Jack MacRoary's Guide to the Independence Referendum:
Episodes One & Two
Genre: Humour
Swearwords: None.
Description: The Bard of DrumTumshie kicks off the inaugural McStorytellers McSerial.
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Episode One – A double header setting the scene
Hello, my name is Jack MacRoary. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m also known as the Bard of DrumTumshie. It’s a long story. A few years ago, when I was in P6 of TattyBogle Primary School we had this Curriculum for Excellence project and everyone found out that I had a talent.
The talent was for writing about the cultural questions of the day. My teachers said. My brother John said it was a talent for getting stupid amounts of homework because I was daft enough to believe that my teachers said I had a talent.
John’s just jealous.
Anyway. That was in primary school. I got invited to write these articles for the Edinburgh eBook Festival and it was to do with the Writers Conference and things sort of took off from there. But you can read about that in my first book which is called Tales from Tattybogle.
Because in 2012 I got my writing published into an ebook. Which made my mum really proud because she’s what is culturally called an ‘early adopter’ of ebook technology. That’s not what my dad calls it. My dad calls it a bloody nuisance that means we never get our dinner on time.
All kinds of things have happened to my mum’s Kindle, including nearly getting eaten by our pig Micro. But you can read those stories in my other book. It’s called More Tales from Tattybogle. See. I had two books published before I even left primary school. Not that the Guinness Book of records was interested.
The publishers wanted me to do a third one – something about five important questions for the digital masses – but I never got round to it. I told them I was retiring because I was going to secondary school – DrumTumshie Academy – and I wouldn’t have the time to keep writing my blog or doing more books.
And I thought that would be the end of it.
But Talent will out, apparently.
Now I’m at DrumTumshie Academy and last summer term, when we did the change to S2, we started a subject called Modern Studies. I thought it would be easy. Easier than history or geography anyway. I was wrong. Our teacher, Mr Marker, who I think might be related to Mr EM from TattyBogle primary, was determined that we would become politically aware. Especially, he said, in this most important of years.
Now you didn’t need to take Modern Studies as a subject to know that 2014 was the year of the Commonwealth Games as well as the year of the Ryder Cup and it was also the year of the Referendum. Which doesn’t have anything to do with sport. And has no referees. It’s to do with Independence. A lot of us in my class didn’t even know we weren’t Independent and that shocked Mr Marker into a frenzy.
It shocked him so much that he set us a project for the summer holidays.
He asked us who had heard of the phrase ‘A week’s a long time in Politics’. And no one answered. Not because we hadn’t (well, I hadn’t) but because he was a new teacher and no one likes talking because as soon as you do he looks at you really hard and says ‘Is that what you really think?’ like you don’t know your own mind.
Except when he asked us what ‘Referendum’ meant and my friend Brian the Brain (you might remember him) said ‘It’s when the referees have a picnic.’
And Mr Marker didn’t stare at him, he went all red and flustered and sort of angry and in a low tone he said, ‘Don’t be stupid, boy.’
And all hell broke loose because the one thing you don’t do is call Brian stupid.
I told Mr Marker, ‘Please don’t call Brian stupid, he’s special.’
‘Special needs,’ some of the boys chanted from the back of the class – because yes, we have some nasty boys in our year and some of them are bullies too – even though we’ve got a school bullying policy in place and when you complain about being bullied you are sent to mentoring but it’s mostly the mentors who are the worst bullies. It’s like the nasty concentration camps, Brian says, and so we don’t go to mentoring or tell people about the bullying. Well, I told my dad and he showed me how to take things into my own hands. But more about that later.
I don’t know whether a week really is a long time in politics, but a double period of Modern Studies is more than long enough for me. Anyway, we’re still at the point in this story of Mr Marker going red and white and calling Brian stupid.
Brian said to me, ‘Don’t worry, Jack, he can’t help himself.’ And got up and walked out of the room. Because he was told that he shouldn’t confront a bully, he should just walk away.
Mr Marker didn’t know what to do then, because Brian’s bodyguard lady gave him a look like thunder and took off after Brian.
Leaving us behind. Which is when Mr Marker came up with the great Modern Studies Independence Project idea. Also known as ‘how to ruin your holidays’ project.
