Russell Galbraith recalls the remarkable Life and times of Robert ‘Bob’ Cuddihy including his barnstorming years at STV on manoeuvres with Oswald Mosely with Mrs Thatcher
Dog’s Own Story | Dream Record Shop: Rodger Evans America 1966, Chicago | Conversation: Theodore Zeldin | Dog Dining: A Cartoon Strip
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Editor at Large
We have a remembrance in this issue of Bob Cuddihy, a well kent face around Leith and STV, in the 1970s and 80s. One of his great loves was setting up The Islander paper on Arran and the Inner Hebrides in the early 1960s straight from school! Here’s a sample.
There Was A Man
This deep dive into Rabbie Burns’s work requires the actor John Cairney to embark upon a major feat of memory, as it is the longest piece of spoken literature today {circa1960}, also deserves attention because its author, Tom Wright, has used Burns’s own words and letters to bring the poet back from a neutered limbo where he has festered for many years.
John Cairney, who first acted the part 4 years ago at Edinburgh Festival, commissioned the play from Wright; partly because of his close resemblance to the poet.
In the play, there are few unusual approaches to theatre production, but there are touches which bring the audience into contact with the actor. Burns leaves the stage a number of times and rather than entering ‘stage left’ or ‘stage right’ he enters from the back of the hall.
“This unnerves people,” says Cairney, “because they want an actor to be far off and out of touch, rather than in immediate contact with them.”
Both were fired by the French Revolution and its hopes. Both hated the upper classes and the nobility. Not unnaturally these two people, living during the same time, might have had like attitudes, especially in pub scenes in both productions, presented to the audience in a similar fashion.
The human side of Burns: his revulsion with Edinburgh and disdain of the Kirk and the relish of the little fornicator, are well developed. Rather than a ‘haggisbashing’, ploughman’s poet, Burns emerges as a complex character who would demand attention at any period in history. Cairney suggests he could easily have made a fine MP – in a Nye Bevan type government.
Naturally the play is not continuous deep insight; the humorous side is well developed. Cairney suggests that his recital of Tam O’Shanter is the one time that he actually acts during the play. I found it a most energetic, whip smart, humorous piece of acting.
To Lunch…Or Not to Lunch
4
7
Can we have one cheese & pickle and one tuna mayo roll “no we’re sold out”
However, the few unconventional stage directions probably reflect the limitations of the Traverse Theatre, where it was premiered. The stage at Traverse Theatre is very small and the audience is practically sitting on the footlights. Last year the Edinburgh’s Peoples Theatre, handed out wine during one performance and carried out one scene in the back seats of the stalls.
What is striking in this play is the similarity between another Festival production staged last year, Tom Paine. Which was performed by the highly controversial and very good La Mana Troupe. Both Burns and Paine are immersed in the common weal; one expresses this in poetry and song, the other in political rabblerousing.
That is the question. Buying something to eat at midday in Port Ellen seems to be a none-to- simple matter for the uninitiated. We met Mr and Mrs Cooper, day trippers who were exhausted after having tramped all over looking for somewhere to get a spot of lunch. Mrs Cooper said they had tried to purchase a couple of filled rolls from a shop that had remained open during the lunch hour. But in spite of the fact that the rolls were right in front of her the assistant behind the counter informed them, “they were all sold out.”
We thought we had struck lucky when we entered a restaurant to the smell of food being cooked. When we asked for a table we were told that the staff only cooked for themselves at lunchtime. Anyone else had to book a meal. We were offered cold drinks. Not even tea or coffee.
There is a lunch room in a hotel across the harbour which, unfortunately, gave us no indication inside or out as to what food it served, or at what price. Speaking later to a local at the ferry terminal; she told me they do soup, mains course, pudding, cheese and coffee for 12/6. n
The truth is an inconvenient shadow slowly disappearing from the screen
Because oh, that voice, that wonderful rich baritone of his. Nordine could make a shopping list sound like poetry
11
The best weekends can contain more lasting memories than a nondescript year
20 This is a triumph. A love letter to the ghosts of Edinburgh. I feel its hand upon my shoulder: Sara Sheridan
28 It’s not the detailed history of railways that interests me, rather my emotional connection to them
Leither
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Cover: What can I say? The wonderful Robert ‘Bob’ Cuddihy, larger than life, polymath and raconteur.A charming and gracious friend. Go Well...
The truth is an inconvenient shadow slowly disappearing from the screen
It is 13 January as I write this and it already seems like a very long time ago that we were drifting in the no-man’s land after Christmas and before New Year, not knowing what day it was and trying to fill those in-between days with pursuits that didn’t increase the pressure on our bank balances and overstretched livers which would be put to the test again come Hogmanay.
Well, that was where I was drifting, and for a few of those days, I managed to fit in some reading, some much needed walking and some much delayed domestic overhauls in my flat which was beginning to resemble a long abandoned secondhand shop. For those who know me, I have to confess that all of these pursuits were accompanied by the odd beer or glass of wine, for purely medicinal purposes you understand, and to maintain a decent level of stamina for the coming storm of a typical New Year’s eve and 1 January.
Much like those dedicated footballers who keep up a middling standard of fitness in the summer to try and alleviate the gut-wrenching rigours of full-on preseason training. Well, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
As with the beginning of every other year, firm resolutions did not feature in any shape or form for me. Most new year resolutions tend to be made either by people who are extremely drunk and therefore deluded as to their actual capacity to keep to them, or by people who somehow convince themselves that “this year is going to be different.”
Only to then find themselves battling to get to the bathroom with a stomach full of alcohol-induced bile whilst climbing over a mountain of classic literature which they’ve always wanted to read, rather than just have it lying around their house in full view to impress guests who just
happen to have the same pile of unread classics in their houses. This tends to happen around the middle of February.
During the in-between days, I did read an article which lamented the unrelenting march of technology, particularly artificial intelligence and social media and some of the inherent dangers within, and which also cast a misty eye to the past and the loss of so many simple things which people of a certain age would recognise immediately. Bus conductors, milk floats, telephone boxes, people selling fish from boxes in pubs, going to Blockbusters to rent a video on a Friday night, and house parties to mention a few.
And this wasn’t just some saccharinelaced trip down memory lane. It was about how we actually communicate with each other and a serious look at how we have lost so much human contact while also watching ourselves being slowly sucked into a dark, unruly world of lies, rumours and rancour populated by conspiracy theorists, people who are vulnerable and frightened, and where the truth is nothing more than an inconvenient shadow slowly disappearing from the screen. All run by megalomaniacs vying to be the world’s first trillionaire.
Recently, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta announced that it would be dismantling its fact-checking apparatus in order to, as he put it, “get back to our roots around free expression.” What this
Recently, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta announced it would be dismantling its fact-checking apparatus
Graham Ross
but everything to do with avoiding regulation and sucking up lucrative government contracts which will add billions of dollars to their bank accounts.
Rich already I hear you ask? Well Zuckerberg was wearing a $900,000 watch when he made his announcement, and Skum spends his spare time sending rockets into space like some phallus-obsessed Bond villain. I’m not so naive as to suggest that we can turn back the effluent-ridden tide which Skum and Zuckerberg surf on, but all of us with a social conscience and a modicum of respect for facts and expertise should do all we can to call out bare faced lies and repugnant, ignorant interventions from anyone, and particularly from self-obsessed psychopaths who think that money equals legitimacy.
If we don’t, the truth won’t be a shadow, it will be a corpse. n
Grey winter days will pass. But to help shoo them away all the quicker, trust in Ken Nordine, says Colin Montgomery
God, Princes Street is a shithole these days. Well, not the whole street. Mostly the array of Scottish tat shops, boarded-up buildings and odds and sods that pass for a capital city’s main drag. I mean, nae offence if you love a bit of tartan and aw that (or if you’re selling it – I doff my Jimmy hat to your ahem… entrepreneurial zeal). But despite the riot of clan patterns, it feels… grey.
