On a sunny Saturday morning (21st May 2022) Moai and I went on a trip down to the Saltdean seafront. We both enjoyed ourselves and we hope you enjoy the photos from our little adventure.
Moai reflects upon the far away Easter Island
Moai happiest on a clifftop looking out to sea
Moai becomes self-conscious and adopts a disguise
Moai happier back on the clifftop
Initially, I outline the target audience for the book, introduce the contributors and share my motivations for undertaking this review. This is followed by the substance of the book. The review ends optimistically, tempering serious themes discussed with an acknowledgement of beginnings.
The target audience for this practical guide is those caring for individuals at the end of their life. This is primarily those working in end-of-life care, but the authors are careful not to exclude family and close friends who might be involved in this role. All contributors to the book were based at Princess Alice Hospice (Esher/Surrey) at the time of publication (2015). One of the strengths of this book is the different end-of-life care specialisms represented in this book.
I have three motivations for reading and reviewing this book. Firstly, at a philosophical level, the sixties mystic Alan Watts in his talks often referred to the value of meditating on our death. More recently the Latin phrase Memento Mori (remember you must die) has increasingly surfaced on social media. I had been very reticent to look into the ‘black box’ of death but recently felt emotionally ready to engage. My second motivation is far more personal. Clair Sadler the Editor of this book is my sister. The copy I have been reading she gave to me when the book was published. In the inscription, she wrote ‘… I hope you think it is a “good” read.’ Clair, ‘it is a very good read’. I am biased, but the only way I would know for sure was by reading the book. My third motivation relates to the second one. In the past I recommended this book to friends, I did this with good intentions. As my friends dealt with the emotional and practical challenges end-of-life care raises, my good intentions always felt a little crass. Writing and publishing this post seems far less prescriptive, more passive and more sensitive.
How you begin to engage with this practical guide will be influenced by your motivation for reading. The book took me far longer to read than I had anticipated. The contributors emphasise the precious nature of time at the end of life and also the need for sensitivity. They also encourage readers to reflect on the subject matter. In meaningfully reading this book you have to reflect. If you read this book abstractly, I suspect you will miss the point. I found myself reflecting both on past events and events still to happen. You need to be in the right frame of mind to undertake such reflections.
After the Foreword and Introduction, chapter titles helpfully employ questions. This is a practical guide and these are the practical questions you might want to answer. Initial chapters cover the meaning of end-of-life care, the people involved and their communications. I learnt that according to the Dying Matters campaign (please see links at the end) there are over 200 euphemisms for dying and bereavement. Next, there are chapters on the common physical and non-physical symptoms at the end of life. It was unsurprising yet reassuring to this lay reader that a patient-centred approach was favoured, typified by ‘the patient is the expert in what they are experiencing’ (Page 101).
I next learnt about help for the families and the influence of beliefs, values and attitudes on dying. My mental model up to this point had been that I was learning, reading about and engaging with the loss of life. On page 116 one of the complexities of end-of-life care hit me like a steamroller. Losses go beyond the loss of life. End of life care is about acknowledging and working with the loss of roles, the loss of a future and the loss of independence. For example, lost roles might include grandparents, friends or daughters and lost futures might be about holidays and adventures which were on the horizon. Lost independence is about acknowledging the increasing need for care from significant others. The next chapters cover the last hours of life and practicalities after somebody has died. There are two final chapters on looking after ourselves and frequently asked questions which I will return to in the final section.
Stories of three families are used as illustrative cases throughout the book. These are Maria Brambila, Albert Hughes and Jenny Baxter. In the early chapters, we get to know Maria, Albert and Jenny and then follow their end-of-life journeys. The cases are well written and inevitably induced considerable empathy. However, do not underestimate the power of this book to surface your real-life case studies. Contributors emphasize the importance of boundaries for those working in end-of-life care. However, for this lay reader, there were no boundaries as I processed memories and future anxieties. I wish my processing had been exclusively altruistic, but some of the aspects of nursing took me back to personal experiences of hospital surgical care. My point here is that it is difficult to abstract yourself from what you are reading and abstraction is not the way to go.