This is what we had to do. We had to write about the Independence. Before it never happened that is.
We did it through the rest of the summer term and then he dropped the bombshell that we’d have to carry on during the holidays. There was no getting out of it because the Referendum thing wasn’t happening till September so we had to ‘keep informed’ all summer.
Actually (but I’m saying this very quietly) it wasn’t that bad really, sometimes I kind of enjoyed it. Because it’s not like history or geography. Sometimes Modern Studies is just like talking to your parents at the dinner table. Not always the thing you want to talk about, but you can learn something interesting all the same.
And of course I come from a family which is quite politically aware. At least my Uncle Tam is. And I found out this summer that my mum and dad were too. But I don’t want to spoil the story for you so I won’t tell you any more about that just now. I’m writing in episodes and you have to read in episodes. That means I have to leave you wanting more. So that you come back.
Of course in the end it didn’t happen – Independence, I mean, not the project - but that wasn’t the end of that. It never is the end of something when you think it is, is it? I don’t mean Independence. I mean the project.
What happened was that Mr Marker was so impressed by my writing that he asked me to keep on writing my ‘reflections’ about the ‘political situation’. It came as news to me because I didn’t know I had any. I just write whatever comes into my head when I have to and hope for the best. That’s the secret of my talent.
So I kept on going with the project. Right through till Christmas 2014. And by what is called one of those quirks of fate, I got the offer from McStorytellers to write a serial for them. I don’t know how but I think that Mr Marker might have had something to do with it. Well, mum was over the moon because she loves McStorytellers. She’s been a fan from the early days. Dad’s quite a fan too because he thinks she can waste less time reading McStories than whole ebooks.
So it only turned out that McStorytellers wanted me to write a serial about the ‘forthcoming General Election’, despite the fact I told them I know diddly about it. They said that they’d seen my writing on Independence and why didn’t I put it ‘into context’ for them. I hadn’t a scoobie what they were talking about but I said yes because I hate to make my mum unhappy and she was so stoked about me possibly coming out of retirement as the Bard of DrumTumshie. And I thought the General Election was far enough away that I wouldn’t have to think about it till a long time after Christmas, and then maybe I could ‘renegotiate my deal’ the way I did before with Guerrilla Midgie. And at worst I could hire a ghost writer if I could find one who would work for free.
But back in an email, right away was that Mr McStoryteller himself saying he was so excited that he thought I should use the Independence stuff right away. That, he said, would put the General Election into context. Who am I to argue with Mr McStoryteller. I’ve even read some of his own stories and he’s not a man to mess with.
I did point out that since we never got Independence maybe what I’d written wouldn’t make any sense to anyone. And he said, no problem. We’ll just change the title. And that’s why my project ‘Jack MacRoary on Scottish Independence’ became what the title of the series is now which is ‘Jack MacRoary’s Guide to the Scottish Independence Referendum’. As you’d know if you were paying attention at the beginning of this. But I don’t blame you if you weren’t, because I’m like that, I just want to get straight on with the story.
And before you act smart, I know I haven’t done that yet. But I’ve got a double header to start with and the story really starts with the next episode. This is, as they say, setting the scene. Which is coming up now. So you don’t even have to wait this week.
Episode Two – Where DrumTumshie becomes a political potato hotbed
Some people don’t know my story. But everyone knows what happened with the Independence Referendum. Which is nothing. And which is why I’m not sure why anyone should be interested in what I’ve got to say about it. But I’ve given up trying to understand the world of adults. It scares me that in just a few years I’ll be part of it. In a couple of years, I might even get the vote.
My brother John got the vote this time round. Even though he was just shy of eighteen. Shy and John are not usually words that go together, of course. My dad was all for Independence but he didn’t think John should be given the vote till he was about thirty five.
My mum’s always saying everyone should give John a chance, and so the Scottish Government obviously listened to her. My parents don’t agree about things quite a lot and John is one of the things they don’t agree on most.
My dad says that he thinks my mum thinks the sun shines out of John’s. Well you know… but he works with John – when I say that he laughs and says, ‘John’s very generous there, right enough, and he gives me more work than he does.’
Dad’s always calling John a ‘handless loon’, but John has two good hands attached to his strong arms. And he’s not afraid to use them on me, I can tell you!
