LANARK LANIMER DAY
An ancient celebration held within the Royal Burgh of Lanark on the Thursday between the Sixth and Twelfth days of June annually since the year 1140.
 

Lanarkians' Corner - Further Reflections

We have memories that we may have roses in December. So the proverb says. Of these roses, we remember colour, velvet and perfume: we forget the scratches they spitefully inflict, the worm they enfold and the mess they make of the lawn, untidily throwing away their waste leaves. We recall June as flaming on the strength of the last three fairly warm sunny days: we forget the deep depression that on the 1st moved in from the Atlantic, liked what it found and remained a fortnight; and the low pressure that squatted over the whole country emitting rain suggestive of a demented god using a bucket.

Luckily, memory is soothingly selective, optimistically biased, perhaps even, we suspect, deliberately lulling our good judgement to have a spiteful laugh at us later on.

Luckily, I said. Luckily for Lanimers.

For, if those of us who have once got involved in Lanimers truly and accurately remembered the emotions we felt and the strength of them, it is unlikely we would go back for a second dose. It is an integral, built-in part of Lanimers, as immutable as the law of gravity, that Things Will Go Wrong. That is as certain and inevitable as that water will wet you. And when we have laboured long and lovingly over, say, painting a back-ground mural and it is knocked down and trampled in the mud Nature ordains must be there, then we are subjected to a rush of the sickening emotion everyone knows, best expressed anatomically; our heart sinks like a boulder, our stomach churns and our blood-pressure shoots up and thumps in our head trying to get out. We burst into tears, or let loose some expressive Old English, or tighten our lips and stay dignified, or say off-handedly, "It doesn't really matter ... I'll make another ... I don't mind staying up all night." These reactions according to our nature and who all are present and who the silly fool was who knocked the thing over in the first place.

The point is that, if we could remember the feeling of that moment, the feeling itself not just that we felt it, then we would not deliberately lay ourselves open to it again.

We are not all equally I stupid, but some of us [have achieved what must I be the pinnacle of insanity and consequent frustration. We have by 4 a.m. of The Day, completed our work of art. There it stands perfect, detailed, bright with pristine sparkle. We are proud, self-satisfied and relaxed. Now to take it out of the shed. It won't go out? Of course it will go out! It's too high to go out the door? Rubbish!! It was all carefully measured!! Bu it won't go out. Someone, somewhere, has blundered Wildly we make progressively stupid suggestions. The cold truth emerges. We must either dismantle the whole thing take it out piece-meal and reassemble it or cut off all these lovely, dinky, beautiful little turrets.

Then comes that feeling ...

Luckily, I repeat, memory gets going. It gets out its riddle and starts, and soon the pain has been discarded and we car recall the near-tragic catastrophe without wincing; and then we turn it into a dramatically amusing little incident to be told in a whimsical tone. It isn't that we are deceiving out audience or ourselves, but that memory has genuinely erased the personal, heart-break aspect and has retained only that the incident contained, if viewed objectively as though in a film, the ingredients of a farce.

When all ten thousand of our paper flowers are found submerged or floating daintily in the two feet of water that has overnight invaded our garage, and we have to dry them out, ten at a time in an oven - this double process being somewhat to their detriment - we later tell it to our friends in terms of: "It really was a pantomime! You should have seen us, all with our shoes oft, wading about in the muddy water!"

When once again you have laboured long and lovingly; when we have survived fire and flood; when the paint is dry and the crepe-paper perfectly draped; when every ribbon is symmetrically bowed and every flower is of uniform bloom; when every child has turned up meticulously costumed, beautifully made-up; when God appears to be in His heaven and smiling benignly on the virtuous - then we take a deep breath and give the wagons ho! signal. We leave the womb of our shed to bring forth our product to an admiring world, in particular to the judges lurking in the hinterlands of St. Leonard Street.

But we have difficulty in rounding an awkward corner and must alter route. The tow rope snaps. A policeman holds us up. We get stuck behind a crawling bus. We arrive at the judging point, late! ...

Macbeth, in vaguely similar circumstances said he felt "cribbed, cabined and confined". So do we. Indeed, we would express it a little stronger. But he did not live long enough to see it all as funny; we do. We can laugh later, even at this, comforted perhaps by the sympathy larded on us and the pleasant glow of martyrdom. And so we do in fact come back for more, for a second and third dose. We recall so clearly the fellowship, the pleasure of creation, the satisfaction of being a part and the good clean fun of all the funny little incidents that we are pleased to be asked again. Of course we'll gladly help! Delighted. We enjoyed it so much last time!

C.R.