"Ally Bally Bee"

Ally, bally, ally bally bee,
Sittin' on yer mammy's knee
Greetin' for anither bawbee,
Tae buy mair Coulter's candy.

Ally. bally, ally, bally bee,
When you grow up you'll go to sea,
Makin' pennies for your daddy and me,
Tae buy mair Coulter's Candy.

Mammy gie me ma thrifty doon
Here's auld Coulter comin' roon
Wi' a basket on his croon
Selling Coulter's Candy.

Little Annie's greetin' tae
Sae whit can puir wee Mammy dae
But gie them a penny atween them twae
Tae buy mair Coulter's Candy.

Poor wee Jeannie's lookin' affa thin,
A rickle o' banes covered ower wi' skin,
Noo she's gettin' a double chin
Wi' sookin' Coulter's Candy

Aquarius

Special note for Aquarians: With the new Millennium heralding the Dawn of the Age of Aquarius, at this time, ready or not, your sign is regarded as the zodiac's leader. You are the trendsetter for the future and because of this high responsibility, many under born your sign will be undergoing at this time, as we approach the Millennium, the pressure of personal change (particularly in your values and what makes you content and happy). Yours has always been a philanthropic sign. Now more than ever these qualities will be highlighted.

Those born under the sign of Aquarius not only march to a different drummer, they make up new music as they go along. They are 'mind oriented' individuals, whose thoughts never stop tick-tocking over. Because of their high focus on intellectual exploration, many inventors, eccentrics and highly original trailblazers are born under this sign. Their intense ability to live on many mental levels, holds both pain and pleasure for Aquarians. For example, in the American Hall of Fame there are more Aquarians than any other sign, yet statistics reveal that in mental institutions there are more Aquarians than any other sign too. Many extremes can surround this sign and these extremes can take them to both heaven and hell.

But in everyday terms, most Aquarians are extremely humanitarian and often involved in social programs that assist others. They can also be objective in judgement, for they never let their emotions get in the way. Outgoing and amiable, Aquarians attract friends wherever they go and those whom Aquarians befriend have their unswerving loyalty.

Aquarians are the zodiac's most mysterious and unusual people - and no two are anything alike. Those born under this sign - ruled by innovative and non-conformist Uranus - march to the beat of their own drum. They see life in a different way. Others quite frequently think their habits and ideas are eccentric or crazy in some way, but it is this uniqueness that makes them so special. The Aquarian mind is extremely quick and they never seem to stop thinking (it is interesting to note that many born under this sign suffer from insomnia.) Aquarians usually have strong political, environmental or social beliefs. But whether it is a relationship, career or cause - Aquarians are happiest when they have "something" to believe in and nurture.

Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I do not die.

(Mary Elizabeth Frye)

Empire State Of Mind

In New York,
Concrete jungle where dreams are made of
There's nothing you can’t do
Now you're in New York
These streets will make you feel brand new,
the lights will inspire you,
Let's hear it for New York, New York, New York

("Empire State Of Mind" - Jay-Z feat. Alicia Keys)

The Megrahi Forum: The Opposite Of Vengence

A comment published in the Scottish review about the Lockerbie bomber's release. By Sheila Hetherington, my Grandmother.

The atrocious murder of 270 innocent, happy, excited people heading home for Christmas appalled the world 21 years ago, and continues to appal us now. Families and friends of the victims will grieve until they themselves die. Generations to come will continue to mourn. The foul act will be remembered as long as memory lasts.
Justice demands that the truth should be uncovered. The present position is deeply unsatisfactory. There are countless theories and counter-theories, suspicions involving a number of foreign governments, talk of relevant papers being made permanently unavailable for inspection. But that inquiry, though urgent, is for the future.
Meantime a man who is thought to have helped to perpetrate this crime is dying. I cannot believe that his death in prison a few months from now could have brought solace to the bereaved, or relieved their anguish in any way, though their personal suffering can only be whole-heartedly respected and understood.
So what should have happened to Megrahi? In practical terms, to remove the prisoner to a hospice or hospital to die in this country would, as Mr MacAskill has pointed out, have brought distress and disturbance to other patients whose right it is to find peace and tranquility at their own time of death. A hospice surrounded by up to 40 policemen is unthinkable, callous and would have been rightly condemned.
Vengeance is not a national characteristic, I think, and, when sought, it often bounces back insidiously and viciously. Jim Swire and others still in profound grief have urged against it. And particularly, since in any case we have some doubts as to Megrahi's innocence or guilt, it must be avoided. Mercy is the opposite of vengeance. It is unconditional. It too bounces back unexpectedly, bringing its own blessings.
The return of Megrahi to Tripoli was not well done. He could have been slipped home without publicity, in a British plane. The scenes at Tripoli airport were abhorrent and disgraceful, and we must be prepared for more of these scenes to come.
I sometimes wonder if BBC News is always impartial in its reporting. Headlines such as 'Scotland's First Minister, Alex Salmond, has been forced to defend the decision...' seem perhaps to be a trifle biased against Mr MacAskill.
Returning Megrahi to die at home was a courageous act of mercy. It was an entirely selfless, non-political judgment, and it is distressing to see that some party members, both within and outside Scotland, are seeking to turn it to political advantage. This opportunism is demeaning, and it is reassuring to see that some of our leading politicans – Lord Steel and Henry McLeish to mention only two – have not stooped to such manoevrings, but have praised Mr MacAskill's decision as courageous, and 'the right thing to do'.
I too believe that it was.