By grey, I mean mood, not hue btw. You probably guessed that. And while it may be a depressing take on Embra’s once precious ‘jewel’ (“boo hiss, why are you talking down our city?” and so on) it is at least me showing my true colours. Something to be said for that in these monochrome days. Which is not to endorse splashing ‘colourful’ views around for the sake of it; let’s leave that to shit-flinger Musk and his ilk. Best ignored. No, for a more full-spectrum appreciation of colourful thinking – and I mean that in the scientific sense, not as a slight on anyone who is neurodivergent (before the Ed is up before the beak
Because oh, that voice, that wonderful rich baritone of his. Nordine could make a shopping list sound like poetry
or whatever) – let’s jump in the time machine and hurtle back through the inky blackness of space to 1966. Nope, not that 1966 – it’s been mentioned enough. I’m talking, America 1966. Chicago to be exact. For it was there that magic happened…
I say ‘magic’, but that seems trite. It doesn’t begin to cover the genius that was Ken Nordine’s iconic word jazz recording ‘Colors’ (we’ll use the American spelling as it was dubbed as such). And goodness what an album. It wasn’t his first rodeo; he was already a well-established practitioner – nay ‘pioneer’ - of what he called ‘word jazz’. Yes, the stuff you associate with smoky clubs, goateed people in berets, clicking fingers a lot.
Before you go all ‘Fast Show’ on me, this was way more than parody jazz catchphrases. No no no… Ken really meant business. Quite literally actually, because the album’s origins lay in a commercial radio advert contract he had with the Fuller Paint Company: to both pen and voice some short, spoken-word odes to different paint colours. Initially just 10 in total. But their popularity proved such that the spectrum expanded into 34.
Excuse me if I use some colourful language…
Ken
How are things with you
And we are so lucky it did. Because oh, that voice, that wonderful rich baritone of his. Nordine could make a shopping list sound like poetry. By turns smooth, funky, wry, curious and – most of all – a timbre like deep mahogany or bittersweet toffee. His timing and delivery deserve star billing too. The pregnant pause, the elongated stop, the whispered refrain, the switch from fluid flow to syncopated syntax… Colors has it all.
Most compelling of all is the sheer invention of Colors. Through his words, Nordine allows each colour to find form, character, personality, a back-
story – even diving into sub-sets of colours within colours (‘Brown’ and ‘Green’ are particularly worth a listen on the album in that respect). There’s even room for social commentary with his take on ‘Flesh’ as a colour, with all the complexities, challenges and contradictions it contains.
It’s never a lecture though; just a 53 minute 47 second joyride. Take for example, the sheer silliness of ‘Maroon’ in which Nordine lists words that rhyme with the colour in question, against a jazz flute ditty, including the immortal line: “Please say prune”. What’s not to like about urged to pipe up for dried plums? Exactly, I rest my case. Even a Hibee couldn’t fail to love this ‘Maroon’. Besides, he has ‘Chartreuse’ on there too.
Safe to say, this iridescent gem brightens any day. Or most days I would suggest. Even just as a novelty listen. There’s a playfulness about it that chases the blues away – although blue is on there too. As is grey. And black. But they all dance their own dance and become part of the whole, earning their place. He even produced ‘playing’ tips for the first 24 colour tracks, that went along with the original album’s sleeve notes.
‘Yellow works well for paranoia’ according to Ken. ‘Beige demands caution’. And watch out for Turquoise because, it ‘takes over’. But my favourite of those notes must be that for Puce: ‘Puce fills depressions’ says oor Ken. Speaking as someone who, like many out there, has experienced the dreaded black dog in the past, that seems like some useful advice to combat the often driech days we endure in Scotland this time of the year.
But whether Puce leave you in the pink or not, no matter… Colors is a tonic. Full stop. And that’s a rarity these days. I believe you can get it on CD online. Or even just find individual tracks on YouTube. They may even lead you to explore his works further – many other audio readings by Ken are available, as he was prolific throughout his life. And that life lasted a full 98 years. So don’t be yellow. Embrace the moment, with Ken. n
Nordine asks:
Growing up in Public
Were I to write a misery memoir, it would be a slim volume, and – without knocking Kurt Vonnegut’s “man in a hole” shape of storytelling – not one amounting to much more than the word count of this column. Which is handy isn’t it?
There would be chapters on my two periods of living in a caravan, first as a toddler near Heathrow and then as an early teen in an Oxfordshire village, and one on enduring a winter in the coldest student flat in Aberdeen (in which the Shaman’s original drummer once pissed out of my first floor window during a party). But the main section would tell of my time at a boarding school for the partially sighted when I was eleven years old.
However, far from an unhappy memory, other than a few bouts of homesickness and the bothersome regime of early-to-bed early-to-rise, the 18 months I spent at that Hogwarts for blind wizards was a magical time. There were playing fields, an allegedly heated swimming pool, and the full-time friends I had there – thrown together as we were 24/7. They were the kind of comrades the narrator of Stand By Me had in mind when he said at the end of that film: “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?”. Or maybe those marble-playing miscreants of Lowell in the 1930s, the souls of which Jack Kerouac sought to sanctify through the “spontaneous bop prosody” of his Dr Sax novella.
In a strange and crumbling world of long corridors, hissing Victorian plumbing, and a constant smell of industrial laundry and stewed tea, the
former Brighton Asylum for the Blind was set at the top of a hill in an East Sussex seaside town. And these were forever friends – if forever could be condensed into just short of two years towards the end of happy childhoods and before being ambushed by hormones.
There was D from Bedford, a mini Marlon Brando in his leather jacket and supreme like-I-give-a-shit swagger. J was from somewhere in London, but it could have been the burbs, a Just William figure with scabbed knees but looking to put aside childish things and discover the secrets of punk rock. Wiry and sensitive, wearing orange-tinted glasses, E was the albino child of an AngloCaribbean family, from Oxford like me but the less than leafy Blackbird Leys.
There were others. The girls who we saw now and then, their living quarters elsewhere. One white-haired lass decided we were going out though I don’t recall any kisses, holding hands or even a conversation that lasted more than a minute. When she judged the romance to be over, her older sister handed me a 50p piece by way of my P45. It seemed an important artefact and I kept it in my broken handled Moscow Olympics mug for two years before blowing it on a quarter of wine gums and a can of Coke.
The staff were wonderful, with a sadistic exception or two. I experienced the sting of a ruler on the palm of my hand and the thwack of a slipper on the backside but the pyjamas stayed on. And there was never a hint of impropriety of which I was aware.
My favourite teacher, Mr M, read us The Hobbit, improved my grammar immeasurably, and spoke to us like we were adults even when the evidence
All that is left of one of Rodger’s former alma maters
suggested otherwise. One teaching assistant was the daughter of Mac, the Daily Mail cartoonist, and we were all secretly in love with her.
She wrapped her arms around me and my co-conspirator M, his face one of fear and freckles, as we toured the London Dungeons on a day trip. And she consoled us after our football team was regularly thrashed by our rivals, and no I’m not making this up, a nearby school of asthmatics: 4-0, 7-1, 12-0. The wheezy bastards.
Our Admiral kit was based on the 1976 Southampton strip, which was weird as we were so much closer to Brighton. Punished for not wearing my baggy tracksuit trousers over my shorts one wintry lunchtime, I was sent to the library to write out “I MUST NOT MAKE RUDE GESTURE AT MRS M” two hundred times. It was there that I would learn about the history of Scotland (1314 and all that), exchange James Herbert novels as if they were contraband, and get up early to read the tabloid back pages.
We were regularly thrashed by our rivals - I’m not making this up - a nearby school of asthmatics: 4-0, 7-1, 12-0. The wheezy bastards
I left the school for the last time at the end of 1979, my parents unhappy I’d be sitting only a handful of ‘O’ levels. The place closed down six years later when the policy of mainstreaming kids with a handicap (as was the terminology of the time) came into play.
