Going Out Is Really Going In

Our Bairn is a tree-hugger. The basis for this hilarious addiction is lost in the mists of time. I suspect it may have been the influence of one of her “aunties” (female friends of Wife-features and I), some of whom have a fondness for patchouli, meditation and literally embracing plantlife. At least that’s a better outcome than if the Bairn was spending more time with her actual uncle, my ex-stripper brother and his Guy Ritchie DVDs.

I mention the tree-hugging because a love of the great outdoors, or even a slightly squashed-between-housing-developments outdoors, is such a reassuring trait in a kid. The roads near our house can be pretty thick with traffic and we gave up the car so big forests, country parks and remote beaches are mostly off limits these days. Luckily we’ve a jungle of a garden and we don’t have to venture far to find playing fields, river walks and seaside links.

There are days, usually when the weather’s gloomy, when the Bairn insists she wants to stay inside all day. Even if there’s a downpour I normally insist we step outside. There are the obvious benefits of exercise and fresh air (assuming you get far enough away from the traffic-choked roads) but also the less-obvious benefits such as better eyesight (my childhood fondness for playing Pacman on the Atari may wellexplain my appalling myopia) as well as the joys of relaxation and connection. The other night it was dry, warm and sunny till 9pm and we had a great time in the local school playing fields. Afterwards it occurred to me it was an evening full of the kind of parent-kid activity that should result in happy memories for decades to come. I still have a memory of falling asleep on my dad’s shoulders as he walked me home one summer’s evening across a field in East Lothian. That was over thirty years ago and still gives me comfort.

The Bairn’s memories should mostly consist of doing awesome long jumps into sand pits, attempting to climb very large, gnarly trees and being asked to remember the number “999” in the event of mum and dad’s “wheelbarrow” race going horribly wrong.

We also stood underneath a particularly large, gnarly tree as a great spotted woodpecker (dendrocopos major) pecked at its gnarls. At one point we were showered with fragments of dead wood like some sort of carpenter’s confetti.

Not Professor Yaffle - Major Dendrocopos

A walk up the River Esk the other weekend was a wee voyage of discovery. Firstly we encountered four fluffy goslings nibbling on the riverbank in front of the mahoosive Tesco that has been inflicted on the Honest Toun. Going further upstream past the old mill weir (hydro potential?) we came across masses and masses of wild garlic. The whole place reeked but in a nice way.

 

Wild garlic

As our Bairn gets older her ability to play more challenging outdoor games grows. I think we’re fairly close to trying her out with some kerbie and you’ve no idea how excited that makes me. Of course, we need to find a quiet street. Either that or use our local roads at 6am on Sundays.

It’s unlikely we’ll go anywhere exotic this summer – we’re still trying to watch the pennies and we miss our friends in the Highlands – so I suspect we’ll be making good use of local green spaces. I’m looking forward to summer nights full of breathlessness and birdsong. As John Muir wrote: “I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown. For going out, I found, was really going in.”        

Fair Drams

I love whisky. From my first taste (underage in Blackfriars on Academy Street in Inverness) to the gifts at my wedding (miniatures of Glenkinchie) to the prospect of celebrating the Bairn’s 16th birthday (a bottle of relatively rare Royal Brackla from Nairnshire has been stashed away for 2025), the water of life has played an important role in the best bits of my life so far.

But like many lifelong heroes the whisky industry hides a dark secret. I’m not going so far as to compare Scotch with Stuart Hall or Jimmy Savile (both of whom I interviewed in my previous life as a radio dude - Stuart was theatrical, verbose and knowledgeable about antique clocks while Jim was plain weird) but the actions of the industry cartel are borderline scandalous.

The Scotch Whisky Association - often assumed to be the only voice the industry has - is a club of rich multinationals currently stymieing efforts to combat Scotland’s appalling abuse of alcohol. Minimum pricing was agreed by parliament a year ago but hasn’t been implement thanks to the SWA’s court action. This was dismissed by judges in Scotland but the SWA have talked about taking it further. Meanwhile its members continue to profit while Scots drink themselves into early graves thanks to booze that’s cheaper than water.

