Its Colours They Are Fine

Auld Lang Syne

Last day of another year and I sit at the window looking down over Hill Street, out across the city. Glasgow.

Directly opposite, across the road, a row of grey tenements, crazy-tilted chimney pots, a tangle of television aerials. Further along, the red brick block of the cancer hospital. From here, if the lights were lit, I could see right into the houses and into the hospital wards.

Through a gap I can see as far south as the Renfrewshire hills, fading today into grey rainmist. (Out of that mist perhaps came the first straggling settlers to this valley, this green place.) Jutting cranes of the shipyards. Monolithic tower-blocks.

Down in the street, an Indian woman passes in a red raincoat and a gold-embroidered sari; a little boy solemnly drags a huge cardboard box along the pavement, to some secret purpose of his own; a sleek black car goes swishing along towards the synagogue at the end of the road; an ambulance draws up outside the cancer hospital. Beads of rainwater strung along a telegraph wire.

From down the road comes a soft chiming of bells from the church of Saint Aloysius. The chimes are a tape-recording, played through speakers high up in the church tower. This is the bell that never rang.

On the table before me is a book on Celtic art, lying open, pencils and a rubber eraser, a paintbrush and a pot of yellow poster-colour, a sea-smoothed stone, speckled and veined. I have been looking for a design that will fit the shape of the stone, an almost-perfect oval. The one I have chosen is an intricate knot, copied from a page in the Book of Kells. The stone is one I brought back with me from Campbeltown. There I went with my wife in the spring, and we crossed one morning to the far side of Kintyre, the coast facing out to the Atlantic. And there we walked for miles, over fields, along clifftops. We scrambled down slopes of shifting scree, till we stood at the edge of a shallow dip, looking down into the wide sweep of a bay. And the waves came smashing in, thundering along the beach, like nothing we had ever seen or heard before. There was nothing between us and America but this vast being, this great surging ocean.

We picked our way down over the shingle. A single shaggy goat looked down at us, without interest. It was a place where no people should be – dead sheep, dead seagulls, a dead gannet, its feathers clotted with oil. And back a little from the water’s edge was the simple grave of some foreign sailor, whose body had been washed up here, far from home. And over the grave was a marker in the shape of a Celtic cross, and the inscription read simply GOD KNOWS. And the ocean rumbled and crashed, endless.

We sat for a time, awed by it, and with nothing much to say.

I had wanted for years to come to Kintyre. In Campbeltown my father was born. There my grandparents lived before coming to Glasgow when the shipyards closed down. Further back than that I know nothing of my family, except that they came over from Ireland, to farm and to fish.

‘Imagine bein able to trace right back,’ I said. ‘All your ancestors, as far as human memory.’

Right back to primitive man. Back through the animals, back through the apes and the reptiles.

‘Back into the sea,’ she said. ‘Back to a tiny wee one-celled creature.’

‘And back before that?’

‘God knows!’

Before we left, she picked up a stone, to bring back with us to Glasgow from this place. How many years had worn it smooth to this perfect shape for us to find? Wet from the sea it glistened, and its colours were deep and rich.

And here sits that same stone, waiting for me to paint it with an ancient pattern. One line interlacing, looping and turning back on itself, without end.

The patterns my mother made with pipe clay on the stairs and the landing, after she had scrubbed them, down on her knees. Curl and sworl, repeated, a flow like waves.

My first efforts at writing – the same recurring shapes, scrawled with a stub of pencil. Holding it up to my mother. Whit dis it say mammy? Real writing.

I make my first marks on the stone, sketching the design in pencil, tilting the stone to the light from the window to see the lines more clearly, watching the outline slowly take shape.

Rub my eyes, grown tired from the concentration. Lean back and stretch. Look up at the ceiling. Landscapes in the damp patch up there in the corner. Japanese mountains through mist, a waterfall, a tree. When the rain falls heavy it seeps through and drips. The landlady has promised, a man will come from the Corporation, climb on the roof, shift a slate or two. ‘That should do the trick,’ she says. ‘Course it’s all storm damage, few years back. Building’s never been the same since. Should’ve been pulled down years ago.’

