planning an exit

And it came to pass in the process of time … the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto the god by reason of the bondage.

Exodus, Chapter 2, Verse 23

Now that I’d decided to retire I had to face the fact that I was old. Don’t get me wrong, I knew that I’d been ageing, slowing down, clapping out and wrinkling up. It was just that I’ve always felt young for my age; more importantly I’ve always been treated as young.

I was still only four when I went to primary, I turned five that September. Throughout my school days I was always the youngest, and smallest, in my class. I hung around the edges, not quite one of the boys. I was never really bullied but I got pushed around. I was always picked last when teams were chosen for football; once, I was about fourteen, I was made to use my shoes and socks for goalposts, the ground was muddy and the others didn’t want to mess up their stuff. Things like that happened a lot.

At the end of fourth year I had a growth spurt and grew to be what was tall for that time. This, and the fact that most of the bammers left before fifth year, meant that I was no longer pushed around. I was still treated as a bit of a joke. Especially by the girls. I didn’t understand girls, it turned out they didn’t understand me.

In my teenage years I had the usual (I assume) mad crushes on girls. Thoughts of the one haunted my daydreams, chaste dreams, there were no harem antics, no calisthenics in the scud. The height of my imagined intimacy involved clutching hands, and, perhaps, a kiss. I just wanted them to be my girlfriend, although what that meant I had no idea. I never did anything about these crushes, it never occurred to me that I might try and talk to these love-objects of mine, far less actually ask them out. In fact I was terrified that they might learn that I fancied them, because then they might laugh at me and turn me down. I found out at the end of sixth year that the girls in my year all thought I was gay.

In sixth year, when everybody was pairing up, I did manage to share a clinch with the girl of my then dreams. The next time I saw her I pretended that nothing had happened, that I’d forgotten everything, that I’d been drunk. I didn’t know what to do, I’d never thought this far, what should my next move be? I still feel ashamed about this, I mean what did she think? So, Alison, if you’re reading this, all I can say is that I’m sorry. You probably had a lucky escape anyway.

I was only just eighteen when I went away to university. Pitifully immature and unfit to look after myself. I couldn’t cook, wash my clothes, manage money, it’s a wonder that I didn’t die. Everyone around me seemed so competent, confident, mature. Again I was the youngest, the runt. Still, being a Scotsman in England helped out a lot.

The English are dismissive of Scotland and Scottishness, they treat the country as a joke. But individual Scotsmen they respect — they can’t place our accents, the normal verbal tells that they’re used to aren’t available, we might be aristocrats, or violent gutter-snipes. We’re assumed to be quick to anger and at least a wee bit mad. So my awkwardness and gaucheness was written off as a cultural thing. Still, around all these adults I felt very much the child.

When I came home and became a janny I was the youngest again. In those days jannies were all old men, at least the ones that I worked with were. So, although by then I was older, I was very much the baby. When I started at Bruntsfield, where my mum worked, I was nature bound to be treated as a child. Then the bulk of primary teachers might be described as mature women, with matrician (that’s patrician for women) attitudes. I was my mum’s son, so they treated me as one of theirs. When I moved to Boroughmuir, well what do you think happened? I got treated as the pot-boy, I got all the crap jobs, any time something needed doing all eyes swiveled my way.

——Who’s young and fit?

Most of the people around me, the workies, other jannies, the cleaners, called me, son. The last to do this, Frank, the plumber, only retired around ten years ago. As I got older this, me being treated as young, never seemed to go away. Why this should be I don’t know. I can think of a few things about me that might cause it, but I’m guessing really.

I find it hard to judge how I appear to other people, I find it hard to think about actually, my mind refuses to focus. Perhaps something about the way I do things, the way I act, comes across as youthful, maybe immature? Certainly the young adults didn’t see me as a proper adult — I was always Neil (nobody else on the staff went by christian name), and they didn’t have any issues about swearing in front of me. Sometimes they’d tell me things that I’m sure they wouldn’t have told another adult. They knew, of course, that I’d do something about it, but we could all pretend that there was no grassing involved. And I’ve always looked young for my age, getting a drink underage was a nightmare. In my forties I passed for thirty, Ramesh looked stunned when he found out my age.

So I’ve always felt I was young.

So how was I going to deal with it? Being old. Much like I’ve treated the other milestones in my life — by mostly ignoring it. I’ve never been much of a one for numerology of life — the special ages, the anniversaries, the special crises that occur at certain times. Forty was just another birthday and if I had a mid-life crisis I’m afraid it didn’t register. Thankfully my wife is like me, we can’t remember the year we got married, never mind the date. We swop homemade cards on birthdays and christmas and that’s about it. A while ago I realized that we must have passed our silver wedding anniversary, don’t people make a fuss of that? I find a lot of the things other people seem to care about a bit of a mystery.

