The Sandstone Blog
Love songs for men, again
For those who don’t know, Fortrose is a douce wee village along the coast a bit from Avoch and not too far from Chanonry Point, the Black Isle’s prime dolphin spotting site. For those who do not have a Concise Scots Dictionary to hand (as I do now) ‘douce’ means sweet, pleasant, lovable, or again sedate, sober, respectable. All true of Fortrose, but especially note that word ‘sober’.
The former Royal Hotel has been bought by an intrepid American couple and renamed Anderson’s Hotel with no more than due self-respect. I trailed along as part of a birthday party of eight, the eight containing, centrally in every way a Birthday Girl, a widow of some years with not only her constant male companion but also her three adult children and one female partner. I would later sit next to the sister and opposite the two strapping sons and daughter all, I should say, with a weight of degrees, travel experience and general accomplishment that puts yours truly into a very deep shade.
First though, to the bar where Mr Anderson was taking a personal hand in attending to his customers. The place has been done up with a traditionally wooden look. Still more to the point he and his wife stock as numerous a selection of malt whiskies as I can remember, and in these matters my memory runs deep and wide. He has also stocked many, oh so many real ales. I would say this was like a homecoming for me except it was probably more like an entry into heaven.
‘Many have tried this before,’ I commented, ‘and come to grief on the modern Scottish penchant for white spirits and yellow beer.’ ‘Just what I advise people to avoid,’ that wise man replied. ‘Meanwhile, what is your preference?’
The two most exotically named brews were a cider imported from the South West of England named Thatcher’s Choice, and a pale ale imported especially from California named Liberty Ale. I will go with pale ale every time, all else is lesser, so it did not come down to the memory of yesterday’s politics. Imagine if they had been named the other way round. No, not possible.
Liberty Ale weighs in at a whopping 6% alcohol by volume, fully 50% stronger than most beers we would consider to be more than strong enough; strong enough to swim across the pond itself, or to duff up likely trouble makers. Very soon I felt obliged to warn the younger men of the dangers of consuming strong drink too quickly. Not too many months before I had been at a small, post launch reception at the home of Highland based artist Eugenia Vronskaya. Eugenia is Russian by birth but learned her English in the Home Counties, resulting in an accent that could cut glass. Her talent and charm are entirely her own of course, at least in so far as they were not inherited from her parents.
Eugenia is very much the real, artistic deal. Educated at the Moscow Conservatoire she made an early specialism of religious icons of the Orthodox and Byzantine traditions. This is reflected in her work today, especially in the smallish, very brilliant portraits that hang in groups at Eden Court Theatre. I should perhaps not mention that she knocks them off in no time, but then so did Picasso. Anyway, her gigantic Dad was over for the occasion, armed with a bottle of genuine Russian vodka. Just retrieved from the fridge it went a surprisingly long distance around the company. Most were wiser than I.
The first symptom of too much that is too strong taken too quickly is the loosened tongue. Someone had to drive from rural Inverness-shire back to Caithness that night and asked my advice about having ‘just one’. A twenty minute reply that included sections of my most intimate history and a gallon of vodka tears gave the answer, the ‘no’ box ticked in heavy bold. The second symptom of too much that is too strong taken too quickly is an impatient desire for more. I drank his too.
These lessons had probably been learned by my young (but not all that young) friends some time in their adolescence, but there is no bore like an old bore. I gave them the benefit of my hard won experience at great length. We sat at a table for eight with me at one corner, opposite the two boys and before long the wide oaken table was bending under the mass and majesty of Mrs Anderson’s splendid cooking. Take these few words as a recommendation on quantity and quality.
The conversation between us chaps turned on the present (as was) happy position of Ross County FC at the top of the Scottish First Division, an unusual and heady location that surely refutes the Theory of Intelligent Design. When it turned to weightier matters my concentration turned to the food, as it had to, until the word ‘baby’ was uttered by one of the boys. The two women leaned forward in their seats as one, anxious to impart their experience as I had, perhaps more than anxious.
‘Wait until they have you up all night,’ said the first. ‘Those hours of lost sleep are never recovered; no, not after twenty years.’ ‘Nappies,’ cried the other, ‘you haven’t changed them on a regular basis. The charm soon departs. And birth, birth, my God birth! Men don’t understand.’
