Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

At present, I live in Oslo, Norway (2022).  I was separated from my ex-wife Natasha around about 2006. We had an arrangement of so-called co-parenting and joint custody of our son Alan. As she had the major share of the custody arrangements, I tended to ‘spoil’ my son by visiting McDonald’s amongst other things. This is where the beginnings of my writing process happened.

When my son Alan was about seven or eight, we often used to go and eat a hamburger at McDonald’s. Of course, there was always a free toy and the playroom. Alan never seemed to grow tired of the playroom. While he was in there, I would often be happily typing away on the keypad of my Nokia Communicator 9210. It was my time to record memories and anecdotes of my own childhood and youth.  

Nokia

They say Nokia failed as a company; they were unable to adapt to the new technology or to innovate. However, technological ‘progress’ is not always progress as such. Sometimes it is rather change driven by profit focused on quantity and price. Often, quality is not the focus anymore. ‘Old’ technology is often discarded despite being highly useful and functional. A good example is the Nokia keypad and screen on the Nokia Communicator! In other words, it is difficult to buy a phone today with a user-friendly keypad and screen!

Solitary Confinement

While ‘tidying up’ the apartment during the ‘house arrest and solitary confinement COVID times, I decided it was finally time to sort out all my mother’s photos and paper memorabilia. Some time ago, my mother had lent me her photo album, scrapbook, and various documents. It was so that I could finish the ‘Family History’. Regrettably, she passed away before I could return them. This was many years ago; all her memorabilia has just been lying in a box in one of my many storage rooms all this time. Once again, I thought I can tidy all this up ‘in a jiffy’. Wrong once again! 

I saw writing a ‘Family History’ as a way to enable members of the wider family to have access to it. With this in mind, I thought it would be a good idea to organize the material in a better way than my mother had done. Although I mentioned above that my mother would have made a good librarian, this was perhaps an exaggeration; she wasn’t always that systematic. Moreover, in order to make the material accessible to other people, it also made sense to digitise everything. This turned out to be another of those never-ending ‘done-in-a-jiffy’ jobs!

It was while sorting, organizing, and tidying up all the materials that I thought I should also try to systematize my own paper and digital memorabilia– hence this book. Once I had started working on the ‘family history’ book, it seemed natural to write about my own recollections. Of course, I also used the source material in my mother’s paper memorabilia.

Long Process

What follows here are these “Boyhood Recollections”. The goal is to publish paper and electronic copies (on websites) of my “Boyhood Recollections” and ‘Family Histories’. I also plan to include my mother’s ‘Scrapbook’ and ‘Photo Album’, and some fictionalised accounts relating to my ‘family history’.

This is an ongoing process (2022) done mainly for my own satisfaction, and for the members of my wider family. Obviously, this is not all done ‘in a jiffy’; however, I have made considerable progress during these COVID times. More or less being sentenced to solitary confinement and house arrest definitely gave me time for this. Before the pandemic, I spent a lot of time travelling and working elsewhere other than in my home office. It goes without saying that this is now much more difficult. 

The advantage, of course, of publishing a ‘Family History’ electronically on a website is that other members of the family can contribute with further investigations and their own stories. I realise I can’t be ‘stuck in the past idea of how publications have to be perfect, saleable, and accepted by a publisher. Such a way of thinking is just a brake on the whole process. I will create ‘finished’ and ‘draft’ products, digital and paper. I can produce them all at my own expense, without being ‘censored’ by commercial publishers. 

Statement by Picasso⁶

Closing the Book

In other words, these ‘recollections’ do not constitute a ‘well-wrought urn’.⁵ I seem to remember reading somewhere that Picasso when he thought of an idea it was in one sense ‘finished’. In other words, artistic production is always in flux, and not like a sonnet of Shakespeare carved in stone.

Consequently, these “Boyhood Recollections” are in a state of flux. That is, every ‘re-reading’ will produce a new version. Like all the versions of The House of the Rising Sun by Leadbelly, the Animals, Frijid Pink, and others; there is no definitive version. Similarly, these ‘Recollections’ are in ‘flux’. However, at one point in time you have to ‘close the book’ and say ‘that’s that’. I guess, it will always be a type of ‘draft’ – an unfinished project. 

This book about “Boyhood Recollections” is more than just so-called recollections. I found myself swimming in a sea of endless stories that go beyond our family’s, just waiting to be written. My eyes have been trained to see memory trails in events, conversations, and memorabilia. I became re-connected with memories in my childhood that I had long ‘forgotten’, and some I remember as clear as day. The memories refused to go away. Like the ‘Family History’ book, I couldn’t resist the challenge of immortalising them. 

Family History Books

The ‘Family History’ book is my promise to my mother, this book is a promise to myself. The ‘Family History’ book is not one book, but four books; they are based on the families of my four grandparents. My mother wanted me to write about the family of her father, Hector MacGillivray. This included perhaps the most important event in Scottish history, the defeat of the Scots at Culloden, where the MacGillivaries played a crucial role.

Most of her childhood memories seemed to be connected to the Isle of Eigg where her mother was born. Thus, this seemed a better starting point for a ‘family history’. Specially, as the history of the Isle of Eigg has been reported in several books, and it has been easier to trace family connections within the narrow confines of the small island.  

My Life

My job as Professor of English Language, Literature and History has provided me with a good understanding of historical, cultural and linguistic contexts. I sometimes put my “Boyhood Recollections” into a social, cultural and historical context. However, I do not want to academically shackle my childhood memories, so I give them free rein, sprinkling them with inaccuracy, where it suits my purpose. This book is about memories and recollections of things that happened, and may have happened. Did these things really happen or was it just my mind reconstructing it to be what I wanted the experience to be? It doesn’t matter. 

⁵ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well_Wrought_Urn
⁶ https://theoria.art-zoo.com/conversation-with-picasso-pablo-picasso/ Read 8 April 2022. See: Barr, A.H. Picasso, Fifty Years of His Art. 1946