My mum had a story about going to a parents’ evening when I was in primary school. She was surprised to see the shattered case and inner-workings of my watch, the one that she’d given my for my birthday, and that I’d claimed to have lost, were stuck up on a poster titled Neil’s watch. Then there was the star chart. In those days there was always a chart where the silver and gold stars that were a reward for good work or good behavior were displayed, there was some competition involved. There were no stars against my name. She asked me about this.

——Yes, people do seem keen on these.

In later years it was a bit of a family joke that they hadn’t spotted that there was something wrong with me. I suppose that if I’d been born around now I’d have attracted some kind of a diagnosis; certainly I was borderline dyslexic. That wasn’t a thing then of course. Now it’s easy to see that I had all the symptoms — I still can’t tell left from right (in primary I once went a whole day with my wellies on the wrong feet); I struggled with reading, I drove my mum mad reading the words down the page. As I say it was borderline, I eventually learned to read. I do still suffer from what I call flash-through, where I suddenly become focused on the white background, so that I can no longer read the words. It a bit like those pictures that, at first sight, seem to be one thing, but suddenly you see something else. And then you struggle to see what you originally saw again.

Dyslexia is hard to describe, even to yourself, even to fellow sufferers. I’ve talked to young adults who have it, we agree what normies seem to believe we have isn’t what we have — we aren’t, word blind, it just that the words won’t resolve. As if you keep repeating a word until it has lost it’s meaning? It isn’t quite that, but it’s the best I can do.

I’ve wandered off a bit there. What I’m trying to say, I suppose, is that I don’t think that getting old, and feeling it, will matter too much to me. I might not even notice it. And if it does affect me it’ll affect me in my very own way.

gloom

Once again I find myself compelled to moan about the weather. Hell is reputedly a hot place but the weather recently has given me room to doubt this. At least whatever rags you get provided with there would be dry. With the nights shortening whatever day we get quickly scampers shamefacedly into the night. It’s not even a proper day, more a murky incident in the night. And then we have the rain. Jings do we have the rain. It may not bear down on us like the Wolf on the fold, but it plunges steadily from the sky like a stream of Lemmings from a clifftop. I realize that that metaphor could do with a bit of work but the constant rain has worn me down. There are huge puddles of water on the wildflower meadow, perhaps it’s going to turn into a bog? That might be good.

At least, unlike the wildlife, I can go inside. True, inside is a victorian cottage that has the same attitude to heat as Dracula has to daylight. But it’s dry. Must be awful being a duck. That said ducks spend most of their lives immersed up to their wing-pits in water, maybe any amount rain dosn’t bother them? Probably Ducks and us have an entirely different conception of the world; Wittgenstein was right about not having a meanigful tête-a-tête Lion then.

I did see one interesting example of Duck behavior. I was toddling homewards when I spotted a serious stooshie amongst the Gossanders. Gossanders do fight but this was beyond their usual mild scrapping, this was a serious ruckus. One of the drakes had caught a fish that was too big for it to swallow. He was being chased around in circles by the other ducks who wanted in on the deal. Eventually he disappeared under the surface and seemed to make his escape. Tough life being a duck.

I wrote the above during the week, It’s now saturday and the rain has stopped, the skies have cleared and we have a nice dawn of the roseate kind. Wandering the playground, watching the birds I realized why I hate the rain so much — it makes it unpleasant to be outside. Without being able to enjoy a wee wander aboot looking at the world and its wonders really does get me down.

Another thing that has cheered me up is the arrival of my Acmé™ Santa Catcher, guaranteed to snare the slipperiest of red-clad Xmas pests. All you do is bait it with sherry and shortbread and leave it in the grate. I haven’t got a grate, great…

weather

We’ve been treated to some weather this week. Although treated is perhaps the wrong word. Suffered? Endured? On Saturday there was a light covering of snow as I walked into work, which meant I had to salt the playground. Snowy playgrounds, the clearing thereof, are a large part of a janny’s winter life. On a crisp day, with a blue sky and a gossamer moon above you, elegantly flicking the salt like a sumo wrestler entering the dojo it can be almost pleasant. In the dark on a sheet of black ice with your feet trying to move in different directions it’s not so nice. A couple of years ago I fell over in the playground and broke my arm, I had to be carted off to A & E by my dad. Being a janny isn’t up there with construction or being one of Stalin’s in-laws when it comes to dangerous trades but it does have it’s moments — I once broke both my feet in several places. To be fair that was entirely my own fault.

