YE BANKS AND BRAES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 4, 29 July 1946, Page 6

YE BANKS AND BRAES

BONNIE SCOTLAND BEATS ALL READ ABOUT THE DRUNKEN SCOTS By Geoffrey Webster. EDINBURGH, June 23. They are, if I may coin a phrase, killing us with kindness. At least I shall die happy. Last night in a state of collapse, I rolled into bed at 7 p.m., unable to face another dinner—the dinner of the Lord Provost, Magistrates and Council of the City of Edinburgh. My colleagues who had the. strength to attend tell me it was a magnificent affair, in a setting of magnificence, with much ritual of swords and maces and gold chains. But—l simply had to go to bed.

A week ago we left London in a super-Pullman train. A week ago—and what have we seen in that week? Catalogue:—Stratford-on-Avon, Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, the house in which William Shakespeare was born (restored 1861), Coventry for,a civic reception in the magnificent hall (I shall over use this world ‘magnificent,” but no matter), a tour of the bomb-blasted city, a walk through the ruins of the agesold cathedral, where the bishop stood before the improvised altar and offered prayers for the living and the dead, luncheon by the Council of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, a performance of “Love’s Labour Lost” in the Memorial The* atre—what a series of colourful scenes to remember forever!— afternoon tea with the actors and actresses still in their make-up and costumes, a whisky in the White Swan, an inn with an exterior and an interior like an Old World stagepiece, and thence to our luxury train for dinner. Poor Shawls We awoke in grimy, ugly, warscarred Manchester, Rain, a thin miserable drizzle of it. Long queues of women, waiting to buy food. Queues everywhere. Mostly old women, incredibly shabby old women, hopeless looking, many with poor shawls over their heads.

The Manchester Ship Canal—what a canal, and what a stink!—with a smaller canal crossing it at right angles at one point. The whole thing swings on a pivot to let ships by.

Barton Power Station —massive in conception, but never destroyed by the Nazis, though its destruction would have thrown the whole war effort of Manchester into the discard. Luncheon by the Ship Canal Company,- Then, a cotton mill, in which we could not hear what our guides were saying.

The noise was too much. I went back to the train, mising the longdrawn dinner by the Lord Mayor of Manchester. Miles and miles of walking through engineering workshops and steel factories on the following day. Here the thrust and drive of industrial England. Here life is real, life is earnest. Ye do not sing or whistle here. Manchester University in the afternoon. Much walking. A once-grey-now-soot-blackened pile, venerable as all great stone buildings are in this country. Dinner is offered by the Manchester Guardian and the Kelmsley Newspapers. I find myself allotted to the group bound for Kelmsley’s. What a party! From a journalistic viewpoint, one of the highlights of the conference.

No expense has been spared. On the card of every guest—and there was a huge dining hall filled with guests, newspapermen all—there was not only his name but the flag of the country! There were bowls of choice fruit, flown from France that afternoon. Banks of flowers, as for a society wedding. After one of the j oiliest dinners in history, we passed down in the lifts to the floors where newspaper production was well under way. Here we were presented with a special newspaper, filled with photographs of our own doings!

Little wonder that Sir Harry Brittain, founder of the Empire Press Union, had to round up the stragglers—the writer from a distant corner of the immense linotype room —and get them into the buses. Even so, the whole schedule of train running in that part of England was disrupted by the late departure of our residential train.

