Scottish things and people that I like

I always wonder how much their *surroundings* has created their sound. Didn't much care for the first album, but the follow-up was great.

(Already, my namesake has incited a mob to riot through Edinburgh, breaking windows to protest the Act of Union. I wonder if he's related. I don't have nearly enough rabble-rousers in my family already.)

Well, Alasdair Gray and B&S are well-acquainted. At one stage AG was going to illustrate a B&S songbook, but I don't think it got very far.

I found it interesting that the Protestant insistence on educating every man woman and child, so that they could better read THE SCRIPTURE had far longer-reaching effects in raising education itself to a kind of religion among Scots, even after the Presbytarian frenzy had passed.

8. Irn Bru bars.

All the tartan and shortbread stuff is bollocks, of course - clan tartans were invented by aristocratic Walter Scot fanboys in about 1820; and ever since "Highland Dress", of the non-military-uniform kind, has been *extremely* posh, the favoured clothes of moneyed landowners like Mohammed Al Fayed. Kilts, incidentally, were invented by a Lancashire mill-owner, slightly earlier.

(xpost)

U forgot

8. Your Dad

try glasgow more :)

(Where *is* that photo of bare-chested Ewan MacG in a kilt?)

(on men or women, I should add)

(I am Duncan MacCLOUD of clan MacCLOUD and I will have yerrrr head!)

I don't think it's very Scottish at all. It's "British".

8. Your Dad

Oops, sorry Dad.

also: nobody's mentioned chewin' the fat, mogwai, absolutely, aereogramme, single malts or haggis. this suggests my appreciation of the country in which i live is rather different to many other people's.

PS: I've never seen that song book.

Tattie scones are great. Anyone ever had a Scooby Snack from the van outside the Botanics? Burger, cheese, bacon, sliced sausage, fried egg and a tattie scone in a burger bun. I had one to soak up the booze coming back from a Hogmanay party last year. Never again.

Every town in the North East claims to have invented the deep fried Mars bar. Go to Peterhead and one shop proudly proclaims to be the originator. Go to Stonehaven and you'll get the same.

Ivor Cutler's Life In A Scotch Sitting Room is indisputably Scottish and indisputably wonderful.

Chick Murray!
Dick Gaughan!
Monorail Music!
Orange Juice!
Edwin Morgan!

"the maggie"? i've never been brave enough. also, if i'm outside the botanics i'm either a) visiting mrs fiendish's sister, who lives up the road, or b) trying to get the fuck away from the west end in that crappy little taxi queue. in either case, death by burger would only be a hindrance.

I heard he's spent most of his life in very squalid surroundings. He deserves to be rich.

Have you read any Edwin Morgan? He modernised Scottish poetry by rejecting the narrow nationalism of McDiarmid (who is, nonetheless, great) and being hip to the Beats and modernism. Like Gray he has an ability to capture Glasgow as it is and also recast it as his imagination wishes. There's a playfulness and cosmopolitan quality to his writing. He translated Miakovsky into Scots! He's suffering from cancer sadly, but he's still writing. He was a lecturer and tutor at Glasgow Uni for years. My parents were both taught by him and agree he was the most inspiring lecturer they'd ever had. That blows my mind.

Do you read yr own paper? Top scientists (badly short of funding, doubtless) did a study showing the DFMB wasn't an urban myth.

(What's true however, is that everyone makes em wrong. You have to seriously, seriously freeze the Mars bar first, so that when it's fried the batter and the outside is meltingly soft, but the inside is cold and rock.)

Stew OTM with Scooby Snacks, but a deep-fried pizza wins my heart every time.

is made in devon or somewhere, innit? buckfast vomit is usually scottish, though, aye.

Do you read yr own paper?

i find it hard to see past all the mistakes :)

"the maggie"? i've never been brave enough. also, if i'm outside the botanics i'm either a) visiting mrs fiendish's sister, who lives up the road, or b) trying to get the fuck away from the west end in that crappy little taxi queue. in either case, death by burger would only be a hindrance.

I used to live for the Maggie - it was the one place I insisted on visiting (to partake in their renowned "Scooby Snack") whenever I visited Glasgow. But it's a young man's burger, really, I'm getting too old.

I didn't know about the Devon thing, but surely it should be left out because it tastes like cough medicine?

I'm going to go for shortbread. And the Loch Ness Monster, because I was fascinated by it when I was small (or when I was wee, as I should say on this thread.) Also - T The Park was great because I wasn't the only stupidly pale person frying in the sun.

Also, x-post - I liked Soma too.

Ben Nevis

West Highland Beaches

Lucky Tatties

The Arches

Hogmanay

i have never experienced the "real" electric brae. i should. although isn't it just full of cars rolling slowly into each other?

John Byrne - Fantastic painter and playwright, you might have come across some of his work without realising it as he has been commisioned to do album covers for The Beatles and Gerry Rafferty among others.
He wrote Tutti Frutti which was a big deal in Scotland, in the late eighties and deserves a DVD release but this, I'm told, is somehow stymied by rights/credits issues.
He also wrote an incredible trio of short tragicomic plays set in 1950's Paisley called The Slab Boys trilogy which are worth checking out.

Lewis Grassic Gibbon - a turn of the century author who wrote a series of books called 'A Scot's Quair', concerning a young womans life growing up on a remote Croft, it's a rite of passage tale with the slightest mystical flavour. You might say he's almost like a Scots Steinbeck, it's great stuff.
There's a film apparently being made as I speak but I don't know if it's just going to be dealing with the first book 'Sunset Song'.

