The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Anne Kinnes, CEO at Perth’s Black Watch Castle and Museum, shares some thoughts...
Michael Alexander speaks to rapper and social commentator Darren Mcgarvey as he visits Scotland’s oldest council estate in Dundee and confronts the existence and impact of social class today in a new TV series
Q Where in the world are you happiest?
A I would struggle to choose between my home county of Yorkshire or my home for the last 28 years, Fife.
Q Favourite part of Scotland to explore? A East Neuk.
Q What was your Plan B, in terms of a career?
A I didn’t have one – I always wanted to work in hospitality. But any other career would have had to include talking to people.
Q Which musicians, alive or dead, inspire you? A Eva Cassidy – her voice is beautiful and her songs have such meaning.
Q Your house is on fire, what one item do you save?
A My dogs Max and Millie – I know that is two items but, like children, you cannot have a favourite!
Q How has lockdown affected you?
A It has been life changing and a time for reflection. My dad passed away on Christmas Day 2019 and Mum is in Yorkshire and I want to see her and all my family – life is short, and family is precious.
Q Last meal on Earth?
A Halibut sauce.
Q Dream dinner party guests?
A Quite David. with hollandaise simply my husband
Q The first thing you would do if you won £1 million?
A Drink Krug Champagne and ponder what to do next.
Q If you could rule for a day, what would be the first thing you would do? A Listen before making any changes.
Q Tell us something about yourself that most people don’t know?
A I learned to play the saxophone (badly) age 40.
Q Favourite holiday destination? A Kalkan, Turkey.
Q What was the last you read?
A Life in Pieces O’porter. book
– Dawn
Q If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?
A Cheese.
Q Describe yourself as if you were a fine wine? A Complex, balanced and improves with age.
Q What makes you happy?
A Time spent with precious people in my life – family and good friends.
Q What makes you sad? A People being unkind to each other.
Q What was the first album you ever bought? A UB40 Signing Off (from Woolworths).
If you could go back to any point in history, what would it be?
Q
A The 1930s – the women’s fashion was so glamorous.
Q What is the best advice you have ever received, and who did it come from?
A Work hard, believe in yourself and treat people well; all from my gran.
Q What do you do to unwind?
A Wine, candles and music.
Q What are you proudest of?
A In my professional life bringing the Poppies Weeping Window to The Black Watch Castle and Museum, the only place in mainland Scotland. It was such an achievement for all involved.
Q If you could turn back the clock what one thing would you change?
A Be more confident earlier in my life.
Q What advice would you give to your younger self?
A Believe in yourself.
Q Theme song for life?
A Lean on me – Bill Withers.
your
Q What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do?
A Making unpopular decisions – even if they the right thing to do.
Q Hardest thing you’ve had to give up?
A My family during pandemic. this are
Q Could you save someone’s life if they were dying in the street? A Yes.
Q Do you give money to beggars?
A No – food.
I would give them
Q What was the worst punishment you had as a child?
A To be sent to my bedroom away from people – I’m a real people person.
Q What’s your motto? A Be kind and work hard.
Saturday, February 13, 2021 | 7
S ocial activist Darren Mcgarvey has spent a lifetime railing against the middle classes.
All his life he’s been talking about poverty and all his life people have been insisting that social class is no longer relevant. He knows it is relevant because he’s experienced it on both sides of the tracks.
But the rapper and social commentator, who grew up amid a sea of poverty in Pollok, Glasgow, to become, by 18, “another angry, confused young man with alcohol and drug problems”, says he’s at a “crossroads” and is now starting to question his own social class.
That’s because following the publication of his 2018 Orwell prize-winning book Poverty Safari, the father of two young children has been afforded the very “middle class” lifestyle he’s spent much of his life slagging off.
The experience has even found its way into his music under the name Loki, with his latest song Run To It not just exploring his journey but the way he feels he’s been perceived by others throughout it, mainly because of his background – the way he looks, his accent and the way he dresses.
Now, in his latest TV series Class Wars, Darren roves Scotland – including visits to Dundee and Angus – where he continues exploring just how entrenched social class in Scotland remains. Exploring whether we are all born equal or whether some are born more equal than others, he speaks to members of the population to see how closely – or otherwise – their notions match his own.
In an interview with The Courier, Darren explained how a visit to the Logie estate in Dundee – Scotland’s oldest housing scheme – and to the Rottal estate in Angus, underlined “that our social class, and where we live, has a massive effect on our destinies”.
“I was fascinated by the Logie estate in Dundee because officially it’s the first housing scheme, over 100 years old,” he says.
“What you notice about it is that a lot of thought has gone into its design, which is indicative of the decline in town planning and community planning subsequent to that.
