Backwards and forwards learning
Backwards and forwards learning contributes to who I am.
Neither the microscope nor the telescope quite help me in the focus with which I wish to see.
Backwards and forwards learning contributes to who I am.
We live between the microscope and telescope.
Magpie
If only I could soar like an eagle
to see the world as I cannot.
I am a magpie in black and white,
in flight through clouds,
seeking colour.
I am nosy, noisy, restless, bothered by life.
I pick up the pieces.
Beat the drum, Fly the night, Catch a star
Frost hit Tillybin and froze the night.
Bitingly cold and startlingly clear.
A night that stirred the soul
A night of Spectacle Sight.
Midnight came rhythmically
Andrew beating his drum:
Sian said ‘time to go!’
The windscreen iced over in anticipant celebration
hands that felt no cold rubbed hurriedly
a telescope to the soul.
The car coughed to life
The farm track bumped and hurdled
– as if urging.
Count the gaps: count the rhythm –
Faster: No time to waste!
Fly the pot-holes
Peer the telescope!
Gosh – what’s that? A jewel. A wonder. A spectacle sight.
Hale-bopp: such Brightness.
SUCH BRIGHTNESS.
Beat the drum, fly the night, catch a star
4.04
and Hale-Bopp reigns its brightest!
SUCH BRIGHTNESS.
Peter and Sian
Now ‘mum & dad’
Fingers that could not dial
Lips that could not speak
‘we have a boy… a lovely boy’
Beat the drum, Fly the night, Catch a star!
Beyont Mizzerment!
Speeshal folk – Deeside loons
The like weel nae see agin
Hunners of years auld, hunners.
Aye speeshal loons – beyont mizzerment!
The ancient Dallyfour lived
a hunner and twenty-sax year –
wud ye believe it?
An berit in Glenmuick
Wi the dates 1596 tae 1722 on his stane:
Betwixt his cradle an his grave
John Mitchell of Dallyfour
behelt saiven monarchs and twa kings
an the union o’ the Croons.
The ancient Dubrach lived
a hunner and ten year –
aye wud ye believe it?
He carrit Dumfoonert’s name – Peter;
And Granted Auchindryne.
Chipped Tooth
The administrator now the
administered.
Pulse-oximeter sirens a frenzied fear,
friendly faces pace in busyness managing
checklists to the unknown.
Man-made epilepsy in-a-box.
Temples numbing – signify it is done.
Tooth is chipped.
Din-raisin wi’ Donald.
Tarbrax by the high road tae Forfar
Donald Mcpherson far fae Bovagli’s hamely braes.
Black bothies left ahind, aiver speerited in saicret. Aye!
Girnoc garrons twinty each – wi’ ankers twa abreast:
the toonkeeper wimmen left oot.
Speerits heich (tcaach ….fit a tirravee!)
Loshtie aye, dwam fou!
The-gaither, time-servin’ smugglers:
Donald Mcpherson – oor seerious scoondrel;
James Gordon – aiver richteous;
an’ John Gall – oonprencipilt mebbe,
yet surely mair of a dweem than a dwam:
loshtie aye!
Donald Mcpherson befuskert high on baith chaffs,
aye rugged cheekit – bricht red oondernaith.
Jorum at the ready the-gaither wi the Gordons: James an’ Peter
…. an nae doot, yit mair of that inextricable tribe!
Aye nae doot!
James Gordon an Abergeeldie loon – of sorts!!
Gamekeeper to David Gordon, Esquire of Abergeeldie.
Friend of genteelity maybe but
naiver to be mizzered in mainners:
Loshtie nae!
John Gall grand-maister o’ the bothies,
brither tae the Girnoc.
Sundoon at his Tarbrax sheilin –
a saicret tryst oonder yonder roddin-tree.
Feckless wi’ a fleerish:
Loshtie aye!
Twa gaugers biding their time,
hodden in-by the Tarbrex Tollbar:
Mr Tawse an’ Mr Rose, aiver-sae wullin in the law.
1824: Excisemen noo wi’ clout!
Aye Parliament had seen to that!
Dragoon guards hauled-in at the ready:
At the ready –oh loshtie aye!
Anither Gordon caa’d Peter, a Camlet loon,
rode auld ‘yella,’ sae many hans in hicht –
a strappin horse speeshal tae the Girnoc:
wi braith snortin’ ready,
yet his maister, Peter wis grippet wi’ doot.
Aye grippet.
The others,
‘to the number of nine or mair’
shared that nervishness –
but plied theirsels’ wi’ ther ain coontraband:
aye, fou an fleein’ tae loosen that fear!
Bit not oor Donald, fa he wis high-heedit,
an seemingly baithered by nout –
not aiven a fearsom rainstorm risen michty faist
wid brak his smugglers course!
Michty me he wis blin tae danger –
Michty aye!
Through the spleeter of weet,
an jist ootside the Tollbar,
Tawse an’ Rose, officers aff the Excise,
wi’ their troop aff ‘Dragoon Guards’
withoot warning, made tae apprehend –
but in-turn were veeshusly attacked themsels.
Veeshusly aye!
Donald McPherson ‘threatened tae
‘blow ther brains oot if they laid violent hands upon them’
an to run auld Tawse-the-Excise
‘throo the body wi’ a pitch fork’
by noo Donald wis joined by the Gordons who a’ the-gaither
started to throw ‘large stanes’
at roon-shoodert an’ wrunkelt Rose.
Aye nae sympathy wis extended
tae the hunchie-bacit an’ fastidious Rose
All this wis witnessed by a young loon
James Gordon age 6 years
His faither Peter, picked him up
an in a flash young James escaped on ‘yella’
back to the Gordons – bit not tae the Girnoc
fa’ that wisnae safe.
Michty No.
Sorrafu’ an wi’ ther tails atween ther legs,
brocht them tae Kincardine o’ Neil –
in the stable Inn –
‘130 gallons of illicit distilled spirits’ wir stacked up high
an horses wer’ at the ready for a second pairty ….
ye can imagine can’t ye – loshtie aye:
for they ‘were at the time takin’ refreshment.’
Takin refreshment – michty aye.
fit a stramash!
ye stramash an’ styterin fou!
An noo The Excise stepped fore:
an all were caught din-raisin.
Shamed Donald McPherson tak flit tae Angus
he never returned tae the Girnoc.
Soon aifter the Girnoc emptied like a quaich!
Ye see ther wis no choice in changin times.
Fitprints aff shame,
an the end of a way of life. Aye.
Din-raisin wi’ Donald.
Loshtie Aye!!
“I’d Buy you that!”
Too many days have past,
from the days of
the burningly bright eyes of our
innocent and wondrous boy.
As simple as the loss of money!
Not the important stuff:
Andrew, if it were so simple!
I’d buy you no money.
at any price.
Kitty Rankin’s hairt beat
Aye Deeside fowk wir feart o’ Kate
she had that weasel way
an she was thocht tae be a witch.
Wan day Kate tak coonsel of Abergeeldy
the Laird wis cavorting or so
she saw – a weasel way ah richt!
Kate cast oot her spell, stirrin’ the soup,
an the Laird
wis droont.
Fowk kent a’ too weel it
wis Kate.
Fit a weasel way. Aye fit!
Poor Kate she was chained
in the ‘Geeldy cellar
– her hairt beat faster
an brocht oot intae the licht
she cooered doon.
Craig nam Ban stood afore her
and the stake a tap.
Her hairt beat faster
– in a ‘weasel way’.
Marched up the hill
her hairt beat faster.
Until the flames a’ licked her.
Aye Deeside fowk wir feart o Kate!
Melt the Bear.
Castellated gallery of white
iron-cast pavilions – one atop another,
shine bright on a Scottish spring afternoon.
Clocks, rockets, asteroids, mummies and totem poles;
fish circle the children, pennies circle the pool.
Whale bones suspended disbelieving
– no dinosaur stolen here!
Buttons to press; costumes to dress;
the Antonine Guard recruits a boy!
Peter could peer all from his board
secret in the attic of Chamber Street.
The polar Bear silent and sad. So sad.
he had saved the girl – us all.
Alive only in the mind.
Ode to Narrative.
Born backwards;
could sleep standing-up,
lived in a world upside-down.
silent as light.
grafted like a Scott;
found and loved Cimbrone.
Stars that shine now.
The doctor (under)standing on his head.
Finding Cimbrone
Junior doctors in love –
Peter smitten by eyes deep.