Years ago.

As a child, writing my name and address on the inside covers of all my books. Elaborately, a very full address.

Top flat right, 115 Brighton Street, Govan, Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, Europe, The Northern Hemisphere, The Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way, The Universe.

And here I am, years later, back in another Glasgow tenement, another top flat right. Same old universe. Wind rattles the panes. It is cold and I can see my breath. The little electric fire is not enough for such a big room. I should have cleared out the grate and lit a real fire, but I’ve been lost in the painting of the stone. I can come back to that later, but for now the room needs warmth.

We have coal, in a tea-chest, in a cupboard by the front door. We have old newspapers under the bed. But no sticks. Check out the kitchen that we share with our neighbours, but there’s nothing there that could be broken up. Nobody else at home. Our neighbours are two students and an Irish labourer. The students have gone home for Christmas and New Year. Jack, the Irishman, goes home tonight. We will have the place to ourselves; some peace.

Perhaps I can pick up some sticks while I’m out. I should go now. The centre of town will be crowded. It’s already getting late.

Outside it is colder than I had realised. Dampness and a wind that stings fingers and face.

The small boy I saw earlier, lugging the cardboard box, has pitched the box on its side, like a tent, on a square of wasteground where a house used to be. Hunkered down inside it, sheltered, he huddles and peers out.

(A New Year’s Day, long ago. Going with my father to see Rangers play Celtic at Ibrox Park.

My father worked part-time at the Albion, the greyhound stadium across the road from Ibrox. On match-days they used the Albion car-park and my father worked as an attendant. I went with him, early, and was left in a little office, to wait.

My father’s friend Bobby switched on an electric fire for me, told me to make myself at home. On the wall was an old framed photograph of Charlie Tully as a young man. Screwed on to the wall, it must have been there for years. As Bobby was leaving, he spat on it, hit Charlie smack in the face. ‘Papes!’ he said, disgusted. ‘Never mind son, we’ll murder them the day.’ I had a long time to wait. In my pocket I had two little books. A New Testament in modern English I’d been given at Sunday school, and the Rangers’ annual handbook. I couldn’t settle to reading them. The wind came under the door. Rain beat against the window. The spit moved slowly down the glass on the picture of Charlie Tully.)

At the end of the street, past the last building, the wind whips harder across the empty space. Once the street extended further, down to Saint George’s Road. But they cleared away the houses, bulldozed the hillside. And now it is a steeper slope. Grassy green and landscaped, it dips down towards the motorway and what is left of Charing Cross. A concrete footpath leads down, in flat slab steps. A dear green place. Green grassy slopes.

Down there was a pub where I used to go as a student. Long gone. I’d even forgotten its name. But just then I remembered it. The Wee Hoose.

I remembered sitting there, another Hogmanay. There would be a crowd of us, not long up from school, drinking ourselves sick for the New Year. And there was a moment, afterwards, when the pub was closing; and I found myself sitting outside at the edge of the pavement. It was as if I suddenly came on myself, discovered myself sitting there, and it all seemed comical and sad at the same time. There I was, sitting, at the centre of this crazy dream that was my life.

‘How did I get here?’ I said.

‘Jist rolled out the pub an sat down,’ said somebody.

‘Naw, but here! How did I get here!’

‘Ach yer pissed!’

Then there was another voice, in the doorway of the pub, intoning, ‘It is closing time now in the gardens of the west . . .’

‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘Ah was readin that the other day. Where in God’s name was that?’

The same voice came back, sharp and nasal, ‘Hurry up please, it’s time . . . Goodnight ladies, goodnight . . .’

‘Who’s that quotin all these books?’ I said. ‘Somebody there knows what ah’m talking about.’

Then it was taken up, an old-time song.

Goodnight ladies

It’s time to say goodnight . . .

Then I was swept off towards a party, somewhere.

Merrily we roll along

Roll along

And somehow, later, we were rolling through the Clyde Tunnel. Shouting out old Beatles songs at the tops of our voices, hearing them echo back. Through the tunnel, through the stupid night. Going nowhere. Rolling along.

