October

Always a weird month for me October. Lots of good and lots of bad memories. I'm going to break with tradition here and repost verbatim some entries from my livejournal in October 2008.

I can't stop crying. Jane and I lost our baby yesterday at 37 weeks.

Jane went to the midwife at lunchtime yesterday. She came home to tell me that we needed to go to the hospital as there was no heartbeat.

Another heart monitor, two scans and an array of registrars, consultants and midwives later and the status was confirmed. Maggie was dead.

So now we have are having labour induced. We are waiting at home for 48 hours and if nothing starts we go straight in for more drugs. Every time I see the cradle or a drawer full of clothes I burst into tears. Jane feels she is some surreal soap opera. It just doesn't happen like that, not at 37 weeks. Everything done right; no drinking or smoking; good diet; blood pressure, urine and blood chemistry all fine. We'll have to discuss a PM with the consultant at hospital.

Then once Maggie is delivered I need to make arrangements, the hospital can do that for free at Melrose but as there is a cemetery behind the castle here we will make private arrangements. And I've still to figure out how to tell the children.

You'll understand if my posting is more erratic than usual but Jane comes first.

Then we headed to the Borders General Hospital on Saturday 18th October.

I'll start off by thanking everyone that gave messages of support to Jane and me during this terrible time. It really was appreciated.

Although this post is very much my own attempt at some catharsis I really don't mind sharing with you but for those that might find it all either overly sentimental or too cold blooded I'll stick my ravings behind the cut.

We went into the Border's General Hospital on Saturday morning, the staff were lovely and we had a private room (I've since learned that most maternity units have these special rooms; "Home From Home" rooms with real furniture and large en suite facilities). Jane received he induction meds and a large dose of antibiotics at 1130am after a long discussion with the consultant. She then promptly barfed them all back up again after five minutes. :-)

So then we had the waiting game and things moved remarkably fast though Jane was sick frequently and prodigiously. Come 2pm Jane knew things were beginning to move and at 2.32pm Maggie was delivered stillborn.

At 7lbs she was fully formed perfection, beautiful but so very, very fragile. She had obviously been dead a few days and there were signs of deterioration. We spent a couple of hours with her before asking the midwives to clean and dress her. Filled out our consent forms for the post mortem and then spent more time with Maggie before saying our goodbyes. This is when we both finally cracked, there had been sobs from me but this part was all too much. Even the midwives were wracked with grief. And only moments before the consultant had been commenting on how strong and dignified we had been in our grief, making everyone's job so much easier.

At home the house has never been cleaner. Jane's mother has been round to help but not finding it easy herself, she has thrown herself into the housework. Jane and I have found our peculiar one up, one down moods have helped us support each other as it has in the past. I find mornings particularly difficult whereas Jane finds the nights dreadful. She wrote about it extremely eloquently on Bad Mothers' Club where we have both found lots of support over the years. her mind and body play tricks on her, she expects to be up all night feeding and there is nothing but a space where the crib was. The Bad Mums have been terrific, cards and flowers arriving every day from them.

We had a real hiccup in our plans on Wednesday when they lost Maggie's body. We contacted the hospital to find out if she was ready to be released to be told that she wasn't there. They then tried calling Edinburgh who denied knowledge and that no PM had been performed. It then transpired that the pathologist, the only one in SE Scotland qualified to perform paediatric autopsy, was on holiday and instead of 2-3 days for a PM it would be more like 10 days. At this point with our consultants backing we were ready to withdraw consent but after talking with Jane we agreed to let things continue. There are a lot of angry obstetricians and midwives down here because of this clusterfuck. Their rage will serve as a fine proxy for my own, I don't have the energy.

When we finally get her back we will intern her in a plot behind Jedburgh Castle, then she will be no further than a hundred yards away. So much for being advocates for green burials at Hundy Mundy. We need to wait for Tom, a church minister in Kelso who married us and baptised both our children (despite knowing that I am an acknowledged godless heathen), he his a good friend and a great source of comfort to Jane and her family. I'm throwing myself into knocking out art in Daz Studio, Bryce and Hexagon. I might even finish the website update. Work has given me as much time off as I need but since I'm still getting the paternity leave in November I'll probably go back next week.

