I've been lucky to know a whole range of characters, including Granny Clarke, and her dog, Ruff. But let me introduce Ruff properly with his own story.

When my youngest uncle, David, he was only eight years older than me, got married and moved out of the house, everyone decided Granny Clarke needed a dog to keep her company.

Granny Clarke put up a stout resistance saying she couldn’t take it out for decent walks and it would get fat. John, her last bachelor son insisted he’d take it walks for her and, since she could deny John very little, someone found a dog called Ruff, a kind of collie all-sorts.

Ruff moved in and began a platonic relationship with Granny. I’ve known many dogs who enjoyed having their heads patted or ruffled but Ruff was too liberated to be treated as a pet.

The rest of my first encounter with Ruff is among the short stories in Bees in my Bonnet but is on its own at - 

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 A lady said to me the other day that when we first met she thought I was dour, which I can be, but it reminded me of a boilermaker I worked with, Jock Russel. One of the bright young Engineers went to Jock with some plans and explained what he wanted made and how it worked and asked Jock if he could make the thing. Jock said nothing at first but then told the Engineer, 'I'll make it a' right. It'll no' work, but I'll make it. Now that was dour.

Jock taught me to play bowls. I've watched some coaches recently and the spend time explaining how to hold the bowl, how to stand and the elements of a good delivery. In addition the the learner practicing, it takes several one hour sessions and the learner never has any fun. When Jock took me in hand, he told me 'Take the bowl in your hand like this, put your foot on the mat, and don't take it off, then roll your bowl next to that wee white one.' We rolled once up and once down and Jock snapped, 'I said, put it beside the wee white one.' That was it!

Jock and I played in many tournaments, him as skip. He didn't demonstrate, waving his hands to show how the bowl had to come inside this one, and round that one, he just stamped his foot and shouted, 'I want it there.'

So many people talk about how it should be done, Jock told me how it should look when it was finished.

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Thanks to Robert Burns and Walter Scott, writers are highly regarded in Scotland so, many years ago, almost, Once upon a time, Sandy Russel, editor of the Scotsman, went on holiday in the Highlands and, of course, attended Kirk on Sunday but went fishing on Monday. When the minister heard who his visitor had been he went in search of him and found him fishing. 'I am a fisher too,' the minister told Russel, 'but a fisher of men.' 

'Oh, aye,' Russel answered. I had a look in your kreel yesterday and you didn't seem to have caught much.' 

This is not a Walter Scott or a Cairndhu story but it could easily have been either and there is a fine river flows through the valley in which Cairndhu rests. So far I haven't let Broon or Jinks go near it.

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At the time the Stuarts were on the throne and fighting with Cromwell a man from Cairndhu was talked into joining the King's side. It was fine marching with the drum but when the fighting started, Jock walked away. He was stopped by the colonel. 'Where do you think you're going?' the colonel asked.
'I'm away home,' was the reply. 'Can ye no' see they're killing one another down there.'

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Keep the peace the Daltons are here

I should really be doing more about 1820 but I'm going to take a breather and think about the next project. I enjoy the village stories in Oakhaven and Cairndhu but need to do a rewrite to get them to flow more easily. I want to do them in short story form so that people can read them on the way to work or listen to them in the car. Something that a retired person can read for half an hour just before putting the light out. I'm drawn to the idea because I so enjoyed the Para Handy and his puffer, the Vital Spark, stories of Neil Munro. You get to know the characters and enjoy half an hour in their company. I think I can do the same with Broon and Jinks and Miss Kirkhope, characters from Best in Show set in Cairndhu. I've written two but they need a bot of work.
What has caused this turn of thought is this latest set of riots and demonstrations which will end up like the 1820 insurrection with a clamp down by those entrusted with keeping the peace. For some reason people are reluctant to accept that the police are a mixture of ordinary people like the rest of us, some lazy and some over zealous but all human and likely to make mistakes. It's the same with doctors, they've read more pages of the medical journal than the rest of us but the journal deals with a kind of average metabolism and none of us is 'average' and might not be in the journal at all. It's this need to find a culprit that is frustrating - I am perfect so it must be someone else's fault is the rule. One of the things I enjoy about being a story teller is that it's always the bad guys fault and I can make sure the goodies win.

