books

Conferences, competitions and Chatbots

/ annburnett / Leave a comment

Last weekend saw 150 writers from all over Scotland converge on the Westerwood hotel in Cumbernauld, near Glasgow, for a weekend of talks, competitions and workshops, good food, good company and a hell of a good time.

I was thrilled to be awarded second prize in the self-published book category for A Last Journey, my memoir of my husband’s struggles with dementia. Not only was it judged on content, but cover, blurb, layout, author bio and website.

It was great meeting up with many writing friends and catching up on news from around the country but now it’s back to ordinary life, if it can be classed as that. I completed my adjudication of Ayr Writers Club’s Scottish article competition and am preparing for my talk next month to carers in Dunbar.

As to Chatbots – I hate them. I’m trying to arrange car insurance, TV and broadband and heating providers and I can never talk to a human. Nuff said.

And it’s AI generated too!

Trains, Journeys and Happy Memories

/ annburnett / Leave a comment

I found Bill’s old train set when clearing out recently. He’d had it from the early 50″s and like everything else he had, took very good care of it. So the trucks were in their original boxes and the engines wrapped in tissue paper. Other engines and coaches looked more modern and apparently had belonged to my son.

It made me think of some of the train journeys Bill and I had taken over the years. One of the longest, and straightest, was the Indian-Pacific across Australia in 1975. We joined it at Port Pirie and spent almost three days travelling across the Nullabor in South Australia and West Australia until we reached the Pacific Ocean at Perth. The Nullabor is a vast empty desert where there are few people bar the railway workers and their families living in cottages beside the track and who rely on the train for supplies and company. It’s a tough life; the children learn through the School of the Air which delivers their lessons through originally radio but which now has video links. If they need medical help, then the Flying Doctor will come to them if necessary or the train will deliver medicines to them.

In complete contrast is the Shinkansen, the Japanese bullet train, which can travel at up to 320kph (about 200 mph). We travelled on them when touring Japan in 2015. Very comfortable, extremely punctual and even stopping at the designated carriage markings at the station so you queued at the part where you knew you were seated. And the bento box meals were fascinating and delicious!

One of the most recent trains I travelled on was without Bill, at a new stage of my life. It was a funicular railway in Budapest in 2023 where I had met up with old friends from our Canadian days. Short and very steep but which saved a long climb up the hills above the city with spectacular views from the top.

It’s lovely to look back at some the journeys we made and the places we visited and all because I was doing some clearing out!

Celebrating Robert Burns -and not forgetting Jean Armour

/ annburnett / 1 Comment

Jean Armour was Burns’s long suffering wife who scarcely rates in the Burns hagiography but who deserves to be remembered and appreciated for all she did for him. I wrote a poem about her when doing my Masters in Creative Writing at Glasgow University.

A widow reminisces on the occasion of her late husband’s birthday

He wisnae much use as a husband, mind.
Oh aye, he was a charmer,
Ask any lassie for miles aboot,
See it in eyes o weans scattered aw roun.
But reliable, naw. A guid provider naw.
Too fu o ideas and thochts and thinking, no enough hard labour.
Left me wi a newborn and a debt to pay, 
A book o verse and scribblins, sangs and bawdy lines
That entertained his cronies many a night
While I watched the weans and stoked the flames o wrath and regret.
Too fu o radical thoughts that had the long finger pointin and 
Murmurins o treason and revolution,
Too fu o lust and adulterous fornication 
for the black coated kirk to stomach, 
Often too fu.
No, no a guid husband as you’d cry it,
But whit a man.

My friend, Catherine Czerkawska, has written too about Jean Armour. Her book, The Jewel, about her is available on Amazon.

And I wrote a fantasy story about Burns and the sycophantic fans he seems to accrue!

A Man’s a Man for a’ that!

Surely the most appropriate person to invite to the Robert Burns Celebration Festival was Robert Burns himself.

It was my duty and pleasure to invite him. I have studied his works for many years and devoted my life to the reading of his poetry. He has been my hero (what an overused word to describe my obsession with him and his work) and the opportunity to meet him would be the highlight of my whole life. Nothing was too much for me as far as he was concerned. In fact, I was prepared to die for him.