To walk along these streets is to stir so many memories.

A streetcorner. A shopfront. The texture of a stone wall. The way a girl’s hair hangs. The pattern on a dress. Everything brings back moments, trivial in themselves, beautiful and funny and sad. Bits and pieces. Fragments in a dream.

Sometimes I feel I know everything that has ever been, and will one day remember it all. All the fragments will make one great timeless whole. Then these moments remembered, this restless déjà vu, seem part of an endless awakening, to something more.

Sometimes it seems the fragments contain the whole; and every moment is eternity, every little thing is infinite. And the moment itself is its own significance, its own meaning.

I turn along Sauchiehall Street, into the crowds, the endless flow. Work is over early today, for most. Now it is all preparation for the Big Night. The whole place is frantically getting ready to relax.

My first stop is a chemist’s shop, to buy some ginger essence. It comes in a tiny bottle, a deep rich red, a phial of magic potion.

Out into the street again and the lights are on – streetlights, shoplights, Christmas lights. It’s still afternoon, but the dark comes down early these midwinter days. I push on through the tide and come to a stop at the next traffic lights, catching bits and snatches of conversation.

‘Honest tae God, it was that size . . .’

‘So ah says tae her ah says Margaret ah says . . .’

‘Course Glasgow’s not really Scottish is it . . .’

‘An ther he wis . . .’

‘More Irish than anything else . . .’

‘Fell doon the subway steps an smashed the lot . . .’

‘Now Edinburgh. Edinburgh’s Scottish . . .’

‘Depends what you mean by Scottish . . .’

‘A wee carry-out bag . . .’

‘But surely . . .’

‘All over the place . . .’

‘Gonnae be some night the night . . .’

‘Watchin it on the telly . . .’

‘So ah says c’mere you . . .’

‘Anywey . . .’

An old man in a long grey coat, down almost to his ankles, goes shambling and muttering past. ‘Nae wonder folk laugh at us,’ he says, squinting across to where a man in a kilt is waiting to cross. A cartoon-Scotsman, big-bellied and beefy-red in the face, he stands and waits for the tides of traffic to part. The old man in the long grey coat coughs and spits and shakes his head.

I have met him before, the same old man. There was one day in Hill Street, a big saloon car was easing along slow. It came to a stop, its engine purring, and the driver leaned out and asked the old man the way to the synagogue. I was coming up behind and heard him direct the driver the wrong way, back down into the town centre. I told him the synagogue was at the end of the street, and ‘Oh, aye,’ he said, ‘yer right enough.’ But when the car had gone he turned on me. ‘Whit d’ye want tae dae that fur?’ he said. ‘Wouldnae tell these bastards anythin. Wouldnae give them the time a day.’

There was one other time I met him, walking past Charing Cross, he caught me by the arm.

‘D’ye know whit it’s all about then?’ he asked. ‘Lint,’ he said, telling me his secret of secrets, repeating it, shouting it into my face.

‘Lint! Ur ye deef? Lint! Lint! Fuckin lint!’

Then, ‘Ach, whit’s the use,’ he said. ‘Ah don’t know.’

Further along comes a young man in orange dhoti, orange anorak, a devotee of Lord Krishna, chiming finger-cymbals and chanting the Hare Krishna mantra, moving through the Hogmanay crowds. A few folk shout at him.

‘Gawn yersel son, give us the auld Harry Karry!’

‘D’ye know any Country an Western?’

‘Harry Harry, Harry Hood . . .’

He catches my eye and I smile but don’t stop.

‘Hare Krishna,’ he says, as I pass.

‘Hare Krishna.’

I cut down towards the supermarket, Grandfare, stopping only to peer in at the window of a music ship, at guitar and saxophone, bongo-drums and flute, banjo and autoharp and clarinet, all arranged neatly in display, just so.

