THE COLOURS OF CHRISTMAS

One of the things that springs to mind when I think about childhood Christmases is the vivid sense of colour associated with them.
There is the red of Santa's tunic, green for the Christmas tree and, of course, what every ten year old's heart yearns for at this time if the year, great expanses of white outside the window - as long as it STAYS safely on the other side of the window.
Some of these colours had a very personal resonance for me. There's red again. Cherry red in fact. The colour of the first, and only, car that I have ever owned. It was a sporty little red pedal powered number that was my pride and joy until I was too big to get into it.
I still get a thrill at the thought of my first, clandestine, sight of it as, on Christmas Eve, my big sister lifted the blanket under which it was hidden in her bedroom. the moment I caught sight of that long, red bonnet I fell in love - truly, madly, deeply. I knew that I would be travelling in style from then on. Admittedly, it would only be up and down the garden path and round my Mother's "Greenie Poles", but a chap has to start somewhere.
There is another colour, though, that resonates even more potently in my memory of those long ago Christmases. One of the decorations that hung on our tree was an odd purple object that looked not unlike a prune. I could never quite work out what it was meant to be but my mother assured me that it was very old and had been bought long before I had arrived on the scene.
I used to watch it, fascinated, as it gleamed under the Christmas Tree Lights. It seemed, somehow, in the unfathomable depth and richness of its colour, to have stored up all the happiness of past festive seasons. I was in awer of this misshapen bauble and I am pretty sure that I did not "ping" it, the way I did the other decorations, for the childish pleasure of seeing it swing back and forth. I didn't want to break it and endanger the continuity the line of Happy Christmases.
Of course, now, all those years later, I realize that those colours only remain so vivid in my mind's eye because of all the things that they were associated with. The colours of those childhood christmases were only given their depth by the efforts made by my parents on behalf of my sisters and I; the presents under the tree, the stockings full of tins of toffee that we occupied ourselves with in the early hours of the morning before we could get to that Christmas Tree. Most of all, I realise now, that it was a stable, loving family life that added, year by year to the bauble's glow.
Inevitably, as time goes by, Christmas loses some of its vividness. We get blase. We grow up? We read cynical, supposedly humorous articles about dreadful office parties, terrible T.V. "Specials" and about how the columnist never wants to clap eyes on another mince pie in his/her life. Ho. Ho. Ho. All very funny - but not very fulfilling.
This Christmas, though, I find myself having much in common with my former self. I am not actually getting ready to climb into my little red racing number but I have much the same sense of excitement as I look forward to my first Christmas at St Paul's Cathedral, Dundee, the Candlelight, friendship and the soul tingling mysteries of this time of year. I have been attending the Cathedral since February and it has turned my life around!
Along with faith, friendship and fellowship are the true colours of Christmas to all of you of all faiths - and none.

HOME SWEET HOME

I like my home "town". It suits me very well indeed. I have lived in both of Scotland's biggest cities and in the lovely countryside near to the English border but here, I can honestly say, is the only place where I have been acutely aware of a Sense of Community and so, because I believe good things should be shared, I am inviting you to a little tour of Broughty Ferry.

Up until 1911 Broughty Ferry was a town in its own right then, much to the chagrin of its population, it was incorporated into the nearby city of Dundee.

The main business of the place used to be fishing and in the nineteenth century more than 80 fishing vessels were based here. Even among the humble fishermen there was a hierarchy. Those who fished for salmon further up the River Tay were the Princes of their profession.

There was another hierarchy at work in the Ferry. The poor and the humble, such as the fishermen I have just mentioned, tended to live very close to the shore in cottages or, sometimes, lean to shacks, while a few streets back, lived the middle classes and white collar workers, such as school teachers and shopowners.

Further back, and high up on Reres Hill, lived the rich in their Mansion Houses that looked down condes- endingly on the rest of the community. Some of these houses bore spectacular witness to the wealth of their owners, many of whom were Jute Barons who owned factories in nearby Dundee.

One owner, who owned a particularly beautiful house (its name escapes me) commissioned an ornate painted ceiling from one of the leading FRENCH Artists of the day. After the building was torn down the whole ceiling was moved, lock, stock and barrel, to the store room of a museum in Dundee, where it remains to this day - unseen and unappreciated.