Kissing You - Scene from 'Romeo & Juliet'

Real Emotional Girl

She's a real emotional girl
She wears her heart on her sleeve
Every little thing you tell her
She'll believe
She really will
She even cries in her sleep
I've heard her
Many times before
I never had a girl who loved me
Half as much as this girl loves me
She's real emotional

For 18 years she lived at home
She was Daddy's little girl
And Daddy helped her move out on her own
She met a boy
He broke her heart
And now she lives alone
And she's very, very careful
Yes, she is

She's a real emotional girl
Lives down deep inside herself
She turns on easy
It's like a hurricane
You would not believe it
You gotta hold on tight to her
She's a real emotional girl

(written by Randy Newman)

The Day I Died - Just Jack

Drag myself from my bed
Around 20 past 6
Get my kids up make breakfast
1 egg 2 toast 3 weetabix

and as i sit down i look up
and your standing in the doorway sun at your back
in my old brown dressing gown
Well no one can love you more than i love you now, but i

Gotta go running for the bus
Coat flying and i try not to miss it this time
but the drivers waiting and that’s strange
kids on the top deck quiet for a change
and there’s no rain and no roadworks
in the bus lane and all my hurts run away
and im smiling as i’m punching in

the day i died was the best day of my life
the day i died was the best day of my life
tell my friends and my kids and my wife
everything will be alright
the day i died was the best day of my life

now the secretaries they got a smile for me
and the in-tray on my desks almost empty
I get a memo from executive joe
saying Rob the gob is getting kicked out
for embezzling funds from the company account
and id be lying if i said i wasn’t chuffed
cos i always hated rob
and now they’ll probably offer me robs old job

and in the park at lunch
there’s no whinos on my favorite bench
none of that drunk chatter none of that pissy stench
and the scrawny little pigeons with the gammy legs
decide to dive bomb from someone else’s sandwich instead
and there’s something about the city today
like all the colors conspire to overwhelm the grey
and this close to the fire i can feel no cold
but a rainbow halo around my soul

the day i died was the best day of my life
the day i died was the best day of my life
tell my friends and my kids and my wife
everything will be alright
the day i died was the best day of my life

so i leave work get to the high street and i miss my bus
should i wait for another no i cant be arsed
i begin to walk
and rush hour crowd seem to part like the red sea
and i’m stopping at the offy
20 cigarettes and a 6 pack to relax me
and as i cross back over the street
i guess i never saw that taxi
i guess i never saw that taxi

the day i died was the best day of my life
the day i died was the best day of my life
tell my friends and my kids and my wife
everything will be alright
the day i died was the best day of my life

"Which color best suits your personality?"

(From a Facebook Quiz - some of it could be true.)

You are black! You are probably an introverted, indifferent sort of person. You aren't necessarily emo or really hateful, though you can be. You just aren't bubbly and happy all the time like yellows, oranges, and pinks. In fact, you probably have a hard time putting up with people who ARE happy all of the time. You are probably intelligent and artistic, and maybe a little bit of a loner. You do have friends, you just don't mind being alone. Gives you time to think. You are a little blunt, and you usually tell it like it is. You are classy, and simplicity goes a long way with you. You can be a little off-beat, your interests may not go with "the norm". As for your friends, you love them deeply. You may not have many close friends, but you choose them carefully. You are incredibly loyal to your friends, and they know they can count on you. You'd do just about anything for them, and they know it. You probably don't show your feelings so much, but you do have feelings. Deep ones, too. You feel things deeply, and you can be passionate - you just don't show it. Your sense of humor is probably a little dark, but you do love to laugh. You can be totally crazy when you open up, but you rarely do.
You, in a nutshell: Classy, introverted, loyal, a bit of a loner, unique, edgy, deep, artistic, crazy (rarely), intelligent. BLACK!