A faltering heart surged as you passed
in white-coat, green mini-skirt and in your pocket
the love-note secretly placed by Peter the night before.
A spoonful of sugar and
the Medicine was in Aberdeen.
Seaton Park gently traversed in a restful peace
– flowering the past, present and future.
Here Peter had his first magical kiss.
Striding on towards the dungeon. The Marischal.
Awaiting Dr Skene – bearded and sinister
punching one-fingered results with palpable sneer!
Indeed this was not yesterday, as Rachel would come to remind us:
Rosemount with cats and fur balls: curtains and croissants.
And ink scribed carefree the Jellicoe way
metamorphosing the romantic in Shute.
And the Autumn brought to us in rich arboreal watercolour:
Getting back to nature: ‘like the primitive man’.
Now is the time of the flowers:
Sentinels of Cimbrone stand tall
graceful in poise, reaching out:
touching the sky.
as newly weds.
And somehow carried back in the scent
through Drumdruills gate and its clipped box path:
leading to the sweetest of peas.
We found Cimbrone in each other.
At Inverewe the Rhoddies were rampant in care-free abandon
And Sissinghurst so alight in Euphorbic lime, but
not (for us) undone by the brilliance of the dazzling White Garden.
Back home, and northern-skied days:
buzzards danced overhead
and we trekked across the fields of Tillybin
down the oak-lined dyke, wandering with the snow-drops and aconites.
And later in the year
towards the castle –
where the philadelphus left us heady and the castle no more than body!
Tae Humbie we went:
Peter’s creative core had tugged.
and marvellously you held on. Wedding bells would chime and gold rings instantly lost
foretold that we would be together whatever.
love is far more than any symbol or precious gold
The Aultdrachty Rauchle.
Naebody mynds Aultdrachty noo,
though lood it rattles still.
Yet Aultdrachty’s watter wis’nae awas clear,
an it hods a muckle saicret.
Sae hearken, an hear the feech
o’ the packman, shepherd an the whisky smugglers.
An beyont the reevin win’
the toon-folk, michty-me,
brought forth their ceevil brolly –
Fit mare eesless cud there be!
Stapit foo’ wi dram he wis,
oor Packman on’t fairst erran –
oor hapless loon had’nae heed Aultdrachty’s rowt
on such a fearfu’ nicht.
The snaa it came ower the Moonth, a bin-drift,
like nane afore.
Poor loon, asleep aside Aultdrachty,
his lum still a reekin’ was berit.
Linvaig, wis the hame of McAndrew: anither mither’s loon –
lured by Aultdrachty’s cackle.
then risen fae a halla, a sleekit naisty beast,
seelenced by Aultdrachty it pounced.
Aye Aultdrachty saa it’ fearsome.
Aultdrachty’s rauchle had a’ thirst that widnae slack.
Half a’ doozen smugglers naixt tae the slauchter,
theer bellies reed-het wi’ watter distillate,
jeelous Aultdrachty cud’nae hae that!
Aye the watter wis nae awas clear.
An then Aultdrachty reeled its maist keerious,
the hapless, stupit toon-folk,
the umberella makkers:
fit an’ earth tak them tae Aultdrachty, nane will ken,
nane but Aultdrachty.
Fit a spleeter o’ weet,
A shooer like nane
eesless brollies, blan in-bye-oot,
sae they huddled by Aultdrachty.
The watter it fell oot fae the heeven fur days, an nichts,
an fullt the quaich o’ Aultdrachty welt beyont the brim,
Ceevil folk, wi brollies, had nae chance.
That’s how lood wis Aultdrachty’s rattle
an sae its keerious tae think
the glen it ken’t has lang since ceased to roar.
The Dumfoonert Loon
There’s Naebody noo in the glen – lang since dwine’t awa.
Dwine’t awa an deid.
Littlins lachter, sing-sang, chirm and diddle
As sailent noo as the shuttered plaid o’ Bovagli’.
An the reevin win nae langer cairit the waxin’ lyrical
o’ Camlet’s auld Minaister.
Aye noo the furtive brow belongs tae this dumfoonert loon:
raikin roond folk gan ah so lang –
an caa’d a’ the same as ane anither!
Noo wi’ Camlet ane cud dibber-dabber faireveer:
Aibergeeldie nae that’s fa sure – but fit loon?
Peter wis it yir namsak?
Ah, cud you be sure – I doot that!
Aye I doot that – they were inextricable – did ye nae oonerstan!
Surely no!!
Cud bleeter a’ day – jist like the Camlet folk a the’ day
Til the Sma stills smacked afrontit
an Girnoc touns drapped an rouped til a’ but scaitered rickles.
Left salient; but fa the wheeblin an fusperin of the hameward win!
Aye hameward.
The hieland Clearance ah richt –
Still Girnoc’s stamack wis wachty lang afore.
Dooble liveliheids: fairmers not jist.
Sleekit lums tae dodge the gauger:
An smuggle the naftie ooer the Mounth.
Pairliment’s Act. An Act oot-by anaither warld.
A deidly haimmer. Deidly.
A yellow horse – a gowden jewel shimmrin gainst Lochnagar
Wis the laird’s very own ye ken.
Then unexpectit the laird wis gan – jist drappit deid:
an tae The Camlet cam his shimmrin Stallion.
Fit chancy; nae but surely heeven pre-ordainit:
on the back of yellow, young James Gordon, a loon jist nine,
galloped awa fae the ragin’ gauger.
Anaither faimily had flit the Girnoc: fairever –
No time tae greet: the family.
The family of The Dumfoonert Loon.
The Gordons, aince inextricable, were gan.
A’ but ‘Red Donald’ – prodeegious o’ Bovaglie.
He fairmed wethers in the hunners & thoosands (an mair!)
Jist for the killin, an Balmoral
Cairtit doon the ‘Butcher’s Walk’ tae the Royal hoosehold:
fit they cad ‘The Mutton Larder.’
Nae wonder ‘Red Donald’ wis the Queen’s very ane flumgummer!
Donald’s drooth (it has been said) wis no for the watter:
Tummlers o’ the stonger stuff wis his stoorum!
Aye his fancy wis for a dram or two (an mair!) –
Donald used to tak his horse and cairt doon glen tae ‘The Inver.’
Aifter a guid nicht, stocious an greetin foo,
Donald wud shaky-doon in his cairt.
Aye his horse had seen it a’ afore!
Even blind-foldit, Donal’s horse cud tak him hame:
tae the sheltered plaid o Bovagli.
Wan day, twa loons wi noshun fa mischief –
unhitched Donal’s cairt wi auld prodeegious still in it –
aye sleepit foo’
an then hitched it back togaither – but not afore
first passing the shafts of the cairt throw the spars o’ Bovaglick’s gate!
The mischeevous anes hod in-by the plaid
An laughit seek, fan Donal deleerious, hootit:
‘I doot the diel himsel has been at work here the day!’
Cameron The Factor – wis a sleekit man ah richt
oonder the coonsel aff Balmoral.
Aifter all, Girnoc had nae mair tae promise.
Folk had nae seengle penny atween them:
Days of dreeving beast gan –
Naftie outlawed –
An noo the Royal takover!
Fit an airth naixt!!
Aye, The Camlet – the hairt o’ the glen,
wis heavin it’s last sorrowfu’ beat.
Naisty deeds, or wis it mercy?
Anyhoo lang-heidit Cameron wis tae be
the Meesenger o daith tae a way of life:
Nae mair chirm
Nae mair diddle,
Nae mair Sing-sang,
Nae mair Littlins’ lachter.
There’s Naebody noo in the glen. Naebody.
Naebody but the dumfoonert loon.
At Bovagli’s door he sits aside an auld currant tree,
son-afore-the father.
Heevenly scent – speeritool yet waesome
Heid foo, an greet-hertit, o’ days gan by.
Aye Bovagli, oh so buitifool – lochnagar’s saicret jewel:
strikes melancohly an’ wonder in equal measure.
Beyont the shuttered sailience within
A stained enamel baith as ready to pour
as it surely wis on Donal’s last nicht.
Weavin in an oot the wuid – noo the preeserve of the deer:
yet aince that of the Gordon bairns.
Bitten aff by Bovaglick’s cald win
wi’ smallpox – such a loss of littlins.
Son-afore-the-father
Heeven scent o’ the bonniest quines.
Currant blossom.
An a loon dumfoonert.
Linvaig hame of the cherry blossom.
Wis tae be Girnoc’s very last tae flit.
