Thursday 11th March 2010 - A Lesson in Misplaced Loyalty

          I have fallen in with the Wilmington Old Bottle Club.  They're off on a spree this morning, and I'm, as ever, keen to join in.  Unfortunately, it turns out they're interested in the bottles, and not their contents.  I have got myself into one of those agonising situations where people hand me fragile obects to admire, and the room turns into a garden shed of obstacles and hard edges.  I simply can't believe what these things are worth, but they're clearly very old, and I don't want to be the one who breaks them.

          With some hilarity, I'm then dragged off for a lesson in an obscure bit of Scottish history.  It's about the Battle of Moore's Creek, which took place here just before the Revolutionary War/ of Independence.  I'm distraught to discover the Scots formed up on the English, or 'Loyalist' side, apparently because they had promised to, in return for land and tax holidays.  They were massacred in a battle lasting about three minutes, providing a public relations triumph for the American, or 'Patriot' side.

          It's not so much that the Patriots were better organised, and more cunning, although they were.  It's more that the Scots were led by donkeys (it's happened a few more times since).  They didn't so much walk into a trap as charge into it. 

[n1369]

It was, apparently, the last broadsword charge in history.  Not only did they not see any of the warning signs, they didn't even look.  The commanding general was called Donald Macdonald.  Perhaps his entire troop were Campbells, and he was wreaking revenge.  Can you believe that on the day of the battle he had the nerve to call in sick?

 

          Later that night, after a brief sojourn at the Brewery, I'm invited to appear on Public Radio.  The appearance turns out to be a word picture describing my enthusiastic approval of a "celtic" band from Raleigh called Barrowburn, performing 'live'. 

[n1372]

In the modern world of media-savvy political protest, 'live' has a pretty technical definition, meaning recorded specially in front of an audience ( I nearly said "live audience", admitting of the possiblity that it might sometimes be done in front of a dead audience), rather than on a gramophone record.  No doubt there will be some editing before it is aired, if only to make for a neat length.  The word picture of me will surely end up on the cutting-room floor, since it was really only a bit of typical American over-enthusiastic hospitality.