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Hoota & Havers - August 09

The other day I scraped the moth larvae off my kilt, turned out a pair of appropriate, if holey, stockings and went off the Edinburgh for the Gathering.

On the first day I found myself sitting in an MSP’s’s seat in the Holyrood debating chamber wondering whether I dared fiddle with the dinky little computery thing built into the desk in front of me. I didn’t, but instead listened to the Great and Good of the clan world taking themselves very seriously and discussing things - sometimes even the future. But it was pretty hard not to lose concentration and let one’s eyes wander across the massed ranks of the chiefs and their henchmen. There were at least two of them one wouldn’t be happy to encounter in a dark glen carrying a broadsword. And more than one I wouldn’t mind joining in a roll in the heather.

    Their survival and reasonable institutional health was surely their most remarkable characteristic, particularly since the culture they head was so comprehensively crushed by the state more than 250 years ago. Outside the Third World, I can’t think of any other society in which the ancient tribal leaders still have any clout. And the clan chiefs do still carry clout. One only had to see the crowds who came to Holyrood park for the Games the following day and watch the descendants of those Highlanders who emigrated centuries ago shyly coming to shake the hand of the chief and stand proudly beside him – and sometimes her – to be snapped.

Equally impressive was the numbers of native Scots who did the same. Of course the usual anoraks of this sort of thing were present, wearing pastiches of 18th century kit, mostly unshaven, looking as if they could do with a good wash and had Mel Gibson tattooed on their bottoms – the blue half of his face requires much needling. There’s even an odd fashion for black kilts, shirts and jackets. I informed one awe-struck American that such a one was a McUndertaker and sent him off to search out their clan tent. But the responses of the ordinary mufti-wearing Edinburgers who had come along for something to do on a Saturday afternoon and found themselves in the midst of a tartan fantasia were the most interesting.

‘There’s my mother’s maiden name! And that must be my chief!’ and they were just as starry-eyed as the Americans when they were fielded and smoothly brought before the Man wearing three eagle feathers. It has to be said that much of the plumage on display was pretty manky. One felt that many of their previous owners had been caught in Victorian gin traps. I discovered that the coolest of clan chiefs, those who tramp the world schmoozing their clans, no longer wear eagle feathers in their bonnets. They wear dyed turkey instead, having discovered that US Customs confiscate the real thing.

It’s an odd business and owes more to Sir Walter Scott and our own, dear, David Stewart of Garth than to anything else. Clannery likes to make out that the whole business is ancient tradition, but it’s constantly evolving. These days even the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs holds members whose ancestors would spin in their lonely burial grounds if they saw their descendants decked in tartan and pretending to be Highland chiefs. The very least it all does is spread a little happiness to lots of people, builds link to the diaspora and, most important to many, it downloads serious amounts of dosh into the tourism industry.

It could download more. Native Scots often regard clannery with some derision. In Scott’s time they regarded it with contempt. That changed to wild enthusiasm after George IV’s Edinburgh visit in 1822. With bit of effective PR, and the Gathering was a great start, the average Scot could rekindle his or her interest in this part of their heritage and great could be the benefit to the nation.

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It’s happened to me twice recently. The first time I was delicately peeling larks’ tongues at the kitchen table, the second I was sitting on the bog. The phone rang and I hurried through whichever chore I was occupying me to answer it. The urgency is all the greater when you’re expecting an important call. The first began with a foghorn and a voice informing me that this was my captain speaking; the second was a bright American voice ‘Congratulations! Your family…’

I have a call bar thingie on the line that is supposed to stop rubbish messages but occasionally the most crapulent get through. If the caller is human I just tell them I don’t want to be marketed and hang up within a couple of seconds. I feel some sympathy for the poor sod on the other end who has to do such a ghastly job to put bread on the table.

But when it’s a recorded message such considerations need not apply. My reaction is a thrill of rage, so pure, beautiful and unthreatening to anyone that I luxuriate in it. It is utterly outrageous for someone to expect me to interrupt my life to listen to such a sales pitch. And I am impotent. You can’t abuse a recording and the only chance to do anything about it would be to listen to the whole damn thing to get a number at the end to ring and then pour out a torrent of volcanic fury, but I know I’ll be bored witless by the end of the message, and my rage will have dissipated. And I don’t really want to bawl anyone out. So I prefer to enjoy that occasional needle-sharp pang of utter fury.

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The Scotsman, on the 1st Aug, carried as its most important front-page story news of a £1.3bn development planned at Dall on Loch Rannoch. Did the newspaper get the date wrong? Should it have been published on 1 April, perhaps 3 years ago? 

Trump is bogged down in Aberdeenshire. Taymouth, an infinitely better prospect that Dall, is on its back feebly waving its legs in the air. Apart from the site owners, only the Rannoch midges would benefit from this ludicrous idea. What on earth did the Scotsman think it was doing?

Shall I dream up a city beneath the surface of Loch Tay with submarine docking stations dotting the shore? Anyone willing to invest a few billion in this scheme? The local architects would surely have nothing better to do than draw up plans.