The supermarket is like a region of Hell, packed with people stocking up for the coming days. There is a tiredness, in the brightness of the lights, in the ransacked shelves, in the faces of the assistants. And over it all the Tannoy tinkles out tinny music, jingling festive tunes and pop songs, all at the same bland incessant level, muted organ, guitar and drums. Have yourself a merry little Christmas. Welcome to my world. The fool on the hill. I quickly gather up the few things I have come for and join the nearest queue. Whatever queue I join is sure to take the longest, even if it’s only half the length. It seems to be a law of the universe, so I surrender myself to it. The woman just before me has two trolleys, filled to overflowing. I prepare myself for a wait of several days.

And it suddenly seems funny, this madness. I imagine us all dancing to that music, linking in a conga-line, weaving through the check-outs.

I make it out eventually, carrying a bulging plastic bag. I have just about come full circle now, am back almost to Hill Street and home.

I stop outside the Chinese shop to look in at the lanterns and ginger-jars, baskets and soup-bowls, toy dragons and kites, boxes and bottles and packets and tins. I stand at the door, smelling spices and teas, and I notice, in the rubbish left out on the pavement, a wooden crate like an orange-box. Remembering I needed some firewood, I pick it out and walk on. The rain has been drizzling on and off all day; now it has started again and gets steadily heavier. Outside the chip shop there is more wood, a broken fish-box. I gather it up, tuck it inside the Chinese crate, and hurry on up the last stretch home; past Saint Aloysius church, past a playground where three boys are kicking a ball about, past a dog being a dog and chasing a cat, past a young Indian girl, past a policeman, past a man struggling up the hill with a crate of beer. I look across to the wasteground where I saw the small boy earlier, crouched inside his cardboard box. The boy has gone now and I stop. Look. The empty box, sagging. Listen. The drip and patter of the rain on wet cardboard.

Home again, the first thing to do is light the fire. Down on my knees, I rake out the grate, scrumple up bits of newspaper, break up the wooden crate for sticks. On the end of the crate are stencilled Chinese characters, and stamped, in red, the words People’s Republic of China. It has come a long way to be firewood for us to burn. The fish-box is stamped Aberdeen. I don’t need to use it yet, and put it away for another time in the cupboard where we keep the coal.

There is something elemental in it, the ritual placing of paper, sticks and coal, the kindling and coaxing into life. But today it is made difficult by the strong wind that comes beating down the chimney in gusts, damping the fire, filling the room with smoke. I try to create an updraught by fanning and blowing; I open the door; I spread a sheet of newspaper across the wire mesh of the fireguard; and at last it begins to catch, a flicker in one corner, a crackle of sticks, a rush and roar of flame as it draws and flares. I peel back the sheet of paper and the flames settle into a slower, steady dance, a glow that brings the room to life.

There is a picture I remember, with a poem about firewood, in a book on Eastern art. Searching through my books, I find the right one and open it at the page.

The picture is a brush-drawing, The enlightenment of Eno, by an artist called Shuai Weng. Eno the Chinese master stands, a bundle over his shoulder; he smiles, attentive, as if listening. A few deft brush-strokes give him life; he emerges from the silence, the white expanse of the page; the lines are fluid and fading, eloquent beyond words.

The verse reads:

The bundle is carried firmly on his shoulder;

Before him, the way home has no obstructions

‘Awaken the mind without fixing it anywhere’,

And he knows the house where the firewood burns

I look up to see those Japanese landscapes on the ceiling, and notice the damp patch is spreading, the rainwater starting to seep through. I place a plastic bucket on the floor to catch the drips.

Jack, our neighbour, is home. I’ve heard him moving about and now he’s knocking at the door of our room.

‘Hello,’ he says. ‘Ah’m just gettin ready to go. Thought ah’d say cheerio an wish ye all the best.’

‘Same to yerself Jack.’ We shake hands on it.

He stands, a bit awkward, not knowing what else to say. He is dressed up for the journey in his good suit, stiff in a shirt and tie.

‘What time’ll ye be home?’ I ask.

‘Should make it in time for the bells,’ he says. ‘The plane gets intae Dublin about ten. Then ah get a bus.’

‘That’s great. It’s really fast.’

‘So it is.’

‘You’ll be glad to see yer wife an kids again.’

