Sunday, September 19, 2021

Imperial Measures (Selling England by the Pound)

I knew it would happen before long

They're going to bring back the furlong

Metres and centimetres going out of style

You give an inch and they'll take a mile

A little crown on a pint glass

Teaching fractions in arithmetic class

Forget those decimals  there's just no point

Unless you need a quarter ounce to roll a decent joint


Imperial measures

They're back again

Providing pleasure

To sad old men

Counting

 up their treasure

In  shillings and pence

Can't believe they're still around

Selling England by the pound


Petrol in gallons, not in litres

All the cops dressed as beefeaters

Union jacks on vintage Minis

When you get fined you pay in guineas


Imperial measures

A pony and a dram

I only want my cocaine in grammes

I spend my leisure time in Amsterdam

Buy kilogrammes of Afghan Brown

Then sell it to England by the pound


5280 feet

1760 yards

1000 metres in a kilometre?

That's miles too hard

For a country under pressure

Needs imperial measures


Copyright Scar Quilse/Tom Morton MMXXI



Sunday, May 16, 2021

New subscriber-only Urban Beatcroft Social now available on Mixcloud

 Recorded under a Marks and Spencer winter coat in Glasgow, a special Mixcloud Select subscriber-only Urban(e) Beatcroft Social. A wee thank you for all those who have supported the show, which will be back on a regular, if pre-recorded basis soon.


Tuesday, March 23, 2021

Unwilding: the pain caused by developing a giant windfarm in Shetland

 I remember driving north from Lerwick for the first time, into a gritty winter darkness that, during my week-long stay, occasionally glowed but never lifted. It was early 1979, the first oil was flowing from the Brent field into the uncompleted Sullom Voe oil terminal. Shetland seethed with industrial activity, thousands of temporary workers, and a kind of murky, atmospheric grime that penetrated cars, clothes and respiratory systems.

I was there to report on what was going on at Calback Ness for an oil industry paper. I saw almost no scenery. Darkness was upon the face of the rock. Everyone was cold and wet and too busy to talk. Sullom Voe was a cost-plus contract, North Sea oil the UK’s deliverance from coal. Or, for Mrs Thatcher, from miners, from unions, from strikes and dependence on the workers. So profit for the constructors of Europe’s biggest oil terminal would be added no matter the expense. The level of wastage and casual theft was extraordinary. The dumping of whole fleets of vehicles and their burial as Orka Voe was filled in seems like a legend. But it happened.

Forty-two years later, I am driving through the Shetland Highlands, my favourite road in the isles, from Voe to Aith, winding high to the Loch of Gonfirth, low to East Burrafirth, over to Aith and beyond to Bixter. It’s Shetland at its most Scottish. It’s a regular trip to the vets, and normally I’d loop back south through Weisdale and return home via Kergord, just to see Shetland’s only old forest and check if my golf club is open for business at Asta.

I’m avoiding that route, though, as it would take me deep into the heart of a new industrial darkness. The construction not of the Viking Energy Wind Farm for what used to the South of Scotland Electricity Board, but of the access roads that will enable a collection of colossal turbines to be erected.

This time I can see the level of destruction being meted out. This time I know the landscape being ripped apart. Intimately.


I used to like wind turbines. Just as, when I was a small child, I was excited by electricity pylons as they marched, skeletal giants, across Scotland. I supported the idea of a wind farm on windy Shetland, before I knew what it was going to cost us.

Supporters argued at first that Viking was key to the future economic viability of the isles, once the oil ran out. It would help in the battle against climate change. Originally, when part-funded by the Shetland Charitable Trust - ironically the custodian of Shetland’s oil income - the community was set to benefit financially; hugely. But now, the Trust having pulled out, SSE will donate a derisory amount to local community groups in compensation. A few folk will become or remain multi-millionaires. Some new chairs will be bought for one or two community halls. And in the end, we who live here will be left with the whirring and whumping of blades, dead birds, some mountain bike tracks, new roads, peat bog of uncertain stability and vast empty car parks. Most of the money will go south.

