“Awake!” cried my mother in her bright Edinburgh voice, “for morning in the bowl of night hath flung the stone that puts the stars to flight.” And she flung open my curtains on the new day as I cowered beneath the covers before dragging myself unwillingly to primary school. This would be around 1957, when Supermac ruled and we all liked Ike. My mother had many another poetic tag at her fingertips: “Home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hill”, “His strength was as the strength of ten because his heart was pure”,…