Aince it wis fairmed by twa brothers Gordon – sons o’ The Camlet.
At Linvaig, look oot aboot ye, fae imaiginashun can easy conjur
Wolf McAndrew:
A mither’s loon lost tae the wild an raised by the pack.
At Aultdrachty, in the Muick, he cam back.
Aye he cam back!
Cud you believe it: at Linvaig lodged a huddle o’ umberella makkers
Fit in the Girnoc: Ceevil folk wi brollies!?
Fit mair eesless cud there be!!
Not even the dumfoonert loon
wid tak, a brolly, tae the Girnoc!
Mair keerious still:
Centuries of doodles writ upon an auld wooden Linvaig Flesher:
Doon tae the ditties signed by the twa Gordon brothers:
an remynders o’ bills;
calculashin’s;
sheep coontit –
An then this:
“Lost last night, Emma Gordon,
last seen going down the road with Fred Duncan’s clothes on.
A’body givin information on her whur-aboots will be rewarded.”
The dumfoonert loon has tae tip his cap to Emma.
An wi’ a guid smirk,
she tips him back wi Fred’s!
The Cosh – the halla an gate tae the Girnoc:
The Miller there wis auld Joseph: Joseph ‘the frugal.’
Anither Gordon, an anither son o’ Camlet!
Aye inextricable ah richt, fae Joseph, wud yae believit,
marrit his mither’s sister!
Auld Joseph wis a prood man, in an ancient year,
yet still trekked ooer the mounth tae Brechin ta visit his grandbairns.
In plaid, kilt and bunnet and wi twa staffs he set aff:
A striking auld man.
Takin his laist journey.
Auld Joseph started up the moontain track all alane
But some of his faimily followed him.
Aye Joseph wis proud, bit he wis auld and guy weak,
an they were feartit for him.
The way wis steep, an soon the snaa gaithered deep.
Joseph tak aff his ill fittin shoes to try an mak the gayin mair aisy,
an tied the shoes tae his staff.
Faimily followit auld Joseph aiver-mair closely
an cud see that he wis vairy tired an oonwell.
Aifter lodging in the snaa, his staff (tied wi his shoes)
he laid doon tae rest.
Ainly tae rise again an stagger on an on,
but fa shorter and shorter.
An shorter.
Nae ‘frugal’, that cannae be richt.
Joseph’s epitaph shud reflect the man on his laist journey.
Joseph: Joseph the cooragious. Joseph the thraan.
At Camlet, the dumfoonert loon drifts in ban oot:
Camlets bairns had such mixt fortunes ye ken.
Some remarkable an so warldly wise;
Cortachy Castle an Airlie too
Burnside, Springfield an even Priory!
Whilst aithers lost affrontit at the gaugers will,
or shamit, jist mebbe, thro a clandesteen birth
in the grounds of Abergeeldie.
The Great Conker Hunt!
Another year! Another year!
Excitement rises for those
inside-shiny-pumpkins.
The giant’s gentle green fingers clasp.
for Kinfaun’s spectacular
rival tae Walnut’s grove.
Boxes laden. Hands held,
feet skip,
purposefully collecting
for some mental feat or other.
Shiny inside pumpkins!
The Three Moustache Tree
At the head of Keir it sits
facing clockwork gyrations
of cars: numbers untold.
It beams a hidden sentinel:
our custodian of mans’
faceless technology.
It stands tall as a cavalry officer saluting;
or as absurd as an upside-down clown on parade.
Or Perhaps a classic screen Idol:
with everyday growth trimmed, waxed, and svelte.
Its moustached face has ups, downs and in-betweens:
hiding a third of no soul.
It has no chlorophyll.
Yet it is strangely alive in the green
and beckons Dunblane home to an odd reassurance.
This is not yesterday
Indeed young Rachel, ‘this is not yesterday.’
And oh yes, and for that matter ‘It’s not the meantime now!’
For this is our moment.
Hale Bopp had brought the brightest gift to Aberdeen.
Two comets had blazed in-between
and then faded in the night sky,
but held still,
in our wonderful moment.
It was Aberdeen’s reevin win that brought us our millennium marvel.
Dark eyes brightening the nineteenth.
Hearts bursting with joy beneath.
Tears cradling a wonderful moment.
The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month
“over the stair she went, she went….
Heavily down the stairs
Binglety, banglety, bumplety
Down with apple & pears…”
That was how our dear soldier fell.
Stookied in sympathy with thoughts cast
always to dwell in the moment.
Yes, our dear soldier reached out to the lost
and brought them together again
in her kaleidoscope of showering comets
and one last glittering moment.
Moments together in time
Each and every drop, has dropped differently into the moment.
A moment cannot simply belong to a drop.
In this our wonderful, yet falling togetherness
our love is only equal to the moment
in the feeling and the fall.
The bed we made
We are neighbours and friends across a generation, and a fence.
Our houses, laid-out in a mirror opaquely stane:
The 1870’s fancy of Mr Cousin that infinitesimal builder,
built himself so fiery red.
It is long since our lost Cousin made his Victorian bed.
Seven years ago this summer, our neighbour’s wife died.
That spring, I recall seeing Elma at the door of her house
in the mirror of a doctor’s eye:
she could not walk.
Crawford, her husband, dear neighbour, had to support her.
My mirror was useless.
Elma had not broken her leg,
no longer proud of diagnosing little Ali’s break,
a tear – no more than manganese and gravity- fell
as neighbour told that his wife had cancer;
that she was hobbling to her Strathcarron bed.
That summer, Crawford arose every morning and dug,
a beautiful circular bed.
For Elma he filled it with roses.
For several years they were colourful and beautiful;
but the roses, in the shadow of Mossgrove life,
faded.
Not quite Ten Summers have since passed,
and ‘That Summer’ is still as real to me as the bed Crawford made.
So I raised my own summer bed, to Elma and life.
Yesterday, from the mirror, I spotted Crawford digging – early yet again:
digging out the scraggy roses from Elma’s bed.
Today Crawford is sowing grass,
and now both our beds are made.
Potty
Granny is gone.
Her potty rusts and now leaks
The beech tree is ancient, but not near death.
The iron potty was once her doll’s.
Peter is here.
He is potty
and in his leaking, he reveals much iron mongered:
or is that ‘irony mongered’?
Candia’s father rearranged such.
Len you died ‘that summer’:
1940 so somersaultingly real to me.
Natural sciences still cannot hang upon such invisible
at least not revealingly.
The disappearance of appearance.
Glenbardy.
Known to none but Peter.
Nestles in a hill that carries a name that we forget why it was so called.
Our WORLD is here!
Natural sciences are backwards free
yet what is humanity
if not understood in its journey?
We have moved on
‘We have moved on’ (said doctor Knows Best)
didn’t you notice?!
Today we have targets, tooled by incentive,
and our patients are our numbered ‘partners’.
Betjeman has been realised:
not in poetry but in his warning.
We must ‘Release time to care’
Illness is our paradigm.
Though (of course) we only seek health!
But sadly, long since did guid Dr Osler ‘move on.’
and Today disorder is our norm.
‘Neuro-everything’ may seem necessary, but it is never sufficient –
unless we are no more than ‘our brains’.
And Peter’s principle is that –
evidence can help inform,
but cannot be sufficient amidst poverty of thought.
‘We have moved on’ and ‘we can be certain’
said Dr Knows best:
history is ‘irrelevant’ and our social world ‘unreal’.
‘We have moved on’ and ‘we can be certain’
of the boundary between ageing and illness.
And more certain still
that we are (indeed) (today) more humane.
Dr Knows Best you are a marvel!
A neuroscientific wonder.
and we have moved on . . .
The PROTOCOL.
The Protocol asks:
“What year is it now?”
“1984” I reply.
The machine stamps ‘Cognitive impairment ESTABLISHED’:
and I fall down a dystopian Orwellian memory-hole.
The Protocol knows what’s best:
do not stray from the pathway
Evidentially (or not)
The Protocol has no need to consider
maleficence and Hippocrates’
but I am an oaf.
The Protocol has moved-on:
ageing is a thing of the past!
Patterns of pathology
have become
TODAY.
The Protocol is unstoppable in its progress.
“It is an all out fight”
our Prime minister confirms.
The metaphors
engaged
are indeed pathological.
The Protocol fights stigma! [The machine confirms].
And any ‘diseased Other’ has nothing to fear
from The Protocol.
The shortness of life
Michael, yes, “life is short”:
So you will say what you like.
Life is short.
