Scottish things and people that I like

Excellent.

It's a wonderful truism - "Scotland is beautiful". Unfortunately, most people who end up spouting this venture no further at the weekend than Braehead or The Gyle and ultimately view their escape from the city via the airport rather than the A82 or M90.

Not that this should hamper their enjoyment of the cities. There is only one way to view Glasgow, for example, and that is with your neck craned upwards. Everything exciting about Glasgow happens above head height, with statues and columns adorning otherwise functional buildings (the street level parts of which have been turned into an All Bar One, with work girls thinking they're class as they drink bacardi breezers), which is presumably why you so frequently come across people lying on their backs in the town centre. Don't worry, you can step over them without spoiling what they can see.

Glasgow appears to have been designed by the same architects as the big American cities with bold lines, classical architecture and a distinctive grid system. Edinburgh, on the other hand, appears to have been designed by a deranged jaikie, woken from his slumbers and given 20 minutes to get it finished on the back of a bookies' line.

Once they got bored with streets, or something happened to them, Edinburgh just built new streets on top. As a result, you get things like the Cowgate passing majestically underneath The Bridges looking more like a paved over canal than a road, but betrayed by the likes of Bannermans - a cellar bar, but one that finally turned out to be about 20 storeys below the final floor of the buildings that eventually ended up on top of them. There are lots of lovely buildings, but none of them sit together properly and look like they're the emptied out pockets of some celestial city planner built where they fell.

Once you get out of them though...

Blah blah mountains blah blah heather blah blah. Leave that to Muriel Grey. (Nice though they are)

The joys are in little things. Driving through some of the most beautiful scenery, which changes coast by coast from rolling hills to precipitous cliffs. The tearooms at Luss. Garelochhead. The bridge over the Atlantic. The Art Deco frontage of Oban hotels. Mull and Iona. Drinking heavily in Fort William, under the shadow of Ben Nevis, and wandering along to the Highland Museum. Inverness and its utterly pointless castle. The mist sweeping over Culloden. The visitor centre at the Baxters factory. Gamrie Bay. Pennan, possibly the most lovely town in Scotland. The wind piling through Aberdeen, and trying to stand up in the gales on the promenade. Eating a fish supper in front of the lightship at Anstruther then walking round the fisheries museum. The bottle dungeon in St Andrews. The Queen Elizabeth forests and David Marshall Lodge. The sun setting and hour before it rises in the summer. The sun rising an hour before it sets in the winter.

There are a million reasons, and it seems foolish merely to list them. So there has to be something personal, and for me it's The Glen. Pittencrieff Park in Dunfermline.

Bounded on one side by the Abbey (resting place of at least part of Robert The Bruce, and his official memorial burial site) and the ruined monastery, Pittencrieff Park was once the estate of the Laird of Pittencrieff, until following his death it was bought by Andrew Carnegie and turned over to the people of Dunfermline - reputedly as payback for not being allowed to play in it as a child. I remember it mostly as where Fife primary schools congregated for a joint day out towards the end of term in the 1970s, acres and acres of space for kids to run in and two large paddling pools, but it's so much more in retrospect. It has a much greater scope than similar parks, with an Italian garden, a hothouse, an animal enclosure with birdhouse and aquarium, a tearooms with bandstand... the Andrew Carnegie museum is there now too, and it features Malcom Canmore's Tower which purports to be the home of Malcom III following his glorious return from the murder of Macbeth and the restoration of the throne to his lineage.

Like everywhere else, it's now full of school neds getting pished. But it's still the best place in Scotland.

Though he did study at Carnegie.

(Also - the Scots invented Freemasonry. Therefore, they invented conspiracy theories!)

Andrew Carnegie returned to Dunfermline later in life (around the turn of the century) for several years. (He was about 14 when he left, I think)

The Glen in Dunfermline is rather nice, though.

The nicest view in all of Scottish scenery is on the road connecting Harris to Lewis, as you come over the pass between the two islands* and see Lewis and the glen of Loch Seaforth.

* for people unaware of Scottish geography: although Lewis and Harris are separate islands, they are a single landmass. The islands are separated by mountains, not water.

*Not strictly true, it's actually on East Port, but these are good enough directions for visitors.

Yes, but instead of voodoo they have the Wee Frees.

(*Tims**)
(**Catholics)

Fitba:

If there's dominating factor in the Scottish persona, it's probably the love of football. (Apart from those who don't, but they're poofs and we don't talk about them) But let's get one thing out of the way - SCOTTISH FOOTBALL IS PISH.

The heyday of Scottish football was probably right at the very beginning. A Scottish club (Renton, who became Alexandria, who became Dumbarton) won the first ever world competition. Lord Roseberry's XI, in their pink and orange stripes, invented international football. Scotland used to regularly spank England, often by 5 goals.

Let's just look at the Lord Roseberry kit again.

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You wouldn't see them wearing something like that these days.

