Jack MacRoary's Guide to the Independence Referendum:
Episodes Nine & Ten
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: In a double header, the Bard of DrumTumshie brings to a close the inaugural McStorytellers McSerial.
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Episode Nine – In which I meet the First Minister again, and she's a woman
I take more care in Modern Studies these days, and I’m even going to take it for my National 5. Because it’s what my Uncle Tam would have wanted. And so, when Mr Marker asked us the question: Who is your political hero? And everyone else was mucking around, I wrote The First Minister. And then I crossed it out and wrote Alex Salmond. Because of course he isn’t the first minister any more.
And Mr Marker asked us to say what we’d written.
And Brian said his hero was Oor Wullie. And I said Alex Salmond, and Mr Marker said we couldn’t both pick the same hero and laughed. I didn’t think it was funny and I thought it was a bit cheeky but then when I thought about it more it’s sort of true because I do think Alex Salmond has quite a lot in common with Oor Wullie. And that’s giving due respect to both of them.
But to keep Mr Marker happy, I crossed out Alex Salmond and wrote My Uncle Tam. And then I put my hand up and said ‘Sir, do they have to be living or can they be dead?’
And Mr Marker said they could be dead. And then he looked at Brian the Brain and said, ‘But they can’t be a fictional character.’ Which Brian thought was unfair, but because he had his bodyguard lady with him giving him a disapproving look, he realised this was one of those times when he had to say nothing. So he said nothing.
But you wanted to know how my dad and me were going to make my mum happy again after all the terrible things that happened. It wasn’t going to be easy. But it was our responsibility.
We got the idea in November when it was the SNP party conference. It was on the TV and my mum said she wanted to watch it. No one had said anything much about politics in our house since the dark days and my mum hadn’t been interested in anything, so my dad said, ‘That’s a great idea, let’s go to the conference.’
But he didn’t mean we should all leave the house and go to Perth and sit there in the Conference Hall all weekend, because he couldn’t leave the animals that long and anyway it would all be booked up. Even though as party members they would have been able to go and would have been most welcome too. No, he meant we’d watch it on TV. As if we were there. Which was okay because both my parents are members of the SNP. They had joined at the start of the ‘campaign’ a couple of years ago – which I didn’t know at the time – but since the Referendum a load of other people had joined too, thousands of them so that by the time the Conference came round they couldn’t all fit into the Perth Concert Hall anyway, even if they’d wanted to. So we were doing a good thing, letting other people go for real while we just watched it on TV. And it meant dad could feed the beasts in between the sessions. And mum could have a wee cry, because she still was crying from time to time. About Uncle Tam and about the Referendum. Two things together were too much for her to take. You can’t blame her for that. Grief doesn’t vanish in a day or even a month. It’s like a dog, not just for Christmas – for ever. I didn’t want to think about what Christmas would be like, the first one without my Uncle Tam, so I tried not to think about it, and instead I tried to pay attention to the conference and some of it was quite interesting actually. And my mum liked it. And I went one better than that. I told my mum I wanted to sit and watch with her. Which I did in memory of Uncle Tam because even though he was more of a Radical Independence man, he’d have liked to watch the Conference.
And because it was really my mum’s treat, and she had a lot on her plate at that time, I was on sandwich duty. And takeaway duty. What I mean is it was up to me to provide the food. My mum’s plate wasn’t one that had food on it. Well, it did when I gave her sandwiches and takeaways, but you know what I mean. I hope.
So there we are, in November at the Conference, virtually. And things were looking a bit different from those dark days of September. Not really brighter, but different. Because even though the vote was No, Yes people were still Yes. And they were voting with their feet since their crosses hadn’t counted. And this was why thousands of people joined the SNP because they couldn’t find another way to express their disgust about what happened. It might only have been 45 per cent who voted Yes but that is over a million people and that’s a lot of people to feel angry and upset and want to do something about it. And what they did, mostly, is join the SNP. I wish my Uncle Tam had done that instead of killing himself.
The Conference cheered my mum up a bit but dad said that it was a ‘temporary’ fix and he had a better plan. He just wanted her to smile again. To be happy. We all did. We knew she’s never going to be truly happy without Uncle Tam, but we all want to do whatever we can. If we could give her Independence we’d do it. But we couldn’t. Not then. Maybe never. But we did what we could. And this was Dad’s plan.
My dad’s not a man with a plan often. He usually just goes about his business minding it and not thinking about ‘the bigger picture’, mum says. He’s not a bad dad, he doesn’t forget your birthday and he’s not a bad husband ‘when it comes down to it’, mum says. He sometimes forgets their anniversary but only till he gets reminded and he really does love my mum. I’ve always known that, but I knew it when he told me of his plan. Because the plan was to go to Glasgow. And my dad hates cities with a vengeance. Even Yes City. But sometimes he knows you have to do things you don’t like to make someone else happy and when it’s your wife and you love her that’s the sign of a good husband.
Dad booked for us to go to The Tour. Him and me and mum. All of us to go to Glasgow and see The First Minister. Which is Nicola Sturgeon now, not Alex Salmond. That happened at the Conference. John was going to stay home and look after the beasts, which was my dad placing great trust in his first-born son, but John is a bit of a ‘reformed character’, as Uncle Tam would have said, and it was a test to see if he could step up to the plate when the family needed him.
