No one ever asks a museum if it’s okay.”― Rudy Francisco

And so dear listener, much consternation this week about the weather being ‘mixed’ with some snow (but certainly not a lot here in Summer’stown) and then other folk chipping in with ‘It’s only the end of March. Bound to be lots of bad weather to come.’

Indeed, dear listener, indeed.

Let me take you back to 2018 and it’s not a totally random choice. It was the year that started with me in Glasgow Royal Infirmary and then the Golden Jubilee with heart problems. Which got sorted. But January/February I kept looking out of the ward window, seeing the snow piling up on Castle Street on the M8 and amazed that folk were actually coming to see me in hospital and were willing to traverse through the corridors of a building that, when I tried to walk through it myself, reminded me of post war East Berlin (except I’d never been there but I had seen black and white films of Richard Burton in The Spy Who Came in From The Cold).

And then a few weeks later came the Beast from the East and we all shivered and wondered will it ever end but it kinda drifted away and then at the beginning of April came my sister’s birthday – 4^th April – and it was arranged I’d take her for lunch to a tapas place she liked in Helensburgh.

I drove down to Hyndland to catch the train and in between where I park my car and the station, I got caught in a horrible blizzard and was soaked and shivering and phoned my sister to call off. She was disappointed but understood. Not long after that, she started going to see the doctor with a complaint that, when checked out, led to confirmation of cancers and her subsequent death early in 2019.

Take from that what you will…….

Music, please, Skippy. Whatever fits in. Thanks. Perfect.

Marty Stuart – Time Don’t Wait [Official Video] – YouTube

And so, the Burrell re-opened and I notice quite a lot of attention being drawn to it but be aware that the car parks cost. Refurbishment ain’t cheap. But I like the whole Pollok Park thing. Altho’ it’s a wee while since I’ve been. Years and years ago I was with a film crew (I was a mere researcher) and the Burrell hadn’t yet opened. I worked with Religious Broadcasting at the time (and had a wee spell presenting church services on the radio) and it was a lovely feature called A Child’s Guide to Glasgow and we brought together children from three different primaries and put them in a range of places like the Kelvingrove and the Cathedral and the Winter Gardens – a group of kids from a posh school, a multi-ethnic school and a rough area school. I’d to mentor the kids from the rough area school. It was good fun but despite it being forty-five years ago the BBC still seem to be exercising some kind of copyright on it……..if it ever makes it to Youtube, I’ll share it. A reminder of a much gentler time.

 Many years later I was there with Good Friend e and wee AJ and we had eaten and drunk coffee and cake and, for some reason, I must have given him a business card of mine and he must have thought it was a credit card and went up to pay. The assistants thought this was a good laugh and then looked at me. It was my turn anyway.

I also remember going to the Burrell with another friend, who shall remain nameless, who really liked (amongst all these oriental treasures) what I think was a collage put together by a local primary school. It was something about the discarded takeaway aluminium tray that was the centre piece of the display. And why not?

I’ll maybe wander over after Easter and see if that’s been refurbished as well😊

A wee mixture of memories there but things have been happening this week and I’ll maybe talk about them next week.

Tioraidh and slowly we’re getting back to the days of keeping it simple, but I still find it too easy to talk myself out of doing things. I need suggestions but I have my Aye Write shopping list.

Iaint850, who needs to find something to replace the editing but what? Or is it time for another uny course? Or Open University?????????

And just a wee word about Chris Rock and Will Smith. The serious bit. And nothing that has happened since this blog was first broadcast has changed things. And it’s still much more up to date than Saturday’s The Edit on the BBC Scotland channel 😉

I’ve spoken to actors and actresses (I use both words and always will do. Women have fought for too much over the years for them to be merged back into male nomenclature) in the past about taking part in discussion programmes and they’ve not been too sure about doing so. In fact I remember Ricky Fulton saying that to a (now late) colleague of mine, Christine Kinnear.

The problem, they said, was that they were so used to someone writing words for them and someone else directing them in what to do, that they were never sure who they really were when they were just ‘being themselves’.

I think we saw that in Will Smith the other night. In those few minutes he must have gone through every part he’d ever played or watched on the screen and decided he had to defend his wife, following a poor joke, but took a wee while to decide who he was.

We do get chances to choose our identity. Was his the right choice at that moment?

My sister was married for a very short while before her divorce but kept her married name and the title Mrs. Make of that what you will.

And in the week when a great drummer died and I raise questions about who we are, there is only one song to be played. Can you guess the bits where I turn up the volume?