Lots of experiments with footballs and small children.

http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~ddb/teaching/hume/hume.jpeg

ihttp://www.nrao.edu/whatisra/images/maxwell2.jpg

http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~awarwood/omega.html

Scared the living shit out of me as an 7 year old.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/news/cult/2005/02/21/17166.shtml

Madchen OTM about Deuchars IPA. Harviestoun Bitter & Twisted is a good un too.

John Byrne is pretty awesome. I've never seen Tutti Frutti though. Apparently the reason it's never been repeated is that the BBC are being funny about royalites for the old rock n roll songs used on the show, but that always struck me as rather dubious.

Alexander 'Greek' Thompson. Renowned architect who made Glasgow look like it does, whose buildings have all too often been demolished or left to crumble by shortsighted/corrupt (ahem) local councillors.

The Barrowlands ballroom!

[ahem subs pls check spelling] but otherwise good fucking call.

i'm still not entirely sure what it was. a dude showing cartoons? that sounds kinda neat.

and my mum *FORGOT* to send in my birthday card to get read out. Unlike Mari0n W1ls0n's mum, who didn't. So on my birthday weekend, I had to suffer girl-cleverer-than-me getting her card read out by Glen. boo.

Ah yes - I forgot the hankies!

and this ...

So on my birthday weekend, I had to suffer girl-cleverer-than-me getting her card read out by Glen

this explains everything, stet :)

Glen Michael was in fact my first "gig" in Cumbernauld.

bloodthirsty barbarians who paint themselves blue and hurl themselves at the English, and yet the ultimate, almost parodic genteelness of the twee worldview of B&S, almost as if it's a an exaggerated reaction to the former (see also Momus). Is that all about the Highlands/Lowlands divide?

I don't think I'm particularly twee. I feel a sense of kinship with people like Alasdair Gray (I met him years ago in Aberdeen) and also with people like Stuart Murdoch, and also with Robert Burns. The gentleness in these people might be described as fierce, and, as in "The Wicker Man", there's a strong pagan sensuality and Celtic lyricism. My own ancestors were Gaelic speakers from the Hebrides (mainly the island of Mull, which my mother has written an excellent book about), and at least two of them (the McKechnies, Angus and Donald) won the bardic crown at the Mod for poetry in Gaelic.

i tried to visit mull once but the clouds poured down for two straight days and it was the most i could do to just see its outline across the harbor.

Also Tracer Hand OTM. So many top words. Like "cushty", "gallus", "chankin" and "chips"

I like scenery and unfounded belief in crappy national football teams and tattie scones and butteries and wee pubs in the Briggait where men play banjos and "Dignity" by Deacon Blue and what Madchen said about the light (she forgot to mention me pointing out that the scenery stopped just south of Gretna) and hills and heather and the pool halls upstairs from the Scotia and the Woodside, and also the Woodside itself, especially its jukebox, and picnics in Kelvingrove Park and the view from the top of the hill at Daviot down to Inverness and the Black Isle and placenames like Acharacle and Ballachulish and single track roads with bemused sheep on them and the way the deer come down off the hills in the Highlands at dusk and the Trash Can Sinatras and the Old Man of Hoy and Christopher Brookmyre and the salmon leap at the Falls of Shin.

And some other stuff too.

I forgot that most of all I love Gregory's Girl and Belle and Sebastian.

2. Eat a buttery
A traditional Doric delicacy, the Aberdeen buttery rowie is a gloriously Atkins-unfriendly combination of flour, yeast, salt and fat. Don’t be put off by the rock hard specimens they serve in Halls – get yourself to a local bakery for the real deal. Eaten with a nice bowl of homemade soup, there’s nothing better to fortify you against the North-East winter.

Absolutely and Still Game. The book Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Ivor Cutler and the Incredible String Band. Some of the ned slang/retorts. "Away an run up ma ribs" etc. Irn Bru and anything Tunnocks. Oh and Altered Images. Scotch broth, Abroath Smokeys.

Other good things: Mackies honeycomb icecream, Highland cattle, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Still Game (xpost!), Archie Gemmill's goal against Holland, West Highland accents.

YOu know, all these things "feel" the same, even Momus. It's like, I dunno, a droll yet twee grimness.

God, yes. The phrase "yer maw" is fantastic.

Yes, they do, but I think you can do that if you just pick things that are similar. I mean, Eddie Reader, Taggart, Thingummyjig and Joey Deacon Blue don't feel like that.

Anyway, while you're mulling that one over, here's a random alternative list of non-pastoral, not gently surreal, uncosy spokespersons of a nation:

Janice Galloway (writer)
Bobbie Gillespie (musician)
Wattie Buchan from The Exploited (punk)
Bill Drummond (artist)
George Galloway (politician)
Elaine C. Smith (actress)
Alex Ferguson (sports mananger)
Peter Mullen (actor/director)

Excellent at swearing, all of them.

Add Rosie Kane and you've pretty much got the antithesis of the spokeslist I would make.

Yeah, Gregory's Girl is great. Much love for Local Hero too. Still not seen That Sinking Feeling though. Must seek it out. What's Bill Forsyth up to these days?

Whisky Galore!