I said to dad wouldn’t he and mum rather go on their own, like a second honeymoon, and he said no, he thought it would be better if we all went. And anyway, I never usually went to Glasgow and we could all share a room in the Premier Inn and I could help him with my mum. I didn’t really know what he meant like that so I asked him, ‘Do you mean like with Nanny Alzheimer?’ and he laughed. Not a big belly laugh because no MacRoary has done that since September, but a sort of tired laugh, and I looked at my dad and he did look tired.
Nanny Alzheimer is my dad’s mum and she can’t remember things. So she is looked after by one of my aunties and is waiting for a place in a ‘home’. Of course it’s not her home, and so it’s a strange name ‘care home’ since mostly you hear that people don’t care for people when they are there. But she has to be ‘looked after’ and sometimes I go with dad to help him do that. And mostly that means just singing and not getting worried that she doesn’t know who we are.
When I think about it, I wish that Nanny Alzheimer had been my mum’s mum, because then she wouldn’t have known about her son killing himself because of the Referendum. Which of course his mum did know and it made her very sick, but not in the memory stakes. No. The problem with my mum, and her mum, my nana, is that they have very good memories and their memories are full to bursting of Uncle Tam all the time. Whereas Nanny Alzheimer can’t remember who the prime minister is or what the day of the week is or whether or not she even voted in the Referendum, or whether Scotland is Independent or not.
But dad didn’t mean it that way about helping with my mum. He said it was just ‘back up’ to help make her happy because sometimes whatever he does he makes her ratty with him and I always make her laugh.
And I thought hard about that, and about what I could do to help dad make my mum happy. And I wrote an email. To Nicola Sturgeon. And I told her some of the stuff that had happened to us that summer and autumn and how I would really like my mum to meet her because the one thing that gave my mum some hope in the future was not the Smith Commission or Devo-Max or anything else but that Nicola Sturgeon was a woman with purpose who might lead us into an Independent future and bring about Social Justice.
I didn’t expect a reply really, and I was amazed when I got one. And Nicola Sturgeon (I know she’s married and should be a Mrs but her husband’s name isn’t Sturgeon and I don’t want to call her Ms because that reminds me of you know who, and calling her Miss would be cheeky and wrong so I’ll call her Nicola Sturgeon) said she would love to meet my mum after the Tour. Backstage. Like real rock star guests!
I kept that a secret from my mum, and my dad. I wasn’t lying to them, I was just hoping I would make their evening special. And I did.
The evening was amazing. Everywhere was filled with people, cheering and shouting and waving flags. But also listening to what was being said. And when Nicola Sturgeon came on stage the place went wild. And she told us of the plans for the future. And I sneaked a look at my mum and she looked happy – at least in that moment. I knew that happiness for my mum was now like it is for Nanny Alzheimer – it only lasts in the moment. For Nanny Alzheimer it lasts as long as the memory lasts but for my mum it lasts only as long as the moment lasts because then the memory comes back. But that’s because Nanny Alzheimer’s memories are happy and my mum’s aren’t, not at the moment.
But like dad had explained to me, the Tour was about trying to build new and happy memories for my mum. And I topped the lot when after the event and we were about to fight our way back through the crowds to our Premier Inn, I told them I had a letter that meant we were going to meet Nicola Sturgeon. They didn’t believe me at first and then they did because I went to a steward and showed them the letter and they led us backstage to where Nicola Sturgeon was. She was surrounded with people but when she saw us, she left them and came to us.
She hugged us all. She even kissed me. But only on the cheek. And she held onto my mum for the longest time. And then she asked us if it was okay if she could speak to my mum in private, and dad and me said ‘yes, of course’ and they went off into a room for a wee while.
No one knows what happened when they talked to each other that night, except Nicola Sturgeon and my mum of course, but when she came out, even though she had been crying, her eyes were a bit shiny with something that looked a bit like Hope.
I’m not saying Nicola Sturgeon is a miracle worker, but I think she gave my mum Hope over Fear all over again when they were in that room.
And I said, ‘Thank you’ to her and she hugged me again and I could see that Nicola Sturgeon might have been crying a wee bit too, because that mascara stuff was a bit loose. And I just thought it was nice that Nicola cared enough about my mum to cry a bit about her loss.
And as I said ‘Thank you,’ and she was hugging me again, she whispered in my ear, ‘Take care of your mum, Jack.’
And I said, ‘I will, Nicola Sturgeon. I will. I promise. And I’m a boy who wants to be a man who keeps his promise so I really will take care of my mum, whatever happens.’ I know that sounds a bit like babbling, but I was a bit overwhelmed by meeting her, if I’m honest, which of course I should be.
And then I said to her, ‘Will you please try and get us Independence, even though I know it’s really difficult now.’
And she said, ‘Jack, it’s the main goal of my life. It will happen.’
And I wish I’d thought to write to Nicola Sturgeon sooner because if I’d written to her before Uncle Tam died then maybe she might have met him and given him back his Hope. But even though actions have consequences, as we all know, you can’t always tell what’s going to happen and of course I didn’t think about writing to Nicola Sturgeon until after what happened and my mum needed her help. I suppose it just proves that we never know what will happen but we have to keep our eyes open all the time for the opportunity to help other people. And I think THAT is what Social Justice means.
