Who the hell is Sophia Pangloss?

Who the hell is Sophia Pangloss? I have asked myself that question many times over many years, and it's a question I think needs answered at last.

She is the voice in my head
She is my mother speaking
She was, and is, a joke
She's a nobody
She's a voice
She is my voice
She's crabbit
She's witty
She's a maven
She's a storyteller
She's a history, she's a herstory, she's a mystory...

I have two voices in my head, one speaks Scots and the other English. On Twitter I originally tried to only tweet in Scots, though the English slipped through, and after the Indyref loss it thrust itself through and I lost my Scots voice for a while. Now, Sophia tweets in Scots, the language she learned at hame, Stuart tweets in English, the language he learned at school. When I speak publicly on Twitter, I picture two audiences; there's Us (us Scots that ken whit ah'm oan aboot), and there's Us and everybody else on Twitter. It depends on who I mean when I mean I want it to mean something to someone...

My mother is my heart, you know that. She gave me her history to add to mine, she taught me more than she'll ever know. Some of my voice is an echo of hers, I heard her, I want you to hear her.

Sophia Pangloss arrived in this life at the back end of last century, back in the days of "a/s/l?", which out of pure contrariness I had taken to answering "twohundredandtwentysomething/f/lithuania"... Then there's Tragedy Day by Gareth Roberts... Candide by Voltaire... they all collided and Sophia was born. Much drink and many spliffs were involved. The Doctor was Dr Pangloss and the Doctor's Daughter had to have a name. Having spent much of the 1980's resisting the pressure to have a 'camp name' which would probably have been Sophia (I think it was first suggested by Fiona Scone in 1985 though it may have been by the Marchioness of Newington...), that seemed the obvious choice, Sophia's sophisticated, but she's not really, she's a sophist, but she's not, really...

Pangloss means 'all' and 'tongue' (or does it mean pang and loss..?) She's all tongue, she's all talk, she's glib, she's universal, she's all about the talk.

In short she's a classy thinker that talks shit about anything and everything.

She's a biddy that bides up a stair. She's the ghostly face in the window of a block of tenements in a photo taken in the eighteen hundreds in Duke Street, she's the camp follower of the Edinburgh Mob, she's the windae-hinger an sometime windae-slinger, she's Isa, she's Cissie, she's Dolly, she's Molly, she's the wumman that never had and never has a voice.

She's my voice. That's new. I never felt I could write. I did well at primary school, but it became apparent in the Academy that English wasn't my strongest subject. I shudder at the thought of Miss Shedden... I still blame her for having to start wearing specs as a teen, sitting up at midnight struggling with her English homework assignments... it was the subject I did worst in at O and Higher grades. I was a scientist back then. Went through my life being hampered by that feeling, that I couldn't write, until I wrote in Scots. That felt daring, a laugh, honest, sharp. I could write (I think) when I never thought I could before. Speaking as Sophia is me speaking as a Scot, in the language I was taught not to use at school, in Scotland.

Sophia's crabbit, she disnae suffer fools at aw, gladly or otherwise, she's hard in the nose. She says whit needs tae be said. She cuts the crap.

She thinks she's funny.

I have always loved learning. Always. My favourite books in our house were Arthur Mees's 10 volume Family Encyclopaedia. I read them all. I admit, that has given me some very outdated mental pictures of the world and I have spent a lifetime correcting his errors, but that's ok too. Learn. So, a lot of Sophia's work has been collecting, curating, hunting for the lead‐ins to get folk interested and help them learn. Understand.

Linlithgow will always be where my history-soaked heart will lie, there's a spot in the Palace that is forever mine, but Edinburgh being where I settled and made my nest, it was an obvious place to start. When I read the tale of a Woman For Sale I wanted to tell that story, and that's how shootinfaetheshin started. It's a way to tell some stories people won't know, my own included...

