FRIDAY 26TH JUNE

Wisdom doesn't automatically come with old age. Nothing does - except wrinkles. It's true that some wines improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place. (Abigail Van Buren)

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FROM MY ALBUM


Jean and I with our daughters Fiona, Lesley and Margaret

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ANOTHER ANNIVERSARY

Sixty-six years ago today was my last day at secondary school.

Most of my class had been together for five years and now we were all going our separate ways. Quite a few of us would never meet again.

It’s said that, when looking back, one remembers mainly the good times, but I do believe I really enjoyed Lenzie Academy.

Our class were very fortunate in having excellent teachers. There was one exception - the science master who seemed to us to be really ancient, and I don't think I learned much in his class.

My favourite subjects were Latin, French and English. I disliked Science, Technical Drawing and Woodwork (these subjects I dropped after Third Year) and I positively hated “Gym.” I’ve got to admit that I didn’t care much for Music, and this is strange considering that music became so important to me in later years.

It may surprise you to know that I still have the test papers for the final exams which I sat in March 1943, and also my Certificate showing that I got 3 Highers - Latin, French and English, and 2 Lowers - Maths and History. I also passed the separate Arithmetic paper.

And now, the big confession - I was having a look at those exam papers the other day, and there wasn’t a single question that I could attempt to answer! The Maths paper in particular was completely meaningless!

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WHAT HAS BECOME KNOWN as the Hudson River School was a group of American artists who, inspired by British painters like Constable and Turner, were involved in a romantic art movement in the 19th century. Founded by Thomas Cole, the group numbered around twenty and included painters like Thomas Moran, Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Edwin Church.

This slide show contains 20 paintings, typical of the Hudson River School.



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THIS IS FOR LESLEY - our daughter who loves horses.

From time to time people tell me, “Lighten up, it’s just a horse.”
Just-a-horse brings in to my life the very essence of friendship, trust and unbridled joy.
Just-a-horse brings out the compassion and patience that makes me a better person.
Just-a-horse brings out what’s good in me and diverts my thoughts away from myself.
So for me and folks like me, it’s not just-a-horse but fondest memories of the past, the pure joy of the moment, and all the hopes and dreams of the future.
I hope that someday they can understand that it’s not just-a-horse, but the thing that gives me humanity and keeps me from being…… just-a-woman.



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A thought -

So many gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind,
While just the art of being kind
Is all this sad world needs. (Ella Wheeler Wilcox)

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Remember last week’s conundrum?

The first person makes me and sells me.
The second person buys me but doesn’t use me.
The third person uses me but doesn’t see me.

What am I? The answer is - a coffin!

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This final clip will bring back memories - “Silence is Golden” was No 1 in the UK Charts in May 1967. Performed of course by The Tremeloes, this group formed in 1958 is still to the fore more than 50 years later!!!



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"Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
And remember what peace there may be in silence."

Those are the first lines of Max Ehrmann’s prose poem “Desiderata.”
In my blog John’s Quiet Corner posted today I have included a visual presentation of the complete poem against a background of lovely scenery, and accompanied by the sublime music of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings.

The whole video takes 10 minutes, but I highly recommend it.

the address is - http://john-quietcorner.blogspot.com/

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FRIDAY 19TH JUNE

You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old. (George Burns)


At forty I lost my illusions,
At fifty I lost my hair,
At sixty my hope and teeth were gone,
And my feet were beyond repair,
At eighty life has clipped my claws,
I’m bent, and bowed, and cracked,
But I can’t give up the ghost because
My follies are intact. (E Y.Harburg)

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I REMEMBER that, at primary school, if there was torrential rain in the morning, the school would close at lunchtime and we got a half-holiday. In such weather the boys would cram into the playground shelter at the morning interval, stand up on the long wooden bench and stamp their feet in time to their repeated cry of “We want a hauf!” (a half-day)

I REMEMBER that sometimes a pupil would have an epileptic fit in the classroom. The child was usually writhing on the floor, while the rest of us sat in awed silence. I don’t recall the teacher attending to the victim - the fit passed quite quickly and the lesson was resumed.

I REMEMBER that a good number of my class-mates came from much poorer homes than ours. The boys were all dressed alike, in trousers and jackets of a coarse brown material, these having been provided by the School Board.

I REMEMBER that in primary school all the pupils went home at lunch time. I was lucky living near the school, but some pupils’ homes were a good 15 minutes walk away.

I REMEMBER that “the basket class” met in the church hall across the road from the school. This was for children who were considered to be uneducable and included a whole range of cases from just a bit simple to mentally defective. They passed their time doing handwork and, although part of our school, there was no contact between them and us.

