Who is the real
Romney? We have
still to find out
Stalinism is alive
and well on the
Glasgow underground
SR Extra
The un-nourished
The disaster of
Scotland’s food
Andrew Guest’s
weekend essay
The Cafe
As an armchair Celtic supporter, I would like to congratulate Islay McLeod’s team for a worthy victory in the cup final last Sunday. Kilmarnock were the better team, and were fully deserving of their victory. I am glad that the win has galvanised the community as described in her piece. It was a great day of football (mostly), that I watched from my hotel room in Denver, marred only by the Kilmarnock fans repeated singing of ‘The Billy Boys’ in the second half. The BBC commentator could only state that the Killie fans were ‘getting behind their team’ in response to the chants coming from the terracing. Whilst I am sure most decent Killie fans would not partake in such disagreeable chants, I feel that commentators should be more vocal in their criticism of such invective being broadcast round the world.
I apoligise if this takes the gloss slightly off Killie’s on-field performace, but I see the need for improvement from the sidelines.
Peter Campbell
Has Kenneth Roy calculated how many of the men on Scottish FTSE 100 boards are actually Scottish?
Jane Drummond
The Cafe
Unlike many publications SR doesn’t have an online comment facility – we prefer a more considered approach. The Cafe is our readers’ forum. If you would like to contribute to it, please email islay@scottishreview.net
Today’s banner
Spring lambs, Ayrshire
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
Kenneth Roy
Why does it take a football team to make Turnip’s pal so effing happy, to bring thousands of people on to the streets of this defeated town, and to release its latent civic pride? I ask the question in a genuine spirit of inquiry.
A couple of weeks before the cup final, jaunty little Johnnie Walker finally quit Kilmarnock. The last workers of the last industry were paid off. There were only 70 of them, hanging on to the end. What work is left? The answer seems to be the council, the hospital, a little bit of retail, and minor admin in dental surgeries and lawyers’ offices. The thriving criminal court must employ a few. Occasionally the BBC turns up as a fly on the wall to film the deprivation – and, in the interests of award-winning documentaries, there are unpaid parts for the extras who have to live here. Remember the three-legged dog called Bullet? Maybe not. Fame is transient, for telly faces and three-legged dogs alike.
The general listlessness has to be experienced. In the 1930s Edwin Muir wrote a book called ‘Scottish Journey’ in which he remarked that parts of industrial Scotland had the quality of an everlasting Sunday. Surprisingly little has changed, although Sunday football is now allowed, and the purchase of alcoholic refreshments in Tesco after a decent hour. But the everlasting Sunday is shorthand for an absence of purpose, and there remains an absence of purpose in Kilmarnock, and Motherwell, and Greenock, and all those other towns upon which the conferring of city status might have acted as a stimulus and an inspiration. (Still getting the nasty letters from Perth, incidentally. They’re gathering while I’m away).
I have no right to talk about Kilmarnock. This little enterprise of ours abandoned it for no better reason than that the roof was falling in on us. We could have stuck around and said hello to the pigeons. Instead we decamped to the nearest airport, as close to the south of France as we could get without actually leaving Scotland. But it astounds me that, last Sunday in John Finnie Street, the street where our roof was falling in, there were moments of such unlooked-for joy that the sound could he heard all the way up the Glasgow Road. How wonderful for Kilmarnock. I mean it. How wonderful.
Why does it take a football team to make Turnip’s pal so effing happy, to bring thousands of people on to the streets of this defeated town, and to release its latent civic pride? I ask the question in a genuine spirit of inquiry. I watched the game on television. Not good. It was played mostly in the midfield. There was very little artistry. There was only one goal, and the usual sterile argument about whether a penalty should have been awarded in the last five minutes. The other lot thought they wuz robbed. The father of one of the players collapsed and died of a heart attack. Some overly respectful person interviewed the Celtic manager about the outcome of the game, extracting graceless replies. And finally we learned that there is to be another cup final, evidently of greater significance, later in the season. The winning team in this one was awarded the Scottish Communities Cup. Who are these Scottish Communities? We were not told. All in all, a complete mystery.
I could have wept. Maybe I did. If only we could bottle the joy momentarily expressed in Kilmarnock, we could re-create Scotland. It would indeed be a happy land. But if football is all they’ve got, it doesn’t feel enough.
Kenneth Roy is editor of the Scottish Review