Lastly a quick pick of Maggie.

I'm still not sure if I should post pics of Maggie here, I might update later. The next October was even more emotional, again verbatim from LiveJournal.


Born at 2237hrs and weighing in at 6lb and 8oz. Alfred Phillip John. And he's going to be an Uppie.

At the moment he's in the Special Care Baby Unit at the BGH though it seems to be mainly precautionary. Resps are a little high and doesn't seem to scream very loudly. More news as it comes.


Yes, Alfie was born a year and a day after Maggie. A real emotional roller coaster and made a little worse (in hindsight) by what appeared to be a series of unfortunate failures in care by the BGH but he's thriving now.


And then to cap it all we had 2010. Again a quick LJ post


On the 16th October 2008 Jane and I rushed to the Borders General Hospital for an emergency scan to be told that our baby, Maggie was dead inside her.

On the 16th October 2010 after a night of spotting we go to the same hospital for a scan to tell us that she is having a miscarriage.

We are home, waiting on the inevitable.


It was on the 18th October after 3 days if bleeding that she passed the large clot that was the bigoted ovum inside her. Exactly 2 years after Maggie was stillborn. Difficult but rationalised in realising that she wasn't truly 10 weeks pregnant but carrying an empty sac, no life there to mourn. And the good news was that in August 2011 we were joined by our fifth child Martha.


October 2011 was uneventful.

Sunshine on a Rainy Day

13th April 2002. A special day. The day Jane and I were wed. Everything went perfect except the things that didn't.

It had been a year in the planning and now it was time. I'd spent the night at Dryburgh Abbey Hotel in their gate house lodge with my Best Man Dave, his brother Tam (an usher and my best friend since I was 15) and the eldest brother Pete. We had dined on pepperoni & jalepeno pizzas the night before and this morning we had a dose of ring sting. On with our outfits. I wore a kilt in a dark red Lindsay tartan with a shoulder plaid and a French blue jacket. I walked along to the Abbey with Dave, my best man and his brothers Tam & Pete. Tam had been my best friend for years and little did I know this would be the last time I ever saw him, but that's another tale. The weather was, well blustery would be too harsh. It was greyish and a little bit windy but not unpleasant.


The wedding ceremony would be held in Dryburgh Abbey's chapter house rather than in the old church ruin which was exposed to the elements. It was an amazing little place with vaulted ceilings and painted plasterwork that was over 800 years old. With candles and flowers it looked a fine setting. I spoke with Tom, our minister, who was happy that everything was going great. Guests were assembling and my excitement was building but one little snag. I had hired a string quartet to come and play the music for the ceremony but there was no sign. Jane would kill me. All the Planning was going to be let down by one of just four things I had to organise myself.


But here they came, looking flustered. Trouble on the road up from Carlisle. Sincere apologies which mattered little. They were here and they were ready to play. I would live. Unbeknownst to me Jane had been informed of this little drama but she wasn't going to let things like this spoil her day.


A chord begins the opening bars of Saint-Saëns Symphony No.3. "If I had Words". I glance over my shoulder to see Jane coming down the Chapterhouse steps. I was grinning from ear to ear. She was gorgeous. I don't think I stopped smiling for another 14 hours.


I really can't recall much of the ensuing hymns and ceremony. The one thing that does stand out and which many of my guests will recall is when Tom made to bless us. As he did this the clouds outside parted and sunshine poured down through a South facing window bathing Jane and I in light. Quite amazing.


We left to the strings playing Ode to Joy to the photographs and the reception of which more at a later date.

Contact! Wait, Over!

My first decent military exercise was with the Officer Training Corps in 1987. The OTC is a part of the Territorial Army in which students from universities and colleges from all over the country run around playing soldier. Great fun, lots of drinking and wenching as well as shooting guns and making things go boom.