Foo Fighters – The Pretender – YouTube

‘To all students – I’m so sorry Covid is making this special time of your lives so tough.’ – (Nicola Sturgeon)

And so, dear listener, ‘picture it if you’se will.’* Me as an eighteen year old student – a very long time ago. And don’t worry; there is a point to this memory and I realise that I should have offered this insight to the Scottish Government a week or so ago and we might be in a better position that we are just now.

It was in the early seventies and I had come down from the fishing town of Peterhead to the fleshpots of Glasgow – or Queen Margaret Halls of Residence, Bellshaugh Road, just along from the Kirklee Bridge at the Botanic Gardens where my ashes will be scattered. 😀 😀 😀

(Good friend e and I have already had a dummy run. It’ll be like Poo Sticks. You scatter the ashes on one side of the wooden bridge and then run to the other side. I told Son Brian who, technically, would be in charge and he went, ‘Fine. Whatever.’)

Initially, I was 18 and didn’t know anyone. There were 350 students in the halls; 175 boys and 175 girls. You had your own room and the cost was covered by your student grant. You got breakfast and an evening meal and lunch on a Saturday and Sunday. And getting to know people was not a problem. 🙂

Yes. There were wardens on each floor but these tended to be single (as in marital status) lecturers who were new to Glasgow and doing their own exploring.

We had no-one to tell us what to do and what not to do. There was no going out drinking with your pals and worrying about what your parents would say to you when you got home. ‘It’s okay mum and dad. I’ve had a good night but I’m tired and I’m just going to bed.’ 😉

The style of student residence has changed but students haven’t. There are still student residences where QM halls once were and there’s a student village in Murano Street near Firhill (when will I see its like again?) and we’ve been telling young people that it’s old people who are most at risk so when they meet other freshers for the first time, of course they’re going to spend time with them – unmasked – cos how do you know what they look like? So, yes, they have gone out to enjoy themselves in a range of ways and they have come into contact with the virus without realising they were putting themselves at risk. 😦

And I’ll give you another example of the naivety of young people away from home for the first time, if I may.

When Son Brian was a lot younger, he and I went to an Open Day at Maryhill Fire Station. The fireman in charge asked us where we thought most of their calls came from…..and then without waiting, he told us.

‘The Murano Street student village.’, cos no-one had shown their youngsters how to wash a grill pan. So nobody knew how to. And every so often, they went on fire. What do students know anyway?

Maybe all the current Scottish Government (with degrees) travelled to uny every day and went home at night. They should have asked me.

*Andy McChuckemup as played by Bill Paterson when he was still an actor with the 7:84 Theatre Company in the Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil.

Here’s a wee bit of the flavour of the Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil. This is John Bett and the man who went on to be Taggart.

And so dear listener, I wrote that on Thursday morning; spent some time in my alternative office of the Botanic Gardens in the afternoon; and got home at night to some studently news that completely changed my view of things.

@JasonLeitch had been telling students that if they weren’t self-isolating and showing no symptoms then it wasn’t illegal for them to go home for the holidays; but then, a few hours later, he was telling them that eh, no, they couldn’t go home cos that would mean they were meeting indoors with another household.

Nobody had explained that leaving mum and dad to go to a student residence meant they had transferred to another household and their original household (or mum and dad as they knew it) was no longer applicable.

And did no-one tell the Scottish Government about the size of some these households in uny residences? I saw one piece of footage on mainstream TV filmed by a student on a phone saying that three of them had tested positive but the rest of them (nine!!!!!!) were self-isolating in the lounge (FFS!!!!!!)

And then they were told that they couldn’t go to pubs, restaurants or cafes this weekend (‘but hopefully just for this weekend’ said the FM) but as I write this I have seen no guidance for those students who work in pubs, restaurants and cafes – or stay at home with their parents. Or stay in rented flats. Or, for the four social work students that e and I did some work for earlier this year who work part-time in social care. The Scottish Government was happy to let them do that then, but now?

I am a wee bit angry and maybe there’s a degree of self-interest in what I have to say but I also know that many students were already disappointed at the notion that, for many of them, the great university adventure was now going to be just watching a pre-recorded lecturer zooming in on their computer screen.

They are used to being told what to do by teachers and parents and they didn’t even get ‘normal’ contact with their their teachers last term or were impacted by the exam crisis. I feel they’ve been let down when much of this could have been avoided. It all seems a bit brutal to me and may well have an effect on their wellbeing and mental health.

I then finished writing this late on Thursday night, hit the Publish button and have not looked at it since.

So, I was going to keep you posted on my kitchen but no room. It’s going well. Here, with absolutely no connection with how my new work in progress kitchen currently looks, is God’s Country by Blake Shelton.