Hamish MacDonald and Cynthia Rogerson book launch | La Tortilla Asesina, Inverness

by Margaret Chrystall

PAELLA, performances and introductions to two new books written in the Highlands turned a launch event last week from Hamish MacDonald and Cynthia Rogerson into something special.

The aroma of the paella dish warmed up the dreich autumn night before everyone headed upstairs at La Tortilla Asesina in Inverness. It was packed with people to hear extracts from the two contrasting books – both with big subjects – which were on sale after the readings and author signings.

As legendary football manager Bill Shankly’s quote goes, some people may think football is not as important as life and death – but more important than that.

And with Inverness-based writer Hamish MacDonald, a lifelong Clydebank FC fan, football poet and “Bankies Bard”, the game is at the heart of his latest book Square Baw – which is mainly inspired by his grandfather.

In the book he starts out to try and unravel the mystery of how William Mackenzie Grant could seem to be in two places at once. A Scottish soldier who served on the Western Front in the First World War, William also appears in a team photograph of a football final in Scotland in 1917.

In her latest title, American-born novelist and short story writer Cynthia Rogerson – who has lived in the Highlands for many years – veers off the path of novels and the memoir of her previous book to create a hybrid with her latest,100,000 Birthdays, which embraces “the entire history of life on earth”.

Poet and novelist Anne MacLeod Introduced the two writers and also asked them questions about their new books between their readings, including what had set each of them off on their “remarkable journeys”.

Hamish said: “I’ve been a football fan all my life and it’s about community, friendship.” He added that he had first gone to Clydebank FC with his dad when he was a child.

“Our club is a wee bit special, the fans regenerated it, they put it all back together again.”

But Square Baw – a collection of football poems in Scots – was mostly inspired by Hamish’s grandfather William Mackenzie Grant.

Anne Macleod prompted Hamish to share some of the twists of the research he had done for the book. As Anne said: “It’s a book of poetry but it’s like a novel.”

The writer turned to research – a journey in itself – to find out more about the man and the photograph. And Hamish had also spoken to his mum who, he told us, is 96 and has a great memory, to find out anything more he could about her dad.

But it wasn’t till a postcard from William turned up in a relative’s house clearout that Hamish managed to get anywhere.

As well as the story of his grandfather, which is told through poetry in one of three sections in the book, Hamish’s poems also talk about everything from the history of football, Scottish football, Hamish’s own big moments at matches, to remembering players, grounds and he shared a lot of them in his readings on the night.

In his first reading, the one slam poem he performed, the witty ALDI Clydebank, set a high level of performances the crowd were treated to by both writers.

Energetic, and animated, Hamish brought alive the words of the poem in which the poet wittily transforms the former beloved ground it was into the supermarket it is now.

He also shared poems like Setterday Ritual, about going to matches as a youngster with his dad. Kilbowie Brazilian immortalises the wry story of Clydebank briefly getting a South American player. Another poem read out and taking us back to an epic game was the comic account in Silver Jooblie of going to Wembley with a busful of Scotland fans. But there were moving moments too that writer Hamish had picked to read out loud – embracing the drama of a match and also taking his audience back to thoughts from the First World War, both through grandfather William Grant’s eyes, as in Home Win: ‘Grant leads the line in Number 9 shirt … He readies for the whistle/ just as it had sounded eighteen months ago/ standing in the trenches/… and thinks for one brief second of Jimmy/ the lad he’d went with to volunteer/ the one who would never return.’

Hamish and Cynthia alternated reading from their books – or as Hamish put it “a game of four halves”.

The Seattle-raised Cynthia introduced 100,000 Birthdays as being “about the entire history of life on earth”, starting off with one-cell Kevin and quickly taking on the persona of “his 194,962,272th granddaughter Polly – on a Saturday night in the sea off (what will be) Goa”.

Actually, the writer was reading as herself too when she was not stepping to the left and taking on prokaryote (or non-nucleus single cell) Polly’s own slightly squeaky voice: “She says cheekily ‘What do I look like?’ She looks like a miniscule hairy penis with a mouse tail. Not that different from Kevin… (Polly) ‘You don’t think my flagella is too long?’ I don’t know what a flagella is.’.” Cynthia told Anne she had written this book because of her own stage of life, her previous book being a memoir. But she had started to wonder about the ancestors before and, having read Bill Bryson’s book on the body and his non-fictional Short History Of Nearly Everything and our ancestors, the writer had begun to come up with her own fictional version of them.

When Anne asked if the writer had had to do lots of scientific research first, Cynthia credited a friend who had checked everything, though said she had been surprised at how little is known sometimes and also how much is constantly being discovered.

“Every day you read about another life-form being found!”

Cynthia raced forward millennia for her second reading which revealed the dramatic account of her fifth great-grandparents David and Margaret finding themselves at the heart of a shipwreck near the coast off Philadelphia.

“It’s a very tight squeeze now and a ludicrous sight – the three heads and torsos sticking out of the deck like a three-headed creature. Rolling sea below them, quarter-moon-lit sky above, the air wild with wind and salt spray.”

When someone in the audience asked Cynthia if her book comes up to the present-day, the important role played by Anne MacLeod in the book’s story was revealed.

“Anne said it was two books!” said Cynthia, revealing that when she had asked Anne to read it, the book was then twice the size it is now. “So this book ends in the early 18^th century now and the second one covers the last 150 years.”

It also meant that when Anne asked both writers what their next books would be, Cynthia had already finished the sequel to 100,000 Birthdays, while Hamish seems to be taking on another big a subject. He is working on a book about evolutionary theory, he said, a fiction.

“Every time I go to Edinburgh, it’s playing in my head …” he added intriguingly.

Square Baw by Hamish MacDonald (Scotland Street Press £9.99) and 100,000 Birthdays (Sparsile Books £10.99) are now on sale. Find out more at hamishmacd.com and cynthiarogerson.org and sparsilebooks.com Both writers are doing book talks, so check out their Facebook pages for more. Cynthia is next in Tain Library on November 21 at 6pm (Dingwall Library follows on Nov 27 at 6.30pm).