THE BEST OF SCOTTISH BOOKS

Back in April BooksfromScotland celebrated Edwin Morgan’s centenary with a dedicated issue. But the celebrations continue, and Carcanet Press have just released a brand new selection of his poems, chosen by Hamish Whyte. Here, he tells us how he approached curating the collection, and how his appreciation of Edwin Morgan’s work only grows.

 

Edwin Morgan: Centenary Selected Poems
Edited by Hamish Whyte
Published by Carcanet Press

 

‘Why didn’t you write an introduction?’ someone asked me. That, as politicians say without answering, is a good question. My immediate answer was that I wanted the work to speak for itself, without any mediation. Readers who know the poems will need no introduction and readers who don’t will find a wonderful world of words and wonders to navigate and discover. Eddie [I’m more comfortable with ‘Eddie’ than ‘Morgan’, if that may be permitted] himself never liked notes in his books and had to be persuaded, for example, that an index could be a useful aid in Sonnets from Scotland. He did relent slightly in later life. He wore his own learning lightly and always reckoned that readers, if they didn’t know a word or place or reference, could look it up (as he had!). There’s plenty of criticism of Eddie’s work – and reviews – published already to provide background – not least The International Companion to Edwin Morgan (ASLS, 2015).

But what, my interlocutor persisted, guided my choice of poems, what to include and what to leave out? I have long thought that the act of selection (whether for an anthology or a poet’s Selected) is an act of criticism in itself – the reader could work out for themselves the editor’s prejudices and thought processes from what’s there and what’s not. It’s always a mixture of the subjective and objective: the editor’s favourites and what the editor has concluded has stood or will stand the test of time. A bit of favouritism gives a book an extra flavour and will hopefully provoke argument and discussion.

But I’ll try to answer how I went about the selection and articulate what principles (if any) were behind it. I took as template Eddie’s own choice from his work for the New Selected Poems published by Carcanet in 2000 – this in turn was based on the earlier Carcanet Selected Poemsof 1985. I had contributed in a small way to both these volumes by suggesting inclusions to Eddie – some he went with, some he didn’t. In both earlier Selected’s at least half of each volume was devoted to poems from three collections, The Second Life, From Glasgow to Saturn and The New Divan, the last published in 1977. Presumably, these are the poems Eddie wanted his reputation to stand on. Of course, there were many more great poems to come, not least the poems written in the light of his diagnosis of terminal cancer (‘A Gull’ etc.); his Demon sequence and the late confessional Love and a Life (written in his own invented stanza form).

Eddie is on record as saying that if a half dozen or so of his poems were to last, he’d be content. But he didn’t say what these might be! It’s interesting to speculate. ‘Cinquevalli’, certainly, which he admitted was his own favourite. Perhaps: ‘Strawberries’, ‘In Sobieski’s Shield’, ‘The First Men on Mercury’, ‘The Loch Ness Monster’s Song’, ‘A Gull’, ‘Trio’ – to choose off the top of my head. They exemplify Eddie’s best characteristics and qualities: imagination, passion and compassion, verbal virtuosity and ventriloquism, optimistic faith in humankind. Others will choose others. But they are mostly from his two standout collections, TSL and FGTS, from the 60s and 70s. That was the basis for the new selection. Eddie was extraordinarily prolific in the last two decades of his life (after his Collected Poems had come out), so that had to be represented as well – but how much? This is where personal preferences creep in. In the 1990s he became almost obsessed with writing poems of three line rhyming stanzas – I find these increasingly wearisome and occasionally doggerelish. I have included one (here declaring an interest, as it’s dedicated to myself and Henry Heaney, former head of Glasgow University Library, but excused as it’s about the shedding of Eddie’s books and papers to institutions). I think an editor should be allowed some perks of this sort. While on this, I have to say I have included a poem whose subject I had suggested to Eddie, ‘Nineteen Kinds of Barley’ (I had sent the list to him from a holiday on Arran) but which in my defence I consider a good poem. Other personal favourites I have excluded: ‘A Defence’ [on magpies], ‘Pomander’ and ‘Let Glasgow Flourish’. One can’t, as they say, include everything.

A poem that Eddie consistently left out of his Selected’s was ‘Linoleum Chocolate’, from The Second Life. It is a slight poem but I have put it in to illustrate Eddie’s discovery in the 1960s that he could write about anything, even a brief scene seen from a bus. He very usefully dated his poems in that collection and this poem seems to have been the first of his series of deservedly famous Glasgow poems: ‘Glasgow Green’, ‘In the Snack-bar’, ‘King Billy’ and the rest.

I have included nothing from Tales from Limerick Zoo, a pamphlet of slight, mildly amusing animal limericks – written in 1988 at a time of family difficulty for Eddie to keep his mind occupied. He didn’t include them in his 1990 Collected or the 2000 New Selected, and I’ve respected that. The publication is probably a collector’s item now.

I have also taken nothing from Sweeping Out The Dark of 1994, except some poems reprinted there from the 1991 sequence Hold Hands Among the Atoms, which I have reinstated as a separate sequence with the addition of others from that publication – I feel they work better in the context of a series rather than as random poems.

In the 1985 Selected Eddie included a poem rescued from 1956, ‘Night Pillion’ (which prefigured his later Glasgow poems). I have left it as a poem taken from that Selected rather than put it back in its correct chronological position between The Vision of Cathkin Braes and The Second Life simply to illustrate Eddie’s rethink of the poem’s worth.

A lot of experimental work I have excluded – interesting yes, but experimental (and he never stopped experimenting, from the 1950s on) – but it can wait for a new Collected. There is enough in the Centenary Selected I hope to indicate this area of Eddie’s work.

Reasons of space are always given for exclusions and that is the case here. I would have liked to include something (if not everything) from the sequence Planet Wave, Eddie’s short history of the world, but Sonnets from Scotland will have to serve as an exemplar of this kind of sweep of the byways of history (pre- and future) as seen through the eyes of interplanetary explorers. Planet Wave was a collaboration with the jazz musician and composer Tommy Smith. The complete sequence can be found in A Book of Lives (2007). Beasts of Scotland was another joint work – excerpts from which are included in the Centenary Selected.

In conclusion, I hope that the whole range of Eddie’s work, from love poems to science fiction and beyond, is represented in this Centenary Selected. I’ve lived with Eddie’s poems most of my adult life. Familiarity has bred only increased admiration and love for one of the most incredibly various and fascinating bodies of work I know in modern literature. And, to answer the question, why no introduction? Well, this can be it.

 

Edwin Morgan: Centenary Selected Poems edited by Hamish Whyte is published by Carcanet Press, priced £14.99.

You can catch more Edwin Morgan Centenary Celebrations at this year’s online Edinburgh International Book Festival. Book your free spot here.

Richard Holloway’s books are always thoughtful, fascinating explorations on finding meaning in our lives and in the world around us. In his new book, he turns his attention to literature, myth and storytelling, with an emphasis on the Bible, and encourages us to embrace uncertainty. In this extract, he muses on the artistic impulse.

 

Extract taken from Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe
By Richard Holloway
Published by Canongate

 

The American philosopher Arthur Danto developed a closely related idea to capture another human compulsion. He described the human animal, in a Latin phrase, as an ‘ens representans’, a being that represents or repeats its experience of life back to itself, picturing it, telling its story, sym-bolising it, re-presenting it. Give children crayons and paper, and they’ll draw their mummy and daddy and the cat on the mat before the fire. Listen to people in the pub after work and they’ll be telling their day over again to their friends. Artists possess this urge for re-presentation to an obsessional degree. Novelists rehearse the complexities of the human condition in a form many of us constantly return to. The best of them don’t tell us about whatever they are describing; they make it present to us. Here’s an example. This is a poet writing about the experience of reading Tolstoy.

 

If I Could Write Like Tolstoy

 

you’d see a man
dying in a field with a flagstaff still in his hands.

I’d take you close until you saw the grass
blowing around his head, and his eyes

looking up at the white sky. I’d show you
a pale-faced Tsar on a horse under a tree,

breath from its nostrils, creases in gloved fingers
pulling at the reins, perhaps hoof marks in the mud

as he jumps the ditch at the end of the field.
I’d show you men walking down a road,

one of them shouting to the others to get off it.
You’d hear the ice crack as they slipped down the
bank

to join him, bringing their horses with them. You’d
feel

the blood coming out of the back of someone’s
head

warm for a moment, before it touched the snow.
I’d show you a dead man come back to life.

Then I’d make you wait – for pages and pages –
before you saw him go to his window

and look at how the moon turns half a row
of trees silver, leaves the other half black.

 

Painters are also compulsive reflectors of what is presented to them in life. Cézanne said the landscape thought itself in him. And some of us can’t stop wondering if the universe might not be thinking itself in us.

But art does more than record and reflect the tumultuous realities that present themselves to our senses, or to wonder at them and impose patterns of meaning upon them. It is also a way of marking our brief moment on earth before we hurtle into the past, like the famous graffiti ‘Kilroy Was Here’ that American GIs etched onto innumerable sites in Europe during Second World War. There’s a Scottish painting by David Allan that captures this poignant aspect of art. Done in 1775, and called The Origin of Painting, it is based on a story by the Roman historian Pliny about a young Corinthian woman who sketched the outline of the shadow of her lover on a wall before he went off to war, so that she would have something to remind her of how he looked when he went away, possibly never to return. That’s the impulse that prompts lovers to carve their entwined names onto the trunk of a tree to prove that once they were here. And it’s the impulse behind the journals kept by writers that enable us to go back into their lives and be moved by how they managed their journey through this fleeting world. They remind us that we are all flitting through a lighted hall towards the great unknown, and some of us try to leave a print or mark of our presence before returning to the dark.

All generations have left behind traces or representations of the world they encountered and the stories they told to make sense of it. Centuries later we examine what they have left behind and try to figure out what they made of their time on earth and what they thought came after. A possible reading of the clues our ancestors left at Qafzeh in Israel 100,000 years ago or at Lake Mungo in Australia 42,000 years ago, is that they saw death as the entrance to another phase of existence, imagined as a version of this one. The red ochre they painted on their dead may be a symbol or representation of that belief. It may be a glimpse of what we call a ‘religious’ belief, ‘religion’ being the slippery term we use to suggest the presence or existence of a world or reality beyond this one, with death as the connecting door between them.

 

Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe by Richard Holloway is published by Canongate, priced £16.99.

You can catch Richard Holloway talking with Ruth Wishart at this year’s online Edinburgh International Book Festival. Book your free spot here.

Scotland’s Makar, Jackie Kay wrote her play The Lamplighter to mark the two hundredth anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in 2007. This month, Picador have published the script, which reads as a profound, impassioned choral poem, and is essential reading for everyone. Here, we publish an extract: affecting, stunning and hard to forget.

 

Extract taken from The Lamplighter
By Jackie Kay
Published by Picador

 

Scene 6: The Story Coming Back

 

FX:
(Exterior a place of memories: West African village. The sounds of children playing.)

