During 2005/06, I wrote a weekly column for Regeneration Magazine, who sent a photographer to get a column header portrait (mugshot). Unintentionally, the guy captured an image of my garden 15 years ago, before anything had time to grow: just some perimeter stones and planting – sparse and bleak. His photo shows a 4ft staked sapling, now become a 20ft mature willow tree; it’s thrilling to see again how much that willow and my other trees, plants, shrubs have transformed the surrounding landscape.
The startling difference between then and now reminds me how effecting change can be, at the same time, very dramatic and very simple. From ‘nada’, to the full abundance of my summer garden, is within reach for those who enjoy it and who want it enough. We need to have and to hold our vision of change; we need to ‘tend’ it – the weeding, watering etc; but whether a garden project or major societal change, my sense is that when it’s wanted enough, the change will come.
This week, the Guardian asked some Scottish writers to reflect on what it would mean to leave the UK: Val McDermid, William Boyd, John Burnside, AL Kennedy, others; worth a look. The poet, Kathleen Jamie’s offering says it for me: “Scotland is a country; countries eventually grow tired of being ruled, year after year, by leaders they did not vote for. We’re more patient than they think, more determined than they realise, and we’re nursing a yearning for change far bigger than they can possibly grasp”.
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Larry’s Lunchette is a year old and I’m going to try for a second year. During July, I’m asking readers to visit our fundraising page – to help meet costs. Your decision on donating will not affect access.
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Boris Johnson made a bold gamble this week. Time will tell whether it’s courageous or disastrous. Rather than ‘eliminate’, our policy has now become to ‘live with Covid’, with minimum restrictions, trusting our vaccination programme’s herd immunity. Different countries, including New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, say that the predicted surge in cases, many thousands daily, will lead to more deaths – a price too high to pay. The PM’s overriding imperative is to ‘move from Govt diktat to relying on people’s personal responsibility’. I agree with Zoe Williams, that there’s a deliberate attempt to shift Covid from a ‘me problem’ to a ‘your problem’. It won’t save him if he’s gambled wrong.
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I’m addicted to alcohol, which I’ve managed to avoid since 4th Sept 2001 (20 years). Good article about alcoholism by Louisa Young. I’m also addicted to caffeine which I consume every day, very strong. This ‘long read’ about our consumption of coffee is very interesting and informative – but I ain’t giving it up!
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If asked to prioritise the damages of lockdown, I’d choose the closure of nurseries for 2-4 year olds – because this is the most formative period of life and we just don’t know how their social and emotional development has been impacted. This Conversation piece references some new research.
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The mood music is changing; it is easy to understand how the SNP would prefer the more progressive Greens inside the tent instead of outside challenging. Good Opinion piece in The Courier suggesting that Scotland’s rich and powerful are particularly anxious about any power-sharing arrangements and policy concessions.
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Advancing Scotland’s Social Economy was once my central focus, and though I’m further away now, there seems to be a dearth of new thinking – particularly from our Govt and civil service. Heartened to read a new ‘Note’ from Les Huckfield, which revisits many themes I’m familiar with – and introduces me to some new ones. Section 4 of his Note is a helpful summary of where Scotland’s third sector stands right now. There’s not enough discussion.
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The writer William Mc Ilvanney (1936-2015) reflects on the DNA of Scottishness.
“Scotland was born poor. There are two main ways to react to poverty. One is to fall in love with money since that is what you do not have. The other is to generate values beyond the economic. No matter how much money Andrew Carnegie made, he couldn’t forget that he came from a place where a person wouldn’t be measured by the weight of the wallet but by the quality of the humanity. When Burns wrote A Man’s A Man, he was locating and preserving the DNA of Scottishness – a belief in equality beyond any limitation of class, status or wealth. It was appropriate that it was sung at the opening of our parliament. The essential Scottishness, of course, is not a matter of purity of blood. It is an amalgam of all people who have come to live here. European, Asian, South American, whatever. Scottishness is not a pedigree lineage, it’s a mongrel tradition.”