My specialism is organizational change a field characterised by uncertainties. However, as a lay person, when I look into the world of palliative care, I begin to comprehend the real meaning of uncertainty.
… to help them have a ‘good death’. This is our goal but not always achievable and this can be difficult for us to accept sometimes. (Page 155)
I learnt that with all the will in the world you cannot necessarily orchestrate a ‘good death’. Each individual will experience a unique set of physical and non-physical symptoms with the severity and duration of these symptoms varying considerably. Practical guidance is offered to enable planning and strategies to address and even pre-empt symptoms, but uncertainties remain. Time is precious in end-of-life care, but again it is difficult to offer any certainty around a timeline of events. Again, practical guidance is offered, particularly around questions that are likely to arise around life expectancy.
As well as, for those working in end-of-life care, family and friends will be involved. Family involvement can range from a child making sense of dying for the first time, to somebody grappling with their dementia whilst fearing losing a loved one. Who is involved and how they engage in these processes becomes another uncertainty? This isn’t just about the end-of-life care for the individual, it is about caring for those they leave behind. A powerful reminder from Saunders (1989) is shared.
How people die remains in the memory of those who live on.
So, so true, yet I imagine profoundly challenging to facilitate those good memories. In terms of place, this may potentially be in the home, in a hospital or a hospice. This needs to be tempered with the care that can and perhaps needs to be provided in a particular place. Also, the availability of hospice beds becomes a consideration.
In the penultimate chapter the focus shifts to the carer in answering the question how do we look after ourselves? The chapter opens with a couple of powerful sentences.
Caring for people at the end of their life can be rewarding and enjoyable. It can, however, also be really tough and demanding, both emotionally and physically. (Page 169)
Acknowledging doing potentially rewarding work, yet also emotionally and physically demanding work offers a philosophical balance. Even after reading this book, I cannot fully empathise with my sister and those who choose to do such meaningful work. There were some emotive passages in this book, but there was only one that poleaxed me. It was a short case extract focused on a carer.
Since Erika started working as a carer, she never had any sick leave but today she has not come to work. She has texted one of her colleagues to say that she has had enough of looking after people and cannot be bothered to come in, she said they ‘owe’ me a sick day. This really is out of character for her. (Page 170)
More proactively the chapter addresses the very real challenges that may arise when providing end-of-life care. Setting boundaries, dealing with burnout, building resilience and mindfulness are discussed. But what comes through strongly towards the end of the chapter is the value of supervision and talking this caring role through with another person. The concluding chapter addresses frequently asked questions. I had actively engaged with this book, which isn’t always the case when I am reading. I was pleasantly surprised that I could answer these questions from what I had learnt from earlier chapters.
Inevitable uncertainties of end-of-life care were acknowledged in the previous section, but with that very real caveat in mind, I want to end more optimistically. These two sentences offer readers hope.
Most people spend the majority of the last year of their life at home, often with support and care mainly coming from their families. (Page 114)
…more people die peacefully than don’t. (Page 155)
One of my motivations for reading this book related to reflecting on Memento Mori (remember you must die). On several occasions, this book spoke to my motivation, for example:
How do we know what we value in life? Perhaps we only fully understand when it becomes certain it is coming to an end. (Page 132)
At the end of this book, I didn’t have an epiphany around Memento Mori. I am glad that I made the time to read this book and engaged with the ‘black box’ of death. This book was well written and effectively organized. That said, it wasn’t an easy read, but then again it isn’t an easy subject. So, no epiphany, yet I found letting a little light into the ‘black box’ of death illuminating. I start every day with thirty minutes of meditation. After reading this book I revised my meditation practice by incorporating, a four-minute gratitude for life guided meditation. This may have been coincidental, or perhaps my epiphany was subtler than I had imagined.
The slightly doomy woodlanddecay.com title for this site alludes to optimism. I do love woodland walking, particularly ancient woodlands. Whilst, the verdant new growth captivates and seduces us, woodland magic is happening beneath our feet. New growth grows out of the old-growth, before itself becoming old growth. This cycle of life and the interdependence between the new and the old reassures me and gives meaning to the inevitable transitions in my life and the lives of those I love.
