Category Archives: Life reflections

The Monday Book: FISH by L.S. Matthews

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I picked up this book while on a week-long writing retreat, one evening when I couldn’t face my own writing any more. It was short, easy to read in an evening, and I stayed up and read it before bed.

LS Matthews has written a charming and deceptively simple story of Tiger, the child of foreign aid workers in a war-torn country. Tiger is the only character in the book who gets a name. The wise guide who takes the family on their harrowing journey says his name is too hard to pronounce so call him Guide. The donkey (also a major character) is Guide. And Tiger’s parents are Mom and Dad.

The country itself is not named. The novel uses childhood innocence to observe the building horror of the situation, and the difficult questions that the horror will stop for Tiger’s family but not the rest, because they are being evacuated if they can reach the airplane. Tiger wants to know what will happen to his friends. His parents try hard to soft-petal that answer, but readers get it.

A journey fraught with hardships resulting from the drought and war that ruined the country shows perils from natural to human. They cannot cross the easiest border because it is now closed to refugees. They are a target, as foreign workers, for kidnapping and ransom. And they don’t know how to navigate the mountains that separate them from the plane that will not wait, and cannot communicate with the plane.

If the book sounds dark, it isn’t. Donkey and Fish are two of the most human characters in the book; on the day they have to leave, Tiger rescues a fish from a receding mud puddle. The fish would have died, the puddle drying up and leaving him noplace to live. Fish continues to be a metaphor for the family’s survival, placed in a water bottle, and eventually…. well, you read the book. You’ll find it interesting.

Spoiler alert: the donkey makes it. :]

Although written for children, I found the simplicity of the story and the metaphor-rich writing lovely, and moving in their stark poetry. Two fins up.

Dinnae Fash (see below)

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Jack gets in on time for a change – –

What a bourach (see below) we’ve just gone through –

Wendy and I try to be as self sufficient as possible and that includes doing our best to fix technology when it goes wrong.

But the last couple of weeks have been a test –

First of all our dishwasher started to leave everything less than clean, so it was time to dismantle the birling (see below) arms and clean them. In the process of re-assembling them we noticed a wee tube thing in the front corner that we’d never examined the last time. When we lifted up the cover over it we found it was really manky (see below). Of course we broke a few small clips trying to remember how the arms came off and on!

Then the dryer suddenly stopped working in mid program and nothing would make it work. Since we rarely use it we gave it away to a friend for spares. So now we have more cupboard space.

The waste disposal unit in the sink began making nasty noises so I decided to take it out and examine it. These things are a hooer o a wecht (see below). I checked it out and it took both of us with much testing of the marriage vows to get it re-installed – and it still made the nasty noises. So we bought a new one – –

The ice maker in the freezer stopped dispensing ice so we took the tray out and found a bag of bread twisted round the turny roon screwy thing (see below). We had to cut the bag into pieces to get it disentangled and were sure we’d buggered (see below) it. But no – once we’d checked everything else out it began making ice and dispensing!

Now the weird thing is –

For most of my life I’ve never had any of these things so I wonder why I felt the only one we could get rid of was the dryer? Who needs an ice maker or a waste disposal, or even a dishwasher? But we made the bread from the bag into French toast and it was no bad (see below).

Bourach – a lovely Scots gaelic word meaning a terrible mess.

Birling – a lovely lowland Scots word meaning turning fairly fast.

Manky – a more modern Scots word meaning horribly dirty and smelly.

Hooer o a wecht – Scots again – rather heavy.

Turny roon screwy thing – do I need to explain this?

Buggered – – –

No bad – almost good – the highest compliment a Scot is willing to pay.

Dinnae fash – another good and useful Scots phrase – keep calm and carry on.