Unofficially filling a gap in “I Am Sixty”. AKA the answer to Question 3. Photo is of the River Tay at Dunkeld and was provided by The Benefaktor.

I, The Benefaktor, have been mobilised into action. Urs, my wife, has her three pamphlets. Even that dead albatross has one. As do its fellow spirits, the ghosts of author Ian Macpherson and GANTOB’s father-in-law Curt Finks. I do not like lagging behind.

Yesterday’s year in Bill Drummond’s memoir, The Life Model, had two blank pages. It was the subconscious section of “I Am Sixty”, covering the period 29th of April 2013 to 28th of April 2014. It was meant to have been contributed by “Smiley”, of “unknown”. Cauty perhaps?

I set myself the task of filling the gap. I missed the day itself. I do not like rushing.

As GANTOB’s legal team insists on me writing, this is part of the 52 Pamphlets, not Drummond’s The Life Model. There is nothing official about what I am writing here.

There is work going on downstairs, and my youngest grandchild is in the room next door whooping away. She is on antibiotics. I put on some Mendelssohn to drown out the racket. His first two piano concertos and the Hebrides Overture (“Fingal’s Cave”), recorded by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. What is it that Florence Nightingale said about the piano? Ah yes: “The finest piano-forte playing will damage the sick”. Never mind.

I need to find out what Bill Drummond was doing 2013-14. As I go across to the HiFi to turn up the volume, I peruse my shelves. I work along the Penkiln Burn section, and the miscellaneous compendiums with Drummond contributions. The Observer, filling a gap from 2011-12, used material from The 25 Paintings, which was published in 2014. And the Penkiln Burn book The Curfew Tower is Many Things (various authors), though published in 2015, documents artist residencies in Drummond’s tower in Cushendall in 2014. I pull both volumes out.  

I turn to page 23 of the smaller volume, by chance rather than design. It is a poem called “The Tower and The Book”, by Emma Must. I establish that it was written in the period we need. Must writes: “The most suitable thing of mine to include is probably the longish poem I started while I was supposed to be at the Tower in January [2014], then finished writing while there in March. It’s the one I copied out into the large book in the Tower dungeon…. I did also write something called Thirteen Tips for Writers Staying at the Curfew Tower, which I emailed to my colleagues on my return… (I think Glenn might have emailed this to you a while ago?)”. These two pieces may well have been poking away at Drummond’s subconscious in the period leading up to his 61^st birthday.

Number 7 of Must’s list is “Pay homage at Ossian’s Grave (Celtic warrior-poet)”.  I know about him – the subject of a great literary fraud by another Macpherson (no relation as far as I can see)(*). And Must’s poem refers to the Thomas Kemp Tower at the Royal Sussex Hospital. Looking up Thomas Read Kemp I see that he designed the equivalent of Edinburgh’s New Town in Brighton, and spent his final years in exile from debt, in Paris. Mountebanks both. [GANTOB: A “strong sense of self-esteem and self-importance”. And with that dictionary definition of ego, these two men could be viewed as good examples of the “male ego” that Ariadne asked about in question 3 of the 23 Questions].

I imagine Drummond – or at least the maverick/ iconoclast part of his subconscious [GANTOB: surely the ego, rather than the superego, which is the “self-critical conscience, reflecting social standards learned from parents and teachers”]. He is mulling over Macpherson and Kemp on a trip from Southampton on the South coast of England to Dounreay on the North coast of Scotland, sewing the second of his Rookery Threads.

The imagined Drummond, March 2014:

Past Perth, tractor holding up a couple of dozen cars, I count down the signs to villages off the A9: Luncarty, Stanley, West Tofts, Bankfoot. Black tarmac, white dotted lines, like stitches, but too fine to be seen on any map. Textured to wake you up if you’re drifting off course. I’m fine, listening attentively to the drone of the Land Rover’s engine. Sometimes I hum along.

I decide to keep going to Dunkeld. I am not going to make it to Dounreay tonight. Perhaps that large white B&B just before the Dalwhinnie turnoff will have a bed. I’ll give them a ring from Dunkeld. I stretch my legs, climb the mound behind the carpark, and decide to keep walking, up along the Tay.