Anyway dad he doesn’t think John should do anything till he’s about thirty five. Which is one reason why John joined the Young Farmers. Because you can’t do that once you’re thirty-five. You have to be young. Not as young as me, though. He joined it a few months ago. Which is annoying because I was the one who first wanted to join. But that’s the problem when you have an older brother. He gets to do everything you want to do before you. And usually, if he’s my brother, he ruins it for you into the bargain.
I was still only thirteen and you have to be fourteen to join the Young Farmers for real. I asked John why he joined the Young Farmers because he doesn’t even like farming that much and he told me it was to meet girls.
Which goes to show he’s not quite as daft as my dad seems to think he is. When I told my dad that, he laughed out loud and said, ‘I met your mum at the Young Farmers.’
She gave him a steely glare – and we had all thought she was deep in her Kindle Fire, not listening – and he added, ‘What I mean is that if John meets a girl like you, she’ll be in for a shock.’
‘I’d like to meet a girl like you, mum,’ I said. ‘When I get interested in girls,’ I added, to remind them that I’m not really interested in girls at all right now. I’m more interested in potatoes.
That might sound odd to you but it’s true. I really am interested in potatoes. When I do grow up I hope I might get to be a potato farmer. And when my dad next puts a crop in our outbye field I’ve asked him if I can howk them like they did in the old days. He told me I won’t get a fortnight off school just to do that, but it wasn’t just about missing school.
There’s money in potatoes, you know. The first thing I will do when I’m old enough will be to go on a potato rogueing course. Honestly. You get to go round all the potato fields and check out how they’re coming on. And you get really well paid for it. Better pay than being a dairy farmer, mum says. My Uncle Tam says anything pays better than being a dairy farmer and he should know because he used to be one. Not like my dad. He’s a beef man.
Like I said, you have to be fourteen to join the Young Farmers, which I am now but I wasn’t then. I was really looking forward to it. And the very week before I turned fourteen, John went and joined the Young Farmers. He did it deliberately so I wouldn’t join. Said he was doing me a favour. I asked mum to make him leave because he was only interested in girls and not letting me join and she said don’t be silly you can both go together, it’ll be nice for you boys to do more things together.
For an intelligent woman my mum can be very stupid (sorry, mum, but it’s true). John and I spend enough time together sharing a bedroom and I would never in a million years go to Young Farmers with him. It was bad enough when I started at DrumTumshie Academy. Even though John had left more than a year before all the teachers knew who I was. Or who they thought I was. John MacRoary’s brother. And that, I can tell you, is not a good thing to be.
I know, I know, I’m not talking about Independence yet. Well, except I am, because for me, Jack MacRoary, Bard of DrumTumshie, Independence will come on the day I’m grown up enough to go potato rogueing. And drive a car. And vote. I don’t care about smoking and voting and paying tax or joining the army, or even having sex, but I do want to be able to drive. Who doesn’t?
So let’s go back to the beginning again. In case you weren’t paying attention at the start of the first episode. I’m not telling you off for that, I do it all the time myself. No, I’m trying to help you here. Put the whole thing ‘into context’ like I’ve been told to do.
It started off as a modern studies project, remember. And I got top marks. I don’t know how. It had something to do with prisms, though I thought that was physics. But Mr Marker said that it was ‘refreshing to see things through the prism of the young teen.’
‘Now you’re in S2,’ he said to the class, ‘you need to wake up your ideas. Become culturally aware. Connect with the world. And what better way to do it than to take an interest in politics.’
You might think I should have put a question mark at the end of that sentence but there’s a thing called a rhetorical question and this was one of them. I know you should even put a question mark at the end of them, but I want to show you how much not of a question it was. It was so far not a question it was a statement.
And I can think of about ten better ways to connect with the world off the top of my head, but you don’t argue with Mr Marker when he’s in full flow.
‘A week’s a long time in politics,’ Brian shouted out, but Mr Marker tried to ignore him till his bodyguard support lady stared hard at him (Mr Marker not Brian) and then he said (Mr Marker, not Brian) ‘Yes, Brian, you’re right, well done.’
Because in our school we’ve got a policy called positive reinforcement and Mr Marker maybe didn’t know that because he was new but he knows now.