It took a bit of arranging. Time of my death, whether temporary or permanent, manner of death, where exactly he was, were all matters I discussed with the agent. Despite some trouble with the seventh commandment, the adultery one, he had in fact been accepted above and not consigned to that other place.

The date was set for my demise. I concentrated hard on what my first words to the bard should be. It was while I was turning over such weighty questions that I stepped out in front of the number 77 Express bus to Glasgow.

Despite knowing that this was the day, a surge of anger at the incompetence of drivers rose in me and I managed a weak shake of my fist at the underside of the bus before I succumbed.

I must confess to being keen to see the pearly gates and St Peter with his open ledger, so I was extremely disappointed to find myself outside what looked like the entrance to an NCP car park. A metal pole blocked my way and in a small porter’s lodge sat someone with his face hidden behind a copy of a newspaper (it was the Glasgow Herald appropriately enough) and his feet on the table.

I tapped sharply on the window. 

‘Yes?’

‘Are you St Peter?’

‘No, I’m St Leger. It’s St Peter’s day off. What do you want?’

I showed him my special pass and he consulted a scruffy piece of paper decorated with coffee rings.

‘Right, you can go in.’

He pressed a button and the barrier rose.

I walked into Heaven. I was enraptured. Now, where would I find my hero?

An angel was hovering nearby, picking his nose I was horrified to note, so I tapped him brusquely on the wing.

 ‘Can you tell me where I can find Robert Burns?’

‘Which one? Robert Burns, plumber and heating engineer, Robert Burns, the dearly beloved infant son of Margaret, Robert Burns, one time teacher of English, Sir Robert Burns,…’

‘…the poet,’ I interrupted. ‘Scotland’s Bard.’

‘Aw him,’ replied the angel. ‘Follow the mists until you find him. He’s aye staring at his feet and muttering.’ And why not, I thought? Of course he would be still writing his immortal poetry.

Then I saw him. He was sitting on a grassy knoll, with his chin resting on his fist and his eyes gazing ahead. A perfect sight, a vision of our greatest poet at work. I stood quietly, not daring to interrupt his reverie.

This was the moment I had been waiting for. This was my destiny. There he was, Robert Burns, the Bard of Scotland, still communing with his Muse.

I stood there in silence. Unfortunately, my stomach gurgled noisily.

‘Got a wee touch o’ wind in the baggie?’ were his first immortal words.

‘Mr. – er – Burns,’ I stammered, my face reddening with embarrassment at the thought of what deathless prose my previous night’s chicken vindaloo had spoiled, ‘I’ve been granted a short visit to speak with you.’

‘Are you frae Hell?’ His face brightened visibly. ‘Any chance o’ getting me a transfer oot o’ here?’

I was transfixed.

‘Why would you want to go there?’

‘Bit o’ life, ye ken.’

I thought at first he winked, but it must have been a trick of the light.

‘Unless of course, you fancy a bit of houghmagandie yersel?’

I recognised the old Scots word though its precise meaning escaped me for a moment. But the wink this time was unmistakable, accompanied as it was by a nudge in the ribs. I understood. He was going to sing to me.

‘I’d love that,’ I enthused. ‘Do you want me to join in? Or would you rather I just sat back and let you perform by yourself?’

‘Just do what you feel like, hen,’ he said. ‘I’m no that fussy after all this time.’

He took my hand.

 ‘You’d better watch him,’ a cherub said cheekily as he passed by, hitching up his cloud. ‘He’s only got one thing on his mind.’

Of course he had. How else could he produce such phrasing, such sentiments, such beautiful lyrics if his mind was not constantly in the act of creation?

‘Mr. Burns,’ I began again, ‘or may I call you Rabbie?’

‘Why?’

‘Well, everybody else does. Rabbie Burns. You’re well-known.’

The swear word exploded from him. An Anglo-Saxon one that I was shocked to hear coming from him. 

‘Who tellt on me then? Was it that bitch o’ … naw, naw, it was her wi’ the big…’ His hands described two round objects. ‘It was, wasn’t it?’