And because this is the last time I’m writing about this – until I come back next week to start writing about The General Election - I should try and ‘tie up the ends’ for you. Because in my story we are only at November 22nd and of course there was the Smith Commission yet to come.
Episode Ten – After the Vow. It's not a happy ending, but then it isn't the end, is it?
We all got home after the Tour and we were ‘emotionally exhausted’ and dad and me were pleased to be home from the City. We had to go shopping with my mum the morning before we drove home but she didn’t want to shop that much so we can’t really complain.
All the way home my mum was talking about the Event and the Future and how we had to keep on going. But dad and me didn’t ever ask her what she and Nicola Sturgeon said to each other – we know some things are private even from your closest family.
Whatever it was she said, it did really help start my mum to ‘move on’ from her brother’s death and that was enough for us. You can only build happy memories one at a time and that’s what we are aiming for.
But nothing stays happy for long at the moment. And the next thing that happened was the next week when The Smith Commission delivered their report. And of course it wasn’t what anyone wanted. Not any Yes for Independence person. It was ‘fudge’, my dad said.
It was ‘iniquitous’, my mum said. And then she said, ‘We’ll fight them all the way.’
The Smith Commission was the first thing my mum downloaded to her Kindle Fire since well before the Referendum. But it was only twenty eight pages long. Not like ‘Scotland’s Future’ which was hundreds of pages long. That’s the difference between Independence and not. If we had had Independence Scotland’s future would be worth hundreds of pages and lots of things would be made better. But ‘better together’ means we’re only worth twenty eight pages, or as Mr Marker would say ‘a footnote in history.’
Twenty eight pages of fudge. I wondered what Uncle Tam would have said. My dad tried to read it and he got so annoyed after page three that he nearly threw the Kindle Fire across the room. I think it confirmed to him that no good comes from technology as well as he knows no good comes from the Wastemonster.
Mum read it all the way through and when I asked her what she thought she said, ‘It’s just an insult. A load of toffee. They must think we’re idiots to believe a word of it and they’re offering us sweeties we already paid for.’
And mum said I should read the report, if not the whole thing then just the ‘summary’. Normally she said I should always read the whole thing but this time it was a waste of everyone’s intelligence so the summary would do. And Mr Marker said the same thing. He said we needed to know what the Smith Commission said ‘in principle’ because it wasn’t really going to happen in any real sense, but that we should know how we’d been sold down the river.
‘For toffee and fudge,’ Brian the Brain said.
And Mr Marker didn’t even tell him he was being cheeky.
If you want to know about the Smith Commission I’m sure you read it for yourself. And my dad says it’s the greatest work of fiction he’s ever likely to read. Or not read of course because he couldn’t get past the first three pages it was so bad.
Despite everyone telling me I didn’t have to, I went on the internet one evening and I read it all. It’s what my Uncle Tam would have wanted. And in the first page I thought Lord Smith was trying to tell us all that everything in garden was rosy and we were better together but then when you went into any detail about it, it didn’t look that way. Because everything in the garden is not rosy.
And I’ve learned you can promise all sorts of things but if you don’t intend to stick to them, it doesn’t mean anything. And that’s what politics is made of. Usually. Promises that won’t stick. And broken promises have devastating consequences. On real people’s lives. I know that now. I know that politicians don’t think that promises matter, but they do. If they hadn’t made promises they had no intention of keeping my Uncle Tam would certainly be alive and we would probably have got Independence. That’s what I believe anyway.
In the Report, there was a lot of things about taxes and promising powers and all that. But when I read it really carefully, despite how boring it is, I saw what my mum was saying that it’s still paying us back in sweeties we’ve already bought. If we’d become Independent we would have had our own money. No one else would be telling us what to do with our lives and our country. We would have been free. And surely every country and all people deserve that?
And it wouldn’t have mattered to me if it was the pound sterling or the Euro or a Scottish pound. It would have been our money to do what we want with. To work for Social Justice and to solve our own problems. Like my Uncle Tam used to say, it’d be wur ain shite we wis shovellin’.
And about the money - everyone knew that all the stooshie Mr Darling tried to create about the currency was just a smokescreen. Or a red-herring. Or whatever you want to call it. I call it rubbish. It was just a way to try and divert people from the real issues. My Uncle Tam said. I remember that most clearly. And he was right. My Uncle Tam would have been very unhappy with the Smith Commission Report. I don’t know what he would have done but I wish he was here to do it.
And everyone in the MacRoary house is unhappy about it. Because we feel we’ve been cheated. But none of us has an answer as to how to fix things. Dad says that sometimes when you break things they can’t be fixed.
But mum thinks the thing we have to do is get into the Wastemonster system, niggle them from within and cause so much trouble that they let us become Independent anyway. Dad thinks that’s a long shot, but says, ‘A year ago we could have sent John to Parliament, that would have done it.’
He told John it was a compliment because now John has turned himself around with college and everything and working properly at the farm, but it sounded like a skelp on the lug of a compliment to me.
‘Mum would be better to go, wouldn’t she?’ I said.