But I don’t think he likes it and he took it out on us by extending the Independence project into the holidays. He even tried to blame Brian, saying that we had to ‘make up time, because of all the time we’d lost.’
But I wasn’t having that. I said to him, ‘It’s not Brian’s fault, Mr Marker and I can prove it.’
‘Oh you can, can you?’ he said and that time he did have a question mark in his voice but it was one of those snarky ones.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it’s not Brian’s fault that time is relative.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Mr Marker said. And if I had to pick one word to describe his tone of voice (we have to do that in English sometimes) I’d call it exasperated.
‘Well, Sir,’ I said, trying to remember to be polite at all times, ‘after all, a week’s a long time in politics.’
The class erupted into laughter and that’s when Mr Marker had me marked. And started his campaign to make every day a school day for me. Right through the holidays. But after all, I guess I win because I’m getting to write a serial on McStorytellers and Mr Marker hasn’t even had one story up there yet.
So, like I said, the project was to write about Independence from our own personal perspective. Because apparently it affects everyone. ‘Like Dandruff,’ Brian said. He said it quietly (for Brian) to me when we were out of the classroom which was lucky because I don’t think Mr Marker has a sense of humour. In fact I think he might have had a sense of humour bypass, which is like a heart bypass and no funnier.
School finished in June and it started in July. My project, not the Independence thing. That started a long time ago. After Bannockburn. When we got it and then we dropped the ball at the beginning of the 17th century because King James VI of Scotland wanted to be King James I of England – which is confusing enough – but means that now we have to study English not Scottish in school. And then a load of Germans and Jacobites and all sorts of people came out of the woodwork and a hundred years later (because nothing happens fast in history) we became Great Britain. Though what’s so Great about it no one’s ever found out, my Uncle Tam says – and I say, maybe we need more history to find out. And he says maybe we need our Independence again.
I hoped I’d get a few weeks off and then just write something on the weekend before we went back to school. But my mum, who as you know just loves my writing, wanted me to start straight away and the funny thing was, in July in my house there was a lot to write about. Quite a lot of it about whether we are better together or independent. But that’s for another episode.
My English teacher says that I’ve got to learn to write in proper paragraphs and not stream of consciousness. John laughed and said it was a stream of something, but not consciousness. I told him that’s just because he has no cultural awareness and, besides, he couldn’t even spell consciousness. And he said he could spell what I was doing and it begins with S. And then put his fingers over his nose to make the point that he could smell it and spell it.
He’s pretty immature, John, especially since he’s nearly five years older than me.
I used to wonder why they waited five years between having John and me, and I asked Dad once and he said it was because they kept hoping John would give them a sign that having another child would be a good idea.
But mum says that’s nonsense and it was because they were in dire straits, and not the band, she meant dire financial straits and so they had to move houses and jobs and all that sort of thing. Except that they didn’t move house till after I was born. But it’s all history and I think history is usually best left in the past.
I think all their troubles started with the Millennium Bug because I was born just after the Millennium. And there were all kinds of bad bugs at the end of the 20th century. If you believe what they say. Which for me depends on who is saying it.
For example, John says I’ve got nothing to be proud of because I caused foot and mouth, singlehandedly, and we had to leave the area because of me and that dad’s never been the same since. He says it was my smelly nappies which caused foot and mouth. I told you he was immature. I said, in that case it was probably you who caused BSE. Mad Cow Disease. We’re brothers. You know how it is. You have to behave like that sometimes if you’re brothers.
I don’t mind John that much really. At least since he’s started to get a girlfriend he washes sometimes and changes his socks. Or at least he just wears my socks a lot more. He can’t be bothered to put them in the laundry hamper and so he comes in and takes off his socks after work and throws them under his bed with the rest of them, hoping they’ll breed new socks, and then because he doesn’t have any clean socks he takes mine. And then I don’t have any clean socks. But I don’t really need clean socks. No girl is going to smell my feet after all.
But this, as they say, isn’t getting the crops in. Though I think I’ve done my job of setting the scene well enough. Better than Shakespeare. ‘In fair Verona where we set our scene.’ I fell asleep right after that. The rest is a mystery. And you will have to wait till next week now for the next episode. That’s the point of serials. You can’t read them all at once. Not at the beginning anyway.