Wife-features is on a mission to eradicate the Honest Toun’s slug population. Or at least set up a No Slug Zone within slithering distance of our veg patch. To assist I was asked to bring back the local supermarket’s cheapest liquor. Four cans of bitter for a pound. Great value slug control; dreadfully lax public health controls.    

As we prepare to lay malty reservoirs of doom in our garden I’d like to lift the spirits (!) of this discussion to highlight the ethical options available to whisky fans. If like me you want to avoid being complicit in the success of the profit-driven health-spurning SWA and its members you really must avoid the big brands. In the supermarkets it’s impossible to find whiskies that aren’t owned by SWA members, and even the ones that seem independent are owned by multinationals which leaves you with a dilemma over the tax they pay.

So, after painstakingly comparing my bumper book of distillers with the published SWA membership I’m fairly confident these are the labels to look out for if you fancy a Fair Dram, in the same way you’d look for Fair Trade on tea, coffee or chocolate:

Tomintoul by Angus Dundee:

Bladnoch:

Glengoyne by Ian Macleod:

Isle of Arran:

Loch Lomond:

Edradour by Signatory Vintage:

The Speyside:

Springbank:

Ben Riach:

Bruichladdich (non-SWA but owned by Paris based Remy Cointreau):

Tullibardine:

Dalmore and Isle of Jura by Whyte and Mackay (non-SWA but owned by multinational conglomerate United Brewers)

Piecharts And Marmite Eck

Once more unto the breach, dear friends. Don’t worry, I’m not having delusions of grandeur. Rather I’ve been taking the refined air of Haddington, the ancient market town and capital of my home county. But the Shakespearean battle quote is somewhat apt; I’ve been waging a gentle, polite war on the streets on behalf of Scottish independence.

As a Green the prospect of Holyrood having control over foreign affairs and the welfare state isn’t usually what gets me out of bed in the morning but it’s the front and centre issue of the moment and we’ve picked a side. I say we but in fact there remain a range of views within the Green movement because it’s not our reason for being.

It’s been interesting getting involved with some of the local SNP foot soldiers, who are clearly a well drilled regiment. Of course at this stage the engagement with the public isn’t the same as during elections when an indication of voting preference is sought; at this stage we’re trying to begin two-way conversations with people about their current thinking on the issue, any questions they have and what information they would like to help them decide, assuming they already haven’t.

As a "Belter" fae Tranent I’ve always thought of Haddington as a well-to-do place. I mentioned this to someone from Gullane and they chortled. Ah yes, the social structure of East Lothian is a multi-layered and complex pattern, rather like the Argyle jumpers of the dapper golfers that pepper our landscape like mini-woollen wind turbines.

One of the three councillors for Haddington is a Tory and East Lothian has a Labour MP (the Tories came second) and a constituency Labour MSP. So, I was expecting a fair bit of pro-Union banter when I took to the streets but what transpired was genuinely amazing.

Over the course of a couple of hours most people were happy to take information and preferred not to discuss the issue - several commenting September 2014 is still a while away yet. Of those who said they had already decided how to vote most were No. When I asked why the reasons given were enlightening.

Graphics via the Bairn's Crayola Qwikflip Easel

I would say a quarter of them cited “Salmond - I don‘t like him” with another quarter saying SNP policies were putting them off. I did try explaining I’m not a cheerleader for Marmite Eck (you either love him or hate him) and I’m still planning to vote Yes, and I also tried pointing out grumbles about the actions of government were just that and not related to the referendum. If you don’t like what the Nats are doing to the health service, vote them out in 2016 and by the way in a Scottish election you get two votes with almost half the MSPs elected in a proportional way so your choices are more likely to be reflected than Westminster’s staggeringly unfair system.