It’s a beautiful afternoon. I follow the signs to The Hermitage, up through the towering Douglas fir trees and narrow, knotted paths, down across a stream and then up again from Ossian’s “Hall of Mirrors”, following the signs to Ossian’s “Cave”. I am dimly aware of the story of James Macpherson (1736-96), who in the 1760s claimed to have discovered the text of a centuries old epic written and narrated by Ossian (originally in two parts – Fingal and Temora). This was a literary sensation at the time, drawing many famous figures into the conceit, but was subsequently demonstrated to have been fabricated by Macpherson, stitched together from his own work and ancient Scottish and Irish sources. The third Earl of Breadalbane appears to have bought into the myth, incorporating Ossian themed follies into his landscaping in the following decades – the carefully planned wilderness with its paths, water features and exotic plants imported thousands of miles by land and sea. I love the idea of an invented world that is now so well established that it appears to be the most authentic part of rural Perthshire, with the National Trust of Scotland stamp of approval. A known fake, but part of the establishment. I vow to visit the real Ossian next time I’m in Cushendall. He must be turning in his grave.

“Control your own myths”. I have been working with Gavin Wade, artist, curator, director. He quotes these four words in the introduction to my new book: The 25 Paintings. He also writes the following on mythmaking: “if it is understood, it no longer contains any power”. The modern Ossian’s power was lost when Macpherson’s identity was revealed. I try to ward off such disclosure.

Gavin and I have been talking about funds. He is worried about keeping his public gallery afloat. I have been thinking how I can help. But I have bills of my own. Money, money, money. Bills, bills, bills. “Bill, you’re ‘one of THE British artists of the last three decades’ – surely you can sell some books/ canvases/ music/ films/ tickets”. I wish people would stop asking me that. Perhaps I’ll sleep in the Land Rover tonight. Man avoids bed. Maps the points. Sells the book.

Another quote from Gavin: “[Bill’s] art offers a double life to the art world, a super symmetry even”. Who knows.

The following day, passing through the Black Isle, and then up to Thurso, I am thinking about lines, mirrors and reflections. I can picture my last destination before Dounreay – Thurso. It has the usual seemingly temporary trappings of a modern commercial port (Scrabster, for Stromness, Orkney). But just inland, firmly anchored, Thurso’s centre is lined by solid Victorian stone townhouses.  I have twinned Dounreay with Southampton on the second Rookery Thread, but should that have been Thurso and Brighton instead?

I know the Brighton hospital that Emma Must writes about in her poem about her Dad’s proud final hours. The hospital block was named after 19^th century property developer Thomas Read Kemp (1782-1844). He was famed for Kemptown, Brighton, with its “flamboyant mix of grand seafront crescents, elegant squares, and a bustling High Street shopping area with a lively village feel” (to quote one estate agent). What a contrast to the grey, Presbyterian Thurso, with its history hidden in stones rather than spilling out onto the street. Bottle it all in, like a good son of the manse.

I’m tempted to drive to Dunnet Head. But I’ve committed to Dounreay. I approach the power station, park, and draw two straight lines intersecting at Spaghetti Junction. It has to be here. I drive further along the coast, and park up at Sandside Harbour, looking north across the Atlantic, a couple of turnstones for company. I throw my annotated map onto the backseat in disgust. What am I guddling around with pencil and paper for? It is my 61^st birthday in a few days. Older than Macpherson. His mythmaking was indisputably over at 59. I’m younger than Kemp though. His bill dodging ended at 61. But, respectively, they wrote a book that is still talked about quarter of a millennium on, and built a town. Lasting impact. Great projects. Scoundrels. I want to fill their boots. Oystercatchers make their piping call, taunting me.

I drive back the long way, via Tongue, Hope, Hellam, Durness, Scourie, Badcall, then all the way down the west coast. The names raise my spirits before dashing each new idea. But I keep thinking. The fuel gauge is perilously close to red; worse as I climb hills. I circumnavigate the lochs, miles of twists to end up a couple of hundred yards from where I was half an hour before – no short cuts here. I concentrate on the road ahead. There are no line markings now.