The first railway line in Scotland passed through the Ferry but, long before the railways, there was the Stagecoach and in King Street there is still a reminder of that long lost world. The Eagle Inn which is still operating was a staging post and did a good trade sustaining the weary traveller with food and drink.

Being on the Coast, Broughty Ferry has often been touched by the Shadow of War. Broughty Castle, which stands near the mouth of the River Tay was a military garrisson as far back as the days when Napoleon was Britain's biggest worry and during the second World War anti aircraft batteries were stationed on the beach.

Much further back than that, French troops landed on the beach on their way to help the Scots fight the English in nearby Dundee.

Nowadays, though, apart from the odd "punch up" outside one of the bars at the week-end, its a quiet place. The yachts from the local yacht club are often out on the riover, people walk their dogs along the beach and the remaining houses of those old Jute Barons look benignly on the rest of us.

As I said my home town suits me fine. Basically, everything I want and need is within walking distance. As an added convenience, I live right above one of the oldest pubs in this area. The Occidental Bar is a fine old, traditional Scots bar where you can meet people from all walks of life. it has its very own cast of "characters" and when I want a bit of company I look upon it as an extension of my living room!

THAT JAVA JIVE!!!!

All my adult life coffee shops have been very important to me. I write in them. I read in them and, as regular readers of this blog will know, I have been known to form relationships in them. I cogitate, ruminate, meditate and (once or twice) mediate in them. Sometimes I even drink coffee in them. They are a basic essential of my life.

Some years ago, before the arrival of the big Coffee Chains in this country, I lived in Edinburgh. There was a great variety of places to drink coffee and watch the world go by in that great City then. Everything from the rather elegant Coffee Room at the top of Jenner's Department Store which looked out over Princes Street Gardens and which was, in turn, overlooked by a looming Edinburgh Castle perched high on its forbidding mound of rock, to the little Italian Cafes out in the "sticks".

My favourite place, though, The Laigh, was right in the centre of town. You went down some steps from street level and into a long, narrowish establishment with a varnished wooden floor and long plane tables and bench seats on either side. On shelves above head height were displayed brass pots, pans and other kitchen equipment from a bygone age, although I always had the suspicion that some of the older clientele could remember them being used.

The walls were wooden panels of a sort of honey coloured hew that glowed when the sun came out. It wasn't the most luxuriously appointed establishment that I've ever been in but it suited me just fine. It was owned by an elderly actor called Moultrie Kelsall who was a bit eccentric and had an honourable, if not scintillating career on Stage Screen and T.V. I chiefly remembered him from a guest role in a black and white series called Doctor Finlay's Casebook which was a national institution for a while.

One of the most attractive things about this place was the variety of customers that walked down those steps. You could find yourself chatting to everyone from an office worker to a business man, an actor or a prostitute! I chatted up the lady who was to be my partner over a chocolate cake one afternoon as I said all the right things about a new pair of shoes she had bought - and was extremely pleased with.

Believe me, I clocked up a good few hours in The Laigh. I like to think of that time as my "Bohemian (some say unemployed) Period" and I'd sit for hours in conversation with eccentrics, amateur philosophers, tub thumpers, nut jobs and, once in a blue moon, someone of true intellect and insight. I may have been a burden on the British Taxpayer at the time, but at least, I was learning. A lot of the ideas that are the mainstay of my world view were formed then.

Although, in most things, I favour independent businesses over national or international chains, I have to admit that Coffee Chains pretty much give someone like me everything they want. You can sit for as long as you like and think wonderful thoughts. If you happen to be in a strange town the sight of a branch of your favourite chain can be very comforting - like a little bit of home away from home. Like your own living room.

I prefer writing in coffee shops to writing at home anyway. It's a less lonely and less sterile atmosphere and if you get stuck with something you forget the laptop for a moment or, in my case, put your pen down. You watch the world go by and, usually, the magic works and your temporary block vanishes as quickly as Spring snow.

The best thing about Coffee Shops though - let me whisper it ladies - that someone wonderful will walk through the door and the only available seat will be at YOUR table. So, if you are passing by my local, come in and make yourself known. The coffees are on me - and perhaps a piece of chocolate cake. Just don't ask me to like Starbucks!!!

