The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Celebrate our wee beauty!
The aptly-named Rough Guide has spoken. Scotland is the most beautiful country on earth. End of. Being a Scot who loves living here, I like this attitude. I can absolutely understand why the even more aptly named Malcolm Roughead, chief executive of Visit Scotland, has fallen on this news with a glad cry and a call to big up our compact and bijou homeland to all those with itchy feet and a groat or two to spend scratching them among the heathery hills and contemporary cityscapes... even if they had to close Skye this year because the island was full.
Being Scotland, of course, the kneejerk response has been to point to the lack of sunshine, the litter and the excess of midgies. And others, with or without a political axe (or our traditionally bad teeth) to grind, have sourly claimed that Scotland isn’t actually a country at all, it’s only a region of a bigger conglomeration. And that means it doesn’t count, so there.
Now, without bungee-jumping into the hell of the current, if temporarily suspended, debate about independence, I think, if I understand it correctly, that Scotland is a country but not a state. Many of us might think we’re in a state but if we are, it’s not actually Scotland.
But England and Wales both made it into the Rough Guide Top 10, too, so I suspect some people are just stirring it.
Be that as it may, we are, according to the readers of this trusted travelogue, beautiful and more so than anywhere else, beating even Canada into second place, in spite of it having Niagara Falls and the wonderfully scenic Justin Trudeau.
As for third-placed New Zealand, someone once described it as “like Scotland – but not nearly as Scottish”. I THINK I understand…
I don’t do looming grandeur myself – I’m more into Softy Walter-type country than Dennis the Menace-type Caledonia stern and wild – but I can see what people mean when they talk about a special feeling that they just don’t get anywhere else.
Our own Tay Estuary wants a lot of beating and I can personally vouch for the fact that the massed magnificence of the azaleas and rhododendrons of Highland Perthshire in the late spring knocks New England in the fall into a cocked, See-you-jimmy hat. And it’s no coincidence that one of our major water features is called Loch Awe.
The thing about Scotland is you have to be able to enjoy yourself in spite of your instincts for self-preservation. With most native Scots, that comes built in, like the ability to do Sean Connery impersonations.
We beef like crazy about the weather but we soldier on.
With visitors, acquiring this skill seems to give them the insight to see natural and man-made beauty even through a haar that would pass for porridge if we ever find ourselves in danger of running out of our national breakfast. As long as they never leave home without a heroic supply of Vitamin D tablets.
They say there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.
“They”, allegedly, being Billy Connolly, who has become the go-to guy for jaundiced comments on the human condition. I believe it, as only a Scot could possibly come up with something so true, so optimistic and so gloriously downbeat at the same time.
As they sometimes say in these parts: “Ya wee beauty!”
Strange how certain figures come back to haunt one, isn’t it? And I’m not talking about Kim Kardashian or even the burgeoning Duchess of Cambridge, recent winner of what passes for small change in royal family circles in an action over topless photographs of her taken while she was on holiday in France a year or two back.
And the only woman in the country that the government is actively pleased is having a third child.
Only a few days ago, a stern warning was issued that the NHS south of the border is in such dire straits it needs £350 million to get through this winter, presumably of discontent.
This is the least amount required to stave off what is being described as “looming chaos” and came from an organisation called NHS Providers which represents mental health, community and ambulance service trusts across England.
In that neck of the woods, I think that is what is known in the vernacular as “the sharp end”.
And £350 million for the NHS? Remind you of anything you’ve seen on the side of a bus recently? A week may be a long time in politics but in terms of stalled Brexit talks and “mistakes” it’s a pigging eternity. Not long enough, however, for those of us with a reasonable memory retrieval system to come up with the correct answer.
Do you think those in the thick of this grim prognostication might think seriously about picking up the phone to call a certain Mr Farage or Messrs Johnson and Gove, to ask if they might be able to suggest where this telling sum of money might come from? No?
I wonder why…
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We beef like crazy about the weather but we soldier on