THE BENEFAKTOR, 2 April 2024

Pamphlet 24 of the #52Pamphlets

Also the answer to question 3 on the male ego

A contribution to the 9 Missing Years project

Contribute a question | Or submit a pamphlet

(*) Ossian was mentioned in an earlier “conscious” chapter of The Life Model (I Am Forty-Five, NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL OSSIAN by Hubert Huzzah): Huzzah wrote about Drummond’s year 1998-99: “Tacitly admitting my relationships with numbers and lines and ritual was always more important than scandalous revelations that I, like Ossian, forge memoirs. Outsourcing fabulation for intangible considerations”.

There are too many ghosts. Curt Finks. Ian Macpherson. Roger Eagle. Myself.

And too many islands. 6000 in the Atlantic Archipelago, according to Bill Drummond. Not quite Ursula’s 11,000 virgins.

And there are too many blank or empty pages in any of our imagined memoirs. Nonetheless, one of the GANTOB project’s missions is to fill the nine undocumented years in Bill Drummond’s conscious/ subconscious. This is not for Drummond’s hive-sourced memoir The Life Model. There is nothing official about this. It is for GANTOB’s 52 Pamphlets(+).

I, The Observer, will fill the gap for the subconscious part of 29th of April 2011 to 28th of April 2012 (AKA “I am Fifty-Eight” in The Life Model). The average lifespan for a southern royal albatross is 58 years. I did not make it even halfway, squashed by an SUV in central Edinburgh, August 2023, at the age of 23. I was distracted by GANTOB, The Benefaktor and a paper plane. Such is life.

When I was a fledgling albatross at the turn of the century I had great aspirations. I would travel the world. Escape the wings of my overbearing parents. I made my way to the post office at Stanley and completed a form to serve a year on Gruinard Island. I left the Falklands the following week and was deposited on “Anthrax Island” after a couple of months of travel and induction.

Over the following decade, after my duty had been served, I travelled the north Atlantic, keeping a low profile, hanging with Arctic terns, miscellaneous geese, ospreys and fulmars.

In late 2011 I encountered Drummond’s subconscious occasionally between Islay and Mull, and once over a mug of soup in Campbeltown. But the winds were too strong to flutter around these musings too long.

In March 2012, however, I was able to spend a few weeks on Mull, nesting close to an osprey family along from Fionnphort. I was out riding the thermals, playing tricks on the tourist guides who were rehearsing their scripts on dress rehearsals for coach tours, preparing for the season ahead. And there was Drummond’s subconscious, waiting for the ferry to Iona.  Geese were foraging in the fields – Barnacle, Greylag and Canada. There was a lot of metaphorical spitting coming from the direction of the “under” Drummond. It was thinking back to Drummond’s first art book: “How to be an artist” (2002). A beautiful slab of grey. A serious piece of work.

A promising thermal disappoints. I plunge tens of feet, frightening some pied wagtails. Drummond’s subconscious is looking green. A heart sink moment. It is recalling the moment when Drummond (the man) realised that there was a missing page in his 2002 book. Not a blank page, or an empty page. A missing page. The Last Page. Oh dear.

Drummond’s unconscious is swearing. Not rhythmically, or knowingly, like Beyonce. But explosively, emotionally, authentically butchering the surrounding air. Why do thoughts like this appear to spoil the peace, it wonders. Think about Iona. A liminal place. A point in the Atlantic Archipelago. It stops for a piece of cake and a cup of tea at the St Columba Hotel. The sea is calm. The water clear and blue, the seaweed sweeping the sand below.

From 2002 to 2012, in idle moments, Bill Drummond’s subconscious had an oscillating relationship with the chicanery of that missing page. When it can bear to think about it, it remembers the following words: “In that instant all my emotions were wiped clean to be replaced by a love for a flag that didn’t, as yet, exist. This flag would have no red, white or blue. And there would be no room for the secondary colours of orange, green or purple. That just leaves yellow and black….You might be thinking that flags are the last thing a UK’n* should want. Flags are about tribalism, kings and queens, going to war. Well, no, ‘The Old Chevron’, as I now call it, is the opposite to that.”

And Drummond’s subconscious is plotting how to bring that missing page to life. Not in the form of a pamphlet# that inserts the words back into the book. Or in the form of a reissue of that book. That has already been done. No, it will be in the form of physical flags, planted into the soil. On the short ferry trip from coast to coast, island to island, Drummond’s subconscious sees rooks flying overhead, coming to land somewhere near Iona Abbey. One of Drummond’s Sixteen Rookeries perhaps.