Storytelling has meaning, we all learn through stories, from Wee Willie Winkie to Red Dead Redemption. We all want to sit at someone's knee and hear a story that paints beautiful pictures in our heads. I want to be the knee.

If we don't learn from history, we don't learn. Understand.

So who the hell is Stuart?

He's Scottish, born in Bangour, grew up in Linlithgow, lives in Leith, where Honeyman Old stepped ashore after being cleared from his home in Sutherland in the 18th century, at the start of the Clearances, carrying the Old name I still carry 6 generations later...

This Old had to carry that name behind three popular and successful siblings through school, (to be followed by another, just as successful) competing to be heard all the time, luckily getting the grades to choose between a future in law or medicine (that was the sum total of 70s careers guidance) so I moved from a West Lothian council flat to Edinburgh Medical School (one of 3 'cooncil hoosers' out of 186 in our year), but I really moved to escape from Linlithgow, where growing up gay in the 60s and 70s had been utterly exhausting, I had a major depressive episode after 2 years at Medical School, (I speak as a trained professional, looking back... but at the time no-one noticed) and of course, I came out as gay at the same time. The two were connected. That was a Very Difficult Time, I came out the same week the first GRIDS cases were being reported in the Gay News. That, plus the article on fist-fucking had me flapping that closet door open and shut more times than Goldie Hawn on a purple one, my coming out was a bumpy one, like most people's... Gay Switchboard helped me out here, a lot... my family, not so much...

Then, and I consider this the luxury of my life, I was allowed 2 further years of fully-supported first-class Scottish university education to compensate for my failure to break the class ceiling, which I put to good use 'expanding my horizons' and becoming the person I am. This involved a lot of sex, drugs and politics... and some rock'n'roll yes, but mainly electronic dance music, and eventually another crisis, playing out in my twenties the adolescent love-games I always felt denied in my teens... wish I hadn't bothered, that kind of drama only leads to... well yeah, it led to there one night, that long dark night of the soul... and I'm writing this so, that all worked out okay... in the end...

From that low point things had to turn around, and they did. After my drop-out period I was bartending in a local bar for a colony of artisans, pink triangle proudly worn behind the bar at all times, happily settling down to domestic bliss in pre-marriage days, never feeling the need in my relationships for a certificate from the State, just for the State to stay out of my relationships. I remember sitting one quiet night staffing the Gay Switchboard phones and my colleague saying "Have you ever thought of becoming a psychiatric nurse?" (don't ya just love the old-fashioned language I use?) So I did...

33 years later I have retired. I feel I have balanced my scales, I have returned at least what this society has given me. My career, mostly in elderly acute hospital admission and community psychiatric nursing, was clean and fulfilling, I spent 8 years on Switchboard, befriended and supported many gay men, trained many new volunteers and organised the first ever Scottish Gay and Lesbian Switchboards conference. I built myself a home with two beautiful Scottish men and six beautiful Scottish cats over the years (at different times, I'm not an old cat-woman, yet...). I built myself a private life and closed the stair door...

Reader, that's who the hell Sophia Pangloss is.

Ah'm entirely suspicious...

Ye see me ah'm entirely suspicious o religions an ah make nae distinctions, ah mean religions in the literal an mair informal senses, established churches, faiths, maist isms an belief systems... ah say that haein been christened masel, brought up 'in the church', read the Big Bible oan ma granda's knee, the yin wi the great pictures, even voluntarily kept it up in ma teens, flirted wi re-birth, but ah wis essentially brought up as an atheist, Church o Scotland if ye like.. even though ah got mair instruction at school oan the Resurrection than ah ever got oan the Enlightenment, ah knew that at the heart o Protestantism wis a core a Scottish atheism, an it aw sprung fae the Heart o Edinburgh... no the Heart o Midlothian, naw no there, that's another story, but fae somewhere between St Giles' no-quite-a-Cathedral tae John Knox's no-really-a-House, probably, by ma way o thinkin, ah wis aye aware o a winkin eye in the Kirk, a respectful scepticism, an acknowledgement that tho we were singin songs tae a higher power, we aw knew that the real higher power lay up the Bridges, in George Square, that scientific an rational studies were the real way tae the Big Answers tae the Big Questions, but the kirk had its function an aw, it ran oor schools an hospitals, it kept oor hatches matches an dispatches records, it gied them that wanted somewhere tae go oan a Sunday, an in the days afore telly an aw the rest that meant somethin, really... naw it did, really, it wis murder polis borin oan a Sunday...

