In a sneaky ploy designed to avoid doing any actual school work, my class of Australian 15-year-olds often ask me about Scotland.
This, of course, is not a modern tactic. I can remember doing a similar thing with my teachers, way back in the last century: launch the old duffer on his favourite topic and then sit back and do nothing while he drones on about Beatlemania, the Lisbon Lions -- or in the case of Nosey Parker, our geography teacher, who was about 110 in the shade, the Relief of Mafeking, as told by the bloke who taught Baden Powell the words to Ging Gang Goolie.
My students have worked out what my pet topic is and subsequently, when they feel like a bit of a rest, they regularly pose the question: "Hey Jonno. Scotland. What’s it like?"
Well, where do you start? Naturally I could inform them of our amazing capacity for invention, citing the Television, the Telephone, Tarmacadam, the Steam Engine and the deep fried Mars Bar as prime examples.
Or I could invoke our national bard Rabbie Burns, reminding them how he wrote, amongst numerous other works, Auld Lang Syne, a little number he apparently rattled off in between exploring other more serious pursuits such as getting pie-eyed with his cronies and knocking up Ayrshire chambermaids.
But no, what I tell my students about (as their eyes glaze over and they start to text their mates in the next classroom) is how certain distinctly downbeat elements of Scotland -- depressing things like the crap weather, economic hardship and Susan Boyle -- are successfully met with and then defeated by our unique and occasionally hard-edged sense of humour.
Typified by people like Tam. Tam was a bloke I knew in Glasgow in the late 80s and, to put it mildly, he was no paragon of virtue. A drinker, a smoker and a bit of an all-round bad boy, Tam didn’t really fit the bill as a decent role model but, on the other hand, his patter was magic.
I remember Tam coming into the pub one night with a small plastic shovel -- a pooper scooper -- I found out later he’d happened across it in the street outside. "What you got that for, Tam, was the question from the lieges. " Bought yourself a dug, have you?"
"Naw, not me," came the reply. "I don’t have a dug but my neighbour’s bought one of them rottweilers and every time I see it, I **** myself."
Then there was the time, at a Social Security Appeals Tribunal -- and I know this is true because as his representative, I was there -- when he posed what he called "a wee riddle" to an official of the DHSS.
"Hey, listen to this," he said, to the women who was known as Hitler-in-Knickers, possibly because she sported a toothbrush moustache, but more likely as a result of her obsessive, somewhat fanatical modus operandi.
"Listen to this. A wumman can make it, she can take it, but she cannae dae it," said the bold boy. "Work that wan oot, missus."
Probably expecting something unacceptably ribald -- I know I was -- Mrs Hitler completely ignored him, but that didn’t bother Tam. "Pea soup," he said, by way of an explanation. "Get it eh? Pea soup. She can make, take it, but she cannae dae it."
Later on, after I’d stopped laughing, Tam told me his strategy was to disarm Hitler-in-Knickers, put her off her guard, which it certainly did. And the appeal was ultimately successful so maybe he knew exactly what he was doing, though I doubt it.
So, in an attempt to bring young Australians up to speed with the essence of Scotland, I tell them tales of Tam and other patter merchants of my experience.
It’s crucial information which ticks all the boxes, really gives them the inside track on another culture, sheds some light on a country on the opposite side of the world.
Highly educational, I’d say. And, of course, they show their appreciation of this enlightenment in the time honoured school student manner.
By yawning, ignoring me, looking out of the window and asking highly relevant questions such as: "Hey Jonno, is it smoko yet?"
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