Scotland

Every time I come here it astonishes me once again how incredibly bleak this country is. Over the course of the past year I made a dozen trips up here. The highest temperature I ever observed in Aberdeen was 12, and that was in July. The hotel still had the heat on. Many of my travels take me to small , random provincial cities (Perth, Stirling, Inverurie) that always seem to require l

engthy travel for often very brief meetings. One of the frustrating things about provincial Scotland is that you always need a cab to get around. The trains don’t always go to all the places, and even if they do, once you get there, there is no public transport to get around, certainly not to industrial states on the outskirts of towns. going over my expenses this evening, I calculate I have spent over 150 pounds on cab fares, and that is fairly typical for a day trip to Scotland. Add on my food and drink expenses and it has been a pricey day. The other reason for needing to take cabs is that the weather makes other forms of transit unreliable. In my year of traveling here, I have had every sort of natural

disaster strike (Icelandic ash clouds, fog, blizzards, torrential rain etc) and every time the last transport to collapse has been the cabbies. So it was today. I left London at 5am and it was 13 degrees. By the time I landed in Edinburgh it was pouring rain and 1 degree. I went to meet a friend in the centre for a coffee. By the time I got to Waverley, it was snowing. In late morning I got a train to Perth, and by Haymarket it was a blizzard. I managed to get to Perth, but all the trains back were cancelled, yet for £70 someone was willing to drive me. Predictably, by the time I got back to Edinburgh airport, it was sunny and there was no sign they had had snow at all- the typically Scottish four seasons in one day. As one of the cab drivers put it, Scotland has unbeatable scenery and natural beauty, but you cant do anything about the grim weather.

But it is not only the weather that is grim. Waiting for meetings, I kill hours in desolate pubs, serving dishes I cant even recognize. I sit, waiting and watching. I watch people getting hammered at 11am, mothers feeding fried pizza and chips to their kids for lunch, fighting by 3pm, bored staff, and overweight, pasty faced people of all ages. It is grim. my meetings tend to be repetitive, the questions variations of the same. Then I always end up back at the same place- Edinburgh airport. After a client lunch that (regardless of the client) has generally made my normally tolerant arteries clench up, I always head for the Yo sushi bar. I am not generally a Yo sushi fan,

but after a day of fried mars bars, the thought of cucumber Maki seems appealing. Afterwards I check the board, find my flight slightly delayed, wander past the Rosetta stone stand and marvel all the languages I wish I spoke, then flop down in a booth in the pub across from gates 10 and 11 and wait for my flight. Or I wander into the BA lounge and look for some vaguely readable publication, which normally ends up with me flipping through the Scotsman for 10 minutes, ordering a wine and waiting for my flight. I check my email. I got over a power point. I make some phone calls. I sip my wine. Another day done.