“There’s a plaque right at the top of the estate that commemorates it officially being opened. It actually uses the language of class
in it. ‘This Logie estate was created for the benefit of the working classes in the British state’.
“It shows class was a live issue something openly discussed until recently in our social history.
“But the language has just been eradicated because it’s a dangerous topic for people in power to evoke.”
Darren says he was struck by how on the surface, and given its age, there are problems with the structural side of the Logie estate.
However, on the whole, it strikes him as a “lower middle class community”.
“That’s partly because of the people that live in it,” he says.
“What that tells you is the value of a home – the general tone of a community – is not judged by the quality of the housing or the design, it’s by the social status of the people who occupy the houses.
“That really shows you the power of class when you have lots of people of one class living in one place and lots in another.
“The whole tone and general conception to the wider community of the status entailed by that is absolutely determined by the social status of the people who live there.
“It’s quite odd when you think about it. I read a thing recently that house prices can be affected by things like just being close to a Greggs bakery because Greggs is associated with the working classes like pastry and sausage rolls. It’s mental that something like that can suppress house prices!”
In 2019, Darren, a former drug user, whose mum died of alcohol-related problems, and very revealed he was “shocked” by the scale of the drugs crisis when he visited Dundee for a previous documentary series.
The first episode of that series focused on Dundee, which in 2018 celebrated the opening of the V&A as it also became ‘Europe’s drug death’ capital.
While the drug deaths statistics in the city continue to be shocking, it was the desperate human stories behind the numbers that really hit home as Darren immersed viewers in a “world defined by poverty”.
This latest series doesn’t go into issues of poverty as such. But Darren insists that issues of class and poverty are often deeply entwined.
“One of the reasons that any real action has not been taken by the drugs death crisis is that by and large – maybe excluding a couple of people – it’s not the children or family of the political classes that are affected by this, so there’s an issue of proximity there straight away, which is absolutely central to understanding class inequality,” he says.
“When people who are in charge of managing social change have no experience of social problems then they have to fill in the gaps with advice from experts who often know just as little as they do except in theory.
“Unfortunately, history shows that for every bit of progress we’ve had – whether subsequent attempts at regeneration in Edinburgh or Glasgow – we see some of these communities need to be demolished in 10 or 15 years despite being designed by the best architects, despite all these promises of a utopian future coming into view.
“They always attribute that to the poverty. They never attribute that to the blind spots of being affluent and in many ways being insulated from social reality that’s experienced by many people outside that privileged bubble.
“That’s why this series – and I was only interested in doing it for the opportunity to explore this – is not just about poor people, it’s not about poverty – it’s about the flip side of the inequality coin. It’s about challenging viewers about their assumption about themselves.”
During his trip to a grouse shoot at the Rottal estate in Angus – 30 miles away from Dundee but a world away from urban Scotland in other terms – Darren discovered that the answer to land inequality might not be as simple as he once thought. In fact, he was surprised how well he got on with the landowner.
“I went up there to grandstand for the cameras but I was quite disarmed by what I saw,” he says. “When I met this guy, he was very charming, very genteel, a very thoughtful and sensitive man, interested in nature. He didn’t inherit his acreage.
“That doesn’t change the broader realities of class that one person owns a lot of land. That’s unfair. Take recent issues at Langholm. The idea that the economic and social fate of so many can lie with an owner who inherited. But when you get up close, it can often be more complicated.”
These experiences have further made him think about the class perception “crossroads” he faces in his own life.
“Following my book publication, if you are basing it on the last few years pre-pandemic on money you make and privileges you enjoy, I was falling temporarily into the upper middle class economically,” he says.
“That’s quite a dramatic and disorienting ascent up the social ladder and one that took me a while to deal with and partly led to me ending up in rehab.
“When I say all this, I’m not living a luxurious lifestyle. I still live in East Kilbride in the same house we lived in before the book came out. But we are not exposed to the same financial anxieties or the same having to tighten our belts or benefit sanctions that people in work poverty have to deal with every day. There is a certain tension – you feel within yourself you’d like to explore this new life and the opportunities and enjoy the success, but then there’s also this fear that, in doing so, you may lose part of yourself in the process of doing that.
“In the process of getting up and getting on, you may inadvertently forget where you came from. I think for me, remembering where you come from is not just important in terms of the vanity of it.
“I often sometimes imagine the people of Pollok who know me angrily rejecting me because they see me as some kind of sellout or something. But a lot of that is in my imagination. If you actually were to get up and on and move into a more middle class community, it’s not long before you forget what it’s like to struggle and then you start to internalise all these daft ideas that explain it for middle class people like ‘meritocracy’ and ‘poverty of aspiration’.
