Lockdown Day 3: March 25th, 2020.

I paused to marshal delinquent thoughts.
“This is a pretty unusual way to pass the time, Terry. You sure this is what you want? It’s not very… uplifting.”

 He nodded, rigid shoulders framing syncopated breathing, “Humour me.”

  “Humour you? That’s easy. What do you call a Glaswegian in a suit? The defendant!

  No?

  Did you hear about the ten-year-old weegie kid who asked his father, ‘Da, what makes children delinquent?’

‘Shut the fuck up son.’ said his old man, ‘Pour yoursel’ a beer an’ deal the cairds.’

  Or did you hear about the Scots wifie that walked in on her husband wanking in a welly? ‘Stop fuckin aboot’ she says.”  

  “Trick. Arsehole is not an alternative lifestyle. You should know that by now.”

  “No? Alright. But I’m telling you, it’s not going to get any better. More Twilight Zone than Twilight Saga.

  Aunt Seonaidh was next. Shortly after Granddad. Lung cancer I think. I was still five. She’s still dead.”

  I shook my head, stared beyond the window over the darkening lake, uncultivated memories stirring strange feelings.
“It’s funny now, looking back, all the things that have changed since then, all the places I’ve been, how small the world has become, all those clear skies, open roads and no borders, all the hassle and heartache…  lived in four continents and been in jail in five…  But the very first time I remember leaving Glasgow was for Aunt Seonaidh’s funeral in Edinburgh.    

  Skipping down the hill all spruced up in my blue and green kilt, knee-high cream woolen socks and russet jumper, a pack of bannocks and sweet Arran Cheddar wrapped in tissue in my sporran for the journey, child’s dirk slotted into my right sock. All very shortbread tin.

  Riding a rickety green and yellow 11 bus along Great Western Road, sitting on the upper deck peering out the filthy window, admiring that almost continental boulevard, so wide, so lush, till it narrowed darkly, ambushed by darkened sandstone tenements stained by a century’s bitter industrial fog of cheap coal, oil  and peat. Winding down Woodlands road to Charing Cross, on past bustling Sauchiehall street shops to office-lined Bath Street. As we neared Queen Street, we lurched down jerking stairs, disbembarked and skipped over to the station, Sraid na Banrighinn.

  The sights and sounds and scents of that day stayed with me for many a year. The stench of diesel fumes trapped beneath the ragged canopy, white steam genies billowing up to the tired glass roof from the shackled engines straining to be away, accordion coaches grinding to halt inches from decaying wooden buffers. Crowds racing across obedient platforms to board local trains to Dunblane or Stirling, or further, on to the foreboding Highlands, to Inverness or Fort William, to Mallaig or Oban for a ferry to the Isles. Places I had only yet heard of. And while I was exhilarated by this rarest adventure of a trek across my whole world from west to east, from the New World facing Clyde to the old habits of the Forth, through Brigadoon towns and villages that didn’t exist the day before, my mother battled long-harboured ghosts just to step onto the station concourse. An uncertainty I sensed but didn’t understand.

  The last war had scarred her, left its mark on her as on all of her generation. She nursed her personal torment, but kept the demons away by never using the railways. For her the tunnelled darkness, the piercing whistle, the dervish steam and banshee brakes, brought back the tears and fears of forced evacuations, all the huddled bedlam, terrified infant screams, the abandoned innocence of lost sons and daughters weeping.  

  Torn in the dark rain of a blackout station night from anxious parents, to be transported to safety with country relatives far from the threatened industrial furnace of Glasgow. Then shortly bundled back and returned to a yet more distraught family as precision Luftwaffe bombing devastated a quiet country village, exterminating grandma’s elderly cousin. Ripped again from grandma’s arms onto yet another weeping train, to be shipped beyond the western winds to Halifax and the unknown story of Canada. Watching the ship behind them, the Benares, torpedoed and sunk with the loss of hundreds, the death of infant dreams. Separated from her older brother in a strange but welcoming country to live in the unappreciated mists of Niagara Falls grandeur. Unable to return home for five years, unable to see her brother though he was in the same country, unable to comprehend the distances involved, unable at first to understand.

  Mum did not travel well in crowds and hated trains. But as ever, she soldiered on and mustered the determination to board the train. By then I barely noted her hesitation, as I filled all possible gaps in conversation with infant babbling wonder.

A New World!
My first astonished glimpse of Edinburgh Castle perched grimly above the city, guarding the day as it had done for one thousand years of war and wanton despair.
Desperately braving the icy haar that wintered in over the Forth to salute Aunt Seonaidh’s interment as the piper played a soulful lament, my fingers freezing in the North Sea mist – because kilts have no pockets to warm your hands in.
Warming up at the bereaved hearth by a new gas fire, an unknown thing I really couldn’t quite understand – where was the coal, where was the ash, what was it burning?
Dreaming the afternoon away staring out the beckoning window at the sea’s rippled silver sheen beyond the grubby docks as my adults reminisced. Wandering back along genocidal roads, Frederick Street, George Street, Hanover Street, recalling the murder of an ancient nation or the birth of an enlightened world – depending on how parochial your viewpoint was. Rare memories of a soft ice cream slyly dripping down the sugared cone and dribbling through my fingers onto those cobbled streets as I later stood spellbound at the sight of the fairy-tale horror-story castle over-seeing Auld Reekie from its rocky throne. An awesome image, mesmeric for an infant dreamer.
Enlightenment.