Monthly Archives: June 2012

There’s one thing about titles and honours; they help you place a person. When you hear the full monicker, you the know exactly who is being talked about. The Prime Minister? Ah, David Cameron. The First Minister? That’s Alex Salmond. The Greatest Living Stornowegian? Er. That’s … I’ll get back to you on that one.

Here in Stornoway we have lots of those people who have names to do with their work or even their place of work. I met one a wee while ago in Bayhead Post Office. Looking far too young and full of beans to be in collecting her pension, who collared me and asked how Mrs X was but dear Frances.

I never heard anyone call Mrs Frances Macleod from Marybank by the name Frances Macleod. Having always worked in pubs and clubs where she carved herself a reputation as the most utterly professional barmaid, she was always just Frances The Carlton and then Frances The Lodge.

Frances Macleod? Who’s that, everyone would ask. Frances The Carlton, did you say? Oh, that Frances? Of course. See what I mean? It was a title she had – like William the Conqueror or Robert The Bruce.
Oops. I have no idea whether dear Frances was in for her pension or not. She told me how she looks forward to her Press and Journal on Wednesday so I will be in big trouble if I got that wrong. How do I get myself out of this one? Er, as I was saying, Frances looked far too young to be buying stamps.

When that other polite and professional lady, the Queen, phoned me a few weeks ago for a yarn, she happened to mention that she was thinking of giving something to show her appreciation for his long years of service to our former convener, Alex Macdonald. I agreed it was a very good idea. Go for it, ma’am, I told her. Then she threw me a bit by asking whether I thought it should be a CBE, an OBE or an MBE.

Not having the foggiest about the differences between the various gongs, like most people, I suggested she go the whole hog and make him a Sir. Sir Alex would sound distinguished, as it was in the manner of Sir Alec Douglas Home, I said.
“One already has a bolshie Jock called Sir Alex,” she explained slowly to make sure I understood. Do we? “You know the one who flung a shoe at David Beckham. Two would be just too confusing for one to cope with.”
Fine. I could see her point, I suppose, which is why I then suggested to Her Maj that she consider wrapping him in ermine and just giving him a peerage. One had problems with that too, she whispered.

“Mr Macdonald is from Carloway, you see. We already have a Lord Carloway, you see. And one also has a Lord Macaulay of Bragar so the west side of that island has already been well-catered for by one’s government and I.” I was getting the drift. Best not mention we had a Baroness Macleod of Borve up there too.
So I did my best for him but OBE it is.

The problem with these honours is that they also show up in an instant who has not been lucky enough to get one yet and who should have got a less or more prestigious one. It’s inevitable that comparisons are made between those honoured and those who seem to have been passed over. Remember the fuss over Bruce Forsyth? Not one birthday or new year’s list came without someone wondering why he and twinkle toes were not on it.

Didn’t he do well? Well, yes but … They got the chance to write the headline eventually. So now a campaign has been launched called What About Sandy? or WAS? I thought it was some kind of pressure group to support Mrs X but it turns out she is just a member campaigning for the Queen to say “Arise, Sir Sandy.”
The members of WAS? welcomed the honour conferred on Mr Macdonald and said it was about time the Queen also did the decent thing and made Sandy Matheson, who is her Lord Lieutenant up here, a sir. He got one of these OBE things way back when.

Sandy was the youngest ever provost of our town and served, often as chairman, on many public bodies. In fact, it is often said Sandy’s had more chairs than Furniture World, the place to go in Stornoway for anything from a stunning suite to a lovely pouffe.

Callum Ian MacMillan, the college fellow and fuel prices campaigner, was telling me that he agreed to become chairman of WAS? after his recent hospitalisation for pneumonia, because he thought Sandy deserved the title Greatest Living Stornowegian. Had he not got over the pneumonia, Callum Ian said that he would have liked to think that I would have nominated him for Greatest Dead Stornowegian. Oh Callum Ian, I just don’t want to think of that happening – if you know what I mean.

How can you leave your eight-year-old daughter in a pub? Not easily, I don’t think. However, if you are Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury then it is just one these silly things that can just happen. Maybe to you, sir, not to me, and I am one of the most forgetful people north of Whitehall.

Yes, I have left my mobile phone, my wife – that time was only because she was chatting up George Gawk for ages – lots of money and sometimes, if I was feeling queasy, the beer that I had bought and even the dinner I had earlier on.

However, no, my daughter is not on that long list of things I have left behind in our watering holes. It nearly happened in a hotel once. Our wee treasure embarrassed us when she was about five by telling the waitress that her dinner was “really, really yuck” and that her fish fingers were “stinky like the toilet”. I did think of walking out at that point and claiming I had never seen the wee brat before.

“Mine? No, certainly not. She just follows us around. I thought she was yours.” I changed my mind when the waitress came back and announced that all our dinners were on the house. That’s my girl. Honesty pays. She takes after me in so many ways. Aw.

Poor Nancy Cameron though. It is fine to have a forgetful father. That is actually like a badge of honour because it shows you have a dad who has a lot of important things going on in his head. But no one is that forgetful. I feel really sorry for her.

I am also sorry for what happened at the Callanish Stones on Monday morning. Yes, that was my fault. Sorry. When you have a bad cold there is nothing you can do about the coughing and sneezing that goes with it and I had a bad cold. That’s all there is to it.

Maybe I should have turned away when I felt that tickly feeling at the back of my throat. I had no idea that my cough, even though it was a whopper, would blow out the Olympic torch. Oops.

In case you are wondering, I did not blow it out as a protest. I know that Olympic torch relays were made popular by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis’ minister for propaganda and that it is ironic that Britain unthinkingly keeps up his customs, but I just had a really bad cold, right?

It was also because of the unearthly hour. Who on earth would go to the Callanish Stones before 4am and hang around shivering waiting for someone to light something? Er, me actually. It was a long time ago. Everyone did it.

That was for Summer Solstice celebrations and, on those occasions, we had taken enough cheap wine to fight the cold which was especially handy at the moment of sunrise when we all took off our clothes and danced around the ancient stone monuments, oblivious of that awful wind. That’s why you should never have beans before you go to a Druidic celebration.

To counter the Atlantic blast, we had also gurgled down oodles of ghastly Co-op whisky, which, its advertising claims, “invokes some of the splendour and tradition associated with the ancient Clan MacArthur”. That’s true. Most of the people I know with that surname are rough as old boots too. Please forgive me. I was young.

Not as young as poor Nancy Cameron though. I can’t stop thinking about that poor child. It is so early for that young lady to be dragged into a pub even if her dad is running the country. It will be 10 years before she can go in on her own and do her own thing.

I hope she’ll have more luck than the girl from Point who went into the Clachan Bar in Stornoway the other day to celebrate being able to have her first legal drink. She must have had quite a few shots because she got a bit loud. At one stage, I’m told, she shouted: “It’s my birthday. I’m 18 today. Is there anyone here who is man enough to make a woman of me?”

A hush fell over the North Beach Street hostelry. There was not a sound to be heard – apart from the clicking of the occasional domino in the corner. The weavers had been paid and they never let anything interrupt their games of doms.

Scott, the barman, thought about putting his name forward but when he checked her out decided he had some glasses to wash. Even Calum, the owner, was very excited. That was just because he thought he might get an engagement party or a wedding booking out of it. Barmaid Donna just got her notebook out.

Again, the Rudhach lass screeched: “You are all so sad. Will not one of you coves in here make a woman of me?” Finally, a weaver from Shawbost stood up, removed his shirt, and said: “Here, a’ ghraidh. Iron this.”