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Why Michelle Mone
has to stay
in Scotland
The perils of
travelling by train
in Scotland
John Cameron
Kicking a man when he’s down
John Cameron
Kicking a man when he’s down
Dumbing-down
the world’s literary
masterpieces
The Cafe 2
A problem of etiquette
The Cafe 2
A problem of etiquette
Why should Alex Salmond
be caressed with a feather
duster by Paxo?
The Cafe 3
Fitzpatrick takes on Hill
The Cafe 3
Fitzpatrick takes on Hill
We’re enjoying the
deep darkness, and the
light from the stars
Alistair R Brownlie
The brigands have taken over
Alistair R Brownlie
The brigands have taken over
Late on an April evening Stephen Maxwell and I were trying to get from the the 1975 SNP Conference at the City Hall, Perth (yes, it’s that hall again …) to Edinburgh, and found ourselves joined in the gloom of Perth Station by three fellow-travellers: Christopher Hitchens (who died last week), then of the New Statesman, Martin Walker of the Guardian, being bear-led by the only slightly less foxed Owen Dudley Edwards.
They were, like us, Edinburgh-bound, but were unsure of timetables after a session at play with young nats, and consumption of a lot of Indian malt whisky swigged from the beak of a bottle resembling the Maltese Falcon of Bogart fame.
The hours passed, with train expected but not arriving. The future Contrarian was torpid, occasionally claiming the hooch was driving him blind, and anyway being out-Wilde’d by Dudley Edwards’ rendering of Dail Days with Garrett Fitzgerald, Charlie Haughey and Conor Cruise O’Brien (doing all the voices and finishing the drink).
About 11 an official reported the train as stuck at Drumochter and fled. Dudley Edwards pursued him into his cubbyhole, shouting with all the grandeur of Sherlock Holmes: ‘I demand a special!’. Incredibly, we got one – our own diesel railcar all the way to Waverley – and two hours later Hitchens and Walker were out cold on sofas in my father’s front room in Craiglea Drive, having had rather more than their tea.
Subsequently – and even after an NS report favourable enough to the home rule cause – I found it difficult to take Hitchens seriously enough to read him consistently. This failing has also applied to most of his associates of the superstar age: McEwan, Rushdie, Amis Junior, though not to their politically incorrect seniors, like Anthony Powell or Evelyn Waugh. Dudley Edwards remains not just the polymath, but a man who could magic a train from nowhere.
Christmas cafe scene
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
Christmas cafe scene
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
Christmas cafe scene
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
Cruelty on a country
bus mocks the season
of goodwill
Dave gives us moral collapse. How would he know? I wonder when he was last on a bus. I will give you a bit of moral collapse from the frontline – or rather the front seat.
Last Sunday afternoon, I waited for the bus in a smart cafe. The management had provided a selection of Sunday newspapers fit for the Andrew Marr programme. In one of them there was a long feature – an essay I think it was called – by a prominent member of the Scottish literati in praise of the young. The young were a good thing, she thought. Well, I think so too a lot of the time, though I would hesitate to generalise. There are nasties in all age groups.
I could almost hear a desperate editor’s mind ticking over. ‘Last edition of the year. We should do hope. Is there anything to be hopeful about? Ah, yes. The future. Young people. Go commission’. And lo, from across the frozen fields containing many acres of newsprint, there came a prominent member of the Scottish literati bearing tidings of joy about the young. At length.
I walked from the smart cafe to the bus station. It was almost deserted except for a bratpack of six teenage boys – no more than 16 years old. They were loud and coarse, but that was okay; I reckoned they would soon be off on somebody else’s bus. But when the No. 24 arrived from the hospital, they piled on our little country carrier. I was doomed to co-exist with half a dozen hopes for the future.
The next complacent assumption: they will head for the long back seat, where their capacity to cause grief to the human race will be fairly limited. But not this lot. They spread themselves about the centre stalls, leaving the rest of us to cower where we could. A mother with a toddler and an elderly woman from the village were the only other passengers as we set off into the dusk. Dazzling stars – the municipal lights of celebration – illuminated our way into the next town.
A can was produced for sharing. And then – for the sources of our hope are nothing if not predictable – they started throwing screwed-up paper objects at each other. It could have been the Round Table annual dinner. Ah yes, I have attended worse than this.
The reason for the ceaseless hilarity was hard to fathom at first. Something was amusing them – though not, I think, the simple joy of living. Then the word ‘Ree-tard’ – the syllables sneeringly drawn out in the intonation of Hollywood – came floating up the bus.
Ree-tard
Ree-tard