Most of the Nos however gave frankly bizarre reasons. One woman said her grandkids lived in England and a vote for independence would turn them overnight into foreigners. It’s difficult to know what to say to that mix of emotion and illogic. I’ve got an uncle in Canada and I think of him as, er, my uncle. 

I was also intrigued by a couple of folk who wanted to know what “it” would be like. “It” being the future under independence. Not having a Delorian, a working flux capacitor and a spare gigawatt I was unable to definitely state what the future would be like but explained at least we’d have more of a say in issues that affect us, and what’s more we’d probably be involved in shaping a constitution. I got the distinct impression these folk struggled with the concept of the people deciding, instead being used to politics as something decided by men in smoke-filled rooms with decision communicated to them via the tabloids.

In much the same way that I found the Scottish election campaign of 2011 mostly about explaining to people HOW to vote rather than WHY vote Green I feel the referendum is still an abstract concept for most folk. At least the conversations I had in Haddington left some punters wondering about the possibilities. I can’t wait to head back unto that breach. 

Fork Handles And Foam Cutlasses

The Bairn has turned four. As Sandy Denny put it, who knows where the time goes? My guess is it goes down the back of the sofa along with all those hair clips, toys that came Sellotaped to magazines and breadstick crumbs.

It does seem as though only yesterday I was nervously putting on hospital scrubs and preparing to assist in the delivery of my first-born. Luckily the medics realised their mistake and I was stood down in favour of, you know, someone who knew what they were doing.

The Bairn has had two birthdays in Nairn and she’s now had two in Musselburgh. It underlines the fact that although I still think of us as a Highland family that has recently moved south, our child is now mostly a Central Belter. Although there’s an argument she will forever be Teuchter given her gestatory development was influenced by the maternal consumption of large quantities of chicken curry pies and cream meringues from Ashers the bakers.

I enjoyed something Tory MSP Murdo Fraser said recently. (Sorry. Do you need to sit down? Yes, I know. I liked what a Tory said. Shocking, I know.) He tweeted that he was preparing for his house to be invaded by lots of small children for a birthday party and knew how the British army felt at Rorke’s Drift.

They keep coming... for Wotsits and cocktail sausages

I’ll see his Zulu reference and raise him an Apocalypse Now quote. After the Bairn’s party I found myself muttering Kurtz’s line: “The horror! The horror!”

Truth be told the party went incredibly well and didn’t leave me utterly frazzled as in previous years. It seems when they get to this age they can pretty much entertain themselves, allowing the grown-ups a bit more time to have coffee and blether.

Wife-features had planned all sorts of games and was clearly itching to put on a PE teacher’s jogging suit and blow a whistle but as soon as the kids were in the garden and some balloons, bubbles and chocolate coins had been produced they were an uncontrollable cocktail of energy. We simply stood back and marvelled at their enthusiasm.

The party had a pirate theme and our wee lass and her girlie pals loved it. I’ve always been uncomfortable with the way girls are assumed to want to wear pink clothes and be princesses. (See what I mean via the Pink Stinks campaign.) The theme was her choice and I suspect has a lot to do with a certain ex-pirate turned underwater rescue cat. The big tankers we see crawling their way up and down the Forth are pirate ships, says the Bairn.

Of course the pirate theme then leads to the vexed issue of weaponry. Foam cutlasses were deployed and not a lot of fighting broke out. I vaguely recall having a cap gun as a boy and I turned out all right. Maybe I’ll reconsider the issue when the Bairn is older and asks to play Modern Piracy 2 – Hijack And Torture on the X Box.

The real torture came with the cutting of the cake. Yours truly, egged on by recent successes in the baking department and the manly dough-handling of Paul Hollywood, had promised to make the birthday cake from scratch. A Victoria sponge with jam filling was produced, with a cream and Smarties topping, and four candles. But at the last minute it occurred to me one of the party guests who would sample it would be my Gran, a former dinner lady whose baking is legendary. It was a real Man From Del Monte Says Yes moment when she pronounced the cake Quite Good.

