Up with the lark on Sunday morning to drive 120 miles to Aberdeen for lunch. A 240 mile round trip for lunch may appear excessive, but I can assure you the tapas was quite, quite non-pareil.
The roads between Stirling and Aberdeen are good. It’s about the only substantial trip you can make in Scotland on roads that are “dualled”. Barring the unforeseen, it’s a two hour trip for me door-to-door, if taken non-stop, without causing offence to the average speed cameras. If however you hang a left at Perth and head for Inverness, the road intermittently narrows. The proposed dualling of the A9, politically, has become a festering sore, reminiscent of the traffic light at Pulpit Rock, Loch Lomond-side, which held up the northbound traffic out of Glasgow for about half a century. Fortunately at Perth I hung a right, and proceeded in the direction of Dundee. Admittedly the road narrowed to a single lane due to roadworks, but it was still too early for the traffic to have built up. I whiled away the time listening to BBC Radio 4. The Sunday morning service came from Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh. The festival is in full swing. I was in Edinburgh a few days ago and I don’t think I have ever seen the Royal Mile so mobbed. But escape from the Old Town and cross the Meadows, and you would never know there was a festival on.
Morning service took me to Dundee and was shortly followed by Broadcasting House. I caught up with the news. Listening to the news is a bit like virtual “Black Tourism”, or “Doomscrolling”. I can only take it in small doses. So President Putin is going to meet President Trump in Alaska. That surprised me. Maybe somebody will take out a citizen’s arrest on President Putin, though I doubt it. Perhaps Putin will say to Trump, “You know, Donald – may I call you Donald? – Alaska used to belong to us. Coming here, I see and feel the remarkable similarities with Kamchatka. It really falls within our sphere of influence. It is, after all, quite separate from the rest of the United States. So we are going to take it back. That may shock you, but you need to understand it within the wider historical context. You on the other hand should feel free to take Canada. We wouldn’t interfere with that. And Greenland? I’m not sure. Perhaps we could make a deal.”
That may sound absurd, but I would guess it’s pretty much how things will go, except that the territory at issue will be Ukraine. The two Big Men will carve the place up. There will be swaps and exchanges – it’s very complicated. Meanwhile President Zelenskyy, who has skin in the game, has not, at least at time of writing, been invited. The Great Powers have been drawing lines on the map like this for centuries. When Foreign Secretary Balfour drew up his Declaration in 1917, I don’t think he consulted much with the Arabs. And look where we are now.
Talking of foreign secretaries, David Lammy has been entertaining J. D. Vance, et famille, at his grace and favour pile, Chevening, in the Cotswolds. There’s even a rumour that J. D. may come up here, specifically to Ayrshire, though not to Trump Turnberry. Maybe the President talked up “Scahtland” to the Vice-President. I wish him a happy holiday, but I can’t forget that dreadful audience endured by Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, when he was berated for not expressing sufficient gratitude, and was told his opinion was worthless. “You don’t have the cards.” Now they’re doing it again, by cutting Zelenskyy out of the Alaska talks. That is why, it seems to me, the talks will break down, and President Trump will need to wait a little longer before receiving his Nobel Peace Prize.
But enough doomscrolling! I stopped at Foinavon, north of Dundee, for coffee and a glance at the Sunday Times. They are featuring extracts from Nicola Sturgeon’s memoir Frankly. I’ve said it before: one word titles are all the rage. Radio 4’s recent series about the HS2 scandal (infinitely worse that the dualling of the A9 scandal) was entitled Derailed, and even as I write, there’s a programme on about tourism in the Persian Gulf – Engulfed. The people who make up one word titles don’t seem to realise that they have become a cliché. With respect to Frankly, somebody wrote into the Herald the other day and said, “Frankly, I don’t give a damn.” A cheap jibe. Of course, the jibes on social media are infinitely worse. No wonder Kate Forbes is not standing for re-election in Holyrood next year.
On to Aberdeen. My Satnav took me to a high speed charger to top up for the return journey. The Granite City was sparkling in the sunlight. I sat outside, had another coffee, and did the Sunday Times crossword. It’s a very good crossword. Inventive.
To lunch with dear friends. Truly scrumptious.
Here let us feast, and to the feast be join’d
Discourse, the sweeter banquet of the mind;
Before I knew it 5 pm was fast approaching. So I hit the road and took the journey in reverse. Safe home by 7.15, despite a bit of gridlock between Dundee and Perth, but I listened to Pick of the Week. Len Pennie the Scottish poet (see poyums) was wandering around the Edinburgh Festival and picking highlights. An eclectic selection! It was very nice to hear Scots vernacular on Radio 4. People still make assumptions about intelligence based on accent. I’ve been reading Born to Rule, the Making and Remaking of the British Elite, by two professors of sociology, Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman (the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2024). Has the British elite changed its character over the years? The book examines over 125,000 entries in that great historical directory, then and now, of people in the UK who have “made it” – Who’s Who. They also looked at the changing tastes of people appearing on Desert Island Discs. Whether such academic approaches in the world of sociology are sound, I wouldn’t know. With respect to the education of the elite, The prevalence of the Clarendon Schools, particularly Britain’s nine most elite schools – Charterhouse, Eton, Harrow, Merchant Taylors’, St Paul’s, Rugby, Shrewsbury, Westminster, and Winchester – thence on to Oxbridge, persists.
Believe it or not, I’ve been in Who’s Who. Not the UK one, but in New Zealand. Whether or not it still exists I have no idea. My stint in the RAF Volunteer Reserve, courtesy of UGSAS, the Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde Air Squadron, was listed as “military service” – much to my father’s amusement. Back here, I’m not sure how represented Scots men and women are in Who’s Who. Perhaps we should have a separate edition – Wha’s Wha.
jamescalumcampbell 