But mum said she was too old and had too many things to think about here to go to Wastemonster. ‘It was a sacrifice too many,’ she said.
‘You’re right mum,’ I said. ‘We’re going to have to give them Alex Salmond, that’s enough.’ Because Alex Salmond is going to go back to the Wastemonster ‘to kick their sorry butts,’ my dad says, and that’s a ‘damned shame’ because he’s ‘a fine man who has aye played straight wi’ us here’, and that’s something to be said for a politician.
‘Maybe you should go and help Nicola Sturgeon at the Scottish Parliament, mum,’ I said, because I thought that might make her happy.
‘I’d be no help to her,’ mum said. ‘And I’m needed here.’
‘Of course you are mum,’ I said, ‘I’m just saying that you would be a good politician, because you’re not at all like what one should be. You care about real people. You could be as great as Nicola Sturgeon any day. But we’re grateful you decided to be our mum instead of going into politics.’
And that made her a bit happy. Which was what I was aiming for. I’d hate it if my mum had to be an MSP and went down to Edinburgh all the time. Especially because that Jim Murphy won the draw to be the Scottish Labour Leader and even though he’s not in Parliament yet he would be and my dad said he’d ram the Smith Commission down Murphy’s (I won’t use the next words) throat if he ever came into contact with him. Which if we went there we probably would because right now he’s hanging around there like a bad smell, dad says.
‘That’ll be the egg he never cleaned off dad,’ I said.
Mum smiled at that one.
He’s really annoying Jim Murphy, especially at the moment because he’s all over the news all the time like he rules Scotland and he’s got one smug pus which needs rearranging if you ask my opinion. It’s just my opinion. I’m entitled to it. After all, it was partly his fault what happened to Uncle Tam. You can’t expect me to like the man after that, can you? Not the man responsible for killing your Uncle. No one could expect me to like him. Even if he never meant it. Which of course he didn’t. He didn’t mean it because he didn’t think. He didn’t think of the consequences of his actions on ‘real’ people like us. He’s just after power. You can see that in his smug pus every time he opens his mouth. I have to say it, right now, I HATE Jim Murphy.
We were still eating our tea and talking about the latest thing Jim Murphy had done to annoy us – which wasn’t hard to find when I said, ‘I’d hit him with Scotland’s Future, the book, I mean not the ebook – because it’s heavier than the Smith Commission.’
And mum said, ‘John, I know I shouldn’t say this, but I’m so glad you threw an egg at that man.’
‘So am I, mum,’ said John. And then he said if he ever set eyes on Jim Murphy again he’d do more than throw an egg, and I wouldn’t put it past him to set fire to an Irn Bru crate using the Smith Commission for a lighter and… we can but dream!
So you can see, one consequence, perhaps unexpected, of the Smith Commission, at least in the MacRoary household is that it’s brought us all together, united in a desire to do something. I don’t mean just revenge on Jim Murphy. I mean something which might mean that Scotland can be Independent in our lifetime.
Because we know that the Smith Commission is fudge and they didn’t ‘deliver’ on the promise and we have to hold their feet to the fire in whatever way we can. Not John’s way perhaps and perhaps I shouldn’t tell Brian about it because he might take it literally (he does that sometimes) and then he’d be in trouble and I still do have a responsibility to look out for Brian.
I should tell you that tempers can get very heated when we talk about politics these days, but the days of MacRoarys shouting at each other are long gone. Except when someone is outside or upstairs and you have to shout to get them in. I mean the argument type shouting. We’ve been brought closer together because of this whole experience, but I still think that if we’d got Independence we’d all have pulled together AND been happy, which would have been much better.
But as it was, after the Smith Commission, which we knew wouldn’t give us anything to look forward to, we had to face Christmas without my Uncle Tam and then get into 2015 where all talk was about the General Election. And that’s what I’m going to be writing about from next week. In my new series ‘Jack MacRoary’s Guide to the General Election’. And it won’t be history, it will be right up to date. As it happens. So come back next week. We’re all in this together, after all.
But before I go I just want to tell you about what I did to make my mum happy for Mother’s Day. You’ll be really impressed. I bought her Alex Salmond’s book for her Kindle. It wasn’t published till 19th and that was a few days after Mother’s Day, but she said it was a book well worth waiting for. And dad bought her Iain MacWhirter’s ‘Divided UK’ ebook too, to read till ‘The Dream Shall Never Die’ came out. John says that sounds like a Bond movie and Mum says that Alex Salmond in Wastemonster will be more action packed than any Bond movie. I don’t know about that. I do know that I’m going to read his book and do a book report on it – and I’ll let you know what I think. But I’ve got to let mum read it first because it was her present, after all. And can you believe my dad even buying an ebook for my mum? It just shows that you never know what’s going to happen next… so come back next week and we’ll find out together.
Swearwords: None.
Description: In a double header, the Bard of DrumTumshie brings to a close the inaugural McStorytellers McSerial.
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Episode Nine – In which I meet the First Minister again, and she's a woman
I take more care in Modern Studies these days, and I’m even going to take it for my National 5. Because it’s what my Uncle Tam would have wanted. And so, when Mr Marker asked us the question: Who is your political hero? And everyone else was mucking around, I wrote The First Minister. And then I crossed it out and wrote Alex Salmond. Because of course he isn’t the first minister any more.
