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Jasper’s Jottings: A Lot to Grouse About

  • Posted on: 16/08/2019

The Muriel & Jasper blog was begun as an experiment to see if we could engage those who would not normally read a “history blog”. We have covered many topics of the 1950s, and there will always be nuggets of historical information somewhere in the blog. See if you can find this week’s!

We have been publishing nearly every week for the last 7 years, always exactly 60 years from the current date. The blog has attracted a large readership and through their own twitter and Facebook account Muriel and Jasper conduct conversations all over the world with their fans.

Let us introduce you to Jasper who provides us with his jottings this week.

1959 –  The Driest Summer in 312 Years

It has been an unusually dry and warm summer  this year, even in Scotland. For Glaswegians being in the 80s is virtually unknown either as an age or a temperature. 

However, for those with “the nose” there is already something different about the air. It is not unusual to see one’s neighbours, especially those in the country districts, opening their back doors and sniffing the air like cats. It’s a sure sign that Autumn is on the way. You can hear it as well in the chatter. “Why Agnes last night I had to have a blanket over the quilt and a wee hot bag at ma feet.”  “Aah ken wit yoose mean Betty, the nichts are fair drawin’ in the noo. Even Jim’s old cock was ready for bed early; it fair confused the fox.”

Festival Fun?

Despite the early warning system this is not a time to settle down; no not yet, for it is a very busy time of year. The Queen may be relaxing at Balmoral , but in Edinburgh it is Festival time. The souvenir shops are gearing up to sell an imagined Scotland to enthusiastic visitors, unaware that we do not spend our days in enveloped in tartan and mohair.

In offices all over the New Town, Festival organisers are trying to cope with the row that has broken out with the comrades over the decision to invite the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra to play in Auld Reekie. Well it is not exactly the invitation of the orchestra that has upset things, rather Lady Pentland-Firth’s (who is on the board) insistence that violinist Johanna Martzy be invited to play with them.

Miss Marzty is a Hungarian artiste, born in Romania in 1924. She is considered an expat by the comrades, but the leading exponent of Dvorak by what Muriel calls the “civilised world.” Never mind if all else fails Lady P-F has still managed to secure Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau,  (“I like a man with a big legato”) and the Old Vic Company . The major Scottish theatrical offering will be “The Three Estates”. To “keep cottagers and ordinary urban people happy”, there are Highland Games at Murrayfield and the Tattoo at the Castle.

Fashion At A Price

Not to be outdone Muriel has kicked off the Festival Season with a fashion show at Adam House. This looked forward to the coming winter season and featured Muriel’s favourite fashion item, mink. As our neighbour Mrs Lottie Macaulay, wife of the millionaire bungalow builder said “ only you Muriel could mix mink and gabardine in such a novel way” to which Muriel replied “I take my cue this season from Pucci, just look what he did for Ski-pants”.

No one did bother to look, finding it hard to recall ever having seen Muriel in “pants” (trousers to us here in in Scotland) let alone ski-pants and come to think of it skis. Far more Muriel was the “Restaurant Dress”, with “versatile” black cape. I could see Muriel had her eye on the full length tourmaline. At £5,500, the market is limited for this sort of thing as one can buy two modest houses for this sort of money. Fortunately Mr Macaulay is trying very hard to get into Lottie’s good books again after a recent dalliance and bought her the coat. It’s amazing how much money there is in pre-cast concrete and rendering.

I tried to improve Muriel’s mood by suggesting that perhaps in a few years time the wearing of animal skins would become unfashionable and, in my view, was the sign of a kept woman.  This turned out to be an unwise choice of words as Muriel retorted “No doubt Jasper under your future Labour government most things will be unfashionable and as to a kept woman…! Well Jasper Wylie you have a cheek considering you have been living off my family’s money for a decade! And if you want to know where some of that came from I suggest you ask Grace, the woman who will no longer be doing the heavy work. Hmm, kept woman indeed!  I should be so lucky. Oh yes and Jasper, I am not a woman as I have told you a thousand times.

On our side of Crow Road, one is a lady.”

Glorious, But Not For The Grouse

Just when you think August couldn’t get any worse, there is ‘The Glorious Twelfth’, which means weekends tramping around the moors in damp tweeds killing things for fun. This is where you find me as I speak, hidden in a wooden lodge with the newspaper and the picnic baskets. Lady Pentland-Firth always has a shooting party. The usual suspects are invited from the great and the good and this year we also have the presence of a number of Eastern Bloc diplomats anxious to observe the eccentric British at play.

We also have with us  our own version of ‘Calamity Jane’, my wife’s cousin Lulubelle Du Bois, who being American is quite good at shooting.  She has brought with her that family of property tycoons from New York who have a precocious little boy called Donnie. Professor Sir Boozy Hawkes (from the music department of the Glasgow University) is here too as he is researching a concert for Lady Pentland-Firth with a hunting theme. The Pentland-Firth Country House Concerts are becoming a feature of the social calendar and are going someway to restore the fortunes of an estate hit badly by death duties and improbable happenings. Bunty Haystack, the writer of rural crime novels, is sneaking about the heather undergrowth with a notebook followed in close pursuit by the Handsome Stranger who works “in the shadows”.