Still, I’ve only to hear Wuthering Heights or Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick and I’m back there, treading those squeaky corridors, smelling those Victorian smells, in that strange, crumbling and enchanted place at the top of the hill in an English seaside town, where specky four-eyes and his pals will always be playing. n Rodger Evans
MOTHER’S DAY WEEKEND | 29-30 MARCH
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MOTHER’S DAY SUNDAY LUNCH
£32.5 | CHEF’S TABLE, GLASS OF HOUSE CHAMPAGNE & CHOCOLATES FOR MUM
‘Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number’ according to Aaliyah, writes Tom Wheeler
Mind you, she was 15 when she released her album of that title. And when you’re 15, that’s a sentiment you can get behind more easily than if you’re say, approaching 47, and groaning in bed with a seized-up back after you foolishly tried to take a broken dishwasher to the tip. (You’ve got previous on this Tom –Ed.)
Sadly, Aaliyah didn’t live long enough to explore this potential reimagining of the subject – though even if she had, I imagine she’d have been in a position to get other people to move her broken dishwashers for her. Age, she may very well have concluded, ain’t nothing but
when each of us is likely to pop off. But even if we accept that age is actually quite an important number, there are various distinct ways in which we can use this information. I’ve known people whose approach is incredibly systematic and driven: making and maintaining lists of life goals to be ticked off (hopefully) ahead of particular birthdays. And I suppose it’s one way – and for all I know, a pretty efficient one – of dealing with the potentially uncomfortable fact that we’re all going to cark it soon enough.
But it’s emphatically not my way. Leaving aside all the planning and list-making involved – and these are things I find very easy to leave aside – it very much depends on having a clearly defined sense of your own self, and your personal goals, from a young age. Otherwise you’re just throwing your limited time and energy pursuing a set of arbitrary targets that you might, in
The best weekends can contain more lasting memories than a nondescript year
different rates depending on whether your team is winning or losing. When your job is dull and repetitious, each day seems to go on forever, but the years zip past at a frankly terrifying rate. Which, I’ll grant you, does sound a touch depressing. But if that’s true, so must be the converse.
I changed career – by way of a fortuitous stumble more than a masterplan, admittedly – a little over three years ago. It feels more like ten years – in a good way – largely because it’s the first time I’ve had a job to which I’ve felt thoroughly suited. I’ve never exactly known that my working life would take a left turn in middle age. But looking back, I’ve always been especially intrigued by people who find themselves, late-ish in life, doing something unexpected or unconventional: the train driver-turned comedy writer (or vice versa), or the Olympic table tennis player still winning games in her 60s.
a number – as long as you make enough money in your teens to ensure you never have to move bulky appliances for the rest of your days.
Once you’re past your R&B prodigy phase and moving into your bad back phase, age begins to feel like a grimly pertinent, largely unavoidable number. Reminders of its relevance to almost everything are rarely far away – especially if you’re a slightly older parent, in which case you’d best prepare yourself for hearing the word ‘geriatric’ rather earlier and more often than you might have hoped.
By the time many of us are in a position to think seriously about a mortgage, we’re already a few years into what would have been the maximum term. Whole industries, not to say whole socio-economic systems, are based around elaborate calculations about
retrospect, not care at all about having achieved.
This is not to give an unqualified endorsement to one potential alternative, which is to have no ambitions at all. (Though, put like that, it does sound quite appealing.) But for those of us who find their ambitions can take quite some time to define, let alone achieve, there’s comfort to be found in the way time passes: which is to say, not entirely straightforwardly.
There’s a heck of a philosophical debate to be had about whether time does actually pass in a linear fashion, but I’m not sure a one-page column gives quite enough scope to do it justice. What I would certainly argue, though, is that we don’t perceive the passage of time evenly, or anything close to it.
Four minutes’ added time at the end of a football match go by at utterly
Perhaps it’s a natural comfort blanket if you suspect you haven’t quite found the life that suits you. But like all the best comfort blankets, it actually works.
And on discovering something that makes you tick – whether that’s in work or elsewhere, in the so-called prime of life or at the age when you can no longer safely move a dishwasher – well, that’s when time starts to behave in a much kinder way. The best weekends can contain more lasting memories than a nondescript year; and while time never quite stands still, it certainly finds ways of being more generous than usual.
Yes, age is a number, and an important one at that; but it’s almost never too late to find enjoyable ways to challenge it. And once I can move unaided again, that’s exactly what I’m going to be saying to my poor aching back. n
In issue 108 of the Leither Kennedy Wilson wrote a story
about his dogs. Now, he tells the truth
When I wrote about Drogba and Lampard my two Lurchers in 20, I lied to protect their identities. They were in fact two Whippets, Jack (aka the Jackster) and Pablo. My Leither piece was written as a letter to a dog sitter and as a cautionary tale for anyone thinking of getting a pet. Walkies in bad weather, pooping and scooping, vet’s bills are all part of animal companionship. Now, more than ten years on I write a different doggie tale.
Whippets look a bit ratty with big long, sad faces. They look skinny, not nearly as cuddly as a cute cockapoo. However, that’s not so. According to one book on dog breeds whippets ‘are the most companionable of hounds’. Whippets feel the cold and they like nothing better than to get up close and personal. I never allowed them to sleep on the bed. They slept in it!
The main contract you make with a dog is that the animal will die before you do. How you feel when they do go ‘over the rainbow bridge’ is something nonpet owners can ever fully appreciate. Pablo died in 2021 aged ten (cancer). The year before, Jack was in the park chasing a ball. Whippets love to chase and run and he loved to jump up and catch the ball before it hit the ground. This was his downfall. The act of jumping and twisting that cold day in January resulted in a ruptured disk in his back. The poor dog was poleaxed.
Jack was rushed to the Royal Dick Vet Hospital at the Easter Bush Veterinary Campus south of Edinburgh. A CT scan revealed that the rupture was not too bad and surgery was not required just rest and recuperation. Jackster, however, would never gain full use of his back right leg. He was nine. With perseverance – on my part and his –and a temporary harness he recovered his balance but his running days were largely over.
If there’s a lesson dogs can give humankind it’s this; whatever life throws at you just get on with it. ‘Dogs live in the present which keeps you in the moment too’, writes Chris Pearson in his recent book Collared. There is no self-pity in a dog’s repertoire. They don’t worry about mistakes made in the past, they’re never anxious about what the future might bring.
For four years I looked after Jack and tried not to treat him like a China doll. He could run off the lead but not chase an unpredictable, bouncing ball. Jumping on the sofa was kept to a minimum, and although he could manage walking downstairs, he had to be carried up. It was tough.
‘For dog lovers, the sensory and emotional engagements with our dogs is what matters’, writes Pearson whose own dog is a Bedlington-Whippet cross. His excellent book traces the changes in
Dog days from now and then
the last 200 years that have shaped the lives of dogs and humans in the West.
By early spring 2024 Jack was becoming really slow and having difficulty with his balance (he was nearly 14). He was not in pain and his heart was strong but his legs were not. One of the most difficult things anyone can do is decide when to say goodbye to their beloved pet. But when the time is right you tend to know. I decided to get the vet to come to the house so I’d be with my old friend at the end. I sat with him as he gently slipped away.
The vet asked if I wanted to be alone with him for a moment but no. I’d said all my goodbyes.
The loss of a dog is traumatic. No one can really share your grief. And grief it is (although to non-doggie folk the notion must sound idiotic). One of the worst things is coming back to an empty home, one where the dog had been at its centre, every day punctuated by meals, exercise…
I don’t equate losing a pet to losing
There is no self-pity in a dog’s repertoire, no worrying about mistakes, never anxious about what the future brings
a child or other human loved one, but it is heartbreaking nonetheless. The recollections of your pet are not the same as those you have of a friend or family member – there are no memories of sitting round the campfire telling silly stories, no memories of nights on the razzle. For all that, your pet was always there with you, never arguing, never judging or going into a sulk over something you did or didn’t do. I loved him despite all his faults and foibles and he loved me despite all mine.
