Alasdair Gray - Every Short Story by Alasdair Gray 1951-2012

McMenamy’s Improved Duck Tandem.0005 seconds after launching.

McMenamy’s Improved Duck Tandem.05 seconds after launching. (The ducks, though not yet drowned, have been killed by the shock.)

Engraving by Shanks in Glasgow People’s Palace Local History Museum showing decadence of that art before Bewick’s advent. Nobody knows if it portrays Provost Coats or McMenamy’s Granny.

Vague, however, was modest enough to know that his appliance was improvable. The power generated by a rocking-chair is limited, for it swings through a very flattened arc. His second knitting frame was powered by a see-saw. His Granny was installed on one end with the needles mounted in front of her. Hitherto, Vague had avoided operating his inventions himself, but now he courageously vaulted onto the other end and set the mighty beam swinging up and down, up and down, with a velocity enabling his Granny to turn out no less than eight hundred and ninety caps and mufflers a week. At the next Glasgow Fair she brought to market as much produce as the other knitters put together, and was able to sell at half the normal price and still make a handsome profit. The other inhabitants of Cessnock were unable to sell their goods at all. With the desperation of starving men, they set fire to the McMenamy cottage and the machinery inside it. Vague and his Granny were forced to flee across the swamp, leaving their hard earned gold to melt among the flames. They fled to the Burgh of Paisley, and placed themselves under the protection of the Provost, and from that moment their troubles were at an end.

In 1727 Paisley was fortunate in having, as Provost, an unusually enlightened philanthropist, Sir Hector Coats. (No relation to the famous thread manufacturers of the following century.) He was moved by McMenamy’s story and impressed by his dedication. He arranged for Vague to superintend the construction of a large knitting mill containing no less than twenty beam-balance knitting frames. Not only that, he employed Vague and his Granny to work one of them. For the next ten years Vague spent fourteen hours a day, six days a week, swinging up and down on the opposite end of the beam from the woman who had nourished and inspired him. It is unfortunate that he had no time to devote to scientific invention, but his only holidays were on a Sunday and Sir Hector was a good Christian who took stern measures against workmen who broke the Sabbath. At the age of thirty Vague McMenamy, overcome by vertigo, fell off the seesaw never to rise again. Strangely enough his Granny survived him by twenty-two years, toiling to the last at the machine which had been named after her. Her early days in the rocking-chair had no doubt prepared her for just such an end, but she must have been a remarkable old lady.

Thirty is not an advanced age and Vague’s achievement was crowded into seven years between the ages of twelve and nineteen. In that time he invented the paddle boat and the ironclad, dealt a deathblow to the cottage knitting industry, and laid the foundations of the Scottish Textile Trade. When Arkwright, Cartwright, Wainright and Watt completed their own machines, McMenamy’s crankshaft was in every one of them. Truly, he was the crank that made the Revolution possible.

McMenamy’s tombstone, Paisley High Kirk, engraved for the 1861 edition of Samuel Smiles’s “Self Help”. (This corner of the graveyard was flattened to make way for a new road in 1911.)

In 1975 there came straight to Glasgow from a Berlin gig Pete Brown the poet, Pete Brown the friend of Horowitz, Pete Brown the songwriter and sometimes pop-song singer. And I dined with him at the home of Barbara and Lindley Nelson. As usual Pete was with a new girlfriend who received most of his conversation, but first he showed the Nelsons and myself a souvenir of Berlin, and that was what we discussed. It was a street photograph of Pete arm in arm with a bear. Berlin takes its name from a bear, so commercial cameramen prowl the streets with a suitably dressed partner. But though the bear in the picture was a disguised man he appeared so naturally calm, so benignly strong, that beside him Pete (who in isolation is as calm, benign and shaggy as a sapient man can be) looked comparatively shifty and agley. We were also intrigued to find the image in the photograph oddly familiar though Barbara, Lindley and myself had never seen another like it. Did it recall dim memories of our infancy in the thirties when the British bear cult was still a political force? As we discussed what we knew of the cult I realized that the time had come for a television programme on it, one which mingled public archive material (photographs, films and sound recordings) with dramatic re-enactments of what took place in private. In 1975 the British Broadcasting Corporation was celebrating the fiftieth year of its charter, archive material was being daily broadcast and displayed, surely the BBC would be interested? It was not. I discovered that although Lord Reith’s restrictions upon clothing, drink and sexual conduct had for years been matter for jest in the corridors of Broadcasting House and the Television Centre, his tabu upon all reference to the cult after Ramsay McDonald’s famous broadcast to the nation was still in force. The BBC rejected my documentary drama. I offer it here, hoping readers will not be afraid to view it upon the television screen of their minds.

1 STUDIO INTRODUCTION

To a recording of The Teddy Bears’ Picnic the camera advances upon a commentator leaning casually against a table on which is displayed: a fancy-dress bear costume, a toy teddy bear, a Buckingham Palace sentry’s bearskin helmet, a Daily Express Rupert Bear cartoon annual, and a copy of The House at Pooh Corner .

RECORDING:

If you go down to the woods today you’re sure of a big surprise!

If you go down to the woods today you’d better go in disguise!

For every bear that ever there was

Has gathered there for certain because

Today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic!

COMMENTATOR: If you go down to the woods today, you’d better go in disguise. Yes. And if you were clearing out an old cupboard recently it’s very likely that you found one of these at the back of it.

(HE LIFTS THE BEAR COSTUME AND STANDS UP)

Perhaps curiosity prompted you to try it on. You can slip into them quite easily …

(HE PUTS IT ON)

Once the zip is pulled up it’s surprising how warm and comfortable you feel. And then, if you adjust the mask over your head, like this … (HOLLOWLY) you are not only completely weather-proof, your voice has acquired a hollow, resounding note.

(HE REMOVES THE MASK)