Harry McGrath
A tale from the campus
Also:
The Midgie
Election of the year
Bob Smith
The good, the bad and the ugly
Also:
Islay McLeod
Dog of the year
‘I would not consider someone who has spoken down the radio over a bunch of lads shoving and punching each other. I do not do sportsmen and I certainly do not do sports commentators.’ Sculptor Sandy Stoddart explaining why he had rejected a request for a statue of the late Bill McLaren. Mr Stoddart was widely vilified for the apparent insensitivity of his off-the-cuff remark, but the Midgie was of the view that he should be cloned in the national interest. At the time of going to press he was still a one-off.
‘All these Eastern Europeans that are coming in – where are they flocking from?’
Mrs Duffy, bete noire of the then prime minister. Mrs Duffy became something of a national heroine for 48 hours. Or slightly less, given the restless demands of the media for fresh sensation.
‘The subject has not been one on which concern has been expressed until now.’
Stewart Stevenson, Scottish transport minister (as he then was), responding in the Scottish parliament to SR’s revelation that Cal Mac, the ferry operator, was avoiding its employer’s NIC obligations by the expedient of employing its 650 crew in an offshore tax haven. The Midgie hails this as a genuinely reforming statement, redefining politics as an activity only necessary when a precedent for concern can be demonstrated.
‘No one can condone the drug-taking but his spiral into depression evokes huge sympathy’
The Scottish Sun defending Councillor Steven Purcell, former leader of Glasgow City Council. The paper failed to identity who was hugely sympathetic – apart from the Scottish Sun of course. The Midgie remained unmoved.
‘This is silly. You won’t give me an email address for the newsdesk at BBC Scotland.’
But it was true. The planning editor at BBC Scotland wouldn’t give SR an email address so that we could send them information of public interest. The planning editor claimed there was no email address. The Midgie’s response was to scoff, as only the Midgie can.
A true ghost story
Lorn Macintyre
Angus Dunstaffnage with three Macintyre brothers (Lorn in centre)
In the middle of January we were wakened in the night by the sound of footsteps on our stairs. We could see the boards moving, though there was nobody ascending.
It was a childhood out of Chekhov. Angus Dunstaffnage painted our Easter eggs and hid them under the rhododendrons. By the stove in the modest wooden bungalow he had had erected from two workmen’s huts in the shortages of wartime after his mansion was destroyed, there was a long gun which he allowed us to handle, revealing that it might have been the one used in the Appin murder. He knew who shot the ‘Red Fox’ on the braes at Ballachulish, but it was a secret handed down in his family.
We sat on the sofa in his sitting-room, enthralled by his ghost stories. After his mother sold Inverawe House at Taynuilt, Dunstaffnage was assembling a fishing rod in its hall for a last cast on the River Awe when he heard a woman screaming, and assumed it was the spectre in the green gown he had been seeing without fear since boyhood, and who no longer recognised her surroundings, with the furniture and paintings removed.
Our grand-uncle Eric had a ghost story concerning Angus Dunstaffnage. Eric had gone with him to Inveraray Castle in 1949, because, as was the custom, Dunstaffnage wanted to sit with his sick kinsman Niall Diarmid, the 10th Duke of Argyll. Eric kept a light on in the eerie room he was occupying in the castle, and during the night he claimed that a small man in a grey plaid came through the wall and laid a chillingly cold hand on his forehead. The following morning, when he vowed to Dunstaffnage that he would never set foot in Inveraray Castle again because of the terrifying nocturnal visitation, he was told: ‘You’re a very privileged person, Eric. You saw the ghost of the bodach glas, a long-dead harper wrapped in hodden grey who appears when the Campbell chief is dying’.
My grandmother sat some evenings with Angus Dunstaffnage that winter of 1958, reminiscing about times past, unforgettable visits from Compton Mackenzie in the mansion in the carefree 1920s, the tragedy of Dunstaffnage’s heir the charismatic Major Alexander Bardwell, adored friend of my mother’s idyllic childhood. Alexander and his new bride Jean were on the aircraft the Star Tiger which disappeared without trace in the ‘Bermuda Triangle’ in January 1948, one of aviation’s great unsolved mysteries.
Angus Dunstaffnage survived Christmas and the New Year. In the middle of January we were wakened in the night by the sound of footsteps on our stairs. We could see the boards moving, though there was nobody ascending. Our dear friend had come to say goodbye, and passed away, peacefully, the following day.
Lorn Macintyre is a writer and poet