“All these kind of comforting ideological opiates that are really just there to help people who enjoy advantages in life feel better that there are so many people out there who are f ***** !”
IT SHOWS CLASS WAS A LIVE ISSUE AND SOMETHING OPENLY DISCUSSED UNTIL VERY RECENTLY IN OUR SOCIAL HISTORY
Part two of Darren Mcgarvey’s Class Wars airs on February 16 at 10pm on BBC Scotland.
E ven though life has ground to a halt again, our traditions bravely trundle on.
Tomorrow, it’s the turn of Valentine’s Day to be celebrated under lockdown restrictions in Scotland as well as the rest of the UK and around the world. There may not be a lot to love just now, but cards, flowers and possibly even some chocolates, will be winging their way to recipients in the hope of injecting a little joy and happiness into the enduring doom and gloom.
One thing’s for certain, the festival has been marked throughout many significant world events – just like the one we’re presently experiencing – having originated in the 5th Century.
Now a global commercial phenomenon, as with many of our celebrations, Valentine’s Day is a mixture of pagan and Christian celebrations.
The identity of the original Saint Valentine remains unconfirmed as there were at least two Christian martyrs of this name in the 3rd Century under the rule of the Roman Emperor Claudius II Gothicus.
Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire until the Emperor Constantine legalised the religion during his reign in the 4th Century. In time, it became the official belief system of the empire.
One story goes that Saint Valentine was a priest who continued to marry couples in secret after Claudius II outlawed marriage (because young, married men apparently made poor soldiers). Before he was executed, he befriended his jailer’s daughter – they may even have fallen in love. He signed a letter to her, “from your Valentine”.
Martyrs were sainted – or canonised – by upholders of the Christian faith to recognise the suffering they had endured for their religion. Saint Valentine eventually became known as the patron saint of lovers, epilepsy sufferers, and beekeepers.
We all know the Romans liked to enjoy themselves and they celebrated a festival in mid-february called Lupercalia. It heralded the impending arrival of spring – so it’s just as well they weren’t holding their feasts in Scotland.
Lupercalia was based around fertility rituals and men and women were paired off with names being drawn from an urn. In the year 469, Pope Gelasius I replaced it with the feast of Saint Valentine, making it fall into Christian calendar.
Throughout the Middle Ages, Valentine’s Day became known as day of romance and, by the 1500s, formal messages of love and affection were exchanged along with gifts.
By the Victorian era, the use of printing technology as well as the ability to post cards meant Valentine’s greetings became more widespread. Cards dating from the 19th Century depicted Cupid, the winged god of love, as well as hearts, flowers and even lace.
These days, red roses – as well as other floral arrangements – are given as a sign of love and affection and, once again, the origins of this tradition can be traced back to Greek and Roman times, when the lives of mythological beings explained the phenomena of the natural world.
Kevin Frediani, curator of Dundee University Botanic Garden, says: “Red is the colour of the heart but, interestingly, white roses are the ones that are meant to send a message. If you’ve ever been given a white rose, it’s meant to mean ‘I’m the one for you’.
“I think the origin of roses was picked up in the late Middle Ages but if you go back even further, roses are associated with Aphrodite, who is the goddess of love in Greek mythology.
“When I did botanical Latin, red plants were associated with Adonis. You often get this as a Latinised name, either at the beginning or the end, and that’s the blood of Adonis and the love of Aphrodite.
“If you study botanical Latin there’s a hidden language that goes in there. For example, ‘lutea’ means yellow.
“For those of us working in the trade, there’s meaning behind who found the plant, a story that was associated. Many of these botanists seem to be romantic because they peel back the layers to Greek or Roman history.
“I didn’t think I would learn all of that when I started in horticulture but over the years you learn more and more.”
Kevin says the gardens remain open to those living in Dundee, providing muchneeded access to a local outdoor space during lockdown. Today and tomorrow, staff will be in the Valentine’s spirit, giving away free red roses to couples who visit.
Kevin goes on: “This is about rewarding good behaviour and sharing hope for those people who regularly visit the garden as part of their lockdown access to green spaces for health and wellbeing.”
Aphrodite was the Greek goddess of love and her son was the winged god, Eros. They became known as Venus and Cupid in Roman mythology.
Gods and goddesses were usually born in spectacular fashion and Aphrodite emerged fully-grown from the foam of the sea, carried to the shore on a large shell. We still use the term aphrodisiac today – especially when describing seafood.
Greek and Roman deities weren’t ones to behave themselves and so were often placed in a variety of unfortunate situations. Aphrodite had her fair share, including witnessing the tragic death of her lover, Adonis.