Takin' Over The Asylum

Robbie Shepherd (presents the Scottish country dancing programme on BBC Radio Scotland and spiks the Doric. His Doric column (boom boom) is the best thing about the Press & Journal. He's a dude, min.

Doric chat up lines: "Fit like ma bonny quine?"

Yer maw! Fannybaws! Whit!

Still Game is great of course (and it's on in ten minutes, hurrah!) but Navid deserves singular praise. "Ye mad shagger ye!" "Quality."

Bud Neill - surrealist Glaswegian cartoonist of the 50s. Created Lobey Dosser, whose statue sits on Woodlands Road. The strip transplants an East End community to the Wild West. Sheriff Lobey Dosser rides a two legged horse called El Fideldo and his arch nemesis is Rank Badjin. Its sensibility is remarkably modern, rich in references to pop culture of the time. Really odd and funny. http://netsavvy.co.uk/lobey/

Taking Over the Asylum is utter genius and if you search it on ILX you'll find me calling for repeated repeats for the rest of all time. Or something. I wuv it. David Tennant! Ken Stott! Katy Murphy!

I have oddly high levels of affection for both Robbie Shepherd and The Beechgrove Garden.

The old Old school - The Rezillos, The Skids
The prophets without honour - The Thanes, Gin Goblins
The new school - Sluts of Trust, Sons and Daughters

I'm so bored with: our WONDERFUL post-punk heritage

- Loch Awe
- Morar
- Glenfinnan monument
- Glasgow Celtic
- Scotch Pie
- Deuchars IPA
- Pub opening (by which I mean closing) hours
- Bert's Bar, Stockbridge
- The table football machine that I played in the pretty cool pub in Newtown
- The Forth Rail Bridge
- Belle and Sebastian
- The spring sky in Lothian

"Can't remember the last time I had a bloody boner. I tell I lie. Judy Finnegan, before she went shakey."

The Star Bar?

I like the Forth Road Bridge best actually.

I like pubs that stay open 'til 3am and pubs that open at 4am.

according to a friend, the only thing "fierce" about bobby gillespie is his smell.

Should have been throttled to death at birth.

I don't agree with the person who said George Galloway and Elaine C Smith though.

Are butteries as good as lardy cakes, Ailsa?

-Lecturing in English, rather than reading aloud notes in Latin
-Discussion and discourse between Lecturer and Students during the course of lectures

Only in the afternoons mind, is the hot water in the gents still scalding?

Heretic! Mind you, it's probably why I have fillings now. I drink it quite rarely now.

Billy Connolly: well, he's just another annoying celeb now, but in his day he was very, very funny.

Lord Kelvin - invented loads of cool stuff, worked on the first and second transatlantic cables, established many common practices in the study and teaching of science.

Ian Crichton Smith (poet)

Lucky Luke

Bert Jansch

Linda Thompson

Alisdair Roberts

Cheery Bananas fanzine

As mentioned, rowies come very, very close to best Scottish foodstuff ever. Strong showings also by tablet, pies (especially with a bit of bovril poured through the hole in the lid), bridies, haggis, white pudding, red pudding, fruit pudding, fruit dumpling, the entire output of the Tunnocks and Lees factories (speaking of which, someone who used to work for Frances had their wedding cake made by Tunnocks - how ace is that?), irn bru, irn bru chews, deep fried pizza, pizza crunchie, smoked sausage suppers, 'sauce' (though this is lost outside of the East coast), pakora and tattie scones.

But there can only be one winner. PLAIN BREAD.

In a world of lesser carbohydrates, plain bread bestrides the world like a collossus. For those who have never encountered this behemoth, a brief description. Rather than square, plain bread is loosely rectangular around 7" tall by about 4" wide. The top and bottom crusts are around half an inch thick (including the immediately surrounding bread) and most closely resemble masonry painted black. The intervening six inches comprises dough with an atomic weight in five figures. It wasn't so much mixed, as drew the ingredients into the gravitational field it was generating. Eating it requires a spare set of jaws, to take up the chewing when your normal set are tired.

The Pilgrim Fathers took large amounts of plain bread with them to the Americas as temporary accomodation. The Titanic is rumoured to have sunk following an unsuccessful attempt to patch the iceberg hole with plain bread, leading to a weight shift and change in centre of gravity for the hull causing it to tip. A small child once survived in an old fridge in Barlanark for 8 weeks, living on rainwater and half a slice of plain bread.

So why do we love it? Well, it makes great toast (not that it fits in a toaster) especially with lemon curd. But the main reason is surely that most lovely of treats made from leftovers, the PIECE 'n' MINCE.
Name me another bread man enough to carry mince, gravy, carrots and totties without leaking or falling apart.

Exactly.

still can't abide the stuff, though.

The Leopard Man at Kyle

Seals at Mallaig

Ferries at Oban

Nardinis

Codonas Waltzers at Helensburgh

Safeway in Anniesland for some reason

Loch Fyne Oyster Bar

Not really, I just love the Bru is all.