Swearwords: None.
Description: The Bard of DrumTumshie kicks off the inaugural McStorytellers McSerial.
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Episode One – A double header setting the scene
Hello, my name is Jack MacRoary. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m also known as the Bard of DrumTumshie. It’s a long story. A few years ago, when I was in P6 of TattyBogle Primary School we had this Curriculum for Excellence project and everyone found out that I had a talent.
The talent was for writing about the cultural questions of the day. My teachers said. My brother John said it was a talent for getting stupid amounts of homework because I was daft enough to believe that my teachers said I had a talent.
John’s just jealous.
Anyway. That was in primary school. I got invited to write these articles for the Edinburgh eBook Festival and it was to do with the Writers Conference and things sort of took off from there. But you can read about that in my first book which is called Tales from Tattybogle.
Because in 2012 I got my writing published into an ebook. Which made my mum really proud because she’s what is culturally called an ‘early adopter’ of ebook technology. That’s not what my dad calls it. My dad calls it a bloody nuisance that means we never get our dinner on time.
All kinds of things have happened to my mum’s Kindle, including nearly getting eaten by our pig Micro. But you can read those stories in my other book. It’s called More Tales from Tattybogle. See. I had two books published before I even left primary school. Not that the Guinness Book of records was interested.
The publishers wanted me to do a third one – something about five important questions for the digital masses – but I never got round to it. I told them I was retiring because I was going to secondary school – DrumTumshie Academy – and I wouldn’t have the time to keep writing my blog or doing more books.
And I thought that would be the end of it.
But Talent will out, apparently.
Now I’m at DrumTumshie Academy and last summer term, when we did the change to S2, we started a subject called Modern Studies. I thought it would be easy. Easier than history or geography anyway. I was wrong. Our teacher, Mr Marker, who I think might be related to Mr EM from TattyBogle primary, was determined that we would become politically aware. Especially, he said, in this most important of years.
Now you didn’t need to take Modern Studies as a subject to know that 2014 was the year of the Commonwealth Games as well as the year of the Ryder Cup and it was also the year of the Referendum. Which doesn’t have anything to do with sport. And has no referees. It’s to do with Independence. A lot of us in my class didn’t even know we weren’t Independent and that shocked Mr Marker into a frenzy.
It shocked him so much that he set us a project for the summer holidays.
He asked us who had heard of the phrase ‘A week’s a long time in Politics’. And no one answered. Not because we hadn’t (well, I hadn’t) but because he was a new teacher and no one likes talking because as soon as you do he looks at you really hard and says ‘Is that what you really think?’ like you don’t know your own mind.
Except when he asked us what ‘Referendum’ meant and my friend Brian the Brain (you might remember him) said ‘It’s when the referees have a picnic.’
And Mr Marker didn’t stare at him, he went all red and flustered and sort of angry and in a low tone he said, ‘Don’t be stupid, boy.’
And all hell broke loose because the one thing you don’t do is call Brian stupid.
I told Mr Marker, ‘Please don’t call Brian stupid, he’s special.’
‘Special needs,’ some of the boys chanted from the back of the class – because yes, we have some nasty boys in our year and some of them are bullies too – even though we’ve got a school bullying policy in place and when you complain about being bullied you are sent to mentoring but it’s mostly the mentors who are the worst bullies. It’s like the nasty concentration camps, Brian says, and so we don’t go to mentoring or tell people about the bullying. Well, I told my dad and he showed me how to take things into my own hands. But more about that later.
I don’t know whether a week really is a long time in politics, but a double period of Modern Studies is more than long enough for me. Anyway, we’re still at the point in this story of Mr Marker going red and white and calling Brian stupid.
Brian said to me, ‘Don’t worry, Jack, he can’t help himself.’ And got up and walked out of the room. Because he was told that he shouldn’t confront a bully, he should just walk away.
Mr Marker didn’t know what to do then, because Brian’s bodyguard lady gave him a look like thunder and took off after Brian.
Leaving us behind. Which is when Mr Marker came up with the great Modern Studies Independence Project idea. Also known as ‘how to ruin your holidays’ project.
This is what we had to do. We had to write about the Independence. Before it never happened that is.