I looked at him blankly. He drew himself up to his full height, which was less than I’d expected from his portrait, and peered up into my face.

‘Who was it?’

‘Nobody,’ I tried to reassure him. ‘I only meant that you’re well known because of your poetry. You’re famous.’

‘Ma poetry? Are you still reading it?’

‘Oh yes,’ I sighed, and bursting into song, I gave him the opening lines of his loveliest.

O, my luve is like a red, red rose that’s newly sprung in June…

He didn’t seem to like it and muttered something about eldritch skriechs.  

‘What else do you ken?’

‘Tam o’ Shanter, The Cotter’s Saturday Night, Address to a Haggis, To a Mouse, Scots Wha Hae, Ca’ the Yowes, Auld Lang Syne, Ae Fond Kiss…’ I paused for breath. ‘John Anderson, my Jo, Holy Wullie’s Prayer, To a Mountain daisy, To a Louse…’

Burns’ draw dropped.

‘You mean, it’s lasted aw this time? Aw these wee bits o’ scribbling? Ah cannae believe it.’

‘Yes, your poems are known throughout the world and Auld Lang Syne is sung everywhere and there are Burns’ Suppers held world-wide on your birthday and not only that, I’m here to invite you to the Robert Burns Celebration Festival.’

His eyes lit up and he laughed.

‘Aye there’ll be a fair wheen o’ Burns in Alloway by noo, are there no?’ He nudged me in the ribs again.

I paused. ‘Yes there’s…. and …’ I mentioned two of Alloway’s worthies. ‘But I don’t know if they’re descended from your line.’

‘They probably are. I did my bit to help the population roon aboot.’ And he winked again.

That was just like Burns. To be so generous in helping out those less well off than himself. Man’s humanity to man, to paraphrase his own immortal words.

‘Ah’m looking forward to seeing the auld toon again,’ he continued. ‘There’s nothing to do up here aw day long.  Mind you…’ He looked me up and down. ‘… you’d do at a pinch. Ye cannae be fussy aboot an old raincoat on a wet night.’

I pondered over the deeper significance of his utterings and was unaware of his arm moving around my waist until suddenly, he pulled me towards him and planted a slobby kiss on my lips.

‘Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,’ he began.

I tried to push him away but though he was small, he was strong – and desperate. His hands wrestled with my Marks and Sparks pure wool skirt and tangled with my underwear. 

‘Mr. Burns!’ I shrieked. ‘Remember who you are!’

He obviously did for he redoubled his efforts and pushed me to the heavenly ground.

I tried to remember what the lady self-defence expert had suggested when she spoke at the Ayrshire Ladies Lunch Club and attempted to knee him but unfortunately missed.

His hands were definitely where they shouldn’t have been.

‘This won’t hurt,’ he was saying. ‘This won’t hurt.’

‘No, no,’ I murmured as my strength failed, while part of me kept whispering, ‘A man’s a man for a’ that…’

‘No,’ I said more loudly. ‘You are hurting me.’

A jolt of pain shot through me and I opened my eyes. I found I was staring at the underside of the number 77 Express bus to Glasgow.

‘This won’t hurt,’ a voice repeated and I looked into the face of an ambulance man who was gently moving me on to a stretcher.

‘You had a lucky escape,’ he said.

I nodded. I certainly had. 

However, notwithstanding his unfortunate..er… behaviour, may I present to you, Mr Robert Burns.

Celebrating Robert Burns’ Birthday

/ annburnett / Leave a comment

January 25th 1759 was as stormy as it is today and Burns celebrated it by writing

Twas then a blast o’ Janwar’ win’
Blew hansel in on Robin.

Burns Suppers are now held all over the world and here’s a bit from my book A Last Journey where we attend an unusual Australian Burns’ Supper.

The trouble was, we weren’t Scottish enough. We had only been in Penola a day when a man called round to ask Bill to join the local pipe band. His face registered incomprehension when Bill confessed to being unable to play the bagpipes. 

‘But I thought you were Scottish,’ he spluttered.