Three hours I've been on stag in this fucking excuse for a trench. Handy to find someone else's old excavation, made digging this one out so much easier. I'm so bored I'm tempted to start smoking (note; 3 years on from this I did in similar circumstances) and my feet are in agony. The tab in to Imber was a fucking disaster. We were completely lost, rockapes were chasing us all over the Plain in Scorpions with deadly intent. We must have walked at least three times the distance we we meant to and then when we RV'd with the guns all the tow vehicles broke down and we ended up manpacking the howitzers the final mile or so. To crown it all I dropped a gun spade on my foot as we were putting the Pak Howitzer into action with just 3 of us (normally a six man job). A quarter ton of steel right into my toecap.

The medic checked it out and reckoned the bones were just bruised but he was totally shocked by my blisters. One on my little toe was bigger than my big toe and that wasn't the worst. He drained the all with needle & syringe and taped them all up not before taking photos to show to others.

So here we are. A 3 gun troop of 105mm Pak Howitzers to provide fire support to 2 platoons of infantry, an engineer trooop, a recce section and an HQ/signals troop. Holding Imber village against a force of one company of Royal Green Jackets and a troop of Royal Scots Dragoon Guards armed with Scorpions & Scimitars according to intel. An I'm in this hole in the ground at the very most rearward point of the deployment. Essentially the arse of the unit.

Movement catches my eye, over on the horizon. Approximately 1.5km away there is a break in the treeline on a ridge. That was a tank silhouette. No a CVR(T) though. That was a Chieftain. 55tons of Main Battle Tank with a big ass 120mm gun on the front. And that there was another one. I got on the radio to my IC and explain the situation. I checked out the tree line with my binoculars. That was another one. Crossing the gap randomly it seemed. By now the boss man was with me. He scoped another two. Might be worth discussing this with the big boss and getting some support back here.

About 10 minutes later I'm joined by two sections of infantry. They hastily find positions around the road into the village. I'm joined in my cubby hole by a GPMG team and a couple of grunts with a large number of 66s. Across the way I can see a pair of 84mm Carl Gustav rocket launchers being set up. Back at the gunline I can see Charlie Sub,  my gun deploying for anti-tank fire. Nothing is coming in here.

Now I can here the tank tracks. It's an eerie sound, no matter how many times you see it on TV when you here them coming for you it's scary as fuck. That squealing metallic rattle as the tracks grind inexorably towards you. And then they stop. I swear they can only be 50 or 60 meters away but we can't see them. A runner comes up an speaks to the NCO in charge of the infantry. I overhear him telling them that their CO wants them to redeploy back at the other end of the village. And off they go. Just me and my rifle again. In this little trench. Well at least I've got a 105mm cannon just a few meters behind me and they'll have a HESH round up the spout.

Here they come. I see the tank barrel come around the hedge row. I make a contact report on the radio. "Hello Mike One Zero, this is Mike Three Three. Contact! Wait, over" Okay. I can see the Chieftain now. It's randomly firing from its coaxial gun. The commander has popped the hatch and is chucking smoke grenades and shooting his pistol. Laughing his ass off. I've got a good bead on him. No more than 25 meters.

I let go the entire clip. Blank rounds of course but if it was real the first two would have been enough. I drop down and reload and come up to start firing again. Shit. They've got infantry. Seem like hundred but probably no more than a platoon. Following the lead tank. I stay in cover and watch as they pass. Another tank and another platoon. What the hell. Let's take some out. I chuck a pair of thunderflashes into the second platoon. They don't reach. They don't even seem to draw attention to me so I let go with another magazine from my SLR....I reckon that would have dealt with at least seven or eight of them. Click. Ammo out. I see a Greenjacket look straight at me as he swings his jimpy round to me I drop just as it begins its chattering fire. Shitohshitohshit! My position was compromised. I change magazines and stay down waiting for the fight to come to me. It doesn't though. I pass the rest of my contact report, confirming 2 Chieftains and 2 platoons of infantry. Seems like there were problems all over the position. Charlie Sub had gone toe to toe with the lead Chieftain and scored a kill only for the second to drive right over the gun (it survived). Absolute chaos. The RSDG/RGJ force stormed straight through us without stopping. Another 4 tanks had hit our main defence line with infantry at the same time. Much stronger than we had anticipated. We clear the hell out of Imber withdrawing to prepared positions. There would be another skirmish and this time we would win.

