Department of Shirk and Truncheons

Scene: Secretary of State’s office - Department for the Elimination of Idle Deadweight’s (D.E.I.D.)

Sir Michael Underpants Fucking-Bastard described his clientele as ‘unworthy of oxygen’ and ‘pig-like’. When asked if he was referring to genuinely disabled people who couldn’t work he proclaimed ‘there are farmers in need of scare-crows, rugger teams in need of tackle practice’

Sir Michael had been appointed due to his utter incompetence to a department where utter incompetence was a winning virtue. The more he messed things up the better for everyone except those which it was meant to serve. Failed computer systems, unfair sanctions, ‘fit for work’ quota’s, forty-five expensive minutes to get through on the phone – it was all grist to the mill of a government utterly Malthusian in its intent.

An heir to the giant Barclay’s fortune (and married to a Rothschild) he had as much clue as to the plight of those on whose behalf he was meant to serve as he did about performing intricate eye surgery. A life of luxury and privilege had been his to enjoy from birth and, certainly in the UK, and within his own constituency of Henley-On-The-Wealth, had never visited even the proximity where lived anyone remotely likely to claim a benefit or a state allowance (although he’d heard tell of a distant cousin who’d had to sell the family Bentley during the crash of ’92. This, he’d thought at the time, must be what they mean by ‘poverty’).

Sir Michael had no love of humanity certainly outside of his own social circle and class and, even then, did not mind one bit hearing of the troubles of a friend or family member, though would never dream of admitting as much. Mendacious, sneaky and manipulative were the three adjectives that best described the character of Sir Michael with perhaps ‘extreme sexual deviancy’ thrown in for the fuller picture. 

Anyone stupid enough not to be rich and pampered was ill-deserving of his attention and certainly, his respect. He imagined such people in Dickensian terms as dressed in rags and living in voluntary squalor somewhere to the east of the City of London or, more generally, in the northern outlands or ‘Scotland’ as he imagined it generically named (even to this day. he referred to the film Brigadoon as ‘an excellent documentary’).

The idea that such people should be ‘given money’ was to his mind utterly appalling and so he viewed his new post in terms of preventing this abomination and putting the money firmly back in the taxpayer’s pocket. These thoughts, if only he’d been wise enough to understand, were the perfect distillation of his party’s manifesto.

Always elegant in expensive dark-blue suit, Sir Michael cut a dashing figure. Sleek dark hair, corn-fed cheeks and a trim body hardened by a decade of kick-boxing, he looked every inch the businessman-politician. He had a signed photo of Margaret Thatcher on his new desk, a memento procured by his father, Sir Hector Albatross Plum-Duff Fucking- Bastard, who had served as Minister for Torture in the Iron Lady’s last administration. 

Sir Hector, now retired, spent his time on his massive Argyllshire estate murdering servants and mounting their severed heads in the baronial hall. Only last year, he’d stabbed his wife by mistake as she’d been picking strawberries in the vast garden. He said to his son later over dinner at The Savoy that, from behind, she’d looked like that ‘ghastly Clare Short’ and he’d run her through with a hunting knife. Her torso now took pride of place on the wall above the fire-place.

I’m Mandy, Believe Me

Internet Munchausen* wasn’t something I’d even heard of until after I’d become a ‘victim’ of it. I’d been introduced online to ‘Mandy’ by a long-time friend who was very careful that I be patient as she did not immediately trust* new internet friends and would need to be coaxed gently into acceptance. I must have played by these rules acceptably as eventually I became one of a small coterie of Mandy’s online friends.

What followed was two years of more and more bizarre lies and deceptions that none of us involved questioned hardly at all. Looking back, I marvel at how gullible we all were, and a residual anger rises up at the thought of this puppet-master who had us all jumping to her tune. Did she sometimes snigger derisively at our submissiveness in her web of deceit? How did she feel when we’d send our love and support to her as she entered the hospital for the umpteenth time for another life-threatening operation?

Anyone reading this will snort in disbelief at the story we swallowed hook, line and sinker: the amputations yet she continued to run marathons and climb mountains, the centre for disadvantaged kids she founded single-handedly in honour of her dead husband, her flawless clarinet playing accompanied by her ‘latest’ foster-child on piano and on, and on.

But, how were we to know someone was capable of this? We were all new to and excited by this new phenomenon the internet. We were all beguiled by this whirlwind woman; this Dr Mandy Smith the eminent psychologist who had all these super-cool super-clever friends (none of whom existed outside of her machinations). We were impelled by our own desire to follow this inspirational lady who overcame any adversity without a whimper (I even wrote two songs for her so much did I want to impress this remarkable individual ‘She Makes Me Want to Live’ and ‘Can’t Help But Shine’. The titles ooze positivity and a willingness to make a mark with her). Also; her main champion was Julie who coincidentally was going through a rough time emotionally and leant heavily on Mandy for the will to go on. This offers up the interesting paradox or juxtaposition that the hoaxer looking for attention was acting as counsellor for one of the hoaxed. “How bad is a lie if it helps?”*

Internet Munchausen is more widespread than folk may realise. In many ways, it is the perfect vehicle for such a condition as Munchausen’s Syndrome. There are no face-to-face doctor’s to fool. No-one can ‘see’ you unless you want them to. Even if they are detected, they can just log off and start again with some other poor dupes. Plus; there is a world of medical information online that can be used to make your claims plausible.