Somewhere down the line, however, it all went wrong. In the 50s, Hibs were the first British club to play in a European competition, having introduced European football to Britain in the first place, and held the World Cup winning Hungary side to a goalless draw in their national stadium. They were invited to tour South America, and the 'Famous Five' became the inspiration for the great Brazil side of the 70s. This continued into the 60s, as they beat Manchester United, Barcelona and Real Madrid, and put 5 past Napoli. Celtic were no slouches in this period either, becoming the first British side to win the European Cup, and Rangers followed suit with the Cup Winner's Cup. Scotland humiliated the World Cup holders of England, a match that featured a fist fight at half time between Baxter and Law about which was a more humiliating sight - a load of goals or playing keepie-uppie in front of them. There was a brief renaissance in the 80s as Aberdeen and Dundee United proved they were the equal of... erm... Nottingham Forest... but that was pretty much it. No longer were the English leagues full of Scotsmen being overpaid, and Scotland could no longer look at England as a wee team who you normally beat.

So what went wrong? Personally, I think the loss of heavy industry is a major part. Where are all the players at lunchtimes with rags bound in dockyard tape? Working in call centres and playing five a side in a gym hall once a week. Kids don't go out as much any more and estates don't have big enough spaces to build a pitch on. Perhaps more crucially, it's very expensive to take kids to the match now.

Plus, of course, it's frequently excruciating to watch. I remember a Hearts/Motherwell game a couple of seasons ago, the highlights of which were one (count it) off-target shot. That was it. The lower divisions are worse, often living up entirely to "22 grown men chasing an inflated bladder around" except that not all of them can be arsed so only about 5 actually chase it. The rest might as well be sitting in front of the telly with 20 fags instead of playing. As Taggart once said, "You think this is murder? You've never been to Firhill." I remember being inducted at an early age by watching Dunfermline play at East Stirling. I don't remember much more than my pie and sitting on railway sleepers in the red ash, but that was enough. It was the start of 30 years of misery.

The highlights, however, have always been the players. Jim Baxter, whose legendary mazy runs may have been due to the amount of booze he had consumed. Jimmy Johnstone, getting lost in a rowing boat. Denis Law, a fox sucking a lemon. The 1978 World Cup squad not letting football get in the way of getting pished on holiday.

But there must be a favourite, and mine is Charles 'Chic' Charnley. Chic is a man's man. Sent off more than any other player in football history, Chic could have been one of the greats and even Franz Beckenbauer said as much. But... eh... Chic liked the drink a wee bit. And the pies. And the fighting in the park with samurai swords. And all the rest of it. Capable of genius on the park, but just as capable of throwing up on your shoes on a Saturday night, Chic was one of us and that's why I love him.

xp

That can isn't purple. FAKE JIMMY BUNNIT!

Q: What's Lionel Richie's African cousin called?
A: Mboza

Really? Aside from the fact that Hungary never won the WC (but, fair enough, they were supreme in the 50s), I can't find anything on the Web about this.

Scotland, World Champions 1967 indeed. At least until October when that title passed to Northern Ireland, of course.

For all my talk of national characteristics, there's one thing more than anything that makes the Scots Scottish.

The bevvy.
The peeve.
Getting pished.
THE BOOZE.

But not just the desire for drink, a trait which I'm sure you'll agree many nations share such as the Irish, the Scandinavians, the Eastern Europeans and England fans in Union Flag swimming trunks in Spain, it's the desire to consume in flagrant contradiction of legality or even just plain good taste that marks us out.

Witness, for example, the spectacle at Christmas. Small children, even the under-5s, are force-fed advocaat by well meaning grannies like French geese (with comparable effect on their livers) in the misguided belief it's "not really drinking" till they vomit spectacular rivers of eggy spew. "Poor wee love, it must be all the excitement." Aye, obviously.

Is it any wonder, then, that we continue the habit as soon as we get the chance? Alcopops were a bit of a godsend for a nation with a hugely sweet tooth, but we go for the hardcore ones rather than the bog-standard breezers. Mad Dog 20/20 drunk neat! Tonic wine! Thunderbird! These are the drinks or your glorious Scottish alkie, not johnny-come-latelys like WKD (even if it is Irn Bru flavoured). I mean come on, the Lanark triangle kept a certain community of monks in cassocks for years, and has given them enough money to buy sandals for ever more.

The inventiveness doesn't end there, however. Many big industrial sites used to have their own bars, where men would fight to pour as many drinks as possible down their throats during their lunch break before going back and trying to put a half shift in. (Seriously, I've seen people drink upwards of 6 pints in 30 minutes) But what if you worked on a site where there wasn't a bar? Well then you had to get creative. If you worked on a site where it was used, acetone wasn't half bad with the right amount of mixer. If you didn't, then it was a matter of resorting to the slightly more fragrant, and therefore harder to mix, photocopier fluid. THESE ARE NOT AS BAD DRINKS AS THEY SOUND. My knowing this may be A BAD THING.

But I suppose, at the end of the day, the best things about Scottish booze are the common things. Even the mass produced lagers are OK, but there are some great beers including the pick of the bunch, Caledonian 80/-. There's a craving for dark rum that probably beats that of anywhere else in the world. And then there's the water of life, the malt. If you don't like one, then you just haven't tried enough. There's one there for you somewhere.

If you're at the bar, I'll have a hauf and a hauf pint. Heavy, aye.

He didn't get a bonus. The first thing you do at work after receiving such news is NOTHING PRODUCTIVE. I got the same news today and I spent my afternoon ranting about Celtic's ineptitude - aldo's rants have been more interesting, though I'll never forgive him for calling me a posh hun because I buy the occasional Herald.