Dinosaur Thing

My famous ancestor

...no seriously he's listed in Significant Scots so he makes the 1700s celebrity b-lists. As a wee boy I was told by my late great uncle James prior to heading off on my school's standard annual trip to Glasgow Cathedral and the Provands Lordship (it was that or the zoo) to keep an eye out for our family's famous ancestor who was buried there. He might have told me his name of left me a clue at least but it really didn't register and I spent most of the trip looking at the plaques within the cathedral for someone with the Callan or Logan name but to no avail. I mentioned this recently to my wife as she was keen to visit the place. At my mother's funeral though I mentioned my work on the family tree to one of her cousins and he managed to provide me with not only a name but a bit of background. He's actually Edward Irving and all he knew was that he was a preacher from Annan in Dumfrieshire who had formed a break-away church and was hence thrown out of the Church of Scotland only to be let back in just before he died. They'd done some physical research on him but hadn't really uncovered much more. Armed with my google search engine I managed to uncover quite a character both from his wikipedia entry and from his mid 19th century biography on Google books. Ironically just a few weeks ago I theorised with my best man that most world religions have similar core beliefs and I'm sure if you trace the roots back far enough you'll find some disgruntled individual with an ego that finds a suitale reason to go with his mates to form his own little church with cries of heresy in the background. I had absolutely no idea I had one in my family tree. Anyway as a result of finding him and some great people also connected on Genesreunited I now have my family tree going back a further 4 generations to 1683.

The Truth About Getting Thing's Done

Congratulations also to my coach Mark Fritz who's just bought out a couple of books including "The Truth About Getting Thing's Done". Mark is a truly unique coach and has helped me reiginite my passions at work. So his insights I would truly recommend and his daily thoughts are worth subscribing to if only to refresh some of the things you already know about yourself but also to perhaps help you find a fresh solution to a problem.

Project Bloodhound

Congratulations to Richard Noble for his launch of Project Bloodhound. I've met with Richard a few times over the past year to try and help the cause and he's certainly and incredible man. Sadly most of the things we discussed didn't come to fruition in the end. For those of you who didn't pick up on the main reason for this venture. This is all about providing an iconic engineering project that inspires youngsters to take up science and engineering topics at school and university. Which I'm all for having seen one of our last great engineering projects HOTOL killed off by fairly destructive remarks by the then DTI minister Ken Clarke. So well done to Lord Drayson for creating this opportunity and to Richard for his tireless enthusiasm in making this happen. This is also uniquely an open engineering project so if you have anything you feel you can contribute by way of experience that can help then toddle over to the website and offer up your services.

Moving on

I debated a few weeks before publishing the last 2 blogs because like so much of my thoughts this last year I never intended my blog to be overly personal or morbid. I also lost the will to blog a bit somewhere along the line this last year. But right now sitting at Glasgow Airport having cleared out the family home I feel an overwhelming sense of needing to move on and getting them "out of my head" is really the first part of that. The grieving process is amazingly complex and completely inconsistent but has to start somewhere. I took a great deal of comfort from two books that helped me move on and understand my grief following my father's death. The first is Haruki Murakami's "Dance, dance, dance" a weird choice but the underlying theme of a detective trying to make sense of a bereavement and have his own world fall apart until suddenly realising his own ability to move on was the only card he had left to play to change events struck home to me. The latter is "Ghost Rider", Neil Peart's road trip after the sudden death of his daughter and his wife within months of each other and I highly recommend it. So apologies for the morbidity and hopefully my desire to blog will soon return.

Margaret Irving Little 1933 - 2008

This is the tribute I wrote and read for my mother who passed away on the 20th of October.

"

I’ve asked the family if I can pay tribute to my mother Margaret Irving Little, mother to Margaret, May and myself, grandmother to William, Claire, Callum and Caitlin, great grandmother to Corey and very soon another little baby.

Just a few short weeks ago I asked my mother what her wishes were of today. She responded that she wanted no miserable faces and no black ties (she’d rather have bow ties whirling around). She wanted this to be a celebration of her life not a miserable affair. She wanted it here where my father was also cremated and laid to rest in the garden of remembrance just as he was 16 years ago.

She also asked that there was little pomp or ceremony because as she said “I’m just a wee ordinary Glesga woman” .

But she was far from ordinary. Always smartly dressed, well spoken, occasionally confused with being a bit “pan loafy”, never suffering pointlessly miserable people but instead cared for those very much in need. She loved music having been taught to sing as many here did by her uncle James Callan. The music here today came from her iPOD which came to be a symbol in hospital of her keeping up with the times. She hated conflict and politics, a symptom of living in a house as a child where communist and tory views were often passionately expressed.

She was in this day and age an extraordinary woman who from a very young age gave up her life in the service and care of others and the love of her husband. A rarity indeed.

A few years ago my nephew William, her great nephew James and myself had the sheer pleasure of seeing my mother and my god-mother Joyce, her sister, relive their childhood years in Dalrymple, Ayrshire where they evacuated to during the war. They showed us the big house that took them in, the servant’s quarters where they were allowed to stay as well as the road they took to school every day, the river they swam in, where they played hide and seek as wee girls. They told us lots of stories all joyous but tinged with the sadness of their father off fighting in the war and their mother helping out as the local postie and never really fitting in with the local country folk. As the big sister my mother was often left to look after her frightened wee sisters often reassuring them in the dark cold nights.

