Raw Spirit (3 page)

Last advantage. This really only affects people in London for now, but if I read the rules correctly, you can drive a Land Rover like mine into the central charging zone of London without having to pay the congestion charge. I’m not saying you
should
, of course, but I think in theory you could.

This is because a 110 County Station Wagon of this vintage has at least ten passenger seats. In theory it has eleven, believe it or not, but that includes the central seat in the front right beside the driver, where your passenger basically gets sexually assaulted every time an even-numbered gear is selected. Most people replace this effectively useless so-called seat with a cubby box for storing handy Landy stuff. As a result of this bizarre proliferation of seats and seat belts, the vehicle is effectively classed as a bus, and while it does mean that you face the added expense of an MOT from year one of ownership, not year three, this would easily be outweighed for Londoners by the benefits of even just a couple of weeks’ free driving into the city centre.

Still a fine, bright, sunny day. Not warm, but mild, even on the water. The ferry shoulders its way through the knee-high waves; Gourock’s drawn-out southern limits draw away and I walk to the other side of the boat to watch Dunoon and Argyll come closer.

What the hell am I doing here?

It all started a few months ago, with my agent. The way things are supposed to when you’re a professional, after all. I was sitting at home in North Queensferry reading the paper and minding my own business on a cool October day when the phone rang.

‘Hello?’

‘Banksie. It’s Mic. I may have something for you.’

My agent is called Mic Cheetham; she’s one of the best, kindest, nicest people I’ve ever met, but that’s in civilian mode; as an agent she has the great and invaluable merit of treating the authors she represents like her cubs. She’s the tigress, and you don’t get between her and them, or even think about doing anything unpleasant to them, unless you want to be
professionally
mauled. Mic is a very good friend but when she’s in full-on agent mode I’m just mainly glad that she’s on my side. What was Wellington’s remark about his troops? ‘I don’t know what effect they’ll have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me.’ Something like that.

Anyway, Mic knows through years of experience and a deep tolerance of my congenital laziness that at least 95 per cent of the proposals that people contact her with concerning spiffing projects they want me to be part of she can either say No to without even asking me – though she’ll always mention it later – or promise to pass on but with the warning that there’s relatively little hope that I’m actually going to say Yes.

And if Mic says she might have something for me, it must be a proposal worth thinking about. The last time she sounded like this I ended up driving a Formula One car round the Magny-Cours circuit in deepest France for
Car
magazine and having a great time (with reservations; I discovered I’m really a pretty rubbish track driver).

‘Uh-huh?’ I said, successfully containing my excitement.

‘How do you fancy being driven round every distillery in Scotland in a taxi and drinking lots of whisky? And then writing a book about it? For a not insubstantial sum. What d’you think? Eh? Hmm? Interested?’

I was so excited I think I took my feet off the desk.

I thought quickly (no, really). ‘Can I drive the taxi?’

‘Then you can’t drink.’

‘I’ll do the drinking later.’

‘Then I don’t see why not.’

‘Why a taxi anyway?’

‘I think they’re going for the incongruity factor; a black cab round the Highlands, puttering through the misty glens beneath the fearsome peaks, that sort of thing.’

‘These people are from London, aren’t they?’

‘Where else? Plus they thought you might share some witty repartee with a garrulous Glasgow cabbie.’

‘So they don’t know me; good, good …’

‘Anyway, Banksie, what do you think?’

‘Can we ditch the taxi? I mean, they’re fine in cities, but some of these distilleries are hundreds of miles away in the middle of nowhere.’

‘What do you propose to do? Walk?’

‘No, I’ll just use my own wheels. I’ll drive myself. To drink. Ha!’

‘So you’d be alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then where’s the witty repartee?’

‘Maybe I can get some of my pals to come along and help with the driving and the tasting and the repartee side of things. Some of my friends are quite witty. Well, they’re always insulting me. That’s the same thing, isn’t it?’

‘Of course it is, my dear.’

‘… Hmm. And we are talking expenses included here, right? Petrol, hotels? Umm … More petrol?’

‘Of course.’

‘And you really think they’ll fall – they’ll agree to this?’

You can hear somebody smile over the phone sometimes, just by the quality of their voice. ‘Leave it with me.’

‘Brilliant! I’ll do it!’