A week after Jackster died, I met a fellow dogwalker in the park. She noticed that Jack was missing, offered condolences, and asked if I’d get another one…like it was as easy as replacing a broken toaster.
She asked if he was a rescue dog.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘he rescued me’. n
Ê Info: Collared by Chris Pearson is published by Profile at £18.99
Ê Bluesky: @kenwilson84.bsky.social
The author and his Whippet Jack
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As strong as
The Short Story
My cupboard turned bedroom screamed, unexpected! The windowless space was only large enough to hold a desk, my bed, and the shelf above my bed with my Irn Bru collection. Each empty glass bottle promised 25p if I took them to the corner shop. To swap 4 of them would be enough for a bru with 5 pence for my pocket.
At night, with the dim light that came under the crack of the door I would look up at my hoard. Observing the stoic man on the logo silently shouldering the weight on top of him.
Strong as Girders.
But they never got traded. Whenever I needed to stay in my room, I would count them. £7.25 of quick cash in case of the worst.
Today Dad was at ‘work’, Mum was at smoking, my brothers were old enough to be at ‘out’, and I was lying on my bed when, like plastic washing up on the beach, an idea came to my mind. What would happen if I threw a bottle against the wall as hard as I could?
Already the glass neck was choking in my hand. It was heavy, as though full.
Strong as Girders.
On auto-pilot I stood. Pulling my right arm back I felt a great dredging of my heart. An Olympic shriek unearthed from my throat as I released.
The neck left my clammy hand with a moist rip. Carried by my yell, the spinning bottle arced through the air, set to take on new form as it struck the wall.
The shriek rang in my ear, or maybe I was still screaming. It seemed as though my cage had turned into an expanse. I wanted to run, to smash through the far wall and break into shards. Let the sea waves wash away my roughness, until one day a scavenger puts my pieces into a toy kaleidoscope.
But, in its bid for freedom the bottle lit perfectly on the blue screw cap. Dropping with a disappointing thud in its unfortunate entirety. I swallowed my yell back inside and buried it. A large dent, with a small blue scuff, in my tiny room was the only result of my notion.
The industrial-strength glass showed almost no sign of abuse. The only sign was a small white plaster mark where
I wanted to run, to smash through the far wall and break into shards
the cap had hit the wall. No shopkeeper would see it unless I pointed it out. I traced my finger in the dent, pressed on it like a bruise. The bottle went back into the bank.
Made in Glasgow said the label. Men who had built ships now made glass that could contain the storms their vessels used to weather. This couldn’t be broken by a kid. No chance.
Strong as fucking Girders.
Under questioning the next day
I explained that this had been an experiment. I had wanted to see what would happen. They shouted about the cost of repairs to the wall. But it was forgotten by the end of the week. It would be years before anything in our house shattered. n Christian Weir is a new writer, keen to share stories that fly you away for a few moments.
Ê Medium: medium.com/ @weir.christian
Marlon Brando pushed my pram
I want to start by telling you a story, writes Russell Galbraith it’s a true story, honestly
Years ago I was standing on a near deserted platform in Times Square New York, talking to a friend whilst waiting for a train. A young woman standing on her own a short distance away approached us uneasily (as you would in New York). And asked, “are you from Scotland?” We said yes. “Do you know Edinburgh?” Again yes. To which she responded (this bit is true) “do you know Bob Cuddihy?” It transpired she was a friend of Bob’s daughter Amy from college and knew the family well. Still… Times Square, in the middle of the evening? What are the odds on that?
His full name was Robert Anthony Cuddihy and he was born in New York on the 11th of September 1946 into what historian Stephen Birmingham called ‘one of the great Irish-catholic dynasties of America’.
His high-living father, Robert Cuddihy senior, was a darling of the New York gossip columns, who, according to Mr Birmingham, ‘flashed across the lives of his friends and family like a playful star’. The elder Cuddihy’s fame was such that the arrival of his firstborn was announced on radio stations across America, broadcast by the most celebrated syndicated columnist of them all. Walter Winchell.
When he was growing up, in order to distinguish him from his famous dad, our Bob was known as Robbie. Much of his early childhood was spent moving between glitzy uptown Manhattan and the well-heeled Hamptons. His parents were prominent members of the New York Social Register. The Cuddihys, it seemed, knew everyone who was anyone in the Big Apple. In some cases, like the Vanderbilts, they were related by marriage.
Bob liked to say, if he ever wrote a memoir, he had a ready-made title, “Marlon Brando pushed my pram.”
Everything changed when his divorced parents died in separate road accidents, barely five years apart. In 1962 his father’s brother Tom, their courtappointed guardian, brought Bob and his four siblings to Britain to be educated.
Three of the children - Sean, Christopher and Mikey - were sent to Summerhill where they would be taught by A.S. Neill; Bob and Deedee went to Kilquhanity. Aged 15, Bob set himself the difficult task of keeping the family
together, and in touch.
Bob responded positively to the unusual (some might say controversial) methods employed at Kilquhanity by John and Morag Aitkenhead. The life-long debt Bob felt he owed the Aitkenheads was reflected in a 1998 obituary he wrote of John for The Scotsman, describing his old mentor as ‘a wonderfully practical teacher’ and ‘the last of a great generation of Scots’. He followed his years there with a spell
at Napier College. Edinburgh University came next.
Bob was never still… and certainly far from quiet during his years as a student in Edinburgh. Persuading the wellknown BBC journalist Kenneth Allsop to run – successfully! - for Rector in 1968 was a demonstration of his imagination, as well as his campaigning zeal.
A prominent figure in the students’ anti-Apartheid movement he showed considerable courage; taking part in public demonstrations, talking openly against university investment in South Africa and trying to stop the Springboks rugby team from playing at Murrayfield. That last, was probably the only time in his adult life he showed interest in a major sporting event.
The late 1960s and early 1970s was an eventful period in Bob’s life. He tried going back to America, failed to settle, and returned to Edinburgh in search of a career. As he told me more than once, this was his city. Although we mustn’t forget, he never abandoned his US citizenship, or his deep interest in US politics. This continued until a week or two before his death when, against a
shift in the polls, he called the election for Trump.
Growing up, his great hero was R. J. Cuddihy, a major figure in US publishing during the early part of the last century, and Bob’s grand-father. From office boy, aged sixteen in 1878, to head of the company in 1905, was quite a journey. The Literary Digest, with a circulation across America second only to the Saturday Evening Post, was just one of the titles R.J. Cuddihy controlled. Funk and Wagnall’s dictionary was another. Bob remembered the famous line from the Martin and Lewis Laugh-in, “You can put that in your Funk and Wagnalls.” Publishing, then, was in Bob’s blood. No-one can say he didn’t try. Which might help to explain The Islander, a radical, fortnightly newspaper based on Arran, aimed at readers living on Scotland’s under-served inner isles.
Never a man to do anything by halves, Bob was publisher and editor of The Islander. In his quest to overtake the great R.J. he also bought a second-hand printing press, much to the amazement of his friends. It’s not difficult to imagine everyone involved having a lot of fun.
Hopefully, this softened the heartache when, after about a dozen editions, The Islander was obliged to surrender to the cold winds of economic reality.
I knew Bob for more than 50 years. Others longer. Bob valued friendship and he was good at keeping friends across a long period of time. I recruited him to Scottish Television in 1972 and he stayed for 17 years, working mainly on Ways and Means and Scotland Today, with the odd foray into documentaries and political specials.
The 1970s was a momentous decade in the history of UK politics, including Scotland; the 1980s barely less so. Bob occupied a ringside seat for much of the action. It helped that he enjoyed the company, as well as the trust, of politicians at every level. One thing was glaringly obvious: even as a young man, people, having met him once, remembered him!