“Our natural lie detectors are muted online, we can’t rely on facial expressions and other physical cues for sensing falsehoods…”(1)

Not one of our little circle of Mandy-fans had ever heard of Munchausen by Internet and even if we had, so enamoured were we that I don’t think it would have made any difference. In fact, in another bizarre twist, it would have been highly qualified Mandy who would likely have explained the condition to us had we raised it thus further separating us from any conclusion that it was precisely the trick being played on us.

Why was she doing it, though? What was her motivation? Did it start of as a wheeze that became compulsive? Had she done it before? Maybe she had multiple scams going on?

Dr Marc Feldman, the author of Playing Sick describes it as “longing for nurturing, sympathy, care and concern that they feel unable to get in appropriate ways”. (2)

When this works, they will find it hard to stop the charade and it will tend to get more and more elaborate. Like a drug user trying to replicate the first hit.

I asked K, one of the others involved, going on 10 years after it ended…

“She never really gave an explanation, well not just one! She said different things at different times. It was a psychology project! A mental health issue!

She also tugged at heart strings saying it was loneliness, needing attention. Also a power trip. If and when we cornered her on issues she would turn the tables, it was our fault, we were trying to tie her words in knots.

I feel even after the event, even though she was caught, there was no remorse, I guess we, as in all of us were feeding the need to be liked, needed and wanted. We all had this full but solitary life and she knew how to trap us into her strange world”

Her ‘Mandy’ claims were either totally ‘factitious’ or else they may have held a grain of truth, an insight into the real person behind the deception.

Yeah the lovely Julie, protected her friendship with her with everything. But even with all the weirdness she helped Julie have a purpose, she helped us all talk quite openly about our lives. In saying all that I’m not excusing her behaviour in any way.

She had wonderful Julie first, then I think it was me, then you, I think she ended up with Ken also. Was a very strange, hmmm exciting, even valued times in all our lives. She has ended up with no-one, but in a strange way she tied Julie, you and myself together.

Scary bit is, who the hell is she doing it to now? After all it took us a few years to crack the code.”

I asked another, S, for her views..

“She never apologised to me, Jools said she wanted to know if I would like to continue talking to her, which I didn't. Trust was gone by then. As for why she did it, I'm guessing only she really knows that. In my experience, people who think their lives are boring, tend to colour them in a little. People read blogs etc and think they're missing out, they perceive others lives to be great. I also think it's easy online for people to live the life they would love, rather than the one they have...”

The persona Mandy created was very, very high-powered as were the ‘friends’ she invented. One was an oncologist. They were a tight wee feminist clique often disdainful of social networks (some chose not to participate in the silly, intrusive medium). ‘Tertiary characters’ for corroboration and to allow Mandy’s absences. Adding flesh to the story.

Mandy claimed to have been an orphan in Manchester. Her beginnings, I seem to recall, were quite brutal and involved an amputation and maybe various foster parents.

She had been married to the love of her life but he had died some years previously (they had been married in a castle, I seem to remember. There were photograph’s posted of some glamorous couple dressed in wedding attire). Her strong ambition was to found some social care facility for the young in his honour which was duly achieved (well, obviously it wasn’t, but we were all led to believe it was).

For myself, the very few times I ever had contact with her directly, I become ‘word-tied’ and intimidated in the same way as you might be if introduced to a celebrity hero.

She told us she was called in as a consultant to the Bridgend Facebook suicides (between ops she was back at work part-time). We were all of course enamoured by this. This was ‘our Mandy’.

She (or one of her tertiary characters) would post photographs and videos from a car meant to depict outings. Videos of mountain climbing with a figure leaping gaps in rocks with a soundtrack by Mandy on Clarinet and ‘Joel’ on piano, both playing immaculately.

Little vids would appear of folk having fun in a large garden. These were meant to be her friends, her carer and her foster son ‘Joel’ while Mandy was either the picture-taker or somewhere in the background like a wise Grand-dame allowing us this privileged access to her private world.

She garnered adoration, sympathy and support which she received with gratitude while giving an air of not really needing it. She was there more for our benefit as we were for hers.

After penultimate cancer surgery (I seem to remember being told she ‘died’ a few times during this), we were told that Mandy had lost the last 10 years of her memory and had to be re-told about the death of her husband and her parents (presumably ‘foster’ parents). I remember at one stage questioning this with Julie as Mandy seemed inconsistent in this (she posted ‘favourite’ songs from more recent times than 10 years). Julie was ultra-defensive of Mandy and jumped down my throat at such a suggestion making me feel bad for questioning one so ill. And so the game went on.

There appeared on her page a photo of large and expensive disability buggy with high-tech ‘touch’ controls (as by this time, near the end, she was virtually bed-bound). This buggy was silhouetted on a lawn outside what we took to be Mandy’s large house in North Wales and appeared to have a slight, slouched figure sitting within it.

