by Michael Bloor
[first published in Literally Stories, January 24th, 2025]
The minister, at her desk between afternoon meetings, took up the next set of documents requiring her attention. Her usual practice, following that of all government ministers, was to read firstly the summary prepared by her civil servants. Only occasionally and in dire need, would she then read the full report. This did not signify any lack of diligence on her part. Indeed, the work of the Scottish Government would’ve shuddered to a halt if ministers had insisted on reading every document that crossed their desks from first page to last. But on this occasion, she read the summary and immediately then read the full report, re-reading some passages and asterisking two or three sentences. Uncharacteristically, she was then ten minutes late for her next meeting.
At the end of her day, she returned to her office to collect her things and picked up the report to take it home with her. She figured she needed to weigh it in her mind before taking any action. She turned from her desk to her window. It was a good view. She looked across Regent Road to Edinburgh’s famous Calton Hill; the westering sun was lighting up the columns of The Monument.
She remembered, once again, a day-trip from Fife as a child: she and her dad had climbed Calton Hill, partly for the view, but mainly because her dad, a policeman, had wanted to visit David Hume’s grave.
By the grave, her dad had explained to her that David Hume had been a great philosopher. She, a child of seven or eight, had asked what philosophers did. Her dad had thought for a moment, and answered that philosophers tried to find out the truth – they thought the truth was important. She must’ve realised that her dad was in a communicative mood. She asked if that was the same as being a policeman. The answer came: not quite. He told her that philosophers believed, first and foremost, in truth. So did scientists. But policemen believed first and foremost in justice.
He must’ve seen the puzzlement on her face. He explained that, he didn’t spend all his working day thinking about justice. He might instead be thinking that, for example, there was only forty minutes to go before the end of his shift, or he might be worrying about how Grandad Moffat was managing with his new hip. But there would be times when a policeman’s job was to make a decision about something and, at those times, the policeman had to choose the option that would serve justice.
That trip up Calton Hill had been a pivotal experience for her. As a government minister she believed in Good Government. Large parts of her days would be taken up with mundane matters: meeting constituents concerned about dog shit in the local park; wondering (as she had that morning) whether the half-bridge at the back of her upper jaw was going to need replacing; and so on. But there were also many times when she found herself weighing a political decision. Those were the times when she asked herself which option would serve good government.
And she hoped her dad would’ve been proud of her (though his hero, David Hume, hadn’t thought there was much chance any after-death endorsements). Her dad had retired on ill-health grounds a few weeks before the 1984 miners’ strike. The son and grandson of Fife miners, he couldn’t bear to watch the news during his last illness. The whole family were silently grateful that he died before the miners were beaten back to work, the following year.
She headed down the stairs to the exit, feeling her teeth with her tongue. That morning, the dental hygienist had known that she, the minister, was left-handed. The hygienist had explained that the teeth on the right-side of her jaw were better cared for than those on the left-side. In the same way, scientists know things we don’t know – surprising things. And by the time we, the public, find out about those things, it’s often too late…
It was like that time, a lifetime ago, when a friend had taken her to see a volcano. After university, she’d spent a year volunteering in a country on the opposite side of the world. They’d climbed the slopes of a mountain dotted with pineapple plantations that were benefiting from the rich volcanic soil. Cresting the lip of the volcano, they saw below them a great blue lake. And in the lake, not in the middle, but over towards one side, was a small island – a volcanic cone. A wisp of smoke was issuing from the apex of the cone. The lake was calm as a porcelain plate; the thin smoke curled lazily upwards. Behind them, lower down the slopes, villagers were working in the pineapple fields. Her friend was a volcanologist. He said that the smoke was a sure sign that the volcano was active. The peacefulness of the scene was a dangerous illusion. Sooner or later, the villagers or their descendants would be in mortal danger, not just from quakes, ash and lava, but also from floods issuing from the lake. She gathered that the villagers kind-of-realised the danger, but they weren’t focussing on it. In truth, it was a task for good government.
She could’ve had a chauffeured government car, but (to the anger of the security people) she always insisted on driving herself home to Fife. She changed the CD in the car from Tom Waits to Thomas Tallis – she needed the company of a Tallis’ soaring choir, even if he was 500 years old. She headed off to the Forth Road Bridge. The traffic, for once, was light. On the soaring bridge, she finally settled on her top governmental task for tomorrow. Under ‘any other business,’ she must take the copies of this report to the Cabinet, and make them see that nine deaths in Perthshire from a rabbit virus was a matter requiring urgent government action.