It was at the old school. For some reason I decided to climb up the front entrance of the school. Why? I still don’t have a reasonable answer to that question. Anyway, I got a good way up, using the nice, easy to climb, big blocks of stone. By the school crest there’s a ledge, which looked a wee bit complicated to navigate, so I decided on a return to earth. That was when I made my discovery. The blocks of stone had been rounded off at the corners, not the best thing to support even the most waif-like of janitors. I watched my hand slip off, this can’t be good I thought. It wasn’t, gravity had its way with me. Twenty foot is quite a long way to fall it turns out. The whole thing was caught on CCTV, which the boys had much fun replaying for people. You saw me disappearing from sight, with the earnest countenance of the goof. Five minutes later I reappeared, rolling across the ground like a jobby off a shovel. I lay there for a while, then struggled to my very damaged feet. A sadder but more broken janny. Once again it was off to A & E for our bold hero. Many lies had be told about that incident, the truth being deemed not fit for bosses, or my wife. I said that I’d tripped and fallen down the stairs. That’s what I wrote in the accident report too.

Monday was awful, freezing cold with lashings of icy rain. The type of weather you wouldn’t send your line manager out in. Wednesday it was back to the frost, the canal was like silver crazy-paving in the moonlight. They were burning something at Grangemouth (I assume), there were patches of red fire dotted along the horizon. The Swans were under the Polworth bridge, in a patch of clear water. We now have a pair of Swans. Hopefully that means that they’ve decided to breed. It would be lovely if they nested in the rushes in front of the flats, but I doubt that will happen. Swans around here nest somewhere a wee way off up the canal. If they are successful they will at least bring their signets down here to show them off. I found myself looking forward to that, we didn’t have any signets to gawp at this year and I did miss them. Thursday started out like it might be all right, but by one o’clock the sky was as grim as a presbyetrian’s attitude to sin. It was so dark that the playground lights came on. As I made my way home the sluices of the sky were opened and the waters of heaven were emptied onto my head. I made my way along whimpering like a Wombat being trampled by Elephants. (I know that Elephants are reputed to be scared of Mice but I’ll assume that they’ve no fear of medium-sized marsupials.) Today it is dry, but that might change for the worse. It’s only december and I’m already fed up to rear teeth with winter!

november

Most have the trees have dropped their leaves now, a few misers cling to their gilt. Brandishing it on outspread branches, or dangling ropes of saffron. The Beeches will keep their etched-bronze armour, to rattle in the wind and turn silver in the frost. The rest will lose their gold soon, leaving us with the stark-bare branches of winter. Everywhere there is Ivy. Clutching its way up trees, clambering in mounds, dark, secret and dense, dusty emerald pillows in the low sun. All sounds a bit miserable. And yet, alone in your thoughts, on a quiet day, there is a something, a smell maybe — of life’s latent power, resting for a while, nascent in the browns. It is all a bit spoilt by the filthy filths of man. There isn’t a tree without its carrier bag, a bush without a can.

We had our first real frost of the year this week, there were still signs of it as I poked my snout from my burrow. We’re in that horrid period, where winter hasn’t fully gripped and everyone is thinking about christmas. I hate christmas. I put it down to my mother, a staunch labour woman, who, when we were small, told my wee brother and me that the conservatives had cancelled christmas. She kept it up for quite a while too. I’m sure that won’t have helped but it isn’t the whole story. I just dislike the mood — of bright lights on the busy black streets, of stuffy yellow bars, it’s the smell of whisky, the endless chocolates, the buying of trees to be thrown out in the new year. It feels forced, all this bonhomie, packing a year’s worth of good feeling into a month. It’s all a racket, invented by grocers and churches, to fleece the punters and keep the tills ringing. I long for the old days, which were never real, where you got an orange and a bar of chocolate in a sock, and then went first footing with a lump of coal and a brick of black bun. The days of the Broons.

We could start a cult, we are only allowed to do things that the Broons would have done. And have the things they had. So for the Claires it’s off with the Jimmy Choos and on with the fetching baffies. I will be granpa and live off pandrops and bags of soor plooms, the unmarried members of staff will have to share a single bed, crivens and jings will be our swear words, we’ll get involved with amusing incidents over misunderstandings. Computers and phones will be banished (there will be no on-line learning!). As I said, simpler times, we’ll call ourselves the Hamish.

fire

In autumn you get days that occur in no other season I think. Broad, wide, open days without wind, where the sun projects a universal flat glare on a porcelain world. Days when the rhythm of life slows to a crawl and the mind takes wing. When you feel the stillness seep into you and the true bones of the world seem to thrum beneath your feet. Your mind, still thinking, empties. Then a Magpie bustles clacking over your head, its long blue tail trailing like a flag, and you wake up. Dawdling to work is a real joy on such days. I amble, watching the leaves pirouette slowly down to the water and the Pigeons sweep like silver bracelets waved across the sky. Old-man squatting in the playground I see the tortoise shell cat hunting, stalking the bushes like it means business. It’s coming time to formally adopt the beast and give it a name. I’ll let the mad old cat women of the school do that, they can arrange the fine-details of the ceremony too. No fire!