I’m imagining the person who was Mandy in her home wherever it was thinking up her next manipulation, her next revelation in the drama. She was like the author of her own fiction and the plot could take whatever course she chose while we were her unwitting audience at her back and call. I remember on my rounds as a tax collector in London schlepping the streets of Belsize Park or Kentish Town willing under my breath that she gets through her latest surgical travail ‘C’mon Mandy, you can do it’. I would have just as well been watching Holby City.

In typical Munchausen-type fashion, whenever Mandy was in mortal peril, she’d bounce back courageously…

“Terrible setbacks would be followed by miraculous recoveries” (3)

The more dramatic the better. I suppose it makes sense that if you are going to create fantasies, you may as well make them impressive ones.

The scenario began to unravel for Mandy when, first Julie expressed a desire to make a pilgrimage to North Wales to visit Mandy, then a Canadian baker who had fallen for Mandy said he wanted to make a visit. How long would the charade have gone on for if she hadn’t got scared and ‘died’?

This prompted the ‘tragic’ news which had been relayed to Julie by one of Mandy’s ‘friends’ that Mandy hadn’t made it through her latest cancer surgery. She was just too weakened by her long and courageous battle. I received this news by phone from K and immediately told my mother of the sad loss. I was stunned but I remember my mother, being of an older generation when folk didn’t have online friends, looking rather bewildered by it all.

I think it was Ed the Baker who googled Mandy’s profile picture and found it to be a photograph of a blonde and very attractive Olympic skier. From there it wasn’t long before ‘Mandy’ outed herself as A from the Isle of Man.

A. In her statement of apology, admitted to maybe having ‘psychological difficulties’. She also claimed it was part of some psychological research she was conducting (she claimed she was a student of psychology) although I don’t remember this part of the explanation going any further or deeper. Feldman says that statistics shows that Munchausen by internet affects women predominantly “And many of them have medical or nursing training…Their fascination with medical issues is expressed in their career choices” (4).

On reading an article in The Guardian about the phenomenon of Internet Munchausen I wrote the following letter in response…

“Having been taken in by the fictitious illness and death of an online “friend” (Sick Note, 26 February), it is reassuring to know that we were not the only ones to experience this. Unfortunately, it has left us distrustful of new friends we meet online. Well done, fakers! You may be ruining a potential support network for those who need and those willing to give”

Reading back on that letter I admit I may have been naïve in ‘blaming’ sufferers of Munchausen.  It is adjudged a bona fide mental illness and as such they are as much victims as the innocents who are carried along on their emotional need.

The strange and perhaps unexpected denouement to all of this was that the ‘real’ person behind the fake Mandy did actually show herself and visited Julie in London and they kept in touch for a while afterwards. She also kept in touch with K by phone for a little while. Julie, sadly, is no longer around to refresh me on this, but it must have been strange for Julie in particular to be cheated out of the person she so revered only to be left with a lie, although she was gracious enough to accept this flawed woman who visited her without too much fuss.

Quite frankly, I wouldn’t reveal any details about who Mandy ‘actually was’ for fear she somehow reads this and decides to make something of it in a legal sense. I feel that when someone has a power of you – in this case a deceptive one – you have no idea what they may be capable of or to what extent they are imbalanced mentally and emotionally. She could be lurking on my Facebook or Twitter pages for all I know under yet another guise. It is unlikely that we were a one-off experiment, power-trip or mental aberration. Writing this, I feel we should have at least reported her to Multiply admin but I don’t think any of us thought of doing that. Some residual loyalty, perhaps?

“There are 67 million ‘invented’ names on Facebook, many of them clearly living another life, less ordinary, or at any rate less checkable. Nobody knows who they really are..” (5)

67 million is more than the population of the UK.

Having written this, it crosses my mind that there was a strong desire on our part to believe in Mandy at all costs. We didn’t ‘ignore’ any contrary evidence so much as just accept what information she was feeding us without much question. All of us individuals who were fooled were in middle age and would maybe be expected to ‘know better’ than be so gullible. But the whole concept of the internet and social networks was completely new to us and we had no terms of reference for someone pretending to be ill and making up stories for attention.

Perhaps we ‘needed’ Mandy as much as she needed us. As I’ve said, she inspired two songs from me, one of which I am particularly proud of and wouldn’t have written it without her. It brought me a friendship with K which I have valued highly. She may have ‘saved’ my friend Julie from emotional collapse at a time when she was lower than I had ever witnessed.

“People fill in the missing pieces in the picture of others they meet online, not fully aware that the picture they are forming is based partly on their own unconscious desires regarding who they want that person to be and how they want them to act” (6)

We hero-worshipped Mandy and helped put her on the pedestal that she desperately wanted for herself. In this way, were we complicit? But, and it can’t be escaped, we had an emotional connection with a character that didn’t exist outside someone’s maybe troubled imagination. An imagination that didn’t mind lying about having cancer; about dying. She didn’t seem to care about leading innocent victims down a garden path of tragedy and grief.

In her ‘demise’ she fell from this God-like height to a figure of pity perhaps lonelier than before, with no issues resolved, and more than likely behaving in exactly the same way in some other part of the vast online ether.