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A letter for Broon

Jinks, the postman, came with a letter from Cluggie, the village next door. They want to have a meeting about the flower show next year. I didn't want to get involved but you ken what Miss Kirkwood is like, as soon as she heard, and I expect Jinks would tell her, she tackled me in the street. 'John,' she told me. 'It's your duty to see that they do not take over our show in Cairndhu. They want to change the name of the village from Cuggie to Dalriada to reflect the quality of the houses there. They didn't have the nerve to say the quality of the people there, but that's what they meant.'
'Miss Kirkwood, I've got this new market garden business to see to and my work at the mine as well as makin' sure Gillespie doesna win the show. I don't have time to go gallavantin' and talkin' to folk like that Cluggie crowd.'
'John Brown, you will not side step your obligations. It was you who first talked to them about this idea of a joint show.'
'There's others better able to talk to them than me, Miss Kirkwood.'
'No there is not, John. You have been hiding from responsibility too long. If you wish I will get Farquhar to accompany you.'
I could see there was no point in arguing so I've written to them at Cluggie, after all, that's the official address and we'll see what happens next.

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Best in Show again

I've just come back from the village flower show. The storm of wind and rain in the week of the show had played havoc with any flowers growing out of doors so it wasn't just its usual standard but as in the fictional village of Cairndhu, it did its best. When I arrived, my friend explained he had looked round his garden and didn't think there was anything worth exhibiting but he'd look again in the morning before the show. As usual one of his entries got a first prize in its category. There were one or two miscarriages of justice but on the whole the judging was fair, nobody bribing the judges with fillet steaks and legs of lamb like Gillespie in Cairndhu. Over the years the number of cups and trophies has ballooned and it takes a good half hour to hand out all the silver-wear despite it being only a village affair. An innovation since I was a lad is the scarecrows; the favourite last year was Donald Trump but, being SNP country, this year Boris Johnson was the scary man. There were one or two amusing ones and I've added one to the images at the bottom. If the flowers were not quite up to standard, the vegetables were with some enormous leeks and huge cabbages and they are also displayed underneath. I can't shut down without mentioning the lunch which always drives me mad because I have to chose from so many delicious dishes.
In Best in Show, I tried to capture the atmosphere of a village and some of the characters I knew as a boy but a village is a living thing and all I could do was show what it was like in the fifties. I grew up among the mines, so I made Cairdhu a mining village but I'm sure there were and still are non-mining villages with similar characters.
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Jinks brings a letter

I've started to lay out the follow on from Best in Show in Cairndhu. The opening comes with Broon making his way home from work and meeting Jinks, the postman. Jinks gives Broon a letter which he says comes from Dalriada.
'Dalriady?' Broon exclaims, where the Hell's that?'
'No Dalriady, Dalriada, it was spelt oot for me. It seems they don't like their place bein' camed Cluggy.'
'It's been Cluggy since ever I kenned.'
Broon goes on and is met by a bee-keeper who wants to know if he can put his bees on the bramble bushes at Broon's new market garden.
Broon goes home, opend the letter and finds the Dalriada people want a meeting to discuss the next years flower show, which will have two classes, the local Cairndhu, and a special class to include the villages round about. He tells Maisie, his wife, that things are getting out of hand. Maisie naturally suggests a session with Miss Kirkwood to sort things out and Miss K insists Broon write back to Cluggy arranging a meeting.
Broon resists but Miss K was his teacher and he is forced to give in.
I tried several other openings but none of them got into the action like this one.So far, I've introduced five characters, which I feel is enough to be going on with. The next will be Broon's daughter Ger and the rivals for her hand, Calum Gillespie, the butcher's son and young Lindsay, the farmer's son.
I enjoy writing about these people. Their problems are not saving the universe but in the village context they are major.

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Cairndhu revisited

Broon's problems with Jinks in Cairndhu and Cluggie village, wishing to have it's name changed to Dalriada to give a proper impression of its community, are about to be reintroduced with the Spring weather. Miss Kirkwood is still there to help him with both. Maisie will keep him right as he tries to get his market garden venture off the ground but he is not entirely reconciled to his daughter's liaison
with Gillespie's son.

