Perth at Night
Croquet lawns, village greens
Victoria was my Queen – Ray Davies
I was in Scotland last week, having arrived just in time to enjoy the full one hundred and sixty eight hours of non-stop television coverage devoted to the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Elizabeth herself was a bit further south in London, floating around the Thames on a giant barge in a wide assortment of pillbox hats, offering that one-quarter, cocked-wrist wave to the millions who turned out, braving the typically bleak English weather. “A magnificent spectacle,” as American Jon Stewart put it, “that you could almost see from the inside of the car wash that is England in June.” I must be careful where I tread here, because in the past I’ve fallen in to the unfortunate habit of bad-mouthing British culture, perhaps largely out of ignorance. No doubt there’s plenty about America that throws your typical Englishman for a loop, and the closest thing we’ve had to royalty is a family of good-haired Irishmen who descended from bootleggers and drove cars in to lakes. But it’s hard to sit by idly while some poncy Frasier Crane-esque TV commentator remarks for the umpteenth time on an 83 year-old broad’s remarkable constitution for showing up in bad weather to her own party and how the whole shindig represents “the best of what Britain is all about.”
OK – screw what I said before. I flat-out don’t get the place, and I’ve been going there since I was fourteen years old. It isn’t just the English and their open-ended rhetorical questions (“wouldn’t want to do that now, would you?”), condescendingly effete posing, or assumed air of intellectual superiority while glassing each other up in pubs over football disputes and vomiting violently in daylight gutters trying to beat ridiculously early last-calls. Scotland is equally weird in its own suspiciously provincial ways. There is no greater chill available to one’s spine than passing the Half A Tanner pub in Perth at ten-thirty at night to the strains of a half-dozen blitzed Scots karaoke-ing Meatloaf’s “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad.”
Eye wan-cha’
Eye neeeeed cha’
But thaer ain’ nae way eem ayre ginnae love ye
So dinnnnnnn’t beee saaaaaaaad …
My mother is Scottish and I’m more than familiar with the accent. But it hits you every time as soon as you land in Edinburgh from Newark and hear the announcement “fer those passengers arrivin’ frae Nyrk.” And that’s exactly how it’s pronounced – “Nyrk” – without a vowel in sight. I consider myself rather adept at deciphering what the heck they’re saying but even I was thrown for a loop on my way out of the country when the United Airlines attendant commented “ye’ve got an un-youshyul’ sir-num..” He was commenting on my last name but I could have sworn he was accusing me of hiding a bomb in my luggage. What good are these elaborate safety checks if all you can do is nod and smile to all the questions about who packed your bags?
It isn’t that it’s any better or worse than this country, it’s just that it’s different. It’s like visiting your cousins’ house where things are enough like home to be familiar, but dissimilar enough to make you feel like you’re walking in some foggy haze. Light switches go down to turn on, the steering wheel is on the right side, and washing machines are cooler-looking and double as dryers, but less effective. There’s much talk of how English cuisine has improved in recent years, but watching the numerous home-cooking shows contradicts this notion and reveals these folks as the anti-Italians in most things food-related. I’m sure there are some fantastic restaurants in London, but in the typical Midlands home cupboards of baked beans and sweeties still reign supreme. We didn’t do much eating as it turned out; there was a stomach bug going around and it hit all of us eventually. It may have originated in the Gleneagles Hotel, where more than a hundred guests fell ill the weekend of our arrival. Edinburgh had its own health scare, and a portion of the city was cordoned off with a Legionnaires’ outbreak. “It’s always something..” Dad observed. “.. Legionnaires’ .. Mad Cow ..”
I promised my Scottish friend Denis Munro that I wouldn’t go overboard on bad-mouthing his homeland, and with typically cheery aplomb he responded “just match every derogatory remark with a complimentary one about me.” Denis is testament to the virtues of clean living, having survived decades on plain oatcakes, lentil soup, and unsalted bread. While his distaste for alcohol is decidedly out of step with the bulk of his countrymen, he’s about as proud and knowledgeable a Scot as you’ll find, rejecting the knee-jerk logic of Scottish Independence for a more measured and genuine love of country. And I couldn’t help but observe that he’s got something there on the rare occasion that I broke away from the daily bullshit of travel; whether it was walking back to my car by the North Inch in Perth with traces of daylight still visible at eleven at night or driving to the airport early Saturday morning to the first breaks of blue on the persistently white-washed horizon. It may be a bit backwards to my clumsy American tastes, but it’s one beautiful place.
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