Jack MacRoary's Fairtrade Adventure
Episode Nine
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: March 8th – The Fairtrade Fashion Show.
Swearwords: None.
Description: March 8th – The Fairtrade Fashion Show.
Now I have to tell you about the Fairtrade Fashion Show. If it was up to me, of course, we wouldn’t even have had one, because I don’t know anything about fashion and I care even less. There might have been a Farmers for Yes group for the Independence Referendum but there will never be a Farmers for Fashion group. Not in TattyBogle, anyway! My brother John likes to think he’s stylish, and the Young Farmers have all got matching shirts, but mostly we farmers wear overalls and mum is just happy if we don’t bring stoor and clart all into the house when we take off our boots at the end of the day. As dad says, ‘Life isn’t about what you wear, it’s about what you are.’
‘Who you are,’ mum says.
‘Same thing,’ dad said. And thus started a great MacRoary debate, which I won’t bore you with just now.
The Fairtrade Fashion show was Melissa’s idea. She was right in that it got a lot of the girls more interested in Fairtrade and we sold out the assembly hall for the fashion show. That has to be a good thing. I’m looking for the positives here. Because the bad thing is that we all had to be in the fashion show. Can you imagine Brian and me as catwalk models? No, I couldn’t, too. Nor could our mums, which is probably why they bought tickets to come and watch us do the walk of shame down the catwalk.
I don’t even know why it’s called a catwalk – Brian said it’s because cats walk in a special, kind of cool way. His mum says it’s called ‘sacheying’ and Brian got really into it. I found it embarrassing but everyone else said it was ‘hilarious’ when Brian started strutting his stuff and said that he really must do it like that ‘on the night.’ I thought it was because his Fairtrade jeans were too tight, but no, it was him trying to walk like a cat on the catwalk.
You probably want to know what we had to wear for the Fairtrade Fashion show. I suppose we were lucky. It was just jeans and t-shirts. Not like Jimmy Wong and the White twins. They made sure that they wore the most expensive clothes we could find – and you can find some very expensive clothes with the Fairtrade label.
Part of the ‘fun’ (at least that’s what Melissa called it) of preparing for the fashion show was ‘sourcing’ the materials. Which just means going shopping to Glasgow and then, as if that wasn’t enough, shopping online for Fairtrade clothes. I call clothes shopping boring, even online, but Miss Direction said that anyone who didn’t want to do the shopping part of the project could watch this film instead called The True Cost. Give me the option of watching a movie or shopping and it’s a no brainer every time. You can watch the trailer here. But really you should watch the whole film. You can stream it or download it and its much cheaper than buying clothes, Fairtrade or not.
At school we watched the whole film – we even stayed back after school to do it – the Fairtrade Committee, that is – and Mr Smith and Miss Direction stayed, too. We decided that everyone should have a chance to watch it, so we decided to add it on to the fashion show event. A fashion show and a movie sounds like better value for money, doesn’t it? It was a good idea to host a screening of the movie. Not just because it would help us get our Fairtrade School status, but because we all agreed it was important that people understand about how their clothes are made and where they come from. Can you believe me saying that? But Fairtrade isn’t just about food, you know, it’s about everything that is produced. And cotton farmers need as much help as livestock farmers. Just because we don’t grow cotton in this country is no reason to forget about them. Never mind all the workers who make the cotton into clothes. And not just cotton – wool as well – I think it’s stupid that we don’t seem to be able to do Fairtrade wool from our own sheep. All farmers know that wool prices in this country are ridiculous. Sometimes it even costs more to shear the sheep than you get for the fleece. That’s one reason why I think we should start thinking about Fairtrade at home. Farmers for Fairtrade would be a good thing to happen in Scotland, if you ask me, which of course you didn’t.
So that was our plan. Have the fashion show, then watch the movie. Or watch the movie, then have the fashion show? That caused a lot of arguments. I wanted to have the movie first, so that people would be ‘informed’ about the clothes they were going to see paraded around. But Mr Smith said that was too ‘political’ and that we had to let people make up their own minds. Miss Direction disagreed and said there was nothing wrong with giving people the facts with their figures. And Brian wolf-whistled and got threatened with being sent out.
But we still hadn’t had our vote on which to do first, fashion or film, and so he stayed. Eventually we agreed to have the fashion on first, because the film was quite long and the fashion show quite short and so it would be a ‘warm up’ to the main event. But the compromise was that we could have a ‘narrator’ telling the audience not just about the kind of material and all that fashioney stuff, but about the stories behind the clothes that the models were wearing. I offered to do the narration, even though I hate talking in public, but I hate walking up and down in fashion clothes even more. But Melissa said she was ‘director’ of the show and she wanted me to demonstrate the ‘street’ priced jeans and t shirts. So I had to do that. Miss Direction said she would read the narration. We all voted on it and Mr Smith put his hand up, too – though I think it was a bit reluctantly. He agreed to run the projection (which just means switching on the DVD player and making sure it’s connected to the projector – not rocket science!). But apparently you need a teacher to do that – school rules.