*‘Factitious Disorder’

*The irony of this is not lost on me

*Famous quote by Limeybean who pretended to die online of tuberculosis in 2005

1. The Lying Disease by Cienna Madrid p9

2. Faking Pain and Suffering in Internet Groups by Denise Grady

3. The Lying Disease by Cienna Madrid  p8

4. The Lying Disease by Cienna Madrid p8

5. The Secret Life: Three True Stories” Andrew O’Hagan p2

6. The Lying Disease p9 from a study by Bournemouth University School of Social Care

The Importance of Oral History

“Did you know that your Granda played the banjo?”

“Naw, I didn’t know that”

“Aye, he played it around the halls. Masonic Halls, those sort of places, you know he was a blue-nose. That’s what he used to call me. He used to kid on and dance with me saying ‘Come on, Jean, at least you’re a blue-nose’. You know, with your Da supporting Celtic and that. Ha ha. He could be a right laugh your Granda Wylie. Had to be, living wi’ that auld scunner. She wisnae right you know, in the head and that”

“So he played gigs and that…with his banjo?”

“I suppose so, aye. Yer Da told me he played for the neighbours in the air-raids during in the war. Would be playing his banjo in his Anderson shelter while the bombs dropped. But, you know what your Da was like with his stories. Couldn’t believe a word could you? But he’d sing at parties and that. Always ‘The Chocolate Coloured Coon”

“Christ! Ye couldnae sing that noo”

“Aye, but people wurnae aware like that in those days. That woman across the road that lives in the big house in the corner. She was in the Black and White Minstrels, I think I told you. Pour soul has dementia now. You see her sometimes just wandering about”

I imagine her in deep dementia, poor soul right enough, finding her old stage clothes and cavorting black-minstrel style on her front lawn. I picture the African family next door looking down at her in perplexed wonder.

“Yer Granny was a mental case, though. A doctor even said she was, what did he say now, ah cannae mind, but it meant she wasn’t all there, you know, in the head. She used to call me all sorts of names, terrible she was. Could cause a war in an empty room”

I try to steer her back to less hurtful memories.

“She was a grafter though eh, very determined?”

“Oh aye, she polished coffins, you know. French polisher in a coffin manufactury at Parkhead Cross”

“Wylie and Lochhead”

“Aye, that’s right. How do you know these things? Amazing. But yer Da would have to wait in the greenhouse until she came home which was sometimes well on into the evening. He’d be in there for hours. Wisnae allowed to let himself in in case he dirtied the carpets. Yer Da had nightmares about that for years, and never took to gardening like his Da”

The starling's chatter on the depleted blossom tree outside. All of a sudden they zoom and there is silence.

“Your mother, though, my Granny MacCallum. She was a weaver, is that right?”

“Aye, a weaver, son, at Templeton’s on Glasgow Green. Tough work!”

“That’ll account for her fore-arms. She used to wash my hair with Sunlight Lemon Liquid in the kitchen sink. I used to have bruises”

“Aye, she could be rough-handed alright. Ye didnae want a skelp from her. But, she had it tough with my father. I sometimes wonder how she put up with it for so long. I was put in a home for getting the police to him. My mother was angry about that as well, even though I did it to protect her and my wee sisters. He was going mad. I was never forgiven for that though. The police being called was worse than him being violent apparently”

“Eventually she left him, though?”

“Aye, divorced him as well, which wasn’t really the done thing back then. You were expected just to stay with your man. But she’d had enough. That’s when she got that place in Bridgeton. Madras Street. You’ll remember that as a wee boy?”

“Aye. Davie’s sweet shop. Used to give me sweets cos I had the same name.”

“That’s right. That hoose had rats and mice and all sorts. The bloke that lived next door had an air rifle and used to shoot them.”

The Brigton of my youth (you only said Bridgeton if you were posh, which meant you weren’t really from around there and lived in the leafy lanes of Denistoun). Plenty parks and greens, chip shops in bountiful supply, wee sweet shops as I’ve said, and a pub for each human denizen. A dieticians nightmare, though the residents self-culled in other more violent ways. This was, after all, the locale of the razor gangs. The Clyde riverman and his hook were kept ower-busy fishing casualties from the murky depths.

“Before she got that flat she lived with your Auntie Joan in a room and kitchen with my Auntie Mary who lost her man in the war”

“He fought in the war?”

“Aye, but not the second one, the First World War where he’d lost a leg. It turned to gangrene some time during the Second World War and he died in the Erskine Hospital. Yer Auntie Mary was with him when he died and she had to walk home to Bridgeton during the black-out to mind her children”

“Jeez o! Was that no’ some walk? Must be fifteen miles”

“Aye, in the black-out as well. He was a lovely man, my Uncle Wullie. Used to let us play with his wooden leg”

“I aye remember aw yer Aunties by you talking about them. There was Lettie and Nettie and…”

“My Auntie Jeannie as well, and Mary. That was your Grannies four sisters. Your Granny was the youngest. She had three brothers as well. Nettie lived up at Dobie’s Loan with her husband my Uncle Jimmy. He was a Catholic and we were all Protestants which was unusual then. A friend of the family, a Francis Patrick, had a child out of wedlock, a wee boy, and my Auntie Lettie who couldn’t have children took him in and that was my cousin, Jim McGuire who was a lovely man. I remember being there when he found out at his twenty-first birthday party and him standing there crying. He never knew his real mother and father.