BABY MINE Lyrics - Alison Krauss

Baby mine, don't you cry
Baby mine, Dry your eyes
Rest your head close to my heart
Never to part, baby of mine

Little one, when you play
Don't you mind what they say
Let those eyes sparkle and shine
Never a tear, baby of mine

If they knew sweet little you
They'd end up loving you too
All those same people who scold you
What they'd give just for the
right to hold you

From your head down to your toes
You're not much, goodness knows
But you're so precious to me
Sweet as can be, baby of mine

The most lovely drive in the world?

"The most lovely drive in the world? For me is between Jemimaville and Cromarty on a June evening with herons on the shore line, stippled sunlight on the fields, and my newly-left-school-daughter learner-driving beside me, slightly too close to the ditch chatting and laughing and full of hope. Seems I blinked and she went from playgroup to here." -Auntie Lindys Facebook status, 11th June 2009.

Jade.

Article from The Scotsman. By Bill Jamieson.

LIKE a fly caught in a camera lens, everything that Jade Goody did was in public view. By the end, there was nothing private about her at all. In fact, her death was the greatest public spectacle of her entrapment.

"Courage", "guts", "magnificent", "fantastic": these were just some of the verbal tributes showered upon her from the Prime Minister down.

Who would have thought, seven years ago, when Jade Goody first burst upon the national consciousness in Big Brother – a foul-mouthed dental nurse and shoplifter from Bermondsey, South London, whose mother was a one-armed lesbian and father was then serving a four-year sentence for armed robbery – that she would rise to become the centrepiece of this Wagnerian death-apocalypse: flower petals descending, the music swelling, the ascension to mass acknowledgement and the light of a thousand cameras filling the stage with a luminescent radiance?

Jade Goody was no ordinary member of the Celeb Set. She was one of its greatest champions. In the age of instant mass image, Celebrity now rules all that it surveys. And celebrity is sustained by a public fascination beyond mere intrusion.

In the Supreme Senate of Celebrity, there is no inner or private life. Everything you do is for the vicarious consumption of the media. The reward is, well, more fame. And all that more fame brings.

The beguiling pull of Celebrity is that it is genuinely classless, open to all and with barriers against none. It is a meritocracy of sorts, entered by the surrender of any sense of the private, the shameful or the embarrassing.

And it is achieved by dedication of a sort. The first purpose of Celebrity is to become well known.

The second is to become even better known. And the third – the very aristocracy of Celebrity – is to be well known even by people who do not want to know you at all.

Jade Goody passed effortlessly through these gradations like a ghost gliding up a staircase. Here was no wilting wallflower, waiting for an invitation. She kept knocking till we let her in, a distraught heroine bursting out of the pages of an Emil Zola novel.

She was forged by Reality TV, lived unashamedly in the public eye, and was succoured and protected by that ubiquitous escort to the familiar, the court ambassador to Celebrity, the very lord high protector of fame: Max Clifford no less, a man who has himself risen by being well known for looking after others who are well known.

But how did Jade do it? What was her secret, her tricks of the trade, her USP? What turned the brassy Jade into media gold?

Jade was not without talents. A raucous honesty was one. An unfiltered trade in gossip was another. Her ability to make ignorance into an unmissable spectacle was beyond compare. A public favourite was her question whether "East Angular" was abroad. My favourite was her reply to a suggestion that she emigrate to America. "They do," she asked, "speak English there, don't they?"

But none of these quite explains her magnetic pull. How was it, exactly, back in 2002 when most media pundits had her down for an early exit from the Big Brother house, that she survived to the final four?

I must confess, I dissented from the consensus view and had her down to be the winner and was briefly disappointed that she didn't quite make it. But unlike other contestants, Jade became more than a Celebrity. She became a brand.

What counted in my view for the Goody phenomenon is that she captured perfectly the state we're now in. Jade Goody was more than a fly on a lens. She was the unsparing mirror of what a large section of Britain has become. And like all mirrors, we rarely pass up the chance to pause and look into one.

Big Brother was not the grotesque abnormality that many believed. It wasn't all that crude, or dumb or moronic. It was disturbingly close to how many of us at that age behave. In fact, it's as good as it gets.

