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 MY SCOTTISH HOLIDAY
I just returned from the West Coast of Scotland. I drove there and back in my aging and very large BMW. I told my plumber friend Brian who co-writes this site that I was 'tanklagged'. You can lose the will to live on the A1. I was astonished that what was once known as a name for an Austin Powers keepsake, or even, lesser known Indie popband, is now the name, of one of those ghastly, but necessary evils.
The motorway service station. 'Mojo' is the current 'respite' facility tied up at motoring intervals, for the knotted length of this well beaten track.
A 'Mojo' is where everything is found in a convenient lane-side grotto of goods. Or 'bads' as I call them. I guarantee you this. If it was not for the fact your bladder size beckoned and the previous four hours spent behind a huge gutless hunk of junk trying to overtake another huge gutless hunk of junk, none of us, would be see dead in such a place.
Vestiges of food that are 'smushed' into cellophane, that cost you an arm and a leg, and the price of a bottle of Gaviscon. The travesty is this. These carcinogenic substances hang from shelves, or steam away under glass, breeding civilisations, and fifteen years from the date of purchase, will be researched and discovered to arrest your children's proper development, rendering them even more stupid than they already are in 2004. Junk food manufacturers will not be punished for this crime in the future, as they would have already changed the name of the product. Look, how a whole generation of kids suffered mental health problems, when Marathon became Snickers? How, housewives lost the plot when Jif became CIF? They would end up 'scouring' the whole store for the original product. Suspiciously, examining the new brand of the same bottle/product, they would very furtively go back to their kitchen sinks using a newspaper with holes in to effect secrecy, and avoid being named and shamed by charladies, hoping not to be recognised by other husband pleasers. Fawning more than usual, and pleading with her owner not to be scolded by his card-school for disloyalty.
(That last comment is not aimed at undermining women or necessarily the natural views of the author. Any form of misogyny is bigoted, anal nonsense adopted by men who have never had a fulfilling relationship with the superior sex. Thus, homophobic comments will not be tolerated either.)
There are all kinds of plastic gloop-like substances that shuffle of their own volition across a warm aluminium shelf, at Mojo's. Christ, you could mend cricket bats with their Jam Roly Poly. Apple turnovers should never be moved, because you never know what lurks underneath.
These, boorish places, are supervised, by people, who only come out at night and become genderless through being exposed to too much stark fluorescent lighting. They have clone-ish or, rather clownish uniforms, and will serve you, only, if it means it does not disturb their 'back to back', 'fagbreaks'. They all smoke because they are generally unfit to breath the same air as you.
The toilet has a health check machine. You strap yourself to this monitor, more suited as a prop out of ER and it measures your blood pressure. Pulse. Cholesterol, and even, lung capacity. Shame, it didn't gauge the amount you have to shit yourself after consuming a B.L.T that either was used as a murder weapon and later hidden in a mud quarry or contained the last shift's sweepings off the floor.
Mojo's is a vending machine paradise.
Here is the gist. You are incarcerated with children saying "Are we there, yet?" every 25 yards for the entire journey. You are at the point of volunteering for Cryogenics yourself after a whole morning crunched at the wheel with double vision and sleep deprivation and then 'kicking and screaming', your brood force you, to swing by this Sodom and Gomorrah for game machines. What next? When its time to get back in the car they refuse to get off the "Grand Prix simulator?" What in Sam Hill is that all about?
Eventually, you find a non-smoking area, and stare disbelievingly at a tray of food that has been re-heated so many times, it looks, either 'boiled to buggery' or suffering from translucent anaemia and tasting like poached latex.
After vomiting, and with your cheque book at the ready, you pay for the previous ectoplasm and walk out with a credit card frayed around the edges, and a touch of the 'Inca two step', or 'Pyrenees Polka', laying bets, whether, you can make it to the next gut bashing pit-stop for weak colons.
After I had extricated the reluctant 'knee biters' from the arcade and walked into the car park, as Dawn started to kindle the Morn, I was struck by an eerie sight. That of a plait of strewn vehicles that had been parked inches from my own on either side. The cars snarling any access to my own chariot, were full of balled up humans, all with their head thrown back and gaping at the mouth. Slowing steaming up the windows and looking, 'for all the world', like a cult suicide pact from the inside of a Landrover, had already taken place. Exhausted, the passengers had decided to doze en-route. I can only feel sorry for the slumbering motorist I had to awaken, after what started as a gentle tap on the window, so I could get him to move his vehicle. The initial discreet 'tappity tap' soon became a thunderous good 'fisting' on the roof of his car. Half comatose, he shoved it into gear and revving the engine, mounted the VW camper in front.