Gore Vidal was a product of the high end of American society. If memory serves me right, he was related to JFK and Jackie through marriage. The first time Bob met Vidal, at the Cheltenham Book Festival I recall, he was able to convince the usually sceptic American author they were distant cousins.
When they met again a while later, Vidal said, “Tell me again, was it my great-great uncle and your great-great aunt, or was it my great-great aunt and your great-great uncle who…”
On another occasion, Oswald Mosley was in Glasgow for a programme on which he’d agreed to be interviewed, at some length, by Bob. The evening before we were due to record a few of us joined Mosley for dinner at his hotel, followed by drinks in a private room. Some way into the night Mosley was being verbally battered about the head by Bob, who kept calling the former leader of Britain’s fascists Tom, much to the bemusement of Tony Firth, our Director of Programmes, who had arrived late.
Mr Cuddihy in full blown larger than life mode and reviewing Open Circuit at Edinburgh Festival 1973
It helped that Bob enjoyed the company, as well as the trust, of politicians at every level
“Who’s he talking to, who’s Tom?” Tony inquired. (Tom was a name Bob had picked up during his research.) To which Tony replied, “Would he call the Pope Fred?”
To which, remembering his deep catholic past, the safe answer is, probably not, although, during the 1982 papal visit to Scotland, as Bob himself liked to recount, he locked horns with Archbishop Marcinkus, the pope’s minder. Bob wanted to know what the tough-talking Marcinkus would do if he tried to doorstep the Holy Father. “I’d break your arms,” Marcinkus replied.
I believe Bob’s time at STV was the happiest and most significant period of his working life. His early years on-screen coincided with a period when there were only three television channels. You couldn’t appear regularly on STV without becoming very well known, even famous, within the STV transmission area.
Bob enjoyed his fame, such as it was. He didn’t mind strangers talking to him in pubs. He loved it when taxi drivers called him by his first name.
Of course, as a reporter, on staff, he
didn’t just interview big names, or report on great events. He was expected to do his turn on the daily news diary which could mean making a mundane story interesting.
Once, as a punishment, his programme editor assigned him to cover National Sausage Week. Bob retaliated by engaging the services of a cordon bleu chef.
On another occasion Bob was ordered to do a report on the opening of the panto season. He went all Stanley Baxter for this one, dressing in full pantomime dame costume. A sight that was not easily forgotten.
Perhaps my favourite Cuddihy memory from his years at STV involves the so-called Iron Lady, Mrs Thatcher. Late one evening at the Tory party conference in Perth, a group of us were drinking in the lounge bar of the Station Hotel… it was pre-Brighton because we had been able to book rooms in the same hotel as the prime minister. It’s also worth noting that our group included prominent Tory MP Alex Fletcher. It would have been about midnight when the prime minister appeared, spotted Alex, and made a bee-line towards us. Looking like someone who’d enjoyed a good night out. While we were struggling to stand, the prime minister, rather than sit, perched herself awkwardly on the arm of a vacant chair, which is when Cuddihy’s presence in the group became vital.
Just as the chair cowped and the prime minister looked like crashing to the floor he moved with the speed of light, catching her a moment before she landed in an ungainly heap, with her legs in the air. Bob appeared more ruffled by the experience than Mrs Thatcher who regained her composure with surprising speed before departing with Denis in the direction of the lift.
F Scott Fitzgerald, to whom he might very well have been related, once wrote: ‘there are no second acts in American lives’.
I doubt Bob ever believed this to be true. Or, at the very least, no such restrictions could be applied to him. Long after he left STV Bob continued to find interesting work: a pioneer figure in the direct video market producing important histories on World War Two and Vietnam, he was PR adviser to the National Pharmacy Association and Director of the ‘Channel 5 in Edinburgh’ campaign.
There’s nothing useful I can say about his illness. It was progressively dreadful and lasted a long time. However, it’s also true, for nearly a decade, in his own way, Bob ‘raged against the dying of the light’.
I mentioned earlier how news of his birth was broadcast live, on coastto-coast radio, across the United States. Well, tonight, at the Teatro Real in Madrid, a performance of Handel’s Theodora, by organist Bernard Robertson, an old friend, will be dedicated to Bob’s memory. George Frideric Handel? Trust Bob to go out in style… n
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Thank you, driver
Overheard in a Leith pub: “Never run after a bus or a woman, son. There’s always another one.” Readers will judge for themselves which part of that advice is good.
In Edinburgh there’s always another bus. Lothian Buses is one of the biggest and best urban bus companies in the country and we’re lucky to have it.
That’s the opinion of Gavin Booth, who for seven years was Chair of Bus Users UK, the passengers’ champion, sampling bus services the length of Britain. To mark one hundred years of Edinburgh’s buses and trams, Booth has brought out a cornucopia of a book: A Century of Edinburgh’s Trams and Buses, his enthusiasm for buses and attention to detail drips from every page.
It is generously illustrated and beautifully laid out. Every image has a full caption. The buses change, but it’s striking how so many streetscapes are still familiar. You can tell from the book that Edinburgh’s buses are specially blessed.
Leith and Edinburgh tram networks.
He did more than that. He had a gift for getting on well with the workforce –the drivers, the cleaners, the backroom staff, and the engineers, as well as the Board and the political masters, the elected town council.
It has remained a happy, productive, efficient operation over the decades, valued enough by Lothian Regional Council to resist the lures of privatisation in the 1980s.
This is important. It means that the operation is run for the benefit of the council and therefore us, the community. Most other public bus operations around the country are run for the benefit of shareholders.
Some remnants of the old Edinburgh cable-tram system are still visible. There’s a 3 metre stretch of the track in the roadway in Waterloo Place with the central groove through which the driver controlled a gripper to the ever moving cable.
The two wheels displayed at the end of Iona Street around which the cables revolved, were uncovered in the recent excavations for the new trams.
The old Shrubhill depot has been developed beyond recognition into residential accommodation; a very attractive set of flats with a bit of character. They have kept the outer walls of the Engine Yards, right at the back on Dryden Street, where the cables were powered, together with the landmark tall chimney alongside.
It seems the present bus and tram operation owes a great deal to the muchloved General Manager in the 1920s, R Stuart Pilcher. His first job was to get the best from combining the very different
If we are serious about reducing our dependency on cars, there needs to be joined-up policies designed to make both active travel – walking and cycling –and public transport into attractive options.
For many decades public policy has been to lay enough tarmac to accommodate the ever growing number of private cars. Which makes Big Oil, the car industry and car-owners into kings of the road. At last, there are signs that pedestrians and other travellers have rights too.
We’re lucky: Edinburgh Council is pretty well disposed. It was one of the first to provide bus lanes to prioritise buses with 50 passengers over cars with only one or two people on board.
There are problems – as we know very well on Leith Walk. There just isn’t enough space to fit in trams, buses, delivery vans, cars, bikes and pedestrians.
Some remnants of the old Edinburgh cable-tram system are still visible
Edinburgh tramcar of the 1930s fleet until closure in 1956. R Stuart Pilcher transport manager in the 1920s, returned for the final procession
Highlights:
} The bike lanes are the joke of the cycling world.
} Ever-spreading parking restrictions should encourage motorists to leave their cars at home. Out-of-towners are best using Park & Rides around the city, followed by the bus or tram.
} Low Traffic Neighbourhoods should be expanded and re-named Community Living Areas.
} Car clubs are a good way of sharing the overhead costs and giving access to cars without increasing the number of vehicles on the road.
With around 600 buses on the road at midday through the week and more in the morning and evening peak hours, is there room for improvement?
Of course there is.
Do you remember the City Sprinters around 25 years ago? They were smaller vehicles running along smaller streets through the schemes. They were run by a different operator. But if Lothian Buses could run them in co-ordination with main routes, it would take some cars off the streets. Active and shared travel are good for our health, good for sustaining local communities, and necessary in the battle against climate change.
We know it’s December when the drivers wear their best Christmas jumpers, with the occasional Santa hat. It’s a nice touch. It gives the service a family feel. And let’s keep up the lovely tradition of saying “thank you, driver” as we get off.