And there is little enough time to mention identity.
You don’t want to be ‘told’
but like me, you ‘tell’ everyday:
In our own professional language (pathologically ‘complete’)
we typecast disorders more ‘real’ than any illness.
Michael, life is short
so we must remember
that we are not all ill.
Not at all.
but you know this.
I worry for you Michael
as you hate illness –
and that makes you angry.
Poems need to offer space
I am no more
SERIES II, than you were
SERIES I.
Much space of time has passed between us:
grandson and grandfather.
Each year, new gardeners will sow
sweet peas
and bairns will still run towards them
as I once did when arriving at Drumdruils:
the scent and colour of you.
The world lives in me (or am I backwards to think so?)
I am neither independent
nor simply dependent:
I am simply Peter that is somewhere
to be found within (and without)
my biology, physics and chemistry.
Every sceptic can agree on this
astonishing ‘scientific’ complexity!
Peter lives in a world far more than
that which is carried in words or indeed numbers
Perhaps our world
can never fully be understood:
DLROW or 12345?
Letters, numbers,
expressed backwards or forwards,
may always struggle with time as experienced.
Let us not calculate light
Sian saw a glimmer in me. I was dazzled by Sian
Glimmer or dazzle, dazzle or glimmer:
let us not calculate light!
Together, and only together,
Peter and Sian have wavelength
Sian
Agapanthus: natural, beautiful, reaching
sharing light, colour and presence.
A globe, a world, projecting tall into the clearest of skies.
Without Agapanthus I have no sky.
How foolish
To think that we can ‘capture’ the moment!
“Listen. Time passes. Listen”
Every moment has properties in physics, chemistry and biology
A togetherness that is lost without time and tense.
“Listen. Science. Listen”
Part of the conversation.
I could never be a leader,
I do not want to lead.
I just want to be part of the conversation.
I don’t want to be labelled,
I do not want to label.
I just want to be part of the conversation.
Is this my sensitivity or that of the world?
I could never be a leader,
I do not want to lead.
I just want to be part of the conversation.
Squiggles
Prosody (when and now)
Syntax (arranged)
Grammar (not to be silly)
Punctuation (all in the timing)
Meet you at the statue in an hour
Thank you:
For meeting me (we are part of serendipity)
‘at the statue in an hour’
(more than serendipity)
Thank you:
For marrying me (we are part of serendipity)
We are arresting in our togetherness
(more than serendipity)
Thank you:
For being there for a temperamental artist
We are all scientists!
(more than serendipity)
Thank you:
For your beauty (beauty beyond serendipity)
I have no sky without Cimbrone
Thank you:
4.04
6.26
Our world together.
I need ethics because I am on my own
I can only see with my own eyes.
I try to shift my stance.
However, I do not always see what others see
I need ethics because I am ordinary and extraordinary
I can only see with my own eyes
I try to shift my stance.
However, I do not always see what others see
[and then there is feel]
Anenomes
under our hedge:
a blue that
opens up to the world:
I know where love might be found.
Scottish Chapter Prize
EGOs get in the way of being true.
I was awarded every award
in my post-medical landscape.
But awards are not signs
to be posted on maps.
and I am not an architect of any landscape.
Let nature in.
Peter DLROW
being confident
is not ‘me’.
the lack of
is my making
Capture
As schoolboy I was put in goals
Yet I could not catch.
Such play!
If only I could catch!
Science:
the goal is wide
If only I could catch!
In praise of
uncertainty
subjectivity
and nothing short of
‘the big bang’.
Experience:
words and numbers
are hopelessly insufficient.
Validation
a word generally understood
– but like all words
cannot understand itself.
VISITORS MUST REPORT TO THE OFFICE.
The number of lives that enter our own is incalculable.
Why select just a certain few stories to define yourself?
Being with you is like being in this fantastic landscape
He looked at her, and she smiled.
She laughed her seventeen-year-old laugh.
That brief smile that afternoon.
Words and numbers
Numbers matter!
But numbers alone cannot begin to reveal the actual experience of life [or any life lived]
This is true of any language.
A D V I C E [as given by Mr Gordon Bennett]:
[Let me be sensitive]
The mainstream is not for me!
No wonder that this ancient rebel
will win no award
that he would not want.
I am a ‘Scottish Chapter’.
Recorded on a bit of faded paper,
a typewritten insert that was glued –
without feel – to a book
on waterfalls.
B E I N G [and let me be sensitive about this]
– is more than a sum –
between the ‘MAINSTREAM’
and me.
Somewhere between:
gut-reaction
A N D
Matter-of-fact.
Now
A N D
the moment that has passed since I thought of ‘now’
words
A N D
numbers
Do not begin to tell you where you might find me.
FOUNTAIN ROAD
I have walked you backwards
every day since
the fountain
flowed.
I am the hunched one.
NINEVEH.
The Politician’s Clock
dust
only dust makes light visible:
bringing colour
to
skies that are not little.
children are
colours
local and deep
As a child I waded into ocean shallows
trembling
the season did not matter –
I could not feel the cold!
Older now, I recall more vividly than then:
tippy-toeing into an ocean deep.
Vivendo discimus
The Antiquary worries:
that today’s Science
has lost the place
of T I M E
in our lives.
Omphalos:
the
only
physical
connection
of our lives.
from our beginning
we
become.
feel
Lists are just lists
[and this is a list]
Words are just words,
numbers just numbers.
Time [might this be experience]
has just passed.
This poem is a list
that left out
an extraordinary word.
The Porsolt Forced Swimming Test (Behavioural Despair Test) is centred on rodents’ response to the threat of drowning. It has been interpreted as measuring susceptibility to negative mood in humans. It is commonly used to measure the effectiveness of antidepressants in rats.
The following is a poem written by me about this test. I wrote it in my mind on my way to Siberia. Once at Siberia I jotted it down in my commonplace notebook. This Siberia is a farm, now a ruin, in the East Neuk of Fife. It should not be confused with the extensive geographical region spanning much of Eurasia and North Asia.
The poem recounts the friendship of two rats: one rat is called ‘Hippocraticus’ and the other rat ‘583’. Hippocrates is often referred to as the “Father of Medicine”. Agnes Richter was a psychiatric patient and seamstress. She made herself a jacket whilst under psychiatric care. It seems that she was known as ‘patient 583’ and so she stitched this label into her jacket.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists has stated that “We know that in the vast majority of patients, any unpleasant symptoms experienced on discontinuing antidepressants have resolved within two weeks of stopping treatment”.
Dr William Sargant (1907-1988) was a British psychiatrist who is remembered for the evangelical zeal with which he promoted treatments such as psychosurgery, deep sleep treatment, electroconvulsive therapy and insulin shock therapy. He wrote, with Dr Eliot Slater in 1944 the influential Textbook: “An introduction to physical methods of treatment in psychiatry”.
“Real Psychiatry” is a blog written by an American Psychiatrist. In terms of psychiatry in the UK a new textbook is to be published this month: it is titled “The Medical Model in Mental Health: An Explanation and Evaluation”
P O R S O L T
Aye its cauld, like Siberia! Says rodent ‘583’
So keep swimming Hippocraticus
ye wud’nae want to SINK.
Keep swimmin’ Hippocraticus
We’re being ‘evaluated’ did ye nae ken?
And all will be ‘resolved’ when we stop
swimming.
Did ye nae hear:
Dr Sargant is giving a talk on ‘values and feeling valued’
Aifter a plush dinner at some Royal Society or anither!
So keep swimming Hippocraticus.
There’s gan tae be a Text book aboot us –
it will “explain” how we feel
based on the new brain cells that grew in oor brains
before we drooned.
The Text book is to be called “REAL PSYCHIATRY”
Keep swimming Hippocraticus!
“The Rules of Science”
are credible
and we
are not.
“I am sae tired 583
I don’t hae strength to swim much longer
Gie me a ‘choppy sea’ any day
tae P O R S O L T”
Keep swimming Hippocraticus! [rodent 583 is close to tears]
the imbalance is not ours.
Hippocraticus [sinking]
Is now dead.
Dr Sargant enters the laboratory
and prepares the PORSOLT glass beaker for 583.
In Defence of War
Dr Sargant has issued a command
to be learned by heart
before entering
his laboratory-treatment room:
“it is moral cowardice not to go along with my
S U P E R I O R
A C C U R A T E
F A C T S”
This is a “rule of science”
hollers Dr Sargant, and
Vivendo discimus
nothing more than “propaganda”.