LAMPLIGHTER:
I remember back before –
when I played with my friends in my
own country, and time was long
And trees were tall, I remember how my brother
and I watched out for kidnappers.
And how good my father was shaping the wood and metal, and
visits to the snake spirit, how some healers could really heal.
I remember how the Crocodile River,
ran fast. I remember my brother ran fast.
I remember our home with its cone-shaped roof, how my
brother and I belonged to our entire village. I remember the
days I lived before I came here, the life before.
The life before, the life I lived,
the life when I could breathe,
when I could smell the smells
and taste the tastes.

FX:
(Fade West African village. Cane field. Suggested rather than stated.)

LAMPLIGHTER:
Seems another me
lived that blessed life, another girl-
girl, deep in the interior country
far away from the coast,
a girl who had never ever seen the sea,
a girl who climbed to the top of trees.
I like to think she is up there, still,
mysterious, magical girl,
that she would never ever
hear this story.

MARY:
I wanted to run from that story.

CONSTANCE:
I wanted to pretend it never happened.

BLACK HARRIOT:
I wanted a break.

LAMPLIGHTER:
But no matter how fast I ran from my story,
No matter how many years,
The story just kept coming in and coming back
Like the sea to the shore
Like the sea always comes back to the shore.

BLACK HARRIOT:
Nobody told my story before.
You better listen good, girl.
Or I’m going to tell it twice!

MARY:
I wanted to be still and quiet.
Never to tell it.
When I lived it
sun up to sun set.

BLACK HARRIOT:
I was brought up on the Guinea Coast

CONSTANCE:
Imagine how much gold they took
To name a Coast after it.

MARY:
Imagine how much ivory

CONSTANCE:
To call a Coast Ivory Coast.

BLACK HARRIOT:
Imagine how many slaves

MARY:
To name a Coast Slave Coast?

CONSTANCE:
On the front of the 22-carat gold Guinea
There is an elephant and a castle,
Beneath the effigy of a right-facing King.

MACBEAN:
‘Elephant and Castle’ – very popular name for British pubs.

BLACK HARRIOT:
I was brought up on the Guinea Coast
When I was a young girl.
I was taken to St Kitts and sold
To Big Fat Planter
When I was a young girl.
I had two children
Their father was Big Fat Planter
When I was a young girl.

 

The Lamplighter by Jackie Kay is published by Picador, priced £9.99.

You can catch Jackie Kay’s Makar2Makar event with Joy Harjo and Suzanne Bonnar at this year’s online Edinburgh International Book Festival. Book your free spot here.

 

Nature writing in Scotland is in rude health, and one of our premiere nature writers, Kathleen Jamie, has edited a collection of essays on Scotland’s landscape and wildlife showcasing the variety of nature writing today. We’re thrilled to share Jess Smith’s piece, ‘The Ruling Class’, in this month’s issue.

 

‘The Ruling Class’ by Jess Smith
Taken from Antlers of Water: Writing on the Nature and Environment of Scotland
Edited by Kathleen Jamie
Published by Canongate

 

The Ruling Class

Scotland’s windswept heather glens and snow-capped mountains, where balladeers sang of lonely lovers and broken clansmen limped home to low-roofed crofts after a long journey, is also the kingdom of the mighty red deer.

The red deer exist amid these magnificent heights, indigenous like the proud Celtic warriors who once ran barefoot across stone and peat to swim in the ice-cold waters of scattered lochans.

In the lower region of the forest floor, ambushed by bog and green marshes, it is easy to imagine the haunt of the mythical cross-legged Broonie of childish nightmares. Caledonian pine cradling osprey nests of stick and twig grow side by side with the ancient oaks believed to have been planted when the Romans left Scotia’s shores.

Rowan trees sprout from stone crags, defying the natural process of ground-held roots. Yet they grow healthily to scatter red berries across a sea of moorland and open countryside to feed flocks of visiting fieldfare.

Where jagged cairn locks horns with thunderclouds and eagles soar, there is no other place on earth more fitting a terrain for the herds of Highland Scotland.

 

One may wander among their territory for weeks and see neither hide nor hair of them. However this all changes at the rut, when the hinds are in season and a king is chosen. He must challenge and be challenged. Numbers can range from a few dozen to thousands but only one can dominate. At such a crucial time it would be a mistake to judge these usually quiet and shy animals as mild and meek – make no mistake, there is an intelligent savagery about the battle for control. It is precise, with no room for error. Mother Nature in her wisdom manages this powerful conflict: she has given the warriors their weapons, which grow like iron spikes from their rigid skulls.

 

High upon the tops an early warning of winter had sprinkled a dusting of November snow. The rut had begun! Across mountainous glens, braesides and thick forests and by deep lochan banks, the mating call can be heard for miles. The monarchs were on full alert. Their royal position was under threat. Challengers for the throne lined up to take control.

Twixt two formidable mountains the herd thudded flat the heather and dying bracken. Loose stones broke away from crags of jagged rock, rolling like thunder from almost vertical braes.

Who knows where the young stag appeared from, but he desired this harem, craved the territory and he was there to fight for it, a right afforded by Nature herself.

He had prepared well in advance by urinating across the bracken, leaving his smell on tree trunks and any place he could spread a trail for the harem to follow. Eager to womb another generation of their species, the hinds followed, as many as he’d ever seen, ready and willing to give their adoration to the future monarch of the glen. Each nosed his aroma, thick on the breeze.

His body stiffened as the rhythm of his loins grew ever more intense. The oncoming fury with the master would determine his strength and a wisdom offered to Nature’s chosen few. Others have failed: heavier, more powerful stags. What made him think that he might succeed?

His youthful lungs swallowed the sweet air; each breath sent testosterone racing through his body like mercury boiling to its limit.

The ‘play’ was imminent. He was never more ready to act it out.

Antlers thrashed the ground to lift and tear heather from its peaty roots, mixed with clumps of sphagnum moss. He roared from the pit of his stomach. From a distance he knew that he looked and sounded the part of a muscle-bound warrior, a mighty foe. Perhaps though, to the main player’s eye, one who had not yet mastered the art of deception. Was he just giving an appearance of a larger than normal beast or was he, in truth, a serious challenger? Would the mighty monarch see him as a worthy opponent or perhaps nothing more than a fly in a spider’s web, easily caught and disposed of?

The youngster had made his decision. To run away would be futile: it was rut time; the master of the herd would chase and trample him to death. He had to carry his battle plan forward. He roared from the pit of his stomach, so loud that it echoed along the river and across the glen.

The sound pierced the ears of the God-like ruler who stood erect on a jagged pinnacle of grey and white quartz stone. Who was this young buck that would take on the father of the herd without awareness of his formidable might? It was unlike a stranger to approach; yet not one of his seed surely?

From his viewpoint the old stag could see how his youthful opponent held himself. Unlike his own sixteen-pointers, the young stag had only twelve-pointed antlers but that didn’t mean weakness: it was how he used them that mattered.

Silently the master of the Highlands approached, carrying his heavy antler-bound head like a jewelled crown. He’d sharpened his crowning glory into needlepoints for this battle to remain chieftain of his clan. There was too much at stake. One one wrong move and his reign would be over.

From the corner of his eye the young stag watched the mighty beast step down from his vantage point of quartz, circle a patch of stony ground and snort the air.

Thumping heartbeats, loud as thunder inside his head, awakened every hair of his hide to stand stiff along his spine.

For one tiny moment fear crawled inside his testosterone-

filled arteries to momentarily cool his ardour. Here stood a mountain of a stag. Rays of intermittent sunshine glistened through those sharpened antlers like a headful of Highland dirks. But it was too late. The duel was imminent.

Avoid those pointers, he warned himself, but only the learned know how. He had little experience, had never fought before. A young ‘nose to the wind buck’ without knowledge would come out bleeding, that’s for sure!

He had wandered among several herds before settling on this crown. Watched others take on those red giants, picking up on their movements, sidestepping the torso stabs, and learned that heavy breathing and snorting nostrils told a tale of weakness – if there was the slightest sound of broken rhythm in both the snort and the breath, he might falter and fall!

 

That day neither master nor student failed to show any resistance to the oncoming crash of antlers. They faced each other full on. Heads were raised high on strong stiff necks as each roared from way down in his throat. Their thick manes of blackish brown bristled and shimmered in the dawn sunrise. The main bout was imminent!

For weeks lesser deer had tackled each other. Young stags had fought while the chief watched from his vantage point upon the pinnacle of rock. Instinctively he knew who would cause him problems but there had been none to worry him until this strong-backed stranger arrived. This youngster who had moved along his borders had been eyeing him up for days. He’d watched him sniffing the harem. There would be a fight but would the young stag have enough courage to see it through to the end? His strong muscled legs, stiff back and penetrating black eyes seemed already to be walking in the monarch’s footsteps and he held his head high, a sure sign of the pride which both had in abundance.

 

For a minute they stood at a safe distance and stared eye to flashing eye; then the battle began. For over an hour they fought, enraged with raw male dominance, locked together with nothing but brute strength. No man or beast could have intervened in such a fight. Every thud of head, turn of body was driven by raw power of muscle and bone as they rammed against any tree trunk that got in their way. Even the jagged rock did not hinder that almighty struggle for the crown. It should have been the challenger’s crown; he was younger, stronger, powerful. The chieftain’s plaid was ripped and torn; he should have fallen but for one single factor!

Wisdom gave the old master an advantage. Not the sharp points to his antlers, but the fact that he knew the terrain, the secure rocks and where to sidestep. What a force he used against the youngster to ram his left side, lifting him into the air so high that he lost all balance!

Over and over he tumbled off the precarious cliff edge, like a thistle-head being blown on the wind, like driftwood toppling from a raging waterfall.

His fight was over; the king would rule for another year.

Remarkably the young buck found his footing, he leapt on several narrow ledges and survived. But he was cut, broken and in pain. He limped onto the secluded forest floor. The battle was well fought; he’d lost to a wiser foe. He wandered far, took security behind a granite roofless ruin amid dead bracken and sapling pine to lick his open wounds.

He would join that clan but only when his opponent allowed it. And if a poacher’s gun or gamekeeper’s fancy didn’t cut short his life-force, he’d face his lord and master once again in the coming year, as a wiser, stronger buck. He had not challenged the monarch without learning wisdom from he of the mighty antlers, his cabar feidh.

 

Stags too injured and old will become loners and roam at will. Perhaps some will remain with the herd but only at a distance. Those aged and too far gone will give up the ghost in some secluded bog where Mother Nature directs her buzzards, red kite and raven to feast upon their flesh. And when the bog spews up their bones, the sun will bleach them bonny.

Young stags and those veterans of a similar battle will stay within the confines of a ‘male-only club’ and toe the line.

Winter’s frosted drum will bang for the chieftain to guide his pregnant harem to lower ground away from the bitter chill of north winds.

Life within the clan will centre around feeding and survival until spring sends them upwards to live in relative peace on the higher slopes.