I thanked him with a wave at a safe distance and left in cloud of smoke letting him deal with the two aging hippies who he had 'bumped' and that now had hot coffee all over their velvet loons and were still yelping like puppies outside a pub.
The road dragged us into Glasgow. My eyes like bullet holes and still company to two belligerent children unwilling to subdue themselves. I finally relented to their wails and stopped at a petrol station for much needed 'motion lotion'.
If you have ever passed through Glasgow it is as scintillating as having teeth pulled. It's a dishevelled place. I drove past a lot of matted looking people in street huddles. The women look hard enough to roller-skate on and the men all have that facial expression that they are sucking a lemon to disguise the smell of their nose being too near their bottoms. Yes, there is some architectural beauty, but these are museums where you can't spend your benefit. Suffice to say, it was a forgettable experience with all the charm of wet leprosy. Since the last comment I was to be wrong about Scots. I met quite a few. They may have had it tough, but they are among the most sweet natured people. Proud, but well mannered and always dispose of syringes thoughtfully.
A hundred constipated miles later, with the kids writhing with yet more boredom, we approached the West of Scotland and through the wind and drizzle made out the peaks of and a foreign landscape. The skyline was unique to me, it has to be said. The beauty and majesty of this scenic panorama catches your own breath. Hailing from the Fens with a featureless terra firma that is as flat as a 'kipper's tit', I was in awe of the sheer dimensions of these hills. Such, eminence about them. They were decorated like giant cakes with gracious fir trees that looked like green armies that stood to attention but, then so elegantly, would occasionally bow a 'Hello' to me under a stiff breeze, as I puttered past. God would have had used a giant spoon to remove the odd cleft and replace it with copses and whitewashed cottages that had a wiggle of track behind it. Straggling droves that trailed like stray dental floss, attached to a row of tiny teeth in the distance.
A sprinkling of boulders and slates were festooning the less sharp crowns, like rather dingy, hundreds and thousands of sugar candy, with the tiny snow caps looking, like the icing syringe had run out. Sheep and goats dotted around the lower plains in between handmade stone walls crocheted together randomly.
The Lochs in Scotland of which there are 700 we never hear about, of all sizes, stood there in their own patchy, but very still, spirituality. Like landlocked lagoons reflecting the fells. Put there only to mirror the beauty surrounding them.
West Scotland has good roads. They seem smooth and uninhibited, unlike the drivers on them.
Just a few miles from Lomond is the Loch Linnie, where we had hired a log cabin. We swept into the complex after the gruelling journey and met 'Jim' who showed us to our 'Big outdoors' accommodation. My legs were heavier than the suitcases I carried and I was surprised how long it took for me to find any feeling in my lower body, or my wife's. She was tired and a little curt. No change there then? After all, we were only on holiday. The children sprung out of the car as if I had ejection seats, and were soon playing giant chess on an adjacent lawn. I still don't know how to play chess on small board sets, either. They had a miniature magnetic travel game from a posh Xmas cracker, years ago, that languished hidden in the glove compartment. A hole in the dashboard that is designed to store all kinds of debris other than gloves it seems. So this went from the sublime to the massive. They looked like 'The Borrowers" playing with the colossal chesspieces, bless 'em. So, I was as sure as hell, not going to show the rest of Scotland, how sad I am. If I were going to learn the game on gardens, or have my own lawn set, I would have to practice at home, first, on the patio slabs with gnomes that I would borrow from neighbours. If I had to use proper chess pieces there are always 'pawn' shops to get them from. We have one in our town that sells dildos so they may have to do instead of gnomes.
The kids tried all week to teach me. I kicked over one piece in frustration. You could say 'I bashed the Bishop'. All the time I was being told the rules of lawn chess. I just thought it was like watching grass grow.
I tripped into the log cabin. (bloody, 'blow up' dinghy got wrapped around my ankles) It was not actually made of 'logs'. It was shiplap. I like my 'tongue in groove' but only since I visited that pawn shop I spoke of earlier. The sort of timber, Summer houses from B&Q are made. Very basic, and nowhere to put the wheelbarrow. Scottish people live frugally and this holiday home was testament to the fact that just because you were on holiday didn't mean you should have the luxury of enjoying yourself.
