Mister Duffy Changes Trains

WHISKY GALORE Now that I have your attention, what do you think of when you hear the name Compton Mackenzie? Most of us, I guess, would think of Whisky Galore , the book on which the much-loved Ealing Comedy film was based. Let me digress for a moment. When I lived in Wembley in the early 1980’s, I had a friend and neighbour called Ed Debreuque, one of nature’s gentlemen. Ed was a lorry driver, he could do honours maths questions as if he were shelling peas, and as I recall, he read Caesar in Latin for pleasure. He later got a first in maths and then an MSc in applied maths from the Open University but remained a driver for his living. Anyway, one day in 1983, he brought this book to the pub to lend me, an ancient Penguin edition of Mackenzie’s The Monarch of the Glen , saying that he had found it very funny and that I as a Scot would also find it so. I had never read anything by Mackenzie, and knew nothing about him except that he had written Whisky Galore . I took Monarch home, read...

  Under age drinking Thanks to Linda Pointon for suggesting the theme of this week’s blog. I used to be the Director of Graduate Studies for my Institute. It sounds rather grand, but it just means that I looked after the PhD students. One of the most pleasant duties of the post was to organise the annual Postgraduate Research Day. On this occasion, each PhD student would give a ten-minute presentation to the other PhD students, whichever supervisors could attend, and myself. This would take up perhaps half of the day. The other half was devoted to lengthy tea, coffee or lunch breaks in which the students could network among themselves, which was actually the chief purpose of the event. The day would close with an hour or so of drinks and nibbles. As our institute is a small one, this was a relatively intimate affair, with perhaps myself and a dozen PhD students sitting round in a circle, drinking wine. Our institute at the time comprised the Centre for Cancer Prevention, the ...

  Southbound This photograph shows the A3 at Robin Hood Way, Kingston Vale, taken from a footbridge over the road, looking south-west out of London. It has two particular reasons for remaining in my memory. The first dates back to the 1980’s when I lived in Wembley. I was in my twenties, unattached, and if not a workaholic, at least very strongly tethered to my work at what was then the MRC Clinical Research Centre at Northwick Park Hospital. A major release for me, however, was the opportunity to leave London and spend the weekend with my sister and her family in Bognor Regis. On a Friday evening, or more often a Saturday morning, I would start up my old and none too reliable Peugeot 104, and negotiate the London traffic, making the eventual escape on the A3. Why I remember this particularly unremarkable stretch of suburban road is not clear. I think the romance of the name, Robin Hood Way, is what made it stick in my mind originally. At some point shortly after this, I woul...

  Christopher Plummer and the Nuns The death of the actor most famous for playing Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music reminded me of a couple of things. There was considerable excitement in our house when the film was released. My dad took the whole family to see it at the Odeon in Edinburgh. I was about nine years old at the time, and it seemed to me that for a Roman Catholic family, going to see The Sound of Music was as much a religious obligation as going to mass on Sunday. As I say, I was only nine years old at the time. That’s my excuse for the following episode. At some point I felt my nose irritating me. I stuck the corner of a handkerchief up one nostril to induce a sneeze. Unfortunately it induced a sneezing fit lasting all through the scene where Rolf and Liesl are alone together singing I am Sixteen Going on Seventeen. This caused much merriment among my family, but I am not sure what the rest of the Odeon audience thought about it. It did the trick, however, ...

  Yorkshire and Me (1) The Three Peaks I guess Yorkshire is going to feature rather frequently in this blog if I manage to persevere with it. Apart from being a county that has everything- a proud and robust people, cities of great character, mountains, moorland, a beautiful coast, a strong culture and history- it has given me a life partner and a second family. If I am to write about my relationship with Yorkshire, the difficulty is where to start. Let me begin with one of the many powerful Yorkshire traditions, the Three Peaks Challenge. Most of us in the UK probably think of The Three Peaks Challenge as the attempt to climb Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon in a 24-hour period. I might have some remarks on the complete lunacy of this in a later piece, but for now, you should know that there is a Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge, which is arduous but less likely to kill you. The Three Peaks are Pen-y-Ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough, a triangle of mountains around Ribbles...