NEVER MAKE ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT WAITERS

Borders Today, UK
May 11 2006

I was humbled this week by an exchange with a young waiter.

After some pleasantries about nothing in particular, I confessed I
couldn’t place his accent at all. He explained he was from Yerevan
in Armenia, writes Peter Clarke.

My ignorance of Armenia, I admit it, is almost total. I knew it was a
former Soviet Republic and somewhere in the Caucasus. I knew they had
been the subject of Turkish genocide and they have their own Orthodox
Church. That is about it.

My new friend disarmed me with his life story. He holds a PhD in
engineering but has to earn his way as a migrant waiter as his nation’s
economy has shrivelled and stalled. I could see his intelligence behind
his darting eyes and his merriment. He remarked Scots have little
appreciation of how lucky we are. Our complaints about our lives are
petty footnotes compared to the experiences of millions abroad.

He observed that most migrants or immigrants, once they have picked
up our language, love Scotland, or Britain, more than the natives.

This is my feeling too.

I was born in Venice, Italy, with family roots in the badlands of
Belarus. Yet I think I know more and have a deeper affection for
Scotland than most who have never known anything else.

My new friend then disarmed me totally by quoting both Scott’s,
‘The Young Lochinvar’ and Burns ‘My Heart is in the Highlands’,
saying Scottish authors are highly regarded in the mountains of
Armenia. How many Borderers could quote these poems without flaw? I
felt thoroughly diminished.

The accession of the former Warsaw Pact nations to the European
Union three years ago, with Bulgaria, Romania and possibly the former
Yugoslav nations joining the EU next year, soon all the more humble
jobs will be filled by these brave migrating people. As far as I
can learn most want to return home as soon as they have accumulated
some funds.

This seems to me a genuinely new and largely unmapped phenomenon. In
past centuries we operated a version of farming termed transhumance
– living on upland shielings with our stock. Now we have a variety
of this transhumance by way of young people travelling thousands of
miles, grateful for jobs we are reluctant to take. I am resolved to
try to be more thoughtful when I encounter them.

We are told the Union Flag will be 300 years old in 2007.

The Act of Union that abolished the English and Scottish parliaments
to create one of Great Britain, never authorised the overlay of
the St George’s Cross on the St Andrew’s Cross. It just came to be
through usage.

I like the notion that it evolved rather than being designed by a
committee. St Patrick’s diagonal red did not get incorporated until
Ireland joined the Parliamentary Union in 1801.

Recent research has confirmed the curious fact all the earliest
representations of the Scottish emblem are shades of red, from scarlet
through to pink. The blue, a sort of washed-out imperial purple,
was a later accretion. I have seen it explained that red is the most
readily available dye and that blue was just not possible in a form
that could endure the weather.

I have also seen it asserted that the saltire was pink as the first
five Scottish Stewart monarchs were gay. I could believe anything of
that dynasty, including the notion the last one, Bonnie Prince Charlie,
was too. James VI and I was certainly not.

I had the good fortune, if that isn’t too incongruent a phrase,
to attend a beautiful service to mark the end of a life in my valley.

Ettrick Kirk is a perfect setting for a funeral. As it happened it was
a fine spring day but the location works well on a bleak wet winter
day too. Lonely kirks engulfed in ancient trees are difficult to beat.

The life of Mrs Janet Scott of Cacrabank was remembered by several
generations of relatives and her neighbours. She died rich in affection
and honour and in her 93rd year without much discomfort.

Samuel Sirocky, the minister, surely the first Czech divine in our
glen, chose his words with felicity. At many funerals we go through
the courtesies of giving thanks for a life but on this occasion with
was no hint of the sentiments being contrived.

It is not easy to make the leap of imagination back to the Borders
she knew in her earliest years, in Peebles. There were barely any
cars. Transport was by steam train or by cart. Work consisted of
two options – the mills or the hills. The Liberals were running the
country. Electricity and phones had been invented but not reached
our rural fastnesses.

She, and her friends, could have had no conception of the terrible
wars and cruelties of the 20th century or of the technical advances.

Janet Scott once perplexed me by boasting her remote and handsome
home was so ‘central’. Central?! “Oh yes,” she said, “20 miles to
Innerleithan and 20 miles to Hawick and 20 miles to Selkirk”. I later
realised that far back, you walked these distances without complaint.

Mrs Scott’s was a lovely life, in a lovely family in a lovely glen.