Not Lucky Luke the cartoon, Lucky Luke the excellent Glasgow psych-folk band. :)
http://www.luckyluke.co.uk/

Scotland is a country both united, and divided by language. Whether you end sentences with "but", "by the way", "eh", "aye, well" or "there you are", they're still all identifiably Scottish affectations. The kicker is this though - only other Scots can tell which part you come from through tics like this. Loosely speaking, to outsiders, there are two main accents - the central belt and the rest. Much of the Dumfries and Galloway regional dialect can be quite easily mistaken for low Highland accents to the untrained ear and, lets face it, they only ever talk about farming and incomers anyway. The Central belt, however, has far more divides. There's the East coast and West coast split for starters, but there are stacks of other just as noticeable ones. There's an audible Protestant/Catholic shift, more obvious in Glasgow, culminating in what is usually described as the 'Posh Hun' voice. You know the sort, treasurer of the local bowling club, has a moustache, drives a Rover. Says "Hullooo" through his nose BUT NOT IN A NASAL WAY FOR THAT IS THE WAY OF NED. Nasal Nedness is something else entirely. Or "pure su'hin' else man" if you prefer. The East coast equivalent of Posh Hun is the 'Pan Loaf' accent, which the half of Edinburgh found in the city centre that aren't tourists seems to use. It's odd to go into Edinburgh and not hear a single Edinburgh accent, but then I suppose that's what Leith Walk is for.

This, of course, misses out the joy that is Doric; a dialect (although there are arguments for it being a language in its own right) which is, frankly, impenetrable to most. My mother couldn't understand her father-in-law for around 3 years, and still can't understand her brother-in-law. Frances claims to understand less than half of what my father says, and his accent is quite moderate. On one trip between Inverness and Aberdeen, at a couple of stops she said she was scared I had been possessed as I was speaking in tongues (and I only have handed-down skills, I can barely hold my own in a Doric-heavy conversation). It's the gleeful joy of the dialect that appeals to me the most though, the complete disregard for letter order, grammar or conventional vowel pronunciation (the acid test, for me, is the pronunciation of 'moo' where Doric speakers INVENT A NEW VOWEL SOUND). Syllables are transposed wantonly. Made-up words are used. Words mean different things in different villages. And yet somehow it all makes sense, in some way we all understand each other. That's the best thing about it.

But this is avoiding the one great thing the central belt does better than any other language on God's Earth. Insults.

You can stick your Hispanics, with their maternal fixation. Why bother going on about it when you can sum it up with "Yer maw." Every single permutation of genitalial nomenclature has been used, from the more traditional "fanny" and "prick" to "dobber" and "pie". Stranger yet, however, is the total lack of implication of shared features with the item apparently being compared. To call someone a "poof", for example, casts no doubt on their sexuality. It just means they're a poof. But we don't stop at rude words, oh no. "Numpty" was ubiquitous at one point, but there is a new kid in town.

"Balloon".

In any other language this is simply a rubberised receptacle for expelled air which can for a plaything for a small child. In Scottish, however, the noun conjures a never-before imagined depth of contempt. Imagine the scorn with which Grant Stott looks at a small child who has just asked him in the supermarket (having been prompted by his older brother who is sniggering behind the Sunny Delight display) whether he "goat sloppy seconds eftir yir braer wis finished wi that Titmuss burd". That's what "balloon" means to me.

: (

#3,124 - RJG's quiff.

(Just discovered Still Game cos we're doing it at work; just proofreading it made me laugh so it must be good).

my dad's family [qv the uncles thread] all converse in the doric. it takes me an hour to get up to speed; before that i just sit there nodding like a loon (see?) while they all take the piss out of me.

still, i don't care. being in a room with my dad's family is the only time in my entire life that i, at 5'7", can feel like a towering giant.

I haven't actually nominated anything, yet

the blue nile

as for the sunday post in general ... a couple of weeks ago i got chatting in the station bar - another great scottish institution - to a guy who used to work there, and he swears blind that half the stories were written to fit a specific headline - eg the editor would tell the reporters: "go and find me a story to work with this." his biggest journalistic triumph, he says, was finding something - and they had to be real stories, they couldn't be made up - to fit the headline: "and he even took jam on his corn flakes!"

I used to enjoy the "Who Is In The Wrong?" diagrammatical depictions of traffic accidents in The Sunday Post.

The P&J still carry Robbie's Shepherd's Doric column (if only they called it that), but I don't think they have the whole page anymore, especially since they have different editions.

I like moist things from Scotland.

I meant to say most things, but I'll leave it. Amusement is so hard to come by these days.

I'm with you on this one.

The thing I remember most about plain bread is that, even from Tesco, it doesn't come in a plastic bag like all other bread. It comes wrapped in waxed paper. The downside to this is that: if you have a really, really minging flatmate who has a habit of buying bread, eating two slices and leaving the rest to rot, then with *plain* bread the ensuing mould will creep through the paper and infect whatever the bread is sat on, such as your kitchen table.

Due to the other properties of plain bread mentioned above, mouldy plain bread is very strange indeed. The mould is bright orange, and can reach quite advanced stages of civilisation if your flatmate is as minging as mine was.

the twee hobbit that lives in my heart just sighed girlishly.

Apart from inventing the whole bloody thing in the first place, Scotland has had a surprisingly minor role to play in British television.

This is basically for two reasons.

