FOR 70 years, the entirety of his working life, Bill has tuned pianos across Scotland, and the hundreds of miles of land and sea that make up Argyll. Across those decades, on late-night ferries and across long, bumpy roads, he has brought the sound of music to household instruments on islands and the mainland.

Now, after all that time and after building up a lifetime of stories, he’s retired. For a quarter of a century, he has also been my grandfather.

I remember a long time ago, for a school project, we had to interview someone we admired about their own childhood. So I went to my grandpa. He told me all about his youth in Clydebank – just as the war and blitz were looming.

He remembered the unexploded bombs and shells collected the morning after air raids, the gas mask boxes taken everywhere by his side, the rationing and identification tags. It’s hard to imagine now – with Scotland and Europe so transformed – what it would have been like in the heat and uncertainty of Clydebank’s industrial heartlands.

He was evacuated three times. The first time he was sent to Kirkintilloch, where he remembers sleeping on a classroom floor busy with mattresses; and then to Rhu, where the local community rallied together to make everyone feel at home; and later to Perth, where he stayed with family.

“All this time my grandfather and my father were at home in Clydebank building the ships – mostly invasion barges which were used in the D-Day landings,” he told me at the time.

It wasn’t till after the war that he was free to take the traditional working-class route of an apprenticeship into his chosen trade. Having been involved in the Salvation Army bands, his love was for music.

“That was the start. I was always interested in music,” he told me. So from the age of just 16 he started out on a lifetime of tuning pianos, originally in Clydebank, then Glasgow, before eventually settling down in Ardrishaig, Argyll and Bute, among the most beautiful parts of the country.

I’ve always been proud to share stories of my grandpa as a piano tuner in Argyll. I’d always slip it into conversations, as something that gave a sense of his practical, generosity and contribution to all the communities up the west coast. Sure enough, in the small world of coincidences that make up Scotland, that storytelling came back around.

A flatmate of mine was travelling through Argyll by the Crinan Canal. Stopping at a hotel, chatting to the barman, she happened to mention my grandfather. Sure enough, the barman replied that he was just across the street working on a tuning job. It’s nice when your friends go out of their way to accidentally make friends with your family!

When you ask my grandpa for stories about his life, he’s always modest. Once he spent a few visits tuning pianos with Paul and Linda McCartney at the Mull of Kintyre, immortalised of course by the famous song.

The simplest story, however, is one of dedication. In Argyll and across its stunning islands, Bill was the only permanent, visiting piano tuner. He had been there for decades, with people that grew to depend on his help and service. So, into his 70s and 80s, when most folk would have their feet up enjoying retirement, he kept going. He kept working and serving the people he had helped throughout his life.

I can say in print, as a proud grandson, what so many of those people would like to say to him. Thank you.

----

Time to change the EU record

DIGITAL music downloads are far more popular these days, but that doesn’t seem to stop Unionists preparing for a “broken record” campaign against independence.

The Tories, north and south of the Border, are repeating the bizarre and inaccurate threat that independence means Scotland will be outside of the European Union. Are they suffering from severe short-term memory loss?

Without independence, it’s guaranteed that Scotland will now exit the EU. The irony that the Tories are magnifying the threat of Scotland being outside the EU clearly hasn’t caught up with them yet. Instead they want to repeat the same arguments as 2014 till the public’s heads are spinning in confusion.

But the facts now beat fear. Top EU official Jacqueline Minor said there’s “no reason” Scotland won’t be an EU member. Professors and experts have lined up to say the same. The Scottish Government, fairly quietly, has already met with ministers from Germany, France, Ireland, Sweden, Malta, Belgium, Iceland, and Norway to build diplomatic bridges.

The threat to Scotland’s relationship with Europe comes from Westminster, and everyone knows it.

Michael Gray @GrayInGlasgow is a journalist with CommonSpace.scot