Adonis was a handsome young mortal who had won her heart. One day, while he was out hunting, he was attacked and killed by a wild boar. All roses had been white until this day, but as Aphrodite ran to her lover’s aid, she pricked her foot on the flower’s thorn and her blood turned its petals red. The red rose has represented passion ever since.
Interestingly, anemones also feature in this tale of woe, with legend stating the delicate flowers sprang from blood of Adonis as he lay dying. The word Adonis is still a term used to describe an attractive man.
And how can we forget the famous flying infant with his bow and arrow? Aphrodite had a number of children and one was Eros – who was renamed Cupid by the Romans. His origins are uncertain and one story goes that his father was the divine winged messenger Hermes (or Mercury in Roman times).
He started out being represented as a youth but gradually became the younger version we now know today. He too was a god of love and it was said a wound from one of his arrows could induce love. Cupid fell in love with the beautiful mortal Psyche. But that’s another tale.
Roses also feature as symbols of love in historic art and literature. Shakespeare wrote in Romeo and Juliet: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.” While Scotland’s Bard Robert Burns famously penned: “O my Luve’s like a red, red rose, / That’s newly sprung in June.”
Kevin Frediani says: “In terms of the gift of time that’s put into growing something, then given to somebody else – this in itself is beautiful. Also, the rose has a scent with it, which gives a lasting connection.
“It’s almost like a living work of art. As it sits on your mantelpiece it provides a memory of that person but it always brings a smile in terms of the deeper memory, the connection with nature, it’s a nice, happy experience.
“It’s not only roses that have been used over time. If you look at the modern age there’s all sorts of things put into bouquets which come from around the world.”
Kevin reveals that most of the flowers we give and receive are imported: “There’s even a carbon footprint on your roses that’s 3kg per rose.
“They’re grown in Kenya then transported out and go through Holland as the Dutch have the world market, so nearly all cut flowers go there – even if they’re grown somewhere like Kent.
“There is a growing native cut-flower industry in a bid to try to reduce the carbon footprint of cut flowers.”
Kevin says his contacts in the cut flower industry also note purple orchids in pots, sunflowers, pink tulips, carnations, alstroemeria and white daisies as popular choices for Valentine’s Day.
Meanwhile, Dundee University Botanic Garden will be doing its bit to spread some cheer this weekend.
“It’s the garden sharing a little love around the city in the best way we know how – with locally sourced flowers,” says Kevin.
IF YOU’VE EVER BEEN GIVEN A WHITE ROSE, IT’S MEANT TO MEAN, ‘I’M THE ONE FOR YOU’
The Dundee University Botanic Garden is open from 10am-3pm and tickets must be purchased in advance. For more details, visit dundee.ac.uk/ botanic/ or call 01382 381190.
Please observe government coronavirus safety guidelines in all outdoor activities. Visitors should not travel from outwith the Dundee city area.
V isitors to the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh might be familiar with the oil painting Ville-d’avray: Entrance to the Wood by 19th Century French landscape and portrait painter Jeanbaptiste Camille Corot. Corot’s landscapes strongly influenced young Impressionists, and the fresh colour and deftly observed play of light and shadow on the rutted track in this particular piece make it one of Corot’s most attractive landscapes.
St Andrews University-educated writer, lecturer, poet and editor David Lorimer remembers being captivated by the picture on a visit to Edinburgh during the 1970s.
Now, more than 40 years on, he’s chosen it as the perfect image to adorn the cover of his new book, A Quest for Wisdom: Inspiring Purpose on the Path of Life.
The book brings together 25 of his highly acclaimed essays, written since 1979, which examine the nature of life and death, questions of meaning and purpose, and the challenge of how we can live more harmoniously together.
“I’ve always loved Impressionist paintings,” explains David in an interview with The Courier from his home in south-west France. “There’s a small collection in Edinburgh. “I remember seeing Ville-d’avray: Entrance to the Wood – probably when I was a student in St Andrews in the early ’70s.
“I was struck by it. I like standing in front of these paintings for one hour just contemplating them.
“Because this book is Inspiring Purpose on the Path of Life, I thought a path going into the wood had a fantastic relationship with what I was writing about.
“It’s a little bit indirect but it’s also a very beautiful painting.”
A former pupil of Eton who went on to prep school in Edinburgh, David, now 68, studied French and economics plus German and philosophy at St Andrews University.
After graduation, he “followed expectation” and went into merchant banking.
However, after two years he decided it “wasn’t a suitable career” for him and jacked it in.
Inspired by a visit to a friend from St Andrews who was teaching at Charterhouse, David thought this looked like a “very good way of life” and, after some investigations, and a year at Cambridge doing an education course, he became a teacher of philosophy and modern languages at Winchester College.
However, after six “very happy and productive and enjoyable years” at Winchester, he was looking to become more freelance and have more control over his time.
