20 years ago (4th Sept 2001), I became conscious of my decision to eliminate alcohol from my life. My primary fear was that I couldn’t survive without it, but there was a secondary anxiety expressed in this quote from Cormac McCarthy’s ‘All the Pretty Horses’: “What he loved in horses was what he loved in people, the blood and the heat of the blood that ran them. All his reverence and all his fondness and all the leanings of his life were for the ardenthearted, and they would always be so and never be otherwise”. I was (mistakenly) concerned that, without drink, I would no longer feel as passionate about things.
When the impact of the external world gets particularly ugly (Afghanistan) – I have a shut-down function; I can divert attention to an ‘urgent’ project, typically in the garden. So, this week, I’ve taken delivery of a bulk bag of cockle shell mulch (400kg) – am combing the woods for the curved limbs of broken trees, to restore my garden paths – a major revamp. As usual, there’s a compulsive, driven feel to my exertions, but I’m immersed in a tiny part of the external world that is mine – where I feel in control.
The quote above refers to McCarthy’s hero, John Grady Cole, who is seventeen: at 81, I now accept that ‘the heat of the blood that runs me’ has cooled a bit. Although it’s a word I have never used, I like to think that, in my day, I too was ‘ardenthearted’.
———
For 14 years, from 1976-1990, I was the Lothian Regional Council’s lead community worker for Wester Hailes. The Labour Administration, politicians and officials, were mainly hostile to community empowerment (municipalists), but I was privileged to be part of a team which helped local people build one of the most sophisticated models of local democracy in the UK. In 1990, a major Govt ‘Partnership’ arrived, and control returned to the bureaucrats. I reference this ‘history’ in the context of Edinburgh City Council appointing consultants for a new Wester Hailes Regeneration Masterplan. History tells us that creating new buildings and physical spaces is relatively simple. The real challenge is whether the soul of the community is regenerated.
———
Horror at the Afghan crisis, is matched by my ignorance of the background, and I found this Conversation piece a useful primer. Prof Sten Rynning says that western powers have been defeated and now cannot choose to oppose Taliban rule. The game is over. The real choice now is between a retreat that furthers hope of a more moderate Taliban rule – and a retreat that, by opposing this rule, stokes further misery.
———
Although much of the detail still escapes me, I feel decidedly optimistic about the arrival of the Scottish Greens into Govt. Like Lesley Riddoch, I think that the near hysterical reactions of the Tories and Labour means that they fear this alliance. Scotland (and the planet) face epic challenges – folk are sick of constant bickering – any gestures of co-operation are welcome.
———
On Monday, Community Land Scotland (CLS) sent a Briefing Paper to MSPs; it reminds them that two thirds of our land is owned by a disgraceful 0.025% of the population and that new Land Reform legislation is urgently required to prevent large scale corporate landowners blocking the development aspirations of local communities. This is a sadly familiar theme because the elite 0.025% have much better access to Govt than our communities – our missing tier of democracy.
———
The Guardian’s Libby Brooks did a short interview with Scotland’s new Makar, Kathleen Jamie – an appointment I heartily endorse. Jamie is neither obtrusive nor apologetic about her politics and will be comfortable offering a Makar’s creative interrogation of national identity. She recently described we Scots as – “nursing a yearning for change, far bigger than they can possibly grasp”
———
From Kathleen Jamie’s 2015 poetry collection, The Bonniest Companie – this poem is called Soledades (Solitudes).
“Having lost my copy of Machado’s Soledades, I search the garden. It’s March, blustery, daffodils nod, and already blossom’s sprigging on next door’s pear. I’ve a hunch I left the book by the old railway sleeper that serves as a bench, and further, that the same breeze as makes the frogspawn quiver in our sandpit-turned-pond, as flaps the laundry, has snatched the book away. And sure enough, it’s there, tossed beneath the beech hedge and open at a particular page, as though the breeze, riffling through, has spotted his own name among the master’s lines: ‘The deepest words of the wise man teach us the same as the whistle of the wind’……”