I write that and ask myself, why no fire? When I was young autumn was the season of fire. Then the world was full of people burning rubbish in their back gardens at this time of year. I love the smell of burning leaves. Are we doing our young adults a dis-service by not exposing them to fire more? Naked flame speaks to something deep and dark within us, something that we will never lose, even when we’ve evolved an extra head and lost the ability to walk. Yes, we could do with a bit of fire.

I got to thinking like a pyromancer because this year the trees in the playground have started producing leaves by the pile for the first time. Just the right amount for a small bonfire. It shouldn’t be too hard to poke some holes in a litter bin and set fire to a few of them should it? It seems the kind of thing that the gardening club would enjoy, they’ve already started pestering me about obtaining a scythe. I’ll pencil it in for next Wednesday lunchtime, in the raised beds, other young adults may be interested too.

Speaking of raised beds the community payback people will be delivering our raised beds from the Grove on saturday. I’m not sure how much work will be involved with setting these up. It has been decided, by the gardening club, that these are to be for winter vegetables — Cabbages, Spinach, Chickory and the like. And tough herbs like Rosemary. All donations and help will be welcome with this, it should be a whole-school project. I don’t know why but it seems to be satifying to eat things that you’ve had a hand in growing. As if in some way you’ve earned your meal. Perhaps we should keep Goats and hens? There’s no real reason that we shouldn’t be able to keep a few Hens on the roof. They should thrive there, safe from predation. We could build them a nice wee hut for them to shelter in. It should go without saying that I want nothing to do with any of the work or responsibility involved. I had rabbits as I child which I had to walk. Unfortunately due to my inattention they wandered off and poisoned themselves by eating Rhubarb leaves. It was a sad time, one where blame was apportioned and voices were raised. No I’ll stick to wandering around in a dream and planning burning things for now.

beds

The raised beds have arrived, it is as I feared, they came as a kit, the rest is up to us. Now, I am too old to be working, not useless, but less frisky than I was say. I don’t need to be retired like boxer in Animal Farm. Funny I’ve never seen myself as Boxer in Animal Farm. Benjamin, the Donkey, maybe but realistically I’d probably be one of the pigs who ends up in a bacon roll. I digress. What I’m saying here is that I see myself in more of a stand around pointing role. Others will have to do the work. It is such people I seek.

Ideally you should know what you are doing, but at the moment we’ll be taking all comers. Your school needs you! Reply if you are interested.

damp

It is a fact universally acknowledged that a janitor having a fag in the playground of a morning is in want of his bed. It’s dripping wet, it’s just me and the birds and the dark. A Robin bounces around, occasionally pausing to give me the evil eye before going about its murky business. Every so often some dispute causes a ruction amongst the Blackbirds, they sweep, trilling at each other, somewhere off in the darkness. Mostly what you notice is the harsh background chorus of the Wrens. I tell myself that it’s lovely but it’s not. It a season where we wander around in the gloom like half-shut knifes, aching slightly and over-sharing the details of our bronchial symptoms with one another. I blame the rain. That’s the problem with having changeable weather, sometimes it’s crap. You could curse people — may you live with interesting weather.

When some light has risen, the Blackheaded Gulls arrive, squabbling for a place on the lampposts. Later they line up on the roof at the front of the school, ready to pounce if some young adult drops their lunch. I saw them harrying a Crow the other day, it had grabbed a slice of something and was trying to find somewhere to eat it. A churn of flying knifes, they took turns targeting their twisting victim. Eventually it was too much for the poor Crow, whatever it was got dropped to create noisy ruck of Blackheads.

It was still dull, if strangely bright, when I walked home. I thought of nothing much until I came to the park and heard the Starlings. The noise was indescribable. I squatted down on a wall, rolled a fag and thought how I could find the words to change that. Like a heap of gieger counters exploding? There’s a depth, a background and a foreground, but then some new noise joins the chorus that spoils the metaphor. I stubbed out my fag and looked at the world.