It’s not so easy from the central exit door - CAUTION: CENTRAL DOOR CLOSING - so let’s remember to say it when we get on. n
Tim Bell
Ê Info: You can find Gavin Booth’s book at Harburn Hobbies or www.fawndoon.com £40
An opinionated history of one house over two centuries
“There were Brass and Iron Guns, Carronades, Small Arms, Anchors, Cables, Sails, Standing and Running Rigging, Shot, Shells, Iron Ballast, Sheet Copper, Lead, Water and Spirit Casks, Iron Hoops etc. The sale would take place in a Yard behind the Leith Assembly Rooms and would commence at eleven o clock of the forenoon on Friday the thirty-first of July inst. David required twenty-five percent of the purchase price to be paid by buyers immediately, and the rest within six days” 10 Scotland Street…The author Leslie Hills tells us more
Who was David? Many years ago, I paid off the mortgage on 10 Scotland Street at the eastern edge of Edinburgh’s New Town and was handed a bundle of vellum deeds, dating back to 1823. I spread them over the floor and read them. It took a long time. The ornate script of the record of the first sale revealed that, in 1824, when the house was brand new, it was bought by David Kedie Whytt, a bookseller in Edinburgh. Who was he? I was intrigued, but busy. Years passed. Then one day in the National Archives at Kew, with an hour to spare, I asked an archivist if she had anything on a man called David Kedie Whytt. What happened next set me on decades of research and travel
A grey document box was laid before me. Inside, wrapped in oilcloth, was a letter, dated 26 May 1836, and headed 10 Scotland Street. In a fine hand, David Kedie Whytt was writing, from my home, to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, to apply for the increase in his pension to which he was entitled, due to thirty years’ service as a Royal Navy Purser. He stated his willingness to serve if called upon. I was hooked. I started looking for him.
David Kedie Whytt, born 1776, was brought up in the busy port of Kirkcaldy, the third child of James Whytt, a bookbinder, and Janet
Davidson, his wife. Their families were long-established. Most were merchants, with maritime links with the Port of Leith and the far south of England. In wartime the men were mustered to the Navy. In the dying days of the 1778-1783 Anglo-French war, James Whytt was a Mariner on the sloop of war, Belle Poule. On board this unlikely maternity facility, Janet Davidson gave birth to their fourth and last child.
By 1790 James had moved his business and his family across the Forth to the West Bow, Edinburgh, where several bookbinders, the neighbours complained to the Council, made ‘dreadful clattering and banging’. The first of the family to leave, in late 1790s, was David’s elder brother, William, who apprenticed himself to the music impresario, Domenico Corri, and made his home in the new New Town.
In February 1799, David’s elder sister, Grace, married Admiral John Gourley of Leith. David and Gourley would soon have many dealings with each other. Just after the turn of the century, David and James set themselves up as wine and spirit merchants in Leith, at the foot of Willie Water’s close, and established their home on Sheriff Brae.
By 1804 James Whytt and Son had moved to larger premises on Lang Gate Side, south of Giles Street and next to the Vaults, the
oldest building associated with wines and spirits in Leith – the earliest title reference I found is 1586. Their home was now on Constitution Street, overlooking South Leith Church with the Reverend Robert Dickson presiding, and its graveyard, in which they bought a large plot, for future use. On Constitution Street was the Victualling Board, which was handy as David had joined the Royal Navy as a purser, responsible for provisioning ships with everything from sails to wooden bowls. In 1809 he was promoted paymaster.
In time of war, imports from enemy countries, in this case, the wine of France, become problematic. Business must have suffered. David added the role of Naval Agent to his portfolio, auctioning off captured ships and their cargoes in Leith with his father, and in London based in Essex Street, a catspring from the Thames.
At the turn of the century, James purchased a newly-built first floor flat on the south-west corner of Morton Street, now Academy Street, with open land on two sides. James’ will informs us that the house had four rooms and kitchen closets, with landings and cellars, stairway and pump-well with a cistern – from where the maid would carry all water supplies up the stairs. There was no water closet i.e. no toilet. James had ‘rights to the whole parts, pendicles and pertinents thereof and free ish and entry’. He would live there for over forty years.
On 13 September 1807, David married Ann Henderson, of Falkirk, and moved to a rented home in Moray Street, now Spey Street. Thomas Carlyle, living there a few years later, was most complimentary about the landlady and the convenience of the spot, just off Leith Walk.
In the spring of 1808, at Mr Grinly’s Saleroom, David and James auctioned the fast Danish Sailing Gallias, Christina, presently becalmed in Leith Dry Dock. She had been cut
If you love history and 200 year old houses, 10 Scotland Street is the book Margaret Atwood
From left: Reverend Robert Dickson South Leith Church, Willy Water’s Close, 12 Scotland Street
out of a Norwegian harbour by his Majesty’s sloop Childers, and was the sloop’s prize. The cargo of fish, nails, iron, stores etc. were also on sale. In the summer the Whytts dealt with the beautiful coppered Danish Privateer, Torden Dkjol, with all her guns, shot, rigging, apparelling. She had been causing much grief to British ships in the Mediterranean and had been captured, after a long chase, by HM sloop Ringdove, one of the fastest sloops on the Northern Station.
Through the autumn of 1808 James and David advertised prize ships and goods, Norwegian yachts and sloops, barley meal, rough barley, sails, anchors, cables, and ropes. In December there were more prizes, including a Danish ship captured by his Majesty’s gun brig, Basilisk. In 1809 their sales include 840 bags of coffee, eleven ships with contents of wines, fox skins, sugar. hand spokes, otter skins and a quantity of cordage, sails and small arms belonging to a Russian brig destroyed by HMS . In 1810, there were captures made by HM ships Clio and Erebus – six Danish prize vessels and cargoes, five prize vessels and a Russian
Galliot. Somewhere in all this, David and Ann moved their growing family to a spacious flat at 2 George Place, now 374 Leith Walk. And somehow David found time to be Secretary Clerk, ashore and afloat, to three Admirals commanding Leith, in succession, over ten years.
The first was Gardner with whom he sailed to Ireland. In April 1804 Rear Admiral Vashon replaced Gardner. Vashon stayed for over four years, charged with protecting the trade of Leith merchants. He instituted a convoy system to protect Leith’s vital shipping route. When Vashon retired, the Leith merchants gave him a public dinner and two commemorative plates, and made him a Freeman of Edinburgh and of Trinity House. Admiral Nelson, who had saved David’s brother-in-law, John Gourley from a Court Martial, said he was happy to call Vashon his friend.
David’s last Admiral was William Otway, who is reported to have been frank and affable with a record of indefatigable service which impaired his health. He joined the Navy aged ten and was immediately pitched into a lifetime of battles, sinking, fevers at sea and captures. In 1813 he had David write to the Lord Provost that two French frigates had been seen and, from their course, he feared they were going north to intercept the Gothenburg convoy. He dealt with them. He too received the Freedom of the City and David wrote his letter of thanks. In the archives there are many letters written by David in his fine handwriting - and signed by the Admirals in their crabbed hands. They went to sea as boys.
When the Treaty of Paris ended the war, the provost was informed that from 16 March 1816 no more convoys would sail out of Leith. On 27 April 1816, in the Caledonian Mercury, James Whytt and son announced a sale of wine and spirit articles, as they have given up the business and will sell, in their warehouses at 61 Giles Street, “Casks, Bottles, Gauntrees, Weighing Beams, Stoups, a Hand Cart etc, all in excellent order and worthy of attention.”
For several years David continued to work as a naval agent from George Place and Essex Street. However, both he and his father were increasingly involved in brother William’s business which morphed from selling music and pianos into a very prosperous bookshop and circulating library. David was a bookseller till the end of his days, but seems to have concentrated on family – while brother William became a power in the land.