Firstly, an awful lot of stuff doesn't make it out of Scotland. Bits do, certainly, and comedy in particular seems to travel. Chewin' The Fat and Still Game are recent exports, following in the footsteps of shows like Absolutely, showcase the brutal wit and turn of phrase that marks out the two mainstays of Scottish humour - abuse and surrealism. Lots didn't though. We all grew up watching Thingummyjig, but who outside of Scotland could pick Jack McLaughlin out? Where in England could Fran & Anna possibly fit in? (Actually, scratch that, where in Scotland could they fit in except maybe the nuthouse.) River City is probably the best daytime soap shown in the evening ever, with production values redolent of the heyday of Neighbours and acting consisting of some really top quality gurning and a woman (? Roisin - sometimes it's hard to tell) who you're convinced is putting on a fake accent as it vaccilates between Aberdeen and Dundee UNTIL YOU REALISE SHE'S NOT A GOOD ENOUGH ACTRESS TO PUT ON A FAKE VOICE. But there are worse things. Gaelic language kids shows. Tartan Shorts. And football shows. Christ almighty, the football shows. Arthur Montford pretending to support Morton, with a rictus grin and a jacket that strobed its way across the screen, almost getting excited about a 0-0 draw at Broomhead where the ball only left the centre circle once. Archie McPherson proving his lack of bias by doffing his wig at both managers prior to an Old Firm match. And the later presenters aren't any better...

Leading neatly to point two.

Jim White.

That's unfair, not just him. More the unrelenting wave of unlikeable bastards that assails us when we turn on our screens, building to the point of nausea and escape to the pub. Dougie Donnelly. Chick Young. Viv Lumsden. Martin Geissler. Shereen Nanjiani. Stephen Jardine. Grant Stott. Tiger Tim Stevenson. Alison Craig.

I was wrong, none of them are as bad. It is just Jim White, the smug prick.

Actually, this has turned into "doesn't like", so my favourite thing ever about Scottish television.

In the 70s, telly didn't start early never mind broadcast round the clock. This wasn't a problem except on Saturdays, when there were programmes to be watched before you went out to play. The telly would get turned on, and you would be presented with a stag against a blue background. There would be strident music. "The Campbells are coming." And we would wait. The music would become more bombastic. Hooray! Telly would start soon! The music was coming to a climax! Telly! Yay! The music was over!

And then it wasn't. Sotto voce, the tune would return, almost embarrassed to be back. We hadn't needed to look at the clock, oh no, or if we had then we assumed it must have been wrong. The music would guide us to the beginning. Only it didn't. Then, inexplicably, it would cut out and the programming would start.

WHY? Why was it so hard to employ a modicum of skill in co-ordinating the music with the start of programming? Or was it just bored STV technicians playing with the nerves of Scotland's chilren? INQUIRING MINDS NEED TO KNOW.

I notice nobody has nominated the Herald as one of their favourite things yet.

I forgot Arnold Brown.

(I only proofread a couple of episodes, PJM.)

I recently got all six episodes on a DVD that some fella had made from his own TV recordings

Brian Morton. Radio Scotland's Art Show (sorry, Radio Cafe, now ferrchrissakes) is much, much poorer without him presenting. He could go from discussing Vaan Der Graph Generator to Kafka to the Krankies. The breadth of his intellect is remarkable and he was a very good interviewer. Way better than Mark Lawson on Front Row. He also gets respect for his book reviews, pieces for the Wire and that massive Guide To Jazz On CD he co-writes.

The Sunday Herald - easily the best Sunday paper in the UK. (And the Herald's great too of course Simon!)

i know a girl who used to work on river city: i asked her about row-sheen's accent. "no, really, she sounds like that all the time," she said.

I notice nobody has nominated the Herald as one of their favourite things yet.

stet did. kind-of.

He also gets respect for his book reviews

no he fucking doesn't. i used to have to sub those things at the sunday, and believe me, it was torture.

no he fucking doesn't. i used to have to sub those things at the sunday, and believe me, it was torture."

Heh, it's testament to your subbing skills then. He's working on a novel apparently - bet you can't wait!

Soft spoken bloke on the Beat Patrol - do you mean David Cavanagh? He's a dude, and what a voice. Have you heard his musical project Phosphene? It involves him reading a story from Arabian Nights over a drone, punctuated by him playing a few notes on an analogue synth, then after another bit of spoken word, pick up a clarinet and tootle away. Then he'll read again before producing a melodica and so on. Delightful avant whimsy.

Glasgow tap water is rank. I think I might even prefer London water.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4719573.stm

Robert Burns is probably Scotland's most famous poet, and some would say rightly so. But what child in Scotland wasn't put off him forever by being forced to recite, parrot fashion, some of his dullest material (or even worse, some 'modern' Scottish poetry like 'The Next Stop's Kirkcaldy' or 'The Finger') in the hope of being given some crappy piece of paper which now languishes lost in the back of one of your mother's drawers? I'll tell you which kind - those that discovered his bawdry. For the truth is, much of Burns' more famous work is actually sanitised versions of the utter filth he used to spend his time jotting down. 'Comin' Through The Rye' originally turned into a lesbo session, and then there's my favourite:

To a cunt

I thought that I would wad a wife,
I wanted one that pleased me,
But on her cunt there grows no hair
and there's the thing that grieves me.

It vexed me sair,
it plagued me sair,
it put me in a passion -
to think that I had wad a wife
whaes cunt was out of fashion.

Plus, he was an alkie womaniser. He only turned to poetry when he burned down his first workplace, pissed out of his head, and was sacked. Before he died at 37, he had somehow managed to father 9 children to 5 different women. A man out of his time. And head.