And Mr Marker asked us to say what we’d written.
And Brian said his hero was Oor Wullie. And I said Alex Salmond, and Mr Marker said we couldn’t both pick the same hero and laughed. I didn’t think it was funny and I thought it was a bit cheeky but then when I thought about it more it’s sort of true because I do think Alex Salmond has quite a lot in common with Oor Wullie. And that’s giving due respect to both of them.
But to keep Mr Marker happy, I crossed out Alex Salmond and wrote My Uncle Tam. And then I put my hand up and said ‘Sir, do they have to be living or can they be dead?’
And Mr Marker said they could be dead. And then he looked at Brian the Brain and said, ‘But they can’t be a fictional character.’ Which Brian thought was unfair, but because he had his bodyguard lady with him giving him a disapproving look, he realised this was one of those times when he had to say nothing. So he said nothing.
But you wanted to know how my dad and me were going to make my mum happy again after all the terrible things that happened. It wasn’t going to be easy. But it was our responsibility.
We got the idea in November when it was the SNP party conference. It was on the TV and my mum said she wanted to watch it. No one had said anything much about politics in our house since the dark days and my mum hadn’t been interested in anything, so my dad said, ‘That’s a great idea, let’s go to the conference.’
But he didn’t mean we should all leave the house and go to Perth and sit there in the Conference Hall all weekend, because he couldn’t leave the animals that long and anyway it would all be booked up. Even though as party members they would have been able to go and would have been most welcome too. No, he meant we’d watch it on TV. As if we were there. Which was okay because both my parents are members of the SNP. They had joined at the start of the ‘campaign’ a couple of years ago – which I didn’t know at the time – but since the Referendum a load of other people had joined too, thousands of them so that by the time the Conference came round they couldn’t all fit into the Perth Concert Hall anyway, even if they’d wanted to. So we were doing a good thing, letting other people go for real while we just watched it on TV. And it meant dad could feed the beasts in between the sessions. And mum could have a wee cry, because she still was crying from time to time. About Uncle Tam and about the Referendum. Two things together were too much for her to take. You can’t blame her for that. Grief doesn’t vanish in a day or even a month. It’s like a dog, not just for Christmas – for ever. I didn’t want to think about what Christmas would be like, the first one without my Uncle Tam, so I tried not to think about it, and instead I tried to pay attention to the conference and some of it was quite interesting actually. And my mum liked it. And I went one better than that. I told my mum I wanted to sit and watch with her. Which I did in memory of Uncle Tam because even though he was more of a Radical Independence man, he’d have liked to watch the Conference.
And because it was really my mum’s treat, and she had a lot on her plate at that time, I was on sandwich duty. And takeaway duty. What I mean is it was up to me to provide the food. My mum’s plate wasn’t one that had food on it. Well, it did when I gave her sandwiches and takeaways, but you know what I mean. I hope.
So there we are, in November at the Conference, virtually. And things were looking a bit different from those dark days of September. Not really brighter, but different. Because even though the vote was No, Yes people were still Yes. And they were voting with their feet since their crosses hadn’t counted. And this was why thousands of people joined the SNP because they couldn’t find another way to express their disgust about what happened. It might only have been 45 per cent who voted Yes but that is over a million people and that’s a lot of people to feel angry and upset and want to do something about it. And what they did, mostly, is join the SNP. I wish my Uncle Tam had done that instead of killing himself.
The Conference cheered my mum up a bit but dad said that it was a ‘temporary’ fix and he had a better plan. He just wanted her to smile again. To be happy. We all did. We knew she’s never going to be truly happy without Uncle Tam, but we all want to do whatever we can. If we could give her Independence we’d do it. But we couldn’t. Not then. Maybe never. But we did what we could. And this was Dad’s plan.
My dad’s not a man with a plan often. He usually just goes about his business minding it and not thinking about ‘the bigger picture’, mum says. He’s not a bad dad, he doesn’t forget your birthday and he’s not a bad husband ‘when it comes down to it’, mum says. He sometimes forgets their anniversary but only till he gets reminded and he really does love my mum. I’ve always known that, but I knew it when he told me of his plan. Because the plan was to go to Glasgow. And my dad hates cities with a vengeance. Even Yes City. But sometimes he knows you have to do things you don’t like to make someone else happy and when it’s your wife and you love her that’s the sign of a good husband.
Dad booked for us to go to The Tour. Him and me and mum. All of us to go to Glasgow and see The First Minister. Which is Nicola Sturgeon now, not Alex Salmond. That happened at the Conference. John was going to stay home and look after the beasts, which was my dad placing great trust in his first-born son, but John is a bit of a ‘reformed character’, as Uncle Tam would have said, and it was a test to see if he could step up to the plate when the family needed him.
I said to dad wouldn’t he and mum rather go on their own, like a second honeymoon, and he said no, he thought it would be better if we all went. And anyway, I never usually went to Glasgow and we could all share a room in the Premier Inn and I could help him with my mum. I didn’t really know what he meant like that so I asked him, ‘Do you mean like with Nanny Alzheimer?’ and he laughed. Not a big belly laugh because no MacRoary has done that since September, but a sort of tired laugh, and I looked at my dad and he did look tired.
