Social Affairs

Sheena’s long road back from brain injuries

BROADCASTER Sheena McDonald has revealed how the trauma of recovering from near-fatal brain injuries put pressure on her relationship with journalist partner Alan Little and drove her into a clinical depression. Ms McDonald, who was almost killed when hit by a police van driving on the wrong side of the road six years ago, told the conference in Edinburgh yesterday how her family and partner had also suffered.”Their trauma was psychological but it was perhaps even worse than mine because they were aware of everything that was happening. I don’t think they had any support at all apart from each other.”

Home schooling

At noon, the winter sun is still above Ladhope Hill in the Borders, throwing shadows across the playground of Yarrow Village school below. The door opens and out come three fair-haired children, backpacks and jackets on.
For Simeon, Rachel and Natan Siroky, lessons are already over for the day. After a muddy walk home beneath the rowan trees, still red with a last crop of autumn berries, they will spend the afternoon pursuing their education under the guidance of their minister father, Samuel, and home-maker mother, Ester.

Singing the changes for who we are

Instead of getting Fran Healy of Travis to write a new anthem for Scotland, why not just stick with Why Does It Always Rain On Me? I kind of like the idea of the Tartan Army singing that before our ritual humiliation at football matches.

”Everybody’s saying everything’s all right, Still I can’t close my eyes I’m seeing a tunnel at the end of the lights,” might just about fit the bill, given our recent performances in the international arena. A majority of MSPs polled apparently want to commission a completely new anthem for Scotland – presumably from a Catalonian songwriter which will take five years to write and come in with 10 times the number of verses we expected.

Has the fire gone out of the nation?

In Agnes Owens’s hard, bright little black comedy set in Glasgow, Bad Attitudes, the anti-hero Mrs Webb enlivens her dull life by complaining to the council about her nuisance neighbours. ”Fancy him calling you a cow,” another character remarks to her. But, more concerned with regulating her neighbours’ bad behaviour than dealing with her own
problems, killjoy Mrs Webb seems emblematic of the new Scotland.

Storytelling

Telling stories is one of our most ancient pastimes, reaching back long before reading. Way before the first scribes were noting the edicts of ancient Egypt’s great and good, hunter-gatherers were enlivening their flea-picking sessions round the fire with a tall
tale or two.
This great oral tradition managed to survive rather well in Scotland, where Burns was reared by two illiterate women: his mother and her servant. Although they could not read or write, or perhaps because of it, they had minds and imaginations well stocked with remembered tales and songs.

Mothers falsely accused of Munchhausen’s Syndrome

This was published in the Herald in 2004. I wonder how much has changed in the family court system?

It is easy to mock the press. But often it is journalists who help the victims of miscarriages of justice. In court, it is easy to forget that the press bench is one of the most important fixtures. The jury and the press representing ordinary people are vital for justice to be seen to be done. G K Chesterton wrote that among officials of the court it is only the jury who can really picture what it might be like to be the man in the dock, who may be innocent. To the others it is simply ”the usual man in the usual place”.

Why we should hang on to Scottish traditions at New Year

LAST Hogmanay, driving through the centre of Edinburgh after the fireworks, I saw a young woman aged somewhere between 12 and 18, standing in the pool of light from a street lamp. Dressed in only a sparkly party dress with no coat, she was clearly dazed from drink or drugs and perhaps alone and shivering as a tide of strangers jostled past her in the shadows. She looked so vulnerable that I pulled over to see if she needed help. But by the time I had made my way through the crowd to where she had been, she had vanished.  The vulnerability of the drunk amid strangers at New Year is not all on the female side – the previous year an assertive woman in her 30s from a naval family arrived at my house having walked across town, saying she had seen a young chap in a kilt on North Bridge.

Alternative health and the end of the age of reason

In London, years ago, a friend took to wearing decoration inspired by the major religions. Round his neck he wore a rosary and a crucifix, he had a tattoo of a Hindu god on his arm and on the back of his short-sleeved jacket was written ”There is no god but Allah”. One day, he went to Brick Lane market. A market trader smiled and said: ”You are a good religious boy.” But then an old man took exception to his garb, shouted: ”You crazy, you crazy, you believe in everything,” and chased him down the street, waving a stick. I thought about this when I heard the story of Stephen Hall, who, shortly before he died of terminal cancer paid more than (pounds) 2000 to a ”wellness practitioner” for a ‘high frequency therapy device” he was told would cure him.