Great fun. All just playing.

White Out

In the winter of 83-84 I started to learn to ski at school. This was a purely extracurricular activity which wasn't very common at the time as industrial action by teachers had put a stop to out of school programmes. After a few weeks of learning the basics at the local public park we were off to Glenshee for a day trip.

It was Saturday and I was delivered to the school for 7.30am. I was dressed in my best winter clothes, not exactly Klosters cool but rugged hillwalking layers. I had a good sized packed lunch and a flask of soup. There were a dozen of us, 3rd & 4th years heading up to Glenshee for our first day's real skiing.

It took us nearly 2 hours to reach our destination. When we got there it was straight on with the boots and skis and off to the nursery slopes. There was Craig Cameron and myself, a pair of complete novice hurtling along at what we thought at the time was a rare crack. The instruction we received that morning reinforced what we already knew and we got a few new pointers, like how to use a tow. Around 11am what had been light flurries of snow started to get quite heavy and the decision was made to break for lunch. Plan was to head back to the minibus, eat our scran and then go back and do some serious skiing in the fresh powder.

Alas it was not to be. First came the news that all the lifts and tows had been shut down, hopefully this was going to be temporary. The snow was getting heavier and the decision was made to transplant our party into the cafeteria on the advice of the police. Apparently the road out was now blocked by heavy drifts.

We settled into the cafe, 12 of us squeezed into a booth that could seat 8 at a push. The place was packed and getting busier. There were rumours of soup being dished out but I wasn't too worried. I'd cannily saved a significant portion of my packed lunch including my flask of soup. Boredom and frustration was setting in. There was nothing to do, nothing to read, no music or radio. After a few hours we were told to grab our gear as we were moving to a ski hire hut as there was more room.

This was a lie. There might have been more room when we arrived but it soon filled to the point that all you could do was sit and shiver on the floor as there was no room to move without standing on someone. A terrible, near sleepless night followed.

The next day saw us wander outside. It was still snowing lightly and there was still no sign of the roads opening up. We had some snowball fights, watched in awe as RAF SAR helicopters landed to take away the sick and infirm, massive Wessex and Sea Kings from Lossiemouth and Leuchars. As night fell and the snow got heavier again we once more squeezed into the shed. Black plastic bin bags were handed out to give us a bit of a barrier between our derrieres and the cold wet floor of the ski hire hut. It was too much, tempers were beginning to fray but a few of us decided to create our own shelters. Snow holes, quincies and igloos were being dug and built all around the site. What a difference. Two girls and two boys in my snow hole, huddled together for warmth and not one naughty thought all night.

In the morning it was clear and sunny. I was due to be taking my O Grade Economics prelim exam that day. Maybe not. Food was being handed out which was good as my stash was near exhausted. Rumours that the snowploughs were near to breaking through rippled through the resort and just after lunch the roads were officially opened. We got back to Dunfermline just after nightfall to find that our plight had made the national news (the resort closure rather than us personally) and was being followed by many anxious parents. Me? I was just happy that I'd missed an exam that I wasn't fully prepared for.

The Longest Day

In the Summer of 1985 the cadets of 1145 Sqn Air Training Corps went for their annual camp to RAF Buchan. Unlike the usual cadet camp destinations Buchan wasn't a flying station but a radar base on Scotland's North East coast near Peterhead. Its role was to direct interceptors to their targets in time of war. Interesting but not that exciting to us teens. We were used to busy stations like Brize Norton or Lossiemouth. Buchan had nothing.

