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“She said ‘I could easily get Twiggy, but she would just send it up, so I’ll get Deirdre to do it instead’ (strong Irish accent). Deirdre was her younger sister, she had succumbed to Polio as a child and had a calliper on her leg, she walked with a limp, but she was game.
The choreographer scratched his head and came up with the idea that she would model a Kimono and CRAWL the catwalk, which at the evening show she did very well and Richard Rodney Bennett played a Chinesey improvisation”
My mother started a garden blog at the beginning of the lockdown.
She usually has a paragraph or two about the garden but most readers tune in for the stories from her past. I posted this month so ago but I think her writing and storytelling has expanded somewhat and would appeal to STWists.
Pressed the FB Like button!
He was flying south on LoganAir from Kirkwall airport to visit me. Thoughtfully and kindly he brought a present since he was staying a few days. Stingily he chose a box of assorted biscuits from his auntie’s stash of accumulated unwanted presents.
Armed with Immodium, should it be needed, a week’s supply of oat bread, which would save him going near the shops, he set off
He put his bag on the security scanner conveyor belt. A boy in his class at school was now the security man. It was a good day for flying, not too much wind when BEEP BEEP BEEP the alarm sounded and lights flashed as his bag passed the X-ray machine.
Security ‘Is this your bag Neil?, Did you pack it yourself?’
Neil ‘Yes, it’s chist me oat bread and me clothes’
Security ‘Step this way’ Neil is taken out of the line to an inspection room and asked to ‘Open the bag!’ ‘Are you carrying anything onto the aircraft that is prohibited by law?’
Neil. ‘Weel I have Immoodium in case of constipation me auntie says...
Security ‘OPEN THE BAG!’
Neil opens the bag, and takes out the folded clothes that his aunt had packed for him and comes to the biscuits ‘They are a present for Rene’.
Security ‘Open the box!’
Neil - no problem - opens the box. Inside neatly concealed like a file in a prison visitor’s bible is a claw hammer!
Neil. ‘A HAMMER!!!???’ Gobsmacked!
They both look at each other and the hammer
Security ‘Can you explain why you have a claw hammer concealed in your baggage? ‘
Neil, still stunned repeats ‘A HAMMER?’
Then he remembered. His lady boss at the museum where they worked as custodians had a lovely hammer which he had once admired, and it was she who had given him the biscuits for his Christmas present. He could see it was biscuits, there was a picture of biscuits and Holly on the box. (It’s now midsummer). So he put them straight into the unwanted presents cupboard.
This he explained in a higher than usual pitched and panicked voice, close to tears.
Normally the hammer would have been confiscated for ever and he would have been charged with being in possession of an offensive weapon, and if it had been at Heathrow he would be serving ten years at Guantanamo Bay (Post September 11)
Collect it on your way home Neil the security guard said, and...Neil, still close to tears, ‘Next time get your aunt Rene biscuits not past their sell by date as a present!’
Worse was to come. Breathing a sigh of relief at his narrow escape, walking across the tarmac, he remembered that his lady boss, on their first day back after Christmas had asked him if he had enjoyed his present, and he said ‘Oh!, the biscuits were delicious’ and she smiled and never said leg! That’s another story.
😂
You are living in an Iain Banks novel, but not one of the nasty ones.
Links not working for me however I know exactly who Neil is and have just been reading the lines in his very unique accent.
Entertaining stuff, but I was initially a bit confused about how Jack Bruce could possibly have engaged in a sado-masochistic relationship with TE Lawrence, when he died in 1935...
According to the NY Times link at the end of the blog post it was actually a John Bruce, but definitely not the bassist!
Burnbob, once you’ve met Neil, you’ll never forget him. There’s a classic Neilism in the June 1st entry.
News - Trump and China - sabre rattling - story
Cast - one teacher and one usual suspect Neil (from now on, Jo Grimond’s Gardener will be JG-G, ‘It’s the drink I think’) and Ingrid and Erland. Setting, Rendall Primary School
Teacher - Have you heard of a costermonger? In London they also have cheesemongers. Can you give me some other ‘monger examples?
Yes ingrid - Fishmonger - Yes good Ingrid, a man who sells fish.
Erland - Ironmonger, he sells pans - Shearers in Kirkwall *
Teacher - Excellent Erland, any more? Long pause, silence...
Neil - Warmonger Miss!
Teacher - (surprised pause), very good Neil, now that’s an unusual monger. How do you know the word, Warmonger?
Neil, ‘Weel, me auntie said ‘Is that Waarmonger off the island yet at the tea table yesterday’
Teacher - Yes , and to whom was your aunt referring to?
Neil - Me granny! Miss
Teacher - Yes, next, any more?
Well the teacher was very lucky she didn’t get Whoremonger, because that was a very common phrase of ours
Neil, former gardener to Jo Grimond and, a Stilton every Christmas and now bessy mates with Helena Bonham Carter after a shaky start (It’s the drink, I think!) told me this story
An old Orkney farmer, John, a bit hard of hearing, kept a goat for some fresh milk. One day the goat went a missing, and this caused him great upset. He asked everyone if they had set eyes on her, sadly no one had.
As a last resort to find her, he asked the minister if he could mention it on Sunday at the Kirk service. He had high hopes
‘Certainly John’, the minister replied ‘Good idea, and when I mention the goat, I’ll hold up my hand so that you can describe the goat yourself to the congregation’
Sunday came and it was a full turn out at the Kirk
There were several intimations that week to be read out as well as a special mention to the new district nurse - ‘I would like you all to extend a very warm welcome to our new district nurse, Min Corrigal’ and he raised his hand in a welcoming flourish. Promptly John stood up and said ‘Yes, Yes, yil easy ken her, for her belly’s all scratched wi gan thro’ barbed wire and she’s blind in one teat, so she chist milks ti the wen side you see!’