These inhabitants of the small South Australian town turned out to be more Scottish than us. Penola had been settled in the 1840’s by waves of English, Irish and Scots immigrants drawn to the offers of free land. Alexander Cameron from Lochaber was the first, setting up Penola Station in 1844. Another, John Riddoch from Turriff, had first gone to the goldfields to make his money. In 1861, he had come to the area where he had bought 35,000 acres. He had recognised the importance of the red earth, the terra rossa, for growing grapes and encouraged the settlers to plant vines. His foresight ensured the prosperity of the area, Coonawarra wines now being world class.

But there was a price the settlers had to pay. The older part of graveyard in Penola was filled with the graves of those first immigrants. Young men and women who had come from Tain and Aberfeldy, Dumfries and Lewis. Their infant children of whom there were many, and their older children who had managed to survive the difficult first five years only to die of some fever or snakebite or accident with the cattle. It made hard reading. Some names were still evident in the town – McLeod and MacKay, Meikle and Burns. Their descendants still lived in Penola, if perhaps not wealthy, then managing to live a reasonable life far beyond the dreams of their ancestors.

They kept up the old traditions too. Or at least, they had versions of them, passed down through generations and adapted and modified to meet the circumstances.

So it was that we found ourselves at a Burns Supper one November 30th. It was early summer and already the temperature had risen into the nineties and stayed there well into the evening. Bill, despite his inabilities musically, had been asked to do the Address to the Haggis. He wasn’t keen. He had never been to a Burns Supper. He had never read much of Burns apart from having to learn To a Mouse for a school poetry competition in Primary 5. He had left Scotland to get away from the kitsch of tartan and shortbread. I had to dragoon him into accepting.

The evening began in the local Church of Scotland with communal singing. We started with On the Bonny Banks of Lock Lo-mont, followed by It’s a Long Way to Tipperary and climaxing with Danny Boy. Eclectic and surprisingly good fun given the setting. We then retired to the church hall where Bill was to do his piece. Dressed as he was in his best pale blue zoot suit, he was only slightly put out to see that he was the only male not in the kilt. He didn’t possess one. He had never even hired one. He had no intention of ever wearing one. 

However he did his part with remarkable aplomb. The piper led the procession in (was that the job they had hoped he’d fill?) and the haggis followed in tartan splendour. It was set in front of him and he recited the verses with the assistance of the crib cards I had prepared for him. (‘What on earth does it all mean? I don’t understand a word of it.’ ‘Just learn it, will you?’)

Bill stabbed the haggis with the kitchen knife provided (it went in with a satisfying splurch) and duly mangled the beast. It was then taken away and to our surprise, the buffet began. Sandwiches, chicken legs, sausage rolls, salad, all followed by the best Australian pavlovas, sickly sweet and soft and drenched with cream. 

Then came the haggis. On cocktail sticks. And mercifully in bite size pieces. After the tooth rotting pavlova, it tasted, well, out of place. Some of the guests refused to touch it, treating it like some outlandish foreign muck. As it is. In Australia at any rate. 

The night gave us many a laugh in the forthcoming months. How those daft Aussies didn’t know how or when to hold a Burns Supper. How they couldn’t tell the difference between the Scots and Irish heritage. Conveniently, we forgot our own ignorance and denial of Scotland.

Time, maturity, whatever, have lessened our ribaldry. Have given us an understanding of what it meant. It wasn’t a celebration of Burns, or of Scotland. It was an act of remembrance of all those names in the graveyard. Of James McLeod from Lewis, of Robina Meikle from Tain, of countless, nameless, infant children. Of all those brave souls who had set out from Scotland to face the unknown. Who had left behind family and friends, knowing that the chances of ever seeing them again were virtually nil. Who were prepared to face great hardship in order to attempt to forge a better life for their families.

They had a long hard struggle in a strange environment where nothing existed that they were familiar with. No identifiable trees or animals, save those they brought with them. No rains or mists or mountains or stretches of open sea or lochs. No blackbird song or gulls’ cry, no gaelic save their own speech, no tales but those they told themselves.

Is it any wonder they clung to the familiar traditions and habits? That they tried to keep burning that which identified them as Scottish? 

