Tag Archives: memories

Bob’s Your Uncle–

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Jack gets over the line again in time – –

Yes – Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a real thing! A friend mentioned it in an email a few days ago, and it got me to thinking – –

I spent most of my life living in central Scotland, and in mid-winter, there, the days are short. I mean that even on sunny days the light starts around 10 am and stops around 3 pm. (Harlan isn’t the only place this happens.) If I had lived in the far north, maybe Orkney or Shetland, there wouldn’t have been any light at all! I’ve heard tales of folk up there holding golf tournaments by head lamps at noon – –

But folk were used to it and mostly just adapted – unless they were incomers from further south. Wendy arrived in Scotland from Newfoundland, which is the tiniest bit higher up toward the North pole, so her winters actually got longer!

In days of yore, by which I mean pre-Christian times, the early inhabitants were sun worshipers and held ceremonies around the winter solstice to encourage the sun to return and for the days to lengthen again. Many of these fire festivals survive to the present day and usually involve a procession with a ‘clavie’ – a large iron cage filled with burning wood with all the people either taking a burning ember to their house or adding more wood to the cage.

In Shetland they have ‘Up Helly A,’ when a replica Viking longship is hauled through the town to the harbor and then set on fire. I think this may also be why New Year celebrations are more significant than Christmas in Scotland? No one really knows when Christ was born, so the existing sun/Son worship time seemed appropriate.

I don’t remember ever having suffered from SAD when I was living in Scotland, and I still don’t really here in Southern Virginia, but I do notice the change of light more. I wonder if that is because, being much further south, the summers are longer and warmer, so the contrast is more stark.

There’s a whole other argument about the need for changing the clocks – springing forward and falling back — but that’s the subject for another post – –

Come back next Wednesday for more from Jack

Bob’s Your Uncle–

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Jack just barely made it in time – –

I was thinking about my late teenage years when I was finishing my apprenticeship as a painter and decorator in the late 1950s and into the early 1960s.

I mentioned this in my post last week and about going to a dance.

But much more interesting were my weekly drives in my first car for twelve miles to the neighboring town, where I attended advanced classes and which opened the path to my eventual college career.

Those advanced classes took place in the evenings once a week and in what once had been an elementary school. It now housed P&D students (all young men) and hairdressing students (all young women) – use your imagination – –

One of our instructors was Bob, and he had a lovely ability to adapt words that became much more useful – a favorite of mine usually went as follows: “Jack – will you replentish the bucket?” He meant me to re-fill a bucket with a generous amount of water. For him the color magnolia was Mongolia, and caramel became Carmelite (an order of nuns). He was a very knowledgeable and patient man, though, and we all loved him!

There were only four of us studying for the advanced exams, so we were allowed to use the instructors’ office as our private space. It had a radio, and we always tuned to ‘Radio Luxemburg’ because back then the BBC had the only station in the UK, and they refused to play pop music. So my first experience of hearing the Beatles was on that radio tuned to RL.

After the class finished I would head to a local pub in the town, where there was a weekly jazz club that ran on the same night, and they often had folk song intervals while the band took a break.

It would be fifteen years later that I would bless having that qualification, which made me eligible to become an instructor/teacher/professor and which now provides me a generous pension!

Come back next Wednesday for more from Jack