“Rewilding” has been in the news this week, and the poet Kathleen Jamie has been much quoted on how Scotland has never, for hundreds of years, been truly wild. But the Lang Kames, the vast stretch of peat bog, ridge and valley currently being excavated, concreted, tarred and tamed, was as intimidating and wild a place as Shetland could ever offer. It was like a tract of boggy desert, uncompromising and glum. Implacably itself.


My last drive north from Lerwick to Voe, a decade after the first one, took place on a day of glowing calm. The Kames enveloped me, shrank me to a minute scale in the face of uncompromising, brooding bleakness. It’s a vast building site. Now, the famous Half Way House, once a drovers’ hostelry, where cattle would be rested on the trip north or south, is dwarfed by the scraped-out network of roads and storage areas.

If only there hadn’t been such fervent, embittered opposition, a few locals say. If only there hadn’t been such delays. The community would have gained so much economically if the Charitable Trust hadn’t been forced to pull out. Now, all that prospective money has slipped through our hands. But there were faults on both sides. An intransigent Charitable Trust insisted it knew best, explained itself badly. An aggressive, emotive and entrenched opposition forced legal actions which saw the Trust kick its ball into the willing hands of SSE and flounce back into the world of investment banking.

But it’s not about the money. It’s about place and love of place. It’s about wildness, if not wilderness, carelessly sacrificed. The unwilding of Shetland.

It’s about loss. And as the spring begins to shed its light on the mess that continues to be made…it hurts.


All pictures by Tom Morton

Monday, February 22, 2021

Big southerly - post from my Substack newsletter - free to read

The whole post with pictures is free to read here

Friday, February 05, 2021

A reading from It Tolls for Thee

With only a few days until publication, this is a two-minute reading in a snowy Shetland from my new book It Tolls for Thee: A guide to celebrating and reclaiming the end of life. Subtitled.

"Not only is this entertaining, but it’s important, and by the end I know it’s vital." Tim Hayward

Thursday, January 21, 2021

Give Me the Jag (Not the Jab)

Give Me The Jag


I'll walk ten miles and I'll walk ten more

At two in the morning, or three or four

I don't believe it's going to do me any harm

So come on, stick that needle in my arm


Some of my friends say they're not so sure

Some pop star said that it’s impure

They smoke their tobacco and their Afghan weed

Spent their 20s off their faces on bathtub speed


I don't care if it's sore

I had the BCG 

From a drunk school nurse, but I didn’t get TB

I've had  penicillin, yellow fever, tetanus too

Been injected till my arms were black and blue

Stop waving those flags

Just give me the jag


Guy had the Pfizer, said it was great

Spent two whole days doing Windows updates

I'm going for Astra Zeneca, I'll tell you why

I've always been an Apple Mac kind of guy


Really I don't care, I'll take what I get

And you will too, I'm willing to bet

Sick of living in a World of Warcraft and Doom

I'm sick of Facetime and I'm sick of Zoom


CHORUS


And if I see you with a mask hanging round your neck again

I got a Supersoaker full of Tabasco and pakora sauce my friend

Give me the jag

That’s J A G

I don’t want no J A B

Give me the jag


Copyright Tom Morton 2021

Saturday, January 09, 2021

Cut Donald Trump From Home Alone 2 (a plea)

Donald’s going to jail

Donald’s going to jail

It’s no fairy tale, you know it’s true

Donald’s going to jail

Justice will prevail

Why he was in that film I never knew

They’re cutting him from Home Alone Two


No-one’s laughing now

No-one’s laughing now

America the beautiful’s been screwed

No-one’s laughing now

He’s eaten all the sacred cows

And every single one’s been barbecued

They’re cutting him from Home Alone Two


You’ll find him at some 19th hole

He lost and now he’s skulking’

He tried to get the FBI to kill Macauley Culkin

I call on Chris Columbus

Joe Pesci and John Hughes

There’s just one thing they know they have to do

Cut Donald Trump from Home Alone 2


They’re cutting off his hair

They’re cutting off his hair

They’ll take his belt, the laces from his shoes

They’re cutting off his hair

Whatever’s really there

I don’t think he’ll be needing much shampoo

And they’re cutting him from Home Alone Two


Do it for me

And burn every print of Home Alone Three