Nanny Alzheimer is my dad’s mum and she can’t remember things. So she is looked after by one of my aunties and is waiting for a place in a ‘home’. Of course it’s not her home, and so it’s a strange name ‘care home’ since mostly you hear that people don’t care for people when they are there. But she has to be ‘looked after’ and sometimes I go with dad to help him do that. And mostly that means just singing and not getting worried that she doesn’t know who we are.
When I think about it, I wish that Nanny Alzheimer had been my mum’s mum, because then she wouldn’t have known about her son killing himself because of the Referendum. Which of course his mum did know and it made her very sick, but not in the memory stakes. No. The problem with my mum, and her mum, my nana, is that they have very good memories and their memories are full to bursting of Uncle Tam all the time. Whereas Nanny Alzheimer can’t remember who the prime minister is or what the day of the week is or whether or not she even voted in the Referendum, or whether Scotland is Independent or not.
But dad didn’t mean it that way about helping with my mum. He said it was just ‘back up’ to help make her happy because sometimes whatever he does he makes her ratty with him and I always make her laugh.
And I thought hard about that, and about what I could do to help dad make my mum happy. And I wrote an email. To Nicola Sturgeon. And I told her some of the stuff that had happened to us that summer and autumn and how I would really like my mum to meet her because the one thing that gave my mum some hope in the future was not the Smith Commission or Devo-Max or anything else but that Nicola Sturgeon was a woman with purpose who might lead us into an Independent future and bring about Social Justice.
I didn’t expect a reply really, and I was amazed when I got one. And Nicola Sturgeon (I know she’s married and should be a Mrs but her husband’s name isn’t Sturgeon and I don’t want to call her Ms because that reminds me of you know who, and calling her Miss would be cheeky and wrong so I’ll call her Nicola Sturgeon) said she would love to meet my mum after the Tour. Backstage. Like real rock star guests!
I kept that a secret from my mum, and my dad. I wasn’t lying to them, I was just hoping I would make their evening special. And I did.
The evening was amazing. Everywhere was filled with people, cheering and shouting and waving flags. But also listening to what was being said. And when Nicola Sturgeon came on stage the place went wild. And she told us of the plans for the future. And I sneaked a look at my mum and she looked happy – at least in that moment. I knew that happiness for my mum was now like it is for Nanny Alzheimer – it only lasts in the moment. For Nanny Alzheimer it lasts as long as the memory lasts but for my mum it lasts only as long as the moment lasts because then the memory comes back. But that’s because Nanny Alzheimer’s memories are happy and my mum’s aren’t, not at the moment.
But like dad had explained to me, the Tour was about trying to build new and happy memories for my mum. And I topped the lot when after the event and we were about to fight our way back through the crowds to our Premier Inn, I told them I had a letter that meant we were going to meet Nicola Sturgeon. They didn’t believe me at first and then they did because I went to a steward and showed them the letter and they led us backstage to where Nicola Sturgeon was. She was surrounded with people but when she saw us, she left them and came to us.
She hugged us all. She even kissed me. But only on the cheek. And she held onto my mum for the longest time. And then she asked us if it was okay if she could speak to my mum in private, and dad and me said ‘yes, of course’ and they went off into a room for a wee while.
No one knows what happened when they talked to each other that night, except Nicola Sturgeon and my mum of course, but when she came out, even though she had been crying, her eyes were a bit shiny with something that looked a bit like Hope.
I’m not saying Nicola Sturgeon is a miracle worker, but I think she gave my mum Hope over Fear all over again when they were in that room.
And I said, ‘Thank you’ to her and she hugged me again and I could see that Nicola Sturgeon might have been crying a wee bit too, because that mascara stuff was a bit loose. And I just thought it was nice that Nicola cared enough about my mum to cry a bit about her loss.
And as I said ‘Thank you,’ and she was hugging me again, she whispered in my ear, ‘Take care of your mum, Jack.’
And I said, ‘I will, Nicola Sturgeon. I will. I promise. And I’m a boy who wants to be a man who keeps his promise so I really will take care of my mum, whatever happens.’ I know that sounds a bit like babbling, but I was a bit overwhelmed by meeting her, if I’m honest, which of course I should be.
And then I said to her, ‘Will you please try and get us Independence, even though I know it’s really difficult now.’
And she said, ‘Jack, it’s the main goal of my life. It will happen.’
And I wish I’d thought to write to Nicola Sturgeon sooner because if I’d written to her before Uncle Tam died then maybe she might have met him and given him back his Hope. But even though actions have consequences, as we all know, you can’t always tell what’s going to happen and of course I didn’t think about writing to Nicola Sturgeon until after what happened and my mum needed her help. I suppose it just proves that we never know what will happen but we have to keep our eyes open all the time for the opportunity to help other people. And I think THAT is what Social Justice means.
And because this is the last time I’m writing about this – until I come back next week to start writing about The General Election - I should try and ‘tie up the ends’ for you. Because in my story we are only at November 22nd and of course there was the Smith Commission yet to come.
Episode Ten – After the Vow. It's not a happy ending, but then it isn't the end, is it?
