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North-west of Skye
by Islay McLeod
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A L Kennedy
There must be a time in a man’s life when he thinks ‘I’d look good in a salmon coloured jacket’. Sundry fishy males drift in and out of marquees at the Book Festival; man-bags loaded with novels written by insightful women. Some inch along with partners resplendent in boulder-sized necklaces and ethnic bangles towards a tray of fair trade muffins.
The last time I attended an A L Kennedy thing a couple of Swedish swingers tried to pick me up at last orders in the Cafe Royal. At 11am it’s pointless hanging around for 12 hours on the off chance. Muffins for one then.
A L Kennedy arrives looking bone thin. The last time I saw her in a tent she was giving it large in a bravura performance just prior to her move into stand-up comedy. Today she seemed to lean more on the lectern. She talked openly of a recent illness and how she’d been ‘happily munching medication for months’ that should only have been for a week or so. ‘When it comes to drugs Alison’, said Sue MacGregor, ‘the best policy is to rattle them straight away – then kick-back to sing something simple’. I’m paraphrasing a touch because of sound problems from a jangly, map-folding culture vulture behind me. However, if you close your eyes, as Sue gently probes, Radio 4 is but a breath away. ‘How good is that?’ as Alison observed from the lectern.
ALK warned years ago ‘not to turn into a performing bear’. Advice I note when tuned into the ‘Late Review’. She facilitated a creative writing group in Dungarvel Prison 20 years past and found herself faced by three staring lifers with blood dripping from their manuscripts, and me. We shared a sense of the ridiculous and from a few hourly sessions a devotee was made.
Juxtaposing the words ‘Night Geometry’ forever conjures a walk across rainy Glasgow rooftops. That’s only half the title of her first collection of short stories; ‘& the Garscadden Trains’ comes trundling after ‘making misery tedious’ as the Herald had it back then. Let’s hear it for tedious misery well expressed. Better than flaccid porn any day.
George Chalmers is a writer and community worker
