I actually did read Tony Blair’s memoirs in 2010, despite having sworn on these pages, quite petulantly, that I would not.
I actually did read Tony Blair’s memoirs in 2010, despite having sworn on these pages, quite petulantly, that I would not. The bit that sticks in the mind is his description of Millennium Eve. You’ll have heard about it, because it’s already the only bit of the book that anybody seems to remember or ever mentions, because it’s funny, because he hated it. He’s in the Millennium Dome, every newspaper editor in the country is stuck on the tube at Stratford, he’s standing next to the Queen who doesn’t want to be there either, and he suddenly becomes convinced that one of the trapeze artists circling over their heads is going to fall down and kill her, thus severely harming his prospects of a second term. It’s a wonder Gordon Brown wasn’t up there with a craft knife, hacking away at the wires.
Actually it isn’t, because Brown was in Scotland. Blair would have wanted to be there, too. All Scots wish to be in Scotland for Hogmanay. It’s in the DNA. If we aren’t there, we realise, we’ll end up doing something dismal, like drinking warm champagne with people we don’t even know, in some ghastly bit of Greenwich. I have spent three Hogmanays in England, which is at least two too many. Sentimental as it may sound, I approached each one with a sense of loss.
There are reasons for this. Of all the areas in which modern Scots excel (grinding economies into the dust, freeing terrorists, sectarianism, heart disease, cycling, biotech, mawkishness, literature about heroin, the manufacture of shortbread, etc) I’d say that Hogmanay is the one at which we excel the very most. It’s thus an oddity that our nearest neighbours are the English, who could not first foot their way out of a brown paper bag.
I’m not kidding. You English are worse at New Year’s Eve than any other nation on Earth. I saw it in in France once, and it was brilliant. South Africa held its own. I did it in India and it was one of the best nights of my life, even though a stranger fired a shotgun at me and I nearly got arrested seven times by the same policeman. In England it has always been dismal. You pay a tenner to get into a pub where you can’t sit down, and the staff hate you because they have to stay up past 11 p.m. I heard a story once, probably an urban myth, about a department store in Yokohama which had as its Christmas display a crucified Santa. Hogmanay in England is like that. You don’t know what you’re doing, or why, and the harder you try, the worse it gets.
There’s not much, these days, that would mark me as a Scot. The accent went so fast that people assume I ditched it on purpose. (I didn’t. I want it back.) I’m predictably chippy about the kilt and haggis, but only because I own the former and don’t like to admit I look stupid in it, and ate loads of the latter at school, and thus know from wide experience that bollock and lung actually make for pretty good eating. Hogmanay, though, is the one that brands me.
At the time of writing, I’m planning on spending mine in a house with friends near Oban. I’ll watch some telly, eat a little too much, drink a lot too much and probably fall asleep on the floor. And yes, I could do all that where I now live in London, but up there it will be somehow different and entirely better. If you’re Scottish, you’ll know what I mean. If you’re not, poor sods, you won’t. Here’s tae us. Wha’s like us? Gey few and they’re aw’ deid.
Were the Sixties any good? I know the Summer of Love thing only applied to about eight people, but I always used to think that I’d have enjoyed being one of them. But then, just the other day ago for me, but probably weeks ago for you (time in magazines gets complicated at this time of year), I saw what looked like an episode of Absolutely Fabulous unfurling on the steps of Westminster Magistrates Court. Every loaded psuedo-lefty in west London was there, all for some reason having views about what Julian Assange probably does in bedrooms. And I suddenly realised. The Sixties were awful, weren’t they? Grandstanding egos all over the place. I now worry that hearing Bob Dylan wouldn’t have made me find myself, grow my hair and shack up with a bird called Stardust at all. It would have made me think, ‘Get a wash and haircut you sanctimonious git, and then have a good hard think about how dreadful the world would be if everybody was like you.’ It’s come as a shock.
Hugo Rifkind is a writer for the Times.
Comments