The source o the Belstane Burn

Auld Mrs Glenmoor wis bein crabbit again
"I'll bet none of you know the source of the Belstane Burn!"
She thocht weans jist sat aboot daein nothin 
But that wisnae fair
Me and Dougie Gray were aye explorin 
Like the time we fund a hole wi two auld motors in it
And a sheep's heid skeleton 
Wee Bobby Graham wis wi us

And he cried it a "goat's underwear"
And Dougie and me couldnae stap laughin

But ye're pittin me aff

Ah wis telling ye aboot the Belstane Burn
We stertit at the wee bridge on the road
And follaed it through this field
It was a braw day, aw shimmery
Wi peewits- ye could hear but no see them
Ah had ma cub jumper roon ma waist
Wi aw the badges aff fur Ah wis in the Scouts noo
And we were wearin oor sandals
Ken the anes wi soles like rubber broon sugar?
There was this wee bing
And when we got roon it
Ye wouldnae believe it!
There wis a hill, but no a real hill
If ye get whit a mean
A hill like someane hud made it
And the burn disappeart!
Me and Dougie ran up
We couldnae wait tae see whit wis at the tap
And we got
Tae the tap
And looked
Ower
And
The
Source 
O
The 
Belstane
Burn
Wis
A dried up reservoir!

He says he saw it first but it was me
Or mibbe baith thegither
There wis a wee bit watter comin in
And the Belstane Burn comin oot
And ye could gang in and play
But best of aw
There wis this auld tower
Goin doon, no up
And it wis aw rustit stupit 
But if ye were carefu,
Ye could walk alang a kinda bridge tae it.

Weel, hud there no been a bank robbery in the toun?
And me and Dougie thocht this wid be a great place
Tae hide the money. 
And ye could look doon the tower
But aw we saw wis an auld ladder
Fawin apairt, 
Ye wid need tae hae been aff yir heed
Tae gang doon it
So we didnae.

And when we got hame
Ah'd lost ma cub jumper
And ma faither gied me a row 
But no a real row 
Fur goin intae the moors
Withoot sayin whaur we wir heidit 
But ye kent from the wey he said it 
It was jist whit he'd hae done
When he wis a wean.

And when we tellt Auld Glenmoor
She jist said, "Oh aye."
Weel a bet masel a million pounds
She hudnae been there fur yonks
And didnae ken 
It wis aw dried up.
 

Matchbox Milk Float

It was in a dream I had, a toy
Pale green with a white abstraction of milk crates
Up back. I think I had one like it
When a child, maybe a present, or perhaps
An impulsive purchase now remembered
Unbidden, to fit at night amongst my thoughts
Too crowded when awake, with fears
For a mother, so cast adrift, diminished by disease
That she would put a coat on over nightclothes
And head off to the shops, or try to open
Her back door with a fruit knife or a coin
Until I had no choice. The deception
Was the greatest of my life.
"This is like your lunch club,
"But they'll let you stay
"A little longer 'til we sort your doors."
I left her at the care home, lost but safe.
One week later there it was,
Play-chipped amongst some jumble on a stall
Its simple form as pleasing as before
The milk float from my baffling dream
I bought it, put it in a bag
In my fleece pocket where it still remains.
I take it out, I turn it in my hand
Or, when alone sit it on the dashboard of my car
Where it skites from side to side
As if driving free while all the time
Controlled by things it cannot change
Hearing this, you may call me childish or,
In kindness, childlike. I disagree, but
I often wish that it was true.

The colours o numbers

Numbers. Ah could coont afore Ah went tae schuil. Yin nicht Ah wis in ma bed and Ah decidit tae coont tae a hunner. Whit a feelin! Ah got tae eighty odds and felt Ah wis awa up high and if Ah didnae keep coontin, Ah'd faw doon an end up in a heap wi yin and twa and three and aw the wee numbers. Mind you, they wee numbers were like freens.

Yin. A black number. Does its ain thing, like yon cat that walked by himsel wi his tail stuck up. It wis in a book.

Twa. A blue number. Ye can rely on twa. It thinks things oot, has a wee blether wi itsel.

Three. A rid number. A bit o a superhero number, but like Robin, no Batman.

Fower. Yellae. Sensible number, twa by twa.

Five. Blue, but lightern twa. Hauf o ten. Like ten wis when it wis a young laddie, oot havin fun.

Six. Awfie pale yellae. Ye can make a triangle oot o six dots but it's no the maist exciting number. Kindae fills a space atween five and seeven.

Seeven. Green. Clever, magic number.