I acknowledged at the beginning that my sister Clair edited this book. As I read and contemplated hidden family references embedded within some of the cases Clair, as well as, significant others were with me. The black and white photograph was taken of the two of us at the beginning. Subsequently, we have both had to navigate and continue to navigate the many uncertainties and adventures everyday life presents. In this sense, there is continuity with end-of-life uncertainties. Perhaps life prepares us to navigate some of the end-of-life uncertainties. There are endings, but thankfully there are also beginnings.
Saunders, C. (1989) Pain and impending death. In P.D. Wall and R. Melzak (eds) Textbook of Pain. 2nd Ed. Edinburgh, Churchill Livingstone, pp.624-31.
A practical guide to end-of-life care
Sadler, C. (Ed). (2015) A practical guide to end-of-life care. McGraw – Hill Education/Open University Press, Maidenhead.
https://www.mheducation.co.uk/a-practical-guide-to-end-of-life-care-9780335263561-emea-group
Hospice UK
https://www.hospiceuk.org/our-campaigns/dying-matters
Details and very accessible resources about the Dying Matters campaign are available on the Hospice UK website. The following extract from their website gives a flavour of the campaign.
Talking about death, dying and bereavement is hard. It can feel awkward or uncomfortable and sometimes, you just don’t know what to say. Dying Matters is the campaign that’s trying to change that. Our mission is to break the stigma, challenge preconceptions and normalise public openness around dying.
Princess Alice Hospice
Further information about the Princess Alice Hospice based in Esher, Surrey and the services that they provide is available here:-
Understanding End of Life Care: A Practical Guide
By-line: Leaf mould agitates as Stewart Lee trends on woodlanddecay.com
It is the 18th of February 2020 and I am sitting in Row B of the Circle at the Brighton Dome (Dome) for the Snowflake/Tornado tour. After two years of pandemic and confusion, we reach the 25th of February 2022 and I now sit in Row A of the Circle at the Dome for the Snowflake/Tornado tour. This isn’t a forgetful senior moment. I am not a stalker and as it transpires, I am not the only returning audience member. In 2020, I laughed a lot and felt a range of different (largely positive) emotions, however, my overall experience was one of benign brainwashing.
The first show was just before the initial pandemic lockdown, how had the pandemic impacted the show? Could I remember the first show and would my memories inform/misinform my experience of the second show? I had a unique opportunity to see the same show at the same venue two years later, the closest I am probably going to get to time travel.
I watched the Comedy Vehicle shows on the BBC too many times. I don’t think initially the first series was loaded onto the BBC player. However, once it was loaded up, I enthusiastically watched the series, erroneously believing it to be the latest instalment of the Comedy Vehicle. I thought how much younger and healthier Stewart Lee looked. His material had become less jaded and world-weary, the comical procession he had now introduced at the beginning of the Comedy Vehicle was a masterstroke, signposting his new comical direction. However, I came to realize that my version of reality wasn’t accurate. It was constructed through a BBC quirk of scheduling. I wasn’t watching them in the order the artist had created them. My experience of the Comedy Vehicle prefaces many of the themes of the Snowflake/Tornado tour.
Firstly, the first tornado and shark set of the show is organized around another television scheduling quirk. Secondly, when the show opens, we appreciate that Stewart Lee isn’t looking younger and healthier. The opening routine evolves around people commenting he has let himself go. Thirdly, similar to the Comedy Vehicle, the live shows play with different accounts of reality. I used to facilitate intense, but also enjoyable residential workshops. In the evenings, I’d watch a couple of episodes of the Comedy Vehicle as a small retreat from reality. It was such a retreat from reality which I was looking for and experienced at both the Dome shows, as boundaries between fact and fiction were blurred.
