Jack MacRoary's Big Brexit Blethers
Episode One
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: Brexit casualties and sacrifices.
Swearwords: None.
Description: Brexit casualties and sacrifices.
Mr Marker was the first casualty of Brexit. Well, I know that’s not strictly true because David Cameron was the first casualty of Brexit, but he’s in Englandshire and that doesn’t count. (It’s my dad’s idea of a joke to call it Englandshire. He did it when my mum kept going on about us being North Britain now, not Scotland.) Anyway, like I was trying to say before I interrupted myself, Mr Marker was the first casualty of Brexit in DrumTumshie at any rate and since that’s where I live that’s what matters to me.
Mr Marker, in case you don’t know me or him or TattyBogle, is my Modern Studies Teacher. He’s the one who taught me that truth is the first casualty of war and lots of other useful things like that.
And it started last year. In June. It was the last week of school when the Brexit vote was announced. And Mr Marker lost the plot. No one saw it coming. Either of those things. Mr Marker couldn’t cope with the after effects of a No Vote. He had his syllabus all ready sorted for our National 5 and now he was going to have to go back to the drawing board. And the rumour was he’d planned a nice holiday abroad in Greece with Miss Direction but now he was going to have to sacrifice himself for us and work out how to teach us all about the after effects of Brexit before it had even happened. It’s a wonder he didn’t take to drink. And yes, for those of you who remember from last year’s FairTrade Adventure, Mr Marker and Miss Direction are now ‘an item’. Mr Smith has left teaching and gone back into the world of business. His parting speech – ‘it’s the economy, stupid.’
We weren’t as lucky though. Apart from Brian the Brain, who has now left school and is working in the Fairtrade Café. As for the rest of us, we came back after the holidays and while no one else knew what Theresa May or may not do Mr Marker had to prepare us for an exam. He’s been looking increasingly pale and – well, hunted is the best word to describe him, I suppose – all year. And now we’re about to sit that exam and if you so much as mention Article 50 near him you can see him physically wince.
But as they say, life goes on. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, though. For example, I’ve just turned sixteen and that means I can drive the quadbike I’ve been driving since I was thirteen. Next year when I turn seventeen I’ll be able to drive the tractor I’ve been driving since last year. Life’s like that.
Plans never go quite how you want them to. If you remember me, you’ll know that I’ve always wanted to be a potato farmer. My dad’s a farmer but he only does potatoes when crop rotation calls for it. Me, I want to get big into potatoes all the time.
At the last parents evening Mr Marker said to my mum that he wanted me to stay on and do Highers, maybe even Advanced Higher Modern Studies. ‘He’s a clever boy, Mrs MacRoary,’ he said and of course my mum agreed with him. Even my dad gave a sort of nod and didn’t say ‘too clever by half’ like my gran sometimes does when I’m too quick with a smart answer. And my English teacher said the same (that I’m clever, not too clever by half). And that cut the mustard with my mum, because as you know she’s into writing and reading and literature and fiction – when she’s not into politics. So that made mum determined that I had to stay on at school and it made me determined that if I was smart enough to pass my exams and stay on for Highers I was certainly smart enough to fail them so that I could either go straight to agricultural college or onto the farm with my dad. My plan wasn’t to fail exactly, but not to do well enough to stay on at school, just well enough to get into college. It’s a dangerous game to play but I felt I owed it to the future of potato farming in our country.
Things changed on March 13th, though. That was the day Mr Marker finally lost it and broke down in class. I don’t mean he cried. He sort of snapped. Well, in actual fact he just walked out of the room. He didn’t say ‘I’m just going outside, I may be some time’ or anything heroic like that, he just said ‘I can’t do this’ and left the building, but not like Elvis.
So I went home on March 13th to tell my mum that Mr Marker had abandoned us just before the exams and what did she think about that but mum got in there first. We were sitting round the table and I was all ready to give them my news when mum didn’t even ask me for it – which she always does – but instead she jumped straight in and told my dad what Nicola Sturgeon had gone and done – which of course you know is called out Theresa May and demanded that Scotland have another Independence Referendum so we can all choose on whether to stay in Europe or not. And the chances are that since I’m sixteen now I’ll get a vote as well.
‘You know what this means, Jack,’ my dad said.
‘What, dad?’ I asked.
‘You’re on chip duty again,’ he said.
It was what is called a cultural reference within the context of our family. When mum is out canvassing and attending political meetings, like she does when there’s a referendum or election for her to win, I end up having to make the chips for tea. I’ve got pretty good at it over the last couple of years, but we thought those days were over. Last summer after the shock Brexit vote mum decided the world had finally gone completely mad and that she should spend more time at home where things were more under her control – especially now that John doesn’t live here any more.
