10 things that changed my life: Bob Davidson

With my grandmother he had 10 children, eight of whom survived into my lifetime. By the time of my late arrival he was very old and made only rare ventures from the fireside. His lawn was still neat but populated by daisies and dandelions and to this day I feel a lawn is incomplete without them. Imagine a boy in the long, baking summers of the 1950s, lying on cool grass with the perfect white ball of a dandelion close to his eye. So many seeds on tiny white stalks, all ready to fly off.

2) The Isle of Iona

PART of the post-war migration from the inner cities, our family was placed in the most peripheral of all housing schemes, South Nitshill.

For many this was an improvement but not for all, and perhaps it takes more than one thing to make a man become embittered and turn on his son. At my present time of life I dare not judge, but through that era my dominant emotions were fear and a sense of worthlessness. Education meant failure, and an uncontrollable nervous tic possessed my face.

I was unhappy for about 15 years but into this mirk sailed the Isle of Iona, which became a sort of spiritual life raft. A week’s visit to the famous huts brought into my life: colour such as I had not appreciated before, the idea of community, certain woolly religious beliefs long since relinquished, and the possibility of escape. All this buoyed me and, much later, Kathy Galloway and Ruth Harvey accepted a stream of poems and essays for Coracle, the magazine of the Iona Community, which further confirmed not only my gift with words but also the validity of my thoughts and feelings.

3) Rugby union

AT 17 I joined the civil engineering industry to become the roundest of pegs in the squarest of holes. A colleague introduced me to Clarkston Rugby Club and there, counter to any possible intuition, a non-sporting dreamer found purpose and direction, physical fitness and comradeship.

Later, I moved to Paisley Grammarians where I eventually captained both the First Fifteen and the county, Renfrewshire.

In the north I played First Fifteen for Highland, with and sometimes against players who were actually great. Rugby converted outsider attitudes into leadership but made me a wayward follower and reluctant employee. This photograph, rediscovered recently in the Highland clubhouse, has two full Scottish internationals, one a legend, and a B international. I am bottom left.

4) The Neil Gunn (Memorial) Viewpoint

SOME sports people find coping difficult at the end of their careers. Tormented by the pain of a squashed disc it felt as if I was lost with nothing to live for and nowhere to turn. Emptiness is a sort of potential though, and I intensified my writing, lying on the floor to ease the pain in my back.

My first wife read, typed, and was supportive and influential. Intended for publication, this was actually practice, learning the craft.

One day I spotted a letter in the Ross-shire Journal. A Dr Kerr Yule planned to establish a monument to Neil Gunn and sought assistance. I contacted Kerr, and his wife Ann, and so began a friendship that lasted until Kerr’s death in 2003 and continues with Ann to this day.

Our conversations covered many subjects and further opened my mind, especially questioning faith and received wisdom. The Neil Gunn Viewpoint is now a feature of our area, sheltering generations of birds and receiving thousands of visitors. Seven Trustees opened the grounds on October 31, 1987, in the presence of James Caird, Jessie Kesson, Sorley MacLean, and coachloads of supporters. Many ventures followed, including the writing competition. In my eulogy to Kerr I paid the highest tribute I have to offer: ‘This man was a teacher.’ Happily, I was a pupil.

5) Munros Tables

AFTER my father died, my mother had too few years before Parkinson’s disease robbed her of all but her most essential self. She visited us frequently in Dingwall and when I discovered what Munros are, insisted on buying me the Tables.

Completing the Munros took about 12 years in which physical fitness returned and new competencies arrived, such as map reading and navigation, and new friendships were established.

A rich treasury of reading followed as Scotland’s outdoor authors are brilliant and their numbers growing. Along the way I read Hamish’s Mountain Walk. Hamish Brown’s classic book eased my thinking into environmental themes, and I won the first two Mountaineering Council of Scotland writing competitions.

Cameron McNeish, as editor of The Great Outdoors Magazine, accepted an article on getting lost in the hills with the scribbled words: ‘Love it!’ Back on the hills themselves I became increasingly confident and often climbed on my own. Those who frequent them will understand my feelings when, on July 4, 1998, I completed both Munros and subsidiary tops on Ben Challum. In the following years I helped Hamish complete the final, definitive edition of his greatest book and edited Cameron’s comprehensive memoir, There’s Always the Hills. In all this there is a pleasing circularity, not least when I look at the Tables and remember mum.

6) The Scottish Parliament

THE greatest gift my generation has given to those following is the marvellous building in Edinburgh and the generous spirit of its founding.

