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Hoots & Havers with James Irvine Robertson

June 06

There’s nothing like a few decent summer days to make one forget that winter is the default position for Highland Perthshire.

Potter a few yards beyond the boundaries of any of the local conurbations and you realise why most of us live here. Often it’s thought to be because of the nice views, but it’s much more visceral. Our stresses and problems can be just as gross as those of our urban counterparts but, for us, any moment of quiet is not filled with traffic, passing jets, buildings or bad air but bird song and hills. We just have a nicer stage on which to do our strutting and fretting.

Modern urban behaviour does seem most peculiar. For the young the highest callings seem to be fame achieved through little or no merit, or extreme drunkenness; and for most others the possession of objects that cost and look as if they cost a great deal of money. It’s the return of the Loadsamoney culture that was so derided in Thatcher’s 80s.

What’s so gratifying about it now is that such folk have so little desire to come into the countryside and so rarely do. A few arrive to buzz up and down lochs on ugly machinery, or come to shoot those pathetic industrial pheasants in the autumn but most people in the countryside – our bit at least - are here because they like it the way it is. And long may the other lot shop, or get sloshed

* * * * *

Genealogy is a pastime innocently enjoyed by millions and yet it always makes me mildly uneasy. Robert Burns seemed to point out the danger: ‘Don’t boast of your titled companions, Or the lordly places you’ve been, A louse remains but a louse, Though it nest in the curls of a Queen.’… It seemed a good idea to confirm that I had this quotation right. It’s wrong. Burns actually wrote: ‘Of Lordly acquaintance you boast, And the Dukes that you dined with yestreen; Yet an insect’s an insect at most, Tho’ it crawl on the curl of a Queen!’ I cannot conceive how one transmuted into the other.

Anyway, I can see that genealogy might matter quite a bit if you were a Mormon determined to get your forebears into Heaven, or the umpteenth McLoon of that Ilk with a great big castle and worshiping American clansfolk but it really gives no guide to who or what you are.

It has always rather bothered me when you see or read that so-and-so is a descendant of King Robert Bruce – as if this somehow invested the individual concerned with some sort of intrinsic worth. I have long been of the opinion of Sir Ian Moncrieffe that most Scots, if not black, brown, or yellowish, are likely to be his kin.

Because someone persuaded me to download a computer program on the subject, I spent a bit of time recently shoving in the genealogy of one of my sets of great grandparents, the minister of Clackmannan and his wife to discover if they come down from Bruce. I chose them because chance bequeathed me more info about them that the other three sets of greats of that generation. The minister was the son and grandson of ministers and was born in Blair Atholl. Her father was also a minister who was also the son and grandson of men of the cloth. He came from Fife. There was some sort of an existing tree, laboriously made out by a maiden great aunt, but these days the millions who play Happy Families go onto the net, and I soon found myself doing the same.

I found his Majesty and confirmed that virtually every other Scot can do the same, but I’m too depressed to take matters any further. The minister’s wife had a genealogical anorak of a brother and I’ve just discovered the result of his labours. Some century and a half ago, he wrote down the names and connections of hundreds, literally hundreds, of his kinsfolk on a roll of paper some four feet long. It looks so dull that it’s rather drained me of any interest in the subject at all. I have tried to think of any benefit in pointing my decaying brain cells at this plethora of dead connections, but I can’t, so I won’t. In another century someone else can take a look.

* * * * *

I used to wear a tie most of the year, mainly because it helped to keep my neck warm and there’s something unfinished about a collared shirt done up to the neck sans tie. Then I stopped wearing a tie and undid the top button of my shirt. Recently I discovered that this makes me a sissy. Real men undo the top two buttons of their shirt. I only found out because a female acquaintance unbuttoned me twice. I thought she was just being friendly but the sight of my effeminate buttoning simply set her teeth on edge.

I have furtively glanced at the naked necks of my male contemporaries and she may well be right. Most of them do seem to bare their chests for no good reason that I can think of, so perhaps there’s a convention going on here that I didn’t know about. However I’ve thought about it, and still undo no more than one button.

I can still remember the distress of my father when I once decided to roll up my shirtsleeves properly – right up to the armpit. Apparently it just wasn’t done. At the very most, he taught me, one should only bare one’s forearms. And I would not dream of flashing anything more than a forearm in such a shirt today. I can’t help wondering how many other fatuous conventions are hard-wired into my brain.

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