There is such beauty here, flat as the world might seem. It doesn’t try to steal your notice, it waits for you to become still. The park was sad but somehow golden beneath its covering of leaves. The trees were covered in lichen of every green, dripping slowly. Next year the trees will soar bright in the sun and sing in the wind. But, to me, just now, they speak their loudest.

systole

The year is clenched, like a pair of buttocks taut for skelping. The short days hurry by unmourned. In this place, in this season, our thoughts do not tarry, our minds Clam-like, shut tight against the world. I commute in darkness, starved of light. The pale sun hugs the horizon as it hops from dawn to dusk. Edinburgh seems very itself on winter days.

Edinburgh; this tall grey town, an enceinte of ringing stones and weeping haars, perched piled upon its rock. It has aye been girt against this world; a douce and proper place, an asylum for a lightly-hinged citizenry; gibbering to the mirror as they dress themselves for church. A rookery of black-clad bourgeois — lawyers, to steal your money; ministers, to damn your soul; and surgeons, to spatchcock your carcass once you’ve gone. It’s no place for the poor and weak.

Edinburgh pays cruelly for her high seat in one of the vilest climates under heaven. She is liable to be beaten upon by all the winds that blow, to be drenched with rain, to be buried in cold sea fogs out of the east, and powdered with the snow as it comes flying southward from the Highland hills. The weather is raw and boisterous in winter, shifty and ungenial in summer, and a downright meteorological purgatory in the spring. The delicate die early, and I, as a survivor, among bleak winds and plumping rain, have been sometimes tempted to envy them their fate.

Thus wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, who fled to the tropics, scared witless by the tales of his nurse, Cummy, and made ill by the weather and playing with lead soldiers in his scratcher. He did admit that he could never really get the place out of his mind, and I’m the same, not truly happy anywhere else. In my grown youth I spent five years in Lancaster, where there was much to like, but I was drawn home to my native terroir. I missed the place, in winter most — its wide white skies, the banshee winds, the clouds streaming thick over the Pentlands, the dark wet stone.

On a dull ne’er day noon I took a walk. A slow wind whistled through the spare and battered husks of summer and striped the canal in brown and white. The trees’ loose brooms quivered and sawed the edges of a flat magnesium sky. Fat purple Pigeons purred in the branches above me, where Squirrels chased, barking and spitting at me if I dared to stop to watch. Sparrows and Coal-Tits chased unseen insects and swooped in sine waves from bank to bank. Driplets jeweled arthritic twigs; a young Heron, long and grey, sternly eyed the Gossanders stealing his dinner. From aloft a Robin sweetly sung. At Meggetland a flock of Redwings were dooking for worms; hop, hop, head up, bounce, head down again. The sun’s flat orb sank into the horizon. Blinded I turned for home.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a dart of neon blue, a Kingfisher whirred away along the canal. Further along I saw it, perched on a bare branch, juggling a silvery prize. This strange wee harlequin, such a bright thing, to not be out of place on this cold and gloomy day. ‘Not such a bad auld toun’, I said to no-one.

birds

I read something recently about birds being the animals that we see the most of. This would have been in the Guardian, yes I’m a woke lefty; I don’t however eat tofu, I’m frightened of it. Every now and again I buy some, put it in the fridge, look at it every now and again and finally, when it’s well past is use-by date, throw it out. For some reason I’m scared to cook it. The Guardian person was right about the birds though — they are the fellow creatures that we see the most of. And around here, just now, that would be mainly Swans and Blackheaded Gulls.

Since we moved in here — February 2017 — the Black-headed Gulls have been a winter fixture. I remember noticing them when I first walked in, and every year they’ve been back. Not as raucous or aggressive as the herring Gulls that we host in summer, they do still make their presence known, cackling at one another like witches who’ve been at the sherry. Black Heads aren’t pelagic, which, to save you googling, means that they’re not seabirds. Their scientific name, Chroicocephalus ridibundus, means coloured headed laugher; I suppose the racket that they make could sound like laughing, seems a wee bit too aggressive for laughter to me. They are fun birds to watch, squabbling over a perch on lamp post, or neatly lined up on the roof at the front of the school. They certainly cheer up the winter’s days for me.

Our Swans, Tony and Cleo, appear to be a couple. (they’re easy to tell apart, Tony is bigger and has what looks like a black pustule on the bridge of his beak.) I say appear to be a couple, as I saw Tony give Cleo a nasty looking nip on her hindfeathers, it did not look at all loving. Let’s hope that Tony isn’t one of those dreadful Pen-beaters that one hears about. Let’s also hope that we don’t witness the act of procreation itself, I imagine that it’s loud and violent, not the type of thing that us sensitive modern humans like to see. (I wonder if a single coupling is all that is required for Cleo to be with eggs?) I was once unfortunate enough to see pair of Herring Gulls at it on the roof panels above the atrium, the sight this union from beneath was repulsive. We don’t want to get a reputation as a school of ill-repute, built adjacent to an avian knocking shop.