‘They’re lying,’ said I. There is an uncanny, unearthly wisdom that emerges when a glass of Linkwood is laid on top of a pale ale that is half again as strong as normal. ‘All this is part of a sort of plot that people subscribe to without thinking. It goes back to the days of no contraception and rigorously policed roles for men and women, which is not so long ago really. Listening, boys?
‘First of all, I count three of you here and there are two more elsewhere. These two enchanting creatures to my right had choice. If birth was so terrible they would have had no more than one each. In the age of highly trained midwives, entonox (a pain blocker also used in mountain rescue as all readers of Cairngorm John will know), Caesarean deliveries where required and a National Health Service to which I am for ever indebted because I owe it my life, all this ‘the hell of birth’ and ‘what I went through for you’ stuff is sadly out of date. Obviously they’re lying.’
If you want to know how to reduce a table of bright and cheerful adults to silence this is the way.
‘They lie especially about the relationship between men and children. I asked my father in law, long ago, what was the best part of his life? That is the happiest and most satisfying. What the old man remembered was the immediate post-war period when they were really poor. He would come back from his work to their single-end, exhausted you can bet, and play with their two little girls for a while before putting them to bed. Then the two of them would listen to the radio before collapsing. Think of it, that was the best part of his life. No money and, at that time, no great future. Try that question with older people with no side, I mean older than these two, and you’ll get much the same answer. I did often. George’s whole being was in orbit around that time or so I believe. No part of life was quite like it after, and of course couldn’t be before.’
If you are looking for a way to get a group of hungry adults picking at their food this is it.
‘My Clerk of Works from way back, Joe Duffy, told me something similar. Big Joe had been a miner in earlier life. They don’t come much bigger than Joe, incidentally. When I knew him, which to say after his broken back had recovered as much as it was going to, he struggled to keep his bodyweight under twenty stones. The delight of Big Joe’s life had been to come home from a night shift before the others got up, put the fire on and get the bacon sizzling. That couple of hours is what he lived for. One night a skip travelling overhead opened when it shouldn’t have and dropped its load of coal and stones on him.
‘Women would do this too, if they had to, they would do this kind of work and take these risks and pay the price of the rest of their lives. Usually they don’t have to. The guys only get a fraction of the kids that their wives get, but the point I am trying to make is that there is no difference between male and female love, not in quantity, not in quality, not in its nature. These guys did what they did and fed the rest of their lives on those few hours. If it had not been so they would have got out. Some do, sometimes because they are no good, sometimes because they are weak, often because they are marginalised and alienated around the home.’
There was a slight, familiar pressure on my right forearm that meant ‘don’t’, but I went right on ‘doing’.
‘Let me tell you something else that isn’t spoken of. Everyone whose family is complete however that might be defined has another child inside that occasionally gives them a nudge. I guess it’s bound into the DNA spiral. You might think about that and the grandparent instinct. The baby in waiting is yours, boys, and all of this ancient hooey is to keep you out of the way when it arrives. When they give you this “you men” stuff they’re lying, actually . . .
. . . for the most part the changing of nappies was a delight because it was a shared thing. After they get used to it they cooperate .’. . but stop. Let me call a halt there. That’s enough. It’s not them lying at all. It’s me. The word ‘baby’ above was real, but the following civilisation-threatening harangue is not one that happened in reality.
No, it happened in my head in the early hours of the following morning when the small voice from within the bloody chambers of my heart does its most insistent crying. What it recalls most, as with George, is bath time before bed, the sensuality of touch and smells, the laughter, the unassailable trust that could only be broken by the most miserable deprived spirit, male or female. What I love to recall next is a small hand reaching out and pointing and the naming of things – light, chair, table, dog (let’s give him his name, Ghillie) – before, whumpf, the head on the shoulder and sleep.
We’re not supposed to say these things. We are not allowed to talk about a small bottom snugly held in the palm of the hand and baby’s back supported on the forearm, the head in the palm of the other hand. Somehow between the 1950s and now it all went wrong and men are more detached than ever from children. Men and children; it’s not a match is it? Not like women and careers but wotthehell wotthehell. Every man these days is a potential paedophile who has to prove his innocence before getting near a child. Long gone are the days of the noble defender. Our little box is walled by work, football and a dream of sex without consequence.
This particular detachment is the end towards which our everyday culture trends and if it’s popular it must surely be for the best. Perhaps we are being prepared for war, but in the small hours I guess it was just the drink talking, with no attachment to the realities of Life, far less to Philip Larkin’s old pal, the constant companion of his art, the trite, untransferrable, truss-advertisement truth.