That, however, is another story. n 10 Scotland Street £14.99
Alamy Stock Photo
Some raindrops fell on his head
Back in 1971 Lawrence Lettice was fascinated by a story that he read in one of the Scottish tabloids
It focused on an internationally famous Hollywood movie star, who was briefly visiting Scotland...possibly for the first time? The individual in question, was Paul Newman, who along with his actress wife Joanne Woodward, was spending part of their vacation taking in the Scottish sights. When he was tentatively approached by two young female fans asking for his autograph, he brusquely and bluntly told them to go away! The girls were a bit disappointed to say the least, but by this time, Mr Newman’s strong reluctance for putting pen to paper for the delight of his millions of fans, was beginning to be well acknowledged and recognized.
All that aside (as we celebrate what would have been his 100th birthday) Paul Newman remains one of the true “Golden Boys” of Hollywood history. Whether as actor, movie star, political activist, racing driver, humanitarian, or creator of spaghetti sauce, marinades and salad dressings, he certainly left his mark; not forgetting that he possessed the most famous blue eyes this side of Frank Sinatra!
Paul Newman first appeared during the early 1950s, gradually emerging from the shadows of those other young method actors who would shape the very notions of screen acting from that era – Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift and James Dean.
Newman was slightly different, in the sense that his striking good looks automatically placed him into the category of “Pin-Up Matinee Idol” alongside the likes of Tony Curtis, Rock Hudson and Robert Wagner. Newman saw things differently, he was an intense, serious and committed method actor, who strove to dismiss any idea of surface superficiality by bringing a sense of authentic truth to his characterizations. He obviously wanted to go beyond his assumed image as a mere fan magazine favourite. Ironically, it was the early death of James Dean, that left the door open for Newman to replace him in two films that would help elevate him up the ladder. Namely: Somebody Up There Likes Me and The LeftHanded Gun. It was the arrival of the 1960s that brought Paul Newman truly into his own. With a string of critically acclaimed and commercially successful films that
would cement his status as one of the most popular film actors in the world.
You only needed to view some of them: The Hustler, Hud, Harper, Hombre (it was beginning to be observed that Mr Newman preferred films with the letter H in the title!) and perhaps best of all - Cool Hand Luke and Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid - to see how much his films were taking root in the public’s affections. Not forgetting his charismatic on-screen double act with Robert Redford, that not only embraced the Old West, but gangland Chicago with The Sting. In many ways, Newman was among the first to project that essence of the cool, alienated loner/outsider, that also later fell upon the shoulders of contemporaries Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood.
You could also add that Newman aged well, with his appeal and popularity rarely waning; whilst he exhibited a wise, seasoned maturity with the likes of Fort Apache-The Bronx, Absence of Malice, The Verdict, The Color
Newman projected an essence of cool alienated loner, viz Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood
of Money and The Road to Perdition
However, despite his seemingly gilded existence, some raindrops fell on his head, due to personal tragedy and genuine feelings of insecurity. The death of his only son Scott through drugs haunted him deeply, and his struggles with alcohol proved to be a battle that was always ongoing.
Yet, out of adversity and loss, something great came to the fore, when Newman (almost as a joke) began to sell his salad dressings to raise money for charity. This soon evolved into a multi-million-dollar industry, also including popcorn, ginger beer etc. In fact, Newman began to humorously observe that his salad dressings were out grossing his films! As an affectionate nod to one of his past screen triumphs as Butch Cassidy, he established and set up a camp for terminally and seriously ill children called – The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp. His credentials as a major philanthropist were now fully established, adding another layer to his status as more than just a movie star.
He passed away in 2008, but his legacy continues to reverberate, as a latter day generation of movie actors including Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks and George Clooney held him in high esteem, not only for his many screen credits, but his overall humanity in attempting to make young lives better.
Twenty-five years ago, I remember writing to the American Film Institute to request if they would consider giving Paul Newman their annual prestigious Life Achievement Award. I did receive a reply from the AFI, confirming that Newman was a possibility...but for whatever reason, it never happened. Despite that rejection, he remains one of the all-time great Hollywood movie stars...a man who rarely failed to communicate with the public. n
Ê Info: Over The Wall is a member of the SeriousFun Children’s Network, founded in 1988 by Paul Newman, visit www.otw.org.uk.
Pencil drawing on coloured paper by 罗一丁
There are record shops & shops that sell records…
The former are a place of worship of sorts, says Rodger Evans, the latter fulfil a function of the free market
And if this sounds petty and contrived, heretical, somehow Marxist, snobbish even, then ya-boo, and I suggest you make your case in the form of a Bunraku puppet show about the life of Rosa Luxemburg. Or else speak to my head butler.
Not to dismiss shops that sell product but I’m simply less inclined to patronise them. Records shops though I will never tire of, because – like football grounds, childhood haunts or favourite cafes – these are places that can elevate your emotions, massage your mind, and salve your soul. Whereas shops that sell records, they sell records, it’s a transactional thing.
My dream record shop, decidedly not a store, the one I do dream of from time to time, is Bogart’s in Oxford. It shut four decades ago but happy is the memory of climbing that frayed carpet before turning left to see the wall of Bowie seven inch picture sleeves and a handwritten note: Don’t try to steal these – we can see you! It was the size of a broom cupboard but its stock offered everything you could wish for as a teen with aspirations to crack the code of the more esoteric articles in the NME.
Subversion, revolution, art, sex, the counterculture, philosophy, fashion, drugs, the beats, cinema, Sci-fi, poetry, it was all there if you had a clue where to look – say in the four sides of the Clash’s genre-defying London Calling, or the kitchen sink opera of the first three Smiths singles – and this was where I commenced my Jabberwocky-like hunt for the ever-out-of-reach chimera of cool. But let me just check over there behind the tum-tum tree.
Skip forward in time and Groucho’s in Dundee captured my curiosity and the contents of my wallet for a while, introducing me to new musical friends and more often than not the artists I didn’t know I liked until I did: Vangelis, Kris Kristofferson, Nancy Wilson. Alas it too is now gone and not that I’m obsessive about this stuff but I have a Groucho’s plastic bag somewhere, and one from Aberdeen’s One-Up, but not a keep sake from Bogart’s.
Record Shak, also no more, was my Edinburgh emporium of choice. To calm wedding day nerves I came away with
a Love Best Of and the Stooges’ Metallic KO. Another time I found a copy of Brian Jones Presents The Pipes of Pan At Joujouka, which had apparently belonged to a couple who’d shared a flat with Nick Drake.
In Glasgow’s east end, Monorail was and is a glorious place to gawp at vinyl treasures and gossip with Stephen, Dep and co. There I’d fall in love with Bill Callahan’s back catalogue, CD compilations on the Ace and Soul Jazz labels, Derek Jarman DVDs, and an Aidan Moffat novelty bottle opener which played The Little Beer Song, until the battery ran out, and which I no longer possess. I’d shed a tear or two into my pale ale but of course I have nothing to open the bottle with.
Record shops outside of Blighty? Amoeba in San Francisco was heaven, if your idea of heaven is a warehouse filled with records, which mine very much is. I began in the bargain bins and immediately found Roberta Flak’s second LP for the cost of a cup of coffee. This odyssey ended not in blood-letting in Ithaca but in the singles and EPs section, when my oldest child told me my allocated time was up and hadn’t I noticed that wall of soul singles for a dollar each? In a record shop everyone can hear you scream.
Discos Babel in Madrid had a poster in
At Monorail in Glasgow
I found an Aidan Moffat novelty bottle opener which played The Little Beer Song, until the battery ran out
the window for the Kaisers, Edinburgh’s premier Hamburg-era not-a-Beatles tribute band. I came away with records by the Young Rascals, Sandy Shaw and Billie Davis, all Spanish releases. A shop in Prague was less fruitful, a two hour search resulting in nothing but a couple of prog singles and the ire of my partner.