Eight. Purple. Ower fond o its foods. Freenly number, like yir uncle. Ma uncle had this yooni maths books wi deid eights in it. ∞∞∞∞ They're no deid eights by the way, they're cried infinites.

Nine. Aye changin colour, dependin on the way ye look lat it. An amazin number, ye can make it intae a square wi three rows o three dots. Nine is like Batman. Ye wid want nine on yir side in a fecht. Nine kens aw aboot mechanics, like yir dad, and space.

Ten. Ten thinks it's great, sittin there like God in a chair, waitin for everythin tae come up tae it. But ten wid be nothin withoot the cat that walked by itsel, and wid only be the cat withoot zero, the hero, the golden ring. Zero is amazin. If it wisnae for zero, which was inventit by an Indian but no yin wi a horse, we wid aw hae stupit numbers like on the clock in ma class. VII, XI, whit's that aw aboot?

Numbers were like a gang but a good gang like Oor Wullie's except there is ten o them, no countin ten. Mibbe mair like the Broons, a faimly, no a gang. Except there are no lassie numbers. Mibbe six, Ah cannae tell. Ah asked Elsie Campbell if she thocht ony numbers were lassies, because she is yin, but she looked at me the wey she did when Ah asked her whit colour wis Wednesday in her heid.

Mrs White

Mrs White 

"Thank you for inspiring my son"

Ma maw wrote tae Mrs White

But ma maw didnae ken

There were twa Mrs Whites

Guid Mrs White

Read braw stories on Friday

And did aw the voices

And kent bits o science

Jist flooer science, mind ye

No space or rockets

But it wis mairn maist teachers

Except the heidmaister

The ither Mrs White

Gied ye big stupit rows

If ye watched ITV

But no Ivanhoe.

You don't watch Ivanhoe?

Find Sir Walter Scott a bit beneath you?

Well, Mr White doesn't.

She wis like Jerry the moose

Wha ance drank this ginger

And turnt intae a monster

That Tom Cat wis feart o

And she'd turn back

And be awfy nice

And dae some flooer science

Then go aff her heid

Not one of you children

Has written in their diaries

That the coltsfoot is now in bloom!

Ah made a wee licht

Wi wire and a battery

And shawed Mrs White

Because it wis science

And she said Ah wis clever

And Mr White wis a teacher

Ah could gang tae her hoose

And he'd shaw me mair lichts.

Ah wisnae that keen

Tae gang tae her hoose

So Ah tellt Mrs White

"Oh I might have a book"

Moose

Ginger

Monster

Ew Eh meght hev eh book!

Eh'm tew hegh end meghty

Tew talk tew a person, Eh've got a book!

She went on and on

But it didnae stap there

Efter weeks and weeks

Anither teacher cam in

Here's a boy, Mrs Glenmoor, 

Who when you offer him the chance

To meet a teacher from the big school

Says, "Ew, Eh meght hev a book!"

What sort of person

Would rather look at a book

Than talk to a person?

And Ah wished it was Star Trek

And Scotty wid beam me

Or Ah wis the Blue Peter tortoise

And could hide in ma jumper

Ah couldnae be like whit

Mrs White must hae been

When she was a lassie

Wi jist Ivanhoe

And fillin her diary

Wi the coltsfoot in bloom

And no feart tae gang

Tae her auld teacher's hoose

Oh mother, Ivanhoe is finished

And it's just that awful Thunderbirds

So I'm off to my teacher's house

To learn about lights

From her husband from the big school

And I'll make sure I look

To see if the coltsfoot is now in bloom.

And nane o her stories

Were as excitin as Batman

And nane o her flooer science

Wis as guid as ma book

But efter aw that

-Ye micht no believe me-

Ma maist favourite teacher

Wis guid Mrs White.

A real poem, in colour

I used to go to a Writers' Group. After a few months, I felt secure enough to recite a "real" poem there. I had road-tested some of my manky, mingin Itchy-Coo rhymes on them. I had made them laugh by reading accounts of my early days of teaching. They had heard my attempts at children's stories and not been impolite when subjected to a most ill-advised attempt to translate one into Scots.
I thus felt confident enough finally to run a serious poem past the group. If they responded well, I intended to send the piece for consideration by Biggar's Brownsbank Committee in the hope that they would display it in the town's poetry garden.
"Volts are green," I read, trying to avoid a cliched poetry voice. "Green as the sea-snakes tracing across my oscilloscope screen . . ."
When I got to the end, there was silence. I decided to break it myself. "I got the idea for that one day when I was summarising the quantities used in electricity. I was writing each one in a different colour on the board and I realised I wasn't choosing the colours at random.
"Voltage is green to me. Power is yellow."
Nothing.
"It's like the way we give different colour to the days of the week. Monday is red for me, but Saturday is sky blue."
"Errr . . . do you do that? That's really weird . . . that's really interesting."