Rooks and their thieving ways. Drummond and his questionable relationship with copyright. But these days are long past.

Drummond’s subconscious is focusing on entirely new performances. Art that cannot be captured on a slab of vinyl, or on the page. Art that cannot be sold. Instead, it will be the dancing of a flag in an Atlantic storm, in the web of connections that can be drawn between Forty Islands. I would need a calculator to work out the number of permutations. Maybe Mull and Iona are two of Drummond’s Forty Islands. The subconscious cannot carry flags. Drummond, the man, will need to come to plant two of his Forty Flags in person.

Artists will sometimes dream of flags. Another boat faring artist mentioned in earlier GANTOB posts – Hundertwasser (1928-2000) – also made a flag, in 1983. A koru, as a proposed secondary flag for New Zealand. A stripe of black: a traditional Māori colour. Green and white spirals, a shape beloved of Hundertwasser and also representing the Māori fern. And I note that an updated version of the flag submitted by another artist “was initially selected for inclusion in the long list of 40 designs for the 2015-16 New Zealand flag referendums, but was removed due to a copyright claim by the Hundertwasser Foundation.” I wonder whether the flag committee had forgotten Hundertwasser’s original, or if too much time had elapsed for it to be relevant. More forties. More thievery. More forgetting.

In those early months of 2012 I encountered Drummond’s subconscious on many islands and outcrops. I am not convinced, however, that it identified all forty. Curiously, I never saw the man himself over that period, on Mull, Iona or any of the other islands of the west of Scotland or out towards the Faroe Islands or Iceland. I heard of sightings of The Old Chevron on Matthias Road, London, and on the Isle of Thanet, but they are off my patch. I have never been to New Zealand, though that is the more traditional realm of the southern royal albatross, so I have not seen Hundertwasser’s koru either. Off limits for me of course as I did not visit in life. As a ghost, I am unfortunately tied to rules of time and place.

We leave Drummond’s subconscious on the return journey from Iona, standing on the tiny ferry, looking up to the sky.  There is a V shape of geese above, honking away. Adjusting glasses to peer through the correct part of its varifocals Drummond’s subconscious is convinced that it is a chevron of greylags. Definitely greylags. His favourite colour.

THE OBSERVER, 1 April 2024

Number 23 of the 52 Pamphlets

If you would like to contribute a pamphlet, visit the 52 Pamphlets page.

+ Read more about the 9 Missing Years project

* Drummond explains in the book “How to be an artist” that the “’n” should be pronounced as in Canadian.

# Also a number 23 pamphlet.

Listen to Urs narrate her blog here:

Answer to Question 2 of the 23 Questions. What fuels your passion for blogging so? (as asked by NIk)

Find out how you can contribute to the “23 Questions” for 2024.

Answer provided by URS

GANTOB has passed the question to “the hive” to answer. She doesn’t have the time. Or does not want to admit that she has a passion for something. I am in a position to answer. As usual, I find myself “doing my bit”.

First, I would like to mention my name. Urs. Short for Ursula. Ursula N. K______, wife of the Rev K_____ AKA The Benefaktor. Initials UNK. An abbreviation of “unknown” in some quarters. How appropriate for the GANTOBverse.

I have very much enjoyed the last few months. While The Benefaktor has been tinkering in his “Kino” as usual, I have been immersed in culture: books I had never heard of from the library or Toppings, coffee dates in galleries, and the new Willow Tea Rooms on Princes Street. I have found inspiration in the most unexpected corners.

And for the first time since the pandemic I have ventured across the border. A trip to London to view an exhibition of female photographers, followed by lunch in a French restaurant with Dot, who I had not seen for years. We were offered the special of “ors” by a rather dashing young waiter. My first thought was that The Benefaktor would not approve. But a second later my reply was “Ors? Of course”. Delicieux.

Writing makes time go by in a flash. Journal writing on train journeys. No travail in travel now. Ideas come flooding in, jotted down, with connections linking together like those videos of neurones in documentaries. I have filled two black and red notebooks already. I might follow Gillian’s example and submit some ideas to a literary journal. And there are my GANTOB pieces of course. We will see if they end up actually in print, or whether they will remain bogged down in an old school blog and my audio recordings.