Kids who succeed at BOG standard comprehensives

Families refusing to turn their backs on local schools are reaping the reward, finds Jackie Kemp There is barely an inch of wall in David and Patricia Beveridge’s sitting room that is not covered with photographs of young people dressed in mortar-boards and graduation gowns, holding rolled-up scrolls. For the couple’s eight children are a formidable bunch, bristling with top-class qualifications. Youngest son Martin, 20, is no exception. Now in third year of law at Glasgow University, he left school with seven Highers – six As in English, French, history, computing, Latin, music, a B in maths and two Advanced Highers. So what did sea captain David and his homemakerwife Patricia have to shell out on school fees forMartin’s education? Or did they pay a premium to live in a leafy suburb near to a “good” school?

Wait gain

Nuala Gormley is expecting her fourth child in February. “When I said what date the baby was due, one friend immediately asked if I was planning to defer. At the moment, I’m just thinking about getting through the next year or so. But when it comes to it, I can’t imagine we would send a child to school at the age of four and a half.”
“Are you planning to defer?” is one of the first questions a pregnant woman north of the border will be asked if her due date falls between November and February. Thanks to a once little-known provision of the Education (Scotland) Act 1980, the parents of children who are not five when the school year begins have the legal right to hold them back until the next year.

Deferred school entry

Nuala Gormley is expecting her fourth child in February. “When I said what date the baby was due, one friend immediately asked if I was planning to defer. At the moment, I’m just thinking about getting through the next year or so. But when it comes to it, I can’t imagine we would send a child to school at the age of four and a half.”

Life without the car

Welcome to the slow lane, the slow life. When my car collided with an 11-ton farm vehicle on a dangerous corner and spun off the road, my children and I became carless or, as we like to say, car-free.

Poisonous pursuit of cheap beef

Billions of burgers, corn dogs – hot dogs on a stick covered in batter. Burritos – Mexican pancakes filled with mincemeat and  covered in runny yellow cheese which looks – and tastes – not unlike custard. Although in New York, Seattle, or San Francisco, where wasabi sauce may be cooler than ketchup and the discerning diner can choose Chinese fusion or vegan Mongolian, across most of the hinterland of North America, food is mince.

The threat to the future of Gaelic

What’s the Gaelic for ”can of worms”? Because it’s time to open one up by asking tough questions of the Gaelic lobby. Number one is why are we failing to save the language and failing badly in spite of massively increased resources?
In 1991, when the census figures revealed a drop in the number of Gaelic speakers from around 79,000 to 67,000, there was consternation. Government had to do more, it was said, to save the ancient language which held the key to understanding the hearts and minds, the songs and poems, of our Celtic forebears.

On a book about autism

The baby came outside under his own steam for the first time yesterday, crawling over the doorstep out into the pale sunshine, blinking hard. I was planting primroses and he crawled into the flowerbed and sat up between my legs, looking as ever like a miniaturised Mark Lawson – that round, bald bloke who presents Newsnight review. He waved his arms
largely, as if encouraging me to favour the television audience with my most rabid views on the latest cinema release, and adding something incomprehensible in baby language, he picked up a handful of black loamy soil and shoved it into his mouth.

Thoughts on Freud

Thoughts on Freud

This is a column about  the news that Pfizer had shelved female Viagra published in the Scottish Herald on 03 March 2004.

I am always rather pleased when I read that scientists have been thwarted in their attempts to reduce this or that great mystery to a few diagrams and a dull explanation. Thankfully, despite the faith our age puts in science and all its works, it still happens quite often. So just as some of the hopeful predictions of the previous generation of scientists have failed to come to pass – the paperless office, the cashless economy, unmetered electricity, to name a few – so reality is intruding on the dreams of the current crew.

Alison Hargreaves

Mountaineer’s parents grieve for children’s loss
The Independent 

Katie Ballard – Alison Hargreaves’s four-year-old daughter – still does not know that her mother died climbing K2, the world’s most dangerous mountain, her grieving grandparents said yesterday.

Joyce and John Hargreaves broke down in tears at the news conference organised by their son-in-law, Jim Ballard, at a ski centre 700 metres up Aonach Mr in the shadow of Ben Nevis in the Highlands yesterday.
The couple who travelled from Derbyshire to be with their grandchildren were told that their 33-year-old daughter had finally been confirmed dead this weekend. “Katie just thinks she is lost, she doesn’t know her mummy is dead,” Mr Hargreaves said. The grandparents admitted that they do not wish Katie and Tom, six, to travel to see the peak where their mother died.