SI Column September
Christine has left the Platform
The day had started badly. I had slept in to be woken up by the mobile. “Where are you?” were the first words on that Tuesday morning. It turned out I was giving a speech to a conference and was due on the platform in 30 minutes. Well give the girl a bouquet; I made it on time but sans speech. Still, while the first speakers, three young men and then the Children’s Commissioner did their bit I did some back of a conference envelope stuff because I had to speak about the Health & Sport committee report into mental well being of our young people. Of course I had no report with me let alone paper. Still I suppose after 10 years as a politician if you can’t speak off the cuff and within ignorance then you’re no politician. I took my cue from the Children’s Commissioner who of course had a beautifully crafted speech as did the COSLA rep who followed-both with beginnings, middles and ends. He kept referring to “managed exposure to risks” and the need for “resilience”. Great I thought I’ll pick up from there as I explained my predicament and held up the scribbled notes as demonstrating the former, suggesting at the end I was marked out of ten for “resilience” Pretty smart stuff I thought and the speech went OK. Glad that it was over I set off back across the podium, forgot that it was a narrow gantry and promptly disappeared from sight. Flat on my back on the floor, fellow speakers then too disappeared from sight as they heaved me back onto the raised platform. Yes I’ll do anything to be noticed!
Millstone birthdays
As you get older, these so-called milestones do appear to accelerate and so it came to pass that the morning after the above “platform event” I woke up to the fact that unavoidably, I was getting older. You know, older in a way that you are glad you can walk and not be out of puff. Then fate delivered a kindly blow in the form of a terrified sparrow. As I blinked my path through the dim of the lounge I noted that Bossie (one half of Newt and Bossie, my rescue cats from Newtown St Boswells ) was poised on the edge of the sofa fixated on the closed curtains. Of course a soon as I opened them all was explained as a panic stricken sparrow flew down onto the ledge. Two cats, with nuclear intent transformed from stillness to deadly flight in an instant. However, and small achievements count as the years pass, I beat them to the kill and sparrow lives to fly another day.
Lucy only has her molars
Schools frequently pitch up at the Parliament’s Education Centre and if you are around you do a stint in front of them, taking questions and so on. I happened to be around when P5 (aged 8) or so, of Broughton Primary turned up. Now I should have known better than deviate from the usual stuff about Parly but it is so boring that somehow I got onto the topic of my bill about controlling dogs-and we were off with tales from all about doggy problems. At some point I made reference to dog size not always being the issue and took as an example the Jack Russell as feisty and quite capable if untrained etc of doing really damage. Up pipes Molly indignantly that “Lucy only has her molars”. I had to make the quick connection, almost as fast as the reaction to that hapless sparrow, that we were not talking about her granny but about her very own Jack Russell which cannot even inflict damage these days on a bowl of Winalot let alone passing stranger. Well at least I have more than my molars.
And finally
I pitched up at TESCO last Saturday in Gala to do my regular supermarket surgery and did the usual reccy to see if Jeremy Purvis (Lib/Dem) still had his ad sign up –big thing almost life size with a picky of him-parked beside the shopping trollies and yes there it was. Undaunted-I am the real McCoy- I did my two hour surgery up at the top of the travellator, latterly to the pleasing sounds of fiddle music. Surgery over, complete with trolly and purchases, I made my way down said travellator to find that the Selkirk fiddlers had been the delightful source of the entertainment. I introduced myself having thrown a couple of quid in their “collection” fiddle case to be told they knew who I was-always a pleasing start. They then indicated they had turned the Jeremy Purvis ad to face the wall to avoid being accused of political bias. I love them! And of course I threw an additional note their way. Made my day.
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