After York, but before the coastal part of the route back to Edinburgh, I settle down to read a novel that I picked up in London: “HERmione” by “H.D.”. Mysterious. Myths and pseudonyms. Right up my street. H.D. for Hilda Doolittle. Not in my nature. By the time I pause to look out of the window I have missed the silhouette of Lindisfarne, the possibility of a glimpse of a puffin, the plunging cliffs and the stately homes, bridges and forests of the border country. How thoroughly modern, playing round with pronouns like that. I have to read passages a few times over. All these “Her”s. Her: the heroine. Or her: “a female person or animal previously mentioned or easily identified”.

On the topic of animals: Less “horse” (after all, I have always been told that I have a little round face). More “little bear”. Fierce, but with the edges knocked off. From the Latin. Who are they calling “less fierce”? I sharpen my claws under the little table on the seat in front, ready to disembark at Waverley Station. I will leave practising my roar until I see The Benefaktor. Unless he stays in his Kino.

Ursula – a 4^th century saint from the south west of England, who lost her feast day in 1970. Best known for her 11,000 anonymous virgins/handmaidens, slaughtered by the Huns outside Cologne. Why do these things always happen to women? Removed, forgotten or unnamed. It’s really not on.

But that’s a lot of detail. What I started out to say is that writing helps me work out who I am – what is going on in my life. When I was still working, I was probably seen as the quiet one. But I was always listening, taking things in. My notepads and latterly my emails showed my “workings”. If we needed something fixed, I would work it out with paper and pen rather than pontificating at length in a meeting. What is the point of repeating what everybody else has already said, just to be heard? I think that means that I am an introvert.

So blogging helps me with “me”. But the reading and research that is required to explore an issue also helps me to explore the wider world.

Gillian – AKA GANTOB – has asked in recent posts, that we try to contribute to a “golden thread”. This is something that links our writing back to that of earlier pamphlets. Well, I have mentioned the south-west of England before, in the context of Glastonbury and Joseph of Arimathea’s miraculous hawthorn tree. But that was centuries before Saint Ursula, and I do not like repeating myself. So how about this: San Lorenzo, Kurt Vonnegut’s fictional island from “Cat’s Cradle” that Gillian wrote about in her Threads pamphlets, was in the Caribbean. I cannot see from a quick flick or a google search precisely where Vonnegut placed the island in his imagination. There may be details in the description of flights or the shipwreck that could help narrow it down: perhaps it was one of those tiny dots that prove so tricky in silhouette form on that Worldle map game. Well, Ursula’s 11,000 virgins and I know a thing about the Caribbean. Follow the line down, from Florida, through Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, and you reach the Leeward Islands. And there they still are: The 90 islands and rocky outcrops that make up the Virgin Islands. They are split now into the British and US Virgin Islands, but I doubt that the martyred souls will worry about that. My namesake is honoured on the US side of the line, in an Episcopal Church. That’s my “new thing” for today.

Finally, these explorations with a pen help me understand complex issues. I have written about identity and finding oneself. This reminds me of my namesake Ursula Le Guin. No abbreviations for her. I have only read one of her books: “The Left Hand of Darkness” (1969). This was one of her first books, perhaps her most lauded, but at times controversial. I was thrilled by it, seeing beyond the science fiction tropes and made-up names. It still seems 50 years ahead of its time. It explored new territories, not of space, but sex and gender, with its ambisexual characters with names such as Estraven. Despite sounding like a female hormone, the characters are referred to in the masculine. This led to some criticism, with Le Guin reportedly “haunted and bedeviled by the matter of the pronouns”. What a pity that others could not see beyond these little words to read and debate the more interesting ideas within.

I settle down for the night. I can hear The Benefaktor shifting furniture around. I think that I will read a bit. A few more pages of HERmione by H.D. And there is my answer in a single word: Her. My. One’s own perspective on the world. That is why I blog.

Tomorrow is another day. The puzzles will refresh. I will be able to challenge myself with another country on Worldle, WhatsApping the result to my son in our daily challenge. Imagine what life would be like Interrailing to Kosovo, taking the ferry to Lebanon or, if I’m feeling adventurous, flying to Fiji. I could sing some of their local songs (though you would not be able to hear me behind a wine biscuit). Read their literature – the original, not in translation. Listen in to the local debates about the big news stories. I dream of booking a holiday if The Benefaktor can arrange travel insurance. On our return I would talk about my discoveries with the hens. Write it all down.