‘Oh aye, ah will that. It’s hard y’know, bein away for so long.’

He has a drink in him and he’s talking more than usual, his face pink and gleaming.

‘No chance of gettin work nearer home Jack?’

‘It’s hard,’ he says. ‘It’s hard. Not much doin.’

‘It’s a long way to have to come.’

Up until a month ago we had another Irish neighbour, a younger man, in his twenties, called Terry. One night we were sitting when we heard a roar from his room, a roar that scared us, like a big animal in pain. Then there was a crash and what sounded like an explosion. Then a moaning and crying and the slam of the front door.

Jack was already out in the hall. Terry had rushed past him, out of the house, ‘lookin like death,’ he said.

It was only later we found out what had happened. Terry had been watching television, ready for a quiet evening, a couple of cans of Guinness to hand. Then the news had come on, with an item about shootings in Belfast. And one of the dead was Terry’s young brother. He had roared then, roared at the madness of it all. And the stupid newscaster was already talking about something else, talking about Parliament and smiling as if nothing had happened. And Terry took one of his cans of Guinness and threw it at the smiling face. And the screen and the tube caved in with a bang, the set blew up, showered glass all over the room. And Terry went raging out into the night.

A day or two later he went for good, back home to Ireland with his anger and his grief.

‘Ah think when ah come back,’ says Jack, ‘ah’ll be movin on again. Up tae Aberdeen, get a job on the oilrigs.’

‘D’you have to do that?’

‘Well. Ah could still get plenty work here. They’re pullin down that many buildins an puttin up new ones. But Aberdeen’s where the money is.’

‘Right.’

‘Listen,’ he says. ‘Ah’m away in a minute. But ah was thinkin ye might want the loan a ma telly while ah’m away, seein yis haven’t got one.’

‘That’s very good ae ye Jack.’

‘Ach!’

Together we lug the set from his room into ours.

‘Lots a good pictures an that on jist now,’ he says. ‘Reception’s nothin great, but it does.’

‘Fine.’

‘Would that be yer missis comin up the stair?’

‘Probably. She’s been out visitin her family. Her sister’s in the hospital, just after havin a baby.’

‘Boy or a girl?’

‘A wee girl.’

‘Nice.’

The frontdoor bell rings and Jack answers it. ‘It’s her right enough,’ he says.

‘Hello Jack,’ she says. ‘Thanks.’ She seems to be tired, glad to be home and to set down the heavy bags she’s been carrying.

‘Jack’s just goin home,’ I say, ‘and he’s givin us his telly while he’s away.’

‘That’s a nice thought Jack,’ she says.

‘Lots a good pictures on,’ says Jack.

He is awkward again for a moment, then he breaks it by looking at the time and saying, ‘Here, ah’d better be goin.’ He fetches his suitcase and a bundle tied with string, and closes the door of his room behind him. He shakes hands with both of us, formally, wishing us well.

‘Right then!’ he says.

‘Soon be home now,’ she says.

‘Should make it before the bells,’ he says again. The words are coming to have a special sound to him. Like an incantation. Home before the bells.

‘OK then.’

‘Right.’

‘Cheerio.’

‘All the best.’

We wave to him from the door, watch him go out of sight round the bend in the stairs.

‘Wee soul,’ she says, as we come inside again. ‘Standing there all dickied up. Your heart goes right out to him.’

‘Ye even forget the rest of the year!’ I say. ‘The times he plays his telly too loud . . . an doesn’t put enough money in the gas meter . . . an doesn’t clean the bath after him . . . an leaves the big pot full of chip fat . . .’

‘I know I know!’ she says, laughing. ‘But still . . .’

Later, after we’ve eaten, I put the finishing touches to the painting of the stone; the delicate interweaving of lines, in orange, finely outlined in green. I give it a coat of varnish and it brings out the colours, makes the stone shine, as if still wet from the sea.

Then together we make a start on cleaning up the room. And we talk, about nothing in particular, glad of the space and the peace, glad, for once, to have the house to ourselves.