My talk of retreating from reality might sound like the ramblings of an addict, but for myself blurring fact and fiction is closer to the work of the hospital anaesthetist (but without the unconscious bit). Fact and fiction blurred when politicians implored us to stay at home and stay apart, shortly afterwards moving a few yards into their garden to enjoy cheese, wine and companionship. Stewart Lee shining a spotlight on the tenuous nature of our reality constructions will always get my vote, or in this instance my £26.
I have seen GY!BE perform twice at the Dome. Their music transitions between loud passages and quiet passages, between melancholy and moments of intense joy. I was lucky enough to see their second ever UK performance at a small theatre attached to the Dome. They played beneath the flickering words HOPE projected onto a screen. There are parallels with Stewart Lee with both acts seeming cynical and depressing to non-believers, yet there are always shafts of sunlight. In challenging the status quo there is always HOPE. There are also parallels with GY!BE and their oscillations between loud and quiet passages. He sometimes shifts the gears between quite manic and rapid monologues and slower dramatic moments, when he appears to hold the audience in his hand. One such quiet moment was in the second Snowflake set when he acknowledges and locates all of us between the end of a pandemic and the beginning of a war.
Stewart Lee is unequivocal that he doesn’t want photographs/videos taken of him during the show. At the 2020 show in the second set, he started ‘outing’ a red light that he believed emanated from the camera of an audience member. It bordered on vicious as he believed that the audience member was refusing to put their camera away. The camera situation deescalated when Stewart Lee concedes that the red light might be emanating from one of the supporting pillars of the venue structure. The de-escalation is poetic, but was this all staged as part of the routine or was this moment of annoyance unique to Brighton? I guess that back in 2020 his argument with one of the supporting pillars at the Dome, to him was real rather than contrived. In 2022, he is still clear no filming/photographs. In 2022, he takes the time to explain that a 30-second clip without context could be highly problematic amongst other reasons. Also, the place confiscated phones go to isn’t a pleasant place.
Much of the material is very similar between 2020 and 2022, but the mood is very different. I guess it always will be with a live show, contingent on both performer and audience input. My fading memory of 2020 was more laughter and more applause than 2022. However, some of the laughter and applause in 2020 appeared to be driven by our nervous anxiety as the audience responded to a performer on the offensive. I certainly enjoyed the 2020 show enough to come back for more. But I found 2022, a more entertaining and warmer experience, through being less confrontational and more participative. He references the book War and Peace at one point, and 2020 felt like the war and 2022 felt like the peace. In 2020, the one big prop in his first set failed. He then used this failure as a springboard into the second set. I guessed that the prop failed every evening, but having seen the prop work in 2022 again this might not have been the case. Nothing was as it seems in either show.
As I am more into peace than war, I am dancing around offering any critique. This is partially cowardice, but this also relates to reviews being integral to both sets and unifying the show. He jokes about his ranking as a comedian in contrast to other comedians. He dwells on every review he can find about his work and weaves these into the show. He does a wonderfully warm and affectionate impression of Alan Bennett. He revisits a positive Alan Bennett review of his work which used the work of Erving Goffman as a reference point. Stewart Lee, theatrically I suspect objects to this sociological reference point, but I am with Alan Bennett. Last night, and two years ago we were in the realms of ‘impression management’. Stewart Lee checking his reviews resonates with all of us, in an age where products, services and people are constantly and publicly reviewed. It has spawned the social media industry which is driven by impression management. When Stewart Lee opens his show with ‘Stewart Lee has let himself go’ he knowingly swims against the tide of impression management. Incidentally, he looked and seemed a lot healthier and happier in 2022. There is even a moment in the Snowflake set in 2022 when he concedes to enjoying his performance. He goes on to suggest that this is problematic for him performing, which I can understand from the reference point of the 2020 show.
Erving Goffman (1959) usefully distinguished in the drama of our everyday lives between front stage, backstage and off stage. In this review, I have been reflecting on the front stage, but the backstage is integral to understanding the show last night. The many references Stewart Lee makes to being reviewed build bridges between front stage and backstage. He even ironically recites the lines the local newspaper could include in their review of him. You can’t help imagining his backstage self then reading the review he has recited about his front stage self.