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I like dogs

I'm always amazed at how life turns up incidents that might find their way into a book about Cairndhu. I met someone who had been on holiday in Cornwall somewhere and the family were terrorised by a cockerel from the cottage next door. It reminded me of the occasion when a dog took a dislike to my bicycle. I tried all kinds of things from going down the other side of the road, to walking the bike  but that dog heard me no matter what. It even jumped over the fence when I tried full speed ahead. The same thing happened in Zambia when I had a motorbike, only that time it was a three legged dog and it jumped an eight foot high hedge and chased me down the street. I've searched for the pic I have of our last spaniel but he seems to have wandered off and I found this of my wife when we were at the launch of the South African Americas Cup yacht that I had forgotten about

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Postman's Knock

 In Cairndhu, at Christmas, each Sunday School class had a party, where there were games like Postman's Knock and a thing called Be Baw Babity and The Farmer Wants a Wife, all of which needed a ring with someone inside. For the Farmer the person inside chose a wife then the wife chose someone to be the child and so on, until someone had to choose a dog. Choosing the first wife, if Tiptoes was there, was fixed - you got scalded with her look if you made a mistake and chose Jeany with the light brown hair. Several people were expected to contribute a party piece and Tiptoes recited Christopher Robin is saying his prayers in a VERY SWEET voice while we boys squirmed at a boy being portrayed in such a pansy fashion. There was also a girl who was taking elocution lessons and recited 'The bairnies cuddle doon at nicht wi' muckle fecht and din'. Why one needed to attend elocution classes to learn that, I never knew. I just hope the present day disco parties are as memorable as ours were.

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Kirk and Free Kirk

My boyhood friend, Rob, and I spent most of our free time together, except on Sunday. My family attended the Parish Church, The Church of Scotland, while his were members of the Free Church of Scotland. The differences between their theologies had long eroded but the antipathy remained. Our building had stained glass windows and a pipe organ and had been built from the stone recovered from the old kirk when it was vandalised at the time of the reformation. The old kirk had been on a low knoll that overlooked the old village but, by the time of the reformation, the village had grown away from it and it no longer dominated and the new kirk was built on a height that overlooked all but the 20^th century part of the village. I suppose the congregation’s first lesson of Sunday worship was that, like Moses, they had to climb up the hill to hear the word of God.

Rob’s kirk had no stained glass, that being a form of graven image, was down near the old kirk and had a small peddle organ, a modern introduction when the congregation was converted to singing hymns but not to the extent of having ‘a kist of whistles’.

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Raspberries

I bought some raspberries at the market on Friday - four punnets for £2. I told them I only wanted two but was told it would still be £2, so I took the four and gave two away. One of the recipients decided to get some cream and really enjoy the fruit, went home and poured the cream over the raspberries, still in the punnet. Of course the punnet, although plastic, had holes in it and the cream ran out as quick as he poured it in. It could have happened to me and it is that sort of daft episode I love to write about - just the kind of thing Broon from Cairndhu would do!
Talking of markets, my books were on special display last week and I had a T-shirt made specially for the occasion. Bees in my Bonnet, short stories, is on Amazon.

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Old Meg she was a Gypsy

Miss Mowat, or a name like that, came for a year. Her big thing was poetry, not Admirals All, or Hiawatha, or John Moore being buried, but My love is like a red, red, rose. Slushy things like that. Even worse, she’d tell us we had to read it to a girl, to the giggles of the girls and the dour disapproval of us boys. We tried to think of some way to get revenge. It came from her own choice of big T, who could break wind, from either end, at will. She asked him to read Old Meg.

T started, ‘Old meg,’ poop, ‘she was a gypsy,’ poop poop.

‘And she went from town to town,’ poop, poop, poop!

As I say Miss Mowat left the school at the end of the year.

