Politics

On inflation

THE barber paused in mid-snip when the radio interrupted its nonstop pop to announce that interest rates had gone to 15%. That’s a pound on the price of the haircut, he said. By the following lunchtime the proprietor of a local restaurant was expressing great relief at the news that the 10% rate had been restored. We’re all working for the banks now; and many people are running to stand still.

That evening I was sitting at dinner with a leading member of the financial and business community, a pillar of the London Stock Exchange. He startled me by saying that what this country needed was a little inflation.

People

Geoffrey Palmer, Scotland’s first black professor

ON the way back from Kelso races on Thursday the bus stopped at the little village of Oxton and our hosts got up an impromptu dominoes tournament in the pleasant little pub there. I was swiftly wiped out in the first round by one Godfrey (”Geoff”) Palmer. He went on to contest the final, in which he was narrowly beaten by a senior Labour local government politician.

Food

Bad waiters

THE head waiter’s beard bristles as he takes our order in a slightly sinister manner. ”Would it be possible,” I ask politely, ”to turn the heating up a little?” One of our party has just arrived from Los Angeles and is feeling the cold.

”No,” he barks. ”It’s at maximum power.” Not for the first time I wonder how on earth people get into jobs for which they are manifestly not suited. An experienced head waiter would deal with the problem more gracefully. He would beam his co-operation, say ”certainly, sir”, twiddle with the control and allow our imaginations to do the rest.

Such subtlety is beyond our friend. Nor can he let matters rest. By now he has the look of a villainous walrus. His small powerful body is hunched in an attitude of pure hatred. ”Too many people,” he says with a bluntness that could be described as offensive, ”sit on top of their coal fires.”

Food

A Scot’s dislike of broccoli

The Herald, Editorial Notebook, 20 Feb 1993.

THEY are serving broccoli again at the White House, as a side dish to taxation stew. Mrs Clinton has restored them to the menu from which they had been hounded by Mr Bush. He also banned them from the presidential jet, Air Force One.

Places

A fishermen’s watering hole in Kelso

KELSO. Two fishermen are having a mournful conversation. ”There’s no water,” says one. I look up from my book, for in the bar where we are all sitting it is impossible not to eavesdrop, and stare out of the window. There, where the Tweed and the Teviot meet, there seems plenty of water to me.

Devolution

Roland Muirhead’s fight for a Scottish Parliament

THERE arrived in the office this week a slim volume called Scotland’s  Constitution. It is dedicated to the memory of Roland Eugene Muirhead  (1868-1964) who for 75 years ”relentlessly campaigned” for an  independent Scottish parliament.

The publication of this constitution is an act of piety by a small  band of faithful followers, for Muirhead, called by Tom Johnston the  grand old man of Scottish nationalism, is now very largely forgotten in  the country to which he devoted so much energy.

People

A defence of Malcolm Rifkind

The Herald, Editorial Notebook, 24 April 1993.

THERE appeared in the London Evening Standard, on Friday, April 16, a vicious attack on Malcolm Rifkind. It was written by a Matthew Norman. I have never heard of him and I entertain absolutely no desire ever to meet him.

The article is a critique of Mr Rifkind’s considered response to pressure put on him by Lady Thatcher and others to support military intervention in former Yugoslavia.

People

Jimmy Logan, selling water and playing safe

The Herald, Editorial Notebook, 29 May 1993.

THE water in the Grand Canal looks filthy but the fat lady from the Bronx reclines in the gondola and trails her fingers langorously in it. This early in the year the smells are not yet ripe but the occasional pong wafts up to the restaurant where we sit in the garden as evening falls.

Places

Regent Terrrace Gardens

The Herald, Ediorial Notebook, c1993.

TO the east of Princes Street, on the flank of Calton Hill, lie graceful private pleasure gardens laid out by the great William Playfair. They are one of Edinburgh’s hidden delights, concealed in the horseshoe formed by Regent, Royal, and Carlton Terraces.