That’s when an opportunity came up with the Scientific and Medical Network, which he’s been working for now for nearly 35 years.
David’s CV charts the trajectory he’s been on since.
He is president of the Wrekin Trust and chief consultant of Character Education Scotland.
He is also a former president of the Swedenborg Society and vice-president of the International Association for Near-death Studies (UK).
He is the author and editor of more than a dozen books, most recently The Protein Crunch (with Jason Drew) and A New Renaissance (edited with Oliver Robinson).
He has a long-standing interest in the perennial wisdom and has translated and edited books about the Bulgarian sage Peter Deunov.
His book Prophet for our Times was reissued in September 2015 with a foreword by Dr Wayne Dyer.
He is a founding member of the International Futures Forum and was editor of its digest, Omnipedia – Thinking for Tomorrow.
A member of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club at St Andrews since 1975, he was also a trustee of the St Andrews Prize and a Churchill Fellow.
Reflecting back over his career, the essays contained in his new publication take him right back to that period in the mid-1970s when he was between banking and teaching.
Having already had a student job as a guide in Champagne cellars during the mid-70s, he spent a year abroad in France and Germany working in the wine regions and as a furniture van delivery driver.
Armed only with his car and four boxes of books, it’s the reading he did at that time that formed the basis of a lot of the essays which followed.
Now, David hopes that A Quest for Wisdom will inspire readers, as Dr Albert Schweitzer put it, in our common task “to become more finely and deeply human”.
The essays are divided into three sections – science, spirituality and meaning; death, consciousness and transformation; and then responsibility and ethics.
There’s an entry point for everybody, he says, because some people will be less interested in one of these aspects than others.
Asked, however, if he’s been successful after a lifetime searching for wisdom, David replies: “It’s a very good question!”
He adds: “I think one needs to distinguish between cleverness and wisdom. Because wisdom for me is something that you distil from your life experience. It’s not only about reading books although you can of course glean wisdom from books. I think the search goes on!
“But recently I’ve come across the work of a man called Jeffery Martin. He runs something called a finders course. This is a kind of deliberate positioning of finders as opposed to seekers.
“The quest for wisdom implies that you are seeking but the finders implies these people have found what they are looking for, which is a state of consciousness in which they feel contentment, happiness, maybe joy and living entirely in the present moment.
“I’m still in a seeking mode if you like, although I have been lucky enough to have gleaned a lot of experience along the way.”
David says its clear “purpose” in life can come in many forms and this underpins the work he does with young people through Inspiring Purpose. Supported by the Dundeebased Northwood Trust, Inspiring Purpose enables 10-16-year-olds to “explore their character, ideals and values through a unique template using web-based resources”.
“What I’m trying to do there is give them a framework in which they can discover what’s already within themselves,” he says.
“The real meaning of education is to draw that out. I have a template which asks them about themselves in terms of their qualities, what they are good at, what they’d like to develop in themselves.
“And then I ask them what inspires them or what project inspires them; I ask them questions about what they want to do, what they want to achieve in their life.
“In the current moment, we are doing sustainable futures. What do they think are the best policies for a sustainable future? What are they themselves going to do about it?”
When discussing “purpose”, David differentiates between the metaphysical and a deeper “knowing” about the purpose of life.
“A lot of people working in science will say life is all just an accident,” he says.
“Whereas if you look at the deepest experiences that people have, such as in near-death experiences, then you find there’s an ‘intelligence’ behind the universe or an intelligence which is consciousness with a capital C.
“It’s also imbued with love and wisdom. And that’s universally what people say when they reach into the deeper structures of reality. It’s that kind of sense of connection for me which is the sense of purpose.
“I’m talking about that deep sense of connection and intrinsic worthwhileness – that there is an underlying purpose to the whole human existence and that’s what I would argue for.”
With this in mind, David explores the realm beyond practical knowledge.
It’s more what he would call “direct knowing”, which in the mystical tradition would be called Gnosis, where you “become one” with what you are knowing.
“If you were trying to understand that at another level,” he says, “it’s like contemplating a flower – not observing a flower and dissecting it – so that while you are contemplating it, you are ‘at one’ with the flower. That’s what I mean by contemplation.
“In the western philosophical tradition it’s actually recognised as a higher form of knowing and for me, what it all comes down to are these principles of love and wisdom.”
A LOT OF PEOPLE WORKING IN SCIENCE WILL SAY LIFE IS ALL JUST AN ACCIDENT
A Quest for Wisdom: Inspiring Purpose on the Path of Life by David Lorimer, is published on March 25 by Aeon Books, £24.99.