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Mineral awakening

While we were being introduced to Parliament, Rob and I still wandered about finding this and that. One day we were trying to catch trout with out hands, guddling, we called it, when I noticed some silvery flecks on a stone in the river. We hadn't been having any luck with the trout, who didn't seem to understand their role in the business so the silver flecks became the centre of attention.  We collected a few stones with these marvellous flecks and too them home. On the way the silver got a bit less shiny as the stones dried out but I was keen for my Dad to see our 'treasure'. 'It's Mica,'he told us, 'and it is in between the layers of those bits of stone. If you can find a big sheet it is worth something.' In those days, mica was important as it was used for electrical insulation in things like irons and the find started my lifelong fascination with stones and minerals. The boy is father to the man as the saying goes.

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Cairtndhu boyhood

Cairndhu is a fictional place but our village was much like it, mixed farming and small mines and everyone a character. The trouble is I get lost among the memories and forget the teachers. After miss Russel we had a newly qualified teacher, called Miss Johnson. She might have been new but she had been well trained and I remember learning things in her class. Which means it was disciplined and organised and didn't have the same possibilities for high jinks. She taught us, eight year olds, how parliament worked and having watched the odd session on TV, they could do with Miss Johnson to keep them in order and stop the nastiness. If we'd behaved in one of her 'debates' like they do in Westminster, the strap would have been in constant use. Still, they are adults and don't need disciplining like eight year old school children.

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Sunburned days in Cairndhu

In the summer, when we were boys, there always seemed to be days when the tar melted and bubbled during the summer. We went swimming in bare feet and burst the tar bubbles with our big toe.When we got home, we were suitably chastised for coming into the house with tar on our feet. Life was tough! It was even tougher the day Rob's big brother came with us. 'You can't swim, laddie,' he commented. 'Well, you'll either learn or sink,' he said and threw me in. It sounds desperate nbut the swimming hole hasn't very big and there were plenty about to pull me clear if I hadn't managed a doggy paddle. Of course we got sunburned and had to get plastered with camomile lotion in the middle of the night.

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The deer hunter

As boys in villages that could have been Cairndhu, we spent a lot of time in the woods with bows and arrows. We took a good deal of care making the arrows and on one particular day I had one with nice feather at its tail and a knitting needle at the point in the hope of surprising a rabbit. To denote what tribe I belonged to, I had adorned the head with a knitting needle and a piece of wool I had collected on a fence. As we crept along through the brown, dead lower branches of a fir I looked into the eyes of a full grown deer - rations of meat for a year. I took quick aim and let the arrow fly. As it passed through the fir branches, the wool caught in the twigs and got stuck. The deer looked at me disdainfully and walked away. The arrow would probably have bounced off but I realised, if it had stuck it might have festered and the dear might have died in agony. The main thing is, I still remember that magnificent animal walking away.

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Sunday School parties

In the village, not Cairndhu but it's proxy where I grew up, we all went to Sunday School at the Kirk. At Christmas each class had a party, where there were games like Postman's Knock and a thing called Be Baw Babity and The farmer wants a wife with a ring and someone inside, then the person inside chose a wife or a husband, depending on their sex, then the husband chose something someone to be the child and so on, until someone had to chose a dog. Choosing the first wife if tiptoes was there was fixed - you got scalded with her look if you made a mistake and chose Jeany with the light brown hair. Several people were expected to contribute a party piece and Tiptoes recited Christopher Robin is saying his prayers in a VERY SWEET voice while we boys squirmed. There was also a girl who was taking elocution lessons and she recited 'The bairnies cuddle doon at nicht wi' muckle fecht and din'. Why one needed to attend elocution classes to learn that, I never knew.

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As well as teachers, there were other professionals in the village.

I was surprised the other day to learn that medical research had discovered a direct connection between the smell of a person’s wind release and certain ailments. Why it surprised me is that sixty years ago Dr George McPheat told the women in our village that they must not clean and 'air' the sick room before he came as he could tell the moment he smelt the air what the patient was likely to be suffering from.

Dr George was quite a character, when my father went into the local cottage hospital for a minor operation sixty years ago, one of the men in the ward developed stomach cramps. While he was examining the man, Dr George asked the matron what the patient had eaten and was told stiffly, “Nothing that would do him any harm, Doctor. The food is very nutritious and he's had a spoon of castor oil to keep his bowels moving.”

“Ah,” said the doctor, “it’s a great thing the castor oil , I take it regularly myself, ---------------- once a year.”       

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