The only holiday disaster
The corkscrew broke in half. At the point of being talked out of putting the noose around my neck and stepping off the dining room chair, I had the brilliant idea, to put what was left of the cork back inside the bottle, using cutlery. The rest is history. The bottle burped and sprayed half the contents over me and everything else within 2 meters at 180 degrees was stained permanently. My wife's cotton dress suffered in the attack. There was a little 'fallout'. Cabernet, across the cabinets. But we were speaking again the next day. After all what a waste of good booze? The least she could have done was let me wring her out properly, first.
Everything else was great fun. We chased the dolphins. Well, porpoises. For the best part of eighty quid you spend two hours in a lifeboat being hurled across the islands frozen up your chuffer and hoping to be re-united with your stomach at some stage. We pony trekked for two hours on horses that shat for a living, and the cruising speed of the pot of PVA they would likely end up in. My horse was called 'Harry' and only one word from me, and he did exactly as he liked. He was wider than the barge, he used to once pull, and when saddled, left me with my ankles up by my ears. I didn't dismount. I just did that 'thing' that Fred Flintstone does, at the beginning of each show, when he slides off the dinosaurs back. Harry was plodder. Two speeds. Stop and reverse. He farted for the rest of Scotland and liked to roll in his own excrement. It would have been nice to let me get off first, on these occasions, but to make matters far worse, the midges for the rest of the week, reckoned I was better than sex.
Ah! The midges.
Everybody warned me. "Watch out for the midges…Take the Deet." Well, my wife works in a hospital and her 'nursey' friends, contrary to what my friends (who had already holidayed in Scotland, incidentally) advised, told her to get "Deet-free" products, as 'Deet' was very toxic.
Well, excuse me, having to state the bloody obvious, at this late and pointless stage. Of course it's toxic. It's supposed to kill living creatures. It's frickin' insecticide.
Question: How can a bottle of 'Shoo' you have just bought for £5 and the size of a thimble, that holds about as much fluid as only one of my sinuses, smother a guy (myself) whose birthmark alone, through years of over-nourishment, and now stretched (know what you are thinking…that's not a 'birthmark', that's a 'stretchmark') to the size of the Tundra, plus the rest of his family, pray tell me, why, buy something that boasts on the label "Deet-free" if you want it to be an insect repellent? That's like getting broadband without a firewall.
These aphids are not just a mosquito. They are tiny winged psychotics. They heat seek your genitals and all believe they are William Wallace. They then, swallow dive into your epidermis giving you a running sore like the ground zero aftermath. These deranged insects are not choosy about orifices. There are so many in the air at once they fill your mouth as you speak and will lay eggs in all your other cavities. These parasitical piranhas actually nest in your hair whether you shave your pubes or not.
I woke up looking like I had been shot at dawn but the firing squad had forgotten to wake me up first. A butt like Beirut and I now had fifteen nipples. My only relief was to paint the seething and festering bites with battery acid from the car. Why? The solvent burns took my mind off the itching.
We went to get some regular fish and chips at a local bar called McTavishe's.
I had a pint of 'Heavy'. Some battered Haggis (it should have been left at the refuge for 'battered Haggis's's's'.) No, it occurred to me the only reason that a true Scot will wear nothing under the kilt is after some Haggis and 'Heavy' you are a prime candidate for a huge laundry problem. 'Heavy' by name, and 'Heavy' by nature. This 'peaty' or rather humus tasting, drink, has the evacuative qualities of Slobodan Milosovitch. I spent three days of my holiday chained to a toilet, unable to tie my own shoelaces. Tossing cabers was not the name for it. Fried Haggis is like a slippery object that resembles a sample from an Ann's Summer's party and tastes like the person should have showered first.
Well, whether you wear nothing under the kilt or not. Just don't frighten the horses. And old Scottish ladies remember, you should always be careful with that that large pin on the front. Watch you don't staple one of your breasts to the tartan and make disrobing very painful.
The same night they put on a piper, fiddler and dancer. My table was at the ringside. What an atmosphere? (It wasn't the Haggis I just ate) The dancer was the image of Kate Winslet and had a kilt, so short, it kept her neck warm. I tell you now, that all Scottish women have to wear something underneath, in order not to show too much of their own little 'sporran'. It's called a black thong with the words "Wicked Girl" on the front.
Bagpipes look very hard to play. You never see a woman play the bagpipes do you, no matter what size their bellows? They could never squeeze and blow and keep their thumb on the hole at the same time.
