Poetic Biography of Rabbie Burns

A short biographical tribute to the Immortal Bard.

NB (for English folk)  oggan = ocean; fu' =  had a skinful.

Rabbie the Rhyming Alkie

                                                O Rabbie Burns, he got sae fu',

                                                They thought that he might ne'er come to;

                                                "Go easy, Rab," his friends all said,

                                                "Or you will very soon be dead;

                                                Your way of life, it is not wise."

                                                But Rab thought they were telling lies.

                                                On Hogmanay, he got so drunk,

                                                He took a freezing midnight dunk;

                                                He fell right off of his toboggan,

                                                And leapt full-clothed into the oggan;

                                                His escapade did not come free,

                                                He croaked it from the pneumonie.

With Amy Winehouse drinking herself to death, and England rugby players jumping in the sea at the World Cup, it seems that little has changed among the famous.

To a Mouse (the Update)

This is an attempt to make Robert Burns world-famous poem more accessible to a modern urban audience. Burns lived in a stone country cottage, a world away from how we live now. Not only his archaic dialect words, but also his rustic sentimentality, are alien to today's people. I was inspired to bring it up-to-date by similar treatments accorded to Shakespeare's plays for the school audience.

To a Mouse

                                    Wee sleekit, cowrin' tim'rous beastie,

                                    O what a panic's in thy breastie;

                                    It's wise ye've run away so hasty,

                                    For ye've been nibblin' at ma pastry.

                                    Furtively ye steal ma food,

                                    And what ye leave is nae so guid;

                                    Ye reek so bad I can aye smell it,

                                    Ye've strewn ma flat wi' wee brown pellets.

                                    Behind the plasterboard ye scurry,

                                    Ye're always in an awfu' hurry;

                                    Both night and day ye're scamp'rin' proud,

                                    Frae one so small, it sounds quite loud.

                                    If I can lay ma hands on ye,

                                    I'll smash ye tae a pulp.

Three Dodgy Haiku from the Word! workshop

The organiser, Jan Fox, challenged us to be in the now, and write haiku to perform in front of the group. She told us that 'now presence' was the key to successful live performance, in her experience.

The first is based on what happened while we were trying to write them.

                                    The fire brigade's here;

                                    We're living in denial,

                                    But get the all clear.

Someone cooking upstairs. Lucky we weren't killed as we ignored the alarm and wrote. Fanatics, eh?

                                    Should I eat Greg's bun?

                                    It's full of sticky toffee

                                    Which will rot my teeth.

It was sitting in front of me after I had finished my first effort, and he had been trying to get someone to take it, as he only wanted one of the pair he had bought.

                                    The cherry blossom

                                    Is gone; they've cut down the trees,

                                    To build a new shed.

Jan mentioned flippantly that real haiku should feature the cherry blossom. This, sadly, is also based on what has happened in my home street, where the prettiest cherry trees in the city have been sacrificed to church expansion.

We had five minutes to write one, and I did three. The secret to churning out the doggerel against the clock is to not be overly fussy about quality.

                                   

                                   

The Word! Poetry Workshop

A friend and I went to the Word! poetry workshop at the YMCA Theatre mainly out of curiosity. It was too small to sit at the back trying to look inconspicuous, so there was no escape. The first challenge was to write a poem about our journey to the workshop. We had five minutes. For someone who never writes and rarely reads poetry, this was a bit of a task.

                                    Walking along, bopping along,

                                    Startled by unseasonal sun.

                                    Greg keeps talking winter coats

                                    While I'm still feeling hot,

                                    He's telling me 'bout clothing shops.

                                    Curiosity killed the cat;

                                    What am I interloping at?

                                    The door is locked, my mind is clocked.

                                    To go or stay?

                                    Nothing else to do today;

                                    And now I'm trapped,

                                    Into trying to write a poem.

Empire of the Clouds

When I was a young boy, my family lived not far from RAF Leuchars. Aircraft were constantly in the skies, and we were fascinated by them in a way that today's children don't seem to be. At school, if a plane went over, we would rush to the windows to look at it, over the plaintive protests of the teacher.

            This fascination was shared by adults too; my mother taught me to identify the different types of V-bomber, and she was no petrolhead. Was it the Cold War which sparked this fascination, or the awareness that Britain had recently been saved by the RAF from being overrun by the Hun? World War Two seemed a long way away to us children, but not so to our parents.

