“As you know we Scots do not really celebrate Christmas. At least it seems reasonable to say we are only just getting the hang of it, as for several hundred years it was effectively banned by our Calvinist forebears who disliked its frivolity, extravagance and associations with paganism. Instead we deal with the season by wholeheartedly marking New Year with extravagance, frivolity and paganism. The main difference being it is not how they do things south of the border. While the legislation was repealed in the early 18th century, when people liked to have a good time Christmas Day has only in the last few years become a recognised holiday and many still work in office and factory. However, since the last Unpleasantness, Scots seem to be getting the hang of Christmas and The Glasgow Herald is full of adverts for sherry, brushed cotton shirts at Carswell’s and gifts by Yardley.”
I will stop there as Jasper’s lectures for the Hysterical Society (which are prepared longhand with blue black ink and are usually typed by Bunty Haystack, currently missing, on quarto paper with carbon copy for the files), tend to be lengthy. To be honest, I am sure you have better things to do with your time than read Jasper’s ‘Druids and Decked Hallls: A Guide to Christmas and New Year Festivals – A Folk Life Study’; I certainly have. Nevertheless, it sets the scene. For despite our protestations, the notion of Christmas is catching on and everyone is busy, busy, busy! Indeed I am beginning to feel that I shall meet myself coming backwards down Sauchiehall Street.
In fact you catch me on the train from Edinburgh Waverley to Glasgow Queen Street. I have been checking up on sales at the Auld Reekie branch of my luxury interior decorating emporium ‘Chez Nous’. Edinburgh is, as the economists say, a challenging market as many of the inhabitants can peel oranges in their pockets. Mind you I did manage to persuade one of the Edinburgh Festival directors that his bungalow in Colinton would benefit from “a cold war make-over.” I am thinking sputnik lights and matching accessories.
I managed to squeeze in lunch with the Morningside Arts & Decorative ladies (M.A.D.) where I was asked to give a brief talk on my views about women in the Church of Scotland. I could feel the frost as soon as I managed to get through the locked door. How five sausage rolls and a plate of last week’s Empire biscuits are supposed to do twenty five is beyond me. It would never happen in Glasgow. I had to judge the competition and fortunately selected the President’s knitted tea cosy. I am glad to be heading west even if there are no seats in first class and I am sitting opposite a man with a bottle of beer, a half- eaten roll and egg and a leery look in his eye.
It is very foggy. Indeed there has been blanket fog in parts of Glasgow all week. The city has been moving at walking pace. Aircraft have been grounded at Renfrew and shipping in the Clyde is at a standstill. For once it has nothing to do with the unions.
It has been quite bad in Maryhill (where Mrs Travers, our woman what does but not a lot, lives) and Springburn to the north of the city and to the south of the river as well. Mind you things are always a bit dense south of the Clyde. I met Mr Ashford, the City’s Smoke Inspector, on the train this morning and he said that the centre of Glasgow had been noticeably clearer since it became smokeless on 15th October. This is clearly the way to go if you forgive the pun.
Oh dear we have stopped and we are not even at Falkirk. I hope we are not too long. Jasper and I are going to St Andrews Halls this evening to see Handel’s Judas Maccabeus. Alexander Gibson is conducting the S.N.O. with the Glasgow Choral Union and the Glasgow Choral Society. I got tickets at Cuthbertson’s yesterday and they were 10 shillings each. It has to be better than Thursday night when we were at the Lyric for The Drawing Room Music Society’s Don Giovanni. Mrs Lottie Macaulay (estranged wife of the millionaire bungalow builder) is no coloratura. I would go so far as to say her performance as Donna Anna was devoid of all colour – stretching the imagination somewhat. I even began to sympathise with Jasper who had wanted to see Shirley Bassey at the Empire and had a face like a wet weekend on him.
Good gracious! I think that man opposite is playing footsie with my Rayne court shoes – half price at last winter’s sale in Daly’s, they have my shoe size on file. Miss Drummond who is in Coats and Mantles keeps her eye on things for me and always gives me a little tinkle if there is anything interesting. I have a small, but robust grip on terra ferma.
“No thank you, so very kind.
I am not really a runny egg roll sort of lady. Anyway I had something at lunchtime. Yes, actually it was a sausage roll well a quarter of one. Yes, Edinburgh; how did you guess? What was that you said – your wife has ‘run aff wi’ the coal man and your heid is up your jumper’? Well you have my sympathy. Perhaps if he has a run in central Glasgow you might find she returns home quicker than you think. Smokeless coal is probably not as lucrative.
