Authors: Iain Banks
‘Okay. Throw yourself off the wall and I’ll catch you.’
‘What?’
‘Throw yourself off the wall and I promise I’ll catch you.’
‘Are you insane; we’ll probably both break our necks.’
‘No we won’t. Come on!’
‘You’re fucking mad.’
‘I can do it. I know I can. You’ll come to no harm. Trust me.’
‘James, we’re both very drunk indeed. This is a bad idea.’
‘Ach, just dae it anyway.’
I considered. ‘As ever your impeccable logic has proved too much for me, my fine friend. I’ll do it.’ I stopped and got ready to jump down onto Jim.
He moved out into the street a little. ‘Na, wait.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve got to jump off backwards.’
‘
What?
’
‘It’s too easy if you jump off forwards; you’ll see that I’m there to catch you.’
‘Ah,’ I said, seeing what he meant. ‘You’re right.’ I thought. ‘Could I not just keep my eyes closed?’
‘Don’t be daft, you’re bound to open them; only natural. It’s a lot simpler if you just turn round and jump off the wall backwards.’
‘Oh, well, what the hell. Okay.’ I turned round, then shouted over my shoulder. ‘Ready?’
‘No. Hold on a minute. There’s a bus coming.’ We waited until the bus had passed. I waved at people on the top deck, then turned round again.
‘Ready?’
‘Ready!’
I threw myself backwards off the wall.
Jim caught me – well, broke my fall – and we ended up sprawled in the middle of the road.
‘You okay?’ Jim wheezed.
I rolled over and stood up. ‘Seem to be. You?’ I put out a hand and helped him up.
‘Fine,’ he said, limping to the pavement with a pained look on his face. Then he grinned at me triumphantly. ‘See?’
I shook my head. ‘You’re aff your fuckin heid, pal.’
We walked on, only stopping at one of the high flats further up Adelaide Road to try to get out onto the roof to look at the view of London By Night. We hauled ourselves up through a
hatch
into the lift machinery space, but that was as far as we got; the outside door was locked.
(I asked Jim to look over this story to make sure I wasn’t getting anything wrong and he said that for him the funniest bit was right at the start, when we’d been walking up the road. He must have been looking at something across the street or otherwise have become distracted because he didn’t notice me shinning up the bus stop and climbing to the top of the wall in the first place; he thought I was still walking along beside him and when he turned to talk to me couldn’t understand where I’d gone. I seemed to have disappeared. He stood there confused for a few moments, looking all around, then shouted ‘Banksie?’ I said, ‘Hello,’ – wittily, obviously – from above head height and that was when he realised where I was. Jim also claims the wall was only eight feet high, but – ha! – he wasn’t the one standing up there.)
‘Banksie, what’s this thing here that says “Palm”?’
‘Oh, that’s for the Palm Tungsten handheld thingy I got for going on the Trans-Siberian. I should have returned it and got my money back after we junked the passports but I kind of took to it. Especially the wee fold-out keyboard thing; that’s just totally brilliant. I mean, I’ve never actually used it, but … Anyway, that folder on the laptop called Palm is for the software that lets the laptop and the Palm talk to each other.’
‘Awright. Not porn, then.’
‘Eh?’
‘Not porn.’
‘Of course not porn; I don’t
have
any fucking porn.’
‘What, really?’
‘Really.’
‘You serious?’
‘Yes I’m serious.’
‘Awright. I just thought when it said “Palm” it might mean …’
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
* * *
Next day is Friday and we have to leave; originally we’d meant to have the whole week but Jim has to be back home for the weekend so we settle up and head south through another Whew-it’s-a-scorcher-sez-the-Scum-stylee day.
However we get to see wolves, which is entirely the coolest thing about this day. They’re at the Highland Wildlife Park, between Aviemore and Kingussie, along with enormous black Highland cattle, European bison, Przewalski’s horse and just about every animal presently or ever associated with Scotland. The wolves have their own big enclosure so they don’t eat the other animals, and they pad quietly along their bit of green hillside like grey ghosts, stealthily impressive. We investigate the smaller forest enclosure where various birds and polecats, wildcats and pine martens hang out, some of the latter in caged areas linked by a complicated system of aerial runs made of wood and wire mesh, reminding me oddly of a train set. Mostly the animals are pretty quiet, but they look dozily content on this hot day.
