerance comes with the lot of being a Dundee FC supporter and a Scotland rugby supporter : a few wonderful 'highs' and perhaps an excess of 'lows' and yet it's good to look back on the happier times.


I was clearing out our garden shed the other day and came across these three photographs that brought back some memories of happier days. The photos which were copies of press cuttings my grandson had collected are not as clear as they should be. They've been damaged by the damp atmosphere in the shed but I publish them here for general interest and as curios of unique events in Scottish sporting history.

You'll remember that a few seasons ago I scored a number goals for Dundee FC. You'll see below a photo of me spinning away in celebration just after I'd volleyed in a beauty for Dundee against United.

The following season I returned to playing rugby and you can see me here in action at Murrayfield. You'll note that I'd had to do a lot of work pumping iron to get my physique right for the upper body stresses of modern international rugby.

What was most extraordinary - you may recall the stir it created in the press and on the radio and TV at the time - is that both my grandsons, S and J played in the same sides with me at Dens Park and Murrayfield. It was the first time that a grandfather and his grandsons had played simultaneously at both senior football level  for Dundee FC and for the Scotland rugby side. In the photo above my grandsons can be seen playing in support of me as I begin to throw the pass that led to the winning try.

The final photo shows the three of us celebrating a goal in the victory which led to Dundee winning the Scottish Premiership.

Proud days for us.

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Photographs  © 2015   SST

Published 1.4.16



Comments    

Noel Howard writes
Nice to see your sporting exploits on the blog and also as John Burton said, so modestly put. I see the Dandy makes an appearance on a recent blog.....in my book no education is complete for those who were not fortunate enough to have waited eagerly every week for the Beano, Dandy, Lion, Tiger et al......soap operas for kids but the difference being good triumphed (usually) over evil. If only we could be so certain today. Do you remember the 64 pagers ?

John Burton observes
I'm astounded, Charles. A sporting dynasty. An inspiration to us all. And so modest with it!

Emlyn Schiavone comments,
As Jimmy Nail once said :-  "Hang on to your dreams. It helps to get through the working week."