Which is why I find myself standing on the deck of this ferry, heading for sunny Dunoon, about to start the research phase of – gee! – my first non-fiction book. This next week on Islay should be fun if I don’t let the war get me down. And then there’s Jura, of course; I want to get across to Jura this time, to visit the distillery there and maybe get to see Orwell’s old house near the northern tip, and even – just possibly – finally see the Corryvrecken, the great tidal whirlpool between the north of Jura and the south of Scarba which I’ve heard about and seen some footage of (and mentioned in an earlier book or two) but always wanted to experience for myself. I mean; a whirlpool! One so ferocious you can hear it from miles away! How cool is that?

From Dunoon along the coast road – past the peaceful-again Holy Loch where the old US Polaris subs had their floating
dock
and support ships – to the first of the Great Wee Roads we’re going to encounter in this book. Officially it’s called the B836 but I’m really bad at recalling road numbers so to me it’s filed in my head as the Great Wee Road To The Left Just Outside Dunoon Before You Get To The Younger’s Botanical Gardens That Takes You Towards The Kyles Of Bute, The Colintraive Ferry For Bute, Tighnabruich And The Ferry For Tarbert. Or something like that.

At the head of Loch Striven I pass a field filled with huge dark brown wooden poles lying on the grass in the hazy sunlight. They look like oversize telephone poles, but must be due to carry power lines. The smell of creosote fills the Land Rover’s cabin. Sometime round about here I realise I’m going to miss the next ferry to Tarbert, where I’ve been hoping to drop in on some old friends – and thus complete a clean sweep of ex-editors this weekend – so I take a detour to Otter Ferry via a precipitous wee road curling over the hills towards Loch Fyne.

Great Wee Roads: a digression
.

A Great Wee Road in my terminology just means a small road that isn’t a main route and which is fun to drive. Often it will be a short cut or at least an alternative route to the main road. It will virtually never be quicker than the main-road route but it will be a pleasure to drive, perhaps partly because it has less traffic, partly because it goes through lots of beautiful scenery and perhaps because it has lots of flowing curves, sudden dips, challenging hills and/or fast straights (though GWRs rarely have many of those). A GWR can be extremely slow – often
way
below the legal limit – and still be enormous fun, it can even be a single-track road, quite busy with traffic and so somewhat frustrating, and yet still be a hoot, and some roads only really become GWRs when it’s raining and you have to slow down.

Anyway, that single-lane-with-passing-places route over to Otter Ferry – snaking up some deciduously wooded slopes
towards
the broad flat tops of the low hills and their close-ranked bristles of pines – is definitely a GWR.

By the side of Loch Fyne I head north again and back down Glendaurel, finally having to press on once more as I’ve ever so slightly underestimated the time required – again – and so end up gunning the Defender up the long curving slopes towards the viewpoint looking out over the Kyles of Bute (this is one of the best views in Argyll, maybe one of the great views of Scotland; a vast, opening delta of ragged, joining lochs, flung arcs of islets and low-hilled island disappearing into the distance).

This must be the first time – certainly the first time in decent weather – I haven’t stopped to take in that great sweep of view. The Land Rover tackles the hill fast in top gear, leaning mightily on the bends but still seat-of-the-pants secure; it feels good, but I’m annoyed at myself for not being able to spare the view more than a glance as I whiz by the car park at the summit.

Getting on to the ferry from Portavadie to Tarbert is a bit easier than it used to be; last time I was here you had to reverse onto the boat, which must have been fun if you were towing a caravan. Back then, a few years ago now, my car was the only vehicle on the ferry, which felt kind of romantic somehow. I was on the way to meet an ex-girlfriend for lunch; a strictly platonic visit, but, still, there was a certain poignancy there.

A year or so later the same ferry figured at the start of the first episode of the TV adaptation of
The Crow Road
, with young Joe McFadden playing the central character, Prentice McHoan, standing all alone on the deck, coming back to his family home for a funeral. I remember watching that first episode on a pre-transmission video and being very nervous –
The Crow Road
was the first book I’d ever had successfully adapted for the screen – and when I saw that first image, and made the connection with the ferry journey I’d taken a year or so earlier, I had one of those It’s-going-to-be-all-right Good Omen feelings that I’m not sure atheists like me are really allowed to have (but
appreciate
now and again all the same), and relaxed, deciding that probably this was going to be a good adaptation. Which, I’m happy to report, it was.

