Category Archives: Scotland

WHY THIS BOOKSELLER LOVES THE NET

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Jack’s weekly guest blog is back – and so is he!

 

the_internet_it_crowdI often hear people complaining about various aspects of the Internet including spam emails, intrusive Facebook and the lost art of letter writing.

But, to be honest, I have no complaints at all! I find it hard to remember what life was like before we had the Worldwide Web. If I try I can recall when the college where I worked just had an intranet and I had a dial up connection at home, but before that I suppose I must have used the telephone a lot (and wrote letters).

What brought this to mind is the last ten days I spent back in Scotland for the funeral of Davy Lockhart. The start was me trying to book flights at short notice with no success and getting a phone call in the middle from a kind lady at the agency whose website I was on. She went the extra mile for me when I explained I had to go to Scotland to attend an old friend’s funeral. A few days later I was being treated like royalty all the way from Knoxville to Edinburgh – agents waiting at gates to whisk me to timely connections, fast-tracked through customs, the works.

Facebook became the easiest way for all Davy’s scattered friends to find out what had happened, too, and what the arrangements were. I’m quite sure the reason the Church was packed out was partly because of that. While there I stayed partly with my friends Mike and Harry Ward and the rest of the time with another old friend Colin Stuart. These friendships, like many others are also kept alive partly through easy communication via the internet.

Now that most airports have wireless networks I was able to keep everyone on both sides of the Atlantic up to date with my progress, and through a Twitter friendship with Blackwell’s Bookshop in Edinburgh was able to pre-order a book that Wendy lusted after and pick it up when I was there.

Meanwhile I have, over the last few years, re-established contact with many old friends almost by accident through serendipitous ‘crossroads’ on Facebook.

So – for an old curmudgeon and an avid book reader – I am an unapologetic champion of that interwebby thing.

Lang may its lum reek!

RIP Davy Lockhart

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heritageJack’s guest blog about a dear friend

Davy first came into my life in the mid 1970s when he was in his early 50s and I was in my 30s. I was at a party in his house when I discovered that he had been a fiddle player as a youngster, but hadn’t kept it up. But he got out his violin and we found we could play a few tunes together.

The very first time I persuaded him to get up and play at the local folk club not long after that first party, he prepared to play the first note and promptly fainted. Half an hour later he got back up played like nothing had happened. A few years later he joined a group of us to create ‘Heritage’.

His favourite place, after Fife, was France. He famously spent 6 months there after Heritage broke up and wound up as guest fiddle player with the Occitan group ‘Los Cotillons de Tonniens’ touring all over the country with them (in costume) playing all the tunes he’d fallen in love with when Heritage had toured there many times.

Heritage spent 15 years playing traditional Celtic music at folk clubs, festivals, concert tours, radio and TV all over Scotland and Europe; Davy was an integral part of the front line for much of that time. By profession he was an internationally recognised artist with work hanging in prestigious collections all over the world, as well as a much loved art teacher in a Fife High School who certainly influenced his pupils very much for the better. But he often said that his musical career saved his sanity from the bureaucracy and politics of the Scottish education system.DSCN2126

During our travels with Heritage the stories about him abounded – from his terrible driving to his ability to fall asleep at the dinner table. He would be the first to admit that he wasn’t a great fiddle player – and yet – he helped establish the sound of the group and that didn’t change much despite various personnel shuffles over the years. The other great stories were the ones that he told – like the time he joined the Home Guard so he could have a rifle to shoot the capitalists when the war was over, and on, and on – –

Davy died peacefully in his sleep on December 28th 2014 at the age of 92 after some health issues over the last year or so.

I consider myself lucky to have known him and to have had him as a friend.