I asked Neil if it was true. He said ‘I don’t know if it’s true, but I first heard it as a bairn on a visit to Jock and Lizzie o’ the Dale. It made a marked impression on me! On me too!
kcr- Syd is in his early 80s now, he would have barely have been born then, his tale came via his father and mother, though the whip was something he had a first hand memory of.
Love it, great read!
Yes, with all the other celebrity name dropping, I just assumed it was that Jack Bruce at first!
Lovely random entertainment, I like that a lot
More Orcadian antics for BurnBob
‘
I haven’t done much embroidery for about fifty years (see pic) but yesterday I may have got my needle and coloured threads out and created a rich tapestry in the interests of literature. Soz Neil, but it was 99 1/2% true!
Today anonymity rules,
Many years ago we were invited for tea, high tea, at a farm, in a distant parish of Orkney. Three generations shared the house, the grandma was in charge of the kitchen. There was a sweet little boy and his parents, so the wee boy was a good story teller. Describing a neighbour girl, he said she spoke as if she had ‘a moothfull of sausage rolls’, he was only about six.
It was a fine summer’s day. Granny wore a coat buttoned up, with a housecoat on top then a headscarf. Like a Polish mama or the Queen going riding, and at about two o’clock she began to set the table, for tea. Slowly. In the kitchen there was a large cupboard by the window, a Rayburn (lit), the table and chairs and a couch on the back wall, where James waited, a hen roosted on the back of the couch, just behind his head.
There was lots of banter and laughs, and few silences, as she slowly and quietly built the table. (There was a TV chef who says ‘build the dish’ that I want to kill). To and fro she went, cups, saucers, plates, knives, spoons, egg cups, jams, butter, bannocks, cheese, oat bread and butter biscuits and fancies (Orcadian for cakes)
Everything in slow motion. It was like an art installation, a Turner prize winning conceptual piece. Tracey Emin’s bed? Crap compared!
I may have seen a goose go by me, and I definitely saw a goat nibble a bit of wallpaper in the corridor. It wasn’t an old long house, it was a newly built bungalow, with picture windows, but it felt medieval to us who were in our Kings Road Glam Rock period.
The boiled eggs were ready at about five o’clock, and by maybe a quarter past we were straight into the fancies, and shortly thereafter we took our leave, apparently to the astonishment of the grandfather, who, puzzled and anxious, rose from the table asking where we had gone? Left, just upped and vanished! Worried, he ran to the window, peered out into the distance and asked ‘Is there a coo in the oats?!’
I was on the phone to Neil last night and asked him to take a second to see that the house was ok, no drips or problems and the answer was ‘No way!’. Apparently the lockdown is very strict in Orkney. If he were to be seen entering the premises the police would certainly be called. Immediately he said
There is a programme on Radio Orkney, first thing, called Moans, Pleeps and Girns. If you’ve got a moan, pleep or grin, you can phone in.
A listener called - ‘I was going over the (Churchill) Barriers today when I saw a Land Rover with two people, a dog and a tent. Most definitely holiday maakers, ‘Phone the Police!’
Point Reyes Light Sheriff’s Blotter, meet your Celtic cousin https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/05/point-reyes-light-police-blotter-why-the-west-marin-papers-sheriffs-calls-column-is-the-best-blotter-in-america.html
Then the restaurant in the Strynd, next door to me, opened up and started selling oven scones. The police were informed immediately, and the girn was broadcast. She was shut down, despite her assertion that she was keeping up the morale of key workers. TWICE.
One pleep was ‘When will the fish and chip van be opening again, because I’m missing me fish supper?’ Reply ‘We can’t reopen because it’s impossible to socially isolate in the back of a converted ambulance’, Try the Willows, they have dozens of workers in an even smaller space (it’s a hut) but they are all members of the same Chinese family
Once, James (before the lockdown) was in Finstown. He buys a giant ice cream cone, three varieties, as a rule every day. He innocently returned to his car, when someone yelled ‘INCOMERS!’ at him. Our family was there before the Vikings!
An aside - he buys his cone at Baikie’s Stores, famous because the server bravely fought off a would be robber with a sellotape dispenser. It was on TV.
I mentioned The Strynd earlier. In Hossack’s Kirkwall in the Orkneys’, he says. ‘in 1669 Arthur Baikie of Tankerness took a lease of ‘the house at the foot of The Strynd with its yaird, togidder with the haill beds, presses, furmes, lockr Keyes, etc within the said house’ (shortened)
In a sassine, dated 1659 this house is described as ‘the Tenement of land of old call it the Ridgeland’, That’s us
Prince William Henry, landed in Kirkwall in 1785 and stayed in The Strynd, it was the only place in Scotland where he landed.
James tells everyone that Cromwell stayed as well, because he used the Cathedral to stable his horses, and we are nearby. Pure coincidence!
Anyhow, what I’m saying is The Strynd is old, our house is 1630
Not long ago the council decided to replace the flagstones in The Strynd with new ones
Our friend (no relation) was horrified and wrote to The Orcadian, the weekly paper. ‘Moans, Pleeps and Girns’ wasn’t on the go then. His letter was to the effect that it was a crime to replace the ancient, historic, well worn, a heritage record of the past, just because they were slippy. (The new ones are slippier!) Then one day he was walking along the street minding his own business, he heard a call, a shout, a yell of ‘STRYND LOVER ****ER!’
That’s more than a moan, pleep or girn. What was his beef?