The 'ironic' answer to Scotland's best writer is William Topaz McGonagall. It's very post-modern to laugh at the ineptitude of the meter and the clumsiness of his rhyming, but beneath it is a real core of what in modern musical terminology we'd happily call outsider poetry and yet harder to directly see is the link to later writers like Ivor Cutler, with odd word structures and an invented grammar. It's hard to pick and choose bits, because I think you need to immerse yourself, but try this from 'Glasgow';

The statue of the Prince of Orange is very grand,
Looking terror to the foe, with a truncheon in his hand,
And well mounted on a noble steed, which stands in the Trongate,
And holding up its foreleg, I'm sure it looks first-rate.

Then there's modern Scottish writing. Alasdair Gray and James Kelman on the West, and Irvine Welsh on the East. I'll stick to Welsh, since I'm most comfortable with this work. For me, pound for pound, Welsh has written some of the best characters in literature. He captures the way they speak perfectly, and lives and breathes his identities. Plus he swears a lot and supports Hibs. What's not to like?

Most Scots don't read books though.

The primary document is the paper, or the magazine. Even magazines seem to be a female only concern, with the titans in the field the Peoples Friend and My Weekly. The former is aimed squarely at the blue-rinse brigade - from the cover, usually an oil painting of the tearooms at Dunoon or a wall in Auchterarder, to the adverts for girdles and wigs inside the back opposite a mini-fun section (I believe I still have the badge indicating I'm a member of Cousin Tom's Own Club somewhere) the whole thing reeked of bus trips to Callander with egg sandwiches. It was like an even more twee version of the Sunday Post, full of heartwarming stories about how someone went round to someone elses for a cup of tea in 1942 and they're still friends to this day. My Weekly aimed itself far more squarely at the daughters of Peoples Friend buyers, with women off knitting patterns on the cover and heartwarming stories about how someone went round to someone elses for a cup of tea last week and they're still friends to this day.

So for men, then, it's all about papers.

The Herald and the Scotsman fullfil the same function. They are mainly bought by Posh Huns and Pan Loafs, both of which only end up reading the sport but enjoy the mental cachet they think they gain.

It's all about The Record during the week. It's a typical tabloid, but one with the misplaced pride in everything SCOTTISH irrespective of whether it's any good or not that dominates much of the country. It has to be read from the back, not the front. It featured Shuggie & Duggie for many years, which ensures the editor's place in Hell.

There are two types of Sunday houses - The Mail or The Post. The Mail is basically a standard Sunday tabloid BUT WITHOUT THE TITILATION. The Post, on the other hand...

Many people have waxed lyrical on the Sunday Post before, but I won't let that stop me. The Post is, at heart, a utopian vision of what post-war Scotland could have been. I believe it's written for people who are genuinely still waiting for VE day to happen, or at least for PC Murdoch to nip ower tae Germany and gie that Hitler a clip round the ear. Only not quite, because that would acknowledge a part of the world outside their own wee existence - let's not forget, this is a newspaper where international news merits only one column, and even then was once cut short to tell the story of Mrs McGlinchy in Achtermuchty whose cat got stuck up a tree. My friend Gavin was once in the centre pages, amongst the clusterfuck of vaguely amusing anecdotes, and was paid moderately well for being chuckled at by pensioners.

There are two highlights, however.

The Friendship Page of Francis Gay is a sort of diary written by Francis, who always seemed to me to be a bit like Michael Landon's angel from "Highway To Heaven", only with rich tea biscuits and flowers for the church instead of wings and good deeds. There's even a spin-off book, for those who can't get enough of salvation by malt loaf.

The Fun Section has always skirted desperately close to the Trades Description act. Some piss-poor puzzles pad it out, but it's most famous for the two main strips - Oor Wullie and The Broons. Both were drawn by Scotland's greatest comic artist, Dudley D Watkins, until he died. Literally, as it happens, since he was doing a Broons at the time. They're easy targets, and Ken Harrison is the only artist since Watkins who has come close to the character and life of the strips that shone out of the page in the Watkins era, but they can, and have, been truly great. Perhaps the biggest problem is that they still can't decide what decade they're set in. I remember one Wullie where he is taken to both Glasgow and Edinburgh in the same day by an uncle and everybody, parents included, fail to believe him until postcards turn up from both. This could have been credible, had it not been written about 5 years after the M8 was built. There's also a Broons where Paw, after being forced into buying fish suppers for the whole family, is confronted with them all picking different things now chippies do stuff like pizza, curries etc. All well and good, but HE PAYS FOR ALL 11 PEOPLE WITH A SINGLE NOTE. Unless it's a £50, NAE CHANCE.

But the best thing about the Broons, is Frank Quitely's affectionate parody, The Greens.

ihttp://www.northernlightz.com/images/story_the_greens_row03.gif

is a sort of diary written by Francis

er: written by whichever jobbing hack has really pissed off the editor that week. i don't know if there ever was a francis gay, but there certainly isn't now.

And, aye, the Broons were great but generally when they pretended to be timeless. I saw a Spice Girl in an Oor Wullie once, I'm sure. And a gameboy. But let's not forgot the seminal moment of Maggie in a bikini.

xpost curses

I had guessed Francis Gay wasn't still alive, unless he was somehow preserved in cryogenic stasis or maybe some home-made jam. I should have said 'Francis'.

suffice it to say: from what he shared, it might as well have been the 1880s/1890s.

I think the rest of the media likes to pretend they don't exist. The Sunday Post never appears in newspaper circulation round-ups either. Maybe that's their choice.

