I Am Often Wrong

I’m not ashamed to admit it.  I am often wrong.  Until I was about 25 I thought that tripe was a fish.  I put this down to it sounding a bit like “trout” and “pike”, which are fish, and to not believing anyone would actually eat offal.

I was 31 and sitting in an Italian restaurant in Edinburgh when I first discovered that anchovies were not a vegetable.  I think I had them confused with artichokes, and I’d never previously ordered anything in which anchovies had been involved.

Going further back there were constant misunderstandings, such as my belief that the Beatles lived in my parents’ record player, and that my primary school gym teacher, Dundee United’s star striker and our next-door neighbour were all the same person.

Thankfully, as the years go by, these mistakes are cleared up.  Sometimes this comes as a surprise (as in the case of anchovies), sometimes I feel like I really should have known that already (as with the idea that the Beatles were each 1 inch tall and lived in Aberdeen, inside a piece of electrical equipment in my parents’ sitting room).

But there are also times when it’s everyone else who believes the nonsensical, and I find myself in the unusual position of being able to speak without fear of contradiction.  During a recent walk in Greenwich Park we were talking about the old adage that a rich crop of berries was a sure sign of a hard winter to come.  I have given this issue a great deal of thought over the years.  I saw my moment, and I grabbed it.

“A rich crop of berries is not a sure sign of a hard winter to come, because if it was that would mean vegetables had the ability to correctly predict the future”

Argue with that.

My Dad's Enforced Silence

My Dad is an expressive person. He talks a lot, and sings a lot, and when he’s not talking or singing he’s happy just to scat or make noises. On the way home from the football once, I had to ask him to please be quiet - He was bored, and consequently had been blowing raspberries intermittently for about 20 minutes, on a busy train. He is an expressive person.

Adolf Hitler and my Dad both developed a growth on their vocal chords which had to be removed. In around 1940 in the case of Adolf Hitler, about 2 months ago in the case of my Dad.

So last week he went into hospital to have his one taken out (a procedure which happily passed without incident) and before I knew it he was conscious again and sending me texts.

“No cups of tea for 24 hours, and no talking for 48!”

I can only imagine how daunted he must have felt at the prospect, and how delighted my stepmother was.

The following day, he decided to go out for a walk to get some exercise. Realising that this would expose him to other people, who would expect the usual enthusiastic chatter and might not know about this imposed rule of silence, he prepared a note of explanation:

“Sorry, I can’t talk. I’ve had surgery on my vocal chords, and I don’t like you anyway”.

I love my Dad.

I Hate Arthur C Clarke

He wrote the book and the screenplay of 2001: A Space Odyssey. He came up with the idea of geostationary satellites, which revolutionised communication, television broadcasting and weather forecasting across the world. He has a type of orbit named after him. He has a species of dinosaur named after him. He has an asteroid named after him. And he was responsible for a disastrous misunderstanding in 1983 which resulted in me standing in front of my entire class at school and crying like a girl. And I’m not a girl.

By far my favourite book in those days was Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World, not a single word of which I understood. But it had pictures of crystal skulls and real actual ghosts and monsters, which was good enough for me. And what’s more, because it was a book for adults rather than 8-year-old children, and it had been on TV, it was Definitely All True.

As with so many other things in my life back then, I wasn’t content keeping this to myself. The world had to know. So I took my tattered copy of the book in to school one day and told Mrs Paisley the deal – ghosts and monsters and stuff are real and it’s Definitely All True and it’s in this book and everyone should know. To my absolute delight, she agreed, and arranged an impromptu reading in the library. I remember my excitement at the prospect of having my book leant the unquestionable authority of being read to us by Mrs Paisley.

But then disaster struck. As everyone was getting settled on the floor around Mrs Paisley’s chair, she gave me back my book and said “here you go, remember to read it loud enough that Samantha and Suzanne at the back can hear”. Then, turning to my classmates “now everyone, Andrew has brought in a book that he would like to read to you all, so be nice and quiet and when I come back we can talk about what you all thought”. The blood drained from my face and my ears started ringing.