I am getting hopeful that they will nest around here, which would be lovely. We could repurpose one of Fraser’s telescopes to get a good view of the nest. Now, technicaly all Swans belong to not-so-bonnie king Charlie but what with his bottom problems I’m sure that he has other things on his mind and wouldn’t mind if we adopted them. That would be a coup — our own swans! We could dress them up in school tartan and get them to peck our enemies to death… I think that we may be entering the gibberish zone there. Still we live in hope that soon we’ll hear the happy slapping of tiny flippers.

wind

I spent Sunday hunkered down, listening to storm Isha rattling my roof, booming in my chimney and rolling bins down the street. Occasionally a specially loud clang would stir me to get up and look out of the rain-splattered window, to watch the rivers running down the playground and soaked people scurrying, rat-like, in the gloom. I’d shiver and sit back down closer to the fire. It was a day to be inside, so I didn’t get out of my jammies.

Unwillingly, I headed out in to the dark and Isha’s dying rage on Monday morning. At Harrison Park my feet squelched and squeaked along the twig-strewn path, under trees that thundered, their branches clawing impotently at the night. I ducked into the wind and tried to ignore my wretched plight. Thus it was that I nearly walked into the fallen tree. I blame the guy who had just passed me under the bridge and didn’t warn me — there’s a freemasonry to the early morning, you’re allowed to talk to each other as if you were acquaintances. Particularly you’re meant to warn of road-blocks ahead. Which said man singularly failed to do. Maybe he didn’t see the tree, he was staggering about, which I’d put down to the wind, perhaps he’d been at the vallies and had floated over it?

I saw the tree at the last minute. It was an evergreen, about twelve foot tall and was blocking the entire towpath. I’d have to make a detour through the park. The rain had turned the park into a marsh. My feet wanted to do two things — sink into the mud and slide out of my sight. I pottered my way gingerly, like a man carrying burning coal in his under-garments. I managed to re-gain the path with no more damage than a thin coating of mud. I got to the school in more-or-less one piece, cold and wet but alive. As I passed the end of the lawn I noticed the first Snowdrops of the year. So although we are still suffering the horrors of winter, spring is on its way.

daz’s last day

I was walking back to work on Monday, listening to the birds singing and admiring the bones of the trees against the flat white sky when it hit me — I wasn’t going to work with Daz ever again. Well, neither Daz or I have ever been too keen on the practice of work, we thought the theory flawed. So it’s strange that, although I have many memories of Daz, it’s the memories of work shared that stay with me most.

Like the time we removed the staples. The pin-boards on the first floor of the old school were getting painted, so Daz and I had the task of removing half a century’s worth of staples. It was only a quarter section but it took us two whole days. It was rote work, lever the staple up with the screwdriver, yank it out with the pliers. Repeat, repeat …. Every so often the staple would break and you’d be forced to dig about with the screwdriver until you got something that you could grab with the pliers. Hateful work. At the end we were left with 4.6kg of staples, hands that dripped blood and a black loathing for staples.

Or, like the time of the big snow. We’ve cleared many a playground of its snow together but there was one really bad year that’s seared on my memory glands. It had snowed on a Friday night, frozen hard on Saturday and snowed again on Sunday. It was about a foot deep with a two inch crust of ice at the bottom when we arrived on Monday. We spent the next few days in the playground clearing snow, salting and swearing. The bit that really got to us however, was the courtyard outside HE (as HFT was called in those days). The courtyard was about thirty square feet and was accessed through an archway that we called the pend. It was where Jack parked his car. Which was why he was giving us all kinds of grief about clearing it. It was now almost solid ice. “We’re just going to have to put our heads down and try not to think”, I said. So that’s what we did. After about two minutes the wailing started, low at first but with a rising note. We cleared it, but by the end we were weeping, our faces covered in tears from the pain and the cold and braying like a Donkey with piles. I was drinking then, but even a couple of large whiskeys didn’t numb the pain.