You remember my brother John? He’s got that girlfriend called Heather who turned him into a human. They were going to emigrate to New Zealand or Canada and run a farm together. Well, they’re in Poland now. Running a farm for ‘experience’. Dad says that John probably just got lost on the way to New Zealand, or maybe hasn’t even noticed that he’s not in New Zealand. But he’s just joking. It was Heather’s idea. She likes to go against the direction of traffic and with all the Poles coming over here she decided there might be a gap in the market over there and besides they managed to get a loan to buy a farm really cheap for like less than thirty thousand pounds and they are going to make it pay and then have money to pay back the bank (it’s her bank of mum and dad, actually) and take the profit and the experience and then go out to New Zealand, or Canada.
If you think my mum and dad could be a bank of mum and dad or any kind, I’d have to say they could only be a food bank because we always have food in our house but money is more of an elusive entity. I was brought up with the philosophy that there’s more to life than money and it’s certainly always proved true in our house.
But back to the real point of all this. I’m stuck, as they say, on the horns of a dilemma. I told mum and dad about Mr Marker and mum said she felt really sorry for him, how was he meant to keep up with current affairs in these times and dad simply said ‘He’ll be back’ in a dark voice and laughed.
So you see, I am conflicted. I feel I owe it to Mr Marker to do really well in the exam to prove to him that he hasn’t wasted his life away in DrumTumshie teaching ‘the post-Brexit generation’, which is what he called us this year. Last year he called us the ‘Post-Indy Ref’ generation but you see, as he always said, a week is a long time in politics so our generations move on just as fast. But if I do well in the exam I’ll have to stay at school through Highers and that means I will have to wait another year to go to college and get out on the farm, which is what I really want to do.
However, now I’m sixteen I think I’m old enough to appreciate that sacrifices have to be made and I think about what my Uncle Tam would have wanted and I think he would have expected me to show some solidarity with Mr Marker. And I wonder what Mhairi Black would want – even though I know now she won’t be my girlfriend because she’s got a girlfriend of her own – she’s sacrificed herself to Westminster for five years so it seems little enough for me to give up one year of potato farming in order to save Mr Marker’s self-respect and give him something to live for. So I’m going to have to pass that exam. Which means I’ll have to study. Which means I probably shouldn’t go on the potato rogueing course in the holidays. But I’m going to. Because life goes on even when you have to make sacrifices and because my mum and dad don’t run a bank or even own the farm we work on, the money I make will come in handy, especially if mum’s going to be running around after IndyRef2.
Mr Marker, in case you don’t know me or him or TattyBogle, is my Modern Studies Teacher. He’s the one who taught me that truth is the first casualty of war and lots of other useful things like that.
And it started last year. In June. It was the last week of school when the Brexit vote was announced. And Mr Marker lost the plot. No one saw it coming. Either of those things. Mr Marker couldn’t cope with the after effects of a No Vote. He had his syllabus all ready sorted for our National 5 and now he was going to have to go back to the drawing board. And the rumour was he’d planned a nice holiday abroad in Greece with Miss Direction but now he was going to have to sacrifice himself for us and work out how to teach us all about the after effects of Brexit before it had even happened. It’s a wonder he didn’t take to drink. And yes, for those of you who remember from last year’s FairTrade Adventure, Mr Marker and Miss Direction are now ‘an item’. Mr Smith has left teaching and gone back into the world of business. His parting speech – ‘it’s the economy, stupid.’
We weren’t as lucky though. Apart from Brian the Brain, who has now left school and is working in the Fairtrade Café. As for the rest of us, we came back after the holidays and while no one else knew what Theresa May or may not do Mr Marker had to prepare us for an exam. He’s been looking increasingly pale and – well, hunted is the best word to describe him, I suppose – all year. And now we’re about to sit that exam and if you so much as mention Article 50 near him you can see him physically wince.
But as they say, life goes on. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, though. For example, I’ve just turned sixteen and that means I can drive the quadbike I’ve been driving since I was thirteen. Next year when I turn seventeen I’ll be able to drive the tractor I’ve been driving since last year. Life’s like that.
Plans never go quite how you want them to. If you remember me, you’ll know that I’ve always wanted to be a potato farmer. My dad’s a farmer but he only does potatoes when crop rotation calls for it. Me, I want to get big into potatoes all the time.
At the last parents evening Mr Marker said to my mum that he wanted me to stay on and do Highers, maybe even Advanced Higher Modern Studies. ‘He’s a clever boy, Mrs MacRoary,’ he said and of course my mum agreed with him. Even my dad gave a sort of nod and didn’t say ‘too clever by half’ like my gran sometimes does when I’m too quick with a smart answer. And my English teacher said the same (that I’m clever, not too clever by half). And that cut the mustard with my mum, because as you know she’s into writing and reading and literature and fiction – when she’s not into politics. So that made mum determined that I had to stay on at school and it made me determined that if I was smart enough to pass my exams and stay on for Highers I was certainly smart enough to fail them so that I could either go straight to agricultural college or onto the farm with my dad. My plan wasn’t to fail exactly, but not to do well enough to stay on at school, just well enough to get into college. It’s a dangerous game to play but I felt I owed it to the future of potato farming in our country.