“Me read it out to them? What the hell are you talking about? I can’t do that, I don’t even know what any of these words mean and the sentences go on forever! Are you insane?”

...was what I wanted to say, but didn’t. Instead I turned slowly to the sea of expectant faces, looked down at what was now my least favourite book in the world, and tried to read some of the stuff that wasn’t the pictures.

I remember very clearly that it had fallen open at the chapter about sea monsters, and I gave the first sentence my best shot. On the third attempt, however, I caught sight of my friend Geoff, who was sitting in the front row and pulling faces at me. So I decided the best course of action would be to set the book aside for the time being, tell Geoff that he was in Big Trouble when Mrs Paisley got back, and then burst into tears.

I still have the book somewhere, and I still haven’t read it. It has caused enough trouble already.

Protesting about being allowed to protest.

Islamic fundamentalism as I understand it is a threat to western society. But as with most issues, we shouldn’t judge without making an effort to understand. And I have to admit, after a recent protest in London, pictured below, I feel rather more encouraged about their intentions than I used to.

Firstly, some of their anger is clearly based on a simple misunderstanding: I’m sure a quick chat is all that’s required to point out the ridiculous hypocrisy of loudly and visibly decrying the existence of free speech by the chap in the centre of the photograph. After all, only a genuine idiot would protest about having the right to protest. So that’s good. Easily cleared up.

Also, at first glance I thought the placard on the right of the picture was announcing the arrival of the “fanatics”, which didn’t sound at all promising and would be a genuine cause for concern, but I was wrong. Evidently at some point over the next few months or years we are going to be visited by “the Fantastics”. I don’t know who they are, but I think they sound like fun:

O Dreamland

It was lying on a dusty pavement in Athens, Greece, 15 years ago, and I saw it and I picked it up and I kept it. I know nothing, absolutely nothing about it, and I don't ever want to know. According to Oscar Wilde the very essense of romance is uncertainty, and this small piece of paper occupies a space in my life which is entirely romantic.

All I need to know is that the image itself is beautiful and evocative and suggests too many scenarios and stories to recount. The words have no origin for me, so they suggest something different every day - A delicious slumber, an unattainable ambition, a cruel joke. The figure is sometimes a boy, sometimes a girl, sometimes waiting, sometimes escaping. The hills and the landscape are real today, but might all be in the child's imagination tomorrow.

I had this image enlarged from the scrap of paper I found in the dust, and it is now framed and hung and part of my daily life. It is a thing I love without understanding.

If anybody knows what this is, where it came from, what it means, please don't tell me:

No Ball Games

Being a goalkeeper was a lonely existence which suited me down to the ground. On arrival at the Big School, cross-country running soon took its place as the only activity I was any good at. It transpired that I could run quite fast, as long as it was over uneven ground, past foliage, through puddles, and between trees.

Again, as with my career in goalkeepery, this was perfect for a young aesthete such as myself. Firstly, it was a reasonably safe option. There was very little danger of being tackled, and still less danger of being knocked out or impaled by a badly aimed projectile.

It also afforded ample opportunity to let my thoughts rise above the mundanity of everyday school life, and tackle the real issues: Can Mark Mitchelson really arrest me just because his Dad is a policeman? Will I get into trouble if I go the Long Way Home tonight? Is it true there’s a school in America where you don’t have to do any work?

I had done it again. I’d found a sport that allowed me to ponder life’s great mysteries, to extract myself from the unseemly business of being about 13. Not for me the painful bewilderment of being hit in the face by a size 5 mouldmaster football. Not for me the missing teeth and brutalised shins of a hockey team changing room. Never for this thoughtful child the twisted human carnage of an adolescent rugby scrum.