 I didn't like Ben Nevis by foot. I got to the first ridge about a tenth of way up and had to have a lie down and some Earl grey. All these people like termites on a mound. Yet, one guy, he must have been over sixty, was in nothing but shorts, and tripping down the slopes like a mountain goat. I didn't mean to run down any mountain I'll have you know. (I can run down a mountain…. "Bastard place") No sudden movements. It was quite cold up there and my nose was running and that was quite enough for me.
I really wanted this old but very nimble bloke to slip on his wrinkly little arse. But he didn't. I will be old one day. You won't catch me messing about up mountains. Give me a bed-bath by care-staff in 'pop-away' uniforms any day. Wear the tartan? Yes, of course. I will need a blanket over my legs thank you. Bagpipes? A catheter is sufficient, if you please, but don't jam it between the walking frame and the wheelchair, especially if it's as ripe as a watermelon. Just push me closer to the window and don't offer me any more broken biscuits.
The violinist was excellent. The 'top fiddler' in Scotland we were told. So, don't buy a car from him.
Isle of Mull.
We took the ferry from Oban to this Island of veritable size, twice the size of the Isle of Wight.
Exquisite. The stuff of fairy tales. Or if you go further up the coastline to Tobermory, the stuff of …well..Fairies. For, this beautiful road will take you North about 10 miles to this coastal village. Now, kids. Do you watch "Ballormory"? The early learning TV programme with that fat bastard PC Plum and that funny looking women in the green dress and bad haircut? That's right! One, and the same place? It has the very distinctive row of gaudy coloured houses that make a rustic village look like an explosion in Billy Smarts underpants.
I asked about this crap colour scheme for houses at the local tourist information, explaining, that it was OK for people who wished to paint the outside of their house and make it look like feckin' 'Trumpton in drag' but, why should we tourists have to gawp at them?
The ginger haired Scot, winked, and leant across the desk, whispering discreetly.
"I reckon, there is, where all the 'Puffs' live. Do you 'bat for the other side', then?"
From this, I gathered that all homosexuals North of Peebles are colour-blind and have the decorative taste and ability of Timothy Mallet, too late, to change his clothes for a D-Day remembrance ceremony.
I did ask the tourist guide this.
"Do you like to be called a 'Scot', or 'Scottish'? He replied.
"Aye, Laddie, the Sassenachs canna ever get it reet. I hate it when they call us 'Scotch'. There's nay such word for folk…so call me a 'Scot' every teem, or I'll put your lights out, you big girlie."
I said with a degree of non-compromise.
"In that case call me an 'ENG' from now on.
 I do love Scotland, I'd move their tomorrow. But why do they all live in Corby now? Oh, not that old chestnut. They moved down South for the work? Corby steel foundries have been shut for twenty years. Tourism is very lucrative. Because of the 'Nessie' legend they have made millions now, and most Scottish people don't have to fetch from wells anymore. They are really nice people, especially if they know you have money. Let me ask you? How many other folk do you know, can charge £75 per family and get them out into the middle of lake to show them something that does not exist?
Pretty clever stuff.
Then they will sell you all this claptrap about 'Clans'. The family 'Tartan'. Apparently, due to thousands of years of ancient feuding and territory issues, they all chose to wear itchy cloth with boxy patterns that were all peculiar to different families. They were all quite distinctive in design. Some were blue, and some were green. If you fancied a fight, you would go out looking for sworn enemies that could be identified by their kilt pattern. Even today you might be harbouring grudges in Tesco's previously held for centuries. If you see somebody by the frozen broccoli, or in the lottery queue with an offensive 'Tartan' you might hear taunts right from over by, the fresh pasta.
"You stole a sheep from my family, and raped my sister,yee, big wassack, yee."
Take no notice and try to let bygones be bygones, he may have a knife in his sock or a frozen joint to lump you with. Or, he may have some brothers who like Hogmanay and cooking whisky and spit shortbread all over you when they talk.
Word of warning
Don't be feeling sorry for Scottish people who live in castles. They make a fortune from tourism. They may rent out just one of the forty bedrooms and fifteen bathrooms in the west wing for their own family and rope it off, but demand to see their living quarters too. You paid to see the whole castle not just most of it. If I were a Laird charging you to come into my house I would accept that you could rifle my bathroom cabinet to find out what sort of person I am.
Rupert had tartan trousers and a tartan scarf but I don't recognise the Clan. I met nobody while I was up there who had a second name called 'Bear'. Golfers have nothing to do with Lairds. They still wear lots of tartan though and call the small guy 'Caddy'. On the other hand a true Scot would call them 'a lazy shite'.
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