She tells me about her sister’s baby, a poor wee lovely crinkled thing, looking out as if to ask what kind of nightmare was this she’d been born into.

‘Any word of them gettin a house yet?’

‘Nothing decent,’ she says. ‘The Corporation keep offering them these dumps away out in the schemes. Really rough. She just doesn’t fancy it, stuck in the house all day with the baby, and him out at work.’

‘Some bits of the schemes are OK though.’

‘Some bits are terrible,’ she says. ‘Absolute misery.’

There’s a bleakness not far away, coming in through our talk, but then suddenly, brightening, she shakes it off.

‘Anyway,’ she says. ‘The baby’s lovely!’

Then I start telling her about something I’ve been trying to write, a long poem about Glasgow, linked together by the heraldic images on the city’s coat of arms, the bell, the bird, the fish, the tree.

‘Still trying to write it out your system,’ she says.

‘Right. Ah keep comin across the images too. Ah’m sure it goes back to ma childhood, learnin the jingle.’

Where’s the bell that never rang?

Where’s the fish that never swam?

Where’s the tree that never grew?

Where’s the bird that never flew?

‘There really is something magical about it,’ she says. ‘Mysterious.’

‘Like one of those riddles you’ve got to solve before you can move on towards the Holy Grail, or the Jewel in the Lotus, or whatever.’

‘Like Zen koans.’

‘Right! The sound of one hand clapping. God! The soundless sound! That’s the bell that never rang!’

‘Is it?’

‘Why not! There’s a whole world to be read into it. The symbols are really beautiful. Ah was lookin at them today an seein all sorts of things.’

‘Like what?’

‘Well. The tree. It seems it’s a hazel, so that’s the hazel of wisdom that Neil Gunn’s always talkin about. And the fish is a salmon. That’s the salmon of knowledge with the ring of eternity in its mouth. Then there’s the bell. That’s the good news, ringin out. And the bird is the spirit, flying . . . soaring.’

‘It’s a lovely way to see it.’

‘And there’s other ways to look at it. Other patterns to make. And the great thing about the images is they’re concrete. They’re real. A bell. A bird. A fish. A tree. Things. And that’s what you come back to after all the flyin about. Just the plain miraculousness of what is.’

‘I’m dying to read this poem!’ she says.

‘All ah have to do is write it!’

‘Why don’t you write something now?’ she says. ‘I’m going to have my bath in a minute and then do the last wee bit tidying up. You could write for a while before the bells.’

‘Ah’ll try.’ I clear a space at the table, sit down with a pencil and blank sheets of paper.

‘Ah couldn’t really settle to it this morning.’

‘If you can’t write the poem,’ she says, ‘write something else. Just start anywhere. Write about where you are. Write about today, about the New Year.’

She goes off to have her bath and leaves me to it.

I look at the paper, and start to write . . .

Last day of another year and I sit at the window looking down over Hill Street, out across the city. Glasgow . . .

I write for a while then get up to put more coal on the fire. But before I fetch it from the cupboard, I remember I had planned on making up some ginger wine, something I’ve always had at New Year, ever since I was a child. I boil up a kettle and add the water to the ginger essence I bought today, mixing it up in a flagon that once held cider. Then I leave it in the kitchen sink to cool.

Passing the bathroom, I shout in. ‘Are you gonnae be all night in there?’

‘Won’t be long!’

There is a beauty in the formality of this bathing for the New Year. Putting on clean clothes. Cleaning up the house. A ritual. A purification.

I remember my mother, scrubbing out the whole house on the last day of the year; changing the bedclothes, washing the windows, hanging up new curtains. The smell of polish and disinfectant; everything in readiness, fresh. Then there was the waiting, for the great change. The bells, and a warmth that made you want to cry. Then the drunk uncles and aunties arriving, everything bright and harsh and loud. The drink and the singing. ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Uncle Billy always sang ‘The Sash My Father Wore’, Uncle Peter sang ‘The Red Flag’. The others would try to shut them both up, afraid they might cause trouble.

‘No party songs please. Give us a wee bit Country an Western, or an auld Scotch song.’