And crucially, as with keeping goal, my newly adopted sport had its place in outsider art – as a film that would for years allow me to pretend I’d read the book of the same name. It completely validated my choice and confirmed my long held belief - that I was a misunderstood antihero. From assembly until lunch. Every Thursday.

Albert Camus, Peter Handke, Erland Tangen.

In some ways I was a late developer. In others I was an old head on young shoulders, setting myself up for a future as a self-regarding gobshite with aspirations of poetic and artistic grandeur. I think this is best summed up in my choice of sports - more specifically school sports. I was a child who, even as the Savlon was applied to the latest grazed knee, always had one eye on his memoirs.

At the age of about 7, there was a decision to be made as to what kind of sport I would subject myself to: I could have chosen hockey, but those sticks didn’t seem to have much give in them. Rugby always looked to me like a game being played by far too many people at once, on the same pitch. So football it was. But not for this child the camaraderie that comes of pulling on the same shirt as all your tiny team-mates, nor the concerted everyone-running-after-the-ball tactics, as drilled into us by our foul-mouthed and foul-tracksuited manager. I wanted to be the goalkeeper. "It was good enough for Albert Camus", I’m sure I thought, "so it’s good enough for me". Naturally too, by that age I had already enjoyed Peter Handke’s excellent novel about murder and the dilemmas of free will "the Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty Kick", so really it was a no-brainer.

Then came four years of standing alone in the pouring rain, ignored as my team-mates celebrated each goal, vilified for each one I conceded. Four years of staring into space while I tried to invent lyrics to go with the Superman theme tune. Four years of standing exactly in the middle of the goal because Princess Leia would be executed if I didn’t. Four years of being caught unawares by lightening-fast attacks while I was figuring out whether I’d prefer to be Batman or Robin at playtime on Monday. Four long years, in which time I think Cults Primary School won about three games.

As an aside, special mention should now go to Erland Tangen, a slightly odd Norwegian boy who scored an absolutely spectacular goal against me in my second season. A right-footed volley from the edge of the box, which fairly thundered into the roof of my net. It was like a proper grown-up goal, and would have been goal of the season had Tangen not been one of our own defenders trying to make a clearance during what became a 7-0 defeat.

But then came the step up to the Big School, where the team’s manager had it all wrong. He made no mention of the importance of a goalkeeper letting his thoughts wander all over the place. Nothing about cultivating an air of aloofness that would stand me in good stead for my adult years. He wanted his ‘keeper to pay attention, bump into people, get in the way of the ball, even catch it. My goalkeeping career was over.

Vampires, Castles and Cocktail Parties.

I recently finished reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Loved the first half, where not a great deal happened but it was creepy and there was a sense of impending doom. Wasn’t too fussed about the 3rd quarter where nothing really happened and the doom seems to stop impending. And then really didn’t think much of the last quarter, when everyone spends the whole time congratulating each other on their bravery, their manners, their fastidiousness, and proclaiming their love for one another. And then they find and kill the Count literally in the final 2 pages. I can’t help but feel that Stoker ran out of story at about page 200 but had promised himself it would be 400 pages long.

One of the places thought to have inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula, and certainly an evocative location in its own right is Slains Castle, a few miles north of my home town of Aberdeen. Stoker spent time here as a guest before starting the novel, and few places have made such an immediate and lasting impression on me – The bleakness of the setting, the precipitous cliffs and the hollow sadness of the building itself. Even though it dates back to the 16th Century the more recent work left it looking like a late 19th early 20th Century stately home, and the ruination always seemed to carry echoes of week-long cocktail parties and late-night music – The chatter of guests dancing into the darkness of the First World War and everything that would mean for their way of life (the owners had to leave and remove the roof to avoid taxes by the mid-1920s). The ruins themselves won’t carry this sense of melancholy for long though, as the site is braced for redevelopment, the nature of which I dread to imagine. I love the place.

Slains castle in its heyday:

...and today: