In the words of the great Scottish writer, (no not him, the other one) Sir Walter Scott, ‘Tis sixty years since. Dear Sir Walter, no doubt in an effort to take his mind off his wife who they say, (and ‘they’ say many things) was very “fond of the swally,” was writing Waverley, sixty years after the Jacobite Rebellion. He was a very busy man and when he was not scribbling away in Selkirk, he was inventing Scotland. This was quite a lot of work as the Scots were not always that cooperative. However, he wove a nation out of tartan cloth and myths, which turned out to be a powerful combination. This was not exceeded until the late 1950s and early 1960s when Andy Stewart invented The White Heather Club. Once again, this involved swords and tartan, but with the addition of lassies in white sticky oot dresses and that Caledonian secret weapon – country dancing. Of course, we all know what dancing leads to.
Sixty years since our own time, we find ourselves in January 1962. From our vantage point we can share in another Scottish cultural watershed – the world of Muriel and Jasper Wylie. These style icons, inhabit the legendary west end of Glasgow, where coal comes in “secks” and the must-haves are a standard lamp, a piano and a walnut bureau in the corner. Their weekends and holidays are spent in the country at their rural bolt hole. This is deep in south – west Scotland where three glens and three rivers meet. It is a world within a world and indeed Sir Walter himself would not find that much had changed. Here no one has bought anything new since the Jacobite Rebellions and material culture centres around firewood, traybakes, the Pentland Firth Arms and country house concerts.
It is here that Muriel and Jasper can unwind from their almost hectic lifestyle in the Second City of the Empire (currently dwindling) as they run “Chez Nous”, an interior decorating shop with branches in the city and Edinburgh. With Muriel’s ever-decreasing trust fund, held at that nice bank in St Vincent Street, (the one with the good counters and potted palms), the couple have been forced to explore what today would be described as “other income streams.” So “Chez Nous”, much to Muriel’s discomfort, is largely bankrolled by her rich American cousin, Lulubelle, from the very Deep South.
Cousin Lulubelle has forced Muriel to embrace sixties style and to carry lines which appeal to new homes in the overspill council estates currently being built in the city environs. “Sticky-oot” legs are all the rage! To be fair Muriel has, as it were, seen the commercial light, but still prefers her high-end clients. These are typified by estate owner and former cabaret singer and dancer Lady Pentland-Firth.
She is the widow of the late Admiral of the fleet who died mysteriously at a Flower and Produce Show. Unfortunately, while she has a country pile, she has a poor taste in men and little ready cash.
Jasper is the artistic director of the business and is in charge of window dressing. His real interests, however, lie in Capodimonte and an active approach to relaxation and especially the local heritage society, known by the locals as “the Hysterical.” Interestingly some have suggested there is more to the Wylies than meets the cats’ eye spectacles of which Muriel is so fond.
This is mere speculation of course and their preoccupation of late has been what Muriel regards as desertion by Mrs Esme Travers their “woman what did but never a lot.” Much to Muriel’s horror Mrs T has found a brave new world in a residential adult education college of the left leaning kind. Muriel blames herself for encouraging Mrs T to attend Twilight Classes at The F.E. College. Of course, she was envisaging something useful, like upholstery or flower arranging and not that most pernicious of subjects Sociology, with its in depth studies of deviance, divorce, and tribal kinship patterns. Although in her quiet moments she did often think that this has some relevance to parts of Glasgow, particularly around Parkhead and Ibrox. Thankfully help is at hand, as a new daily woman has been appointed after a rigorous recruitment process that would have shamed the nation’s intelligence services.
Jasper sees more than one might think, and he has a grasp on wider affairs, even if it is only from his Museum in a Shed. He knows in his waterworks that 1962 will be a challenging year. Indeed, he fears a crisis involving the USA and the comrades may bring the world to the brink of destruction – he heard things when he visited the States last year with Muriel. There is much to worry about on the health front too, with smallpox in Cardiff and Bradford. On the other hand, a vaccine has been developed and human ingenuity may ewll see the first American orbit the earth in the race to land on the Moon.
Nearer home, while Princess Margaret and the Earl of Snowdon travel to Antigua for a much needed three-week holiday, the Prime Minister Mr McMillan has a bad chill, and the Chancellor Mr Selwyn Lloyd announces a period of wage restraint. The Trades Unions are not pleased. The attempt to make the railways more efficient is beginning to hit passengers as services are withdrawn. At least we can have a laugh at the Pavilion Theatre in Glasgow where Jack Milroy is playing Buttons in Cinderella.
We join Muriel and Jasper at their well-appointed home in Glasgow in January 1962. It is almost ten years since we first met them. They are having breakfast and reading The Glasgow Herald – nothing in Glasgow, or indeed the world, has happened unless it is in The Herald. “Was it in The Herald?” is a remark you will often hear when one fully tweeded Glasgow matron turns to another while ascending the escalator in Lewis’s Department Store. Thus, “ I hear Sadie that Mr Donaldson is dead,” will be followed by a look of incredulity and the follow up, “Really Evelyn, I didn’t see it in The Herald”.