My Uncle Jimmy was a lamp-lighter, you know, a gas-lighter. They sent young Jim to a Catholic school but he came home crying saying he was scared the statue of the Virgin Mary in the school hall-way was going to fall on him so he went to a Protestant one after that”

“Lettie sounds quite a character”

“O she was. A bit of a wheeler-dealer you’d call her now. Bought pawn tickets off folk then sold them on. She worked for Summers the Plumbers for a while up at the Round Toll going out towards Possilpark”

The starlings come back for further chirps and more wan blossoms fall to the ground. Downstairs the Cypriot woman chants her Orthodox prayers and my mother says “are you sure your comfortable there, son, here, have another cushion” for perhaps the seventh time and tells me about her Auntie Nettie’s man, Jim, who delivered Barr’s Irn Bru on a horse-drawn cart.

Can't Live With Them......

‘See you; you were never easy to get on with. Always critical. Always having to be clever clever’

The sun beamed through the open patio doors. It seemed to spread a whole body halo around his mother, as if she’d received a final benediction by light straight from heaven.

‘We’re not this, we’re too that. Christ! Sometimes we thought you hated us. Hated your own family. All we ever gave you was love and you sitting there all sullen in judgement of us’

He didn’t recognise this mother. She spat these words with bile, red eyes like the devil. He didn’t know she was capable of such violent contempt. In a strange way he was quite impressed. This over-polite pleasant woman had a bitchy side. He almost thought ‘good for her. ‘Bout time you stood up for yourself’. He almost smiled at the thought. His old mother was damning him to hell and a part of him felt proud of her. There was a certain vindication to it, and he couldn’t totally disagree of her bitter portrait of him.

He had sat in his parents house on many occasions and well into adulthood like a sullen tanager, resentful and monosyllabic. Grunting answers to their friendly enquiries as if the effort would take his last breath. They suffocated him. She anxious and his father subtly controlling and with an agenda laid out for matters to be discussed. He, art and philosophy, she, cushions and the cheap frying pan she purchased at Poundland. The more his dad tried to sway the conversation his way the more anxious his mother became and the more objects she brought from the kitchen to show him. His brother was allowed a way to deal with this. He snarled and hissed and ploughed his own conversational furrow. The youngest was allowed this luxury but he knew that if he adopted this behaviour then sensitivities would be deeply bruised.

These were his parents and he loved them dearly. He just couldn’t stand being in the same room as them at the same time.

And there was no way past it in the tiny one-bed flat. Not until there was a new arrangement one day and his mother took to watching her own telly in the bedroom.

The care home which, due to her condition, his mother was now forced to exist in seemed quite airy and bright although with that stale whiff of stale urine and over-boiled mince that seemed to pervade such places.

She wasn’t happy here, at least not when she was sentient and a little more lucid than at present. It was actually better for her when she was off on one of her mental tangents when she couldn’t have cared less where she was. She could have been sitting amongst the animals in Edinburgh zoo for all she knew or cared. But when she came around and realised where she was it scared her afresh every time as if she’d only just realised.

‘Is there no one coming to take me home?’

‘You and your bloody music! All we ever did was encourage you. Do you remember that time we brought that guitar all the way up to Liverpool for you, me and your dad?’

‘Was that the time he was meant to have turned deaf but really he wasn’t?’

‘I don’t know what you mean, son. I think you make some of this up just to confuse me. We brought that guitar up for you and all you did was drink and resent our presence. Me and your da felt so unwelcome and we’d done you such a good turn’

‘I know ma, and I’m so sorry. I always felt you’s were stealing my personality. Something like that’

‘Stealing your personality? I don’t even know what that means. We barely got a cup of tea and a sandwich from you. Your dad and I had to go out for something to eat’

‘Aw ma I was never mean that way. I think you’re confused’

‘Mean-spirited your da said. You were mean-spirited’

Outside some birds were chirping and he heard the low buzz of the traffic on the main road. An orderly popped her head around the room door and asked was everything ok. He answered that everything was fine. He wanted to add just my very soul being eviscerated before me, that’s all!

‘We used to dread you visiting your father and I, but we were too polite to let it show’

The nurse does a double-take ‘now now Mrs Bryant. Your son has come all this way from Scotland just to visit you’

‘Only because he has to. I bet he can’t wait to get back up there. It’s all obligation now. Only moved back up there to be different as usual’

I address the orderly who is looking a bit flummoxed by this rather involved family strife..

‘See that form of dementia when your mother can’t even remember who you are…?’

She nods in nervous agreement.

‘Why can’t she have that kind…?’

A butterfly enters the room. A pretty yellow and lemon it flutters briefly then falls in a dead faint to the floor.