Unlike man, their only predator, red deer do not harbour grudges. They do not pick quarrels or remain within the herd with aggressive tendencies.

They simply know and live by the rules.

When the rut returns, Mother Nature’s easel will be in place with purple and crimson flashes of paint to splash her canvas.

No mortal will eye her portrait: that honour she has given over to the red deer of Scotland’s mountains and glens.

It is their story.

 

Antlers of Water: Writing on the Nature and Environment of Scotland edited by Kathleen Jamie is published by Canongate, priced £20.00.

You can catch Kathleen Jamie talking with contributors Chitra Ramaswamy and Amanda Thompson at this year’s online Edinburgh International Book Festival. Book your free spot here.

Cassius X is more than a biography;  it tells the remarkable story of global icon Muhammad Ali converting to Islam and preparing for his infamous title fight against former convict Sonny Liston, set against the most dramatic social landscape – racism and segregation, the rise of civil rights, the mafia’s controlling interests in boxing, the origins of soul music and the historic wars at the heart of the Nation of Islam, which eventually led to the assassination of Malcolm X.

The book is a prequel to Stuart Cosgrove’s award-winning trilogy of books on the history of soul music – Detroit 67, Memphis 68 and Harlem 69 – and uses intensive research and sweeping storytelling  to shine a new light on a legend in the days before he became an icon. Here, he shares a playlist to accompany the book.

 

Cassius X: A Legend in the Making
By Stuart Cosgrove
Published by Polygon

                                                          

 

Boxing and Soul: A Playlist

 

‘Night Train’ by James Brown and the Famous Flames (King, 1961)

Sonny Liston’s signature tune. A blistering R&B reworking of Jimmy Forrest’s St Louis jump-jazz classic.

 

‘You Beat Me To The Punch’ by Mary Wells (Motown, 1962)

Smokey Robinson uses the metaphors of boxing to enrich this early Motown love song.

 

‘First Round Knockout’ by Joe Frazier (Motown, 1975)

Disco king Van McCoy oversees the northern soul rarity by heavyweight champion Smokin’ Joe Frazier.

 

‘Love TKO’ by Teddy Pendergrass (Philadelphia International, 1980)

A master vocalist sings this great Philly love song written by Cecil Womack. The song uses the metaphors of boxing to convey lost love. Surely, the only time that the technical knockout (TKO) has made it into music.

 

‘Doin’ The Ali Shuffle’ Alvin Cash (Mar-V-lus 1967)

Chicago funk maestro Alvin Cash pays homage to Muhammad Ali and his trademark canvas dance – the Ali shuffle.

 

‘Knock Out’ by Margie Joseph (HCRC, 1982)

The great Mississippi soul singer who was often compared to Aretha Franklin survived the shift into disco and club music and this was one of her best-selling records.

 

‘Soul Power’ by James Brown (King, 1971)

The Godfather powers through this funk anthem, the title track of the now famous concert that supported Muhammad Ali v. George Foreman’s ‘Rumble in the Jungle’.

 

‘Night Train’ by Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames (Columbia, 1964)

The organ-led Mod version of Sonny Liston’s signature tune from Fame’s album Rhythm And Blues At The Flamingo.

 

The Spinners ‘I’ll Be Around’ (Atlantic 1972)

Not boxing-themed, but a standout track from the soundtrack to When We Were Kings, the 1999 Oscar-winning documentary about Ali and Foreman’s ‘Rumble in the Jungle’.

 

‘Knock Him Down Whiskey’ by Sugar Ray Robinson (King, 1953)

The legendary boxer leads a jazz and R&B tribute to whisky. Sugar Ray is supported by Earl ‘Fatha’ Hynes and his Orchestra.

 

Cassius X: A Legend in the Making by Stuart Cosgrove is published by Polygon, priced £17.99.

You can catch Stuart Cosgrove talking Val McDermid at this year’s online Edinburgh International Book Festival. Book your free spot here.

Not quite a novel, not quite an essay, Scotland’s Charco Press new publication by Luis Sagasti, A Musical Offering, is a series of fragments, or prose patterns, that celebrate and muse on the wonder of music, silence and storytelling. It’s a most beguiling read, and here, we share an extract for you to enjoy.

 

Extracts from A Musical Offering
By Luis Sagasti
Published by Charco Press

 

No one knows why an eighteenth-century Count, with no problems other than those that come with his position – palace intrigues, a damsel’s jealousy, the tedium of protocol – is unable to make peace with his conscience and get to sleep at night, as is God’s will and his own fervent desire. Like all of us, Count Keyserling believes that lying awake in the dark when everyone else has left for the land of Nod is a form of punishment. A punishment that equalises: insomnia makes no distinctions when it comes to expiating sins. As the nobility have always done, Count Keyserling attacks the symptom rather than the cause: he commissions the cantor of St. Thomas of Leipzig, one Johann Sebastian Bach, to create a composition that will lull him to sleep at last. In recompense he offers a silver goblet overflowing with gold louis. There was no need for such generosity; after all, it was the Count himself who had secured the composer his post in the Court of Saxony. Bach more than rises to the occasion, composing an aria to which he adds thirty separate variations. The compositions are linked not by the melody but by the bass line, the harmonic foundation.

The person charged with delivering these musical sleeping pills is an extraordinary harpsichordist who not only is capable of playing anything that is put in front of him but can also read a score upside down, like a rock star playing a guitar behind his back. His name is Johann Gottlieb Goldberg. He is young, which is to say impetuous and pretentious. Nevertheless, he practises the most difficult passages in the evenings, to avoid surprises. And he tries to find the right tempo that will help the nobleman drift off.

In honour of its first performer, and thanks to the alacrity with which he undertook his charge, posterity would christen this series of compositions the Goldberg Variations.

 

*

 

Despite his surname, the Count is Russian, and an ambassador to the Court of Saxony. This makes for a reassuring diplomatic immunity, soirées (or rather, the palace lives in a permanent state of soirée), wild boar and candied treats in the evenings – and insomnia. Keyserling has a valet, who is more like a confidant. His name is Vasya and he only speaks Russian. Through the open door of the bedchamber, the music drifts in along with the draft – and sleep too, it is hoped. Vasya’s task is to shut the door once he hears the Count snoring. Spokoynoy nochi, he says just after ten. Good night. The valet leaves the bedchamber, taking with him the candelabrum, which he carries to the adjacent room where Goldberg is waiting. He places it on a table and nods to indicate that the recital should begin. Keyserling opens his eyes, observes the half-darkness of the room where the music comes from, and closes them again. The bedcovers are pulled up to his chin and he wears a nightcap. Vasya, standing to one side, follows Goldberg’s hands; Goldberg, the score.

The next day, the Count makes an observation, almost an order. The lapse between each variation should be shorter: when this gap of silence occurs, it is filled with expectation, making it impossible for him to fall asleep. On that first night, however, Vasya hears the Count snoring before the seventh variation begins. He closes the door to the room; Goldberg, the lid of the harpsichord. Where the corridor forks, they bid each other good night in Russian and in German. The valet descends the staircase. Goldberg heads for the other wing of the house in search of wine and conversation.

 

*

 

There is a more or less widely held view that music and sleep share certain convolutions. In truth, they inhabit the present moment in very different ways. Music promises the pleasure of the future: anticipating a melody that flutters a few steps ahead is the dessert we savour even as we raise another steaming forkful to our lips. The present of sleep is pure mother’s milk; there is nothing beyond it.

 

Should we see Goldberg as a reflection of Scheherazade? Each night, she staves off death with an unfinished story. This is no mean feat: to leave the Caliph with his mouth watering yet his stomach sated at the same time. Goldberg, on the other side of the looking glass, tells the same stories time and again, delivering the Count his little death every night.

 

A Musical Offering by Luis Sagasti is published by Charco Press, priced £8.99.

 

 

Universal Basic Income has become a hot topic, especially since the global COVID-19 outbreak. Annie Miller has been an advocate for UBI for over 30 years, and has written two books that explain the issue for easy understanding. Here, Annie summarises the benefits of adopting Universal Basic Income.

 

Essentials of Basic Income
By Annie Miller
Published by Luath Press

A Basic Income Pocketbook
By Annie Miller
Published by Luath Press

 

 

Essentials of Basic Income and A Basic Income Pocketbook are both by Annie Miller and published by Luath Press, priced £4.99 and £9.99.

We may be enjoying the wonderful nature of Scotland as we take a break in these summer weeks, but we also be aware not to take our landscape for granted. In his book, Cottongrass Summer, conservationist Roy Dennis, shares seasonal essays that both celebrate Scotland’s natural spaces and warn us to think on and take care of the land around us. In this summer essay, he shares his thoughts on the gorgeous red squirrel.

 

Cottongrass Summer: Essays of a Naturalist Through the Year
By Roy Dennis
Published by Saraband

 

A good day with red squirrels

On the last day of August 2015, my fieldwork was with red squirrels rather than ospreys. It was a magical day. At noon, I called in on old friends at Amat Estate in Sutherland to see how the squirrels in their woodlands had done. We sat at the kitchen table looking out at their bird table above the river. Soon there was one squirrel, then another, and in the end a total of seven beautiful red squirrels, all of them, bar one, born in 2015.

This area was where we, the Highland Foundation for Wildlife, working with The European Nature Trust and the landowners and staff of Alladale, Amat and Croick estates, translocated thirty-six red squirrels that I had caught in Moray and Strathspey during February and March 2013.

When I left the house I saw three more in the gardens and another ran across the public road as I drove off. Eleven squirrels – no wonder my friends said to me how much they loved the project and what pleasure so many visitors had gained from our successful work to restore red squirrels to this part of the Highlands, where they had died out nearly fifty years before. Two really young squirrels had also recently been seen in the nearby Alladale pinewoods and, judging by the number of eaten pine cones on the forest floor that I witnessed, red squirrels were indeed alive and well there also.

Later in the day, after checking out a satellite-tagged golden eagle location, I drove along Loch Broom from Ullapool. It was great to know that those pinewoods also had red squirrels again. In the winter of 2008 and 2009, I organised and carried out our first translocation of red squirrels under a licence from Scottish Natural Heritage. This pioneering project was carried out with the enthusiasm and support of Dundonnell Estate. We moved forty-three red squirrels from Moray and Strathspey, with the support of private landowners and people who feed squirrels in their gardens.

Two squirrels were live trapped in any one place, checked by Jane Harley, a Strathspey vet, and then driven the same day to the release site. Each squirrel was transported in a nest box containing hay, nuts and sweet apple, and the boxes were fixed in trees in groups of four at the release site in Dundonnell woodlands. At each site six nut feeders were also erected and these were kept restocked during the first winter by Alasdair MacDonald, the estate keeper. Young squirrels were observed in the first summer and the population grew rapidly, with one enterprising squirrel even walking over the mountains to Leckmelm, near Ullapool. The owners of the garden reported to me that it was male, so in March 2009 I released a female in the same garden, and that spring they bred and reared young. The local people thought it was magic – a bit like a ‘lonely hearts’ club’ for squirrels! I called there again in January 2020 and my friends, John and Ann, told me that their garden was still a haven for squirrels.