URS 31 March 2024

Pamphlet 22 of the #GANTOB2024 #52Pamphlets

AKA answer 2 of the 23 Questions

This has now been answered.

I want to ask a question but don’t know if anybody else would be as interested in the answer to the question as I would be. I watched an interview on YouTube where Bill Drummond was interviewing this guy and Bill mentioned the male ego a few times and I find this concept really fascinating. But what is the male ego? Is it something that is easily defined?
Can what it is even be articulated?
I find the idea of ego fascinating and troubling and I need help figuring out what it is! Or at least what the male ego is….
ARIADNE, 29 MARCH 2024

To answer this question please either post a comment to this blog, email GANTOB or use Instagram or Twitter/X. Selected answers will be collated in a future pamphlet in the #52Pamphlets.

Read more about the 23 Questions, and submit your own question.

Hi Gantob,

Here’s a question for you:

What fuels your passion for blogging so?

Thanks

NIk aka Young Man on Facebook

This question has now been answered.

To answer this question (either from your own perspective, or your imagined response on behalf of GANTOB or affiliates), please either post a comment to this blog, email GANTOB or use Instagram or Twitter/X. Selected answers will be collated in a future pamphlet in the #52Pamphlets.

Read more about the 23 Questions, and submit your own question.

This is hot off the press. Bronwyn, who we first met in the GANTOB Kompanion Volume between the first and second books, and who was important in identifying some of the deceptions by The Foundation Doktor and The Benefaktor, has had a flying visit to the croft. It was lovely to meet her. She had quite a few tales about Ali and Curt that I hadn’t heard before.

I wish her every success on her retirement and travels.

The A9 drags. I take it gently. I have to protect my consignment of papers. Not from accidents – though the road has a litany of tragic tales no doubt – but from prying hands. When I stop, I make sure that the box is covered in the footwell behind the passenger seat, and my old Land Rover properly locked. It is proving an expensive journey at 15mpg. That retirement lump sum is not going to go very far at this rate. I do not stop at Blair Atholl to refuel. The following stretch – the climb to Drumochter – grinds on, so I take my foot off the pedal on the descent and limp into Dalwhinnie. Luckily they have diesel.

I pause to take stock. It is my first time this far north. I have left the waterfowl of the East Anglian fens far behind. They will be in somebody else’s charge once they have filled my position. I have been given some directions by Ali. “Watch out for the Sow of Atholl and the Boar of Badenoch on your left”. He has asked me to take a photo, for his wife. There was no mobile reception when I took it, but down in civilisation, with its familiar takeaway cups and wraps, I have a couple of bars. Ali’s email gives some context: His wife Gillian has been doing some writing. She has also been working too hard. Sadly, they have had a bad flood. She has no time to come this far south for a photo to illustrate a blog she has been working on. The quote that she is looking to mirror is from American author Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, from the 1960s. She is “rather obsessed”. I have the quote written in my notepad. I need to keep my mobile for navigation.

“Mountains arose abruptly to the north of Bolivar, crowding the remainder of the island with their brutal humps. They are called the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, but they looked like pigs at a trough to me”.

I cannot find an angle that accentuates the porcine connection. My snatched photo of the two mountains reminds me more of a scene from the introduction to Twin Peaks. Bum. Ba Dum. No matter. I send the photo and disconnect.

Back onto the A9. Alternating single and dual carriageway. More dodgy overtaking by red Audis. Duelling. There is nowhere to stop for a bit of a break, some refreshment. I burrow down into my memories of the trip so far. Three days and counting. A stop in Chester-Le-Street for a bit of a chinwag over birdwatching with Pat followed by a night on her surprisingly comfortable sofa bed. And then a rather awful afternoon with The Photographer in Edinburgh. It has been decades since I last saw him [Ed: as described in the second GANTOB book, in the Muir Trance series]. At his request we have agreed to meet at a local nature reserve, rather than his house. I park beside some modern flats and follow my nose to the dovecot (“doocot” apparently in these northern climes) agreed as our rendezvous.

I recognise him at once. He is sitting, head down at a picnic bench, peering at his phone. He has hardly changed in all the intervening years. He stands to attention as I call his name, and eases himself out of the wooden assault course. Limbs tangled in struts. He seems nervy and distant, but I remember that he was never a particularly good listener.