Tough Work - Building the Radical Road

“I am glad to hear my countrymen are resolved to act like men. We are seeking nothing but the rights of our forefathers – liberty is not worth having, if it is not worth fighting for” James ‘Purlie’ Wilson 1820

In 1822 it was suggested by the Scottish literary giant, Sir Walter Scott, that unemployed weavers who had taken part in the Radical War of 1820 but had neither been executed or transported should be set to task building the pathway which exists to this day under Salisbury Crags on Arthur’s Seat. It is pretty much agreed by the few historians who have commented on this event that this was in no way offered as any sort of conciliation or clemency but more as a punishment and a lesson for those

“Tough work to pay for an uprisin’. Mind it’s a bonny view, right enough”

The sun moved in a bleak, grey sky. The clouds in Scotland were converted Presbyterian’s and felt it their collective duty to hide any sign of solar gaiety and/or warmth rather like a pinny disguises the voluptuous shape of womanhood.

Still, McCulloch thought ruefully as he rested on his cutting blade, at least it had stopped raining. A fellow could slide fifty yards down this bloody big bear-hill when the grun was wretched muddy and glistening wet like an auld dug drookit in a burn.

He could get poetical like this. He’d read his Burns and his Fergusson. Even auld Wattie Scott whose idea it was that it should be they - the radical and seditious -the malcontents – who would build this road in the sky. This road ‘neath the Crags for the likes of him and his loyal tory chums to stroll and meander and flirt and look across the Firth to Fife, like they were walking on the very backs of their labour.

Auld Wattie who this very day was escorting a bloated German-English king around the streets of Scotland’s capital. What a  game that was. Sometime in the future all would be would be tartan gonk shops all up the Royal Mile wi’ bagpipes blarin’ oot Songs from the Shows. And it would all be that gimpy wee sods fault. Like it was his fault a gang of west of Scotland weavers were building a scenic walkway around Arthur’s Seat. Sir Walter Scott. Next they’d have them building some gothic space rocket in his honour in Princes Gardens.

He’d been addressing no-one in particular regarding his wonderment at the view but his friend Archie Taggart had picked up on his winsome tone.

“You know Andrew; I never even knew this bloody mini mountain even existed until I was told to be digging in to it. For a’ ah knew it could have been in Timbuctoo”

“Maybe we could all have been in Timbuctoo” He thought of friends of his consigned to penal colonies half way around the world. He thought of Baird and Hardie, and Wilson down in Strathaven who’d been executed for ‘high treason’.

April fool’s Day 1820.

Andrew McCulloch had been a mere boy of 24 years, though married to Elsie who had borne him three bairns. Now, as he gazed over at a castle on an even higher rock than the one he toiled on, he felt like he was a thousand years old. Somehow, he’d gone from one state of affairs, a simple weaver trying to scrape a living for his family to being part of a chain gang digging a path a hundred feet above central Edinburgh.

April fool’s Day.

Elsie: Life changes imperceptibly sometimes. You don’t notice decline when it creeps up on you year on year, bit by bit. You make do and mend as wages get lower and work is harder to come by. The bairns will maybe only get good meat or fish the once in a week when before there’d be mutton or pork and maybe a roast on a Sunday. Clothes get darned to death instead of replaced until, before you know it, your man’s trews are aw darn and naethin’ else.

Imperceptible!

When I married my man I was but eighteen years old and green as the Campsie hills. I was quite a looker and deserved to marry a weaver. A good weaver could work his own wage in his own time. A good weaver could provide a warm wee cottage for his family. A weaver counted for something. And ma Andrew was a good weaver and a fine looking man to boot. Plenty lassies laid their plate at him but he’d tell me often in our early amorous days that I was the apple of his eye. In truth, we were mad for each other and it was a wonder I only had the three weans by the time all this trouble started.

Our poverty was a slow descent it seemed but looking back it was actually quite quick. One week Andrew had more work than he could handle the next he was almost begging for it. The world was changing and fast. The city was becoming crowded and the ways of weaving was changing.

Machiines! That was all the talk. Machines! They could use machines to weft the cloth quicker and cheaper and they didn’t require the same level of skill. Any keelie or cottar fae the fermtouns could do it and would do it willingly and cheaply because they had families to feed as well. Not that we didn’t resent them. We did. They were taking food out of our mouths. Human nature being what it is you tend to blame the apparent enemy although Andrew didn’t see it this way, though it would have been better for him – and us – if he had. He said it was the system. He said it was the bosses after profit on the backs of the working man. He said he could understand progress but it didn’t have to be done brutally. It could be done gradually and so that all could benefit. A tax on the power looms was all the talk among Andrew and his friends.

Ma Andrew is a good Presbyterian. He believes in self-improvement. He taught the bairns words and numbers soon as they could crawl. It may be that he educated himself that little bit too much.

McCulloch: We were all members of Book Clubs or the local Mechanics Institute, we were no fools. We were literate hard-working men. We read Tom Paine and Rousseau : our own David Hume and Adam Smith. This was what they now call the ‘Scottish Enlightenment’, only they didn’t like us sharing the wonder of it. Astronomy, philosophy, geology. And politics, always politics. The way it all worked. And economics. Political economy. In a way it had more relevance to us than to anyone else as we seemed to be more and more at the brunt of it. We needed explanations of why things had turned so much against us. And solutions. We wanted to help ourselves: to improve our lot. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Yet everyway we turned they shut us down and refused to listen.