“Choice of words” is not relevant
yells Dr Sargant
in his Defence of War.
Note: I have written this poem from the perspective of a fearful rat shortly before leaving PORSOLT for disposal. Attached to the rat’s foot was this label “Anti-Sargant 01984”
A L O N E
Evidence cannot be based
in numbers and words
alone.
We are all “evidence”
of time experienced
uniquely.
You are unique
do not forget
that!
Science matters:
matter makes us and made us.
the living [and the dead] understand [understood] this!
Yet, it is the unsaids, the unknowns, and soon forgottens
that alone we keep
dead or alive.
Delivering news that passed me by
I was a paper-boy
delivering news that passed me by,
every day.
I was paper-boy to Mrs Picken:
36 Redford Drive.
who left me an apple on her window-sill
every day.
I was a paper-boy
delivering news
every day.
Girgenti
Girgenti followed Paestum
in a blue sky summer.
Beneath this sky
two girls sang.
It was a beautiful summer.
o o r B I G B R A W c o s m o s
aye my fiere
Peter Pan flew oot the windae, aince agin
it was braw tae be flyin’ oot there
where the sky is nae little!
Story-telling, surveying in oor ain vernacular:
that’s nae jist ony quantity!
Yer spaiken scrieves were interstellar, solarising,
and unsoberising.
Let’s hae a dram tae that!
In a sky that is nae little
where light is silent
we flew hauding hands wi’ the pawky Duchess of Lost
and huddin’ oan wi fingernails
took a ride on the glimmerin’ tail o’ Hale Bopp.
Michty me whit
B R I G H T N E S S !
And the craik as we flew the gaither
It wis’nae jist telescopic, microscopic
it was daft and fun,
fun and daft
and B R A W!
braw.
I could write essays [on just about anything] but I began here
Sian
[ W A V E R L E Y ]
sixty years since
they were buried
in the graveyard
sixty years since
they were loved.
*this poem was inspired by coming across a grave that made me cry. It was by chance I came across the grave to Margaret Ogilvie by her daughter Nellie. This was on Tuesday 6th August 2019 in Clunyhill Cemetery, Forres,
DIFFICULT TO DEFINE:
Without: Line-breaks, silly metaphors, crazy syntax, odd grammar, miss-spellings, lost trains-of-thought, alliterations and alterations [OF ANY LANGUAGE]
Might the CAPTION be Wrong?
[I am a c r e a t i v e sort]
I no longer feel a need
to be known
or remembered.
All that matters to me
is my family.
[I am creative sort]
poet silly, poet me
silly poet, silly me
Pupil.
I am a circle,
you were
SQUARE.
I see shapes,
you saw:
[place any word of your choosing here]
You are the past,
I am
NOW.
EVIDENCE BASED MEDICINE can be both evidence and medicine if it includes:
s u b j e c t i v i t y
– there is no view from nowhere [1]
EVIDENCE BASED MEDICINE can be both evidence and medicine if it includes:
the s o c i a l world
– no man is an island [2]
EVIDENCE BASED MEDICINE can be both evidence and medicine if it includes:
t i m e
– listen. time passes [3]
EVIDENCE BASED MEDICINE can be both evidence and medicine if it includes:
e x p e r i e n c e
– vivendo discimus [4]
References:
[1] The View From Nowhere – by Thomas Nagel. 1989
[2] No Man is an island – by John Donne. 1624
[3] Under Milk Wood – by Dylan Thomas. 1954
[4] Vivendo Discimus [it is by living that we learn] – Patrick Geddes. 1889
DIVISIONS
To anti-THIS and anti-THAT –
each day a new ‘recruit’ is enlisted:
played out on a BINGO card –
but this is not a game.
In the anti-WORLD of military metaphors,
we make ‘opponents’ of each other.
The wounded ourselves.
The world makes equal of us all
Poets [Little Spartans or otherwise]
need not follow rules.
The philosopher [following nobody]
was heckled by specialists
for asking everyday questions.
The world makes equals of us all.
As time passes,
and death approaches,
there is no need for poets and Little Spartans.
The world makes equals of us all.
BINGO!
older [retired]
labelled [again]
shamed [by power]
BINGO!
We are greedy consumers of simple explanations yet the reality is anything
but
the noo [without end]
intellectual noise,
the wisdom of others,
isolation of
feel.
Fiction had disrupted reality
Sancho Panza recalls –
that a Russian doctor
mistook Peter to be
Patrick Geddes.
Sancho Panza recalls –
that the gardener who practised medicine and now plants trees
mistook the Russian doctor to be
Don Quixote.
With more errors made than atoms in the sun
all agreed that
fiction had disrupted reality.
Everyday-in-betweens
Somewhere between
an ordinary artist, and
an ordinary scientist
[if you seek everyday-in-betweens]
you will find
something extraordinary
Last Monday
The following poem is addressed to Robert Hepburn who died in Temple, 1798. It is based on a stone gateway that has out-survived the house that it long since introduced.
AWARD CEREMONY for the INSTITUTION
Each year, sometimes twice, the Institution holds an Award Ceremony.
Award Categories have been agreed behind closed doors by a small committee.
This year, a new category of annual Award has been introduced, this will be for the ‘Brand Developer of the Year’
The Committee has agreed that last year’s ‘Whataboutery’ award should go to its Improver of the Year
It has been agreed that this year’s Soft Power Award will be for the best ‘Control of Narrative’
The Committee can confirm that the award for ‘Courage on Behalf of the Institution’ will be jointly received by several members, but that one of these members will also receive the medal for ‘Discrediter of the Year’.
The Institution has decided, as in previous years, that there will be no public vote on any of the categories.
divisive folly
I am the
most scientific poet
that poetry has ever known.
AYE RIGHT!
I am the
most artistic scientist
that science has ever known.
AYE RIGHT!
I do not feel my DNA
I feel
a presence of words
that do not begin to explain how I feel
I feel
a presence of yesterday
I do not feel my DNA
More than a little!
I have been told by EXPERTS
that I am not resilient e n o u g h.
I have suffered –
and I have learned from my suffering
– more than a little!
I listen to others –
learning from experience different to mine
– more than a little!
I am a die-hard scientist –
and a rebel romantic
– more than a little!
EXPERTS, please remember –
poetry has something to say
– more than a little!
“Perceived”
Presented with uncertain symptoms
the doctor, a diligent scientist,
checked every bit of data that had ever been established:
evidence-based and randomised controlled.
This empathic doctor [a natural worrier]
re-checked every last bit of data and every guideline
[“Guidelines are not Tramlines”]
Always learning from the life of others
the doctor realised that there is more to evidence
than randomised controlled data.
It is by living that we learn:
or have I “perceived” this wrongly?
Footnote:
It is not uncommon to come across senior doctors describing reports of harmful effects of medical interventions as “perceived”. These same doctors then insist that the most important evidence is based on Randomised Controlled Trials.
This poem may be perceived as an ‘attack’ upon evidence. It is not. Evidence comes in all forms, and evidence-based-medicine, although necessary, cannot fully represent experience.
A Humble Gate
At Bovaglia,
Rachel opened a gate:
a gate to the mountains.
The passer-through smiled in thanks,
and Rachel smiled back.
Two smiles.
At a gate to the mountains.
HALE BOPP
Andrew, you beat the drum,
for others less fortunate.
Andrew, you fly the night:
‘second to the right, and straight on till morning’
Andrew, you caught a star:
Charlotte.
The next two poems are from a series ‘A Thousand Chances’ written in the Tarland Arms, May 2021 [the poems form the basis for several short films]:
An Electric Razor: Donated.
A fading Classic scene,
– cottage style:
in a bristly commercial woodland.
South Milton cottage,
yesterday, I visited you.
I had travelled far North to be with you
and the late Spring light was disappearing with the sun:
over the horizon.
The Acanthus leaves that you hand moulded
in concrete
are still there –
as your Doric pillars reach for the sky.
The woodland is dark now –
but your ARCADIA still brings magical light.
The Atmosphere.
Jist aifter lunch, on the first day of a new year,
ootside yer front door
you suddenly drapped deid.
John Glennie,
as the shepherd o’ Lochrie
you had woken each day o’ yer lang life
in this place and
felt,
seen,
and experienced,
it’s wunnerfu’ –
naturalness.
Naebody aiver found a hame for that
Highlan’ Ewe that found its way tae Lochrie
In the Spring of 1864
Aifter ye had gan [gan an deed]
Yer son Sandy
gae an illustrated talk to the
Strathdon Mutual Improvement Society.