But these days no sae much, these days the kirks cannae compete, an there's no sae many folk need somewhere tae go oan a Sunday... or else they're no able... mainly that in fact... Naw, these days the auld religions are dyin, an with them the auld truths o wumman wis made fer man an this is the real body an blood o Christ, laudin the pure an castin down the heretics, aw the ritual o ceremonies o namin, o remembrancin, aw the... aye ah'm gaunnae say it, aw the men in frocks pontificatin oan whit should go oan in public places, whit should go oan in folks' private lifes, whit should go oan in folks' heids, whit passes fer acceptable discourse, an whit thinkin wis right-thinkin an whit wis wrong...

Ah'm no standin here an watchin new religions takin the place o auld religions an no sayin anythin. Gender ideology tae me displays aw the signs o a religion, in fact, wi aw the TWAW tenets an 'wrong body' spiritual talk it's auld religion wi barely a slap o lippie oan, it's a poor effort an like a lot o folk ah've dismissed it this past few years as nae mair than that, other folks' lives, no ma concern... but as this past year has worn dreadfully oan we've come tae see the extent o the spread o this religion intae whit ah'm reliably an regularly informed is oor only viable route tae Scottish independence, an THAT maitters tae me. That's why ah look at a party ah've stepped in an oot o fer 40 years an always felt wis 'mine' an ah dinnae like whit ah see, an that's why ah'll keep sayin whit ah see... ah'm entirely suspicious.

Mirror mirror...

Ah wis watchin Doris answerin the right honourable an fabulous Joanna Cherry wi the words "I refer the Right Honourable and Fabulous Lady to the answer I gave a moment ago", an ah had a flashback o Maggie utterin the exact same words, year in year oot fer a decade, an then it morphed intae a vision, like in Polanski's Macbeth where Macbeth has a wobbly at a pairty an sees the unendin succession o Banquo's descendants, ye know that bit, the unbroken line o Kings leadin aw the way doon tae Jamie Saxt, (cos he wis the original version's sponsor ye see, a nice wee bit o spin fer Jamie, the auld fox he wis)...

Anyway, this vision is like when ye fold yer dressin-table wing-mirrors in an ye see yersel tae infinity, that sort o thing, an ah suddenly saw a long line o Tory Prime Ministers stretchin away oot o sight tellin Scotland that they're shite but we'll take aw yer money an yer first-born... It's an awfy vision o the future, except ah'm describin the last 40 years, dinnae ever tell me Scots 'wullnae put up wi this' or they 'wullnae put up wi that', we've pit up wi it aw awreadys, an we've let oorsels get colonised by wankers ffs!

It could well be oor future if we dinnae dae somethin different, somethin unorthodox, somethin that works... an here ah'll spell it oot fer ye, Wur. No. Daein. It. Yet.

Have ah got this right?

Right, bear wi me, ah'm jist workin this yin oot.

It looks like, gaun by the polls, that Labour could get wiped oot in the constituencies in May...

So aw the constituency MSPs are fightin tae get tae the top o the lists...

Which they'll manage cos they ken everybody, they hae clout in the party...

So aw the list MSPs are oot the door come May...

Tae be 'replaced' by aw the 'constituency' MSPs...

Some o them oan their fifth term, 17 years an countin...