Were this not so, Jade Goody would not have attracted seven million viewers and a cascade of advertising support. The reality show was one of Channel Four's biggest commercial successes ever. And because of that, they did the least surprising thing – they brought Jade back for a second run in the Big Brother house.

Jade Goody was a one-off. But she was also one of us. She came to typify a large part of the country we have become, just as the Big Brother house was itself a metaphor for Britain. What she lacked in brain she more than made up in heart.

That she was so representative, so one-of-us, is what made her life, and her death, the stunning national events they became.

TWO GIRLS SINGING by Iain Crichton Smith

It neither was the words nor yet the tune
Any tune would have done and any words.
Any listener at all.

As nightingales in rocks or a child crooning
in its own world of strange awakening
or larks for no reason but themselves.

So on the bus through late November running
by yellow lights tormented, darkness falling,
the two girls sang for miles and miles together

and it wasn't the words or the tune. It was the singing.
It was the human sweetness in that yellow,
the unpredicted voices of our kind.

(From Scottish Poem Book)

Ludwig Van Beethoven to his 'Immortal Beloved'

Good Morning, on July 7

My thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved
I can live only wholly with you or not at all-
Be calm my life, my all. Only by calm consideration of
our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together.
Oh continue to love me, never misjudge the most faithful
heart of your beloved.
Ever thine.
Ever mine.
Ever ours.

(From 'Sex and the City: The Movie')

Why do women cry for no reason?

"I just watched a YouTube video by a very popular member entitled Girls Are Weird, Why Do They Cry for No Apparent Reason? His girlfriend was in the video and they were talking about an instance that actually happened when she started crying, and could not explain why. Their conclusion was that girls cry for no reason and are strange. While I believe that women do cry for reasons they cannot explain, I do not believe women cry for no reason at all. (Note: I am using the word women instead of girls for all intent and purposes, my use of the word women include girls from 16 to 50. I have never seen an older woman cry for no reason). Here are the reasons that I (a woman) believe that women cry.

Exhaustion: You may have noticed that many performers have been known to collapse and end up in the hospital in the middle of a tour due to exhaustion and frustration. This is an extreme kind of tired experienced by someone who has worked too hard and has not had time to relax. This kind of tired will even make a grown man cry, he just will not do it in front of you.

Frustration: Have you ever heard a woman say she had a good cry? Well chances are she cried from frustration, and the act of crying relieved the frustration. She will cry until she cannot cry anymore, with reasons being anything, or nothing at all, and arise from her soaking wet pillow ready to face anything the world can dish out.

Lack of Control: Women often find that they have these mysterious crying fits when in new relationships. They often blame their crying on hormones. The truth is that they are in a situation, which they do not know how to control. As exciting as a new relationship is, not knowing what is going to come next can be extremely frustrating and unsettling and lead to an unexplainable crying fit.

Extreme Happiness: Emotion is emotion and tears are tears. Women will cry just as easily from extreme joy as they will sadness. So if you walk into the room, and she bursts into tears, do not worry. She may just be happy to see you."

Enough

Recently, I overheard a mother and daughter in their last moments together at the airport. They had announced the departure. Standing near the security gate, they hugged, and the mother said, 'I love you, and I wish you enough.'

The daughter replied, 'Mom, our life together has been more than enough. Your love is all I ever needed. I wish you enough, too, Mom.'

They kissed, and the daughter left. The mother walked over to the window where I was seated. Standing there, I could see she wanted and needed to cry. I tried not to intrude on her privacy, but she welcomed me in by asking, 'Did you ever say goodbye to someone knowing it would be forever?'

'Yes, I have,' I replied. 'Forgive me for asking, but why is this a forever goodbye?'

'I am old, and she lives so far away. I have challenges ahead, and the reality is - her next trip back will be for my funeral,' she said.

'When you were saying goodbye, I heard you say, 'I wish you enough.' May I ask what that means?'

She began to smile. 'That's a wish that has been handed down from other generations. My parents used to say it to everyone.' She paused a moment and looked up as if trying to remember it in detail, and she smiled even more. 'When we said, 'I wish you enough,' we wanted the other person to have a life filled with just enough good things to sustain them.'

Then, turning toward me, she shared the following as if she were reciting it from memory:

'I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright no matter how gray the day may appear.

I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun even more.

I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive and everlasting.

I wish you enough pain so that even the smallest of joys in life may appear bigger.

I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.

I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.

I wish you enough hellos to get you through the final goodbye.

Then, she began to cry, and walked away.

They say, it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but an entire life to forget them.