He ca’d his talk ‘The Atmosphere’.
‘BASELESS’
Empirical Science
has yet to research if ‘Uppityness’
may be associated with ‘MINCE’.
Empirical Science
when iron-bru fuelled
has found that gas rises from the base.
The MINCE Brand
Order your MINCE now!
The MINCE Brand –
ready in just 5 minutes!
Alas there are no neeps, no tatties.
Just MINCE, MINCE, MINCE!
This is the MINCE Brand –
ready in just 5 minutes!
ENTERPRISE MINCING MACHINES
‘ENTERPRISE MINCING MACHINES’
Are the BEST in the World!
‘ENTERPRISE MINCING MACHINES’
Are endorsed by the Royal College of Mincers.
‘ENTERPRISE MINCING MACHINES’
Are the reality not the perception!
‘ENTERPRISE MINCING MACHINES’
Reduce you to MEAT in 15 minutes!
A ‘Poster Boy for Psychiatry’
Provides an ‘empirical’ noticeboard for evidence-base:
displayed in NEON yellow [because natural light is not sufficient]
Provides an ‘empirical’ noticeboard for evidence-base:
because numbers matter more than experience
Provides an ‘empirical’ noticeboard for evidence-base:
the ‘Chemical imbalance theory’ was always a ‘trope’
Provides an ‘empirical’ noticeboard for evidence-base:
where followers of Hippocrates may not always be welcome
A ‘Poster Boy for Psychiatry’ provides an ‘empirical’ noticeboard:
but fails to say that your experience might be considered ‘BASELESS’.
Up the ANTI-
Up the ante!
Anti-this, Anti-that!
A binary absurdity dividing reality:
Making opposites of us all.
Up the ANTI-
Up the ante!
Standing outside the circle of listeners,
a Venn diagram without overlap
and we are cruel to one another.
Up the ANTI-
Up the ante!
A monstrously unreal Hydra,
where heads are chopped off
blood spills and stains.
Note: I was an NHS Psychiatrist for 25 years. This poem is a response to the rise of the term “The New Anti-Psychiatry”. This term has become widely used by a number of psychiatrists, often referring to anyone who has questioned the prevailing psychiatric narrative in any way. Unfortunately this divisive use of language has dismissed the opportunity to learn from real world experience of psychiatric interventions, and as such is “anti-science” in itself.
GODDAMIT!
The EXPERT said:
‘I am an EXPERT in what is right and wrong.
I am an EXPERT, literally, GODDAMIT!’
The EXPERT said:
‘Hippocrates and all his followers were wrong.’
That’s what the EXPERT said, GODDAMIT!
Alas, there was no evidence-base to support the EXPERT’S ‘Literal EXPERTNESS’.
However the EXPERT said he was right, GODDAMIT!
Real world context: Tyler Black, MD, 12 October 2021 [retweeted by Prof Rob Howard]: “If someone cites ‘first do no harm to me as an argument, I immediately know they have thought very little about medical philosophy or ethics at all”
ALLIANCE
This is a poem written by myself as a ‘human of Scotland’. I am also a retired NHS doctor who worked for over 25 years in Scottish hospitals. As a doctor and as a citizen of Scotland I was invited to be part of a number of so-called “consultations” by so-called “independent” organisations. Invariably these organisations worked in “partnership” with the Scottish Government.
This poem is not based on any political views; rather it offers thoughts on how organisations use [or misuse] language. The poem also does not shy away of asking, behind all the ‘Spin’, where Power really lies in Scotland?
The ALLIANCE
‘Alliance’ – a word we hear a lot aboot in Scotland.
But whit dis it mean?
In oor auld family dictionary ‘alliance’ is to be found somewhere atween:
‘allure’ and ‘alligator’.
But the dictionary defines it as:
‘a union by treaty or marriage: a partnership’.
Did ye ken that Scotland has it’s vairy own Alliance:
Health and Social Care ALLIANCE Scotland.
This ALLIANCE is in ‘partnership’ with the Scottish Government –
as set oot in a ‘Memorandum of Understanding’.
The ALLIANCE speaks tae us, the “Humans of Scotland”.
Promising that we are “at the Centre” –
and that as “trusted neutrals” the ALLIANCE will
“actively listen” with “intelligent kindness”.
The ALLIANCE-brand champions “courageous leadership” –
leadership that enhances ‘”trust and relationships” with the “humans of Scotland”.
“Have Your Say” the ALLIANCE invites.
Well this poem seeks tae oblige.
Orwell once said of ‘SPIN’, that as a word, it wis used as if it were:
‘no more harmful than a ride on a merry-go-round’.
In Animal Farm Orwell also reminded us that ‘the object of power is power’.
The ALLIANCE keeps reminding us that we are ‘humans of Scotland’.
[Although it has to be said, some humans are mair equal than ithers].
St Andrew’s Hoose in Edinburgh is where oor Government operates.
Wan of Scotland’s finest historians described this building as:
“brooding and authoritarian” just right for “an occupying power”.
Is it here that we find the real partnership atween ‘allure’ and ‘alligator’?
A poem [in its passing]
A logical thinker [few have your ability]
In ‘ABSTRACT’
[we met] [and fell in love]
Logically, we should not have fallen in love!
ABSTRACTION, abstraction.
T O A S T
We were both just 17
on the bus home
to the student halls
I puked on your lap.
the day after
we kissed.
The next five poems were written in the Bridge of Cally Hotel, Tuesday 2nd August 2022. Inspired by the rivers and bridges of Perthshire. An equal source of inspiration was the poetry of Kathleen Jamie in her collection ‘The Bonniest Companie’.
This was not NEWS!
See for miles,
all the way hence
If you can!
Wander for miles,
all the way hence
whenever you can!
After all this activity,
Ruichlachrie
has cleared a way just for you!
So wander, wonder, and be yersel’.
Note: Ruichlachrie is in Glen Bruar. It was once a croft but in recent times was turned into a pile of clearance stones. It was at Ruichlachrie that I had my unexpected seizure on the last day of 2021.
“The Blairgowrie Junior berrypickers weigh-in-lottery”
Back in the land of the Jeely makkers
I feel braw!
Saft-fruit is ripening now
orchard-to-orchard.
A lifetime on from Drumdruills
and I am a hundred-punnets short of
sanity.
But I am happy [SERIES II].
Take me to the river,
mid-thought
mid-dash.
No need to find a crossing
As my love for you needs neither
ford nor bridge.
Take me to the river,
mid-thought
mid-dash.
Come back the earth
[endlessly] I was stravaiging in the wrang gear!
an auld fairmer revealed this to me!
Back came my Grumpa
in his SERIES II!
In my waking dream
Teddy bears rule!
[Series I to infinity –
I am a Scott]
and get it wrong
Number me
[I am numberless]
Label me
[I am labelless]
Judge me
[and get it wrong]
Last Thursday
to Callum
Dear Callum,
It was lovely to spend time with you last Thursday. Thank you for making this possible. My old Land Rover coped well including with the heavy flooding on Friday.
I have written a poem for you. It is called ‘Catterline’
I have attached an edited image of the Kinneff tombstone that caught my eye. I have also found some fascinating connections/coincidence/patterns in relation to Clochnahill [the place inscribed on the family tombstone]. I intend to share these ‘links’ in a blog post along with my poem.
aye Peter
The music of the Abbey
I returned today
to the Abbey,
30 years since
your daughter
married my magical friend.
Much Time has passed
and you are now a
great-grandfather
to a wonderful choir.
I felt the presence of absence
and absence of presence,
as I entered the Abbey once again,
George, neither you nor your choir were there,
but the music of the past,
never silent in my mind
played again,
most beautifully.
Light
nobody has to look for it,
light is friendly
LOST
Glenbardy:
my hairt fair beats for Sian
Carmichael:
where Sandy magically reached out to me
Asloss:
together with Rab, a friend of Liberty
Random street:
where Richard’s stories moved me to tears, wonderfully so
Abbotsford:
hame of a Rebel and part-timer [time passes, listen]
Dust:
the big braw cosmos.
Wunderkammer
Today has been wunderkammer,
a day where one idea inspired another.
I began this poem yesterday.
S P A N D R E L
architecturally DEFINED,
visually ADORNED,
structurally SOUND,
metaphorically USED.
The corner of all things.
dance to the music
live a poem
dream the feel
sense before you hear
dance to the music.