So, Kezia's rejuvenation o Scottish Labour is gunnae depend oan the combined energies o a diminished bunch o agein party insiders that hae jist been rejected by the voters, individually an en masse...

Have ah got this right?

Mibbe ah'm deid, mibbe ah'm no...

Mibbe ah'm deid, mibbe ah'm no... but ah am only a character in some puir sowel's addled heid, born oot o ower much whisky an no enough guid sense, so dinnae greet, jist heave awa lads, ah'm no deid yet... or mibbe ah am...

Onyway, if ah am deid, ah'm the only yin. The indyref's ower, the lies were selt an boucht, the votes cast an counted, an fer the time bein we Scots hae been pit back in oor box. Actually, we climbed in, but the point's the same, naebody's deid. It wis a noisy battle, a messy yin, but no a bloody yin. Noo that it's ower, an we lost, oor priority is ta protect oorsels, oor kin, an oor nation. We hae tae build a wa tae defend whit's oors...

The bells are tolling fiercely,

And the cry comes louder in,

Mothers wailing for their children,

Sisters for their slaughtered kin.

All is terror and disorder,

Till the Provost rises up,

Calm as though he had not tasted,

Of the fell and bitter cup;

All so stately from his sorrow,

Rose the old undaunted chief,

That you had not deemed to see him,

His was more than common grief.

'Let them cease that dismal yelling

It is time enough to ring

When the fortress-strength of Scotland

Stoops to ruin, like its king.

Let the bells be kept for warning,

Not for terror or alarm;

When they next are heard to thunder

Let each man and stripling arm.

Bid the women cease their wailing:

Do they think that woeful strain

From the bloody heaps of Flodden

Can redeem their dearest slain?

Bid them cease, or rather hasten

To the churches, every one,

There to pray to Mary Mother,

And to her Anointed Son,

That the thunderbolt above us

May not fall in ruin yet,

That in fire and blood and rapine

Scotland's glory may not set.'

Noo look, ah ken it's a tad dramatic, an ah'm no suggestin fer a meenit that we send aw oor wummen tae the Kirk tae pray, no when the wummen o Scotland are some o oor best fighters, an fer the life o me ah cannae see whit guid prayin'll dae, but taen aw in aw, it fits wi whit ah'm feelin. We've lost, we've aw got wounds tae lick, but sae long as there's fight left in us, even if it's only a hundred o us, we're no aboot tae roll ower an show oor bellies, we're a fightin bunch, an Scotland's glory will not set, no yet...

This wis a message fae the other side...

Cast yer mind back...

Jist cast yer mind back fer a meenit, tae the Sixties if ye can, an mind how different life wis, fer abody. Mind coal fires, mind men at work an wummen daein messages, or spendin an entire day washin claes, mind weans gettin hammered, mind makin parritch the nicht afore, mind... weel mind yer ain life, whit wis it like fer you personally 50 year ago? How different wis it fae the life ye hae noo?

Ah'll bet, like me, it wis a different world, an no jist oan account o nae washin machines an haein tae soak yer lentils, it wis hugely different oan a political level an aw. We were at the height o the post-war British welfare state project, we were still bein reminded daily o whit we'd been through tae get that, aulder fowk had seen real sufferin baith afore an durin the war,  an how if we worked hard fer the country, through times that were hard, it wid gie us somethin that fowk really valued, it wid gie us security..

It's the mark of the enlightened society ah want tae see that offers that tae abody that bides here, basic security. An that's whit's bein whittled oot o the system since Maggie took office an steered this country taewards bein a neurotic 51st State. Every man fer hissel an deil tak the hindmaist, untrammled markets, makin money oot o money, an haein fowk in unemployment an underemployment, in poverty an ignorance, in worry an anxiety an fear, bein judged a price worth payin, so's that the same corruptin greedy interests can stack their profits withoot a care... That's no the country ah want tae bide in.