As late as the 1980s, the Sunday Post had a readership of 2.7 million, which represented two-thirds of the entire Scottish adult population, which was some kind of record for saturation.

http://www.fortunecity.com/athena/exercise/2492/OORWULLIE/04b98e40.gif

[geek bit]It's especially amazing they got papers out when you realise that they were working with Quark 1 on SE/30s. 30mins for a mono page to EPS.

I can't believe no-one's mentioned Billy Sloan.

My old flatmates once had a totally made up story in the centre pages of the Sunday Post. I will recount later, but I have to leave NOW to get to the Lansdowne in time for the Celtic game (I may be pushing it a bit)

But this is "things and people that I like"...

Never met the guy, so I don't have anything against him personally, but he does champion some rubbish. Still, his bits on Scotland Today have produced some moments of comedy gold. "He's not a rapper, he's a singer, but I think this will go down well with the young people." On Ian Wright's short lived pop career.

!!!

see, i'm not really named after the damned song: dr grimly-fiendish was actually a character in a children's book called "the founding of evil hold school", by one nokolai tolstoy. and when i started posting to ILX, i'd just been rearranging my bookshelves and found it and ... well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

but i've just dug the book out and i see it's dated 1968. which means baxendale got there first. wow. top work, old cartoon fella.

http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/g/grimfien.jpg

the likeness is uncanny.

FFS. it's been a long day. nikolai.

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.

ihttp://www.toffs.com/xtraThumb/3065.gif

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.

If "lucrative" meant even the possibility of a penny a year, given it's fun and 1) my job isn't and 2) the bonus is worth the square root of fuck all (in real terms, it's actually about two weeks wages, but you're supposed to work hard all year to get it and these are more or less real time - with work fitting in wherever) then doing this instead of actually working is several orders of magnitude "better".

Fuck me, I wish I could just write pish for a living. With an editor these screeds might be almost entertaining.

ally looks so young, in that photo!!!

I would actually like to go and visit again as an adult. I remember being taken by a child, and not being very impressed by much, except running around chasing my brother screaming and pretending to go at him with a claymore or something. My mum said there was a book where you could look people up to see if any of your ancestors had died there, and she claimed to have found quite a few.

I did like the descriptions in the book of the Highlanders being so terrifying that most of the early battles just involved the loyalists turning around running away. :-)

Or just say I can't type for the life of me, especially using this mysteriously bouncey keyboard.

I'm even more confused now!

I once heard of a guy at Celtic Park saying "aw naw er Annoni on an aw noo" which is brilliant if you say it quickly.

(trans: Oh no! There's Annoni* on as well now)
(*Enrico Annoni: pish Italian defender who was once Celtic's highest earner)

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/vli/language/scots/index.htm

It's pure mad n'at huvvin yer ain pairliment n'at ay?

Even better than "Glaswegian Windoos" or whatever it was called.

That makes the linguist in me roll over on my back and waggle my arms and legs in the air with joy!

Awright troops!

(And FWIW, Scots is not just a "Translated for Neds" type dialect - it is actually a separate language, related to Old English/Anglo Saxon but with more Scandinavian influence and less Norman.)

There's more linguistic, grammatical and vocabulary evidence - as well as historical - that English and Scots are different languages than, say, Swedish and Norwegian.

x-post, I am such a linguistic pedant, sigh.

x-post

I can't see any real grammatical difference at all, based on the page linked to above. It's just spelling and the odd bit of vocabulary.

Yes, all that is true. But why the but? Let them!

x-post: Saying that Scots is a dialect of English kind of sounds like "well English was here first and the Scots just starting speaking it all weird". Of course, I don't think that.

Yes. Reading Tore Janson's book about language Speak, one of the things that struck me was how important this aspect is, how when nation/empire building, stamping out regional dialects/languages in a draconian way often does achieve its aim, even in the long-term. Without it, countries do fail to gel as nations. I often get all confused about where my sympathies lie when it comes to nationalism.

You forgot the one about coming in pissed and switching on your PC first before even considering the kettle/toaster.

(when I met Ned, I introduced myself by asking him if he had a blue tie. He quickly realised it was me.)

I was just going to cite them! Even (especially?) their English member.

I love this thread.

Also there is the possibility that I will just eat them all myself.

I noticed upthread that I was going to tell the story of my flatmates being in the Sunday Post. They were in a band, and wanted some publicity. They therefore went to the Sunday Post with a ridiculous story of how they met their drummer - he had come round to audition for the band and had looked through the singer's tape collection and found a demo tape from a previous band of his there which, suprise, had been given to the singer by a friend of a friend and had become a big favourite of his, and he'd always wanted to meet the people responsible. And now he had, and now they're in a band together.

This story, incidentally, does not have one iota of truth to it. Yet there it was in the centre pages of the Sunday Post alongside other heartwarming tales of hillwalking dogs and marathon running lollipop ladies.

In other exciting news, you can read Francis Gay online!. There's something not quite right about the Sunday Post being on teh interweb, but I like that their website is reassuringly pish.

Tell me about it, I've eaten 6 myself since Thursday night.

I have a friend who was also involved in a fake Sunday Post centre page story. Three times. It was quite lucrative, letting Little Old Ladies laugh at the Youth Of Today.

R.I.P. Ivor Cutler

The trailer features Dominik Diamond - for one glorious moment I thought Aldo had had his hair cut and had been drafted in as a talking head following the powers-that-be at the BBC reading this thread. Sadly not.

(that rant about plain bread still makes me weep helpless tears of laughter every time I read it).

