Jack MacRoary's Fairtrade Adventure
Episode One
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: February 29th – The Start of the McSerial.
Swearwords: None.
Description: February 29th – The Start of the McSerial.
You may know, or you may not know that this is the start of Fairtrade Fortnight 2016. If you didn’t know, you do now. So I have done the first thing I set out to do, which is to let people know about Fairtrade.
Last year was a good one for me, because I finally got The Complete TattyBogle published as a real book, which makes me a real author, not just a virtual one with ebooks. But I also made a commitment. And that was to make DrumTumshie Academy a Fairtrade School.
I’ve just about done it. And I wanted to share the journey with you. Everyone seems to go on a ‘journey’ these days whenever they do anything, and I was no different. But I’d like to say that my journey was more of an adventure. And I’d like to share the adventure with you. In fact, even if I wouldn’t like to, I have to, because it’s the last thing I have to do to make DrumTumshie Academy a fully-fledged Fairtrade School. Over Fairtrade Fortnight, I’m writing my adventure as a serial for McStorytellers and that will give us the final box ticked to become a Fairtrade School. So here goes.
This serial starts on February 29th, which is when Fairtrade Fortnight starts. Of course you don’t get a February 29th each year, just every four years, which makes it special. Or as my friend Brian says (he’s also on the DrumTumshie Fairtrade Committee) it’s not a real day. But it is a real day to start my McSerial on, so don’t worry.
I had to explain to Brian that the serial is not the kind of cereal you can eat but one that you read. Which is, my mum says, a kind of consumption nevertheless. It’s also a play on words. For people who like to do that. Or should it be play with words? How do you play on words? Brian asked me that question and I didn’t have an answer.
When I came up with the idea of the serial, I realised that it would probably be the first ever Fairtrade serial. I said to the DrumTumshie Fairtrade group that I was going to do a Fairtrade Serial and Brian said it would be too difficult. That’s when we started having the discussion about Serial and Cereal. But I didn’t give up.
We have a teacher who works with the group as well (she’s called Miss Direction and is a geography teacher) and when I told her my idea she said it would be a very interesting idea but asked me where would I source my materials from? So you see it’s not just Brian who gets things the wrong way round. There followed a long debate about all the things that go into a good cereal – nuts and wheat and milk and… and then I explained that this wasn’t the kind of cereal I meant, that I was talking about a serial you read, not one you eat and that the ideas would come from my head and from what happened. It would be the story of what happened from when we first started trying to make DrumTumshie Academy a Fairtrade School to when we achieved our goal.
Brian said it would be better to call it a Fairtrade Adventure because more people will read a story if it’s an Adventure story than just any other old kind of story and we all voted on it and agreed he was right. So it was my job to write A FAIRTRADE ADVENTURE and that’s what I’m doing. But since it’s going to be on McStorytellers it is also a McSerial. So I like to think of it as Jack MacRoary’s Fairtrade McSerial. But you can call it what you like. It’s not the name or the words that matter, it’s the actions we take. Like my Uncle Tam used to say – ‘don’t just talk the talk, walk the walk.’
Anyway, I thought it was a good idea to do a serial because the theme of Fairtrade Fortnight 2016 is to have a Fairtrade Breakfast, and of course breakfast time is when most people eat cereal… though my brother John eats it at night so that he doesn’t waste time in the morning.
Once we had resolved the confusion between serial and cereal – proving that spelling really is important – the bell went and we had to close our meeting – and so I’m going to stop this episode here and tomorrow I’ll go right back to the beginning and start again on my Fairtrade Adventure. I hope you’ll come with me.
Last year was a good one for me, because I finally got The Complete TattyBogle published as a real book, which makes me a real author, not just a virtual one with ebooks. But I also made a commitment. And that was to make DrumTumshie Academy a Fairtrade School.
I’ve just about done it. And I wanted to share the journey with you. Everyone seems to go on a ‘journey’ these days whenever they do anything, and I was no different. But I’d like to say that my journey was more of an adventure. And I’d like to share the adventure with you. In fact, even if I wouldn’t like to, I have to, because it’s the last thing I have to do to make DrumTumshie Academy a fully-fledged Fairtrade School. Over Fairtrade Fortnight, I’m writing my adventure as a serial for McStorytellers and that will give us the final box ticked to become a Fairtrade School. So here goes.
This serial starts on February 29th, which is when Fairtrade Fortnight starts. Of course you don’t get a February 29th each year, just every four years, which makes it special. Or as my friend Brian says (he’s also on the DrumTumshie Fairtrade Committee) it’s not a real day. But it is a real day to start my McSerial on, so don’t worry.
I had to explain to Brian that the serial is not the kind of cereal you can eat but one that you read. Which is, my mum says, a kind of consumption nevertheless. It’s also a play on words. For people who like to do that. Or should it be play with words? How do you play on words? Brian asked me that question and I didn’t have an answer.
When I came up with the idea of the serial, I realised that it would probably be the first ever Fairtrade serial. I said to the DrumTumshie Fairtrade group that I was going to do a Fairtrade Serial and Brian said it would be too difficult. That’s when we started having the discussion about Serial and Cereal. But I didn’t give up.
We have a teacher who works with the group as well (she’s called Miss Direction and is a geography teacher) and when I told her my idea she said it would be a very interesting idea but asked me where would I source my materials from? So you see it’s not just Brian who gets things the wrong way round. There followed a long debate about all the things that go into a good cereal – nuts and wheat and milk and… and then I explained that this wasn’t the kind of cereal I meant, that I was talking about a serial you read, not one you eat and that the ideas would come from my head and from what happened. It would be the story of what happened from when we first started trying to make DrumTumshie Academy a Fairtrade School to when we achieved our goal.
Brian said it would be better to call it a Fairtrade Adventure because more people will read a story if it’s an Adventure story than just any other old kind of story and we all voted on it and agreed he was right. So it was my job to write A FAIRTRADE ADVENTURE and that’s what I’m doing. But since it’s going to be on McStorytellers it is also a McSerial. So I like to think of it as Jack MacRoary’s Fairtrade McSerial. But you can call it what you like. It’s not the name or the words that matter, it’s the actions we take. Like my Uncle Tam used to say – ‘don’t just talk the talk, walk the walk.’
Anyway, I thought it was a good idea to do a serial because the theme of Fairtrade Fortnight 2016 is to have a Fairtrade Breakfast, and of course breakfast time is when most people eat cereal… though my brother John eats it at night so that he doesn’t waste time in the morning.
Once we had resolved the confusion between serial and cereal – proving that spelling really is important – the bell went and we had to close our meeting – and so I’m going to stop this episode here and tomorrow I’ll go right back to the beginning and start again on my Fairtrade Adventure. I hope you’ll come with me.
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.