‘Who you are,’ mum says.
‘Same thing,’ dad said. And thus started a great MacRoary debate, which I won’t bore you with just now.
The Fairtrade Fashion show was Melissa’s idea. She was right in that it got a lot of the girls more interested in Fairtrade and we sold out the assembly hall for the fashion show. That has to be a good thing. I’m looking for the positives here. Because the bad thing is that we all had to be in the fashion show. Can you imagine Brian and me as catwalk models? No, I couldn’t, too. Nor could our mums, which is probably why they bought tickets to come and watch us do the walk of shame down the catwalk.
I don’t even know why it’s called a catwalk – Brian said it’s because cats walk in a special, kind of cool way. His mum says it’s called ‘sacheying’ and Brian got really into it. I found it embarrassing but everyone else said it was ‘hilarious’ when Brian started strutting his stuff and said that he really must do it like that ‘on the night.’ I thought it was because his Fairtrade jeans were too tight, but no, it was him trying to walk like a cat on the catwalk.
You probably want to know what we had to wear for the Fairtrade Fashion show. I suppose we were lucky. It was just jeans and t-shirts. Not like Jimmy Wong and the White twins. They made sure that they wore the most expensive clothes we could find – and you can find some very expensive clothes with the Fairtrade label.
Part of the ‘fun’ (at least that’s what Melissa called it) of preparing for the fashion show was ‘sourcing’ the materials. Which just means going shopping to Glasgow and then, as if that wasn’t enough, shopping online for Fairtrade clothes. I call clothes shopping boring, even online, but Miss Direction said that anyone who didn’t want to do the shopping part of the project could watch this film instead called The True Cost. Give me the option of watching a movie or shopping and it’s a no brainer every time. You can watch the trailer here. But really you should watch the whole film. You can stream it or download it and its much cheaper than buying clothes, Fairtrade or not.
At school we watched the whole film – we even stayed back after school to do it – the Fairtrade Committee, that is – and Mr Smith and Miss Direction stayed, too. We decided that everyone should have a chance to watch it, so we decided to add it on to the fashion show event. A fashion show and a movie sounds like better value for money, doesn’t it? It was a good idea to host a screening of the movie. Not just because it would help us get our Fairtrade School status, but because we all agreed it was important that people understand about how their clothes are made and where they come from. Can you believe me saying that? But Fairtrade isn’t just about food, you know, it’s about everything that is produced. And cotton farmers need as much help as livestock farmers. Just because we don’t grow cotton in this country is no reason to forget about them. Never mind all the workers who make the cotton into clothes. And not just cotton – wool as well – I think it’s stupid that we don’t seem to be able to do Fairtrade wool from our own sheep. All farmers know that wool prices in this country are ridiculous. Sometimes it even costs more to shear the sheep than you get for the fleece. That’s one reason why I think we should start thinking about Fairtrade at home. Farmers for Fairtrade would be a good thing to happen in Scotland, if you ask me, which of course you didn’t.
So that was our plan. Have the fashion show, then watch the movie. Or watch the movie, then have the fashion show? That caused a lot of arguments. I wanted to have the movie first, so that people would be ‘informed’ about the clothes they were going to see paraded around. But Mr Smith said that was too ‘political’ and that we had to let people make up their own minds. Miss Direction disagreed and said there was nothing wrong with giving people the facts with their figures. And Brian wolf-whistled and got threatened with being sent out.
But we still hadn’t had our vote on which to do first, fashion or film, and so he stayed. Eventually we agreed to have the fashion on first, because the film was quite long and the fashion show quite short and so it would be a ‘warm up’ to the main event. But the compromise was that we could have a ‘narrator’ telling the audience not just about the kind of material and all that fashioney stuff, but about the stories behind the clothes that the models were wearing. I offered to do the narration, even though I hate talking in public, but I hate walking up and down in fashion clothes even more. But Melissa said she was ‘director’ of the show and she wanted me to demonstrate the ‘street’ priced jeans and t shirts. So I had to do that. Miss Direction said she would read the narration. We all voted on it and Mr Smith put his hand up, too – though I think it was a bit reluctantly. He agreed to run the projection (which just means switching on the DVD player and making sure it’s connected to the projector – not rocket science!). But apparently you need a teacher to do that – school rules.
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.