HEROES ALL

I have gone blithely through life wholly unaware that I was carrying a heavy handicap. The rather modest success of my career should not after all be ascribed to my lack of ambition or congenital idleness, though both perhaps played a part, but overwhelmingly to my name - “Sidney” often abbreviated to “Sid”.

Sid(ney) - 2016 version

I have got used to my name, which I always felt was friendly and cheerful, qualities I admire. Quite why I was called Sidney is slightly mysterious. Apparently the plan was to call me, regally those days, George; alas some relations told my dear parents that the last George in the family had taken to drink. All a-fluster by this dire omen, they hastily settled on Sidney, the name of an agreeable commercial traveller of their acquaintance. Otherwise there was no family connection to the name and the fierce Scots Clan Sidney is unknown to history.

Much more recently the penny has dropped. Sidney, and especially Sid, is an irredeemably lower crust moniker. I have searched in vain for great leaders, poets and men of consequence but there is no Sid Nelson, Sid Wordsworth or Sid Bonaparte. There was an excellent comedian called Sid Field who died at 45 in 1950 and whom I remember from the radio (top-of-the-bill on Henry Hall’s Guest Night). There was also clarinettist Sid Phillips and his jazz band and of course Sid James of the lecherous cackle, but I am really scraping the barrel and have to resort to Hissing Sid, the serpentine antagonist of Captain Beaky and his Band in the 1980s. I entirely ignore the pansy Sydney version favoured in Australia. In my banking days I had a very able lieutenant called Bert, of Dutch origin, and we made a formidable team as Sid and Bert. While we probably sounded like a couple of house-painters, I recall our triumphant deal-winning mandate over our rivals Rodney and Rupert! But to hit the top echelons, I should have been christened a boastful Maximus, or at least Hugo, Adonis or Peregrine. I fear my Sid was subconsciously a promotion block to my elders and betters. Friends, please still call me Sid or Sidney nevertheless as the spirit moves you!

A grand name does bring dividends. You will all recall Admiral Sir Cloudsley Shovell whose faulty navigation caused 4 of his capital ships to hit the rocks at the Scilly Islands in 1707 with the loss of 2,000 sailors including Sir Cloudsley himself. In the modern Navy he would have been court-martialled and dismissed, but instead he was hailed as a hero and lavishly entombed in a Grinling Gibbons-carved sepulchre in Westminster Abbey, no less. As Sid Shovell he would have fared much less well.

All this naval talk makes me think of tattoos, once the preserve of old sea-salts and rough soldiers. Europe is in the grip of a tattoo epidemic. The hotel pool I patronise here in Karlovasi, Samos is overrun by Slovaks, Swedes, Serbs and Poles, male and female, many tattooed from head to foot. I do not admire this adornment, ruining the skin of our young and the artwork irremovable I believe without substantial pain. I admit I am not up to speed in street cred and coming as I do from the North East of Scotland, the ancestral home of the Picts, I must watch my words. The early medieval Picts were famously The Painted Ones but whether this was actually accomplished by way of tattoos or by the smearing on of the blue dye known as woad (or both) is a matter of scholarly dispute. I am very glad this particular fashion is no longer de rigeur in the sitting-rooms of Aberdeen.

Many British young people sport tattoos which brings me finally round to the Rio Olympics. Didn’t we do well? We have won medal after medal and I love the excuse for patriotic flag-waving and singing the national anthem. We have John Major to thank (well done, old boy!) for directing National Lottery profits into sport allowing a generation of professional athletes to thrive mightily. It has done wonders for national morale!

Rose, Whitlock, Murray and Farah lead the medal charge at Rio

SMD

21.08.16

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016