Enough dancing around and hiding behind sociologists, I didn’t enjoy the Ricky Gervais mime on the theme of what is unsayable in 2020 or 2022. The joke was funny but stretched far too much. There is even a rare heckle at this point, causing him to pause and then continue with his mime. He acknowledges the heckler and also somebody on Mumsnet Guestbook (whatever that is) claiming that the mime goes on for too long. How can we determine how long is too long? He seems to concede a little at this point, but you get the impression it will stay there in the set as a critical touchstone.
In interviews between 2020 and 2022, he had intimated that the second Snowflake set was going to be rewritten to include his reflections on the pandemic. I would have welcomed this. There are references throughout both sets to the experiences we have all lived through with a recurring reference to ‘it is good to get out.’ I think this is both a joke and a shared truth. He talks about the voices in his head and his voices seem at times to have been ugly voices, but he broadens this to the wider mental health of everyone. It does resonate and it seems prescient and definitely in the realms of HOPE. It wouldn’t fit a Snowflake critical routine around Woke and cesspits and the demise of comedy. So I suspect, Basic Lee will take forward the mental health reflections he tantalisingly hinted at last night (please see his website for further details).
I thought that I was being clever attending the same show at the same venue two years later. However, there was a twist that I couldn’t have scripted. I have deliberately avoided the detail of the show, but in the first set, he oddly meditates on why the customer floor space of a shop is smaller than staff floor space. Fear not, in context this is part of a funnier routine about meeting your heroes. He asks the audience why the floor space anomaly exists and Harry in the front row shouts out the correct answer. Stewart Lee is surprised by the speed and accuracy of the answer and gently quizzes Harry. It transpires Harry was here two years ago like myself and Harry had also been to see the show in London. This allows some Harry based improvisation throughout the first set which had particular meaning for me. I suspect Harry and I were not the only ones to choose to watch Snowflake/Tornado more than once, what better review than to come back for more.
I entered the wonderful Brighton Dome with its otherworldly elegance and impressive foyer. In line with an eminently sensible Covid health and safety protocol, we were required to depart the Circle at the end of the show via the fire exit. The fire exit completely bypasses the foyer leading us out into the wonderful Pavilion Gardens, which I know well. If I was unfamiliar with the venue, I would be a little lost and disorientated at this point. Tonight, I am not lost, but my grip on reality has been loosened for a few hours providing a little happiness in an increasingly mad and sad world, but HOPE still flickers. However, I cannot help imagining Stewart Lee sitting in the foyer at his merchandise table doing what Goffman called ‘off stage’ work. Consoling himself that he had played the room as it was dealt. If he was ruminating on literally losing all of the audience sitting in the Circle, rest assured you didn’t lose us, just political correctness gone mad!
Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday.
https://www.stewartlee.co.uk
Stewart Lee: Snowflake Tornado Brighton 25 02 2022
Please see 400 episodes later – March 2024 update at the end of this post.
As a child, I enjoyed the fantasy and adventure of Pogle’s Wood and how it could take me away to a magical place. For myself, Take the High Road is a grown-up version of Pogle’s Wood. For 25 minutes, my reality on the south coast of England is paused and I am transported to a far-away magical place. A place defined by beautiful countryside, where people actively engage with each other and the natural world surrounding them. A place back in the 1980s, when life was tougher, yet perversely less complicated.
This magical place is the small fictional village of Glendarroch. The actual village is Luss, on the banks of Loch Lomond. At the heart of the village is a village shop/post office, further afield crofters live in the crofts. The village is located within a country estate with a manor house and all that goes with that. The drama appears to oscillate largely between the shop and manor house. I enjoy watching an episode each day at around teatime. It provides a bridge for me between the real world of everyday living and the fantasy world of evening television.
I am watching episodes in consecutive order and at the time of writing, I have reached number 21. Episodes have been loaded up onto YouTube and I along with 500+ others have subscribed to Take the High Road. There is currently access via the STV Player, but I fear this may be temporary (see internet resources). My memories of watching Take the High Road as a teenager are hazy, but I do remember Mrs Mack. In doing my desk research for this post, I learn that the actress who played her Gwyneth Guthrie recently passed away. Mrs Mack made a big impression, she always wore a hat and at times scared my younger self. Although, as noted on Nostalgia Central (see internet resources), strong women characters were a strength of this programme. I look forward to meeting her again in future episodes.