The translocation of red squirrels to Dundonnell was so successful that in March 2012 we moved twenty more from Dundonnell to three private estates on Loch Broomside. Again, the squirrels responded, and it’s wonderful to know that red squirrels have spread throughout all the available woodlands and now occur in some of the gardens in Ullapool. The squirrels were last seen in these parts of Wester Ross in the 1960s and 1970s, and it’s very satisfying to think there are probably now between 500 and 1,000 squirrels between Dundonnell and Ullapool. At the Sutherland site, red squirrels have spread ten miles or more down the glen, and I received a wonderful eyewitness account of a squirrel boldly swimming across the River Carron to get to conifers on the other side of the water. By 2018, they had reached Rosehall and Strathoykell. It’s been very exciting to see how well these wonderful wee creatures have responded, given the chance.

That’s why I then had discussions with SNH and was granted a five-year licence to carry out further translocations in the Scottish Highlands, north and west of the present range. It’s a great way to create new populations isolated from the threat of grey squirrels and their disease risk. Under the licence, Trees for Life are also carrying out a series of translocations to suitable locations. My foundation has also more recently successfully restored red squirrels to Inverewe Gardens in Wester Ross and to Loch Ossian in Lochaber. I think our pioneering fieldwork has been so successful that it should be copied in many areas of mainland UK, instead of just accepting the presence of grey squirrels.

 

Cottongrass Summer: Essays of a Naturalist Through the Year by Roy Dennis is published by Saraband, priced £9.99

BooksfromScotland are kicking off a new feature series ‘Introducing. . .’ where we publish work from up-and-coming writers based in Scotland.

We start the series with Andrés N Ordorica, a queer Latinx writer and educator based in Edinburgh. He creates worlds with characters who are from neither here nor there (ni de aquí, ni de allá). His fiction and poetry has been featured in Confluence Medway, The Acentos Review, Gutter, and 404 ink Magazine. His work has been anthologised in Ceremony (Tapsalteerie Press), We Were Always Here (404 ink), and The Colour of Madness (Stirling Publishing). His non-fiction has been published by The Skinny, Bella Caledonia, and Somewhere: For Us. Currently, he is working on a novel that explores love, same-sex desire, and the intense search for belonging through the eyes of two young men from the same Mexican immigrant family at two distinct points in their family history.

 

The Fountain

I was walking into Princess Street Gardens on a sunny day. In the middle of a conversation with my friends. You were waiting there like a split infinitive ready to quickly interject at any given moment. I don’t remember what I was trying to say to them, but I remember I never finished the thought.

You were exactly how I imagined you would be if ever this moment happened. Your stance, that aloofness, the golden hair on your sun kissed legs. All exactly how I knew it would be. Some white patches and fine lines may have appeared, but we are who we were seven years ago at the end of the day. You stood there looking at your phone dressed in a linen shirt and shorts, vintage sunglasses, and loafers. Looking ever the part of the posh boy abroad. The cadence of your voice and how you punctuate moments with your hands were exactly the same. How you use your deeper register when you feel uncomfortable had not changed. You were always serious when you let your voice go deeper. You were always drunk when you camped up. But, who’s to say what was the real version of you? I never quite knew back then. Went with whatever I was given on any given day.

The sun was hot, and we were surrounded by throngs of tourists, my friends went on without me. It was I who made the first move. It was I who went up to you. Even though it felt like you were waiting there ready to pounce. I don’t know why I did because you did not deserve such generosity. You did not deserve me mending the years that went by without you apologising. But I was able to forgive you in that moment because I wanted to win. I wanted to have the upper hand. I wanted to tell myself that I had indeed forgiven you. So up to you I went to put an end to the previous seven years of not speaking:

—Hello stranger.

You slowly took in my presence as it started to dawn on you what was happening. As you started to realise who I was. You straightened up, combed your hands through your hair and said:

—Oh my God!

—What an unexpected surprise.

It was true. I did not expect that I would be attempting to resolve our past while out at lunch on a Tuesday afternoon. In a city, in a country, so far from where we first met. In all honesty, I never thought we’d share the same air ever again. But here we were.

I removed my sunglasses to force you to look into my eyes and take all of me in. I wanted you to remember me in this moment as having power, being calm and in control. I wanted you to remember my civility and maturity. Two things you did not have even though you were the older of us two. I wanted you to see me as I was seven years onward. Seven years of evolution and happiness.

Eleven thousand miles divided us. But in an instant, I traversed that distance by noticing you, taking in the moment, and going over and saying hello. Easily I could have disappeared into the masses of foreign voices and never would you have known we shared such close proximity. This boldness was not like me. I had never felt more powerful than I did in that moment. I was able to be both. I was able to be both the young man you had erased from your life seven years prior, and the older man who was willing to say hello and let bygones be bygones. I was all the things you never were.

I was kind and asked you questions about your life. Things I knew from friends and the occasional stalk on social media. With interest I asked about your work, your family, your years sans our friendship. All the while I remembered the happy times we had together, and of course the fallout. I remembered the night we decided to drunkenly take the friendship to the next level. I remembered you throwing me in the air on a dance floor as a jazz quartet played big band songs. We downed whisky from crystal tumblers and set about making poor life choices. I remembered the soft whispers back at our flat, tiptoeing from my room to yours and attempting to not wake the others. I remembered the smell of musk that you wore; stored in a pretty glass bottle that came from Morocco. I remember your wardrobe of Victorian military uniforms and pinstripe dinner jackets. Your great grandfather’s smoking pipe that rested on your bookshelf. Its smell of leather and vanilla tobacco hanging in the air. A room of curiosities curated with such specificity. Why did I think all of this was so interesting back then? How did I not see it was all a set? You were always acting, never willing to give anyone a true sense of yourself. You were always waiting to be written about.

You asked about me, but not about him (which felt purposeful). Your eyes were fixed on my wedding band. You took in the surroundings and realised he must be the reason I was there in that moment. In the seven years, that we did not speak I had made a life. I moved forward with myself and continued my story without you as a character. With enthusiasm I mentioned his name, told you about our flat, laughed about adulthood and responsibilities. My wedding ring gave me power in that moment. It meant that great things had happened for me while you were gone. Things that could have been yours to know had you not vanished from my life. But there was no bitterness in me anymore. Speaking to you removed any venom that might have remained. I was able to let go of all of that when I walked over to you.

Our catchup had reached a natural conclusion and I said goodbye to you. Put my sunglasses back on and disappeared into the throng. In that moment, I was both. I was the old me that held anger for how you treated me in our last few months together and I was the new me who would go on the rest of his life knowing life had happened exactly as it should have. I was both things you could never be. I was forgiven and I had forgiven.

The morning after we spent the night together, you had to leave. You were going on a two-week journey across north Africa. You hurriedly filled your vintage suitcase with odds and ends. We were both hungover, I brought you coffee. I sat on your bed and played through the night before. The heat of your mouth on my navel, the way you devoured my body, the way it felt to come with you. Your hands as they explored me, the whispers of things that we shouldn’t have said but did. I remember walking you to the front door. Your cab was waiting and in the morning glow of summer light, you looked ever the angel. I kissed you on the cheek and told you that I hoped your trip goes well. When you came back, you would be different, but I did not know that then. Did not know how you would stop speaking to me and gaslight all my recollections. Would erase the glass tumblers, the big band, the all-night dancing, the many mistakes. You’d choose to forget it, but I would not.

***

When I finally found my friends, they handed me an iced cold beer and I happily took it. Popped the tab and greedily gulped some. The sun was shining over Princes Street Gardens. The castle stood tall in the foreground. They asked about you, and I quickly summarised your time in my life, leaving out the unhappy memories. I presented your story in a kinder light. I was a new person in that moment. I was more powerful than I had ever been. After seven years chained to the memory of what went wrong, I had learned to let go. I sipped my beer and let the scenery anchor me to my new life. The fountain sparkled in the summer light and a rainbow shone in its mist and I was finally at peace.

 

You can find out more about Andrés N. Ordorica at andresordorica.com and on Twitter  @AndresNOrdorica.

We have an abundance of fictional detectives here in Scotland, but that doesn’t mean there’s no time to get acquainted with a new one! Introducing DCI Grant McVicar, who has been called in to investigate after a body has been found in Castle Semple loch . . .

 

Extract taken from Drown For Your Sins
By Diarmid MacArthur
Published by Sparsile Books

 

The uniformed constable pulled a face as he waved the grimecrusted silver pick-up through the police cordon, then turned back to his post. As it trundled past him and into the car park, a deep voice boomed out.

‘Constable, make sure those camper vans don’t bugger off…’

The vehicle pulled in to a space and the imposing figure of DCI Grant McVicar got out, stretched and rubbed his hand over his shaved head as he stared out over the calm waters of Castle Semple loch; waters that today had been sullied…

He had wakened with a vague, undefined feeling of unease that he couldn’t explain. No doubt it would come to him, but for now he turned his gaze along the car park, already a hive of activity; uniformed cops were taking statements from rather shocked-looking members of the public, SOCOs were busy on the three pontoons that stretched into the loch and there were a number of emergency vehicles parked indiscriminately, including an ambulance and a red van with an empty trailer attached. He presumed that the semi-rigid rescue boat was already out on the water. There were a few buildings situated at the far end of the car park, including Castle Semple Rowing club, outside which the activity seemed to be centred. He sighed heavily and set off towards the epicentre of the investigation; he would keep an open mind until he had spoken to his team, but already he had the feeling that it was going to be a murder investigation. Despite the implications, he felt the first frisson of excitement run up his spine…

As he approached, he could see the unmistakable figure of Detective Sergeant Quinn issuing instructions to a couple of uniformed officers. He frowned. He still hadn’t made his mind up about his new assistant…

*

DS Briony Quinn regarded the tall figure of her boss as he strode along the car park; she glanced surreptitiously at her watch; unfortunately, he noticed and rewarded her with a frown.

‘Aye, I know, sorry…right, what have we got. Who all’s here?’

“Mornin’ Briony” might have been nice…

‘Okay, Boss, two female rowers capsized at the far end of the loch after hittin’ what turned out to be a body.’

‘What time?’

‘Just before eight, they reckon. Weren’t wearin’ watches, apparently.’

‘Have you taken a statement?’

Of course I bloody have…

‘Aye, but they’re in shock. No wonder, mind you; the body was naked and they think that the hands and feet were tied.’

‘Hm, definitely sounds like murder, then – how did they get back up here?’

‘They managed to wade ashore – it’s pretty shallow up there – then a local resident took them in and called us. There’s a few bungalows up at the end…’

‘Aye, I can see them from my house. Right, is anyone up there just now?