So on each Burns Night, I raise my glass to them, to those pioneers who showed such bravery and strength and resolution. I celebrate the character of those long dead Scots and the legacy they left behind. 

Slainte. Good on you, mate.

Available from lumphananpress.co.uk or Amazon

‘A Last Journey’ Launched!

/ annburnett / Leave a comment

This is the story of our lives abroad and home in Scotland before Lewy Body Dementia got its claws into Bill and destroyed his life.

The launch was held at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh where friends and family gathered to hear me talk about the book and how it came about. Alex Howard, Creative Engagement Coordinator for the theatre was the emcee and introduced the readings and took questions from the floor.

A Last Journey is available from https://lumphananpress.co.uk/bookshop/ or from Amazon.

Ann Burnett’s Memoir ‘A Last Journey’ Unveiled

/ annburnett / 3 Comments

Award winning writer Ann Burnett is releasing her memoir A Last Journey, at the Festival Theatre on October 15th 2024.

Age Scotland have given Ann an award towards its publication.

This is a touching, funny and moving story of Ann and her husband Bill’s life together before Lewy Body dementia took him over, and her struggles to look after him until his death.

Dementia. It wasn’t what the couple expected at all. They had ‘imagined themselves doddering along till their eighties’ but dementia had other ideas.

Inveterate travellers, living abroad and experiencing life in different countries, they suddenly became confined to their home because of dementia and lockdown  

A Wee Taster

/ annburnett / 1 Comment

Just a wee bit from my memoir, A Last Journey, to be published in October. It’s from the introduction.

Our Golden Wedding in Dumfries House, 2016

My husband, Bill, and I imagined ourselves doddering along till we reached our eighties. Beyond that was a mist, fading away. But in our mid-seventies all that changed. Bill was diagnosed with dementia.

‘I’m shocked,’ he said to the consultant. ‘I didn’t think anything was wrong.’

But I knew. For several years something had been niggling away at me. Something wasn’t quite right. Forgetfulness you can put down to ageing, but this was more than that. For our Golden Wedding in 2016, I’d bought printed badges bearing the names of all our guests, even having different-coloured backgrounds denoting whether they were family or friends. I thought it would benefit our guests, coming as they did from a variety of our interests and activities, even including Bill’s new family members, who he’d only discovered the previous year. But really it was because Bill couldn’t remember names.

I even moved us across the country to be nearer our sons ‘just in case’. It took me until 2019 to persuade him to visit the GP and at least ask about his ‘problem’.

What is dementia? Alzheimer’s, the most common form, is what people usually think of when dementia is mentioned. But there are over 200 types of dementia and more may well be discovered. Every patient is different; they have their own unique symptoms and presentation of the disease. And the symptoms change and evolve as the disease progresses.

At the moment there is no cure. Every few weeks there is a media fanfare as yet another new miracle drug is claimed as the panacea for dementia. What they actually mean is that the drug might slow down the progression of the illness if it is caught early enough. A big if. Getting an early diagnosis is not easy these days. Doctors seem to be loath to actually do all the tests required to be able to say with any certainty that dementia is present. Is money and lack of resources the problem?

And dementia is terminal. It may be a long slow deterioration or, as in Bill’s case, a rapid gallop towards the end. For him, there were almost exactly three years from diagnosis to death. 

But instead, I’ll focus on Bill’s drive and determination to continue living, despite a doctor’s prognosis which gave him only 18 months, as it was in Bill’s nature to put his head down and charge at whatever he faced, however much it came back to knock him down again and again.

There are always two people involved in dementia: the sufferer and the carer. Much is spoken about help for people with dementia, but help for carers is much thinner on the ground. Although dementia sucks the personality out of the sufferer, it reduces the carer as well. Weeks, months, years of caring leave the carer in a state of limbo, neither a partner nor a professional carer, stuck between two states of being, unable to participate fully in the activities and hobbies they enjoyed before, with only the knowledge that ahead lies the death of the loved one and an emptiness beyond.

It’s Coming Soon…..

/ annburnett / Leave a comment

I’ve written a book. A memoir all about the last few years when instead of writing I became a carer for my husband Bill. He was diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia in March 2019 and died in March 2022. Only three years it took for that terrible disease to kill him.