Old but it is beautiful and its colours they are fine, should old acquaintance be forgot, the workers’ flag is deepest red, nobody’s child I’m nobody’s child, I’m like a flower just growing wild, stained by the blood, for Auld Lang Syne, we’ll take a cup of kindness yet for Auld Lang Syne. Come the morning, there was always an emptiness. Glasses would be broken, food trampled into the floor, ashtrays overflowing, the smell of last night’s drink. Tired and drab, a staleness. The New Year.

I heap more coal on the fire. It douses the flame, but only for a moment as it licks then leaps and flares again, and other New Years come back to me.

Crouching, in the room full of loud uncles, trying to read The Broons book I’d been given at Christmas. The last page of the book, as always, ended with the Broons at their Hogmanay party, all misunderstandings cleared, all confusions resolved.

First New Year after my mother died, no party then, my father morose over his beer. But watching television and laughing. Duncan Macrae singing ‘Three Craws’.

The second craw

wis greetin fur its maw

on a cold and frosty mornin.

Cold and frosty. Waiting for our first foot.

Jack’s television set sits, alien, in the corner of our room. It is old-fashioned and bulky, a squat box. It takes up too much space; it intrudes. We should just have told Jack we didn’t want it. But I’m curious to know what’s on right now, so I switch it on to find out.

It takes a few minutes of droning to warm up, and what comes through is a choir that sounds like the Black and White Minstrels, singing ‘In the Good Old Summertime’. There is no picture, just a flickering zigzag of lines. The song is one that touches me. I remember it from before, one of a thousand stupid songs I have floating in my head. Singing about summertime in the heart of winter.

(An old film clip, of Laurel and Hardy at a street corner, frozen. Deep in the Depression, snow falling thick. Stan plays harmonium, Ollie sings a song. In the Good Old Summertime. At a street corner. Frozen.)

My grandfather winding up an old-fashioned gramophone, cranking the handle in his big fist. Putting on record after record, old 78s in brownpaper covers. Let the great big world keep turning. When you and I were young. In the good old summertime. My grandfather the blacksmith, who came to Glasgow from Campbeltown when the shipyards closed down.

‘Your bath’s run!’

‘Jist coming!’

She comes in wrapped in a towel and crouches in front of the fire to dry her hair.

‘See if you can get a picture on the other channel.’

I switch over and we can make out the vague outline of a kilted Scotsman singing ‘These Are My Mountains’.

‘White Heather Club,’ she says.

We watch for a few minutes, amazed. But the reception is bad. The voice is a crackle. The picture fades. The singer is reduced to a pattern, a buzzing stream of electrons. We switch off, put the television away in the coal cupboard, out of sight.

‘That’s better,’ she says. ‘Peace.’

The bath is deep and hot and I ease down into it. I stretch and soak in the warmth, muscles untensing, and drift off into thought.

And the memories come in a stream now, no order to them, a moment here, a glimpse there, random, tumbling, New Years past . . .

Walking home, in company or alone, from endless desolate parties . . . Making resolutions, making no resolutions . . . Starting diaries that never got beyond January 3rd . . . Shouting myself hoarse on the terracing at Ibrox or Parkhead, watching Rangers and Celtic try to pound each other into the ground . . . One year sleeping for a day and a night, disturbed only by the roars from the match up the road, waking through a fog, the floodlights shining on to the wall above the bed . . .

There was one year in London, stoned and raving through the crazy city night, laughing, laughing at the whole mad universe, spinning in its endless sorrow-joy . . .

There was a year we had a ceremony in Kelvingrove Park; made patterns with red thread on the hillside, left it to the weather, to be trampled, blown; let a blue thread drift on to the river . . .

There was a year I took nothing to do with any of it, made the New Year nothing special . . .

There was a year the two of us came hitch-hiking home from Europe, just making it back in time for the bells . . .

There was a year I looked out and the world was white and new, all covered in snow, everything still and perfect, in its place . . .

There was a year our neighbours’ party broke up in a brawl, and outside the street was being hosed down after a car-crash, and somebody’s chimney was on fire along the road . . .