Of course it is not good enough just to be seen dead in The Herald it must be on the right day. For as those and such as those know Births, Marriages and Deaths are only announced properly on a Friday. This particularly applies to engagements. A Thursday, or indeed any other day, is, well let’s face it, “common” and may ruin one’s chances of becoming a church Elder, gaining Rotary membership or President of the local branch of the Scottish Women’s Rural Institute; though if dead it is of less concern.
“I see Muriel that Major Donaldson’s daughter is engaged to that chap who is in Robertson’s jam?”
“So, I heard Jasper. Actually, I heard it from Mrs Macaulay, when I had coffee with her on Tuesday in Fullers. She told me between choux buns. I think she is made of cream. We both bought cards and wee mindings, but as I said to Lottie, we had better hold off until it’s confirmed in The Herald. I knew it would be in today, with it being Friday.”
“What did you get, just in case I meet the Major at the Club?”
“Well Lottie bought a tray with a wipe clean surface, and I thought a stainless steel toast rack and butter dish would be useful. Although I rather regretted it afterwards as I thought, along with Lottie’s tray, it perhaps smacked too much of breakfast in bed, which might be the wrong signal to send out to a newly engaged couple if you know what I mean.”
“Oh, I don’t think so Muriel; it is 1962 and anyway stainless steel hardly reeks of pre-marital passion, does it? Carlton Ware might have been a different matter. That stainless steel is very up to the minute, as they say, and popular in “Chez Nous”, especially among first time buyers.”
“I am sure you are right Jasper. Anyway I will drop it off this morning with their woman what does and just in case it was the wrong choice I will keep well clear of Mrs Donaldson at choir on Tuesday.”
“Talking of women what do, is there any news of Mrs Sloan starting? I am not sure I can take much more of Sharon’s cooking. I couldn’t decide if last night’s suppa was a meal or an operation.”
“She is going to start on Monday, Jasper. I thought it best to get Christmas and New Year over with and have a fresh start. Any way she had a holiday booked with her invalid sister in Moscow.”
“A sister in the Soviet Union? Well things are going to be interesting. I am surprised you let that one pass Muriel.”
“Not Moscow in the Soviet Union Jasper! Moscow in Ayrshire, you know just off the A719 on the Volga Burn.”
“That might make a good talk at the history society.”
“No doubt Jasper, no doubt, especially as that meeting room of yours is so cold ;half the work would be done in the setting.”
“Very droll Muriel, the heating costs extra, and I am reluctant to put the subscriptions up.”
“You might attract more members if they didn’t have to employ ice breakers when visiting the facilities before questions and tea. Captain Scott would be hard pressed to cope with those conditions. Anyway, back to Mrs Sloan. I thought I would break her in slowly with an induction day, we will have coffee and then familiarisation. I will send Sharon into town so she is not to upset at being demoted and she can start the heavy work on Tuesday. The attic needs dusting. Then on Wednesday they could work together on Gayle’s room. She has school and then ballet, so that will give them plenty of time. Hairy Mary from Inveraray has a meeting at the Gaelic Church, so she won’t get in the way.”
“What are you doing next week Muriel?”
“Well, I thought we should spend a bit of time at “Chez Nous”. After the sale we will have to restock, and I really think the windows need changing. I know people do not have much money in January, but we need to keep customers interested. Perhaps you could do something a little tartan for the great writer’s birthday.”
“Sir Walter?”
“No, the other one.”
“So are we going to work on the windows together? I have a few ideas.”
“Well Jasper that would be lovely, but I mean ‘we’ in the corporate sense. It will be you. I have a couple of meetings to attend to firstly with Mr I.F. Clarke, the senior lecturer of General Studies at the Royal College of Science and Technology. He wants the institution to become a Technical University on the grounds that otherwise Scotland is going to be left behind. I am one of the advisory team as you might recall. After all there will be important decorative questions such as where we put that statue of David Livingstone.”
“I can well imagine Muriel; statues are always trouble. That will not take the whole week, surely?”
“No just Tuesday and I don’t want to be here with rooms being turned out. On Wednesday I am going to Bradford.”
“Don’t tell me, I suppose that’s Bradford in the Urals.”
“Don’t be silly Jasper, it’s in Yorkshire. The Scottish Tourist Board have asked me to go as part of their campaign for “Scotland for the Holidays.” There are 30 of us going – well 29 and one who gets things done. We have handbills, posters and a competition to win a Shetland Wool Jumper.”
“Well, that should do it Muriel, I can see them now massing at the border hungry for knitwear.”
“You seem rather carnapcious this morning Jasper. Perhaps a little fresh air might improve your January mood. I have letters to write, one to British Rail about the closure of the Leith North Loop and the other to the choir mistress about the Twelfth Night Concert.”
“But that, thankfully has passed.”
“Yes, but one has to think about next year and some radical alterations. Lydia Kettle was a rather scrawny Partridge in a Pear Tree as well as out of tune. Shona Legge is in no way capable of a passable descant and Carol Singer smelt of cheap sherry which distracted the altos and put the minister off the benediction. I am not even going to mention the Postman’s Lord of Misrule which was totally uncalled for. Mary McLeod says she will never play the Queen of the Bean again and is having her letter box sealed.”
Happy new year Everyone.
à bientôt
Muriel and Jasper
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