The Knitter, Doctor Who and the X-Factor.

A fair amount of The Knitter is set around a small area of West Lothian that just happened to sit on some enormous coal seams. I’ve talked a lot in the book, and in previous blogs, about the talent that has been produced, and gone largely unnoticed, from among the coal miners – including my father.

There’s a little triangle of fairly non-descript towns within a couple of miles of each other: Whitburn, Blackburn and Bathgate. They are non-descript not because of the people, but just because they look and feel like so many similar villages and towns in the area. A bit worse for wear; like an old guy you pass on a street corner – obviously been through a lot, not ended up as anything special, but is probably hiding an interesting history if you took the time to find out some more.

So apart from a few coal mines producing the odd coal miner-poet, surely nothing of interest has come out of there? Surely that little triangle of ordinariness can’t have inspired anything out of the ordinary? You’d be surprised:

• Dario Franchitti is one of the most famous racing car drivers in the USA and won the Indianapolis 500 this year (2010). His name doesn’t give it away, but Dario was born in Bathgate – and he has won more races in the USA than any other British driver in History.
• David John Mcdonald was also born in Bathgate to the local minister. Later as David Tennant he became a great actor, as well as spending years hurtling around time and space in a police box as Doctor Who.
• A Bathgate doctor, James Young Simpson discovered the anaesthetic properties of chloroform and successfully introduced it for safe medical use.

Now that might be enough for most small towns. But the West Lothian triangle’s achievements go much further. What other two square miles of Britain has produced two winners of the Simon Cowell star making machine? In truth it was only one actual winner, but given that the “loser” was none other than Susan Boyle, best known scot since Sean Connery and watched on youtube more than all other Scots put together, I’ll call her a winner too! Susan was born and by all accounts still hangs around a lot in Blackburn, a couple of miles from Leon Jackson’s house. Leon who? some will say – but Leon actually won X -Factor.

So there we are – the “non-descript triangle” has given us among other things safe surgery, a superstar sportsman, a couple of modern “stars” and Doctor Who – not bad for a clutch of wee working class towns in central Scotland! Not to mention of course a person I’d argue was at least as talented as any of them – my father – not born there, didn’t live there, but felt a part of the area nonetheless having jumped off a bus most weekdays to work in the mines.

Does any of this mean these places were special somehow? Is there something about them that has made them produce more than there expected share of talent? I think not. What can make places like this special is their very ordinariness. For some that can make you want to push for something better; for others it can make you start believing you might really have some talent in comparison to what you see around you; for others still it probably makes them want to dream a bit about what might be. For most of course life changing things won’t happen.

But if you ever find yourself driving through Whitburn, on through Blackburn and into Bathgate, don’t look down on any of it. Don’t be tempted to think “this looks a bit shabby, a bit boring, nothing interesting could ever happen here”. Remind yourself that this is a hell of a place! A place that gave us Doctor Who, Chloroform, an Indy 500 winner and Susan Boyle! And that coal miner poet I heard about. What was his name again?

Tagged as: history, memoir