‘Cliff took one of the rowing club’s launches up, just to secure the locus. I’ve got uniforms along at the far end tapin’ off the area, just in case. The place is a warren of paths, it’s a bloody nightmare…’

‘I know, I sometimes cycle down here…’

He suddenly realised that he hadn’t. Not for months, not since…

No…

Their conversation was interrupted by the sound of a powerful Zephyr outboard – they turned and saw the Water Support Rescue Vehicle approach and draw in alongside the central pontoon, on which a number of figures had gathered. A black body-bag lay in the centre of the boat and Grant turned angrily to his sergeant.

‘Who the hell authorised removal of the body. I always like to have a look…’

‘Sorry, Boss, it was Doctor Napier. I said you’d probably want to see where it was found but she refused to wait any longer.’

His anger subsided slightly – even he wouldn’t dare cross the formidable and experienced pathologist, Margo “Nippy” Napier. As he frowned in the direction of the pontoon, he saw her petite, wiry form step nimbly into the boat and unzip the body bag.

‘Aye, fair enough…right, who else is here?’

‘Well, as I said, Cliff ’s up at the end of the loch, Kiera is out co-ordinatin’ the uniforms round the paths and Faz is on his way. Actually, I think that’s him arrivin’ now. Sam’s in Dundee on leave, won’t make it back until Monday.’

Clifford Ford, a young and enthusiastic DC, was a relatively new member of the team, still anxious to prove himself; DC Kiera Fox had been with him for a few years, her short red hair matching her short temper, especially where the criminal fraternity was concerned. They were capable officers who could be left to get on with the job in hand.

Grant looked back along the car park as DC Faz Bajwa jogged towards them. The black turban of the young Sikh officer contrasted with the white t-shirt and khaki cargo shorts that showed off his muscular physique and, as he approached, he flashed a wide grin through his dark beard.

‘Morning Boss, morning Sarge. Sorry, was playing football; right, what can I do?’

‘Get back along the car park and interview the occupants of those three camper vans. They’ve got German plates on them but they’ll probably speak English and they might have witnessed something if they’ve been here overnight.’

Faz smiled again.

‘Sure, Boss, Catch you in a bit.’

They watched as he jogged back along the car park.

‘Bloody runs everywhere, that boy, eh.’

Grant gritted his teeth. For some reason, his sergeant’s slightly uplifted east coast “eh” at the end of her sentence irritated him.

‘Hm. Right, let’s get down and see what Nippy has to say. Brace yourself…’

 

Drown For Your Sins by Diarmid MacArthur is published by Sparsile Books, priced £9.99

We’re big fans of Charco Press here at BooksfromScotland, so we’re delighted to give you a taster of their latest release, Holiday Heart by Margarita Garcia Robayo.

 

Extract taken from Holiday Heart
By Margarita Garcia Robayo
Published by Charco Press

 

That night, after they’re all showered and fed, Lucía logs onto Skype and calls Pablo so the kids can say hello. It’s hard to get full sentences out of the children, but they tell him, as best they can, about the seaweed, the brunch, their bodies buried in the sand. Then they start yawning and Lucía sends them off to their twin beds, in the room Cindy has decorated with old stu#ed toys she found in the apartment, left over from a previous life.

‘They’re shattered,’ she says. She is sitting at the table. The sound of the waves drifts in through the open balcony door. Pablo is wearing the same dressing gown he had on when she left. She wonders if he’s even showered. He’s in the study, with his back to the wall where a photo hangs of the four of them by the entrance to a funfair they went to a long time ago, in a farming town near New Haven. They’re all holding cotton candy. It was a happy day, or that’s what the photo implies. In reality it was probably hard work, full of tetchy discussions about whether the rides were appropriate for the children at that age, or whether they’d already had too much sugar. She suddenly has flashbacks of that day out: obese families devouring shiny glazed ham with their sticky hands; old people hauling other old people in their wheelchairs with their special passes for getting on the rides without queuing. And the ladies selling homemade cakes and syrups at the bakery stalls, while their kids scampered around excitedly, getting under everyone’s feet.

In the background she can hear the television: a Colombian soap opera, from the sound of it.

‘Lety’s here,’ says Pablo.

‘I know.’

‘You do?’

Silence.

They’ve been together for nineteen years. The strange thing is not the infidelities, thinks Lucía: she also committed some, although they were more discreet, more casual, nothing that’d put anybody’s heart at risk. The really bizarre thing is to look at the other person and wonder who they are, what they’re doing there next to you, when it was that their facial features changed so much. The accumulation of time makes strangers of us; nobody can say precisely when the seed is planted. The first symptom is disinterest, something miniscule that then becomes normal, and then both people stop wondering why they’re still there, oozing indifference towards one another, agreeing with what the other says as a formality: the time long gone when what they said seemed interesting. Or worth listening to.

Their relationship had been bad for a long time, but it had also been a long time since she stopped thinking she should do something about it. Sometimes she surprised herself in front of others, applauding the longevity of her relationship with Pablo. She would take his hand, look smugly at the others, and say ghastly things like, ‘Despite our differences, we’ve made it this far.’ What did she want, a medal?

She thinks about Franco. Nine or ten years ago.

Whenever Lucía spoke, Franco appeared to be giving her his undivided attention. But she could tell from the blank look on his face that the poor guy was just trying to work out the meaning of the words coming out of her mouth.

Franco was nothing to her, but she likes remembering him, especially now.

An intern who did her filing and brought her coffee. She’d offered to edit an internal publication for the scholarship program; it was a dull, time-consuming job for which she was paid a pittance, and which involved chasing up contributors to ensure they met their deadlines. She sometimes also moderated a virtual forum that the journal hosted for each issue; in general the themes were related to the Hispanic community in the United States, and the majority of the participants were resentful, aggressive immigrants who answered her opening questions with lines like ‘Show us your ass, sexy momma!’ The only help she had was Franco, which was as good as no help at all. She’d decided to get him out of the way, assigning him pointless tasks that would keep him away from her cubicle – where the guy usually sat in silence and watched her work – until the day he stopped behind her and started rubbing the back of her neck: ‘You’re stressed out,’ he said. How original, she thought. But instead of getting annoyed, she focused on the warm tips of his fingers pressing gently into the nape of her neck. She got up from her seat, turned around and was startled by what she saw in Franco’s eyes. Hunger. A young guy, with thick hair and very white teeth. Something was not right about it, but she didn’t care. She saw herself as if from outside her body, and barely recognised herself: a veil had been drawn over her, and now it was pulled back to reveal something too gruesome, too intimate. Scars, she thought, as she slipped her tongue into the intern’s mouth. A stump.

Rosa comes shuffling back wearing slippers.

Lucía is glad of the interruption, which breaks the excruciating silence and drags her away from her thoughts.

Rosa tells Pablo who they’ve got staying at the hotel.

‘David Rodríguez?’ he replies, pretending to be as excited as his daughter. ‘Wasn’t he injured?’

Rosa nods.

‘He’s on crutches.’

‘What a legend,’ says Pablo. ‘Do make sure you get a photo with him, darling.’

Rosa goes back to bed, smiling.

Lucía considers a few things to say and discounts them all as pointless.

She remembers Pablo crying, denying everything, even his own versions of events. Too scared to even look up. She sees him crouching in the bedroom, his dick hanging down limply like the clapper of a bell. Dark, wrinkled. Sordid.

Pablo leans back in his chair, briefly pulling a resigned smile. How long can they go on examining one another on-screen?

Sometimes, thinks Lucía, he’s such an open book, it’s just sad.

And sometimes he’s a padlocked trunk.

The dressing gown has a stain on it that looks like grease. His face is covered with sparse stubble, giving it the appearance of suede. His eyes stare into the screen in a way that reminds her of a photo of prisoners in Pakistan: pressed up against one another, gripping the bars of the cells with their nail-less fingers. She saw it in an exhibition, years ago.

 

Holiday Heart by Margarita Garcia Robayo is published by Charco Press, priced £9.99

There has been some brilliant YA books coming from Scotland’s publishers recently (check out Ross Sayers, Laura Guthrie and Akemi Dawn Bowman), and it looks as if Black and White Publishing’s Ink Road imprint has got another corker on their hands with Harry Cook’s Fin & Rye & Fireflies. In this extract, we follow Fin as he goes exploring the new town he has moved to with his parents. He is about to make some friends, and possibly some enemies too . . .

 

Extract taken from Fin & Rye & Firefies
By Harry Cook
Published by Black and White Publishing

 

I wander down the street, the sky the colour of honey and the trees full of acorns. I have to hand it to Lochport; the town itself is pretty cute. I stroll into the centre, which takes about five minutes from our place, and find it full of maple and oak trees, rustic old buildings with shop signs like ‘Smith’s Candies’ and ‘McElroy’s Fish & Chippie’ and a wooden dock that looks like it’s from the set of JAWS. A bright yellow bike with a pink seat leans against the window of McElroy’s. It has a scribbled sign that reads ‘Free to a good home’ followed by another sign underneath that reads: ‘Just kidding. $50. Pay within for the key.’ The bike’s wheels are locked with a chain. I have a small wad of savings, $150 to be precise, from my job at a coffee store back in Pittford, and I figure a bike of this kind – especially that pink seat – is a sensational investment. I open the door and let myself in, a bell jingling somewhere out back. The smell of fish overpowers me like a chemical attack.

‘Hello?’ I say, calling into the abyss. ‘I . . . I’d like to buy the bike.’

A rummaging noise comes from behind the plastic curtain and a woman wearing a yellow rain mac, high-top wellies and a fisherman’s hat comes out to greet me; she’s plump with big kind eyes and a button nose.

‘Sorry, love. We just got a new delivery in and my hearing ain’t what it used to be. You been waiting long? What can I get for ya?’

I smile. Her warmth is contagious.

‘I was . . . I’m new here,’ I say. ‘I was actually hoping to buy that bike out front?’

‘Oh that?’ she says. ‘Oh, take it. You’d be doing me a favour! My daughter, Poppy, she put that fifty-dollar sign out front under mine. She calls herself a “hustler”.’

The door behind me swings open and cool air tickles the back of my neck.

‘Speak of the devil. We were just discussing your hustling skills, darling.’

Poppy, dark hair with piercing green eyes, leans over the counter next to me and gives her mother a kiss on the cheek.

‘Poppy McElroy,’ she says, offering me her hand to shake. I can’t help but notice that it’s emblazoned with a ring on nearly every finger.

‘Fin Whittle,’ I reply.

‘And I’m Isla,’ Poppy’s mother says, walking around to the front of the counter with a key on a pompom fob. ‘They call me a local treasure.’

‘Yeah, right. I take it you didn’t get the fifty dollars for my bike?’ Poppy asks, a crease in her forehead the size of the Grand Canyon.

‘Mr Whittle here is kindly giving your old bike a new home,’ Isla says with a grin as we follow her out on to the street. ‘I refuse to take money from a new neighbour,’ she continues, unlocking the bike and presenting it to me like it’s a showroom-fresh Mercedes S Class.

‘Thank you so much,’ I say, glancing at Poppy who rolls her eyes and gives me the hint of a smile.