The cake was decorated with fork handles

A real lesson we’ve learned from previous birthdays and Christmases is not to build expectations and not to have a clock counting down. I don’t think the Bairn quite understands the passage of time yet and if weeks go by before the big day the level of feverishness can get to be too much. There’s also the come down to manage. The day after the party we tried our best to spend lots of time playing with new toys and talking about going back to nursery after the holidays.

Only 261 sleeps till Christmas…  

Voterspotting and Shadow Puppets

A day and an hour loomed large this week.

The day – 18 Sep 2014 – is our date with… democratic reform. “Destiny” sounds unnecessarily stirring. Call me Mr Tidy but for me this is about creating clear lines of governance and audit rather than fulfilling something the Corries might have penned.

I had hoped the popular press, who surely have an interest in this battle going to the wire, would try to be a bit open-minded. The Daily Mail helpfully drew a diagram to show its readers how to vote No in 500 days’ time. Tired old phrases like “Break Up Britain” continue to be cranked out. Sigh.

To their credit Scotland on Sunday have been running a series of think pieces, occasionally getting beyond the usual soundbites, and I genuinely hope this piece by Karine Polwart reaches a good chunk of the Undecideds. It’s inspiring stuff and certainly strikes a chord when I force myself to watch Question Time which increasingly looks like it’s reflecting a completely different planet.

I had a wee chuckle at the Sunday Times’ effort at boiling down the sections of society the campaigns will be probably be targeting. They cleverly illustrated the piece with a Trainspotting theme. Look, there’s a man, a lady, another couple of blokes and a man in a Brigadoon outfit. He’s a Highlander. Oh yes. Because, you know, that’s how everyone dresses as they trundle round Tesco Extra on the Inverness Retail Park.

Key voters: Youth, lady, clipboard man, bunnet man, and, er...

If only there was another image they could have used to illustrate “Highlander”. Maybe rather than a stereotype they could have used someone famous from the North. Like Kevin McKidd from Elgin. Who was in Trainspotting. Too clever?

So far my experiences of talking to people who haven’t decided about the referendum fall into two categories. The first group of people don’t really want to think too much about it but aren’t ruling out taking an interest nearer the time. The other group are those who have strong political feelings and are curious about how independence can help get them what they’re after.

In chunks of East Lothian there’s an ingrained Labour vote. ‘Tie a red rag round a brush and people will vote for it,’ was an expression I recall from childhood in the mining community of Tranent. My father’s grandfather, a chap called Lees, was apparently famous as one of the few Tory supporters in the town and would pin blue rosettes to his delivery horses at election time, only for them to be pelted with veg as they made their rounds.

It’s becoming clear those traditional Labour voters are key, with many confirming to me they understand they can vote Yes next year and go back to their traditional voting pattern the year after in the hope of unseating the Tories from Westminster. Whether they then go back to voting Labour in the Holyrood election in 2016 is another matter entirely given the party’s increasing number of grey policy areas.

During these chats I often detect an appetite for something other than the usual main flavours, at which point I remind folk you get two votes in a Scottish Parliament election and the regional vote uses proportional representation to elect 7 MSPs rather than one. Like Karine said in her piece, her Green vote does actually count.

So that’s the day that loomed large. What about the hour? Well, it was arguably more important than the referendum – Earth Hour on Saturday. (I remain amazed at some hardcore Nats who insist we need independence first and then we can figure out stuff like climate change. Why would you argue to get control of something without saying what you’d do with it?)

I am usually a wee bit sceptical of campaigns that go mainstream. Earth Hour is a good example. This year it felt like Comic Relief with lots of people pledge their support and being seen to be doing so. I can’t help thinking the excitement of going without electric light on a Saturday night overshadows the real need to conserve power all year round, and for the transition to renewables to gather pace.