We did it through the rest of the summer term and then he dropped the bombshell that we’d have to carry on during the holidays. There was no getting out of it because the Referendum thing wasn’t happening till September so we had to ‘keep informed’ all summer.
Actually (but I’m saying this very quietly) it wasn’t that bad really, sometimes I kind of enjoyed it. Because it’s not like history or geography. Sometimes Modern Studies is just like talking to your parents at the dinner table. Not always the thing you want to talk about, but you can learn something interesting all the same.
And of course I come from a family which is quite politically aware. At least my Uncle Tam is. And I found out this summer that my mum and dad were too. But I don’t want to spoil the story for you so I won’t tell you any more about that just now. I’m writing in episodes and you have to read in episodes. That means I have to leave you wanting more. So that you come back.
Of course in the end it didn’t happen – Independence, I mean, not the project - but that wasn’t the end of that. It never is the end of something when you think it is, is it? I don’t mean Independence. I mean the project.
What happened was that Mr Marker was so impressed by my writing that he asked me to keep on writing my ‘reflections’ about the ‘political situation’. It came as news to me because I didn’t know I had any. I just write whatever comes into my head when I have to and hope for the best. That’s the secret of my talent.
So I kept on going with the project. Right through till Christmas 2014. And by what is called one of those quirks of fate, I got the offer from McStorytellers to write a serial for them. I don’t know how but I think that Mr Marker might have had something to do with it. Well, mum was over the moon because she loves McStorytellers. She’s been a fan from the early days. Dad’s quite a fan too because he thinks she can waste less time reading McStories than whole ebooks.
So it only turned out that McStorytellers wanted me to write a serial about the ‘forthcoming General Election’, despite the fact I told them I know diddly about it. They said that they’d seen my writing on Independence and why didn’t I put it ‘into context’ for them. I hadn’t a scoobie what they were talking about but I said yes because I hate to make my mum unhappy and she was so stoked about me possibly coming out of retirement as the Bard of DrumTumshie. And I thought the General Election was far enough away that I wouldn’t have to think about it till a long time after Christmas, and then maybe I could ‘renegotiate my deal’ the way I did before with Guerrilla Midgie. And at worst I could hire a ghost writer if I could find one who would work for free.
But back in an email, right away was that Mr McStoryteller himself saying he was so excited that he thought I should use the Independence stuff right away. That, he said, would put the General Election into context. Who am I to argue with Mr McStoryteller. I’ve even read some of his own stories and he’s not a man to mess with.
I did point out that since we never got Independence maybe what I’d written wouldn’t make any sense to anyone. And he said, no problem. We’ll just change the title. And that’s why my project ‘Jack MacRoary on Scottish Independence’ became what the title of the series is now which is ‘Jack MacRoary’s Guide to the Scottish Independence Referendum’. As you’d know if you were paying attention at the beginning of this. But I don’t blame you if you weren’t, because I’m like that, I just want to get straight on with the story.
And before you act smart, I know I haven’t done that yet. But I’ve got a double header to start with and the story really starts with the next episode. This is, as they say, setting the scene. Which is coming up now. So you don’t even have to wait this week.
Episode Two – Where DrumTumshie becomes a political potato hotbed
Some people don’t know my story. But everyone knows what happened with the Independence Referendum. Which is nothing. And which is why I’m not sure why anyone should be interested in what I’ve got to say about it. But I’ve given up trying to understand the world of adults. It scares me that in just a few years I’ll be part of it. In a couple of years, I might even get the vote.
My brother John got the vote this time round. Even though he was just shy of eighteen. Shy and John are not usually words that go together, of course. My dad was all for Independence but he didn’t think John should be given the vote till he was about thirty five.
My mum’s always saying everyone should give John a chance, and so the Scottish Government obviously listened to her. My parents don’t agree about things quite a lot and John is one of the things they don’t agree on most.
My dad says that he thinks my mum thinks the sun shines out of John’s. Well you know… but he works with John – when I say that he laughs and says, ‘John’s very generous there, right enough, and he gives me more work than he does.’
Dad’s always calling John a ‘handless loon’, but John has two good hands attached to his strong arms. And he’s not afraid to use them on me, I can tell you!