I stopped writing during those years. I had neither the time or the energy to do it. My life was subsumed into caring for Bill. I tried to get as much help for us as I could so I joined Dementia Research. A student contacted me looking for people she could talk to about having carers in the home so for six months I had sessions over Zoom when she asked me about how things were going. I talked. And talked. She recorded our sessions, transcribed them and sent them to me after she had completed her research.

I also wanted the professionals who were dealing with Bill to be aware of the person he’d been, and not to regard him as just a poor old soul so I wrote a brief summary of all the things he’d done, his sporting achievements, the countries we’d lived in and the sights and experiences we’d had as a family and made sure there were copies of it in all his medical files.

After Bill died, I read the student’s transcripts over and realised how much I had forgotten about those terrible days. I wanted to recall other aspects so I started jotting down brief paragraphs about trying to find food that he could eat, about the sheer exhaustion of it all and what it did to me, about the carers who came to help, about the guilt and the sadness and the laughs. Yes, we even managed to laugh at times.

Then there were the diaries of our travels that I found when I was clearing out, the letters I’d sent home, the articles I’d written for an online site dealing with countries to see and visit. A tremendous amount of material and the only thing to do with it was to shape it into a book.

It took me over a year and many tears and much frustration but it’s now finished. Hopefully it will be published in the autumn.

Can’t wait to share it with you!

The Coach Trip (Part 2)

/ annburnett / Leave a comment

The hotel is owned by the coach company and set up to cope with oldies. We all go in to eat at certain times according to the bus we came on, and sit in the same seats. The staff are all young and foreign and quite delightful, serving us quickly and efficiently with our meals. They are also trained to spot anomalies. One guy, travelling alone and obviously with chronic illness, didn’t appear for a meal and the staff reported this and the receptionist phoned his room to check on him. Fortunately he was just tired and not hungry. His table was right next to us and he was sitting beside a couple who neither spoke to each other or to him throughout all our meals. I wouldn’t have wanted to join them for such meals either.

The hotel at Loch Tummel

Every day we climbed on our bus, Donnie the driver, head counting us to make sure he had the right number, and more importantly, the right people. One or two wandered on to our bus by mistake and had to be gently pointed in the right direction of their transport.

Donnie’s big bus

Donnie knew every single-track road in the area. It was wicked fun to watch the expressions of the drivers who met our large, far too broad bus for the road, on a bend and had to stop suddenly and squeeze past while we sat aloof and rather smug.

We travelled to various tourist places each day and were ejected from the bus to explore for a few hours. Pitlochry was an interesting stop with the dam and salmon leap close by. However the salmon weren’t leaping, it not being the time of year so we adjourned to the visitor centre set high above the dam and with magnificent views from the cafeteria. There is also an exhibition area explaining how the dam was built and how it works to provide hydroelectric power with interactive models so you can produce your own power or make recalcitrant wooden salmon leap upstream.

Pitlochry Dam

It was raining in Aberfeldy so we nipped into an unusual shop run by an Irish artist, Ryan Hannigan. He has some old printing presses in the shop that he uses to print his own designs. He is also a musician (you can buy his CD or vinyl there too) and he recycles old uniforms and army gear into stylish clothing for sale.

The site of the battle of Culloden meant an early start but well worth it. The story of Bonnie Prince Charlie and his epic attempt to wrest the throne from the English is vividly told in the visitor centre and you can experience the sights and sounds of the terrible fight all around you. Then to the battlefield itself with flags marking where the Jacobites stood against their enemy in a desperate attempt to halt the retreat.

A gravestone at Culloden

After all that blood and guts it was a peaceful afternoon in Aviemore where Sheila met us and took us to her new home and lunch.

It was a quick few days and on the way home, Donnie stopped in Callander to allow us to browse through all the wee artisan craft shops, a perfect way to spend a wet afternoon.

It was an easy experience of a holiday. No hassle, food, accommodation and trips all organised and running smoothly. Even the weather was kind on the whole. We were taken care of and driven about very comfortably. I saw parts of Scotland I’d never visited and others I hadn’t seen for a very long time.