I never tried a "real" poem again. But here is that one in full.

The colours of physics

Volts are green
Green as the sea snakes
Tracing across my oscilloscope screen
Current is blue
Outlined in silver
Like the sparks that spit
From the pitted dome
Of the Van de Graaff machine
Leaping charges
Charge is white
White as the polythene rods we rub
With dusters as yellow as power.

(I'll get my coat)

I might be turning Green

I have a friend who lives far away. He's fond of putting political things on Facebook and, perhaps as a happy echo of arguments in student flats, I always try to pick holes in these posts. Recently, he claimed that if he still lived in the UK, he would "definitely vote Green". "Aye, right," I thought, "the Greens are..."

Tumbleweeds. I am struggling to argue.

Fast-rewind to the eighties. A TV sketch that shows some hippy-dippy environmental activists climbing into a clapped out bus that belches smoke as it pulls away fits my world view perfectly. Whatever messages on equality and local control that the Greens have are swamped to this immature physics student by an anti nuclear power stance he perceives as ill-informed. Actually, it probably was ill-informed. Whatever I think of their stance on nuclear energy now, I don't think it will be ill-informed and I'll come to that later. The thing is, you're never going to agree with everything a political party stands for and the nuclear issue isn't the big one for me anymore, nor should it ever have been.

The Greens seem to be the only genuine alternative out there. I don't think I'll be better off under them and nor should I be. The big smokescreen about "We're all in this together" is not that the 1% are the only people untouched by austerity but that people like me are too, in that we can still afford food, fuel, housing and plenty of treats, so we may be tempted to keep things going as they are. (That's me as an individual - go to my wider family where some are on zero hours contracts and it's a different story).

Many people, and I am probably one of them, need to pay more tax. I don't avoid it, I'm just not asked for enough for some things.

I like the internationalism of the Greens. They were pro independence but have been the most positive of the pro independence groups when it comes to working with what we've got. I suspect they were only in favour of independence because it was the best way to get social justice. That's a lot better than being in favour of social justice because it's the best way to get independence (and that is most definitely not a dig at our new FM).

In my current job, I sometimes get to hear politicians speak. Most are competent but unchallenging. Two have impressed. One was Gordon Brown, no longer PM and talking, with passion and sincerity, about international education rather than UK politics. The other was Patrick Harvie, co-convenor of the Scottish Greens. I was probably rather rude to him because I bounded towards him when the talk was over to shake his hand despite the fact that he was speaking to someone else at the time. He came across as compassionate and scientifically literate, hence the remark about the Greens not being ill-informed.

So, I'm not definitely Green, but I might become so. I didn't know where to go after the referendum, being hugely reluctant to call myself a 45. Feel free to argue. It does me good.

Little quanta of delight

I heard a comedian tell a joke that went along the lines of, "What I want to know is, with all these wind farms around, what's to prevent the whole country just taking off?" Now, I know why this supposed to be funny, but the physicist part of my brain gets in the way of me finding it so. You just couldn't make a wind-driven propeller that generated lift... I know that this is the sort of thinking that leads to people commenting that physical scientists are "on the spectrum" but that phrase, like the term OCD, is one that shouldn't really be splashed about.

I had a problem, initially, with Andy Scott's sculpture Arria, which stands at the side of the M80 motorway near Cumbernauld. I thought that Arria was beautiful in parts, but something about her disturbed me. After a time, I realised it was her four arms. Not only did Arria apparently have four arms, they were arranged in such a way that it would be biologically impossible for them to move independently. (It's OK to be thinking "FFS get a grip, Gregor!" at this point.) Physics came to the rescue. Arria doesn't have four arms. She has two. We see her at two instants in time, one when her arms are behind her, the other when she has swept them towards us. This gesture is, in itself, quite lovely.

Roadside art gives me a little quantum of delight every time I pass it. Since most of it is beside busy roads, hopefully lots of people get a little ping of pleasure out of it every day. Just as a single photon can't do much illuminating but a laserload can be pretty intense, all the pings surely add up, giving the country more of a lift than a fast-birling wind turbine ever could.

Photo - from Wikipedia, taken by "Bikeparks", Creative Commons License.