Or, like the time we had to move the cupboards. Jack H, our former owner, was a sucker for anything free. “Toxic waste you say? Free you say? When can you deliver it?” He’d got the offer of some worn out office furniture from one of the corporate ghouls that headteachers are forced to hob-nob with and had, of course jumped at it. It was around twenty huge cupboards and tables; great ugly things that nobody wanted. It arrived in two Pantechnicons, and eight men, with proper furniture moving equipment, dumped it all along the ground floor corridoor. Now it was down to Daz and I. They were horrible to move. The cupboards were about eight foot tall and not rigid; the tables were about eight foot wide and had to be threaded through any doors. And, as I said nobody wanted the things. We managed to offload about half of them, but the rest we had to store on the steps at the back of poor Laura’s room. None of it fitted in the lift. We explained to Jack that this meant that it all had to go to the ground floor, “but the fact is that we live in a multi-level school”. I don't know if Jack’s life flashed before his eyes at that point, but he was very close to a bloody and painful death when he said that.

Or, like the time we cleared Ailsa’s room so that it could be carpeted. We had a rolling programme of renewal then, every year we painted and carpeted a couple of rooms. Ailsa’s was on the menu for that year. Now, as I’m sure that Ailsa would admit, housekeeping standards had slipped. The place was a midden, only eclipsed by Fee’s midden. To be fair it was doubling up as the English store but still… It took a day and a half, Daz cursing me for choosing that room with every load. I was cursing myself in my head. Apart from all the furniture there were many big heavy boxes, classroom sets of improving tracts, boxes that needed both of us to shift. There were treasures, under a pile of books we found two dead mice and a full box of milk tray all squashed completely flat.

But, I suppose, it was the week that we spent alone in the old school, while you were all here, that I remember the most. We’re janitors, we’re used to being alone in big buildings, but there was a different mood about the building, one that got to us. The old school was always a noisy place, but it was still that week. Partly this was down to various stuff: the server, the heating, the extract fans being turned off. But there was a lack of something in the silence — the school had lost its purpose and you could feel it. Daz and I battered around the empty corridors chatting about the new school, the world, life, all kinds of tosh. I think I remember it most because it was a time of passing, and Daz leaving is another passing. It’s not goodbye, he’s only going down the road, but a large, and happy, part of my life is now in the past.

hawthorn

The gardening club, as a gestalt entity, have many plans, one of which was to aquire a Hawthorn for the hedgerow behind the bike shed. So this week we assembled an away team to go and steal one, for we do not wish to spend any money. We didn’t really want to steal one either but needs must. Besides, when I talked to the parks guy about sourcing a Hawthorn he more or less suggested that we dig one up from somewhere. That’s my story anyway…

There’s a whole load of mystical nonsense attached to the Hawthorn. For example, we Scots shouldn’t remove our coats until they bloom — “Ne’er cast a cloot til Mey’s oot” as nobody has ever said. That’s not especially mystical, just stupid but… it could mark a portal to the underworld, or heal broken hearts, it might grow next to a Clootie well and that’s just the Gaelic twaddle. We want one because it’s good for wildlife. Although if we did blag a portal to the underworld as an extra…

So, Wednesday lunchtime we wandered along the canal to Harrison park. We were heading for the hedgerow where someone, perhaps nature, has planted quite a few Hawthorns, Emma and I have been eyeing these up for some time. Half way along Emma spotted a Kingfisher. We spent some time watching it scoot back and forth along the canal like a blue dart, occasionally perching on a branch to eye the water. Eventually it hid in some bushes and we wended on our merry way.

We found a suitable Hawthorn nestling at the edge of the park, where the path splits off the towpath. For tools we had a fork and my razor-sharp weeding spatula but what we found most effective was shear brute force. I wonder what people thought we were up to? I’d planned some words to use if we got pulled up by some busy-body — strong, harsh words. Fortunately nobody had the temerity to interfere (a hi-vis jacket and a look of purpose goes far in such circumstances). The Hawthorn was resistant but we finally managed to get it, and a good portion of root, out of the ground. It didn’t actually make a plop, but I’m sure that we all heard one in our heads. By then we’d run out of lunchtime so we agreed to plant it the next day. Which is what we did. I think it looks jolly fine. Perhaps it will even bloom for us this year.

It didn’t make it through the winter.

pool (or pond)

Finally we have a pond. According to my records I’ve been promising this for some time, you may pick for yourselves from my litany of excuses (copies available on request) as to the cause of the delay. (Don’t pick one of those that I use for my wife!) If you’re too lazy to do that and want me to provide an excuse I’d say that it was the weather.

Ramesh, now an ex-officio member of the gardening club, and I did the digging. Then the plenum of the club assembled to do the hard landscaping (as I believe that it’s called). It was half-filled with buckets of water from the canal; you can’t use tap water, it contains chemicals, which the wildlife doesn’t like. That’s what I learnt from my youTube studies anyway. I also learnt that people who produce gardening videos are all very irritating people. Something about their inane chirpiness really grates. They fall into that category of people who, “should have been shot at birth”.