Speaking of shadows the Bairn had a whale of a time in her candlelit bath. Getting her Octonauts toys to act out their usual adventures but via the medium of shadow puppetry gave them a whole new lease of life.

Barnacles reacts to the SNP's climate change plan

This week parliament debates the Scottish Government’s proposals and policies for reducing carbon emissions, which frankly are beyond the rescue of even Captain Barnacles and his polar bear might. We need to cut emissions from transport and housing by investing in walking, cycling and public transport and by insulating homes properly. Instead the government appears to be pinning hopes on a mystery solution when they’re in their dotage. The first emissions targets were missed; they blamed extremely cold weather. Thank goodness that’s unlikely to happen again!

On an unrelated note, do excuse me: I must rub some more goose fat under my thermals and crank up the radiators a bit more. In true dad style I am livid at the prospect of still having the central heating on as the calendar flips over to say April.

So Long And Thanks For All The Ash

So the chimneys of Cockenzie coal power station have stopped belching. After 45 years the plant has been switched off. It could generate 3,500 Gigawatt hours of electricity, enough to supply a million homes. Yet we seem to be managing fine without.

There’s the obvious question about what happens next on the site. Iberdrola have permission to convert the plant to gas but they’re waiting for the UK Government to decide on prices and general direction.

The gas option would lock us into burning more fossil fuels. As we know, we already have more fossil fuel reserves than we can safelyburn if we want to limit climate change. In short, some of this stuff has to stay in the ground.

And at a local level if the gas idea steams ahead I’d like to think East Lothian folk would make a fuss about the massive pipelinethat would be required across the county – through some incredibly productive farmland – to connect the station to the gas grid.

But perhaps the overlooked issue here is the legacy Cockenzie’s coal-burning has left us. The fact that Bill Kelly flicked the off switch last Friday morning after breakfast has perhaps created the impression a line has been drawn under the station’s activities. But just a short distance to the west there’s a live legacy and it’s not pretty.

Check out these fly ash lagoons. They extend for miles along the coast to the mouth of the River Esk. I’ve blogged before about thebeautiful bits. In some places nature has taken over and created some wonderful habitats, and it’s a superb green space on the doorstep of East Lothian’s biggest town. But some chunks remain grim and in very poor condition. By all accounts Scottish Power don’t give a hoot. They have bigger issues to consider.

There is a proposal to have the ash lagoons area designated as a local nature reserve but until Scottish Power get their finger out there’s little anyone can do.

The legacy of burning coal for half a century also reminds me of what fly ash is. It’s highly toxic and needs constantly wetted to prevent it blowing around. Coincidentally this week’s East Lothian Courier contained an archive article from 1988 in which an ash storm from the lagoons covered houses, cars and the golf course at Musselburgh. One person, with no previous history of respiratory problems, was diagnosed as suffering from bronchitis.

I’m also constantly reminded of East Lothian’s coal-mining and burning legacy thanks to the high prevalence of diseases like emphysema.

Before Christmas East Lothian Council nodded through theidea of replacing Cockenzie with another fossil-fuel plant yet it’s going to great lengths to consult on guidance for planning permission relating to windturbines. It all seems rather back to front. Where we have a chance to generate power cleanly we should grab it, and where there’s a risk of repeating dirty follies we should say no thanks.

B Roads And Branch Lines

The Bairn has taken to biking like a, well… Like a wee lassie whose dad is mad about bikes.

For Christmas Santa brought her a scooter but we’ve not been out and about on it much. The underused secondhand tricycle we carted down the road from Nairn over a year ago has instead become the vehicle of choice.

A few times now we’ve been down the street and around the block, and on at least a couple of occasions we’ve been a fair distance to a play park and back. Amazingly I don’t have to stoop and push terribly often - she’s pretty self-propelling.

Flouting the rules. That's my girl!