But think back again tae whit that meant fer us aw, fer a while we aw committed tae the same consensus. That pact wis broken in 79 an hasnae been fixed. We've had a generation o right-wing governments pursuin free market policies an their thirst isnae yet sated. Gied free-rein the Etonian cabal we've currently allowed tae sit in government wid turn this country upside doon wi neo-liberal outrages, think aboot it, an the best that can be said o the Westminster alternative is that Milliband probably widnae dae much but he'd slow the process, he's certainly no a socialist, an oan the sidelines there's a pale-blue Liberal rump wi twa faces an a brass neck haudin the coats...

er... ah lost ma threid there... ah wis thinkin, oh aye, ah wis jist thinkin aboot how much has changed in 50 years, it's like anither world really int'it? An whit we've got tae think aboot noo is the 2060's... we've got tae think aboot how we pit oor mark oan the future, whit sort o a country we want tae gie the 60's weans tae bide in, the yins tae come. It'll be as hugely different tae them as the 60's wis tae us, er, is tae us, er... d'ye get whit ah'm gettin at?

We cannae influence everythin, ah've nae doot there'll be mair channels oan the telly pumpin oot mair keich, fowk'll no ken a twin-tub if it came up an hit them, an aw stovies'll come in a wee sachet, but we can influence the things they write in the history books. We've  got a choice tae make atween twa futures. We can stick wi a system that's gettin dragged ever further right, where a bunch o fruitcake teapartyists can get a quarter o the vote an the Tories reaction is how far wid ye like us tae lurch? An an opposition that frankly breaks yer heart, where goeth the Labour party? ... We can stick wi that, or we can choose a different path, an we can build a new consensus, tae tak the powers that we can wi independence tae build a better nation...

Are we hell...

Somethin that's been botherin me o late, an it wis brocht tae ma mind again by the post fae Bonningtom Mill jist roond the corner fae me yesterday, lookin at the creaky an frankly undemocratic apparatus o the dyin state we find oorsels in, is a thocht ah've lang been mullin ower anent oor representation in the Palace o Fools oan the Thames. Anne lays oot the lie o the land perfectly an so ah'll no repeat her. She refers tae oor representation as bein 59 oot o 650 MPs, or 9% oot o the entire Hoose o Commons, roughly in line wi oor population share. But that only tells half the story...

See, back afore the war, Scotland sent 74 MPs tae Westminster, oot o a total o 615. By ma reckonin that's 12%. That fell efter the war tae 71 oot o 630, or 11.2%, 72 oot o 659 in 1997 or 10.9%, then doon tae the 9% it is noo. The plan wis tae further cut that tae 52 oot o 600, or 8.6%, a plan currently abandoned, but mark ma words if we say nae they'll be back at that again gied half a chance, they, an ah mean ony an aw o the three anti-independence parties, 4 if ye count UKIP, they wid aw love tae cut Scotland's numbers further. Noo, ye may say 'Weel, that's cos we've got Holyrood where we didnae afore' an ah can see where ye're comin fae an aye, Holyrood's daein great an the mair powers tae it the better, takin the hit oan the chin o sendin less MPs doon tae London, weel we'll jist hae tae manage an onyway they figure less in oor minds noo onyroads, an they'll hae less tae dae, jist the reserved powers really, that cannae tak aw their time, so they're really jist part-time MPs (ah nearly said party-time MPs there... D'oh!) in fact we'll jist club them aw th'gither like hale-time equivalents an cut yer numbers slap bang wollop...

But that's Defence... That's Foreign Affairs... an Welfare... an the Economy... an the 'Constitution'...

That's big issue stuff, real man-the-barricades stuff... an we've let oor representation in the Mither o Parliaments, that's bound us in sic a lovin an big-bosomed embrace fer 3 centuries, we've let oor representation oan aw the Great Matters o State faw fae 12% tae 9% in the last century (that's a decline o 25%, ah'm gettin guid at this eh?) at a time when we're supposedly #bettertogether?

Are we hell...