T aking a snowy stroll in St Andrews, Bill Shackman looks to all intents and purposes like anyone else out enjoying the crisp winter weather. The affable north-amercian, who has lived in the university town with his wife Emily Michelson and their children for 11 years, is in fact filling me in on the details of his dramatic heart attack survival story, which took place just a few months previously.
On December 8 last year, Bill, 47, was surfing at East Sands when he collapsed on the beach. “I have no memory from the day,” he says, “just a hazy recollection of the waves at West Sands looking too dangerous to enter. I am an experienced and cautious paddleboarder who usually surfs in smaller waves on West Sands. When the conditions get bigger the waves have a much nicer shape at East Sands. I was excited to see whether the morning would live up to the great surf forecast for that day.
“All I remember of what happened is a vague feeling of light-headedness. I have since heard from others what they remember. A friend reported seeing me surfing in big waves out past the pier at East Sands.
“Other surfers remember greeting me as I came out of the water. I looked fine. A group of students reported that I was standing on the shore, smiling; watching other surfers catching waves.
“Apparently I looked like I might go in for more. It’s a good thing I didn’t. I collapsed on the shore a few seconds later. I must have known something was wrong in time to get out of the water,” he reflects.
In fact, Bill had suffered a heart attack brought on by an undiagonsed condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), an inherited disease of the heart muscle, where the muscle wall of your heart becomes thickened.
Luckily for him, he was surrounded by people who knew exactly how to respond to the situation.
“I know that I owe my life to those who gave me CPR and used the nearby defibrillator to revive me,” explains Bill.
“Lewis Hamilton, a fellow surfer, passed by just before I collapsed. Incredibly he had
CPR training at work just the week before. Scott Mitchell, a surfer affectionately known as Mitch, also noticed me collapse.
“His training immediately kicked in and they immediately began chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth. Another surfer who is also a doctor, Oliver, noticed what was happening and helped as well. A surfer who used to work as a fireman knew where the public defibrillator was.
“I am so grateful to the entire community of people who were concerned and aware enough to quickly offer what help they could.
“Bystanders provided scissors to remove my wetsuit, a towel to provide a makeshift pillow; an acquaintance helped the police identify me.
“I feel like the whole community came together to keep me alive and I will never be able to fully repay them.”
The air ambulance was called to assist but Bill’s condition was stabilised enough to allow him to be transferred to Ninewells Hospital by road. There, it was the next day before he became fully aware of what had happened and his initial confusion was most worrying for his wife, Emily.
“I was in my office at work, and got a cryptic call from campus security asking to come see me,” she explains.
“Then I saw I’d missed a call from campus police. I knew immediately that Bill must have had a surfing incident, and I assumed the absolute worst. The police were very kind and comforting. They stayed with me until the consultant was ready to meet me.
“I spent about 40 minutes with Bill. He didn’t have his short-term memory back, so we had the same conversation about 10 times. But it was a huge relief to see him, hear him, and touch him.”
Neither Bill nor Emily had heard of HCM but the diagnosis made sense once it came.
“I had known of a long list of aunts, uncles and cousins who had all suffered fatal heart attacks before their time. It is helpful to know which genetic condition explains this family trait.
“Before this event I thought I was perfectly healthy. I eat a vegetarian diet and regularly get five hours of cardiovascular exercise a week. I occasionally suffered shortness of breath but attributed that to simply getting older. But over time the wall in my heart separating the two lower ventricles was thickening and growing tougher, resulting in an obstruction that makes it difficult for my heart to pump enough blood.”
Although recovery from such a lifechanging event will be a slow process, Bill is taking gentle exercise every day and has the added reassurance that he has been prescribed medication to keep his heart rate slow and steady.
In the event that it does get dangerously high, “I have an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) in my chest. This device can regulate my heartbeat, slow my heart if it goes too fast and defibrillate my heart if it stops altogether.
“The initial soreness from the CPR and from the wound where the ICD was implanted have passed, though I still do not feel entirely at ease in my body. Lockdown has provided me with ample time to go for longer walks every day. I have ventured out further on my cycle a couple of times and even attempted a jog last week.”
Bill has also had the chance to meet the people who stepped in to help when he collapsed.
“I went to East Sands on Christmas Eve and met the crew of people who saved me. It was very emotional to be able to thank them, and I think it was a relief for them to see me doing well. Since I have no memory of the day it was very powerful to hear their accounts.
“I hope that some day after lockdown I will at least be able to buy them all a pint so that we can all share our stories. I also hope to surf again one day and truly look forward to seeing them out on the water.”
It’s no surprise that coming so close to dying has led Bill to reflect on his life and relationships. “This experience has forced me to evaluate what gives my life purpose and meaning,” he says.
