May 1999, An Independent Scotland - 2
By Ray Schaufeld
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Friday April 30
I had had my reasons for trying to hop it to Australia. 3 of them. Well ok not little Tammy-Jane. She was a sweet little baby with pink skin and golden hair and her own way of getting across the width of my sitting room. She lay on her back and flexed her back and leg muscles.
Babies are generally little and cute and parents are often able to handle their care.Laurence and Sarah had explained to me that Tammy sometimes struggled with her breathing but they had put a breathing monitor in her room and had visited the bishop to get given a prayer and a blessing. They had also decided to confine their smoking to their sitting room and not to smoke in their kitchen or in Tammy's room.
Mothers are not always as sweet and lovable than their offspring. Mothers can often be good looking and even the plain ones can appear to have good reasons for the things they do but sometimes their actions are not pretty,
Take Vera my own mother. I had split with Laurence 11 years ago when I was expecting Lola, my elder daughter when the good times had run out. I saw the direction in which things were going and I had no wish to hang about and become a downtrodden battered wife in Craigmillar, Edinburghs' worst slum. I hopped it to Stirling where I had friends. Before I escaped Laurence had copied all the addresses and phone numbers out of my phone book including my mothers' address and the number of the English Department of Stirling Uni where I was a M. Litt student.
I told my mother that if ever Laurence phoned she was to put the phone straight down. Always ready to seize any chance to stir and meddle she told Laurence that she would welcome phone calls from him at any time because her phone could be an 'emergency number' This is how the three of them had been able to beat a path to my door. Vera had helpfully supplied them with the new address of my lovely new flat with Edinvar Housing Association,.Not straight away, she kept Laurence dangling till Lola was set to go to Boroughmuir, a good inner city comprehesive, and little Jess had got a part time place lined up for nursery school.
Yes, the snake bided her time before striking. Every time.
As for Sarah, Laurence's new little teenage wife with her tall slender figure and her long chestnut curls, pretty as a picture with one baby in the buggy and the new one on it's way.... well I had a problem with her smoking. Not the fags, my problem was with whom she offered them to ..
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Want One?'
That was Sarah offering her fags, in my sitting room the first time we met.
She would wait till there was a tense lull in the conversation between Laurence and herself. She would then pull a fag halfway out of the packet, lean forward and offer them.
To Lola!
Lola was eleven.
Sarah explained:
'Ma uncle did that to me when I was her age and a' kept saying no. Then when a' was fourteen a' said yes and I've been smoking ever since!'
(and what else did her uncle do to her?)
I never said that. Neither did I say 'Just because your uncle was a bloody fool do you have to be one too?'
Both these replies had come to me after she had left, together with the rest of her family. At the time I had simply vowed never to let them into my sitting room again. It wasn't the fact that I was an ex-smoker. Because it was a freezing January day I had not made them go outside to smoke.
It was Sarah's attiitude. Massively wrong. Abusive towards my daughter, myself and my flat in equal measures. Yuk!
They were a odd couple anyhow with their age gap and difference in looks. Laurence was 4ft 11 and 44 years old. In my more mellow days with him I thought he looked like a little garden gome. Sarah was about 5ft 7 and 19 years old. She would have been even better looking if her face was not so tense.
Laurence had always wanted to be a husband and a father but I was not sure if theirs would be a lasting relationship. I also suspected that if they fought amongst themselves then my daughter would get caught in the crossfire.
Anyway that's them away now. When Jess goes to sleep and Lola is playing with little Kris' indoor rabbits downstairs. I get down to the business in hand.
A New Scottish Assembly - Want One?
Want it or not, and some people simply see it as a big waste of money, we are going to get our Assembly and as the Presiding Officer in the Cowgate on the Polling Day it is my job to study the training material so that I know what I am doing.
B*gger it there's heaps of stuff to read and it can wait a day or 2. I settle for phoning Wilma my childminder who agrees to takes Jess for the long hours of Polling Day plus the time It will take me to get to her big house in Morningside with Jess in the carrier on the back of my bike. I shall be paying her the going rate of £5. per hour from 6am to 11pm. She only ever takes Jess annywhere if she is doing somethinng with her own children so it's easy money for old Wilma. Mind you I'm getting over £!3 per hour - my best pay ever!
Paula downstairs, my friend who I always take for granted, will be taking Lola after school.
I'm having a early night. Paula, her man Cam and little Kris have all gone up Arthur's seat as tonight is Beltane. All the local Pagans, Druids and friends of the aforesaid gather up the top of Arthur's seat at sunset and stay all night to welcome in the sunrise. My friend Barbara always goes too.
As always.I plan to get it together to go up there next year.
Meanwhile, 2 days later
Sunday 2 May
I study my training maual for presiding officers.
They certainly cover all the angles! 'In the rare event of a voter appointing a proxy who is illiterate' Unlikely. The voter would have to be a person who was either bedridden or out of the constituency on the day. They would want to vote and they would have no friends who could read or write who could vote on their behalf. Perhaps their proxy friend who came along might conceal the fact that they could not read or write and then ask for my help at the polling station. Back in Poland my father's grandmother could not read or write as she was a woman from a poor family in a patriarchal society. She was a concealment artist of this type for her whole life.
I don't study the video that accompaies the training manual. My video player/recorder is in a freight box somewhere between Melbourne and Edinburgh.
I wonder who my work colleagues will be. Perhaps they will be people who work in schools and libraries as these places are always polling stations so they will have the day off work.
Anyhow the job looks straightforward. It's a clerical production line with a bit of extra stuff at the start and end of the day.
And voters don't need to read or write that well. They make their X in the box and they have the party colours on their ballot paper, to lead them.
My training manual does not say that BTW.
I'm all set now for the big day next Thursday. The historic day when Scotland first votes for it's members in it's very own Scottish Assembly.
(to be continued)
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Comments
I'd guess in today's parlance
I'd guess in today's parlance, Lawrence was a stalker.
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