It was that selflessness that continued throughout her life.

As a child my memory of her was her rising at 5 to get us all fed, dressed and packed off to school and work, always in clothes cleaned and ironed in a house that was never left to get dirty. She’d often finish her day at 9 o’clock having ironed for Scotland for a few hours and within 10 minutes fall asleep on the chair.

As a student I knew that she’d rather give up her last five pounds of housekeeping money to make sure I was well fed than spend it on any simple luxuries for herself.

As other women would have hit middle age and decided to have some “me time” my mother instead gave up her evenings to make sure that my ailing grandmothers went to bed warm and well fed. A job she never complained about or wavered from.

Never more so was she selfless than when a very sad neighbour suffering from MS who seemed to spent most of her days making cruel and awful complaints about the noise generated by us children became herself in need. My mother made sure she had a hot meal and went to bed warm and clean night after night. For which I believe she only ever truly received one thank you.

She deeply cared for my sisters in their time of need, never herself complaining of having to do so. To her it was a duty to her children. She was the one who encouraged me to turn to music as solace for my own troubles and was instrumental in encouraging myself and my father to reconnect when we’d simply ran out of things to say to each other. Both of which I will be eternally grateful for.

She was also an inspiration. For so many of us here it will be her love of my father, Robert that has been such an influence in our lives and an aspiration for our own happiness. I never saw them argue and they never ever hid the fact that their love was greater than anything or anyone and would never be broken.

My mother was also nothing short of courageous. On receiving news of her illness she was determined not to give into it and instead opted for a lengthy and unpleasant course of chemotherapy to buy her as much time as possible.

Just a few short weeks ago she entered hospital a very sick woman indeed. My wife and I and my son Callum and daughter Caitlin got in our car and drove as fast as we could to be with her. When we got here just 20 minutes from the end of visiting time I really feared the worst. She’d barely registered her visitors that day and was bent double in a chair looking very frail. I was quite shocked and didn’t know what to say. My wee boy Callum pushed through, sat in front of her and said “Hello gran”. You could literally see the life come back to her as she held his face and said “oh my wee boy”. It was quite remarkable and in the remaining visiting time she increasingly looked more herself.

The next day she was sat up and ordering us all about with plans afoot for Christmas, decorating the house and fixing the stairs going well into the next year. Her fight back was nothing short of impressive if not “throne” insisting to all that “it wasn’t her time yet”. Forcefully enough at one point that she accidentally head butted my sister.

Just a week last Saturday though when she was told that she probably didn’t have enough energy to fight her latest chest infection she opted to go comfortably. She was as she said “reassured that my father was ready and waiting for her”. It became obvious to us all that her determination to hang on those last few weeks was for that reassurance that they would again be together.

I really didn’t know how to end this tribute other than to say that she was a beautiful woman and we will all miss her very much."

Two Songs

Those of you who know me know that I'm not a very "external person" but every now and then coincidences happen that are so powerful that even I can't explain them. In my life 2 songs arrived that changed the course of my life in a way that I will always be truly grateful. The first was "Living Years" by Brian Robertson and Mike Rutherford. A song really about the regret of stalled communication between father and son and the realisation after death that it can't be repaired. At the time I first heard it I was in a similar boat. I hadn't fallen out with my dad, we had no major arguments or disagreements. We'd just run out of things to say. The song, coupled with gentle encouragement from my mother pushed me towards finding something to talk about. Not just "can you pass me onto mum" when I phoned but stopping him and saying "no actually I wanted to talk to you first". It made a difference and events in my life spurred him onto stepping in an helping me. He was by the time he passed away my best friend when others who should have been were sorely disappointing. On the morning I got word that he was dying I threw everything into my car unpacked and drove foot to the floor all the way to Scotland. At just before 4 p.m. on the border between Lanarkshire and Dumfries and Galloway "Living Years" came on the radio and I had an overwhelming sense that I should slow down and not get myself killed trying to make it to his bedside. It wasn't a voice in my head but more a feeling that I was too late. It was in fact just a few minutes before he passed away. The other song came to me a different way. It was a Sunday evening and my mother who'd been diagnosed with small cell lung cancer had been taken into hospital urgently. My wife who is a hospice doctor read the signs and started to urge me to consider heading up to Scotland. I needed some time to think. I started tidying the house and putting the bins out for the next day. Whilst I was doing so Anthony Hegarty's "Send me someone" dropped into my head and I sat down for a while. She sounded so scared and at this time she really did need "someone to hold when I die". I came back into the house and we tried all sorts of light hearted TV programs to cheer us up. Somehow everything we watched had a morbid theme or twist and we opted for an episode of Torchwood instead. 10 minutes into the episode "Random Shoes" what should be used as the soundtrack but "Send Me Someone". It was too weird and I just couldn't watch anymore. The next day we packed the family up in the car and drove up to the hospital. We made it just 20 minutes before the end of visiting time and the day had not gone well. She hadn't registered acknowledgement of any of her visitors and looked very frail indeed. My son rushed through and sat in front of her and said "hello gran". The life visually came back to her as she said "oh my wee boy". She then staged an amazing fightback for a few more weeks. Although this time I made it before she passed away I will forever be grateful for that moment and the warmth of her hug shortly afterwards.