TIPPERLINN
SUNSHINE.
A cluster of small cottages
women handloom weavers
Tipperlinn, with a ‘reputation’
for sunshine, and
the ‘best people’ in Edinburgh.
RATIONAL + PRACTICAL.
The sunny cottages replaced
by a grand house and an Asylum
that was never to be
big enough.
Tipperlinn, the new mansion
built of warm-hued sandstone,
windows floor-to-ceiling
home of Dr Skae, Physician Superintendent,
protégé of Dr Batty-Tuke – another
large-headed man.
July 1863, at Tipperlinn:
that famous address to the emerging establishment
‘A Rational and Practical Classification of Insanity’:
brainful and weighty,
it was well received,
though had a few critics.
CATRIONA.
Years collapse now.
You were born, October 1965 –
from birth your eyes blazed: everyone remarked.
I arrived late, backwardly, 1967.
From the start, sister + brother
we were ‘ROUGH PROOF’.
[Photographs survive to confirm this!]
THE BANK.
Catriona, when wee, our childhood
seemed endless.
Today, it feels like
a momentary passing.
Memory, young and old,
not always reliable,
yet Granny’s letters read like yesterday:
“Most of the time is taken with Stuart talking about the Bank”
“It is grim and exhausting”.
THE MEADOWS.
1969, Tipperlinn House has a new role:
‘The Young People’s Department’.
Aged just 8, you were to be
one of its youngest ‘guests’ –
your bright eyes dimmed instantly.
I recall ‘family Therapy’
dressed up in shirt and orange tie,
aged just six.
Interviewed behind a two-way mirror
That was blinding.
GUESTS OF THE REAL.
You escaped
from Hospital.
Granny describes, in her letters,
how you were ‘captured’ in the Meadows.
Dr Wolf, like all the adults,
got you so wrong.
Yes, it was Dr Wolf who wrote that celebrated book:
‘Children Under Stress’.
PERSISTENCE OF WOUNDS:
Four decades of Psychiatric drugs:
this is your ‘later’.
Practically and Rationally, you are considered
Mentally ill, Majorly, so. Intractably meadowless.
But Catriona, I see your eyes as they once were,
so bright,
in my creative
brilliant
older sister.
I guess that we weren’t so
“ROUGH PROOF”