Those following should not take our democracy for granted because it was won by determination and endurance rather than violence. Here our representatives manage our collective affairs, balance our consciences with whatever is practical, and, ultimately, determine what we are.

When a lesser assembly was snatched from us in 1979, I felt affronted and aggrieved. Now I am not so sure. What we have is many times better than what we did not gain, and the leadership of our five first ministers superior to anything Westminster has offered.

I find myself more in harmony with the present Scottish Government than any I have known in my life, and there is no contradiction in believing that borders should be open and people free to roam. In the age of global corporations, neither capital nor data are at all restrained by customs posts.

Our natural home is Europe where, even if we are only one constituent member, we are nonetheless more influential than any mere annexation. Our neighbours are vital to us; that is, all our neighbours. I long to be the citizen (not the subject) of an independent Scotland that chooses to share sovereignty within the European Union.

7) Northwords Magazine

ROSS and Cromarty District Council was a shining light under the progressive leadership of independent councillor Dod Finlayson. His three successive writers in residence set standards and gave guidance to countless aspiring authors in the 1980s and 90s.

Aonghas MacNeacail broke new ground, founding Northwords Magazine and many writers’ groups. Thom Nairn carried Northwords onwards with, first, Tom Bryan as editor and then Angus Dunn. Brian McCabe took Dingwall Writers Group in particular to national recognition with talent and projects sprouting everywhere.

Brian established a partnership with Highland Print Studio (then ART.tm) who published my first book, The Bird & The Monkey.

In 2001 Angus stood down from leading Northwords and I, now living on my own and following a precarious writing career in the garret, took it on.

As managing editor, I turned it into a general arts magazine and set about putting an object of beauty, new in the world, into mainstream outlets.

In this way lessons were learned about design, editing, print, managing an editorial team, distribution, and selling. The editorial team included the novelist Moira Forsyth as fiction editor, who is now publishing director at Sandstone Press and my partner in life.

We first met at Dingwall Writers Group after which she described me to her sister as ‘…a rude, arrogant man’. Not wrong, I’m afraid.

8) Sandstone Press Limited

PUBLISHING houses stand where art and business meet. Ours is located in Inverness but has outposts across Britain and America and relationships throughout the world.

Like most companies in the creative industries, we conspire with the readers, the listeners, the viewers, to pretend that the object in their possession is the result of a single spasm of artistic genius. Not so, although the authors are the originators, always central, and often geniuses.

With them we might spend a year on data (note what comes first), edits, design, preparing the market, printing, followed by a rollicking publicity campaign on release.

All this is to ensure an easy passage between the author’s private voice and the reader’s inner ear.

Publishing over 20 books a year, and aspiring to thirty, our business is a quickly turning wheel. In recent years my job has altered, and I now function as a sort of minister for change, doing my best to keep the house wind and watertight while also building outwards.

Still part of the team, I collaborate in the artistries of publishing while maintaining a tenuous connection to the myth of control.

Meanwhile, our books fly from the warehouse in Glasgow: collections of thoughts and feelings, expressed in narrative, presented by means of crisp typography within robust, high quality constructions and beautiful, appropriate design.

9) A Hilger Watts theodolite

INDESPENSIBLE on site, the theodolite is used to set out building lines, raise verticals, establish boundaries of all kinds. It looks both forwards and back. A little wheel at the side brings the telescope into focus.

Taking a long backsight on Mosspark, I locate my grandmother, Charlotte Davidson, seamstress, busy in the kitchen. Focusing nearer: my mother, laundrywoman and cleaner, and reader. Next: Ann Yule, political activist. Somewhere in the middle distance, while working on her memoir with Remzije Sherifi and the women of Maryhill Integration Network, something shifted. Something to do with feminism, but not a direct consequence.

Just a slight adjustment of focus achieves unimagined clarity. One of my foster daughters works in broadcasting, the other is a nurse. The Sandstone Press engine room is entirely populated by women. This is good because the new ways are better than the old. Time to put the theodolite away.

10) A glass of pure water

IN a grubby site hut in Govan I decided to transfer to the security of the water industry and am still more than half in love with it, although we were not always kind to each other.

In the outdoors I enjoy nothing more than walking beside a Highland stream as it pours off the hill, or beside a wide river, or a loch. Sometimes the water in those streams is so clear it would not be visible were it not moving. Language aspires to the condition of water. It tumbles and sings and haunts the unconscious mind. My life is made of water and words.