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Hoots & Havers with James Irvine Robertson

Every so often I take some visitor round some of the more scenic spots of the nation. Of course Highland Perthshire is the jewel in its crown but, having done that, we usually head west. I’ve tried south and east, but neither seem up to very much and north is usually included in the return journey from the west.

We stay in B&Bs, both for reasons of economy and because the entertainment provided by some of the very curious folk who run them. This time our hosts included a potty vegan whose children, before she exorcised them, were unhealthy because their forebears had been involved in occupations like hunting and animal husbandry. I shan’t be going back; the full Scottish breakfast was a pallid imitation of the real thing. After I said how much I was looking forward to the deep-fried black pudding the night before, I received a chilly look and not even an egg was to be seen on our plates in the morning. Judging by the string of gentlemen callers till 4am, the other seemed to run the local knocking shop but seemliness will not permit fuller detail.

But both had something in common – a deep contempt for Visit Scotland. In one place the tourist office had been closed but volunteers had set up shop instead and they were both helpful and cost nothing to either customer or those offering hospitality. In the other, the clerk ‘misspoke’, saying that the town was almost full and that we had obtained virtually the only rooms still available. Having shelled out the substantial percentage of the cost of a night, we then found plenty of vacancy signs and discovered that most local establishments had resigned from membership.

The faith of successive governments in the efficacy of quangos is baffling. In theory a wonderful concept, communism failed because it became apparent that central state control just doesn’t work. It is against human nature. Those with secured salaries and pensions will put their own interests before those they are supposed to serve and will always become steeped in bureaucratic arrogance – ‘the insolence of office’, as Shakespeare put it. Quangos are just another manifestation of the same thing, as are the poorly accountable local authorities and even the police.

We also inspected the new set up at Culloden. It’s excellent – dumbed up rather than the customary down. I even came away with a nasty taste in my mouth at seeing and hearing chunks of metal thwacking into flesh and it certainly showed the utter grossness of warfare as well as the necessary romance demanded by that particular battle.

We walked the battlefield afterwards and the fluffy dog, a beast of great and touchy dignity, managed to get up the nose of a guide. He had his audience of Americans in the palm of his hand by the ‘Well of the Dead’ where, amongst the pile of corpses after the battle, lay the well-mangled remains of Alexander Macgillivray of Dunmaglass. The tourists peered at the well, looking for an echo of the horror. The dog pottered up to sniff for bones, overbalanced and fell in headfirst. The pathetic drowned rat of a creature that I fished it out cracked up the entire party and the beast’s obvious humiliation at the mirth, aggravated the situation. The only one not smiling was the guide.

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The world is going down the tubes, as always.  Apart from minor problems like crunching credit, rising demand for commodities, their consequent price rises – which seems to be alleviated if you riot - and Wendy Alexander, the biggie seems to be population growth.

Everyone moans about it but since its solution is fewer people and nobody wishes to volunteer to be the first to be culled, little can be done. Getting rich seems to sort it out, as does ignoring the multitude of religious sects that interfere in sexual practices but both these remedies have complications that make them ineffective.

It was reported recently that fat people eat 18% more calories than skinnies, and further ravage the planet by consuming more fuel to move their excess bulk around. Perhaps a solution lies there. Medical science has made great advances. Tiny folk can be given growth hormones to ensure they achieve an adequate size, and presumably the reverse is also possible.

Give all pregnant women a size-reducing hormone and, in a generation, we could shrink humanity by, say, 50% so that the average height of our species would be somewhere under 3’. There may be a few necessary adjustments to our infrastructure, but food would go twice as far, planes could carry twice the passengers; cars could be shrunk requiring half the fuel and twice as many of them could fit on our roads. The new generation of houses would need half the materials to build and half the fuel to run. Perhaps a petition to Downing Street might set the ball rolling.

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On the subject of which – petitions that is – I signed my first to Gordon Brown this week. There’s something called the Violent Crime Reduction Bill coming up which bans swords and similar things with which our wayward young are inclined to chop each other up.

There are areas of life which are exempt from the ban. White Cockaders and the like can still dress up and play at early warfare with swords, pikes, and lochaber axes. And fencers can still fence and javelins may still be javilled. But you won’t be able to sword dance any more. And this is what the petition is about, the preservation of the ancient right to bear arms that may be danced across or upon. The link is http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/dancers  So go sign.