Wind Resistance

SPOILER ALERT
 
So, having missed it on Saturday night because I was working, I made it along to The Lyceum tonight to see Wind Resistance, after L insisted it was a show I really HAD to see. Not many tickets left on Sunday when I booked my seat so no surprise that the place was packed. And what a beautiful show! Karine Polwart had us spellbound as she wove her story of Fala Moor. It felt like we were around a camp fire as a travelling storyteller brought their story to us. And personally it seemed to touch so many resonant elements that it was as if she was creating one of those nail and string pictures we made in the 1970s, connecting points on my life to her story. The interest in birds, Skylarks soaring into the sky, hearing their song and scanning the bright sky until I could find the source of that fabulous soaring song. Flushing Red Grouse from the heather, on birdwatching trips with the YOC. The call of the Curlew, on the moors or down on Broughty beach on a Sunday morning. The title of a short piece I wrote that got published in the YOC magazine. The thrill of seeing v-shaped skeins of geese overhead every autumn, either growing up in the Ferry or in Edinburgh, when the sound always makes me look up. Remembering seeing those Barnacle Geese flopping down onto the sand at the water's edge at Loch of Strathbeg having flown across the North Sea into a headwind. Strathbeg that was name-checked in Karine's Geese Itinerary prose poem. And the geese skein a metaphor for socialism and team work, for communities working together. And then family history stories, with references to Soutra, that long hill that was a landmark on so many journeys south and north. Songs and words weaving the threads together. Her threads, but they felt like mine too. I guess they felt like they belonged to many in the audience. And then she veered into football, almost apologetic to the Lyceum audience, but no surprise to me. My college photography project that linked sport and theatre. And her tales of creating a girls' football team in first year of secondary school, when girls did Home Economics and boys did metalwork and woodwork and technical drawing. My memories of school too. Our football competition in S1 - boys only - was for the Pele Shield. Hazy memories that the Technical Drawing teacher had somehow got hold of one of Pele's shirts. Or have I embellished a tale? Karine's passion for Aberdeen FC - the other half of the New Firm. Her listening to the CWC Final from her bedroom in Denny, me watching it in my college room in Durham on my portable black and white TV. Both of us delighted at the late winner. It doesn't get better than that for a Dons fan, she said, much as three days later in May 1983 it would get no better for a Dundee United fan like me than winning the league at Dens. And the point of all this football talk? To bring in Alex Ferguson, manager of that Aberdeen team, who used the symbolism of the v-shaped skein to describe team work. A vision he used to inspire other teams - Man U and the Ryder Cup team at Gleneagles. A place I visited earlier this year. Yet another personal nail in the pattern, just like the friend I saw who was sitting just a few seats along in the same row - the sculptor who created Cressida down on the beach. Threads. Connections. Stories. Inspiring. Passion.