Methinks oor precious wee yins are among those who’ve suffered most in the lockdowns.
While adults harrumph about being stir-crazy, the bairns have been separated from their besties, missed out on months of crucial school work and cut off from favourite activities; sports like football, tennis, karate, skating. Singing and dancing classes. Rainbows, Brownies, Guides, Beavers, Cubs, the BBs. Most of them cancelled for nearly a year.
A huge raft of enjoyment and learning of which our younger generation has been deprived. Here’s hoping the beginning of the schools going back on Monday will bring those activities one step nearer.
Not that I was a great after-schooler. Frankly, couldna be fashed. I quite enjoyed Brownies at Carden Church because it was basically just games. However, come graduation to Guides, I went right aff the hale performance. Too much like hard work earnin’ various badges.
My pals had armfu’s o’ them; I just kept failing. Child-care – forgot to take the kiddo to the lavvie (for five hours). Light-a-fire-and-cook-sausages – utter torment during a frozzling week at the Guide hut in Braemar, when I was wracked wi’ home-sickness and I couldna get a blaze, so couldna cook ma sausages, and it was Baltic in my hame-made, paper-thin sleeping bag.
Worst of all, come the halfway Wednesday and parents arrived on a bus for a visit, my mum wisnae there as she couldna get aff work. If there’d been a badge for greetin’…
But earlier in my wee life, in the 50s, I fell for the famous smell o’ the greasepaint… and Losh, could you inhale it when yer mums were clartin’ it on yer excited wee cheeks ahead o’ each Babs Wilson show. Started at the titchier Tivoli and worked up to the wondrous revolving stage at His Majesty’s.
Even after the thrill of the evening, how me and Sheila –my first bestie – nearly tiddled oorselies wi’ excitement gan hame on the top floor of the Culter bus, still done up in lipstick and eyeliner, like Hollywood stars. Imagine, we did that marathon Culter/Aberdeen round trip several times a week after school and weekends for tap, ballet, stage-class, Highland and acrobatics lessons.
The latter ended prematurely for me when it became clear I couldna execute a Tumble The Cat, as mum cried it, without divesting the top o’ my spine of most of its skin.
Babs was Fabs! Introducing us to all the best musicals of the 40s and 50s. Then came the problemmo when Sheila – two years older than me – went into block-toes at ballet. Mo was jealously devastated. Babs (rightly) insisted I was too young for them.
My super daughter-defending (ballet-ignorant) mum differed. So I went on to blocks at the tender-toed age of eight (!) for our Puppet Show routine. Still remember the ribbons on our wrists, multi-coloured tutus, the many up-and-doons on oor blocks. The ecstasy; cheers from the crowd – dad in the front row every night. But oh, the agony; peelin’ oot bleed-soaked cotton wool from my peer, flesh-ribboned little taes.
A fish supper will ease birthday blues
My birthday next week and usually it’s celebrated by loadsa delish lunches and suppers with friends and family – and me having the first choice of venue.
I’d been planning maybe Thai, Indian, French and, of course, a chipper. But thanks to Covid, my disappointed mooth will be waterin’. And I’m really nae that cocksure I’ll order a Thai or Indian feast just for masellie.
But I might just send oot for a jumbo haddock supper, served wi’ my ain bread, butter and tea. In front of the telly.
Fit a fine lockdown birthday banquet.
Sussexes only want privacy on their terms
Another “canna wait”, hud yer watter moment for me. News that the Sussexes are doing a 90-minute, “tell-all” with the queen of tell-alls, Oprah Winfrey.
Due for broadcast by CBS on March 7, then distributed globally, but no other details yet. Fit an excitement.
It’s been quite a week for the exiled royal couple, what with Meghan winning her privacy legal case and news of their second pregnancy, released along with that cheesy black-and-white pic – straight out of the last scene of Notting Hill with Hugh Grant admiring Julia Roberts’s bump. They should have accompanied their press release with Charles Aznavour crooning She.
I can take or leave them but it does irritate when they bang on about wanting privacy to bring up their children, then go on global primetime TV to talk about theirsellies. And I canna stand their continual preaching about the climate (excluding private flights) diversity, anti-racism, equality, universal poverty, you name it, as if they were the saints and everyone else the sinners.
My heart goes out to the Queen and what she might be feeling. Surely she’s been on the blower to Harry instructing him to keep off topics such as the rift with his brother and losing some of his military patronages. Just as if Her Maj needs Oprah’s scoop only a pucklie weeks before her 95th birthday, and Phil’s century. Ma’am, you have my deepest sympathy.
This article originally appeared on the Evening Express website. For more information, read about our new combined website.