Jasper Has The American Papers

In truth I would rather be in my Museum in a shed which is fast becoming a major centre for the study of local history, but Muriel says we have to put in an appearance here as it is part of the country way of life and supports the fragile rural economy. Unless of course you are a grouse in which case it is ending, rather than supporting, your way of life. Fortunately someone needs to watch the picnic hampers and I have the added interest today of a pile of American publications brought to me by Cousin Lulubelle who has been across the pond on the new Comet Aircraft to check on her business interests .  Reading other peoples news does put a different perspective on things, although the world in chaos is reflected everywhere with a massacre in Portuguese Guinea, floods in Taiwan and rioting in Kazakhstan.

Ultimate Weapons – A Point of View

In the United States President Eisenhower has approved a Senate motion that says “the United States will be prepared to use chemical and biological weapons – to the extent that such use will enhance the effectiveness of the air force”. I am not sure it will enhance the effectiveness of mankind.  At the same time they are not neglecting the army and at their Combat Development Centre they have unveiled “the soldier of tomorrow”. It seems America’s ultimate weapon is “the man”.

Obviously the army does not know about the air force’s weapons. Anyway looking ahead, it seems the soldier of 1965 will have “a helmet with a built in radio, infra-red binoculars and his own rocket device, a jump belt and with be able to cross streams and jump cliffs with ease”. I cannot imagine what war America might be involved in the mid 1960s that would necessitate all this. Particularly given all the trouble they have domestically at the moment regarding race. There are very serious problems for example around schools and integration. 

A Horse in a Love Scene and Lust in Cincinnati

On a cultural note I see that the U.S.A. has lost Edgar A. Guest, “The People’s Poet “  who published around 11,000 poems. They have also lost Preston Sturgis the playwright and film director who won the Academy Award for The Great McGinty in 1941. His love scene between Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve was a comic masterpiece particularly because of the intervention of a horse. He had brilliant lines like Barbara Stanwyck saying “I need him like the axe needs the turkey.” Sturgis died at the Algonquin Hotel which is as good a place as any I guess.

Not so good a hotel seems to have been the one where the singing group The Platters were arrested in Cincinnati after several young women were found in their rooms. They have been acquitted, but the judge said in his summing up, “you have lost an opportunity to be an example to your people” and accused them of being involved in “lust” for which “you will be accountable in that highest court before which you must in the end stand final judgement.” I think we can all guess what’s behind that. I wonder what the Cincinnati judge would make of Cousin Lulubelle or Lady Pentland-Firth or even Glasgow on a Fair Friday Night!

A View From Across the Pond 

Now I suppose it is all well and good for me to sit and criticise the Americans with their frontier spirit while I am holed up on a grouse moor in Scotland as a massacre takes place around me. The boot of course, or should I say sneaker, is however also on the other foot as our Transatlantic cousins also observe us from afar and find us wanting.

We lack central heating, fridges, fast food outlets and decent coffee. They like our accents, but find our behaviour odd. In this month’s Time magazine there is a report about our reticence when meeting one another and the writer quotes the favourite American joke that two Englishmen stranded on a desert island would not speak until properly introduced. They go on to say that Americans travelling in British railway carriages find the lack of talking oppressive.

With some amusement Time Magazine notes that they have discovered through the pages of the Manchester Guardian the existence in England of The Conversing Travellers’ Association. Apparently this was founded in Letchworth (the first garden city) and has 100 members with the specific aim of indulging, as a matter of principle, in topical conversation with strangers.

I think it only reasonable to point out to our American friends that England does not make up the entire United Kingdom and that in Scotland, well at least in Glasgow (even on the south side) this would not be the experience. Generally speaking it is hard, if not impossible, to undertake the shortest journey in Glasgow by bus, train or tram without getting some complete stranger’s life story.

Conversation With A Stranger From Moffat

Why only last week I was having a coffee in our county town of Dumfries  (where we have our rural bolthole ) when I struck up a conversation with a lady from Moffat. Just for information Moffat is a spa town of some antiquity favoured by coach parties on their way north or indeed south. It is generally considered that “one never has a bad day in Moffat”, possibly because of the easily available toffee which when chewing makes one smile.

Anyway this lady, who had relocated to Moffat from Newton Mearns because of some unsavoury bungalow building (by a man with a wife who was overdressed in furs in spring) would subsequently find her “flitting” to be ill advised. It seems she found her divided house shared a common entrance with some power workers renting the other half while they were working on “the electricity”. These men found themselves at a bit of a loose end of an evening and somewhat like The Platters  in Cincinnati put out an advertisement for company. It seems these ladies arrived by the front door in the dark but left by the fire escape as it was getting light, not wishing to be seen.

I tried to make light of this saying to the lady that it was clearly an attempt to make the nights in Moffat as good as the days. A moment of hope came when “the electric men” were replaced by a family with four teenage girls and four lady poodles. It seems the behaviour of both girls and poodles left much to be desired was completely inappropriate for a retired Latin teacher, who simply said, “I thought I had left all that conjugation behind me.” The use of a shared washing line with “black” washing put out reputedly on a communion weekend was the last straw. It seems the lady has invested in a mobile home on the Pentland Firth Caravan Park for occasions when it all gets too much, with young men climbing the fire escape and the poodles dashing about ruining the pompom dahlias.  I was quite glad when Muriel arrived with her purchases from Boots the chemist.

Oh No!

“Jasper ! Jasper, are you awake?”

“Oh Muriel, good. Is it lunch time?”

Yes, I mean no; well it is but..”

“But, what?”

“Bunty Haystack has been shot.”

 

Jasper Wylie

August 1959