Things changed on March 13th, though. That was the day Mr Marker finally lost it and broke down in class. I don’t mean he cried. He sort of snapped. Well, in actual fact he just walked out of the room. He didn’t say ‘I’m just going outside, I may be some time’ or anything heroic like that, he just said ‘I can’t do this’ and left the building, but not like Elvis.
So I went home on March 13th to tell my mum that Mr Marker had abandoned us just before the exams and what did she think about that but mum got in there first. We were sitting round the table and I was all ready to give them my news when mum didn’t even ask me for it – which she always does – but instead she jumped straight in and told my dad what Nicola Sturgeon had gone and done – which of course you know is called out Theresa May and demanded that Scotland have another Independence Referendum so we can all choose on whether to stay in Europe or not. And the chances are that since I’m sixteen now I’ll get a vote as well.
‘You know what this means, Jack,’ my dad said.
‘What, dad?’ I asked.
‘You’re on chip duty again,’ he said.
It was what is called a cultural reference within the context of our family. When mum is out canvassing and attending political meetings, like she does when there’s a referendum or election for her to win, I end up having to make the chips for tea. I’ve got pretty good at it over the last couple of years, but we thought those days were over. Last summer after the shock Brexit vote mum decided the world had finally gone completely mad and that she should spend more time at home where things were more under her control – especially now that John doesn’t live here any more.
You remember my brother John? He’s got that girlfriend called Heather who turned him into a human. They were going to emigrate to New Zealand or Canada and run a farm together. Well, they’re in Poland now. Running a farm for ‘experience’. Dad says that John probably just got lost on the way to New Zealand, or maybe hasn’t even noticed that he’s not in New Zealand. But he’s just joking. It was Heather’s idea. She likes to go against the direction of traffic and with all the Poles coming over here she decided there might be a gap in the market over there and besides they managed to get a loan to buy a farm really cheap for like less than thirty thousand pounds and they are going to make it pay and then have money to pay back the bank (it’s her bank of mum and dad, actually) and take the profit and the experience and then go out to New Zealand, or Canada.
If you think my mum and dad could be a bank of mum and dad or any kind, I’d have to say they could only be a food bank because we always have food in our house but money is more of an elusive entity. I was brought up with the philosophy that there’s more to life than money and it’s certainly always proved true in our house.
But back to the real point of all this. I’m stuck, as they say, on the horns of a dilemma. I told mum and dad about Mr Marker and mum said she felt really sorry for him, how was he meant to keep up with current affairs in these times and dad simply said ‘He’ll be back’ in a dark voice and laughed.
So you see, I am conflicted. I feel I owe it to Mr Marker to do really well in the exam to prove to him that he hasn’t wasted his life away in DrumTumshie teaching ‘the post-Brexit generation’, which is what he called us this year. Last year he called us the ‘Post-Indy Ref’ generation but you see, as he always said, a week is a long time in politics so our generations move on just as fast. But if I do well in the exam I’ll have to stay at school through Highers and that means I will have to wait another year to go to college and get out on the farm, which is what I really want to do.
However, now I’m sixteen I think I’m old enough to appreciate that sacrifices have to be made and I think about what my Uncle Tam would have wanted and I think he would have expected me to show some solidarity with Mr Marker. And I wonder what Mhairi Black would want – even though I know now she won’t be my girlfriend because she’s got a girlfriend of her own – she’s sacrificed herself to Westminster for five years so it seems little enough for me to give up one year of potato farming in order to save Mr Marker’s self-respect and give him something to live for. So I’m going to have to pass that exam. Which means I’ll have to study. Which means I probably shouldn’t go on the potato rogueing course in the holidays. But I’m going to. Because life goes on even when you have to make sacrifices and because my mum and dad don’t run a bank or even own the farm we work on, the money I make will come in handy, especially if mum’s going to be running around after IndyRef2.
About the Author
Jack MacRoary, also known locally as the Bard of DrumTumshie, comes from the small farming community of TattyBogle, which he has singlehandedly put on the map through his fame. After bursting onto the Scottish literary cultural scene in August 2012, when he appeared at the inaugural Edinburgh eBook Festival, Jack now attends DrumTumshie Academy.
During his brief but eventful literary career so far, Jack has been a blogger, providing an insightful commentary on rural life and Scots culture; a short story writer; and most recently a political commentator through his McSerial contributions to the McStorytellers website.
The Complete TattyBogle, Jack's first “real book” published by McStorytellers in 2015, brings together in a handy compendium all of his musings, commentaries and stories to date.
During his brief but eventful literary career so far, Jack has been a blogger, providing an insightful commentary on rural life and Scots culture; a short story writer; and most recently a political commentator through his McSerial contributions to the McStorytellers website.
The Complete TattyBogle, Jack's first “real book” published by McStorytellers in 2015, brings together in a handy compendium all of his musings, commentaries and stories to date.