I visited my patient yesterday.
He is from Alloa.
In the Lowlands of Scotland.
A tall,
Former miner
Now ageing gracefully.
His grandson was there
And his red-headed great-grand daughter.
She sat colouring as I sounded
The old man’s chest.
‘Papa, I’ll pop to the chemist.’
Said the grandson.
He refers to himself in the second person
as Papa too,
As in,
‘‘What were you thinking, Papa?’ She asked,’ He might say.
His grand daughter
That is.
His family, close-knit
Like a finely woven
Fabric.
And me.
My grandfather
Was Papa too.
And I wonder whether this is a Scottish thing
Beyond the affectations
Of the English upper-class,
As in Papa. Like Nicole in the Clio advert of the 90’s.
Papa. With two flat-A’s.
A doubling-up of Pa.
And the links that connect us with our pasts
That hang
By a weakening thread
To our present.
Dr Rod’s Odd Blog (almondemotion) 
And now, with the same Papa as Rod, I too am now a Papa. The story continues.
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My nana and my mother were both Scottish . My grandparents were nana and papa , I think when we were kids , people thought i was posh …. or wied or both calling him papa !!
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