And we’d read The Bible as well though there was some more devout than others. They cried Purly Wilson an atheist at his trial but that was all part of the black propaganda aimed at us by the press and the powers that be to make us out as devils and traitors.

Was not the Encyclopaedia Britannica born in Scotland? Indeed Social Science itself – the study of human nature and societies – was a Scottish invention. Lord Kames, Smith, Hume, Hutcheson, Adam Ferguson. Scottish Protestantism preened itself over its high literacy rates and educational inquisitiveness. But, maybe not for the likes of us.

The ganger-men on their mules were more like guards; carbineers with rifles. They patrolled the rough-hewn pathway and kept the men working. One of them, Doughty, seemed to find it hard to confine his thoughts to himself and considered it the greatest wonder that these ‘scoundrels fae Glesga’ should be subjugated to hard-labour in Auld Reekie. Doughty had fought Boney at Quatre Bras and had been drinking on the fact ever since. McCulloch pitied the beast that had to bear his weight. His Black Watch tunic which was no longer legal for him to wear was, at any rate, almost unrecognisable slobbered as it was with accumulated mud, grub and dust from his basement High Street dwellings.

“Slackin’ again, McCulloch? Jings! Ye jist cannae help yourself, eh?”

Down below the fanfare and pageantry had started in earnest. There was the blowing of bugles and the cheering of folk. The royal regalia flew high on The Royal Mile.

“Christ! Napoleon will have risen from the dead again by the time this road is built if it’s to be at your rate o’ graft. Mind, that widnae bother a traitor like you, eh McCulloch. Ye’d take up arms and join ‘im”

The wind blew bitter gusts and there was a cold snell which sprayed on them constantly. August it may have been but it was as dark and dank as any January.

An’ who would you be fightin’ for, Doughty. That corpulent German galumph ridin’ aboot in his daft klit doon there?

“Ye’d think ye’d have learned to mind yer tongue by now, McCulloch, given how much you’ve come down in the world”

McCulloch looked around him expansively “Would ye no’ say, Doughty, that I seem to have come considerably up in the world?”

McCulloch’s work-mates sniggered at his cheek and how he always seemed to be too quick for Doughty’s slow jibes. In Doughty’s mind there was a rage and total lack of comprehension at the idea of McCulloch owning this quick intellect. McCulloch was a prisoner, and a treasonous one at that. He should be abject and subordinate, not witty and clever. And certainly not making jokes at his jailer’s expense (Doughty saw himself a s a jailer as well as an over-seer)

“Ye’ve aye to be the smert-erse, McCulloch. Is it no’ you diggin’ oot rock for your herrum-skerrum ways oot shootin at sofjurs at Bonnymuir?”

“Aye, militia-men. Lackeys and spies like yourself. And you the one wi’ so much self-pride aboot it. To me you’re nothing but a disgrace. You’re the traitor, yet you’re too glaikit in the brain to ever see the truth in that”

McCulloch spoke with venom and fire. He’d come too far down the line to pull his punches now. Doughty had been at Bonnybridge, he was sure of it, on the side of ‘law and order’. He’d been a spy. An agent provocateur. A great many of ‘the radicals’ had been ex-forces men, dumped out of the army after the war with France and left to rot on the high streets without work and full of rage at the system that had betrayed them. Doughty had posed as one of these but really he’d been a sneak and an informant probably for Mitchell of the Glasgow police who would in turn inform the Home Secretary in Westminster about plans to ferment. Sure, it was the likes of them that had provoked the rising. Locked up the leaders and manipulated the rest to take up arms.

April Fools Day.

Elsie: The men were ‘aw surprised but not ‘aw o’ them up for the fight. There were laws noo about sedition and some notable reformers had been transported already. Ye weren’t allowed to drill with arms or hold meetings and demonstrations far less swear oaths of allegiance. In Manchester the year before there were folk shot and killed by militia and in Greenock only the previous Autumn there had been cavalry used to quell a crowd in Greenock. Protesting about politics and wages came at a high price if you got involved. Suddenly the whole thing was supposed to start. The men didn’t know that their leaders had been locked up the week before, then on Saturday 1^st April there was a Proclamation that the strike should begin, so on the Monday men stayed home from work in their thousands, their tens of thousands, all across the west.

Taggart: We were aw duped: smoked out into the open. Efter the Committee had been locked up spies started fomenting the strike and troops turned up everywhere we went. The boys at Srathaven, the lads at Port Glasgow, and aw us at Bonnybridge. We were divided and we were nabbed. Waiting for us they were. Either that or we have psychic forces at work among our military and polis.

Doughty: Just doing our bit for King and Country….!

Taggart: Treated us like we were for insurrection and I guess it must have appeared that way. We’d been betrayed over a minimum wage in 1812 and they’d proved that they weren’t gonnie listen to our reasoning. Maist o’ us were just aggrieved aboot wages and oor basic standard of living, but of course they wurnae gonnie change ony o’ that withoot a fight and it was the fight that they were scared of. They were afraid of what would happen if we all had the vote. You see, if they hudnae managed to manipulate and divide us; the rising may well have spread into something very big indeed. Our own wee French Revolution.