Now at the moment our pond, or mere, or perhaps tarn looks a wee bit underwhelming. We must wait for Mother Nature and her things to work their magic. Somebody kindly left a load of broken paving stones in the car park, which we utilized to create the border. Then Ramesh and I stole a statement stone from the building site over the road to finish the job.

I’ve decided that the pond/mere/tarn/billabong should be of the wishing kind. We’ll put it about that a votive two-pound coin or five is very effective in resolving affairs of the heart. We should be quids in, the young adults have plenty of dinner money and, if I remember my time as a young adult correctly, affairs-of-the-heart type problems take up a lot of their time. The only issue with this is that the coins might poison the nature. This might interfere with our other plan — the Goldfish. But that might not be the greatest idea anyway, we might just be creating a Carp gulag.

Still, pond acquired, let’s see what happens.

It leaked. A leak which we never managed to fix. The broken paving stones might have been a bad idea.

snámh dá éan

I’ve been on early shift this week for the first time in a while, and I’ve noticed quite a change in the pace of life in our wee part of the planet compared to my last early shift. The birds have started making a lot of noise in the morning. Too me it sounds sweet, which is odd when you come to think about it — the noise is the avian equivalent of The Wurzels singing, “get off my land” and Luther Vandross crooning … well, the type of stuff that Luther croons: “take off that brassiere my dear…”. Whatever the intention behind the chirruping it was pleasant listen on my walk to work.

Later, taking the morning air by the bridge, I saw two Blackbirds fighting. They’re vicious little beggars, they really go for one another. Usually this is accompanied by a lot of squawking but this pair were fighting in total silence, as if it were a fight to the death. They rolled around, wings flapping and beaks stabbing. After a couple of minutes one decided that he’d had enough and hopped off into the night. The winner preened and strutted over to his missus who had been lurking behind one of the benches watching the fight.

There are other signs that spring is nearly here — the Daffodils are flowering in the park and the Cherry trees at the front of the school have blossom. Way too early! It’s still only February. A frost will burn the blossoms right off.

Our Swans, Sandy and Helen, have been gaslighting me. To start with there’s another male, Menny, in the mix. I only realized this when I saw all three of the together. Sandy and Helen are clearly an item: I’ve seen the doing the synchronized neck dance, which is their equivalent of slow dancing. Now they’ve disappeared somewhere. At the weekend I’m going to walk along the canal to see if I can find them. Hopefully they are nesting somewhere close by. I also hope that this isn’t the start of yet another an obsession.

It was now nearly March, the weather was improving, you could hear, feel and smell spring on its march. I was settled on retiring, the house wasn’t sold yet, but I decided that I couldn’t wait forever. My wife had reluctantly agreed that she could cope with me being home all the time. All that I needed to do now was to tell my workmates. So I gathered everyone (the boys, Ella, George and Kevin) into the office and made my announcement.

——You know how my mum and dad left Coco and me the house? People said yes, there was nodding.

——So I’m coming into some money? Again agreement.

——And do you remember me saying that if I ever came into any money I’d keep on working? They remembered.

——Well, it turns out that that was utter bollocks. I’ve decided to retire at the end of June. Thus I fired the starting gun on the end of my career.

Everyone and her husband has an opinion about education. So, after a career working in schools, you’d expect me to have one, and you’d be right, I have lots of them. And you might expect that my opinions, having been close to, what was once the chalk-face, and is now the interactive whiteboard-face, would be on-point and informed. Well maybe. I have seen education from the inside in a way most people don’t; as a janny, who nobody notices, I’ve probably seen schools as they really are. Nobody was putting their best clothes on for me as I shambled around. I got to see the educational underwear. Not many people get to see that.

I’ve been involved in a few HMIE inspections in my time. What they see is not a school in normal mode. A great deal of work goes into what the school wants them to see. And as I was told when I was studying quantum physics, the very act of measuring affects the result. Nobody thought that I was taking measurements, so people did what they usually did. But…

Although I’ve worked in a lot of schools, I’ve only worked long term in a few. So my experience is limited, and in the case of primary schools, happened a long time ago. The only secondary school I really know is Boroughmuir. And it isn’t your average school. I’ve only worked in the Scottish system, and only in Edinburgh.

So take what follows with a cellar sized helping of salt. Remember also that I’m biased and that what I know about schools comes from a very small sample of even the system I know. With these caveats let’s dip into my thoughts about the raising of the young adults.