We all got home after the Tour and we were ‘emotionally exhausted’ and dad and me were pleased to be home from the City. We had to go shopping with my mum the morning before we drove home but she didn’t want to shop that much so we can’t really complain.
All the way home my mum was talking about the Event and the Future and how we had to keep on going. But dad and me didn’t ever ask her what she and Nicola Sturgeon said to each other – we know some things are private even from your closest family.
Whatever it was she said, it did really help start my mum to ‘move on’ from her brother’s death and that was enough for us. You can only build happy memories one at a time and that’s what we are aiming for.
But nothing stays happy for long at the moment. And the next thing that happened was the next week when The Smith Commission delivered their report. And of course it wasn’t what anyone wanted. Not any Yes for Independence person. It was ‘fudge’, my dad said.
It was ‘iniquitous’, my mum said. And then she said, ‘We’ll fight them all the way.’
The Smith Commission was the first thing my mum downloaded to her Kindle Fire since well before the Referendum. But it was only twenty eight pages long. Not like ‘Scotland’s Future’ which was hundreds of pages long. That’s the difference between Independence and not. If we had had Independence Scotland’s future would be worth hundreds of pages and lots of things would be made better. But ‘better together’ means we’re only worth twenty eight pages, or as Mr Marker would say ‘a footnote in history.’
Twenty eight pages of fudge. I wondered what Uncle Tam would have said. My dad tried to read it and he got so annoyed after page three that he nearly threw the Kindle Fire across the room. I think it confirmed to him that no good comes from technology as well as he knows no good comes from the Wastemonster.
Mum read it all the way through and when I asked her what she thought she said, ‘It’s just an insult. A load of toffee. They must think we’re idiots to believe a word of it and they’re offering us sweeties we already paid for.’
And mum said I should read the report, if not the whole thing then just the ‘summary’. Normally she said I should always read the whole thing but this time it was a waste of everyone’s intelligence so the summary would do. And Mr Marker said the same thing. He said we needed to know what the Smith Commission said ‘in principle’ because it wasn’t really going to happen in any real sense, but that we should know how we’d been sold down the river.
‘For toffee and fudge,’ Brian the Brain said.
And Mr Marker didn’t even tell him he was being cheeky.
If you want to know about the Smith Commission I’m sure you read it for yourself. And my dad says it’s the greatest work of fiction he’s ever likely to read. Or not read of course because he couldn’t get past the first three pages it was so bad.
Despite everyone telling me I didn’t have to, I went on the internet one evening and I read it all. It’s what my Uncle Tam would have wanted. And in the first page I thought Lord Smith was trying to tell us all that everything in garden was rosy and we were better together but then when you went into any detail about it, it didn’t look that way. Because everything in the garden is not rosy.
And I’ve learned you can promise all sorts of things but if you don’t intend to stick to them, it doesn’t mean anything. And that’s what politics is made of. Usually. Promises that won’t stick. And broken promises have devastating consequences. On real people’s lives. I know that now. I know that politicians don’t think that promises matter, but they do. If they hadn’t made promises they had no intention of keeping my Uncle Tam would certainly be alive and we would probably have got Independence. That’s what I believe anyway.
In the Report, there was a lot of things about taxes and promising powers and all that. But when I read it really carefully, despite how boring it is, I saw what my mum was saying that it’s still paying us back in sweeties we’ve already bought. If we’d become Independent we would have had our own money. No one else would be telling us what to do with our lives and our country. We would have been free. And surely every country and all people deserve that?
And it wouldn’t have mattered to me if it was the pound sterling or the Euro or a Scottish pound. It would have been our money to do what we want with. To work for Social Justice and to solve our own problems. Like my Uncle Tam used to say, it’d be wur ain shite we wis shovellin’.
And about the money - everyone knew that all the stooshie Mr Darling tried to create about the currency was just a smokescreen. Or a red-herring. Or whatever you want to call it. I call it rubbish. It was just a way to try and divert people from the real issues. My Uncle Tam said. I remember that most clearly. And he was right. My Uncle Tam would have been very unhappy with the Smith Commission Report. I don’t know what he would have done but I wish he was here to do it.
And everyone in the MacRoary house is unhappy about it. Because we feel we’ve been cheated. But none of us has an answer as to how to fix things. Dad says that sometimes when you break things they can’t be fixed.
But mum thinks the thing we have to do is get into the Wastemonster system, niggle them from within and cause so much trouble that they let us become Independent anyway. Dad thinks that’s a long shot, but says, ‘A year ago we could have sent John to Parliament, that would have done it.’
He told John it was a compliment because now John has turned himself around with college and everything and working properly at the farm, but it sounded like a skelp on the lug of a compliment to me.
‘Mum would be better to go, wouldn’t she?’ I said.
But mum said she was too old and had too many things to think about here to go to Wastemonster. ‘It was a sacrifice too many,’ she said.
‘You’re right mum,’ I said. ‘We’re going to have to give them Alex Salmond, that’s enough.’ Because Alex Salmond is going to go back to the Wastemonster ‘to kick their sorry butts,’ my dad says, and that’s a ‘damned shame’ because he’s ‘a fine man who has aye played straight wi’ us here’, and that’s something to be said for a politician.