McCulloch: ‘Aw us men walked fae Glasgow to Condorrat in the pouring rain, urged on by the duplicitous Englishman, King, or whatever his name actually was. He gave Andrew Hardie half a card saying it’s matching half could be found with Baird and his men in Condorrat, and from there we would march on the Carron Steelworks at Falkirk. We were like a walking Luggie Burn, soaked and bedraggled and only twenty-six of us in total. Sure enough we were met by Baird and his five men. We were urged by King to march on Carron as we’d pick up support on the way but all we met was a troop of Hussar’s at Bonnybridge. They arrested nineteen of us after a short exchange of gunfire. But, in other places in the west, there were other risings….

James Wilson: The spies spread word to Strathaven that a great rising was afoot in Glasgow and beyond so we started marching for a gathering on Cathkin Braes. Half way there I smelled a rat and returned home. They arrested me anyway on four counts of treason and I was found guilty of “compassing to levy war against the King in order to compel him to change his measures”. They hung me and beheaded me on Glasgow Green in front of twenty thousand. I said to my executioner on the way there “Thomas, did ye ever see sic’ a crowd?” I was sixty-three years old…

McCulloch: There were troops and police everywhere we went. Yeomanry and Hussars. In Bridgeton, a drum beat a call-to-arms which raised 200 radicals with pikes and blunderbusses. In Tradeston a bugle was used for the same purpose. In Duntocher and Paisley; Stirling and Portpatrick and in many other areas where there were struggling weavers and their families. But, not just them. There were shoe-makers, cabinet makers, tailors and blacksmiths. All who were struggling to earn a crust never mind buy a whole loaf and saw a better world through intelligent reform.

In Greenock the crowds turned on the militia who were trying to take strikers to jail. The soldiers shot eight dead and badly wounded many more

McCulloch looked down from the high ridge of the half-built path-way. His colleagues – his comrades – were all hewing and digging, pick-axes were causing flint-sparks in the damp air before dusk lay over the grand old city. The New Town for the wealthy more than half built to the north and The Mound all filled in and providing access to the grizzled Old Town leading up to the Castle Rock. The royal visit – the ‘plaided panorama’ - was nearly over and the fat, gouty king – George the Fournicator - would soon make his way to Dalkeith. Scotland was, to him, a country of wealth, whisky and tartan pageantry while in the north the Sutherland Clearances were favouring sheep over the lives of humans and the Corn Laws were making folk into hungry, desperate animals. This was no king for the people. This was smoke and mirrors. This was bread and circuses without the bread and only the circus. But, how long could it last?

McCulloch knew that the rising of 1820 had let the genie out of the bottle and no royal patronage would put the cork back for long. He thought of Hardie, Baird and Wilson who’d made the ultimate sacrifice. He thought of the nineteen transported to God-knows-where. He hoped their families would be allowed to join them. He thought of his own family, his Elsie and the wee one’s barely surviving in the new slums of the east end of Glasgow where once they’d lived a fairly prosperous, honest life in their wee cottage in Calton.

He looked down over the quieting city and knew he was on the side of what is right and hoped that history may have learned from their example.

Doughty:  You can understand it though, eh? I mean, we’d just fought the French and their revolution. Bloody wars where good men had died. And were they – we – just going to stand back and let it happen here? The country in the hands of a group of disenchanted handloom weavers and cobblers? Grow up for God’s sake. Some men are meant to lead and some men are meant to weave cloth and that’s the end of it. These men up here on this hill are carving the path they deserve to carve; with tools and graft. They’re a perfect example of what happens to a man when he fills his head with books and political clap-trap. The Rights of Man. There is no right except what is right. A natural order. How things are meant to be. You wouldn’t have great men like Wellington or Castlereagh – God rest his poor soul – or Sir Walter Scott out in the fields picking spuds or sweating in a factory. No.  They are men suited to their positions.

Take the royal procession today. The people were out in their thousands cheering and toasting the great and good displayed in their finery. The king in his Stuart tartan, Sir Walter, the Duchess of Sutherland. All the honours of Scotland.

This hill is our punishment and our lesson and the rain is incessant to remind us of both. How foolish we were to be tricked when our leaders were already in prison by that first day of April: April fool’s day. How disorganised not to have realised that fact. Yet, how desperate and committed we were.

It rained that day like it rains today: hard and solid, like sheets. Guid Scottish rain that would freeze the face aff ye.

Aye we had muskets and aye we had pikes. We’d been trained to use them on Glasgow Green as had been reported to the policeman Mitchell. Turner the spy had given Hardie his half sheet and told us the other half would be with our brother-in-arms, Baird in Condorret.  King was running about all over rousing us all into action. He seemed to pop up everywhere and everywhere we went there just happened to be Hussars.

The moon is large in the sky above Arthur’s Seat and the rain still falls. Like the skilled men they are they want to make a good job of this wide path-way. They are aware that it may stand for centuries as a commemoration to the men who built it.