For the whole journey I’ve been listening to a mixture of the radio and some ancient select tapes; the radio for the latest news on the war and the old compilation tapes because I’m still feeling a bit emotional about the war, I suppose, and want something nostalgic and comforting to listen to. I’ve brought my Apple iPod too, along with the adaptor that lets it communicate with the Land Rover’s tape player (CDs are
far
too hi-tech for Defenders of this vintage; I counted myself lucky it hadn’t arrived with a seventies-stylee eight-track) but I haven’t bothered connecting it.

So my listening consists of a mixture of breathless embedded journalists telling me how much progress the US and British troops are making, dashing across the sands towards Baghdad and Basra, and old songs from the decade before the first Gulf War.

Tarbert to Kennacraig, where the ferry for Islay leaves, takes ten minutes. The voyage to Port Ellen lasts a couple of hours, the late afternoon becoming night. On the boat I sit in the bar reading the paper, soaking up the war, then read some of the whisky books I’ve brought along as research. I drink a couple of pints. Usually if I’m going to be driving later I don’t drink alcohol but if I’m on a long ferry journey with a very short drive at the far end I’ll allow myself up to the legal limit. Two pints of Export is safe enough, though it’s also heading up towards my other limit, when I start thinking, Hmm, quite fancy a fag.

Blame the dope. When I first started smoking the occasional joint it was always resin crumbled into tobacco – I don’t think I
saw
grass for about ten years after my first J – and later, especially during what you might call binge smoking sessions, when my pals and I were arguably too wrecked to roll another number or load just one more bong, it was just sociable as well as a hell of a lot easier to have a straight, smoke an ordinary cigarette. So as a result I have a sort of sporadic, part-time
addiction,
and have decided that yes, that old piece of poisonous propaganda my generation were peddled is actually true, cannabis does lead you on to stronger and much, much more lethal drugs. Well, one, anyway; specifically, to tobacco, if that’s what you mix it with. Ah, the joys of cretinous prohibition (… we’ll be returning to this theme later. Just in case you’re under any illusions).

But it’s odd; when I’m sober I hate the smell of cigarette smoke. I’m the kind of person who tells people smoking on non-smoking trains to put their fag out. (Thinks: Hmm, I believe the technical term for this is ‘hypocrite’? No?) I even do this on the last train, when people are often drunk and seem to think that makes it okay to smoke, and I’ve been known to do this even when they’re bigger than I am or there’s more of them.

However. Just let me sink a few pints or a few whiskies or a few whatever and – especially if I’m with people who smoke – I start thinking that a cigarette would just round the buzz off nicely. Usually I manage to resist. Sometimes, very drunk, feeling extremely socially relaxed, I succumb, and start cadging fags off my pals.

And, while I may not pay for my habit in financial terms – apart from the occasions when I feel I’ve smoked too many of somebody else’s fags, when I’ll go and buy them a packet … though they’re never my fags, you understand; they’re my friends’, because I don’t really smoke, see? – I do pay. Extensive research has revealed that my hangovers are consistently between 50 and 100 per cent worse the next morning if I’ve been smoking, compared to the control group of Standard Bad Hangovers And Their Usual Indicators (number and type of painkillers required, extent of sighing and quiet moaning, ability to string more than three words together, depth of desire to consume large greasy breakfasts, etc.).

On the ferry I also have a Cal Mac chicken curry and chips with lots of tomato sauce. This is, I realise, your basic poor/horribilist cuisine, and almost as awful a confession as owning up to smoking, but it’s become something of a tradition for me on Caledonian MacBrayne ships, especially on the
five-hour
journey from Oban to Barra, where Ann and I spend a week or so most years.

We’re talking the sort of curry you used to get in school, like chip shop curry or a Chinese restaurant curry; curry like they almost don’t do it anywhere else any more (and for good reasons); frequently all glutinous with too much cornflour and with the chicken meat often boiled and simmered down to fibres, the whole thing coloured a suspicious-looking dark, mustardy yellow, doubtless loaded with sodium and E-numbers. Plus the chips are rarely better than okay. However, as a strange sort of slumming-it treat, it works for me. I actually look forward to one of these when we’re planning trips to Barra, and I was genuinely pleased to find that they had the same dish on the Islay service.