Albert in Glencoe
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Notes

This was the first of my monologues in this style, and was composed shortly after I began my activities with Edinburgh University Mountaineering Club. It details an imaginary meet to Glencoe; we always went by coach as hardly anybody had a car, and visits to the Clachaig Inn and the Callander Chippie were de rigeur. (There were actually two chippies, one of them owned and run by members of the Luti family, whom I was later to encounter through the Killin Mountain Rescue Team and my career as a teacher at McLaren High School. Suffice to say that none of them would have countenanced such an exchange as that recounted....)

Albert himself began to look at this stage as though he was serially expendable, as if foreshadowing Kenny from South Park.

The gory nature of some of the verses has been known to have veteran Mountain Rescue Team members spluttering into their pints. I later spent a few years as a member of the Ochils Team, and am more than happy to take this opportunity of extolling the selflessness and dedication of the people I encountered. Where would walkers and climbers be without them? Well, not to put too fine a point upon it, dead, in a number of cases. And like other occupations where traumatic situations are apt to arise, a sense of humour with a somewhat macabre element tends to come with the territory.

I should add here that members of EUMC have always been far more responsible than “Wallace”, headlines in the “Daily Record” notwithstanding.

As is only proper, the verses include the occasional tribute to the lyrics of the original compositions by Marriott Edgar and Co.