Culture

On the correct rules of hat wearing

AN unexpected pleasure of the week was to tune into Gerald Scarfe’s ironic BBC2 essay on the subject of class and its totems. People, it seems, are still prepared to pay large sums of money for the titles of old feudal baronies. Indeed, it was revealed elsewhere this week, some of the hard-pressed Lloyd’s names are selling superfluous titles to raise the wind.

We heard too of the earl outraged to hear that the applicant for the post of butler, having made a fortune buttling in America, had sent his sons to Eton where, egad, they might meet the earl’s own offspring. The butler was shown the door.

Culture

On plans to charge for the Botanics in Edinburgh

FOR a blessed half hour this week I sat on a bench at the herbaceous border in the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh. Myriad plants were in bloom below the high hedge marching gracefully above them; their subtle colours soothed the mind and emptied it of care.

I have been coming here, on and off, for most of my life. We played childhood games on the daisy-strewn turf and ran about the magically mysterious rock garden, occasionally to the kindly rebukes of the keepers.

People

White Settlers

ON these sunny mornings of our Indian summer it is hard to feel bad tempered, but there are people whose behaviour can nudge you towards irritation whatever the weather. Among these, the imperious Englishwoman is a world champion.

Such thoughts occurred to me as I queued behind one of the breed at the express till at our local supermarket this week. She caught my eye because she was carefully reading the notice explaining that transactions were cash-only.

People

Rain in St Malo

St Malo

COCO the dog is a trifle wet. His mistress has taken him on his morning walk and, because it is raining, chained him to a banister rail until he dries and can resume his usual place on a settee. For most of his life the boxer, grave and dignified, has sat around the lobby of the hotel and watched the tourists come and go. They pet him still.

Devolution

A Burns NIght ‘massacre’ – failure of devolution in 1979

The Herald, Editorial Ntebook, 25 September 1993.

SIR Myer Galpern, who died this week, was a Lord Provost of Glasgow and a Labour MP. But he will be remembered because of his time in the chair of the House of Commons as Deputy Speaker.

On Burns Night, 1978, he presided over the humiliation of the Callaghan Government when it suffered a series of defeats in the division lobbies. The result was the 40% rule which turned the devolution referendum into a mountain too high to climb.

 

People

Nelson Mandela

NELSON Mandela joins us for a working breakfast though, at 8am, he has already eaten. He does not look his 75 years, and he speaks to the journalists, with energy and conviction, for more than an hour. Our breakfast sits unnoticed on the side table.

Devolution

“Were we just wrong, Jim?” Sillars and devolution

From Arnold Kemp’s book, a personal history of post-war Scotland “The Hollow Drum”.

…Jim Sillars told me a story about himself which, he said, explained his character. When he was 15 he was apprenticed to a plasterer and was one of a team working on a job. Although he was the junior apprentice he found he was expected to do the labouring. On further inquiry he discovered from the boss that the job had been priced to allow for three labourers, a junior apprentice, a senior apprentice and a journeyman. The boss had not employed any labourers; he was skimming more profit by making the junior apprentice do the donkey-work.

Sillars walked off the job. There was an enormous row. His father was called to a meeting. But it was to no avail and that day the plastering trade lost a recruit.

 

Food

Warsaw

A LETTER arrived from Warsaw this week. At least, it was a belated Christmas card that had somehow grown into something bigger, an epistle of six pages jotted down between times by my old friend Stas, running from one card on to another and then on to writing paper.

People

Pat Chalmers and the BBC

Pat Chalmers, controller of BBC Scotland between 1983 and 1991, has retired from the corporation after a two-year stint in Hong Kong, and this week friends and colleagues attended a dinner given for him in London.

Pat belonged to an era of broadcasting that seems now to be disappearing. Both in the Birtian BBC and in the commercial world increasingly ruled by market forces, it would now be difficult for an independent and rumbustious spirit like Pat to survive.

Food

Finnan Haddie

SCOTLAND’S greatest gift to international cuisine is not, I submit, salmon, beef, mutton broth, haggis or oatcakes, or even the simple bacon roll, that blessed balm for over-indulgence. It is the finnan haddock, served with a poached egg on top.