The three of us stand silently for a moment, the only noise coming from the splash of the ocean against the dock just across the street.

‘I see Rye still hasn’t caught anything,’ Poppy says, giving a nod to where a guy roughly my age is sitting on an upturned bucket with a fishing rod bobbing up and down in the grey sea. Next to him squats an English Bulldog, drool pooling under its cheeks.

‘Not a thing,’ Isla says with a giggle. ‘Your friend’s a terrible fisherman.’ And with that she heads back into the store to serve a customer.

Poppy turns to look me up and down.

‘Fin, was it?’

I nod.

‘Cool name,’ Poppy says, flashing me a grin which just as suddenly fades as something behind me catches her eye.

I follow her gaze across to the wharf.

Two guys and two girls are now standing a little way off from Poppy’s friend Rye and laughing. At first I pay no attention to anything other than the adorable English Bulldog, but then I hear the word.

 

Fin & Rye & Firefies by Harry Cook is published by Black and White Publishing, priced £7.99.

BooksfromScotland has always loved Eilidh Muldoon’s illustrations, so when we heard that Little Door were publishing her debut picture book, we knew we had to share a sample of its beautiful interior. And aren’t these pages lovely? Plus, Eilidh’s got great advice for getting the young ‘uns to sleep too.

 

Snooze: Helpful Tips for Sleepy Owls
By Eilidh Muldoon
Published by Little Door Books

 

 

Snooze: Helpful Tips for Sleepy Owls by Eilidh Muldoon is published by Little Door Books, priced £6.99

BooksfromScotland will confess to being ignorant about the world of gaming, but we can also tell you that a new book from Joe Connelly, Checkpoint: How Video Games Power Up Minds, Kick Ass and Save Lives, will fascinate even the most sceptical non-gamer out there. We caught up with Joe to find out more about his book.

 

Checkpoint: How Video Games Power Up Minds, Kick Ass and Save Lives
By Joe Donnelly
Published by 404 Ink

 

Your new book Checkpoint: How Video Games Power Up Minds, Kick Ass and Save Lives has a speedily added foreword that brings us right up to date, placing you and the reader within the current COVID-19 crisis. Though you have had your own stresses during the last few months, did you feel, as a gaming enthusiast, a little more prepared for having to stay indoors?

I’m not sure if I was more prepared for staying indoors as such, but I was perhaps more aware of the rich and engrossing virtual worlds video games can transport us to. At a time when freely exploring the real world became impossible, almost overnight, I found the sprawling digital landscapes of the likes of Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018), The Witcher 3 (2015) and Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) to be especially important while escaping our increasingly terrifying reality. The thriving social platforms of Fortnite (2017) and Grand Theft Auto Online (2013) also helped offset the physical and mental isolation brought by lockdown.

Having submitted the final manuscript for Checkpoint just as the global pandemic took hold of this side of the world, my publisher 404 Ink and I decided to add the foreword to reflect the situation, and underscore the importance of video games and escapism during lockdown.

 

Gaming, especially for those who don’t take part, can be seen as an isolating and therefore troubling pastime. (It’s funny how the same isn’t said for reading!) Your book sets out to tell another story about gaming culture. How did you come to write it?

One of Checkpoint’s overarching aims is to deconstruct and dispel that very stereotype. As a narrative non-fiction book about video games, mental health and how the two overlap, I sought to explore my own journey and how I used games to support me through some tough moments in my early adult life onwards. My uncle killed himself in 2008, which impacted my own mental health – to the point where I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety disorder, sent to see a counsellor and put on a course of medication which I’m still on today. Throughout, I used video games as a coping mechanism, a learning tool and an outlet for escapism. Books, TV and film are great resources for learning about mental health, but video games are too! All of which is detailed in Checkpoint alongside insights from mental health professionals, video game players and video game developers.

 

You tell the reader some personal stories about your family and your own experiences with your mental health. How did you prepare to write with such intimacy?

While coming to terms with my own depression and anxiety, I switched careers from plumbing and gas fitting to journalism – studying at university and graduating into video games journalism. Whenever I could, I wrote about video games and mental health, at one stage doing so in a monthly column for VICE. While doing that, I wrote a wee bit about my own experiences, but with Checkpoint, I sought to go deeper. I generally find writing cathartic, so when I started digging into some of the more personal stories which feature in the book, it felt good to get them out of my head and onto the page. Still, the process as a whole was pretty exhausting!

 

When did you make the connection between your love of gaming and its positive effects on mental health?

At first, my personal connection between video games and mental health was simply the fact that I used games to escape reality. I still do so today, as do loads of players, but once I moved into writing about the medium, I discovered a whole host of games which explore sensitive and interpersonal themes, such as depression, social anxiety, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and suicide, to name but a few. Speaking to the developers of these games, and the players playing them, helped me further appreciate the positive effects gaming can have on mental health. To be clear: I’m not a mental health professional, which is why having voices better qualified than me in Checkpoint was so important.

 

In the book, you speak to many others in the gaming industry about mental health. Was it a challenge to get others on board with what you wanted to achieve in writing the book?

Not at all – everyone I approached was happy to share their insights with me, which definitely made the process easier. I think the reason for this is two-fold: one, once I explained the project and the desired message, it aligned with their point of view; and two, the gaming and mental health experts I spoke to are so, so passionate about what they do. Speaking to passionate people about something they enjoy is one of the best feelings as a writer, and I *think and hope* I’ve done everyone I spoke to justice in conveying that message through Checkpoint.

 

Do you remember when you first fell in love with gaming? What was your favourite game as a child?

I attribute the now defunct Dundee-based DMA Design’s Lemmings (1991) as being the first video game I ever properly got into. At five years old, I fell in love with the puzzle platformer game’s cutesy blue-robbed/green-haired sprites, each of who I was tasked with guiding to safety (or not!), and the fact that each level had multiple routes for success blew my wee mind. I loved the family Atari ST computer we had back then, upon which Lemmings was easily my favourite game. As an aside, while DMA Design no longer exists, the company did move to Edinburgh in the late 90s/early 2000s, rebrand as Rockstar North, and is responsible for a pretty popular video games series named Grand Theft Auto.

 

Readers may prefer crime fiction, biographies or poetry. As a gamer do you have a preferred genre?

As with reading, for me it really depends on the mood I’m in. If I want something light, I might pick up football simulator FIFA, or jump into something familiar like Sonic Mania. If I want something which requires more brain power, I might resume my career in the digital dugout of Football Manager 2020, wage war in a grand strategy sim like Crusader Kings 2 (2012), or fight hordes of undead demons in action role-playing game Dark Souls (2011). With a young daughter (and another on the way), I’ve increasingly found myself playing games on the couch – courtesy of my Nintendo Switch – and have recently spent a load of time frolicking in Hollow Knight (2017) and Luigi’s Mansion 3 (2019).

 

What are you playing just now?

I recently replayed horror game The Last of Us (2013) in preparation for its sequel, and it was great to revisit what is surely one of the best video games all of time several years since its release. I’m now only a few hours into The Last of Us 2 (2020), and I’ve fallen in love all over again. Developer Naughty Dog’s latest venture is gorgeous, thrilling and brutal all at once, and I can’t put it down. That is, when I’m not hiding behind the couch, cowering from its cast of zombie baddies!

 

There are some brilliant game recommendations in the book. Are there any you’d recommend just now as we head into the summer holidays with travel restrictions still in place?

When it comes to virtual exploration in the midst of real-world travel restrictions, sandbox open-world games are my go-to. Modern classic Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017), available for the Nintendo Switch and Wii U, is chalk-full of stunning mountain ranges, leafy forests and beautiful vistas, and is a joy to explore. Going back a little further, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011) is a fantasy realm still well worth getting lost in today. And I’m sucker for a city break in Grand Theft Auto V’s (2013) pseudo LA cityscape, Los Santos.

 

What are your next writing plans?

I’d love to break into fiction. At present, I’m working on a whodunnit thriller about an agoraphobic, housebound teen-turned-viral star who uses online vlogging as her sole means of outside contact. When she discovers there’s more to her sister’s suicide than first thought, she goes missing overnight. Watch this space 🙂

 

 

Checkpoint: How Video Games Power Up Minds, Kick Ass and Save Lives by Joe Donnelly is published by 404 Ink, priced £9.99.

 

 

 

Who dreams of a trip to a sleepy, sunshiny Italian village? Us too! And if we can’t visit just now, we can always read all about it! Which brings us to Perfume Paradiso by Janey Jones – the perfect slice of escapist fun! In this extract Charlotte Alexander, arrives in Montecastello from New York to look at lavender farms for her thriving cosmetic company. What else will she find there?

 

Extract taken from Perfume Paradiso
By Janey Jones
Published by Black and White Publishing

 

It was riposo time in Montecastello that Wednesday afternoon when I emerged from the station. All was quiet. How was I going to get to the hotel? There wasn’t a cab in sight. My phone told me it was just a seven-minute walk, so I decided to go on foot. My case on wheels posed no problem, although my wedge sandals were another matter. I was pretty pleased with my choice of a white shift dress, as the early afternoon sun was blisteringly hot.

As I walked along the almost deserted main street, a sleepy silence surrounded me. Montecastello dozed, but it did look like a very charming town, with shops boasting flowers, cheeses, honey and antique books. The quaint town hall with its clocktower stood behind a town square. An ice cream parlour called Gloria’s teased with its promise of twenty-five flavours. A wine shop had one word above its window: Rossini. I admit, I was mildly excited about being in the town where this most delicious fizz is made. I imagined Montecastello bustled in the mornings and late afternoons, but for now, there was not a whisper.

Until, that is, I heard the sound of a truck trundling noisily over the cobbles. I glanced over my shoulder to see a green tractor and trailer bouncing towards me like a giant grasshopper. It certainly was rural here, no doubt about it. Cute enough, but very countrified, and I’d finished with country places as soon as I got out of my tiny childhood village of Ambler when we’d moved to London for Dad’s job. I’d missed the horses, and my stable buddy, Jonny Kent, but that was all.

The tractor got closer. I looked back again, and although the glinting sun blocked my view of the driver’s face, I saw the strong, tanned forearm of a farmer, as he rested his elbow on the door. As he drove by, the tractor bumped over a raised block in the cobbled road and the contents of one of the barrels in the trailer splattered over the side, spraying through the air and HELP! spotting my white dress with a thousand little pink dots. Baptism by rosé wine. No!

You’d think the farmer would be apologetic, but, no. He just raised a hand by way of a surly, ‘Oops, sorry,’ his heavily bearded face unmoved, and then he carried on, leaving me furiously messed up on the pavement. I was completely blindsided. And now my dress looked like a total disaster! I took my rage out on the pavement, pounding along the cobbled surface crossly, planning what I’d change into at the hotel, and then . . . Goddammit! OW!

Caught between two cobbles, I lost my footing and, in painful slow-motion, twisted my left ankle as I went over on it. The damned wedge heels. It was e-x-c-r-u-c-i-a-t-ing.