JANE HAINING (SCOTLAND'S OSCAR SCHINDLER)

I have been fascinated by this largely forgotten heroine since I first heard of her and I am now engaged in researching material for a play that I would like to write about her.

Jane was born in the last years of the nineteenth century in a little village called Dunscore in the South West of Scotland. She was a more than able pupil at school, becoming Dux (top pupil in her year) at Dumfries Academy.

After a career in Commerce she went on to train to be a Missionary and secured a position as Matron of The Church of Scotland Mission School in Budapest.

She was home in Scotland on holiday when World War 2 started and, against the advice of family and friends and her bosses, she went back to be with her girls.

She was gassed in Auschwitz on the seventeenth of July 1944.

At one point Jane was made to sew the Star of David onto the clothes of the children in her care.


POEM FOR JANE HAINING


The stars fell out of the sky
and, if you could have done,
you would have gathered them up,
one by one,
and stationed them once again
in their rightful quarters
and, as before,
their shining would have shamed
the darkness around them.
But, instead, they made you
sew them into all those
little coats and dresses,
forcing you to chain
all the bright and shimmering
to the dull clod
of a poisoned earth.
Then, at the dying breath
of that great evil,
just when hope -
fragile as a Spring flower -
broke ground,
you were sucked into the maw
and in your presence
the darkness all around you
was shamed into nothingness.


John R, Nicoll.

AUTUMN

AUTUMN

Every year I clutch
at the last of those colours
before the inevitable fall
into the long white day,
and every year I fail,
for my porous memory
will let them all leach away.
It is then I remember
that green is the only colour
I need register in my mind's eye.
Through the long, dead days
I shall wait for green's return.
Green is the colour of faith.


John R. Nicoll


I am having trouble leaving comments on my own blog, would you believe. I'll get the hang of it some day. In the meantime I would just like to thank Pearl, Suz and all of you for your comments - particularly on the last posting.

To Sledpress: You are absolutely right. There are a lot of very dodgy men out there who just use people for their own amusement. I'm also not denying that other people have been treated in a far worse manner. I don't take drugs and I don't believe in counselling (some of the most screwed up people I have ever met are, or have been counsellors), unless its for something serious, so I am using these postings as my own self prescribed therapy. I am trying to make sense of it all myself. As you get a bit older these things affect you more acutely and I would just like to get it all in perspective and, hopefully, find someone who actually is who she says he is.

The Trouble With Adrienne should follow shortly and, as you will see, things get even more confusing. Thank you all very much. You've restored my faith in women. Hope you don't think that I am being patronising - cos I certainly don't mean to be.

J.R.N.

THE TROUBLE WITH ADRIENNE*

Meant to have the article I have been meaning to write ready for you by now. But it's proved to be a much more complex affair than I had reckoned on.

Better that it's right than quick, though. I want to be absolutely fair to the party involved and I would like to obtain the maximum cathartic effect for myself. I'll try not to keep you waiting longer than I have to.

If that doesn't have you dry mouthed with suspense nothing will!!!!!!!!!!

*Not her real name but its close enough.

John R. Nicoll, Dundee (The Hospitable Scots Bachelor)

P.C. OR NOT P.C. PART 4

If you've been following the P.C. or not P.C. strand you may well be glad to know that, for once, the machinery of bureaucracy has coughed and spluttered and lurched in the right direction.

That's my ham fisted way of saying that I have once again been assigned as a school escort to the same little Asian boy that I was escorting last year.

I picked him up the other day and he was ready, face washed, hair combed to within an inch of its life and ready for his new school - or at least as ready as any school boy ever is for anything to do with school!

I'm glad it worked out this way. I'm glad for him. I'm even more glad for me. I'm sure that he will appreciate a little continuity in his life. I know that I do.

I'm a big fan of continuity myself. I know that nothing stays the same for very long in this life but, lately, change has seemed to become a religion in certain quarters. Often it is change for changes sake - or, as we used to call it, FIDGETING!

How nice if things can continue in the same way - at least for a while.How nice if you can bask a little longer in the warmth of a friendship or enjoy a comfortable situation. Why must this world insist on dragging us along by the scruff of the neck? What's the hurry?

My young friend shows me his new toy car. He grins. He giggles when I call him a twit. Then he looks out of the car window to see the world roll relentlessly by.

Again, I ask, what's the hurry?