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Stuck-inside guide How to pub-crawl across Scotland through books and films
LOCKDOWN may start easing soon, but it seems likely to be a long time yet before any of us find ourselves in an actual physical pub. It’s not of course the booze we’re missing – we can get plenty of that at home – but the company, the conviviality, the atmosphere, the feeling that, in the late hours, almost anything might kick off. So, for those who cry inside every time they walk past their closed-down local, or wake up having dreamed of standing with a pint at the bar, here’s a few ways you can get that pub feeling through films and books.
WHERE TO GO FOR A BURNS SING-SONG
The Royal Oak, via Set in Darkness. Think of Ian Rankin, Rebus and pubs and your mind is likely to go right to the Oxford Bar. But it turns out that Rankin’s own favourite pub scene from his novels is set in The Royal Oak on Infirmary Street, Edinburgh.
In it, Rebus dives into the toilet, reached without entering the pub. Through a window looking into the bar, he sees Cafferty, who he thought was locked up in jail, singing a Burns song. “Rebus’ world is off kilter completely,” Rankin has said.
WHERE THE LANDLADY IS NOT FOR MESSING WITH
MacNeil’s bar Stornoway in Peter May’s The Blackhouse, where there’s uproar across the room, but, writes May, “A single, high-pitched voice rose above all the others, shrill and commanding. A woman’s voice. ‘Get out! The lot of you, before I call the police.’ ‘They’re here already,’ some joker quipped, and those who knew Fin, laughed. The manageress was a lady in her middle years, not unattractive, soft blond curls around an elfin face.
But she had been in this game a few years and knew how to handle men with a drink in them. She rapped a stout wooden stick on top of the bar ‘Out! Now!’ And no one was going to argue with her.”
Are you up for arguing yourself?
WHERE TO GO FOR A RESCUE
Let’s go back in time, courtesy of Diana Gabaldon. We’re at the World’s End pub, on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. It’s some 250 years ago, in the third of the Outlander series, and Jamie and Clare (Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan right) have come to rescue Mr Willoughby, who has drunkenly licked a sex worker’s feet without her consent. The pub is still there, on the Royal
Mile, all these years on.
WHERE FOR DRUNKEN STORYTELLING
The Griffin, Glasgow. One of the most rousing scenes in Sunshine on Leith, a film of many rousers, the “Over And Done With” sequence, is set ostensibly in an Edinburgh pub, but was filmed in Glasgow. Watch it and you’ll already be looking forward to the day when we can all sing out, “It’s over and done with, it’s over and done with” and get right back down to the pub.
WHERE TO SWAP LIVES
The Ship Inn in Banff, where you can hang out in the bar, share a whisky and find yourself being offered a whole new life: Houston, the Porsche, the $80,000 a year. Yes, we’re watching Local Hero, and Mac, the hot-shot oil executive, is trying to strike a deal where he gets Gordon’s life in the fictional village of Ferness, including his hotel and his wife, in exchange.
“I want you to leave Stella here with me, Gordon,” says Mac.
“Would you do that? Would you leave Stella here with me?” “Sure, Mac,” says Gordon.
WHERE FOR PIES
As in, “Ooh, did you hear that, Jack, they’ve got pies.” Sit yourself down at the bar of the Clansman and eavesdrop on a bit of Jack and Victor banter courtesy of Still Game. In one classic scene, Boaby the barman is asking them what they would like.
“We would like it to be warmer in here,” says Jack. “Yes, and for the décor to be a wee bit more inviting,” says Victor. “And to lose the stale smell of pish,” says Jack. The chat climaxes with Jack saying, “We would like to come in here and no want to kill wur’ sells.” Then Boaby asks them what they would like to drink. “Two lager.” Still Game was originally filmed in The Gimlet in Ruchill, but later, a constructed set was used.
WHERE FOR A REUNION
The Port Sunshine bar is empty and there’s only Sick Boy playing snooker on his own, when in walks Renton – after two decades gone . “So what you been up to, for 20 years?” Sick Boy asks. Much of Renton’s life story is told in a few lines – the marriage, the two kids, the life in Amsterdam. Sick Boy’s too, in a single line, “I have a son, he’s in London with his whoor mother.”
The T2 production team hung the Port Sunshine sign over the lettering of The Douglas Hotel, in Clydebank, but the interior is the basement of Edinburgh’s Central
Bar. Of course, if what you want is a bit of nostalgia rather than reunion, you might prefer to go right back to that iconic Begbie glass scene in the original Trainspotting, as filmed in The Crosslands, Glasgow.
WHERE FOR AN EQUAL RIGHTS PROTEST
The Grill Bar, on Union Street, Aberdeen, where back in the early 1970s a group of women stormed a men-only pub to protest at the discrimination they faced. On Vimeo, you can watch the trailer of a short film, titled No Ladies Please, after the sign once hung in the window. After being refused a drink by the barmaid, one of the protestors says, “Come on, sister. This is 1973, not 1873.” In spite of their efforts, here was no let-up in the men-only policy till 1975, when the Sex Discrimination Act was passed.
WHERE THERE’S A SCOTLAND MATCH PLAYING ON THE TELLY
The punters have stopped singing Flower of Scotland and are wailing because Scotland has lost, and all that is about to be disturbed by the arrival of a bunch of English-accented care home workers on the hunt for Jim Broadbent’s Timothy Cavendish.
This, in other words, is Cloud Atlas, and the setting is the Drovers Inn at the head of Loch Lomond. And – save for the disappointing result, the anti-English stereotyping and the knocked-out molar that lands in a pint – who wouldn’t want to be there? The bar is rammed, heaving with bodies, and lined with bottles. It’s a great, sweaty pit of life. Plus there’s a classic, slapstick movie pub brawl. And who doesn’t like them?
WHERE TO GO FOR A PICK-UP
You go into a shadowy, man-filled pub, stand at the bar and order a wine. You light a cigarette. A voice appears at your shoulder, “I heard you came looking for me. That’s nice. Because I’ve been thinking about you. I’ve this feeling that I’ve met you before… But I cannae work it out. Look at me. I need you to look at me.” You’re Kate Dickie in Red Road and your character seems to be stalking her prey, and now a fight has kicked off and the brawlers are spilling out onto the street. Don’t be put off, have another beer, have another fag and keep watching, because the film is heading towards one of the most graphic sex scenes in Scottish film.