I REMEMBER that there were only two men on the staff, the Headmaster and Mr Maclennan who took the Qualifying Class (Primary 7). The latter had a soft Highland accent which I liked to hear when he read poetry to us. His strap, which he used frequently, was never out of his hands, and he would be continually playing with it, rolling and unrolling it.

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This colourful painting by James Tissot (1836-1902) is simply entitled “Quiet.”



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Many years ago children’s comics used to contain conundrums which posed the question “Who am I?”

Can you find the answer to this?

The first person makes me and sells me.
The second person buys me but doesn’t use me.
The third person uses me but doesn’t see me.
What am I?

Answer next week.

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This poem was written by John Allan a Kirkintilloch man who was born in 1863.

HADDIES*

My wife has been readin’ in some books o’ fame
That fish as brain food has some sort o’ claim,
So she thinks that my intellect’s growin’ ower tame
And feeds me on nothin’ but haddies.

At breakfast when bacon would just be the thing
My wife o’ the strain on the brain’s sure to sing,
And soon from the fireside, all fizzin’, she’ll bring
The usual plateful of haddies.

At dinner I’m thinkin’ of broth and of beef,
Aye hopin’ for once I’ll get a relief
From the phosphorus diet o’ modern belief,
But in comes the platter o’ haddies.

So, wife, don’t try any more my good nature,
Or you’ll soon have your hubby a poor lookin’ creature,
A steak or a chop will make my brain greater
Than if I’d an ocean o’ haddies!

*Haddies - the popular fish food haddock

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Earlier this year I came across a magazine called “Scottish Memories.” I found it well written and most informative, and the subject matter going back to the old days was right up my street. Needless to say I now look forward to it every month.

In the June issue there was a short piece about what was Top of the Pops in May 1963. I was surprised to find that I didn’t know 6 of the artistes or groups named, and out of the top 20 titles I hadn’t heard of 11 of them!!!

Of course for me the golden age of popular music was the 1930s. During those years songs didn’t just appear and then disappear a few months later. No, the most of them were popular for years, songs like -The Isle of Capri, Red Sails in the Sunset, When I Grow too Old to Dream, Falling in Love Again, It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie and Night and Day.



That’s a photo of Al Bowlly who is the singer on this clip of Night and Day. One of the top UK dance band singers in the 30s, he lost his life in the London blitz in April 1941.



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FRIDAY 12TH JUNE

OUR WEDDING ANNIVERSARY





Jean and I were married 55 years ago today in Sandyford-Henderson Memorial Church in Glasgow.

It was when I started working at the church community centre in Glasgow that I met Jean. She was a member of that church, was leader of the Brownies and a frequent visitor to the centre.

Our friendship gradually developed and in the summer of 1953 we went on holiday together to Portsoy. Although we were guests in the local hotel, we were boarded out in a house a short distance away, Jean having a room upstairs while I was downstairs.

There was a piano in the hotel, and we always remember that one lady there, in her Aberdeenshire accent, would ask me to give them a “tunie.”

We became engaged in August of that year.


Jean and her father



1954 was the year in which -

Roger Bannister ran the 4 minute mile
The Vietnam War began
There was a hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific
Senator Joseph McCarthy began his anti-Communist hearings in America
The Nobel Prize for Literature went to Ernest Hemingway

Films popular that year included -

The Belles of St. Trinian’s
Brigadoon
The Dam Busters
Doctor in the House
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
White Christmas

On radio there was Hancock’s Half-Hour, the Goon Show and the Billy Cotton Band Show.

On TV there was the first soap be screened in the UK the Grove Family, and 1954 was the year which saw the controversial play 1984.




At the back - my father, Jean's father and my cousin John.
With Mary the Matron of Honour is the flower girl Jane a niece of Jean's.
On the left is Jean's mother and on the right my mother.

Our wedding, which used the Church of Scotland form of marriage, was conducted by my uncle Rev George Hardie who was a Baptist. At that time he was the Secretary of the Baptist Union in Scotland.

The matron of honour was Jean’s friend Mary, the best man was my cousin John, Rita my sister played the organ and Jean’s brother-in-law Angus was church officer.

The reception was held in a nearby hall, and, after the meal and the usual speeches, there was some dancing. Of course my side of the family were rather staid compared with Jean’s relatives. At the end of the evening they all went to her parents’ house, where they partied till the small hours.