The choice of the theme tune was inspired. The melody evokes Scottish Highlands, but it also evokes some of the emotions. It simultaneously calms and reassures, but also gently excites you. It acts as a portal out of my everyday life today, into the fictional realm of Glendarroch. The theme tune is integral to this journey between worlds. When it plays at the end, I know it is signalling that it is time for me to return to my everyday life.
In the sixties, children’s lunchtime television programming which included Pogle’s Wood was called Watch with Mother. This programming ended with a music box and a figure gently descending into its box. This is how the theme tune works for me at the end. The theme tune has a ghostly quality. Echoes of dramas, of past happiness and past sadness, with a hint of events still to happen. The theme tune sounds like it was recorded on some old audiotape that stretched over time, before being transferred to a digital medium. It conveys exactly how I feel in my late fifties. There is still a little mischief and merriment in me, but I need to be wound up if you want to hear my tune. Sometimes I sound a bit wobbly, but at least I am authentically wobbly.
You could drop in at any episode, as the storylines are not too complicated. I initially watched a later episode, but I had the time and the inclination to go back to the beginning and the very first episode. I was curious to learn how they would introduce this closed and quiet community to the wider world of a national television audience. How do we step into a quiet meditation on another world?
I think the label ‘establishment shot’ applies to setting the scene within a television drama. In the case of Take the High Road, the establishment shot set the scene for what was to come, but also signalled the pace of what was to come. The drama frequently focuses on the running of a country estate. The estate manager is referred to as ‘the factor’. In the opening shot of the opening episode, the camera focuses on the back of a man, who it transpires is the factor. You cannot see his face so you cannot gauge any emotion. All you can see is his back as he looks out over the loch. He quietly looks at the calm waters for some time and you begin to wonder what is happening. This is what is fashionably called ‘slow television’, but all of this was before slow television was fashionable. And then his car phone goes in his range rover and the drama very slowly begins.
Slightly unusual shots of the backs of actors reappear in later episodes. Today, in a world of celebrities, faces are far more prominent on television. A face can be very expressive, but it can also distract you from the dialogue. When in Take the High Road they linger on the backs of actors, it does focus your mind on listening to the dialogue. I am not sure if this was intentional, or something else?
Going back to the early 1980s reminds you how much today we take telecommunications for granted. In this era, there was no internet, no email, no mobile phones, except for a very rare car phone. We are offered a glimpse of a simpler life and the advantages and disadvantages of such a way of life. There is a telephone at the village shop/post office and up at the manor house, but that is about it. Frequently, messages have to be relayed from these two telephones, by word of mouth. The delivery and arrival of a baby are communicated by word of mouth, complicating what subsequently transpires. Today, news coverage is so instantaneous and informative, if a little overwhelming. This can be sharply contrasted with a newspaper journalist awaiting a call from his editor in the village shop/post office. Inevitably, none of the social media platforms existed, but the human sentiments still existed. Gossip in Glendarroch leads to allegations taking the form of graffiti painted overnight. The next morning there is a shot of the local community reading the graffiti.
I used to watch the classic soap operas, when I was younger, such as Coronation Street and Emmerdale Farm before it became Emmerdale. However, I completely turned against them and watched no soap operas for decades. In the early days, Coronation Street was far more observational and far less dramatic. Dramas do arise in Take the High Road and I know the series becomes more dramatic in later 1990s episodes. However, these early episodes signpost a potential niche in television production. A new soap opera with a focus on rural life with plenty of landscape shots. A soap opera with an emphasis on observing everyday life, rather than dwelling on the conflict and confrontations of life. Now, that would be refreshingly different.