Anyway dad he doesn’t think John should do anything till he’s about thirty five. Which is one reason why John joined the Young Farmers. Because you can’t do that once you’re thirty-five. You have to be young. Not as young as me, though. He joined it a few months ago. Which is annoying because I was the one who first wanted to join. But that’s the problem when you have an older brother. He gets to do everything you want to do before you. And usually, if he’s my brother, he ruins it for you into the bargain.
I was still only thirteen and you have to be fourteen to join the Young Farmers for real. I asked John why he joined the Young Farmers because he doesn’t even like farming that much and he told me it was to meet girls.
Which goes to show he’s not quite as daft as my dad seems to think he is. When I told my dad that, he laughed out loud and said, ‘I met your mum at the Young Farmers.’
She gave him a steely glare – and we had all thought she was deep in her Kindle Fire, not listening – and he added, ‘What I mean is that if John meets a girl like you, she’ll be in for a shock.’
‘I’d like to meet a girl like you, mum,’ I said. ‘When I get interested in girls,’ I added, to remind them that I’m not really interested in girls at all right now. I’m more interested in potatoes.
That might sound odd to you but it’s true. I really am interested in potatoes. When I do grow up I hope I might get to be a potato farmer. And when my dad next puts a crop in our outbye field I’ve asked him if I can howk them like they did in the old days. He told me I won’t get a fortnight off school just to do that, but it wasn’t just about missing school.
There’s money in potatoes, you know. The first thing I will do when I’m old enough will be to go on a potato rogueing course. Honestly. You get to go round all the potato fields and check out how they’re coming on. And you get really well paid for it. Better pay than being a dairy farmer, mum says. My Uncle Tam says anything pays better than being a dairy farmer and he should know because he used to be one. Not like my dad. He’s a beef man.
Like I said, you have to be fourteen to join the Young Farmers, which I am now but I wasn’t then. I was really looking forward to it. And the very week before I turned fourteen, John went and joined the Young Farmers. He did it deliberately so I wouldn’t join. Said he was doing me a favour. I asked mum to make him leave because he was only interested in girls and not letting me join and she said don’t be silly you can both go together, it’ll be nice for you boys to do more things together.
For an intelligent woman my mum can be very stupid (sorry, mum, but it’s true). John and I spend enough time together sharing a bedroom and I would never in a million years go to Young Farmers with him. It was bad enough when I started at DrumTumshie Academy. Even though John had left more than a year before all the teachers knew who I was. Or who they thought I was. John MacRoary’s brother. And that, I can tell you, is not a good thing to be.
I know, I know, I’m not talking about Independence yet. Well, except I am, because for me, Jack MacRoary, Bard of DrumTumshie, Independence will come on the day I’m grown up enough to go potato rogueing. And drive a car. And vote. I don’t care about smoking and voting and paying tax or joining the army, or even having sex, but I do want to be able to drive. Who doesn’t?
So let’s go back to the beginning again. In case you weren’t paying attention at the start of the first episode. I’m not telling you off for that, I do it all the time myself. No, I’m trying to help you here. Put the whole thing ‘into context’ like I’ve been told to do.
It started off as a modern studies project, remember. And I got top marks. I don’t know how. It had something to do with prisms, though I thought that was physics. But Mr Marker said that it was ‘refreshing to see things through the prism of the young teen.’
‘Now you’re in S2,’ he said to the class, ‘you need to wake up your ideas. Become culturally aware. Connect with the world. And what better way to do it than to take an interest in politics.’
You might think I should have put a question mark at the end of that sentence but there’s a thing called a rhetorical question and this was one of them. I know you should even put a question mark at the end of them, but I want to show you how much not of a question it was. It was so far not a question it was a statement.
And I can think of about ten better ways to connect with the world off the top of my head, but you don’t argue with Mr Marker when he’s in full flow.
‘A week’s a long time in politics,’ Brian shouted out, but Mr Marker tried to ignore him till his bodyguard support lady stared hard at him (Mr Marker not Brian) and then he said (Mr Marker, not Brian) ‘Yes, Brian, you’re right, well done.’
Because in our school we’ve got a policy called positive reinforcement and Mr Marker maybe didn’t know that because he was new but he knows now.