The golden eagle does not look happy; it has a fair-size rocky bit of hillside fenced off for its use but it keeps launching itself at the hessian side netting as though trying to escape, and its enclosure just isn’t big enough, not by about a mountain range or so. I’d rather see some well-shot high definition film of an animal like this than have to watch it suffer in what must seem to it like a punishment cell. Actually I’d rather see a grainy black and white photo than this; it’s the only off-note in the park, which otherwise seems well set out for the comfort of the animals. Well, having said that, the café isn’t great either, but we have a snack that is at least edible and head for our homes through what feels like summer heat.
Even the Jag is sounding like it’s got all cranky in the high temperatures, idling at 1500 revs and running on after the ignition’s been switched off, coughing and popping before spluttering to a stop. I contemplate trying to fiddle with its carbs, maybe adjust the slow running jets, but I’m worried I’ll just make matters worse, so just let it rev away; I’ll book it in for a service tomorrow.
We take a certified long-distance multiple GWR; the great A9 short cut, leaving the main road just before the end of its longest dual carriageway section to head over the hills for Trinafour, Tummel Bridge, Schiehallion and the Appin of Dull (for about three decades I’ve meant to stop and take a photograph of me standing to the side of the sign that says ‘Dull’; finally I get to). Past Castle Menzies and through Weem for Aberfeldy. Near the Castle is the House of Menzies, which is a sort of combined art gallery, coffee shop and upmarket off-licence formed out of some attractively preserved farm buildings. I have spent far too much money here in the past, taking away a crate at a time of interesting New World wines and the odd rare whisky. Somehow I manage to resist its siren call this time.
Aberfeldy is approached over an old light-controlled one-way humpback bridge. Another of General Wade’s. General Wade was the geezer charged with building roads over large parts of the Highlands after a highland rebellion in 1725, to make quelling any future uprisings easier. What actually happened was that in 1745 the wily Highlanders used the new roads to come storming out of the hills faster than they ever had before, taking everybody by surprise. Visible from the summit of wade’s is an elegant looking footbridge which is made of plastic. I seem to recall this was hailed on a long-ago edition of
Tomorrow’s World
as the future of small bridge-building, though that may have been a little optimistic. Aberfeldy’s a neat little town with good places to eat, several huntin’ shootin’ fishin’ campin’ hillwalkin’ type shops (the kind Les claims have lights above the door just for me), a good butcher’s and an outfitters with an intriguing upstairs bit that sells antiques and lace, though the opening hours seem a little erratic. The road rises steeply out of town, winding up towards the long undulating straights which carry us across the moors for Amulree and the Sma’ Glen before we rejoin what feels like the world of ordinary roads again at Gilmerton. when I was working up at Nigg and coming back to Gourock at weekends – in the seventies when the A9 still went through a lot of the towns it now bypasses –
this
short cut genuinely did save time. Nowadays the A9, for all its faults, is a lot quicker, and this route just presents a more interresting way to go, not a fater one. Heading for Fife I’d normally aim for Gleneagles from Muthill (I’ve never stopped to check, but I’d lay odds the locals pronounce it Moothill or something similar, rather than the obvious way), however today we take the original short-cut route, on a wee daft road pointing straight at Braco. Then it’s cross-country round the back of the Fintry Hills for Dalmuir to drop Jim and onwards across the Erskine bridge to Greenock to deposit Dave.
‘I wasn’t really tetchy, was I?’ I ask as Dave retrieves his bag from the boot.
‘I’ve seen you worse. Like the time you straight-armed the controls off that Pelican crossing in Glasgow.’
‘So,’ I say brightly, ‘not that tetchy.’
‘Definitely not
that
tetchy.’
I decide I’ll settle for this, bid Mr McC. a hearty farewell, climb into my comically over-revving Jag and hightail it back to sunny Fife.
10: Welcome to the Land of Heederum-Hawderum
PORSCHE TIME. INDEED
, 911 time. We have a light blue 964 model Carrera 4 Cabriolet on a K plate, so it’s about ten years old right now. The ‘4’ means it’s four-wheel drive. This is not so you can take it off road, it’s to give the little blighter more grip in the wet and try to tame the notoriously tail-happy behaviour 911s have exhibited since the sixties because they have the engine in the wrong place, i.e. hanging out astern of the rear wheels.