The leaders had just about exhausted their entertainment options. We'd been dinghy sailing off Peterhead and down in the pit (the bomb proof bunker) that housed the Fighter Controllers and their support staff. We'd had a tour of the radomes which were supremely uninteresting. That said, I was seventeen and I really did want to have a career as a Fighter Controller and these were the days before FACs and AWACS.

Now some bright spark had decided to bus us all to Peterhead Power Station. And now commenced the longest most boring day I have ever experienced. The sun was blazing down on this great industrial greenhouse whilst some apparatchik explained how it was powered by waste gas produced from the Brent Oil Field in the North Sea, how many generators there were producing however many megawatts of power for the national grid. Tedious hours walking along gantries into control rooms, generator rooms, mess rooms. We were hot, hungry, bored. I remember Debbie Marshall kept handing me little tokens which I misread as being just plain irritating (I was always a bit blind to others' affections).

We were given an airforce packed lunch; soggy cheese sandwich wrapped in cellophane, a kit-kat or penguin, piece of fruit (usually an apple) and a tin of cheap sparkling drink (of the Pola Cola variety). At least I'd had a decent breakfast. Then as we awaited the bus there were huge clouds rolling in and a sudden thunderstorm. It could only have lasted ten minutes but it was the most interesting thing that day. After the deluge we went out into the blazing sun to await our bus, coils of water vapour writhing around our knees like we were in some kind of alien landscape. Debbie had shifted her attentions to some other chap, Graeme Winsborough, and I got on with the important things in life like singing bawdy songs or macho posturing.

Not to say that the week in Buchan was a washout. The weather was glorious. We had great times heading into Peterhead either for organised activities or impromptu fun of an evening. There was a Tac Eval (tactical evaluation exercise) where the station is attacked by special forces. This happened at Lossiemouth the previous year and we were in lockdown for 36 hours. This one lasted about an hour. Accommodation and admin were taken in 20 minutes and the operational site (the Pit and radomes) lasted less than an hour. All over before the end of breakfast. I've stayed friends with the guys and gals from those days. A great crowd.

It Begins With A Kiss

This is my life as were. It struck me that whilst I've been blogging away on livejournal and others about the now, the past is missing.

This is all about me to be honest. I know that at some point I'll start forgetting things and I hope to record some of my memories here. Random happenings from the last forty years all from my perspective.

Let's start with 6th October 1984.

Kiss were playing the Edinburgh Playhouse. It was going to rock. I was sixteen years old, brimming with hormones and now in my 5th year at school. I'd aced my O Grades and this was in part a gift for doing so well. I was dressed in my finest Italian Combat Jacket, stonewashed jeans and black cap sleeved T. My parents dropped me off at the top of London Road and I went in.

After buying my tour t-shirt I wandered into the auditorium. A bit lost I took my seat. The crowd built up and suddenly I was roused by the shout of "Scummy!" from a few rows back. It was my mate Kev from air cadets. I knew he coming but hadn't expected to bump into him. He'd obviously had a head start on the booze front and he got me a beer. The support act was starting, Bon Jovi.

The was Bon Jovi's first visit to the UK and only their sixth gig there. I'd heard there single Runaway on Radio 1's Friday Night Rock Show and was quietly impressed. They weren't disappointing. I remember a number of brassieres were thrown at Jon Bon Jovi, I don't recall many of the songs though.

Next up was Kiss. This was the second tour after they Unmasked the previous year. No make-up but still exciting. They opened with Detroit Rock City, the bass thundering into my chest. I was no more than four metres from centre stage banging my head with the best of them. War Machine was awesome and the bass solo by Gene during I've Had Enough (Into The Fire) is indelibly etched into my dura mater such was the ferocity of the sonic assault. The set climaxed with Rock and Roll All Nite with Lick It Up and Black Diamond as encores.

And so I left ears ringing, high on adrenalin and beer. My parents drove me home and hence to my bed. What a night.

I never owned a Kiss or Bon Jovi recording ever. Still one of the best concerts I ever saw.