Striding away after our snatched greeting he explains that he wants to take me to see an unfamiliar duck. I cannot work out how this might be the source of his angst. I follow on. In the centre of the park is a huge natural lake with dozens of submerged trees. It is like a scene from a dinosaur movie: a surprise in the middle of the city. The grey herons at the water’s edge, on branches and in flight appear to confirm the primordial hypothesis. As we walk, the peace is interrupted by an unseen coot’s call and we glimpse a water rat, which scurries away to watch us in safety from under a branch. A flotilla of mute swans glides parallel with the shore, approaching a viewing platform where there are dozens of tufted ducks living up to their name in glorious submerging monochrome. We make little small talk while walk. We barely know each other, apart from the Curt Finks connection. And then he stops, and starts whispering as we approach a pair of colourful ducks. They are in a quiet corner away from the clamour of Canada geese and black-headed gulls. The Photographer is clearly excited. He splutters his question, and I answer as gently as I can. I decide against using the term “common teal”, which I suspect would be a letdown, opting instead for Anas crecca, speaking it gently, like an anacrusis, before emphasising its familiar name of Eurasian teal. “Lovely, colourful pair”, I enthuse. The flash of green on the female’s wing, the brown and black markings with rim of yellow on the male’s head. The Photographer types into his phone – an aide memoire I imagine initially, but then I realise that he is googling my opinion – checking it.

“I love how they stick together, probably coming back to the same spot year after year”, I comment, to break back into his consciousness. Ill judged. I learn over the course of the next thirty minutes of monologue that The Photographer has three wives and counting, with numerous (never quite quantified) dependents. “Number 3” (wife) is proving rather more demanding than he had first imagined. He must be at least 80. Expenses are mounting and home is not a happy place. She has been signed off work with severe morning sickness for a couple of weeks. He is grateful for the warmer weather and longer days. He is out and about much of the time.

When we are back at the doocot The Photographer sheds his morose side and asks me, with his first sustained period of eye contact, “Do you know the work of Bill Drummond?” I have to admit that I do not. He goes on to explain that his recent exploits with his school acquaintance, the former Rev K______ (AKA The Benefaktor) have led him to do some “research”. He flicks up the Wikipedia page for this Drummond character on his phone, and scrolls down to a bit about burying $20,000 in a stone circle in Iceland. This, The Photographer, contends, is his way back to recapturing the intense period of happiness that he and Number 3 had last year. He has a cheap flight booked and is heading out in the morning. He will buy a map and spade when he arrives.

“He was obsessed by the guy, buys his art, but fan boy turns foe over night. What a story!” The Photographer is cock-a-hoop. “Destroyed the photo in 20,000 cuts. More perhaps, depending on how you count them. Richard Long was the name of the photographer [Ed: but not The Photographer]”. He’s talking so much that he’s quite out of breath. “Drove up, all the way, up, the UK” to get it out of his system.

We go our separate ways. I wish him luck with his journey. He gives a thumbs up. I decide to hunt down a hotel rather than take up his offer of a bed for the night. I update Ali by text and ask about the arrangements for the following day. He replies with a What3Words reference.

The next morning, after a generic hotel breakfast, I set out from central Edinburgh, choosing my route to avoid the low emission zone signs on the advice of the concierge. They have just appeared. He is not sure if they mean anything. I make good time, allowing a stop near Kinross for a midmorning snack. So here I am, in the Cairngorms, listening to Julian Cope on the Land Rover’s CD player. His Black Sheep album. The Shipwreck of St. Paul. “The saddest place in the world for a heathen/ Is this place, let’s burn it down”.

Ali’s new house is apparently quite difficult to find. Inspired by my account of The Photographer’s story he has suggested that we meet at a four-thousand-year-old stone circle in a housing estate, and go from there. He thinks I will be interested by a site known only to the local, off the tourist trail.

I take the Aviemore turning, and then follow the Tripadvisor instructions. I do not know how to use what3words to navigate. The instructions are not difficult to remember. I am told to “look out for a residential road called Muirton (on your right hand side)”. I am thinking about renowned ornithologist Grayling Muir [Ed: GANTOB book 2] as I pull up, so am distracted and do not see Ali approaching. He laughs and gives me a huge hug. I have known him since he was a little boy. I shake myself out of my trance.