There was last year when we saw the New Year in quietly, sitting together in meditation . . .

And this year that is ending will also pass from my mind, except for these moments that will come back to me, from nowhere, vivid and clear, with their own meaning, or with all meaning gone . . .

A spring day in Kintyre; crouched at the edge of the ocean, picking coral to string for a necklace; seeing, in a green and dripping cave, a flat stone painted by a saint, centuries ago . . . A horse in a field, russet in the sun . . . A smiling jade Buddha, behind a skull, in a cluttered junkshop window . . .

First days in this our latest temporary home; summer evening at the open window, listening to the sounds from the street . . . The way the sun slants across the tenement opposite; the chance shapes weathered on a gable end . . . A face. A voice. A journey . . . A tree in the park that looked golden as it shed its leaves . . . A dead pigeon in a fountain, floating on its back, its wings spread open like a bird in heraldry . . . The smile on the lips of a dead cat by the roadside, a winter day . . . The cry of my sister-in-law’s baby daughter, new-born . . .

I climb from the bath, let the water run out; dry myself and put on clean clothes; I feel new.

The god of the old year is dying. His is the sadness of these last days, the dark time, the natural ebb of the year. But the solstice is past, already a week gone. The cycle is turning again towards light.

This year too we plan to meditate through the bells, and it’s almost time for us to begin.

We have a little shrine set up in one corner; candles, incense, a few flowers. We sit before it and chant an ancient mantra, Aum. The seed-sound of the universe, of God the creator and God the preserver, God the transformer and destroyer. Aum.

The Universe, The Milky Way, The Solar System, The Earth, The Northern Hemisphere, Europe, Britain, Scotland, Glasgow, Garnethill, no Hill Street, Top flat right.

The Earth goes turning in space, towards another day. The tape-recorded bells of Saint Aloysius start to chime. It is the magic hour, the change. The New Year.

Further, away across the city, I hear more bells, and more, all just out of phase. Boats on the river sound their foghorns, all blending into one great drone. It sounds like an extension of our chanted Aum, and that makes us laugh. The great mantra, resounding over Glasgow!

A window is flung open and a woman’s voice bellows out.

‘Happy New Year everybody! Happy New Year!’

‘Wonder where this one’ll take us?’

‘God knows!’

The varnish has dried on my painted stone and I pick it up, feel the weight of it, solid, in my hand. The pattern has a wholeness, is harmonious, complete, and within it the lines seem in motion, interweaving, beginningless and endless, a pure energy flow.

I put the stone down and together we go to the window to look out. A few people are already out in the street. Two young couples, arm in arm, their voices laughing, go swaying down the middle of the road. An old man sits at the edge of the pavement, his head in his hands. A car passes, saluting everyone with a hoot of its horn. Two men have started to scuffle in a doorway, another two are wobbling up the hill, supporting each other and singing, happy.

For Auld Lang Syne, my dear, for Auld Lang Syne.

As a child I thought Auld Lang Syne was this old old woman, a crone, the ancient Mother. And somehow all this celebrating was for her.

There is noise from every house, television and records all but drowned out by the voices, raised.

Every window is a separate world, a little capsule of light. Here and there where the curtains haven’t been drawn we can see right in; we can see a man singing; a glass raised in his hand; we can see a small family group round the TV; we can see a party, already well under way, a room and kitchen packed.

In the hospital too the lights are on and we see an old woman at a window peering out; in another ward a porter is playing a piano, and upstairs a young nurse is combing her hair at a mirror.

Further along the road there’s a crash of breaking glass and a window has been broken, from the inside. One or two faces appear at other windows, curious. But nothing else happens.

‘Look!’ says my wife, pointing over at a house across the road.

A woman has a young child caught up in her arms and she dances with him, round and round and round. Light on her feet she spins with him, her head thrown back as they laugh and laugh.

We come in and close the window now, warm ourselves at the fire.

The incense stick has burned down. A heap of ash. Fragrance.

For Auld Lang Syne, my dear, for Auld Lang Syne.

The Earth goes turning in space. First day of another year.