apocrypha
Despise not a man in his old age; for we also shall become old.
Ecclesiasticus/Sirach, Chapter 8, Verse 7
When my wife and I first started staying in together we spent a lot of time in her bedroom. In my mind it was always sunny; she wore her blue Japanese dressing gown with the dragon on it, I wore her jeans and no socks. We lay on her bed watching videos on the tiny black and white telly, listened to records, and drank Czech lager from long brown bottles, but mostly we talked. We must have done other things but they haven’t stuck to that time. One of the records we listened to a lot was Shakespeare’s Sister. There was a song — Turn your radio on, I think it was called. It had a line, life is a strange thing, just when you know how to use it it’s gone.
I’ve been thinking about that line recently, now that I’m much closer to gone.
It’s one of those phrases that seem to be saying something until you look closer. Like, life is like the Eurovision song contest — if you’re in it to win it you don’t understand what’s going on.
Meaningless and sweeping, they still leave a taste in your mind. I suppose what it means is that if you knew then what you know now you’d have made a better job of your life. I can’t think it means that you have come to some comprehension of what life actually is.
So, there you have it, my nature journals, some bits of my life, some thoughts from my head. From the shape of what’s missing you might be able to tell something more. Now that I’m finished it’s time for a walk, it’s raining, the canal will be quiet. I’ll have it to myself, so, as I walk, I can think about how to waste the rest of my life. For it is spring.
at the canal
Boroughmuir is now in its third building; I may be the last person living who has worked in all three. Now, that might not be true, but it gave me a good deal of pleasure to write such a orotund sentence, (and, as a bonus, to use the word orotund which doesn’t get out much).
I didn’t get to spend too much time in the Junior School, our original home, later used for S1/S2. And by that time we weren’t using it any more, it was going to be sold off and converted into flats. It was a sad building then, a place where quiet echoed; it was in the process of being broken up. I spent most of my time in the janitors’ office where the janitor lived. I do mean lived. He’d fallen out with his wife, so he slept in the school; along with his dog and a couple of cage-birds. He slept on the medical room couch, which had had to be refurbished three times in five years it was said. So I didn’t really get to know it at all. I did know our other homes very, very, well.
The Old School was a marvellous building, eccentric and full of character, but there can be no doubt that by the time we left it was showing its age as a school. When it was built classes of forty-odd were packed into stepped classrooms, seated at desks with built-in inkwells; things had moved on. Then there were the toilets, squalid and scarce. One urinal and three sit-downs for six hundred boys! The current fad for hydration was a big issue there. But the main problem was that it wasn’t built next to the canal.
There were many wonderful things about the new building, but it can’t be denied that it being built by the side of the canal was the most wonderful. When a new Boroughmuir was first mooted various sites were suggested — the Astley Ainslie, the water board site at Fairmilehead, a bend on the Limpopo. Each had its issues. What wasn’t suggested was that it could be built where it ended up. That was because the site was then owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland; it was to be the site of their grandiose new corporate headquarters. Then we had a wee bit of mixed luck — the banking crisis. The Royal Bank was one of the main victims/culprits, it was felt that a renovated outside-lavvy in Danderhall was a better fit for their, now scaled-back, operations. Our bit of the site was sold to the council. So although we all had to suffer from the bankers’ greed and stupidity, at least we got the perfect site for the new school.
I’ve lived by the canal (St. Peter’s buildings and Gibson terrace), and I’ve walked back-and-forth along it for many years. When I first knew it, the bit around the school anyway, it wasn’t the loveliest of places. It was mostly industrial then; there was the McEwans brewery, with its unceasing clanking and malty airs, and some other big buildings, which if they weren’t being used to make things any more, had clearly done so in the past. The lift-bridge was broken down and covered in rust. What fauna there was consisted mostly of Coots, and for the flora there was some type of acid-green weed that covered the entire surface of the canal. Slowly things changed. The buildings got knocked down and the canal got opened up for the millennium at Wester Hailes, which allowed a more varied wildlife to creep back in. The canal was cleaned and dredged, the green weed disappeared, houses (and a school) were built and the lift-bridge was fixed. The Coots left, I suppose that they had lived off the weed.
So, today the canal is lovely. It’s a thriving, bustling place, a place of life and beauty. Full of people and animals going about their daily businesses, by water, land and sky. Every season brings new sights and sounds, new colours to the scene. Winter’s somber grey skies with the sound of the gulls; the towpath spikey with the remains of last year. Spring’s vibrant greens, the sound of song-birds and the verges bursting into life. Summer’s calm every-green lushness with the Swifts shrieking in the dome of the sky. Autumn’s russet-red sad plenty, with the Geese honking above, when the winds blow the leaves into crunchy gold piles. Yes, the canal is a fine place.
Eventually Boroughmuir will need a fourth building, I won’t live to work in that one, such is the nature of time. I do hope, however many buildings we may need in the future, that our wandering days are over, and that we’ll stay here, by the canal, and make it our home.