We’re lucky in that although we’re in a town centre and near some busy roads we do have a few areas of wide pavement and we don’t have to go too far to find some paths away from traffic and into parks or onto the links at the beach.

I guess at some point the scooter will take over and then it’ll be fun to see if we can move on to a balance bike or similar. I think one of our pals whose son is a few years older than the Bairn has offered a bike he’s outgrown, and we can take it away later this year.

Bizarrely the Honest Toun has been without a bike shop for a few years. The place is often swarming with cyclists and the route through from Edinburgh out along the coast towards North Berwick is incredibly popular with MAMILs. Thankfully a bike shop has just opened at the Fisherrow end of town. Ace Bike Co behind the Brunton Theatre already appears to be doing brisk trade and quite how they resisted ticking me off for the state of my commuting bike when I took it in for a service I’ll never know. I do sort of miss the mannie from the Nairn bike shop who used to roll his eyes and sigh whenever I hirpled my mud-caked calamity of a bike across his threshold for inspection.

To make the most of my freshly tuned machine (I was genuinely thrilled at having all 24 gears available again) I took it out for a bit of a thrashing around the B roads of East Lothian.

Skies beginning to bruise over Macmerry

Following the River Esk to its mouth and going along the sea wall by the ash lagoons made for a peaceful, flat start with distant landmarks like Cockenzie power station and North Berwick Law to spur me on. I spotted what I think were a couple of grebes in the sea and powered along towards the twin chimneys. (The power station shuts down in a couple of weeks and amazingly Iberdrola who own Scottish Power have no immediate plans to do anything with the site. There has been talk of conversion from coal to gas but who knows? Even more amazingly I learned only recently the station has never used all the heat it generates for anything useful - it just goes out to sea, hence the near-tropical waters off Port Seton. Bonkers when you think in years gone by across the road there were probably folk huddled round Calor Gas heaters in drafty council houses!)

Fa'side

Just before Seton Sands I turned inland and uphill to Seton Mains Farm and along a path by the dual carriageway towards Longniddry. Then again inland and uphill towards the Motherland of Pencaitland before dropping down into Macmerry. Along the old A1 (to think this was the main road to London until the late 80s) to Tranent, then up to Elphinstone (please pronounce as Elfason and not El Fing Stone) and down some very muddy tracks to Fa’side Castle.

Then a great freewheel downhill towards the sunset over the Pentland Hills, through Inveresk and into Musselburgh. Total trip? Probably 20 miles.

Pentland sunset

B roads are preferable to A roads but even then it seems it doesn’t take much of a straight stretch to encourage motorists to put their foot to the floor on what are basically country lanes with hedgerows and little room for manoeuvre. I’d like to think back in the day when I was behind the wheel I gave cyclists not only room but the courtesy of reduced speed upon passing. My experience of East Lothian roads suggests courtesy is a mysterious concept for most drivers.

Of course there are some great tracks and paths, in particular the old railway lines. Occasionally there is talk of trying to revive the Longniddry-Haddington line but I reckon it’d be pretty pricey. It is weird that the county town isn’t on the rail network and bus services are so shoddy. Of course if the line was reinstated we’d have to find a fresh route for bicycles and I can only imagine that would mean a route on roads. Something of a backwards step as the old rail routes provide such a safe place to cycle, especially for kids.

It probably makes more sense to improve the bus services. However, the rail line does go through East Linton and it’s a thriving wee community so I can see a case for opening a station there.

As for opening new stations I’m already imagining a future bike trip when the Bairn’s older in which we cycle along the old line to Dalkeith, hop on the new train service to the Borders at the new Eskbank station, alight at Tweedbank, pootle around the backroads and forests of Selkirk, Gala and Melrose and hop on the Waverley line back home having loaded up on tea and slabs of buttered bannock.

Epicurus, the ancient PR account executive for joy and simplicity, said: “Bread and water confer the highest possible pleasure.”

I reckon the modern equivalent must be bikes, trains and cakes.