American Life In The Summertime #32 - Scotland

In Scotland it is illegal to be drunk in possession of a cow.

Now before you start judging the Scots for not trusting themselves to have lowered inhibitions in the presence of barnyard animals, it is worth mentioning 2 things. First, it DOES get very cold, dark and lonely in some parts of Scotland, particularly this time of year. And second, the Scots are nobodys fools: you will note that the law does not outlaw being drunk in the COMPANY of a cow, only in possession of one. It would clearly be counterproductive for all concerned to shag your own cow, hence the law. However if you can sneak over the fence after a few pints and acquaint yourself with one of your neighbour's livestock without him seeing you, well, the Scots clearly feel this is fair play. 

Welcome to bonnie Scotland, land of haggis, highlands, and Hogmenay, the famous new year's eve street party in Edinburgh which is what brought me to this part of the word at this time of year. On a trip that takes an entire year you obviously can't be everywhere in summer, and due to filling the warm months with events on the continent of Europe itself (ANZAC Day, Running of the Bulls, Oktoberfest etc), I was left with winter in Britain. Backpacking in Britain out of season is a very individual experience. Every Saturday night the hostels are full to capacity with bucks parties, hockey teams and groups of drunk girls on weekends away, and then for the other 6 nights of the week they are completely empty and you are alone, or else you are sharing the dorm with one other person, who is always an old man who seems to live there permanently and is sitting on the floor doing yoga in his underwear. Thankfully at this time of year by 4pm it is dark and anonymous enough to be completely acceptable to retire to the pub for the next 8 hours to get away from him, although when you return he appears to have not moved from his cross-legged position in front of your bed, however somehow has managed to change underwear and has now established what I'm sure he feels is a very soothing humming sound to help share his zen-like calmness with his roommates. Being lulled to sleep by a nearly naked man sitting humming next to your face is perhaps not as calming nor soothing a bedtime environment as he believes, but at least he had invited no cows back to share the dorm. 

Scotland easily wins the "Most Helpful Locals" award of any country so far on this trip, as all you have to do is pull out a map anywhere in Scotland, even without looking lost, and instantly somebody will come up to you & offer help. At least, that's what I assume they were doing, because one thing about the Scots is true - their accents are completely incomprehensible. So you end up with a progression of people coming up with earnest, friendly expressions saying things like "Och - dyae nae ken y'ar, laddie?", at which you smile and both nod and shake your head to cover all options. Between the sparsely populated towns, the infrequent other backpackers in winter, and the accent, travelling alone in Scotland in winter can leave you feeling somewhat of an outsider, especially in the far north of the country, where ordering a beer becomes a half-hour exercise of exaggerated gestures and pantomime, followed once you have obtained your beer by standing at the bar looking blankly at each other because there is not the slightest chance of any further communication. You feel this is exactly the sort of town for which the cow law was made and you again regret not having obtained some of the quality bovine erotica from the village in Turkey (ALITS #21) which might help break the ice.

But the thing that defines the Scots more than anything else is that they are NOT ENGLISH. After more than 1,000 of years of border skirmishes, fights for territory and carrying off local maidens to one side or the other, things have cooled off slightly, but the Scots still delight in making fun of the English and stressing that they are a separate country. Most everybody knows of William Wallace, the Scottish patriot who lead the wars of independence against England in the late 1200's (and in Mel Gibson's movie Braveheart). William Wallace is a national hero in Scotland and unsurprisingly in a country whose chief unifying factor is a 1,000-year hatred of the English, there is a monument and statue of him at Stirling. The statue is based on Mel Gibson's depiction of Wallace and carved with the movie's famous cry of "FREEDOM!!!!!, however it has not had an easy life: parts of it are routinely chipped off by nationalistic Scots, while others are so aggrieved that their national hero has been made to look like an Australian actor that it is also routinely defaced and vandalised, to the point where there is now a fence around it to prevent further tampering. And so, as a result, you now have the enduring symbol of Scottish national independence and freedom..........in a cage.

The irony is just too delicious. And so in the words of that other great patriot Jerry Springer: 'Til next time, take are of yourselves.....and each other.