“The prospect of nearly dying reveals the absurdity of judging a life in terms of aspirations and regrets. More important than what I have or have not done are the relationships that have given my life meaning.
“My absence would be meaningless to me but would leave a hole in the lives of those who love me. My children, my partner, my family, my friends are at the heart of who I am. Our relationships with others, even strangers, shape how we live our lives and what we get out of it.
“I find myself smiling and greeting passersby while out walking, waving to people who make eye contact while driving by in cars.
“Every exchange with another person seems like a chance to connect, to give and to receive. Though I think I understood that lesson before, this near-death experience has impressed upon me the preciousness and fragility of each of those opportunities.”
Once Bill was discharged, Emily remembers that, “Our kids really rose to the occasion,” says says proudly, “dealing with it in their own way but also just helping each other (and me) out. And we received so much support and sympathy, of all different kinds.
“I knew St Andrews had a great community, but I still was overwhelmed by all the love. People gave us food and flowers and practical help for as long as we needed. When Bill first got home, he was very weak, tired, and uncomfortable, but in good spirits. The very best part of his return home was that Mitch had dropped off a giant card for him the night before, signed by all the regular surfers. He’d organised it all. It was such an amazing thing to do. Bill opened it right away and was incredibly moved. I think we all cried a bit,” she admits.
The family is in regular touch with the specialist cardiac arrythmia nurse and Emily says: “I was really touched that she made a point to ask if I had any questions, as Bill’s partner. Friends and relatives continue to check in on us. As for our family, I think everybody has grown up a little, and has realised how precious our time together is. But sometimes someone is just grumpy (it’s lockdown) and normal – and that’s great too. I’m so glad we get to go back to normal and be the family we were before.”
MY ABSENCE WOULD BE MEANINGLESS TO ME BUT WOULD LEAVE A HOLE IN THE LIVES OF THOSE WHO LOVE ME. MY CHILDREN, MY PARTNER, MY FAMILY, MY FRIENDS ARE AT THE HEART OF WHO I AM
Support Bill and Emily’s campaign here: justgiving.com/fundraising/east-sands-heroism For further information on Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) visit www.bhf.org.uk The defibrilator at East Sands is managed by Operation Heart Start www.heartstart.org
S elf-care isn’t always easy, and can slip in times of increased stress.
Like many of us, actress Gillian Anderson knows she could do more to take care of herself, but that doesn’t mean it always happens.
When asked how she takes care of her mental health, she said: “I have increased my meditation, which always helps. The next thing to do is to not just talk about doing yoga, but actually do yoga.”
“The benefits of yoga are well documented; whether it’s helping to maintain suppleness, flexibility, strength or core,” says psychologist Dr Maryhan Baker. “Many celebrities hail their youthfulness to its powerful qualities. Yet very few people know the incredible power yoga can have in supporting mental wellbeing, and in the period of uncertainty we find ourselves in now, never has it been more worth a try.”
Here’s why you might want to make yoga a regular part of your routine.
IT CAN HELP YOU FOCUS ON YOURSELF
“We feel better if we look after ourselves, and even one yoga class can leave you feeling incredible,” says yoga and spiritual teacher Scott Hutchisonmcdade. “When we feel good, we tend to look after ourselves a little bit more.”
He refers to yoga as a practice of “selfcompassion and
16 | Saturday, February 13, 2021 self-kindness” – one that can help you send a signal to yourself that you’re worth taking care of. After just one session Hutchisonmcdade says it’s possible to “feel so good” that you’ll find yourself wanting to make “more positive choices in your life”.
IT CAN HELP REDUCE STRESS
In 2020 the ONS found over a third of UK adults said Covid-19 had affected their wellbeing. If you’re concerned about your mental health, always speak to your GP, but outside of that, yoga can be used to help manage and relieve stress levels. Hutchison-mcdade says yoga can help “reduce levels of cortisol, the stress hormone in our blood”, and notes breathwork is key to this. “It doesn’t have to be complicated, and anyone can practise breathwork at home,” he explains. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, Hutchison-mcdade recommends practising a simple box-breathing technique: inhaling for three counts, holding your breath for three, exhaling for three and holding for three – all through the nose. “That can really help reduce the stress response, it’s great for anxiety – it really steadies everything that we are,” he says.
Baker agrees. She says: “Yoga as a practice is all about connecting to your breath and coordinating movements with the inbreath and outbreath. The focus on the movements allows people to disengage from the internal dialogue which perpetuates a sense of overwhelm, criticism and stress. All of this can be lost as you turn inwards with your practise.”
She is also keen to point out yoga is for “anyone who wants to find moments of calm and connection. Stress levels are almost instantly reduced and people report a huge sense of calm afterwards.”