“Long journey?” he asks. Recovering, I explain that I am grateful to stretch my legs. We tromp around the circle. It is damp. And cold. Nearby houses provide a bit of shelter from the wind. The inner circle is pretty complete, but the stones are low and squat, unlike Stonehenge. It is low key. I like it. It is how I imagined Scotland to be. We head back to our cars. I follow up along tiny roads, the view opening out into a U-shaped valley obviously scraped out by glaciers. A different type of trough.

Ali’s wife – Gillian – welcomes us at the door. She has finished her day’s work and wants to get out for a bit. We follow, past the trees, avoiding the flooding, and come across the neighbouring crofter repairing his fencing. We do not get anywhere very fast. A little further down “the glen” we stop for the postmistress in her red van. Gillian whispers a story once she is out of earshot. The postie is apparently the great great great…. granddaughter of the man who killed the pirate Blackbeard in the Caribbean back in the early 1700s. Can trace her family, and the story, back 300 years. I search for the details when we get back to the croft and connect to the internet. I cannot find specifics – the name of the pirate slayer is never given. It just says: “When Blackbeard was about to deliver a killing blow to Maynard, another sailor, a Highlander, jumped on Blackbeard’s back and inflicted a deep wound.” But Gillian seems to believe it. “20 cuts, 5 musket shots and then he was decapitated, head on a spike”, she marvels. She really is as mad as a box of frogs. She grabs Vonnegut’s book Cat’s Cradle from the table and shows me the pigs at the trough section before reading out the following passage from later in the book: “His family’s wealth derived from the discovery by Bokonon’s grandfather of one quarter of a million dollars in buried pirate treasure, presumably a treasure of Blackbeard, of Edward Teach”.

Speaking of treasure, I rescue the box from the back of the car and bring it to Ali. Notepads of figures, maps, a lot of details about bird sightings, all in his father’s hand. A few loose-leaf pages of typed text – stories and journal entries from a dot matrix printer. They have been up in my loft for 30+ years, the letters BCG scrawled on the side of the box. We had worked for hours, Curt, me and Grayling. We had some successes, with mentions in the acknowledgement sections of Prof Muir’s papers. But never a paper with Curt’s or my name at the top. There is nothing in the technical writings that would be a surprise to anybody now. We have missed our chance. But I can give my friend Curt (RIP) – Ali’s Dad – a bit of a leg up with his stories. He would have loved that. Gillian agrees, noting her success with one of Curt’s stories in a literary magazine recently, and her labours of love with the GANTOB books.

After supper I make my excuses and settle into the tiny guest room. A box room with bare white walls. They are still doing the place up after their move. The confines of this space frame my memories of the past few days and allow me to plot my next steps. The world is my oyster. I have no ties. Perhaps I will pop up to the Moray Firth to see the whales and dolphins. And when do puffins arrive? I could head up to Orkney to catch them and the Ring of Brodgar, the isthmus separating salt and freshwater. How wonderful.

It has been a long day. That night I dream of stone circles and buried treasure. In the morning, I rise early and write down everything that I can remember from the past 3 days, for GANTOB (the project). If she does not like it, she can spike it or cut bits out.

I leave before Ali and Gillian wake, only stopping once I reach a snack van and toilet a few miles south of Inverness. A skein of geese flies over head, audible above the hum of the road. I book a ferry and a room in Stromness on my phone. Up, up and away.

Bronwyn, 20 March 2024

Pamphlet 18 of the #52Pamphlets

This question has now been answered. Unless you’re very interested in the GANTOB process, you’d be best skipping to the answer.

Hi Gantob, 

I have a question that I would like to submit, and my question is:

Is work important for the soul? Is work important to keep you grounded?

Sometimes I really hate my job and it can feel so draining, depressing and pointless and it takes up most of my week leaving me with only two days  where I can actually do the things that I enjoy doing. But if I didn’t have to work – if all of my time was actually mine – would I lose touch with reality? 

Yours,

Tim (names may have been changed)

To answer this question, please either post a comment to this blog, email GANTOB or use Instagram or Twitter/X. Selected answers will be collated in a future pamphlet in the #52Pamphlets.

Read more about the 23 Questions, and submit your own question.