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Toast Across (or Doon?) the Watter
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Red Belt in Quoiting
The following arose from a discussion between my brother Stuart and me about the puff he had penned for me to put on the back cover of my paperback SOCIALISM: My Part in its Downfall, in which is briefly mentioned the time Stuart took my dad (Stuart sen.) to visit Jimmy Reid[1] at his home on the Isle of Bute some twenty years ago. Jimmy (and Stuart jun.) worked for The Herald.
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| Stuart McKinlay sen., Denny's Shipyard? |
Jimmy Reid: Last week a colleague from The Herald came to visit and brought his dad along, which was a delight for me. He made my day: had worked in Denny’s shipyard that was located at the foot of Dumbarton rock. A yard that has a well-earned place in the annals of history as an innovator of both the steamship and the hovercraft.
He was born and bred in the nearby and beautiful Vale of Leven. A place I know and cherish. In French parlance, it was an area that could have qualified for the title of Red Belt. It had many radical, socialist, and communist councillors. All great characters, with divergent personalities. Some were heavy drinkers; others militant abstainers. Some militant Christians; others aggressive atheists. All united in common cause against poverty. Mind you, they argued like hell on just about everything else.
My new, auld acquaintance and I blethered about them, and others, and about the character and characters of the Vale. Renton were the first footballing champions way back in 1877 or thereabouts. Eat your hearts our Celtic and Rangers. Renton, known as the Rantin to the locals, was proclaimed capital of the world by general and global acclamation, according to self-taught, local historians. A few years later I met while visiting Renton, the quoiting champion of the world. He seemed a very decent chap and wore his fame modestly. Yes, you’re right. I can’t remember his first name.
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| Jimmy Reid, The Herald, July 17, 2000. |
My friends left to meander back home through Argyll and I left convinced that quoiting had a wider pedigree than we had acknowledged. But where was the evidence? Then it came. It’s in Homer’s Iliad. Quoiting is mentioned, along with javelin throwing, as one of the events at the Olympos games. Was the Vale of Leven, in fact, an outpost of ancient Greece? It is my belief that Socrates would have been more at home in Renton than in Athens, with dunderheids like Plato, who believed in a class-divided society. In ancient Greece two-thirds of the population were slaves, and it was unlikely ever to be the genuine cradle of democracy.[2]
Stuart McKinlay: We were driving over Bute and as Jimmy had invited us up for “a wee dram”, we settled into his lounge overlooking Rothesay Bay.
“For folk like me, coming from Govan,” Jimmy said, giving dad the best chair (though they all looked best), “this is like the Riviera...” It wasn't (initially) Glenfiddich they were drinking as I imagined it would be, dad’s favourite though it was -- as here they settled into common reminiscences of Red Clydeside, and the yards, and people they knew, talking as though continuing an interrupted conversation. It could well have been that of course, or maybe Glenmorangie, but then Jimmy had a large selection to tempt any connoisseur to hesitation, racked for choice, and he welcomed us again and reached into his drinks cupboard and pulled out a bottle from the rear (while Mrs Reid gave me, the driver, a lot of attention and an orange juice).
He said to Stuart sen: “Listen, I've got something special here. It was given to me by a friend...” He seemed a little mysterious, reluctant to say. He held it up to the soft island light at a window, a straightforward bottle, no special shape, modest at least in any visual note of pedigree, but Irish, no less. Bejabbers. It was Midleton Very Rare. With one ‘d’, from East Cork. He gave it a critical look of restrained satisfaction, then a quick glance of respectful reluctance over his shoulder as if fearing some expert objection... but, as there was none ... he pronounced this his “favourite, this one was given to me by a freen, aye, you'll like this Stuart, ye’ll hae a wee sip...” With the idiom and etiquette observed, he poured with exquisite caution. This would take some time.
Well, they spent maybe two-and-a-half to three hours sampling the contents of Jimmy’s cabinet. If they didn't “demolish” the Glenfiddich and the Glenmorangie too, they weren’t the incorrigible ironclad Clydesiders we took them to be. I was in the Press Bar often enough sitting between Jimmy and Willie McIlvanney to see malt whiskies treated with copious respect by those two; and dad you know about.
It took me an age to conjure the initial potation from the chimerical mists of memory. It came to me gradually by elimination in brief messages between us about the Socialism outline. I kept thinking of Jameson’s and Middleton’s, a distraction, until it came... Midleton. Mind you, I’m not certain I’m not fooling myself through the brilliance of enforced imagination. Frankly, they would’ve swigged rotgut in a tumbledown shebeen if they had to (I think), but they didn’t have to, and had the best. The puff stands.
Neil McKinlay: You’ve given me a hankering to try some Midleton Whiskey! I think it needs to be Midleton Very Rare! I’ll toast faither with my first slug of it.
I have tried Jameson Irish whiskey, and Dubliner, and maybe others. However, unlike the Scots, for some reason the Irish give their whisky an extra run through the Coffey Kettle or something. It all makes it too smooth for my liking, “waattery” in other words, like when good whisky is diluted.
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| Neil, Stuart sen., & Stuart jun. Many moons ago at Arrochar? |
Anyway, it must have been enthralling being a fly on that Bute wall, watching the interactions and listening to the interlocutions of these two disillusioned Commies drowning their sorrows, discussing their evanishing utopia as it drifted down the Clyde, nay, as it was sinking into its watery grave. Aye, also toasting the immortal memory of the Vale’s Red Belt with a belt of whisky.
And how could you stand sitting idly by? You know that one cannot enter into the inner sanctum of whisky blethers with a mere orange juice in one’s hand. Nay, you remain as you are, banished to the outer courts! Your self-controlled self-disciplined self-restraint is to be greatly commended! Avoiding the hypnotic allure of the golden elixir, and, resisting the whispered in your ear temptations of John Barleycorn, is wordy o’ a grace as lang’s my airm.
Thanks for being there.
[1] James
Reid was a Scottish trade union activist, orator, politician and journalist
born in Govan, Glasgow. His role as spokesman and one of the leaders in the
Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in between June 1971 and October 1972 attracted
international recognition. He later served as Rector of the University of
Glasgow and subsequently became a journalist and broadcaster. Formerly a member
of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Reid was later a Labour Party member.
After supporting the Scottish Socialist Party in the late 1990s, he joined the
Scottish National Party in 2005 and fully supported Scottish independence. He
died in 2010 after a long illness. Wikipedia
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