THE BENEFITS OF YOGA ARE WELL DOCUMENTED; WHETHER IT’S HELPING TO MAINTAIN SUPPLENESS, FLEXIBILITY, STRENGTH OR CORE
IT CAN FOSTER POSITIVE BODY IMAGE
Hutchison-mcdade says yoga can encourage a more positive relationship with your body. “It doesn’t take long for you to practise yoga to start feeling better about how you look and how you feel,” he explains. “It’s not about losing weight, it’s about that confidence – and that can really affect your mental health.”
IT CAN HELP YOU FEEL IN CONTROL
With Covid-related restrictions continuing for who knows how long, it’s easy to feel out of control. Adopting a yoga routine could help, as a way to take charge of a small – but meaningful – part of your life.
Hutchison-mcdade notes the hardest thing about yoga is often, “getting off the sofa to do it, especially in lockdown”. However, it’s worth it he says: “Routine is like getting a bit of control back, and it’s setting up for when we do return to a new normal – so that routine’s fantastic. After a month of practise you really will notice the benefits.”
If you, like Anderson, struggle with getting into a routine, Hutchison-mcdade says: “Start small and gentle; go on Youtube and do a small five to 10-minute gentle sequence. It doesn’t have to be this amazing yoga class that you’re jumping about or standing on your head, it just has to be something.”
“The practise doesn’t have to be a long one,” Baker agrees, “15 minutes is enough to benefit, and for many feels easier to engage with and practise than meditation alone.”
Actress Gillian Anderson, left, says yoga helps with her wellbeing. Right, yoga and spiritual teacher Scott Hutchison-mcdade.
I’ve just walked into the wrong house. Can’t explain it as we’ve lived here for almost 19 years but I’ve no other explanation, I must have. There are happy children here collaborating on the design of this week’s blackboard. There is a plan for tea. The dogs have been walked. The living room doesn’t look like a WWE wrestler and his mate have popped round for a rumble. School work has been done and there’s a wash on in the machine.
What. Is. Going. On??? I’m feeling a little freaked out by it if I’m honest. I’ve been told just to go through, sit down and get my column done. They will sort out the tea. Who are these people and what have they done with my teenagers? The mister is late shift and I’ve just come in from work so am I a bad mother for wondering what’s happened? OR what request am I about to be hit with? I never believed I was this cynical. I like to think not only is my glass half full but it’s also refillable. However, it’s not my first rodeo and I didn’t just float up the Tay in a bubble. My “mammy senses” are tingling and only time will tell which of my gang of three will burst first.
I dread the day when they realise that as a group they have more chance against me than individually, but for now I’m safe and can spot the weak cracks. Divide and conquer, I’m sure there will be an explanation soon enough.
Biggest kid is refreshing her email every half hour waiting on a much-coveted acceptance to university (or not). I don’t have any words of comfort or wisdom, I can’t quite remember the period between school and university. One second I was sitting exams in our high school gym hall and the next I was dancing on the sticky floor in the students’ union.
Lots of questions being asked about the practicalities of going to university and being a student. I’m not sure I’m entirely qualified to dole out advice. How do I explain that I can remember next to nothing from my degree but I am able to sing, word perfectly, the back catalogue of Phil Collins in the baking aisle of Tesco on a Wednesday morning?
Middle kid assures me all home schooling deadlines have been met and continues building a gargantuan castle on Minecraft. I suppose at a push this could be seen as an engineering assignment. Smallest kid has disappeared upstairs. I just cannot fathom what is going on one bit.
There has been one incident which has caused some discontent between the gruesome threesome. Middle dropped a pint glass of juice on the kitchen floor. It didn’t break but instead landed right way up and all the juice splashed back up soaking her glasses, the inside of her baseball cap, the cupboards, the worktop and even the ceiling. In our pre-pandemic world this might not seem like a big thing, however during Lockdown 2.0 this was huge. An event of epic proportions, momentous even. And nobody, not one of us, was there to see it. Not even the dogs.
We did have the good grace to check what the noise was and confirm she wasn’t injured. We even helped clean the ceiling. The other two could just not find it in their heart to forgive her. I couldn’t grasp the reason for this level of annoyance being conveyed. The juice wasn’t for them. It wasn’t even that big a cleaning job all things considered. So why this displeasure? Answer? £250. The grand sum of £250 seemingly to be split equally between them on any occasions such as this. Had they caught this on camera and sent the footage into You’ve Been Framed they’d have been quids in.
Accusations were thrown about until the realisation that middle couldn’t have done this if she’d tried dawned. And no, Mum was NOT in the mood to let them try to recreate it. The rage I feel when people are in the kitchen at the same time as me isn’t normal. Turning my precious kitchen into a film set isn’t on my Tuesday night agenda.