A good slap

There's a couple of great Ulster Scots words that I want to share with you, they are;
'thaveless' which describes being no good at practical things especially working with your hands.
and 'skelp' to roughly strike someone especially a naughty child.

You can probably tell where this is going?

When I was a kid I was known for being thaveless, as in "gimme thon ya thaveless edjot, I'll dae it masel' And then when I was 11 years old, all of that changed, when I made an iron poker in metal-work class at school.

You should have seen it, it was a beauty. I recall the immense sense of pride I had, looking at the finished article. No more the thaveless edjot I was practically an ironmonger.

It was a thin straight metal rod with a twist at the top, the handle made of a stack of glued together red, white and blue Perspex discs that I'd shaped on a lathe. It was a really well made, good-looking, poker.

I gave it lovingly it to my Grandmother for her birthday. The irony is not lost on me that less than six months later, Granny would be beating the legs off me with that same poker. (yeah that's right I grew up in an era where you could beat a kid with an iron rod and no one thought anything of it)

My Grandmother: Margaret Carlisle nee Spence

My Grandmother was what could best be described as a strict disciplinarian. She belonged very much to those generations before modern childrearing practices who firmly believed that children should be seen and not heard. For her, like everyone of that era, love came in one flavour only; tough.

I'd been farmed out for the summer holidays and having drawn the short straw was to spend six weeks with Granny Carlisle. Her house was practically a museum, all leather and linoleum, it smelt of liver and dust and sounded of the slow tic-toc of long clocks. Nothing was to be touched, everything was an heirloom and my every move was under constant surveillance.

Granny's parlour was out of bounds to all but a few

I'd managed on one rare occasion to give her the slip and slid unnoticed into the parlour, the one room I was strictly prohibited from. Telling a very inquisitive 11 year old that he can't go somewhere is a sure fire way to ensure that's the one place he ends up. So what happened next is really all Granny's fault.

She had one of those spinning globes, which at the time, seemed to be as big as the world itself, now however looking at the picture I can see it was a modest affair. What's the point of having a spinning globe if you can't give it a spin, so that's what I did. I spun it fast enough to turn the world into a blur of green and blue and I recall it making a very satisfying rickety hum that was begging to be accompanied on the piano. Timorously I tapped out a high note "tink" and more bravely another "tink, tink" before forgetting where I was and launching into a full blown keyboard bash all low notes and ominous.

It was as if the notes, that were still reverberating around the room, had heralded the appearance of an evil witch in some bad movie. There was Granny, glaring gruesomely at me from the doorway. "ya dirty wee heathen"; heathen being the worst swear word that Granny knew. "I'll skelp the legs aff ye"

After a bit of a Benny Hill style chase I was roughly caught, wigged about a bit and then as if by magic the poker, my poker, appeared in her hand and I received three or four good skelps around the back of the legs that would hurt for a week.

As I limped from the parlour the dying notes from the piano were still ringing in my ears along with the slowing rickety hum of the globe.