And on Thursday, Liverpool! Liverpool the incredible! Luxury and refinement incredible, side by side with squalor and filth of a kind we know nothing about in New Zealand. The luncheon by the Lord Mayor of Liverpool in the Town Hall ballroom, a place of gleaming, crystal chandeliers and luxurious furnishings, was one to remember forever. In the afternoon, not wishing to see a soap works, I broke off

again and rode miles along Liverpool’s celebrated “elevated,” which passes along the docks. Here much to sadden the heart. Mile upon mile of ruins. Bomber warehouses, burnt out hotels, ruins of mean shops. Visited (after a long, trying walk down a dirty wharf) the Durango, in which I came to England on top of 396,000 carcases of frozen mutton from Napier. Found this new ship horribly dirty, under partial refit, and busy loading English motor cars for Buenos Ayres. She will bring back frozen meat for lean and hungry England. Tartan Ribbon And on the morning of Friday, June 21, we woke up in Glasgow! Here we—the whole Press Conference, from Ceylon, Bermuda, Tasmania, Whangarei and where-have-you!—at once became Scotsmen. They tagged us with name-and-place cards, hanging them on our lapels by bits of tartan ribbon. Aye, an’ we’re all Scots still, ye ken? What hospitality! Cruise down the Clyde, in a lux-ury-excursion Cunard ship, to land at John Brown’s shipyard. Some day I shall write about that visit and that cruise. One could write a whole page. Here the ships that are names - to-conjure-with were built—and are building. Now —after a delightful train journey in yet another special train, from lovely Gourock—Glasgow, for a dinner provided by the Scottish Daily Newspaper Society. Whisky, the dinkum Scotch of Bonnie Scotland, free all day, now ran as freely as the water in the streams of this lovely land. On each side of me I found an apparently solemn and substantial gentleman of title, each bent on putting me under the table. Themselves, they (to use the hallowed phrase) drank the stuff like milk.

A great glow enveloped the whole conference! The dinner began to the skirl of pipes, as the haggis, the celebrated old-time haggis of fable and history, was carried in with ritual of waving whisky bottles, pipe-major style, stalwart piper, prouder than'any zoo peacock, and a tall chef in the habilments of his profession. Much ado of opening a bottle, of being toasted by the chairman, and of piper and chef being required to toss off at a gulp a sandbagging noodle of neat whisky that would have knocked out a sergeant of Independent Mounted Rifles at 600 yards! Then—bravely lads—more processional piping, and the guests eat up their haggis, quickly, while it is yet hot, and wash it down with a swig of neat whisky ceremonially served in small glasses, although the tables gleam darkly with many as yet unopened bottles of Scotch. The dinner speeches of rare eloquence, and much drawing of corks. Songs by a baritone profundo—the songs of Scotland, everybody, and especially our dusky-skinned colleagues from far hot places, joining in the choruses. “Oh, when I get tight on a Saturday night, then Glasgow belongs tae me” It was Friday night, but how we sang it. And, if you follow me, Glasgow belonged to us! It really did. In the morning, as we filed mournfully into our fleet of luxury buses, conversational values—the sparkling conversation of phrase - making specialists—were at a low ebb. Here and there in the buses there was a nodding off to sleep. ’ Others just stared dully. Oh, Glasgow, where is thy sting? Then, of a sudden, the birthplace of Robert Burns. And now, listening to a small man who must surely know all tire lore of Burns, we poke around inside the dingy place in which Rabbie first saw the light. Shooting Dice Myself, I looked in, through a tiny window, at the darkness which was the room from which, out the same window, Burns first looked at the light. Now, indeed, we saw as through a glass darkly! Then, buying of souvenirs, and off to Burns monument, and so to Prestwick airport, clearing house for all the world, with sleepy-eyed Canadian airmen shooting dice American fashion in front of the reception station.

Another official luncheon. Then, in a Dakota, uneventful as a bus ride, a flight to Edinburgh, coming in over the Forth Bridge, to land on a warm field of new-mown grass, on a golden, sunlit afternoon. I might have been at Mangere. I felt a sudden glow of happiness. This place, this Edinburgh, is a place to love, as one might love a gracious and steadfast woman, I said to myself. And so it is. Some day—some day when I am not half stupid with sight-seeing and fatigue—l shall write of Edinburgh. Tonight we shall bundle into our luxury train and glide off to Stockton-on-Tees— but we would prefer to remain, for here all hearts have been won.