My parents


Back row from the left - Angus and his wife Jean's sister Sally, Jean's brother Bill, Robert's daughter Rene, Jean's brother George and his wife Marion, and Jean's brother Robert.
On either side of Jean and myself, her parents and George's son George.
In front - Robert's children Ann and John, Margaret daughter of Angus and Sally, George son of Robert, and Peter and Jane children of Angus and Sally.

When Jean and I left the hall, we went to Central Station where we joined the overnight sleeper to London Euston. From Paddington Station we took the train to Newton Abbot, north Devon, and there we spent the first part of our honeymoon.

Among other places, we visited Torquay, Paignton, Buckfast Abbey and had a sail on the River Dart.

One of the things we always remember is the bar of a hotel where 3 or 4 older men befriended us and entertained us with their songs. This was long before Karaoki!

And another thing that sticks in my mind is the fact that I suffered quite badly from hay fever for the whole fortnight!!!

When our time there was over, we returned to London for a week of sight-seeing. We stayed with the parents of Leonard Lewis, my friend from RAF Brize Norton. Some years earlier my own parents had acted as hosts to Mr and Mrs Lewis when they visited Scotland.


With my parents, my sister Rita and her fiance Richmond. They were married later that summer.



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I usually finish this blog with music, and today there's really only one piece that's suitable. In our courting days, this was OUR SONG -



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FRIDAY 5TH JUNE

This week’s quote:-

After the age of eighty, you seem to be having breakfast every five minutes. (Christopher Fry)

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DURING THE LAST FEW WEEKS some newspapers have been publishing clerihews.
Perhaps, like me, you weren’t familiar with the term. I’ve discovered that they were named after the novelist and humorist Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956) who produced the first one. And this is it -

Sir Humphrey Davy
Was not fond of gravy,
He lived in odium
Of having discovered sodium.

It’s usually biographical with the subject’s name taking up all of Line 1. The 4 lines are irregular in length, line 1 rhymes with line 2, and 3 rhymes with 4.

Here are another two of Bentley’s -

George the Third
Ought never to have occurred,
One can only wonder
At so grotesque a blunder.

Sir Christopher Wren
Said “I’m going to dine with some men,
If anyone calls
Say I’m designing St.Paul’s.

Now, you’ll understand that I just had to have a go - so this is my effort -

Tony Blair
Didn’t care,
He caused ruction
With weapons of mass destruction.

If you’d like to try you hand at clerihews, let me have them. They’d be included in future blogs, anonymously if you wish.

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THE CELEBRATION OF COMMUNION has always been extremely important in the Scottish Church, but I’ve been surprised to learn how it was conducted in the 18th century.

What is known as the Communion Season today usually begins with a Preparatory Service on Friday night, ending with a Thanksgiving Service on Sunday evening.

In the old days however everything began on the Thursday which was called the Fast Day. No work was done and church attendance was compulsory.

The following day essential work could be done, but at midday there was a church service which could drag on through the afternoon.

Saturday was the day when everyone was expected to prepare themselves seriously for taking communion, and the streets of the town were usually deserted.

On Sunday no work of any kind could be done, not even bringing water from the well. Church attendances were so big that often the service had to be held outside. Of course we’ve got to remember that many of the congregation would have come from outside the town, and there would be some, having travelled many miles, would make a day of it in Kirkintilloch.

In the 20th century the Scottish church was very much involved in anti-drink propaganda, and so it’s interesting to learn that two centuries earlier pubs did a roaring trade in food and drink at Communion time. Old records show that drunkenness over those few days was a big problem.

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Sorrows of Werther by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)

Werther had a love for Charlotte
Such as words could never utter;
Would you know how first he met her?
She was cutting bread and butter.

Charlotte was a married lady,
And a moral man was Werther,
And, for all the wealth of Indies,
Would do nothing for to hurt her.

So he sighed and pined and ogled,
And his passion boiled and bubbled,
Till he blew his silly brains out,
And no more was by it troubled.

Charlotte, having seen his body
Borne before her on a shutter,
Like a well-conducted person,
Went on cutting bread and butter.

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Abraham Solomon (1823-1862) was a painter who specialised in Victorian social scenes. Both his sister and brother were painters as well.

The first of the paintings below shows a young man chatting up a girl in a railway carriage, her father having fallen asleep. When the painting was shown, it caused quite a scandal, because it was improper for a young couple to be engaged talking together in such an intimate way.

So great was the row over it that Solomon painted the scene again, and, as you can see, everything is completely respectable.





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I love this next clip, which takes me back more than 70 years!!!



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Cartoons used to end with “That’s all, folks”, and that is all for today’s blog.

Don’t forget to visit my Quiet Corner -
http://john-quietcorner.blogspot.com

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