             We went to Leuchars to see the annual air display, and watched the English Electric Lightning perform its astonishing feat of climbing vertically to the stratosphere direct from the runway. I was too young and naive to fully appreciate it. I got to sit in the cockpit of an aircraft, and familiarise myself with the RAF style of toilet, which was a bucket in a tent. My first ambition was to be an RAF pilot, one which collapsed when it became clear I was very short-sighted.

            The other day I was scanning a sale of damaged books at Waterstone's, gobsmacked by the sight of books going for a pound in there. I picked up one called 'Empire of the Clouds', by James Hamilton-Patterson. It was subtitled 'When Britain's Aircraft Ruled the World', which turned out to be a wild exaggeration once I got to reading it. It has pictures of all the old favourites, the Vulcan, Victor, and Valiant, not to mention the Hawker Hunter, which I once assembled a model of, and the Buccaneer, which my brother built.

            The book is a combination of a valediction to a lost Britain, with its delusions of victory, and its huge but hopelessly balkanised aircraft industry; and on the other hand, a searing expose of how the 'powers that be' blundered it all away, often after a few sherries over a long lunch. Arrogance and laziness are a potent combination, and our aircraft industry, on which so much depended, seems to have been well-endowed with both, to counter and defeat its amazing talent.

            Profound ineptitude at the highest levels of government played a huge role in the fiasco. Ministers seem to have preferred the half-baked nostrum to careful analysis. Tragically, it seems to me that they reflect the limitations of our whole society in that. The public, in spite of vast expenditure on education, remain to this day untrained in the assessment of relative probabilities, or the weighing of pros and cons. The author himself seems unaware that he too shares this syndrome, and his own analysis lunges between extremes in much the same way as that of the decision-makers he berates. For example, he states that the Lightning was a much faster performer than the hugely successful Dassault Mirage, having previously stated that our aircraft's worst problem was a small fuel tank. The Lightning could sustain Mach 2 for only two minutes to the French plane's twenty. Surely it's obvious that the Lightning would climb faster, unencumbered as it was by the heavy fuel? He makes no mention of this, preferring to lord it over the French for a face-saving moment.

            Another failing which he shares with many is the awe in which he seems to hold the Americans. He praises the F86 Sabre, and laments the terrible casualty rate of our own inferior Meteors and Hunters. He seems quite unaware that the Sabre also had a catastrophic casualty rate. I have heard from RAF maintainers, that the F4 Phantom, which we bought from the USA, had such unreliable electronics that the radar frequently failed just as it left the runway. It was useless.

            The deadly indifference to casualties of the post-war nation fell heavily on the pilots, who were badly paid and not valued. The bosses seemed to think there was an endless supply of expendable young daredevils, and there was; but they weren't a good choice to take care of valuable aircraft, frequently destroying plane and self in some tomfool stunt. The author seems to admire this behaviour, for unfathomable reasons.

            We have long been suffering from 'posh numskull in charge' syndrome; we could defeat Argentina in the Falklands only because they suffer from it even more. The curse of Britain is at least partly secrecy. The unholy trinity of stupidity, ignorance, and arrogance dominates the minds of the powers that be; whenever they take a decision in secret the consequences are appalling. Only public debate can restrain their fecklessness.

Sad Decline of Leicester's Victoria Park

The state of Victoria Park is now quite laughable. The poorly-maintained football pitches have covered the park with bare patches, to such an extent that even on a warm summer day the number of people using it is much smaller than it was before football activity recommenced a few years ago. When the park was used purely as a park it was highly popular; that is hardly the case today.

            The problems began a couple of years ago. The grass was cut very short in the Autumn, presumably on the expectation of yet another mild winter. Instead the winter was bitterly cold, with snow and heavy rain for months. The football pitches deteriorated into a sea of mud, and have never recovered. When Spring came, the park authorities reseeded, but apparently without watering, seemingly relying on the rain to germinate the grass. A severe drought immediately followed, and none of the grass seed germinated at all. It gradually blew away in the wind, over a period of weeks.