WATERLOO
‘Today seems not indifferent to yesterday’
so Big Ted said to me
as we set off on another wee adventure
[I think that he was talking about the weather,
but I may have misheard him,
as the Land Rover we travel in is noisy]
[It is also 64 years old and the milometer has clocked again].
Today [not indifferent to yesterday]
we set off for Waterloo.
Yes, WATERLOO!
No, not the battle site,
but a former fairm
remote in the Scottish Heilan’s!
On oor Caledonian adventures,
Big Ted refers to me as Sancho Panza, we are, after all
the kind, as people say
who like to go on adventures.
And the more madcap the better!
It was a fair trek to Waterloo,
but hill aifter hill made
beauty of the distance.
Oor adventure felt like an ‘art’ of farewell.
Finally, we reached Waterloo:
sweaty and puggled,
we found it to be:
the faintest, lightest, nearly not there.
Stanes rickles, jist ankle high, were all that summed up
existence.
CHAMPION TREES
Yesterday, with the quick steps of our next hope we returned to Tillybin,
where the present was vulnerable to the past.
The day before yesterday, we returned to Crathes castle,
where in less than a lifetime
saplings have become ‘CHAMPION TREES’.
We were newly married, when I planted
‘our’ Goodnestone Spanish Chestnut tree.
In unspectated absence
it failed to thrive.
But joy, the Field Maples, that we also planted less than a lifetime ago
are now CHAMPION!
How ‘long ago’ it is, that almost by chance,
this ‘gifted gardener’ fell in love with a byordinar’ lass!
Together, we filled Tillybin with patterns of love.
Patterns, that if you know where to look,
still grow strong in the green of today.
There is so much sky around Tillybin.
We need no reminding of this!
It is in the green.
It is time to go Sian
for us to leave Tillybin.
Champion Trees are growing in our garden.
‘WARLD’s END’
I still miss you.
You lived in a cottage
That you had named:
‘WARLD’s END’.
No label ever fitted you:
a cheat and liar, fuelled by:
alcohol, tobacco and steroids.
I did not approve of your behaviour.
But you were part of my life
and I miss you.
In a summer, that I cannot otherwise recall,
I returned from a holiday to my work as a doctor.
Pointing to the front page of the latest newspaper,
my Senior Registrar asked me:
“Was that your patient Peter?”
[When I was training in psychiatry I was ‘allocated’ a psychotherapy patient. I was this patient’s doctor right up to the time of my patient’s premature death. My patient died accidentally. Drunk, my patient fell asleep in his bed whilst smoking. The oxygen cylinders under the bed [for my patient’s asthma] did the rest. My patient was blown out of the roof of Warld’s End cottage]
Miss Garden heads North
On a quiet Sunday in June, we took the road North.
Led only by curiosity and serendipity,
a happen-chance finding in a faded Green book of history.
Miss Garden, your story is beautiful:
unglimpsed by today,
your memories are nowhere.
Crows now roost in the roofless ruin of your Strichen hame.
The grand Doric-pillared entrance portico
has been replaced by a lean-too, corrugated iron ‘palace’ to shelter the fairmer’s coos.
Miss Garden, you will be glad to hear:
that your ancient Horse Chestnut tree still grows,
but weary with age, it now rests its limbs on the ground.
This tree is a migrant through time.
If only it could tell the beautiful stories of Strichen.
It was a quiet Sunday in June,
we had followed the road North.
That day, we were part of the story.
Thirty years of summer skies
Thirty years of summer skies
Years before our Italian petimus,
In the corridor of Woodend Hospital
You passed me by.
I was more than half-melted already.
Open-hearted and open-handed
you boldly met me halfway,
more than halfway.
Thirty summers have faded,
since those Woodend days in the DOME
[the Department of Medicine for the Elderly].
Still you hold my hand
and take me to Eden.
Yesterday, on a quiet Sunday in June
you took me to another Eden:
to the brig that spans the Deveron, at Alvah.
You guided me there by a forgotten byway,
lined, baith sides, by majestic, ancient and glorious trees.
We stopped, repeatedly, to read almost indecipherable aboroglyphs
carved into the tree trunks by
young lovers of yesteryears.
And then, through light-dappled leaves,
in the freshest of green,
almost transparently so,
the Brig o’ Alvah.
What a wonder.
A wonder in any world!
There together,
standing on the bridge,
with the river flowing below us
here and there sparkling;
in quiet pools, outwith the eddies,
we could see brief reflections of the sky above us.
The immeasurably deep sky.
AGAPANTHUS., n., a genus of plants of the Lily family.
The day I married more than you
you outshone all that Lily beauty.
I knew that day
that I could not be your equal.
Humbled, beautifully so,
encouraged to be free
to be the Peter you love.
Thank you Sian,
for being my advisory thunderbolt.
Together have we realised what the Greeks always knew:
the best form of education is collaborative.
FORNETHY
The woodland is dark.
I won’t go there again.
A lingering scent of childhood despair visibly threatens.
Fornethy.
Darkly secreted in the forest.
A grand house once full of ‘Adam fireplaces’,
bedecked with Miss Coats Fabergé eggs.
On her death, Miss Coats, bequeathed her house to the children of Paisley.
In beautiful patterns of colour, they came to stay at Fornethy,
for a country retreat.
But woodland is dark.
The ‘school’ is now all boarded-up.
Window Tax abuse.
The futures of children.
Fornethy. Now the abode of 24 hour security surveillance.
BEWARE.
K I N G S E A T hospital:
It was the 1994 FIFA World Cup,
141 goals were scored that summer.
I saw nearly all of them on the old wooden television in the doctors’ residence!
The microwave no longer worked, but the kettle did
and I did just fine!
The faded curtains in the doctor’s bedroom
a green and white pattern of ivy,
failed to meet in the middle –
through the gap you could see the stars shine bright.
The reassuring early morning sound of the gardener’s lawn mower:
the bowling green ready to play
Never did I hear the clatter of bowls.
The doctors’ library opened out into the doctors’ residence:
what the whole of this society owes to Aesculapius!
But it was the ill-arranged ephemera of gathered time
that captured me.
Here I grew to appreciate the company of people
who listened to the world.
Kindness of being was there in Clouston ward:
led by a doctor
who without ever really knowing,
made you feel better through just being there.
30 summers have passed since those days,
And today, up and down that dip from Newmachar,
I returned to Kingseat Hospital.
A new housing estate greeted me,
almost a new town,
with no school, no shop,
off-the-peg street names,
off-the-peg houses.
Planners imaginations stifled for profit.
And sitting puzzled amidst this new world,
the roofless hospital ruins.
This is no healing landscape.
Trees planted when the hospital was first built, now mature.
The autumn colours comfortingly vivid
the dappled, darting, reflected light,
impossible to catch.
Doctor, why are you striding about there?
The reality I had known no longer existed
The window attempted a smile
How do you seize the past? Can we ever do so?
The past moves only as a feeling
Memory is inside me
D I S B L A I R
More beautiful than any dolls house
this ancient place,
forever in sympathy with its
setting.
Here, Old Machar became new,
a central feathered granite stairway
welcomes guests
through Abergeldie doorways:
‘we met yesterday said the room’.
Such persistence of old takes stamina:
no bumpy approach track could contest!
Talk about the Art of transition!
Tillybin would understand:
– drums beat
– nights fly
stars gloriously free.
By Peter Scott-Gordon
19 October 2024
GABERSTON BOYS
When we last met
you were young men,
really just boys –
certified or not –
Designated insane.
I was your visiting doctor
In Gaberston house.
Yesterday, I met you again,
you were leaning over the wall of my garden:
we chatted together as auld men
the Passing of time making our conversation
beautiful, real.
Vox humana –
never was there a wall.
AGENDA
[Little Spartan poem in response to reading an article by RCPsych Scotland in the Herald, 19 June 2025]
Your ‘AGENDA’?
to diagnose
and treat more?
Your ‘AGENDA’?
to be institutionally blind
juggernaut determined –
The pathological magnifying glass
of our times?
Your ‘AGENDA’?
to prioritise
the voices of senior psychiatrists,
deaf to vivendo discimus?
INNER COMPASS
You heard me blether oan a YouTube video
an ye got in touch!
Aye, for mony a year I wis
a doctor.
Ye’el need SCOT-STRANSLATE,
Not jist fa me,
bit asae fa Psychiatry!
Psychiatry,
unner the heidy influence of Industry
dumfoonert and noo defensive!
Ye ask for advice, but un-doing hairm
Is onything but easy.