No Irvine Welsh on this thread - does everyone hate him the noo?

Irvine Welsh is equal parts classic and dud. His last two novels were a marked return to form after a dodgy spell.

I am sad this never came true.

Och aye

Different sections that can be read in any order, the sidebars of blockplags/diplags/etc., author's interjections, artwork: everything in it cries out to be hyperlinked with everything else in it (see also Life: A User's Manual, The Unfortunates, Arcades Project etc. etc.).

What does "gadgee" actually mean? Is it like saying "shitboy" up north, or "buster" down south, just a way of showing disrespect for someone without it being too aggy?

It's just a word for any random wee guy about town. Not always disrespectful.

(I'm from the wrong coast so I might be talking shit)

mad wee guys are radge gadges

It's just a general terms, like "bloke" where I come from, but I'm not sure if it has connotations elsewhere.

xpost

Is it Romany? Apparently a lot of slang on the East Coast (Scotland AND North England) is. So I've been told.

I'm reading Christopher Brookmyre books and learning all kinds of new slang! I like his books, there's some Scottish things.

That last Brookmyre book on the serial killer big brother stuff was badly written drivel.
Easily his worst book and the only real clunker he's published, the one before it about spiritualism was great.

Scotland is no bad.

think that should be the new motto instead of Nemo me impune lacessit.

Scotland Isnae Bad

I liked Leith, being asked if I wanted "salt and sauce," and the Glasgow Necropolis.

Also: Robert Louis Stevenson.

Alcholism?

AC/DC?

Limmy's Show

I like Scottish banknotes but am more than a little irked by English shopkeepers' unwillingness to accept them. What gives?

Imagine how much more irked you'd be if you were Scottish.

Scottish banknotes are unusual, first because they are issued by retail banks, not central banks, and second, because they are technically not legal tender anywhere in the United Kingdom – not even in Scotland.[1][2] As such, they are classified as promissory notes, and the law requires that the issuing banks hold a sum of Bank of England banknotes or gold equivalent to the total value of notes issued.[3][4]

Imagine how much more irked you'd be if you were Scottish.

I do think about that fwiw.

So why do they exist in the first place? Is it a botched, nigh contemptuous symbolic allowance?

and you can still execute a Scot with a crossbow if they try to pay for horseshoes with ye counterfitte currencies between maundy thursday and whit sunday.

95% of scottish notes test positive for traces of ground-up shortbread iirc

All the more reason to prefer them to their English counterparts.

So why do they exist in the first place? Is it a botched, nigh contemptuous symbolic allowance?

Apparently banks in England used to be able to print their own notes too:

Until the middle of the 19th century, privately owned banks in Great Britain and Ireland were free to issue their own banknotes. Paper currency issued by a wide range of provincial and town banking companies in England,[3][4][5] Wales,[6] Scotland[7] and Ireland[8] circulated freely as a means of payment.

As gold shortages affected the supply of money, note-issuing powers of the banks were gradually restricted by various Acts of Parliament,[9] until the Bank Charter Act 1844 gave exclusive note-issuing powers to the central Bank of England. Under the Act, no new banks could start issuing notes; and note-issuing banks gradually vanished through mergers and closures. The last private English banknotes were issued in 1921 by Fox, Fowler and Company, a Somerset bank.[9]

However, some of the monopoly provisions of the Bank Charter Act only applied to England and Wales.[10] The Bank Notes (Scotland) Act was passed the following year, and to this day, three retail banks retain the right to issue their own sterling banknotes in Scotland, and four in Northern Ireland.[11][12] Notes issued in excess of the value of notes outstanding in 1844 (1845 in Scotland) must be backed up by an equivalent value of Bank of England notes.[13]

I think it's more a case of lets give the Scots their little freedoms, keep the fuckers on side.

... little being the operative word.

Interesting, thanks.

Cullen skink
Haggis
Vegetarian haggis
Innis & Gunn beer
Bruichladdich
Castles

I will now answer the thread question in boring fashion

Cullen skink
Haggis
Vegetarian haggis
Innis & Gunn beer
Bruichladdich
Castles

ludacris otm

lol wtf how did I xpost myself with an edited version

that mangoes on the run beer by innis & gunn is so good

Ferguzade, Scotland's version of Lucozade.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FBo_PvkX0AAYwRI.jpg

"DAUGHTERS keep radiant on it". This can't be real!?

Vague and fond memories of those Chewin' the Fat sketches that were ads for a beer you drank in the morning: "it's never too early for a Fusilier".

It's 100% genuine.

https://www.doyouremember.co.uk/memory/ferguzade

It was from Forfar, you couldn't make that up!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0CYB5V9e64

It's weird because Lucozade isn't that far from Irn Bru, anyway, in terms of taste and spiritual sustenance.

This is deep Glasgow lore, but this place popped into my head the other day.

I even wondered if I might have imagined it, but I definitely visited at least once.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-DvmtFGTdI
https://stvfootagesales.tv/content/buck-rogers-burger-station-glasgow/
https://www.glasgowlive.co.uk/news/history/glasgow-burgers-rogers-station-14717048

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA3JH5tfTYg

James Kelman is fantastic.

Wish Bill Forsyth would direct a new film

Ah yes this video is a classic

NTS: Must rewatch Gregory's Girl

Housekeeping (1987) is just a masterpiece. I really wish his original cut of Being Human (1993) was commercially available