Each episode concludes with the wonderful weary theme tune accompanying the closing titles. The magic is that they filmed shots of the loch and surrounding countryside as the backdrop for the closing titles. An inspired choice, showcasing landscapes worth celebrating. Today, we are used to high-definition drone footage of sweeping rural landscapes. In the 1980s such innovations did not exist, so the film crew had to improvise. It appears that the closing titles were filmed by hanging out of a helicopter or a light plane. There isn’t the balancing facility on the cameras, something we take for granted today. As a consequence, the footage is very shaky, to such an extent that you feel that you are up there in the sky with the camera person. An illusion just like I am sure the illusory nature of croft life, but for this viewer an engaging and worthwhile illusion.
I am grateful to the uploader and I have been accessing episodes via this channel. The uploader openly acknowledges “I own none of the content in this video, nor the video itself. ‘Take The High Road’, and all the rights to it, belong exclusively to STV Group plc, and no copyright infringement is intended.”
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkyKWXik379YEzRUn5jRZ9A
Writing the original post, I never envisaged watching 400
episodes. Strangely, after reaching the 400th episode milestone I
stopped watching and I do not envisage watching the final episodes. I enjoyed time travelling to a more innocent and community-orientated time. I am grateful to all the actresses/actors and production team who made this wonderful escapist tea time viewing possible. And
thanks to the YouTube uploader for making this series accessible once more. Many of the cast are deceased and I am sure many of the original viewers. I used to imagine the original viewers watching when Take the High Road was first broadcast and what they made of the controversies which played out in their living rooms. I do not want to spoil the drama for anyone who has yet to watch. Obliquely, I can share how much I enjoyed the visit of Mrs Mack’s (Gwyneth Guthrie) sister and the modernisation of the Village Shop (very 21st century, but thankfully no automated self-service tills). I enjoyed watching the characters age in front of my eyes. I was present for the birth of young Donald and later when he got into trouble at school. As mentioned in the original post, this drama was reputed to feature strong women characters and this belief has been confirmed and emphasised through my viewing.
I have decided to celebrate my favourite characters. However, with the big caveat that I enjoyed all performances and warmed to particular characters during particular storylines.
Favourite Female Character – Grace Lachlan (Marjorie Thomson) As I reflect, she is the character I miss the most. Almost, all of her appearances were set in her small croft kitchen. The magic was how she embraced firmness and seriousness as well as a huge amount of loving kindness. This combination was most apparent in her often humorous although almost always patient interactions with her son Dougal Lachlan (Alec Monteath). An honourable mention goes to Isabel Blair (Eileen McCallum). In this case, her kingdom was not a croft kitchen, but a village shop, with a special mention to the splendid pinafores in her wardrobe.
Favourite Male Character – Mr Murdoch (Robert Trotter), riddled with contradictions (poacher/church figure), loner yet in search of
company, attracted to Mrs Mack, yet not attracted to Mrs Mack. As I reflect, he was the real enigma, I always felt there was more going on when he went off to the woods which we never knew about. An honourable mention goes to Rev Iain McPherson (John Young). He always brought wisdom and serenity to proceedings, yet still had to buy his chocolate biscuits covertly, if you want to know why you will have to watch for yourself.
A note of caution when accessing internet resources. They sometimes reveal future storylines and dramas, that unless you are a willing time traveller may spoil your viewing. A quick internet search revealed these three which I found interesting and informative.
It is catalogued on IMDb using its later title High Road.
The residents of the rural Scottish village of Glendarroch deal with issues ranging from crop failures and parish pump politics to infidelity, alcoholism and drug abuse.
Whilst, they provide limited information it is worth drilling down into the ‘user reviews’. They do offer a summary of what the show is all about from the perspective of the viewers.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0163499/?ref_=tt_urv
At the time of writing this updated post episodes from the last five series were accessible via the STV player. However, availability appears to be for a fixed time, certainly worth checking in the first instance.
https://player.stv.tv/summary/take-the-high-road/
There is a very interesting and informative piece on Nostalgia Central. The show evolved out of an earlier show called Garnock Way, but this was deemed too gritty for viewing in England.
https://nostalgiacentral.com/television/tv-by-decade/tv-shows-1980s/take-the-high-road/