Daniel Gray - This Is Scotland: A Country in Words and Pictures

DANIEL GRAY

This is Scotland is Daniel Grays fifth book. His first solo work, Homage to Caledonia: Scotland and the Spanish Civil War (Luath), was turned into a two-part television documentary for STV . His second, Stramash: Tackling Scotlands Towns and Teams (Luath), received widespread acclaim, with The Herald calling it A brilliant way to rediscover Scotland, which made getting lost in Cumbernauld while researching the book worthwhile. Grays most recent work, Hatters, Railwaymen and Knitters: Travels through Englands Football Provinces , was published by Bloomsbury and, according to The New Statesman is A delight. An exiled Yorkshireman, he lives in Leith.

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ALAN M c CREDIE

Alan McCredie is the photographer behind 100 Weeks of Scotland , a celebrated online project documenting all aspects of Scottish life in the two years before the independence referendum. It appears weekly via The Scotsman and is published as a book by Luath Press. McCredie has been a freelance photographer for a decade, working with most major agencies in Scotland and beyond. He has specialised in theatre and television but is perhaps best known for his documentary and travel photography. A member of the Document Britain photo collective, he is a Perthshire man lost to Leith.

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This is Scotland

A Country in Words and Pictures

Daniel Gray and Alan McCredie

Luath Press Limited

EDINBURGH

www.luath.co.uk

First published 2014

ISBN : 978-1-910021-59-0

ISBN (EBK): 978-1-910324-35-6

The publishers acknowledge the support of Creative Scotland towards the publication of this volume.

The authors right to be identified as author of this work under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has been asserted.

Words Daniel Gray, Pictures Alan McCredie

Cover, book and map design by Daniel Gray

For Jenny, Eilidh and Joe.

ALAN M c CREDIE

To the memory of Tony Benn, who encouraged, and encourages, me.

DANIEL GRAY

T his is not Scotland as the brochures display it. This is everyday Scotland not a nation seen wearing kilts or in the middle of eccentric rituals and festivities but a nation of beautiful, haggard normality.

It is a place of Tuesday mornings at the bus station, not solstice ceilidhs or bagpipes by foggy lochs.

This Scotland is seen at a once-in-a-lifetime juncture, yet it could be any era: it is just that the clothes are different. While politicians and people with too much time to think became fixated with Ayes and Naws, this Scotland just went about things as usual. It always will. We wanted to see the normal moments it lived in and document them, to put on paper the daily grind you set your watch by, not annual and rare dates on a calendar. Something to look back on, something to read and realise in years to come that not much really changes when humans are around. Something to draw comfort from and smile with.

Our book does not claim to be exhaustive, academic or deep, but seeks to offer a fond glimpse of and a flirty glance at Scotland. This country is quick and right to celebrate its lochs, hills and glens. Yet we think there is romance too in the run-down town and the battered old pub, and poetry in urban decay. It is chips in the rain with your arms around someone youve just met and want to kiss, not haggis and forced dancing with businessmen on Burns Night.

Further, there is more fascination for us in a gaggle of pensioners sucking on smokes outside the bingo than in epic Highland moonscapes. This is Scotland seen not with an itinerary or through an internet search, but via an aimless bimble.

The words and pictures are meant to complement one another, each filling in gaps, but not so fully as to leave nothing to the imagination. Portions of overheard conversations add context and paint the air, social history and local tales speak of yesterdays well lived. These histories remind us that it is very often the small, neglected places which make a country, if not the world.

There was no rationale for our route, other than a vague feeling that the places in this book would contain sights and stories worth recording. We did not end up exploring the south west or north of Scotland as much as we would have liked, though that came down more to parental responsibilities than disinterest or unwillingness: this is no rock n roll, Caledonian On the Road . In any case, we preferred trains where possible, and even a paddle steamer.

In our defence, Edwin Muir only travelled to half a dozen places for his Scottish Journey , probably the best travelogue about Scotland of the last 100 years. We too went to what is now called Inverclyde and Dundee, though were slightly more generous in our offerings than Muirs conclusion that:

Port Glasgow and Greenock comfortably stink and rot, two of the dirtiest and ugliest towns in Scotland, with a natural position second only to Dundee, which is the dirtiest and ugliest of all.

Muirs book is ingrained with a sadness about what he sees as a country in decline. It is one that is:

gradually being emptied of its population, its spirit, its wealth, industry, art, intellect and innate character.

Before our meanderings began, it was not a Scotland either of us recognised, but then our own version could, we realised, be a false, or at least different, one. Leaving that version behind in Leith, in Grangemouth, Cowdenbeath and Pitlochry, Caithness, the Hebrides, Govan and elsewhere, we would seek to find out just who exactly Scotland is.

These places would also help us to present a non-homogeneous Scotland at a time when political discourse sought to stamp on the country a solid, corporate identity.

Across twelve areas we would look for a country, eat a lot of chip sandwiches and see more pebbledash walls than any person should. We wanted to capture everyday Scotland for every day to come, the view from the lens and the pen as it was in the second decade of the 21st century.

We hope this book sings you a song.

T his street, this whooshing artery. For a mile it rolls, a river with tributaries of dirty-beach-coloured tenements. Leith Walk, or The Walk if youre from these parts, is not a street but a documentary.

Everything can be found here, just like the brochures say about other places. This is a different kind of everything. It is shops that repair televisions and sell dartboards, and shops displaying vegetables of which white people will never know the names. It is the old boy in a kilt asking of you pence for a brew. It is the young girl in oversized glasses on her way to talk about design specs in a bar that will never sell Tennents lager. It is dog muck on your feet if youre not careful, and a smile from someone handsome if youre good.