But I don’t think he likes it and he took it out on us by extending the Independence project into the holidays. He even tried to blame Brian, saying that we had to ‘make up time, because of all the time we’d lost.’
But I wasn’t having that. I said to him, ‘It’s not Brian’s fault, Mr Marker and I can prove it.’
‘Oh you can, can you?’ he said and that time he did have a question mark in his voice but it was one of those snarky ones.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it’s not Brian’s fault that time is relative.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Mr Marker said. And if I had to pick one word to describe his tone of voice (we have to do that in English sometimes) I’d call it exasperated.
‘Well, Sir,’ I said, trying to remember to be polite at all times, ‘after all, a week’s a long time in politics.’
The class erupted into laughter and that’s when Mr Marker had me marked. And started his campaign to make every day a school day for me. Right through the holidays. But after all, I guess I win because I’m getting to write a serial on McStorytellers and Mr Marker hasn’t even had one story up there yet.
So, like I said, the project was to write about Independence from our own personal perspective. Because apparently it affects everyone. ‘Like Dandruff,’ Brian said. He said it quietly (for Brian) to me when we were out of the classroom which was lucky because I don’t think Mr Marker has a sense of humour. In fact I think he might have had a sense of humour bypass, which is like a heart bypass and no funnier.
School finished in June and it started in July. My project, not the Independence thing. That started a long time ago. After Bannockburn. When we got it and then we dropped the ball at the beginning of the 17th century because King James VI of Scotland wanted to be King James I of England – which is confusing enough – but means that now we have to study English not Scottish in school. And then a load of Germans and Jacobites and all sorts of people came out of the woodwork and a hundred years later (because nothing happens fast in history) we became Great Britain. Though what’s so Great about it no one’s ever found out, my Uncle Tam says – and I say, maybe we need more history to find out. And he says maybe we need our Independence again.
I hoped I’d get a few weeks off and then just write something on the weekend before we went back to school. But my mum, who as you know just loves my writing, wanted me to start straight away and the funny thing was, in July in my house there was a lot to write about. Quite a lot of it about whether we are better together or independent. But that’s for another episode.
My English teacher says that I’ve got to learn to write in proper paragraphs and not stream of consciousness. John laughed and said it was a stream of something, but not consciousness. I told him that’s just because he has no cultural awareness and, besides, he couldn’t even spell consciousness. And he said he could spell what I was doing and it begins with S. And then put his fingers over his nose to make the point that he could smell it and spell it.
He’s pretty immature, John, especially since he’s nearly five years older than me.
I used to wonder why they waited five years between having John and me, and I asked Dad once and he said it was because they kept hoping John would give them a sign that having another child would be a good idea.
But mum says that’s nonsense and it was because they were in dire straits, and not the band, she meant dire financial straits and so they had to move houses and jobs and all that sort of thing. Except that they didn’t move house till after I was born. But it’s all history and I think history is usually best left in the past.
I think all their troubles started with the Millennium Bug because I was born just after the Millennium. And there were all kinds of bad bugs at the end of the 20th century. If you believe what they say. Which for me depends on who is saying it.
For example, John says I’ve got nothing to be proud of because I caused foot and mouth, singlehandedly, and we had to leave the area because of me and that dad’s never been the same since. He says it was my smelly nappies which caused foot and mouth. I told you he was immature. I said, in that case it was probably you who caused BSE. Mad Cow Disease. We’re brothers. You know how it is. You have to behave like that sometimes if you’re brothers.
I don’t mind John that much really. At least since he’s started to get a girlfriend he washes sometimes and changes his socks. Or at least he just wears my socks a lot more. He can’t be bothered to put them in the laundry hamper and so he comes in and takes off his socks after work and throws them under his bed with the rest of them, hoping they’ll breed new socks, and then because he doesn’t have any clean socks he takes mine. And then I don’t have any clean socks. But I don’t really need clean socks. No girl is going to smell my feet after all.
But this, as they say, isn’t getting the crops in. Though I think I’ve done my job of setting the scene well enough. Better than Shakespeare. ‘In fair Verona where we set our scene.’ I fell asleep right after that. The rest is a mystery. And you will have to wait till next week now for the next episode. That’s the point of serials. You can’t read them all at once. Not at the beginning anyway.
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.