It’s a creaky, rattly, bangy kind of place to be, the 911, when the top’s down. Actually it’s a fairly noisy old thing even when the top is up, when, in addition, it feels dark and claustrophobic, but then it’s almost never used with the hood closed unless we’ve gone out in sunlight and encountered unexpected rain. The 911 is another unexpectedly relaxing and limit-friendly car to drive, because – while it will very happily scream along at three-figure speeds with the hood stowed, and give every impression of enjoying it – it feels just as content at much lower speeds.
Happy cars: in defence of anthropomorphism
.
This is all, obviously, about our perceptions, about human comfort, in the end; when we talk about a car enjoying a certain speed all we mean is that we feel happy with the sensations
we
experience while in the car at that velocity, based on our earlier experiences of being in cars. To the extent that a car exhibits (in the widest sense) behaviour, this is what makes us treat it as alive even though we know perfectly well that it isn’t. The conceit of ascribing emotional states to cars or other vehicles is simply shorthand for expressing our knowledge of the parameters within which the vehicle is designed to perform and its current relationship to – and position within – those parameters.
A degree of mechanical sympathy is necessary here; an even moderately good driver should experience a degree of discomfort if they hear an engine being overrevved, and, equally, when a person feels that a car is humming along, engine singing, their sensation that the car is ‘happy’ probably reflects as accurately as possible a state in which the vehicle is performing just as its human designers intended it to in those conditions.
So, in the 911, with the top down, wind roar and hair-mussing tend to increase beyond the acceptable at very much more than a mile per minute, and certainly when sustaining such speeds for long periods, and it’s that feeling of being battered by the slipstream that tends to rein in any accelerator-flattening proclivities while you’re exposed to the elements.
And exposed to the elements is how you jolly-well should be driving it, of course, unless it’s absolutely bucketing with rain (though, thanks to the effects of that same slipstream, you can drive with the top down in quite heavy rain and still keep dry. Until, of course, you stop, say at traffic lights. Then you get soaked). Nevertheless, it has to be said the number of people driving soft tops with the hood raised on beautiful sunny days is one of road life’s more perplexing enigmas.
And it doesn’t have to be a scorcher, either. Some of the most fun to be had with a convertible is in the winter, when you get a fine, clear, crisp sunny day. You’ll need outdoor clothing, and a hat and gloves probably, even with the heating turned up, but the sheer joy of zipping through the winter countryside with a blue sky above and somewhere or nowhere
in
particular to go is entirely worth the effort, even if you do sometimes get the odd funny look.
There is an even more esoteric kind of joy to be had driving in the country with the top down at night, though this is best in the summer. Then it’s the smells you notice. Your nose gets more of a workout in a soft top than it would in a closed car anyway, but something about a summer evening darkening into night seems to bring out the scents of the surrounding land with particular intensity.
Perhaps equally esoterically, in a 911 you come to appreciate things you’d never think of appreciating, like driving past walls, under bridges and through tunnels. These hard surfaces all reflect engine noise (it’s behind you, remember, so you’re always leaving the sound behind, never driving through it as you would in a front-engine car) and the engine noise a 911 makes is definitely something worth hearing; a bassily metallic clatter like a sextet of barely muffled pneumatic drills.
For my next trip I will require the help of a member of the choochter race … Ken MacLeod is a proper Islander, from Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides – also collectively known as the Long Island, which sounds more romantic (and a large part of the character of these isles is created by the tension between their undeniably romantic appearance and the effort and practical compromises required to live there all year long).
Ken’s family come from Skye and Lochcarron, on the mainland. He was brought up on Lewis – with lots of brothers and sisters – until his father, who was a minister in the Free Presbyterian Kirk, moved to Greenock in the sixties. This was a considerably more traumatic relocation than mine from Fife to Gourock at about the same time. We just moved from one coast to another, about 70 miles across Scotland’s central industrial belt. For the MacLeods, especially the young ones, leaving the wild, bare purities of Lewis’s Atlantic coast for Greenock with its smoke and bustle, its teeming tenements and crane-stacked shipyards must have seemed like moving to a different country, almost another planet.