Category Archives: Scotland

Teach your Children Well – – –

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Jack just makes it in time – –

I taught an on-line class yesterday morning and it brought back many memories.

To explain – –

I taught classes in a Scottish college for over twenty years starting with apprentice house painters and ending with management students. I had the opportunity to retire at either age 60 or 65 and might have gone on to 65 if only for the sheer pleasure of actually teaching. But the bureaucracy and paper work was so awful that I chose 60 and don’t regret it.

However, I never lost the pleasure of actually helping a group of people to navigate their learning experiences and I’ve been lucky to continue to be able do that.

Following retirement, I was contracted as a consultant and taught classes in lots of exotic places, then after moving to the US it was mostly more about Scottish culture, language and music.

Sometimes this was very informal just sitting down with friends and sometimes much more academic in lecture halls or classrooms.

In some ways performing as a singer for audiences gave me more confidence to do something similar in front of a group of students. Eventually, I think, it worked the other way too.

The two big role models in my teenage years were both teachers – George Simpson was the woodwork teacher at the high school I attended and Jim Yeats was the newly appointed young painting instructor when I moved on to the local college as part of my apprenticeship as a house painter. If I saw them walking in town and they said hello I felt like I was walking on air!

So if I managed to be a role model myself, then I’ll be well satisfied!

Gang yir ain Gait

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Jack just makes it in time this week – –

The heading translates from old Scots as ‘ Go your own way’ or even ‘do it your way’.

So a gait or gate might be an actual physical barrier but often just a path or street or alley leading somewhere. In my hometown of Dunfermline there’s a street just outside the Norman Abbey called the ‘Kirkgate’ and at the Southern entrance to the town is another one called Nethergate.

Shifting to our backyard but still with a Scottish connection – –

Many of the crofts in the highlands have two areas of ground attached to the house – the ‘in-by’ and the ‘oot-by’. In other words the nearest patch (usually for growing vegetables), and the outer patch where a cow or a pig would be raised.

Our back yard is divided into an in-by and an oot-by. We grow tomatoes in raised beds in the inner part and our chickens live in the outer part where we also grow vegetables (no cows or pigs!). So we have a fence with a gate and that wooden gate was getting pretty old and saggy.

I started by putting two 4×4 posts in and hinging the old gate to one of them, but it still sagged and twisted. So it was time for a new gate to the oot-by! We debated and searched the local hardware stores but everything was very heavy and very costly. Then Wendy suggested using lightweight PVC pipe with plastic netting stretched over.

So that’s what we did. Wendy crocheted the netting onto the pipe frame using special string and we hinged it to the post with gardening twine stapled in place. So far it isn’t sagging but we now have to think how it will be more permanently hinged and how we’ll latch it.

‘We did it our way’ or ‘gaed oor ain gait’ – – –