Those in Amsterdam and Copenhagen, whose names I forget, saw my Euros and Kroner spent on LPs by Jackie DeShannon (who wrote Bette Davis Eyes and Put A Little Love In Your Heart), Chris Spedding (whose CV includes The Sex Pistols and the Wombles), and The Saints (Australia’s Ramones).
Where I looked in Egypt was in truth a bit underwhelming. I expected to discover shelves creaking with North African jazz, soul and disco, the sort of tunes Gilles Peterson would swoon over. Instead I came away with a couple of Jimmy Cliff albums and Debussy’s La Mer Nocturnes on the Deutsche Grammophon label. These were nice finds but discs I could have bought in a shop in Tollcross or Canonmills rather than Zamalek, a qism in the west district of Cairo, the name thought to have originated from the Arabic for preciously owned. Hmm. There are shops that sell records and there are record shops.
Me? I go to record shops. n
Dog dining: Enjoying street food
TracyGriffen
Writer without portfolio
Sally and Coco are two alpha female dogs who live in Leith. This comic strip is by Sally’s owner, the very talented Kate Charlesworth.
Kate and I have neighbouring allotments locally. The an unwritten rule of allotments is that whatever you do, just garden. In other words, less words are sometimes better. Blethering is all well and good, but most allotmenteers have a list of jobs to get through, so we get on with our gardening, with only smatterings of chat. It really is rather peaceful.
I only became aware of Kate’s work lately - she’s a cartoonist and illustrator, her award-winning graphic novel Sensible Footwear (A Girl’s Guide) appeared in 2019 from Myriad Editions. She’s even got her own Wikipedia entry. That’s the thing about Leith, sometimes you’ll see a rock star walk past - the amount of talent that resides in Edinburgh’s port is frankly amazing. Likewise, Kate (and Dianne’s) grey doggo Sally is a bit of a local legend. She’s a silvery beast with a bright red collar – you’ll see her leading the ‘big dog’ pack with Euan the dog walker. My dog
Coco is a traditionalist, she likes kerb kebab from Best Kebab
Coco (the fitness pug) is much smaller than Sally, but also thinks she’s the boss.
At the allotment Coco tries to scrounge treats from everyone, and Sally lets her know not to push her luck. So, in real life Sally and Coco get on by ignoring each other, but one thing they really do have in common is that they love the street food of Leith Walk. There are lots of fancy eateries opening everywhere, however Coco is a bit of a traditionalist, she likes kerb kebab from Best Kebab (it lives up to its name, the original and best, no imitations please) or a dropped macaroni pie from outside Storries Bakery.
Yes, there was a DJ in there (Josh Baker) doing a techno set on that wintry Friday night.... In the bakery… With a counterful of cakes…
Sally and Coco are both (what the vet describes as) scavengers. So, although they are highly regarded dogs, they both love hoovering up Leith Walk. And I love the comic strip Kate has dreamed up from our exchanged emails over Christmas about our dogs. Thank you Kate, and here’s hoping for a good growing season this year.
Check out Kate’s work at the dogfriendly Argonaut Bookshop on Leith Walk. She is currently working on her next full-length comic. n
Ê Bluesky: @tracygriffen
A successful conversation is one which goes exactly as planned
Podcasts have become a hugely popular and influential part of the media ecosystem. Their length and open-endedness offer the potential for conversations that reach deeper. For the broadcaster Kirsty Young, podcasts are “changing our ears” in altering our relationship with audio. They have revealed a “thirst” for length and depth and “connection”, just at the time when much media has become ultra-short and “Tik Tok-able”.
A cultural shift
Podcasts have also, Young believes, exploited a “a cultural shift”, with people generally happier to talk about their lives in an ‘unguarded’ way, more willing to talk about darker aspects of their lives. Young’s Young Again series illustrates this well, with her emphasis on “light, not heat”, aiming to “illuminate” her guests, not “turn them over”. Her clear fascination with her guests is clear and this seems to give her the “permission” to get into deeper areas. Her recent Irvine Welsh episode focussed on his experiential view of life: “I’ve always seen myself as a learning machine.”
What often emerges from such long form interviews is people “going a bit further than they intend to go”. Talking to a stranger can be freeing in some sense. I had this experience recently when interviewed by Angela Casey from Edinburgh Outdoors, a podcast that focuses on “exploring green spaces and the people in them to be found in and around Edinburgh”. The conversation focussed on my interest in quiet routes around Edinburgh, especially the exrailway path network.
Successful conversation-led podcasts connect to the idea of deep conversation as articulated by the historian and polymath Theodore Zeldin. Born in 1933, Zeldin has been a visionary historian, engaged in a conversation with the past, from which new insights may emerge. Conversations are, for Zeldin, at the heart of what it means to be human and creative and a route out of the inconveniences of loneliness and isolation.
Zeldin believes that our contemporary world is full of communication but lacks meaningful conversation. Central to his philosophy is the idea that conversation can stimulate profound personal and social change. His particular interest is in transformative conversations – the type from which we are prepared to emerge
a slightly different person. A powerful idea.
Zeldin questions the “virtues of introspection”, arguing that this can be a bit of a cul-de-sac. We should not be retreating from others but engaging with them. This is the route to a fuller life. Ultimately, other people “are infinitely more interesting” and “have infinitely more to say”.
Creating new cards
It’s not the detailed history of railways that interests me, rather my emotional connection to them
Many aspects of modern society are shifting us away from conversations with those outside of our immediate networks. We are, it is widely argued, witnessing an era of disconnection and an erosion of civic spaces, with online communication dominated by non-geographic communities, sharing narrow interests. For Zeldin, social networks “have mainly specialised in brief and superficial exchanges”. Instead, it is the meeting of minds with different backgrounds and interests that stimulates genuine exchange. As Zeldin powerfully puts it: “when minds meet they don’t just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, engage
in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn’t just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards.”
Zeldin uses the metaphor of “procreation” to suggest that only in genuine engagement with others can you be truly “intellectually fertile”. He argues that true creativity is not an individual act; “we can’t just sit and think out of our own heads”. Instead, we all need some form of muse to inspire new thinking and help us “produce something whose exact dimensions and character I can’t predict”. Embedded in Zeldin’s promotion of the deep conversation is this open-ended aspect. As he asks rhetorically, “is a successful conversation one which goes exactly as planned”.
Emotional connection
The conversation I had for Edinburgh Outdoors was, like the paths themselves, full of interesting connections and tangents. What emerged was that it’s not the detailed history of the railways that interests me, rather my emotional connection to them. During tough times, lengthy wanders along them have, if you pardon the pun, got me back on track. I was happy to go into that more revealing territory because the questioning was gentle, not interrogatory.
What also emerged was an evangelical aspect to my promotion of path exploration. In the past few years, I’ve discovered several superb paths and spots in Edinburgh that I wasn’t previously aware of. This has given me the hunger to seek out more, the next ‘hit’.
Recent finds include Gorgie Green Lane which provides a slice of an Edinburgh unacknowledged in guidebooks or by influencers. Also, the superb Burdiehouse Burn Path which takes you through a gentle valley, deeply wooded at parts.
These emotional and evangelical aspects would not have emerged if the conversation had been short, or if the questions were asked in a robotic way. In a podcast, the conversation has time to breathe. We should be striving to find the time for more such deep conversations in our daily lives. n Charlie Ellis
Ê Info: The author thanks Isabel Crozier and Howard Beck for their encouragement on this piece
Ben Macpherson MSP
Help & Advice Surgeries
Royston/Wardieburn Community Centre, 11 Pilton Drive North, EH5 1NF
15:30 to 16:30 Leith Community Centre, 12A Newkirkgate, EH6 6AD “I am here to help and serve all constituents in Edinburgh Northern & Leith. If you need assistance, or if you would like to discuss any issues or ideas, please contact me or come and see me at one of my monthly Drop-in Help & Advice Surgeries.“ 9:30 to 10:30
11:00 to 12:00 West Pilton Neighbourhood Centre, 19 West Pilton Grove, EH4 4BY
Partime
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