Nauseous with pain, I had to stop, telling myself it would soon pass. I took deep breaths as I rested by the doorway of a bakery. Sadly, the pain only intensified. I tried to walk, but my ankle collapsed under me. I couldn’t believe the agony. I took my shoes off, but still couldn’t walk, and the burning heat of the pavement cobbles didn’t help. The world really was against me!

It was one of those moments when I wished my mother was still alive so I could call her. She always advised taking tiny steps forward. I couldn’t even do that! I was trying to decide what to do when, confusingly, I heard the tractor getting closer again – making its way back to me from the opposite direction. Great, the return of the rude farmer. I was embarrassed by my foolishness and the last thing I wanted was his pity. I tried to make some progress along the pavement as he approached, but barefoot and in agony, it was hopeless.

He rolled the tractor – gently – to a stop by the kerb. His face was clear to see now; handsome perhaps, under a beard, brow smeared by a morning’s work, framed by unkempt dark hair. He looked irritated, so why he’d turned back to assist was beyond me.

‘Do you need help?’ he asked, in Italian. Impatient voice. Glum expression. Inexplicably annoying demeanour.

‘No, thank you. I’ll manage,’ I replied, curtly, in Italian. I then muttered under my breath, in English, ‘Stupid country bumpkin.’

‘I came back to give you a lift.’ This time he used near perfect English and glowered furiously. I guessed he’d heard my childishly rude comment.

‘I’d rather not,’ I said, eyeing the one seat in the tractor.

‘Okay. I watch you walk, then I go,’ he said. This sounded like an order. God, he was bossy, too.

I gathered all my strength, trying to take a step forward, but as my left foot hit the ground, I couldn’t stop an agonised cry as my ankle gave way. I felt like such a fool, but I knew I wasn’t going to make it on foot.

‘I will lift you,’ he said, jumping down and striding towards me.

First, he promptly lifted my case onto the trailer.

‘My good case,’ I protested. ‘It will get all sticky.’

‘Sticky or stay here?’ he said.

I was in an impossible fix. ‘Sticky,’ I conceded.

Next, he gathered me up and hoisted me across his shoulder. I was mortified. My dress was not the longest. I could tell that my thighs were on show. How had my arrival in Montecastello deteriorated to this situation of deeply chaotic shame so quickly?

 

Perfume Paradiso by Janey Jones is published by Black and White Publishing, priced £8.99.

Who would like a dose of psychedelic noir set in South Africa in a not-too-distant dystopian future? You would? Then Scotland’s science-fiction press, Luna Press Publishing, has the book for you. If you’re ready to dive into a world of doomed Hollywood blockbusters, elite all-female espionage operations, drug cults, and the possible ending of time itself, then read on. Here, we’re introduced to Brick, a Hollywood star teetering on the edge of living the dream . . .

 

Extract taken from Club Ded
By Nikhil Singh
Published by Luna Press Publishing

 

The rain drags flags beyond the glass walls of Charles De Gaulle. Brick can feel the Northern winter coming on. He’ll get one last taste of it before stepping through the airlock. A nostalgic ‘escape-to-paradise’ feeling resurfaces. For a moment, it’s just like the old days. Then time catches up to him. Escape to Paradox, the old inner voice chortles. He wonders when he picked up such an annoying voice. Did it come out of rehab? Was it perhaps a fossil of some half-defined character sketch, the career-relic of a younger self? Brick prefers to ignore it in any case. Inner voices are way too Hollywood for Paris in the rain.

The coziness of the airport café, in relation to its freezing views, only accentuates the unreality of his situation. Flying out to a shoot used to be a daily grind. But after years of inactivity, Betty Ford and a splendid array of mid-life crises, the whole situation had started to morph into memoir-potential. Something a young writer could breed a rom-com out of—a real touchie-feelie. Brick realizes that he is finally playing the starring role, in the nostalgic sequel to his very own life. Looking back at the golden years with a bitter aftertaste; ‘Just south of cliché’ was what he would have grumbled twenty years ago. Or was it fifteen? Exactly how many golden years did it take before the ripest of grapes turned to dust in his mouth? He could recall all the dates. The numbers stayed solid. It was just actual memories he was having trouble with. The colours and tones escaped him. Lost time, he ruminates, the ultimate special-effect. He tries to avoid being cynical. He even listens to his wife and attempts yoga here and there. Yet, despite his obvious sincerity he is still haunted by the age-old sensation of feeling like an imposter. It’s a sensation that took him back to when he was a young lion and the world was still his tuna fish. This was back when the fame had really hit hard, leaving technicolour bruises over everything. But even in the glow of those golden days, Brick was always waiting for the penny to drop, waiting by the phone, or in the wings. When fans looked up and saw their ‘dapper Hercules’, fresh from outer space or slick with the blood of an enemy, the man behind the action idol remained in silent doubt. Brick waited patiently to be exposed for the cheap Hellenic mirror-portrait that he struggled to maintain. He was continuously on the watch for the critic, reporter or love interest that would finally unmask him for the stand-in he felt he had become. It never happened. Instead, his career took off.

Brick’s life descended into corporate wangling and backroom deals. Fame crystallized around him; that most exclusive of amber’s, slowly asphyxiating his personal freedom and pickling him in ‘type’. But that was all in the Jurassic—light years ago. Now, Brick has been exiled to the land of Nod. He regards his wife Lisa-Marie, who wafts beyond the wasteland of a wilting cappuccino. She looks so cinematic, he thinks. He begins to mentally construct an opening scene: camera tracks slowly through a large crowded airport. It finds a man and his wife. They sit at a corner table of a cafe. Isolation in a crowd (or is that too obvious for an opener?). The man is Brick Tynan Bryson (early 50’s) and the bottleblonde ex-swimwear model, is his wife, Lisa-Marie Liszt (mid 40’s). She faces in towards him while he sits facing out, feet apart, uncomfortable and shifty in the hubbub. In dress, both are sleek and well turned out. He, every bit the ‘aging action movie star’, large, statuesque, standing out almost comically against a tide of urbane human traffic…. A ‘dapper Hercules, lost amongst suburbanites’ was how the Times described him in ‘95 (the description still sticks—‘like bubblegum on a shoe’). She, on the other hand is (what any callous casting brief would describe as) the ‘mature trophy-wife’.

Perhaps Lisa-Marie had been content to wear the trophy tag once. But 1995 was a lifetime ago. By now the routine has worn thin and died. Her strategically disguised intelligence turned to melancholia, in the same way wines age. The ingredients remain the same, but an irrevocable alteration had occurred after fermentation. She was like that—a real California red. Still, Brick couldn’t help but cartoonify her anxiety. He is incapable of interacting with the morbidity of her yoga-toned body, which to him, is a pointless strategy against the onset of age. Her withering silences had only brought him closer to the shore of death. It’s all too Ingmar Bergman for an old-school action legend. This sensation of mortality became the excuse he offered his reflection. When she was crying in the lounge next door, quaffing dong-qui ornostalgically watching reruns of the sitcoms  she had despised so much in her youth. Brick often dwells on her old reflections. He remembers a lush Amazon, bounding un-catchably through the Malibu surf. Or winking down from billboards across Scandinavia. Of course, he loathes the fact that he objectifies his wife. But these judgements are played close to the heart. After all, Lisa-Marie could always be counted on to remind him of his affair with alcoholism. All his neuroses are, by now, just so many dirty glasses to her. ‘Take off the mask, we need the hood’ was still her oldest insult.

 

Club Ded by Nikhil Singh is published by Luna Press Publishing, priced £12.99

Everyone loves One Button Benny, so BooksfromScotland is delighted that our favourite robot is back for another adventure. What gigantic catastrophe is about to trouble Benny? You can see in our taster below. And will Benny be able to save the day? You’ll have to pick up a copy of the book to find out!

 

One Button Benny and the Gigantic Catastrophe
By Alan Windram
Published by Little Door Books

 

 

One Button Benny and the Gigantic Catastrophe by Alan Windram is published by Little Door Books, priced £6.99.

There has been a huge surge of interest in cycling over the COVID-19 lockdown as people have tried to curb their reliance on cars and public transport. In Gears for Queers, authors Abi Felton and Lili Cooper tell us that you don’t need to be consumed by all things lycra to challenge yourself to a memorable cycling adventure. BooksfromScotland chatted to them both about their recent experiences in cycling, writing and publishing.

 

Gears for Queers
By Abigail Felton and Lilith Cooper
Published by Sandstone Press

 

You’ve had quite the adventurous time of it over the last couple of years. Firstly, you both cycled (and camped!) across Europe and then you decided to write about the experience. How did these adventures come about?

Abi: When we started dating, we both talked about travelling, but neither of us were sure how we wanted it to look. For a while, I had been thinking about walking across Europe, and it was Lili who suggested we try cycling instead. I hadn’t been on a bike for about eight years before we met, so I knew it would be a steep learning curve, but I was up for giving it a go!

The opportunity to write the book came up when we were approached by Kay, an assistant publisher at Sandstone Press, based up in Inverness. She’d got hold of a few of our zines and asked us if we’d considered writing a book!

 

Did you always know that you would write about your trip?

Lili: Not at all! Or at least, not in the way we ended up writing about it. I kept a journal the whole way, and when we came back we started writing blog posts and zines about the tour, but really focusing on specific things like offering advice for folxs considering touring, or vegan campstove recipes. I think we probably wouldn’t have written a book about the trip without the push from Kay, and she really helped us figure out the process. In the end, it’s a very time consuming, albeit rewarding, experience, and with the pressures of jobs and life, I’m not sure we’d ever have carved out that time of our own initiative.

 

And now you’ve had to go through the publishing process in the strangest of circumstances. As debutants you don’t have the comparison of publication outwith a pandemic. Still, how have you coped with lockdown?

Abi: I think like most people, lockdown has been a total rollercoaster. We definitely had a massive crash post-publication, because for a while that was our only focus, and it felt like it came around really quickly! The one thing that was great was having a really supportive community on social media, who helped keep us feeling excited and good about the process, because it’s easy for that to be chipped away at in such stressful circumstances.

Lili: We’ve been phenomenally lucky really – both of us have been able to continue working from home, neither of us needed to shield and we’ve got pretty stable housing. In terms of publishing, the hardest thing for me has been it not feeling ‘real’ – we can’t just go into a bookshop and see our book there. We’ve been really grateful for everyone sharing photos of Gears for Queers and messaging us to say they’re reading it or have enjoyed it.

 

But back to your story. We are well used to the phenomenon of the MAMIL (Middle-Aged Man In Lycra) – so much so they have a recognised acronym! Were there challenges you didn’t expect cycling long-distance as a queer couple?

Lili: I think on the tour we write about in the book, many of the challenges were those we face in our everyday lives – questions of safety and visibility that are as present at home, as they are on the road. There were loads of challenges of long distance touring we didn’t expect, completely unrelated to being a queer couple, simply because we were complete beginners. And I think we also faced challenges that any couple would face, travelling together and living in a tent for six months!