Oh you found out because she had sooty prints all over the back of her brushed nylon nighty. I am not surprised that is not a fabric I would choose, although my woman what does swears by it, says its full of static and makes her tingle. So your wife said much the same thing. I will need to check but I don’t think Maryhill is smokeless. Anyway her son – he’s Billy – does a coal round when he’s not, as they say, detained at her Majesty’s pleasure. If you’ll excuse me I need to read my Glasgow Herald, we business women need to keep up with affairs you know. And you can finish that egg roll. Oh good you have one with sausage in your pocket. No, I am not into monkey business, thank you.”
Well I am not, but the Americans are. It says here that a monkey called Little Joe has just returned from space. He was sent 53 miles up into the atmosphere from Wallops Island Virginia. Now my good friend Patty lives in Virginia which is quite near Roanoke where they have a star on a hill.
I must write and ask her if she knows anything about Little Joe.
Sometimes the world seems a little odd, particularly at this time of year. For not only do we have monkeys in rockets, but we also seem to have lots of women walking aimlessly about the country. The Herald reports on a Dr Barbara Moore, who at 56 has walked 110 miles from Birmingham to London in 26 hours and 25 minutes. This has been achieved on a diet of fruit and vegetable juices. It seems the vegetarian doctor has started something as no lesser person than the editor of The Glasgow Herald says that this weekend two young ladies who describe themselves as “dancers” plan to walk backwards from either Southend or Brighton to London. They are quoted as saying “that walking forwards is no longer an achievement.” As the editorial diary suggests “one of these nymphs” should try the corner of George Street and West Nile Street on Friday evenings at about 5 o’clock.
At least this is a relatively harmless activity unlike a report from France where the defendant in the ‘Baby Powder Trial’ has been acquitted. Chemist Jacques Cazenove was charged with the murder of seventy three children – the result of his sales of baby talc which contained arsenic. It seems the court decided on a twelve month suspended sentence as he did not do this deliberately but rather as a result of clumsiness, imprudence and neglect. All sounds a bit odd to me and I imagine his Christmas sales are going to be a bit down.
Sometimes one wonders about men. To be honest I wonder most of the time. Here is another example of the behaviour of a man which goes beyond belief or in this case to the heart of belief. A Mr J.F.S. Watt of Dunoon writes to The Herald on the vexed question of Women Elders in the Church. He says “the average woman in the Church of Scotland does not know the difference between John Knox and John O’ Groats and she does not care.”
Might I suggest that the women of the Church of Scotland absent themselves from that institution and Mr Watt will soon find out what we know as well as what we do. I have always thought Dunoon overrated.
At the other end of the scale the Pope has moved his Church’s fast from Christmas Eve to the 23rd. One can only assume he is doing the cooking and bed changing for Christmas guests. Oh dear I have a bit of a tickle. “No thank you I do not fancy a wee swally of your McEwans. I have a Fisherman’s Friend in my Mappin and Webb handbag.”
The Herald now has a column on Bridge. I hope this is not a sign of things to come. There is only one thing more tedious than Bridge Notes and that is Nature Notes. For example, today there is an article about Waxwings. Apparently, the author’s postman is struggling under the weight of Waxwing correspondence which comes from all over Scotland and even Giffnock.
It seems the first waxwing was sighted in Buchlyvie on November 1st but things have become really hectic since the 17th. What is the betting that the bulk of these correspondents are men? “One can never” says the writer “get tired of waxwings.” Try me! I wonder if there is a Waxwing Society in Dunoon. I wager a pound to a penny there is. Well at least I would, if I approved of gambling.
It is so dark outside. Really one is inclined to do nothing, but even this weekend is full of Sales of Work, Carol Concerts and sherry parties and I must start the Christmas cards. One thing is for sure, Jasper won’t; except to appear every ten minutes to say “Muriel have we sent one to so and so?” The festive season is very easy if you are a man. Perhaps that is why women are taking to walking either forwards or backwards. After all, if we do not know our John Knox from our John o’Groats, should we care?
“Evening Madam. Don’t we usually see you in First Class?”
“No room, Conductor.”
“Sorry about that Madam; frozen points but we shouldn’t be too long now. Is this gentleman bothering you?”
“No more than the rest. Are you on this train tomorrow?”
“No – off to Thurso then John o’Groats, do you know where that is?”
“I have heard rumours that it might be near John Knox. Do you come straight back?”
“No, I have a couple of days leave. I’m a bit of a twitcher, going to look for waxwings. You can never get enough of waxwings. Tickets please; all tickets……”
Muriel Wylie
On the Edinburgh to Glasgow Train December 1959
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