Hoaiver, I can be a Transatlantic ‘digital’ friend,
in this aiver abstract warld.
PERFECT BLUE
Allison dumped me,
my first girlfriend.
I had not long ‘turned’ 18.
I painted ‘PERFECT BLUE’ on my bedroom wall
[a Madonna song that I did not understand]
Four decades passed before
I could sleep again in my Bonaly bedroom,
where I first had wet dreams,
was woken by my loving family on the toilet.
Four decades on
And a ‘ROUGH PROOF’ black and white photograph,
in its original frame, is still on display –
of toddler me with Catriona:
Brother + Sister.
Four decades on
My teenage wall art is gone.
There is no STEELTOWN!
My Bonaly bedroom, now encased by my father’s files –
volume after volume of unsorted grievances
from the Big Beaded Commander, Walter, Scobie and White
to Hotspur Street!
However, amongst the volumes of woe,
Carefully kept by my father
one of my few publications:
HEALTH BULLETIN, July 1997.
LIVING ART
I have no doubt,
I am Living Art.
I have no doubt,
I live for Science.
I will not live beyond this life.
No doubt!
Yet, I’m uncertainties lived –
I aspire to be a generalist.
Living Art is a rare place to be:
it follows no rules
delights in uncertainty
makes Science real.
TONNES
Gardens, seek and follow
the natural rhythms,
Nature the only guide.
I have helped nature make
gardens for Sian.
Tonnes of earth
wheelbarrowed,
for Cimbrone,
together, towards, reaching
agapanthus,
sky.
Tuesday afternoons at Bannockburn.
Those Tuesday afternoons.
friends
to our friendship.
old walled garden Tuesday afternoons.
learning from one another –
our growth is borderless.
HARRIET
Harriet, impossible as it is,
you led me to
Corriemuckloch.
You died so young, so long ago
but your childhood vivacity
hangs on in there
above the Newliston stairway.
Harriet, tonight I am here, in
Corriemuckloch.
It was here that your Aunty Lilias died
on her way to Kenmore.
Today, by the Quaich, I travelled to Kenmore.
Your portrait was in my mind.
Art, beautiful art, lives beyond us.
Duff lives
Big Ted suggested
a visit to Strathbraan.
Big Ted wondered about
longevity.
At the ford over the Braan,
just beyond the gate to Ballinloan,
a kindly farmer greeted us.
We explained our madcap adventure –
to chalk letters of longevity
on the ruins of his farm.
The kindly farmer smiled
and together we crossed the Braan.
Borrowed Words
Without them,
where would we be?
Borrowed words help me
but are not me.
Borrowed words, poetry in concrete –
A creative reality
that belong to me, time and space.
at CORRIEMUCKLOCH
Big Ted said to me –
‘Perhaps we are learning from life in a different way?’
I replied to Big Ted –
‘It is the adventurous who are shy’.
At Corriemuckloch, I fell asleep,
I dreamt of my children, they asked me –
‘Daddy, why do you use those different colours of chalk?’
SAME as they EVER were
radiant,
Same as they ever were!
brilliant,
Same as they ever were!
Inseparable
mum and daughter
The Aitenadoruis series:
Upper Tullochgrue
Haemoglobin red iron-roofs
drew me bodily
to you.
Rothiemurchus, the womb
Lairig Ghru, umbilicus.
Wilderness ‘confinement’.
‘In danger of collapse’
I arrived late:
MANDATE 25/00781 had been ‘implemented’.
I am sorry Cecilia,
I arrived late
John Dudley Sandeman: Lost in the view
For two years they searched.
You were found
on the
watershed:
Bealach an Amais
‘Pass of the Find’.
For two years, the Landscape Held You.
Lost in the view.
In your rucksack,
Volume 19 of
‘The Great Lives of the Voyagers’
That your father had given you as you set out
for the mountains.
John, we went to the same school,
our friendship,
– as with Simon –
almost mythical.
Like Time itself.
Yesterday, Andrew, my son,
Now older than you [and Simon] when you both died,
Waved to me from
Bealach an Amais.
S P E E D Y
My name is SPEEDY.
I am made of Time.
I was the OLYMPIA
of all OPELS!
I passed you by!
A Rebel adventurer
I have stories
Never to be Told!
What I saw:
Real, wondrous.
I passed you by!
GRANVILLE
Yesterday, I chalked your name
In bright colours
On a glacier-strewn boulder in Glenglass.
‘Granville’ yer name is hardly
that o’ Glenglass!
Yer mither, Margaret,
hoosekeeper tae Balnarge
Kenny’s ‘bidey-in’.
Balnarge noo an ankle-high ruin.
Granville, the last Friday of July 1934,
a proud day for you!
Presented the Glenglass school prize
for ‘Bible Knowledge’!
You grew up to be weel kent
Yer name, Granville, awaes in the
Newspaper headlines.
Behavin’ outrageously in Inverness in yer kilt,
day-in-day oot!
Yesterday, I chalked your NAME
In bright colours
on a boulder
In Glenglass.
Fluchlady
Over-the-hills-and-far-awayness
Still roofed, only just
Empty for decades.
No Art is possible
without
a dance with death.
Not Today
But everyday.
Secret Shape of Time
It is early morning
Granny’s kettle whistles
She winds the grandfather clock.
It is lunchtime
Bonaly Primary School
I am ‘backward’, so I am told.
It is summertime, the school playpark
Tarmac is melting.
“What is the TIME Mr Wolf?”
It is holiday time
Tower of Glenstrae, Argyll.
I am with my Granny [I am her little helper].
Neon orange life-vests [with whistles]
Stored in the ‘Arts and Crafts’ Hallway cupboard.
The last year of school , Firrhill High.
For English, I studied the poem ‘Rainbow’
Higher A, for that
And in all my exams!
On the top deck of the maroon-coloured Number 10 bus
To Princes Street
To buy with my paper-round money
From John Menzies record department:
“Difficult to Cure”.
It was strange being dead.
I have already died
Three times
[perhaps more]
BEN CRUACAN
[I was not ‘Rough Proof’]
ALDBAR GLEN
[Tainted Love]
RUICHLACHRIE
[‘a little bit of activity’]
As a living artist
It was strange being dead.
FAR AWAY
All this happened
more or less.
Mr Benn offered me
His red coat of armour
[I had to borrow it again and again]
I turned into David Byrne
[if only]
It was revealed that
Hamish Hawk
Was the son of
David Bowie.
We danced to our death
NITTY GRITTY!
An Evening Class in Myth and Reality
Just whose
Subjectivity
is being studied?
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 being
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”
AITEANDORUIS
On a bend
of the river Oykel, with
the best view
of the Kyle of Sutherland!
You stood
on the high watermark
of ‘ordinary’
Spring tides.
Aiteandoruis –
‘the place of the door’
from the moment
I heard of you
I had to visit.
Aiteandoruis –
It did not matter to me
that nothing survives of you,
‘ankle-high’, or
otherwise!
BAUDOLINO said:
‘a door is not a door if it does not have
a building around it’.
Sometimes, I disagree with
metaphors!
Aiteandoruis –
Door to door,
I visit ruins
seeking the notion
of ‘through’.
In the Kyle of Sutherland
on a bend
in a river
there was a house
with a door.
The Dirlot Angel
I travelled
far North
to finally meet
you.
Quietly to share
my beautiful
misunderstood sister.
She once dazzled
as you did.
Today, lichen
of Caithness,
light-radiant lichen,
gathers on you like Time,
adding to your beauty.
There is something more,
to being an
Angel.
Slaggan Bay
Big Ted was fed up
with all the maps and notes
– that I keep gathering.
So, I promised him
Slaggan Bay
where, wave after wave
would find ‘reality’
and time, illimitable
as the horizon.
Together,
we reached Slaggan Bay,
our wonderful experience
now lost
inside
this poem.
Dundonnell
You died aged sixteen:
a ‘spasm’ of the heart.
Your bones
in a circular place
inside an ancient beech plantation.
Here, adding to the melody of bird song,
I heard your heart beat –
whilst mine faltered.
You died aged sixteen.
Destitution Road
Heading North
– there is always
a further North.
Wandering, further
and further from home,
in nameless, numberless time.
Destitution Road.
COLOURED CHALKS
poems are
coloured chalks.
bright,
vivid colours
that no time
can weather.
Friendship is time itself.
We met
through
your brother.
I never met
your brother
so this must
be impossible.
Friendship,
is time itself.