We went on a second longer tour in 2019, where we cycled from Kirkcaldy to Budapest. Travelling through somewhere like Hungary, where we knew there were maybe more negative attitudes towards LGBTQ people, increasingly reflected in legislation, we were more cautious and, whilst there were lots of places where we felt safe and welcomed, it was also stressful as a queer couple feeling that bit more guarded.

 

Although your trip was testing physically and mentally, there were plenty moments of joy and appreciation. What are your favourite memories?

Abi: I think so many of the joyful moments came after really hard times – like a stop at a thermal bath in Germany in the midday heat, or eating the best falafel in Switzerland after a hell ride. But for me nothing will beat when we were invited into a family’s house, in the middle of this tiny village in France. We’d knocked on the door for water, because we were going to wild camp nearby and were invited to stay overnight. Sophie and her three children cooked us an amazing three course vegan meal, and we stayed up late helping the kids with their English homework. In the morning they sent us off with fresh baguettes from the bakery. It was such a warm and generous act.

Lili: I think one of my favourite memories is of eating dinner with our Warmshowers host on the roof of a student house in Wageningen in the Netherlands, as the sun was setting. It’s funny, whilst the cycling was fantastic, and some of the views and the hills and the routes will stay with me forever, the memories that are most special to me are to do with the people we met, who hosted us, or who we encountered on the route.

 

What did you notice about each country’s relationship with cycling that’s different from the UK?

Lili: God, so much! Especially starting riding in the Netherlands, it was so different – in terms of infrastructure, being able to ride off road cycle paths pretty much everywhere, and in terms of attitudes to cycling and cycle touring. When we’ve ridden fully loaded touring bikes across the UK we’ve felt like a total oddity, but it’s much more common across mainland Europe. The difference, especially in terms of how bikes (and pedestrians) have priority at things like roundabouts, and the way that can impact drivers attitudes, is really noticeable. It wasn’t always great – we had some pretty hairy rides in Switzerland and parts of the south of France – but there were undeniable differences.

 

Because of COVID-19, there has been a surge in interest in cycling. What advice would you give to these new cyclists?

Abi: I’d say don’t worry about what other cyclists are doing. There’s sometimes a pressure to cycle in a certain way, or be a certain type of cyclist, or look a certain way. But really cycling should feel fun – whether you’re riding to and from the supermarket, or along the Rhein. Sometimes I get bogged down because I don’t feel fit enough, or fast enough, but as soon as I get back on my bike, all that disappears and I know I belong on two wheels!

Lili: My advice would be more practical. Find a bike you are comfortable riding – it doesn’t have to be the newest or the lightest or the most expensive. If you’re interested in learning how it works, there are some great classes and places to do that – I’d recommend London Bike Kitchen’s online classes as great place to start – but if you’re not interested, that’s ok too! Try out different route planning tools – we use open street maps in combination with google maps and komoot to figure out new routes. Finally, I guess I’d say connect with other cyclists – whether in real life or online!

 

Have you been thinking about your next cycling adventure once travel restrictions are lifted?

Lili: We went to a webinar from Cycling UK about the Great North Trail and were totally sold. We don’t fly, so international travel is probably going to be off the table for a little while yet, and we were already looking for routes closer to home. In the far future, we have some unfinished business from our 2019 tour and I think we’re going to take the bus to Munich, cycle to Venice, and then follow the coast round and down to Athens!

Abi: I recently discovered the Great American Rail Trail, so that’s on my radar too!

 

How did you approach the task of writing your travelogue together?

Abi: We’re lucky in that a lot of the work we do is already done collaboratively, so we both felt pretty comfortable facing writing a book together, more so than if we were doing it individually! We decided early on to split the book as evenly as possible, and to make sure neither of us had more of the exciting events than the other. We worked to keep our voices really distinct. It can be easy to fall into a sort of ‘shared narrative’ when we are talking about the tour. That said, one of the advantages of writing alongside your touring partner was the ability to memory check each other, and we spent the first few months reminiscing and remembering together in as much detail as we could.

 

Do you have any plans to write together again?

Lili: Definitely! Abi is keen to start on Gears for Queers part two, but I’m waiting for the dust to settle from this first book. But we’ve been writing blogs and zines in the last few months – I think one of the best things about our relationship is that we enjoy working on creative projects together!

 

Finally, what have you been enjoying reading during lockdown?

Lili: Luckily, it was Abi’s birthday during lockdown, and two of our favourite bookshops – Lighthouse in Edinburgh and Category Is Books in Glasgow have still been delivering! The last book I read was The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin, which I just smashed through in three days.

Abi: Pre-book publication I was reading a lot of memoir and travelogue, but since the book came out I have retreated into science fiction and fantasy. I finally finished Circe by Madeline Miller, and at the moment I’m halfway through Rosewater by Tade Thompson.

 

Gears for Queers by Abigail Felton and Lilith Cooper is published by Sandstone Press, priced £8.99.

In interviewing Malcolm Alexander about his book, Close to Where the Heart Gives Out, David Robinson finds a doctor who discovered time is often the best medicine.

 

Close to Where the Heart Gives Out: A Year in the Life of an Orkney Doctor
By Malcolm Alexander
Published by Michael O’ Mara

 

Looking back, Malcolm Alexander can hardly understand why he took the job. It’s not as though he liked island life: even a month as a junior doctor in Shetland had been long enough. So why he even applied to be a GP on the Orkney island of Eday (population 125) in the late 1980s was something he can’t properly explain. It’s not as though the island had made a particularly good first impression either: on his first visit, he decided to rule himself out as a candidate at the interview in Kirkwall the following day.

He changed his mind, took the job, moved there with his wife Maggie, a trained anaesthetist, and their four young boys, and in turn Eday changed his life. How it did so, and how he and his family learnt to love the island is the subject of his thoughtful, well-written and engaging memoir Close to Where the Heart Gives Out. 

Alexander, 63, worked on Eday for only four years in his thirties, and his book is mainly about his first year there. The rest of career – indeed, the rest of his life – hardly gets much of a look-in, though he has held a number of top-level medical posts, and was associate medical director of  Scotland’s telephone triage service, NHS 24, before he retired three years ago. So why, I ask, did he give his memoir such a tight – and come to that, rather non-egotistical – focus? What was so special about that first year on Eday that it dominates his life’s rear-view mirror?

‘The original intent,’ he tells over the phone from his home on Bute,’was to show how a doctor thinks and to write about things which they don’t often express – such as fear of failure. To be honest, I’m not sure how well it achieves that aim, because in the writing I often got distracted by the environment and the people.’

That’s understandable. In his previous practice in suburban Glasgow, he’d never experienced the kind of ferocious winds he did on Eday (‘It’s only a proper gale,’ locals tell him, ‘when the grass goes black.’) ‘Growing up in West Linton, I’d always enjoyed nature, yet on Eday … Well, the wildlife was everywhere. I’d never seen curlew chicks, for example, yet there you might see them walking down the road.’  He writes well about the island’s ‘intake and exhalation of wildlife’ and it’s somehow no surprise to find him working as a de facto vet for the occasional injured seal or sick swan.

The main focus, though, is on the islanders.  In Glasgow, he treated an average of 30 to 35 people in a morning’s surgery.  On Eday that number dropped down to around seven. Even so, he says, that’s not the best patient-doctor ratio in the NHS: that honour belongs to North Ronaldsay, whose GP has to look after a mere 90 potential patients.

‘Doesn’t that mean it’s all a bit of a skoosh?’ I ask with my customary tact.

‘This is why Eday was so pivotal for me. You had so much more time with the patient. The consultation in the surgery might still average 10 or 15 minutes, because there would be people in the waiting room: they trended to arrive at the same time and all have a blether, but you didn’t want to keep them waiting all the same. A home visit, however, could take an hour and a half, because you then had the time to immerse yourself in the patient’s whole history. And the central realisation from that is that it’s lives that are important, not the prescription.’

Many of his patients were elderly people whose lives had barely changed since the 1950s, many of them with a stoicism engrained in pre-NHS days when it had cost money to see the doctor.  One such was a woman whom he treated in the same box bed in which she’d been born. Her croft had no electricity and the only water supply was the rain collected in buckets by her front door.

Alexander’s book is dedicated ‘to the people of Eday, who helped me understand the important things in life’.  Like what? ‘The key realisation was that I needed them just as much as they needed me. And when you really fit into a community you become more tolerant of people. You realise that everyone has stress in their jobs – maybe the boat couldn’t get to the pier that day or there wasn’t enough flour on the island or the farmers hadn’t been able to make hay. The island taught me that I was part of the community, and that I was no more and no less important than anyone else.’

That lesson stayed with him when he helped to write the clinical algorithms underpinning NHS 24 in Scotland. ‘When I started working there in 2005, the questions you’d be asked in the telephone triage were too long and boring and we had to rewrite them to make them quicker and easier to understand. All the time, I had in mind whether those questions would still be appropriate for someone ringing from Eday. If you write them just for, say, Glasgow, you might be assuming that people can just go down the road and buy some paracetamol, that they can hop into a car and go to A&E. But that’s not going to work for Eday, so why not write an algorithm that’s helps them to do what they can at home and then move them to an A&E environment that might involve a boat or a plane but which would just be a taxi in Glasgow?’

Although he doesn’t mention any of this in his book, I notice that he talks about NHS 24 as ‘a general practice with five million people in it’. And somehow it’s entirely apposite that such an important part of the whole nation’s health care has its roots in the attentiveness and experience of a doctor working on with a maximum potential caseload of just 125 souls.

This is a wonderful portrait of island life and a year of family adventure, discoveries and occasional moments of fear, as when his heavily pregnant wife has to be flown off the island for emergency care in Aberdeen – the only time he kicks himself for living in such a remote place. I will, however, take issue with Alexander on two points: first, for thinking that he hasn’t conveyed a sense of the fear of failure any island doctor must surely feel when they alone have to deal with an emergency.  Secondly, for writing that ‘We don’t spend enough time truly doing nothing.’  Really? Even in lockdown? ‘Well,’ he concedes, ‘maybe I should rewrite that bit now.’

 

Close to Where the Heart Gives Out: A Year in the Life of an Orkney Doctor by Malcolm Alexander is published by Michael O’ Mara, priced £8.99

The great thing about thrillers is at they often play with or even break the conventions associated with the genre. Tom Gillespie’s novel The Strange Book of Jacob Boyce may start with the mysterious disappearance of Ella Boyce, but it becomes something entirely unexpected and surprising. We got in touch with Tom to talk more about his novel.

 

The Strange Book of Jacob Boyce
By Tom Gillespie
Published by Vine Leaves Press

 

Here, Tom introduces his novel The Strange Book of Jacob Boyce:

Tom gives us a reading:

Now, Tom talks about the theme of obsession in the novel:

 

The Strange Book of Jacob Boyce by Tom Gillespie is published by Vine Leaves Press, priced £9.99.