‘Maybe you should go and help Nicola Sturgeon at the Scottish Parliament, mum,’ I said, because I thought that might make her happy.
‘I’d be no help to her,’ mum said. ‘And I’m needed here.’
‘Of course you are mum,’ I said, ‘I’m just saying that you would be a good politician, because you’re not at all like what one should be. You care about real people. You could be as great as Nicola Sturgeon any day. But we’re grateful you decided to be our mum instead of going into politics.’
And that made her a bit happy. Which was what I was aiming for. I’d hate it if my mum had to be an MSP and went down to Edinburgh all the time. Especially because that Jim Murphy won the draw to be the Scottish Labour Leader and even though he’s not in Parliament yet he would be and my dad said he’d ram the Smith Commission down Murphy’s (I won’t use the next words) throat if he ever came into contact with him. Which if we went there we probably would because right now he’s hanging around there like a bad smell, dad says.
‘That’ll be the egg he never cleaned off dad,’ I said.
Mum smiled at that one.
He’s really annoying Jim Murphy, especially at the moment because he’s all over the news all the time like he rules Scotland and he’s got one smug pus which needs rearranging if you ask my opinion. It’s just my opinion. I’m entitled to it. After all, it was partly his fault what happened to Uncle Tam. You can’t expect me to like the man after that, can you? Not the man responsible for killing your Uncle. No one could expect me to like him. Even if he never meant it. Which of course he didn’t. He didn’t mean it because he didn’t think. He didn’t think of the consequences of his actions on ‘real’ people like us. He’s just after power. You can see that in his smug pus every time he opens his mouth. I have to say it, right now, I HATE Jim Murphy.
We were still eating our tea and talking about the latest thing Jim Murphy had done to annoy us – which wasn’t hard to find when I said, ‘I’d hit him with Scotland’s Future, the book, I mean not the ebook – because it’s heavier than the Smith Commission.’
And mum said, ‘John, I know I shouldn’t say this, but I’m so glad you threw an egg at that man.’
‘So am I, mum,’ said John. And then he said if he ever set eyes on Jim Murphy again he’d do more than throw an egg, and I wouldn’t put it past him to set fire to an Irn Bru crate using the Smith Commission for a lighter and… we can but dream!
So you can see, one consequence, perhaps unexpected, of the Smith Commission, at least in the MacRoary household is that it’s brought us all together, united in a desire to do something. I don’t mean just revenge on Jim Murphy. I mean something which might mean that Scotland can be Independent in our lifetime.
Because we know that the Smith Commission is fudge and they didn’t ‘deliver’ on the promise and we have to hold their feet to the fire in whatever way we can. Not John’s way perhaps and perhaps I shouldn’t tell Brian about it because he might take it literally (he does that sometimes) and then he’d be in trouble and I still do have a responsibility to look out for Brian.
I should tell you that tempers can get very heated when we talk about politics these days, but the days of MacRoarys shouting at each other are long gone. Except when someone is outside or upstairs and you have to shout to get them in. I mean the argument type shouting. We’ve been brought closer together because of this whole experience, but I still think that if we’d got Independence we’d all have pulled together AND been happy, which would have been much better.
But as it was, after the Smith Commission, which we knew wouldn’t give us anything to look forward to, we had to face Christmas without my Uncle Tam and then get into 2015 where all talk was about the General Election. And that’s what I’m going to be writing about from next week. In my new series ‘Jack MacRoary’s Guide to the General Election’. And it won’t be history, it will be right up to date. As it happens. So come back next week. We’re all in this together, after all.
But before I go I just want to tell you about what I did to make my mum happy for Mother’s Day. You’ll be really impressed. I bought her Alex Salmond’s book for her Kindle. It wasn’t published till 19th and that was a few days after Mother’s Day, but she said it was a book well worth waiting for. And dad bought her Iain MacWhirter’s ‘Divided UK’ ebook too, to read till ‘The Dream Shall Never Die’ came out. John says that sounds like a Bond movie and Mum says that Alex Salmond in Wastemonster will be more action packed than any Bond movie. I don’t know about that. I do know that I’m going to read his book and do a book report on it – and I’ll let you know what I think. But I’ve got to let mum read it first because it was her present, after all. And can you believe my dad even buying an ebook for my mum? It just shows that you never know what’s going to happen next… so come back next week and we’ll find out together.
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 literary cultural scene in August 2012 when he appeared at the inaugural Edinburgh eBook Festival, Jack now attends DrumTumshie Academy. His current ebooks are Tales from Tattybogle (available from Amazon here and Kobo here) and More Tales from Tattybogle (available from Amazon here and Kobo here). He is also the first McStorytellers McSerial writer.
Jack lives on a farm with his dad, mum, older brother John and a range of animals and pets, including Dug (the cat), Bisum (the dog) and Micro (the pig). His ebooks give an insight into rural life, as well as providing an insightful commentary on Scots culture.
Follow Jack on Facebook here.
Jack lives on a farm with his dad, mum, older brother John and a range of animals and pets, including Dug (the cat), Bisum (the dog) and Micro (the pig). His ebooks give an insight into rural life, as well as providing an insightful commentary on Scots culture.
Follow Jack on Facebook here.