            This did not prevent the pitches being used for football again when the season recommenced, even though they were scarcely fit for play. After a long hard year of muddiness, exactly the same sequence of events took place again with reseeding. During the summer, I noticed that couch grass had begun to claim the edges of the bare bits for itself, something the planted grass was obviously unable to do, resulting in a dark green ring of long, tough grass surrounding each patch of bare brown earth. If the city cannot afford to pay for water for the seed, why cannot they collect rainwater from the many roofs the Council controls? It could also be used to refill the pond, which dries out in the summer.

            Some of the park had, until recently, been preserved from devastation. The area to the Welford Road side had not been marked out as a pitch, and was made into some sort of underused cricket area, which left at least some grass for picnicers and the like. Unfortunately, that too has now been turned into a pitch. It seems the City Council doesn't care about any park users other than the footballers.

           

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the supermarket.

I bumped into Andy. With his long hair and beard, he looks a bit like Gandalf. And he is a wizard at knowing where to scrounge free food and drink. This was on University Road. The last time I bumped into him there, in almost exactly the same place, he was on the way to an inaugural lecture by a newly minted professor. I went along with him and got free wine and snacks, as well as an education in how iffy the pharmaceutical biz is.

            I caught up with him, and found it was exactly the same situation again! What a coincidence. We went up to a lecture theatre, and a new prof gave us a talk on neuroscience. Andy is genuinely interested in this stuff, and would go even if it weren't for the freebies. I think.

            The prof was introduced by a bearded bloke in a suit, who said he was a ProViceChancellor, whatever that is. He was very serious, and told us the prof had been promoted from the post of Reader, and was the bee's knees. It was a Leicester tradition to have these inaugural lectures, in which the new prof communicated to the public the results of his distinguished research. The ProVC believed it was very difficult to give these talks, as the scientists had to decode their stuff into language even I could understand, which many found the hardest thing they had ever done. He said we were starting a little early, but didn't think anyone else would be coming. I was puzzled by this. Was he claiming to be psychic? Of course he was wrong, and a few people drifted in on time, only to find they had missed the start! Boy were they surprised!

            The prof gave an interesting talk, which included some witty animations, just to prove he had a sense of humour, even though he was such a swot. We learned interesting things, such as the fact that some professors can't turn the jargon off, even when they are trying very hard to. We also learned that most of neuroscience is bullshit, as the silly fellows are using the brains of rodents, which are very different from those of larger mammals. Large animals such as us have more white cells than grey ones, whereas the mice are the other way round. The white cells are used for communication. As a result, most of what children are taught in school about the brain is part-smart, at best. Apparently Albert Einstein left his brain to science. Instead of using it for scientific research, the Yank universities just cut it into pieces and divvied it up for souvenirs. We also learned that most of the drugs being used to treat stroke patients don't work, as effective doses have excessively severe side-effects. The prof and his henchpersons have managed to show that a cocktail of different drugs at acceptable dosage levels may produce better outcomes, which is a very important piece of research.

            After the talk, we repaired to the Charles Wilson Building to scarf the freebies. This is a skyscraper in the middle of the Uni, named after an absolute nonentity. He was the gaffer of Glasgow Uni when I was a student there, and I don't know why anyone would name a building after him. Still, that is where the grub is usually doled out for these events. People drifted up quite slowly. Only about half the people who had been to the lecture came to the nosh-up. I was first up for the wine, and it was a very palatable red. Andy went off to another lecture! What an intellectual. There was another of his cronies there, but he didn't hang about very long. Perhaps that was because the scientist types were totally deffing us out. I hung around the edges of various groups of people, in hopes of being sociable, but they acted as though I was invisible. I began to worry about deodorant failure. I had washed quite carefully before I came out, but it had been a warm and humid day. Or was it the grey beard I sport? Perhaps they thought I was a down-and-out, coming to get smashed on the free wine. I only had a couple of small glasses, a few handfuls of peanuts, and some crisps. I noticed that most of the insiders were on the juice, rather than the wine.

            I had hoped to get some tips from the prof on stroke prevention, but was unable to get his attention. This was quite different from the previous gig I went to, when everyone had been very friendly, and we had discussed meta-analysis of treatment methods quite freely.

            After I got home, it occurred to me that it wasn't just me who was being ignored. The whole do had divided up into small cliques of people, who talked only amongst themselves, and completely ignored all the other groups. Since I wasn't a member of any of them, I was imperceptible. Perhaps the people who didn't come up from the lecture knew they wouldn't be welcome. It seems that studying neuroscience appeals to very clannish people. Or makes them that way.