Dancing Queen

Linlithgow Loch, created millennia ago when glacial deposits changed the course of the River Avon, has been home to mankind since earliest times as witnessed by the remains of crannogs on the lake.  Now, it lies in the middle of the ancient royal burgh, surrounded by housing and close to the traffic roar of the M9. Despite all this, it abounds with bird life especially water fowl. A stroll round the perimeter in the early morning was accompanied by a chorus of from thrushes, blackbirds, robins and wrens, surely the champions in the size to volume stakes.

Mute swans, coots, moor-hens, mallards, tufted ducks, herring gulls, and the occasional escaped, domestic duck or goose all went about their business –  feeding, fishing, nesting, courting – unaffected by the human activity surrounding them.

Nesting Coot

 It wasn't these that I had come to see.

Great Crested Grebe

 It was the great crested grebes and their elaborate “dance” as they bond into mating pairs. I was not disappointed. They performed on cue.

Bobbing and dipping, separating and coming together, swimming in line and then together, it was a privilege to witness such a rare display in an urban setting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORqblRpH9Eg 

Linlithgow Palace, birthplace of James V and Mary, Queen of Scots overlooks the loch. The young princess must have seen the dance of the great crested grebes from the palace windows.

Married to the Dauphin she spent her early adult life in France and indulged her love of dancing at the French court. It is said that on her return to assume the crown of Scotland, she brought the refined dances in the French style to her native land.

The style of contre-dansant became translated into “country dancing” where the partners face each other and bow and set before separating and joining in a stylised pattern.

I wonder if she thought of the grebes she had watched in childhood as she tried to get the rougher elements of the sixteenth century Scottish nobility to pas de bas or dance a schottische.

Thankfully, the grebes, brought to the brink of extinction by our Victorian forefathers who used their feathers to decorate women's hats, were saved to thrive again beneath Mary's windows and perform their stately dance.

Newcraighall

For anyone visiting Auld Reekie, our capital city, the park-and-ride is a boon. No more fighting the traffic and being either fined or fleeced for parking. 50p and a ten minute train journey and you are into the litter strewn centre of the Athens of the North.

How many shoppers, culture seekers or sports fans have climbed the steps from the car park to Newcraighall station to take the wee shuttle train without noticing the memorial to Bill Douglas, film maker, director writer and actor?

At the top of the station steps

Born in Newcraighall in 1934, Douglas grew up in a world of poverty, emotional deprivation and physical abuse. His escape was the cinema. National Service gave him a way out and he found friendship and the encouragement to make a career out of acting and writing and then film making.

His famous trilogy - My Childhood, My Ain Folk, and My Way Home – is autobiographical and constitutes one of the finest bodies of work made by any film maker anywhere.

Made in the 1970's, with a tiny budget, shot in black and white, and using local people and a few professional actors, he captured the bleak physical and emotional landscapes of the post war mining village and harshness of his childhood.  A world dominated by authority and fear, a world where people struggled to express their feelings where violence and indifference were commonplace yet containing images of tenderness.

Douglas coaxed performances from the ordinary people of Newcraighall and, in particular, from Stephen Archibald and his chum, Hughie Restorick, as Jamie and his half-brother Tommy. 

The boys had been truanting from school when they approached Douglas asking “Can I have a fag, Mister?”. Douglas laughed and, recognising their innate ability, cast them immediately.

Stephen Archibald went on to play the Jamie/ Bill Douglas character in all three films to critical acclaim and became a firm friend to the director.

Sadly, he didn't achieve the escape his mentor had managed. There was no National Service to take him away from his background and he died, aged forty, from the effects of drug abuse and neglect.

He was captured on film expressing his thoughts on how a different generation had been lost to drugs rather than deprivation.

The miners cottages now prettified and neat

Newcraighall is being developed, new build everywhere.

 The railway, a recurring image in the trilogy, still runs past, separating the world of the mining village from the splendour of Newhailes House. The line is electrified now. No more coal and smoke and grime. No more mines. No more miners. 

Newcraighall today

 There are still glimpses of the harsh landscapes of Bill Douglas' childhood but thankfully few. We have come a long way

You don't have to park and ride to experience Bill Douglas genius. His films are available on DVD  and if you do, you'll never climb those steps to Newcraighall station quite so indifferently again.

https://moviemasterclass.wordpress.com/articles-and-reviews/bill-douglas-his-ain-man/

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi3616866841