Even the road itself was in grand form. A sign, by the side of it, said ‘road liable to icing’. We both laughed and looked around to see if there was any marzipan. Perhaps the pine trees were actually candles in fancy dress? Beside us, an articulated lorry passed, carrying cars that had been squashed by a crusher into tidy boxes. Each one looked like an infinitely complex Rubik’s cube. Crushed chrome and glinting shards of glass twinkled in the weak sunlight.

Flakes of paint fell sparkling onto the motorway in its wake.

We passed through our first Scottish town. It wasn't much to look at. Low squat bungalows like sumo wrestlers of concrete passed either side of us. The place looked impoverished.

And we saw our first Scottish bus. I don’t know why it excited me. Sad, I know. It looked like any other bus. It isn't as if it was wearing a kilt or anything or smelt of porridge and thistles. It really was, just a bus; but it reminded me of another Scottish bus we had encountered a few years back. It was during our first visit to Scotland.

Now, it is a fact that the Scots drive pretty fast on country roads. I can drive fast myself given the chance. Don’t get me wrong. I like speed. Many an insect has been obliterated against the windscreen on our travels. Bumble bees call me the whispering death. Lesley calls me an accident waiting to happen. So I slow down but Scottish buses, in the countryside…

Well, I remember driving along a long, curvy Scottish road, bracketed with tall hedgerows. We were somewhere north of Aberdeen, on our way further northwards toward Banff. I had a trail of traffic building up behind me, despite the speed I was travelling at. It was getting embarrassing. There was no place I could pull into, to let them pass, and their collective Scottish breath was on the back of my neck. I hate being stuck behind a slower driver myself so I was acutely aware of the traffic build up behind. And there it was: my salvation. For as I rounded another corner there was a bus, a single-decker blocking the road to let passengers on.

‘Thank God for that’ I said to Lesley. ‘I can tuck in behind this bus and not feel like I’m the one holding up the Rally at Monte Carlo.’

Lesley agreed and popped a toffee in my mouth.

And then the bus doors shut and it suddenly took off, accelerating like a bat out of hell. It drew away from me at an incredible, death defying speed, completely ignoring the laws of physics, which were running along behind it, out of breath shouting ‘wait for me you crazy bastard!’

I put my foot down to catch up, and it rounded a corner ahead on two wheels.

I chased.

It pulled further away like a formula one racing car.

Not only did I have my foot to the floor, but my jaw joined it as it disappeared into the distance with a puff of exhaust fumes.

Lesley couldn’t breathe for laughing at that point. Not to be outdone I kicked the car into fourth, and fifth, caught a glimpse of its back bumper and then the bus hit warp speed and blink, was gone, out of sight around another a bend; possibly the same one the driver must be round. The last we saw of it, it was leaving the road, jumping over a hill in the distance. I literally couldn’t go any faster. My ears were being stretched into the back seat by the force of acceleration as it was. Lesley looked like she’d had a facelift.

Incredulous and ego dented I decelerated and managed to pull into a side road and let the procession whiz past.

The first Scottish manned space probe will be a bus that hit a speed bump a little too fast. That's why I got excited when I saw the Scottish bus. I missed the first Apollo moon shot. I didn’t want to miss out on the next one, especially when it’s full of pensioners who think they are on their way to the Bingo.

We came off the M74 at Junction 8. There wasn’t a Junction 9 which was odd because it was clearly marked on the map. From there we circumnavigated Glasgow, which again was odd because it isn’t even Jewish. Ouch. And besides, the traffic would have held us up if we hadn't made the detour. Along the A726 we went, which would eventually take us to the Foreskin… I mean, Erskine Bridge; but first, we stopped in a town called (pictured below) Strathaven. We needed to get money out of a cashpoint. We also had to check if some money has been paid into my account. Money was a big problem; specifically; the lack of it. Strictly speaking, we couldn't afford to go away but it was then or never.
I parked up and Lesley went to the cashpoint. The shops, like the buses were also Scottish. I don’t know why it took me by surprise but it did. I'm like this when I travel. We were after all, in Scotland. I found myself reading the shop signs. The place brought to mind stories by Robert Louis Stevenson. This wasn't because the place was old fashioned or quaint, or because the Big Issue seller had a wooden leg and a parrot on his shoulder, because it wasn’t. It was down to my over active imagination. I made notes of the shop names with a vague uneasiness that this is how train spotters start out.

I wrote down:


Scottish sausages dangled in the window. Beside the butcher was:

It had a pleasant blue front. That blue, is what the sky would look like when the big grey cloud, which had come back again, disappeared. On the other side of the butcher shop was an establishment that sold children's clothes. It was called:


Not very Scottish, I admit but that became secondary to the more salient fact that Lesley came back without any money. The cash machine had no money in it; either that or it was just tight fisted. For whatever reason it wouldn't give her any money; but not only that, she had gone into the bank and asked if she could get some money over the counter. A rather rotund and bespectacled cashier had said ‘no, you’ll need a bank account with our branch before you can withdraw money.’

Or a shotgun and a stocking over her head, I thought, rather darkly, when she told me. The rotund man had popped his head out of the front door of the bank, which is how I know what he looked like. She had asked him if he knew where there was another bank in town and he said ‘no’, which was odd because I could see one from where I was parked. No wonder he was a banker, and a complete one at that. If he didn't know there was another bank across the road, then he wouldn't be able to find his backside with both hands if I kicked him in the pants for being such an unhelpful prick.

It was 3.00 pm by the time we headed toward East Kilbride along the A726. We had just passed round a roundabout and on our left were some blocks of flats. The paint was peeling like some kind of skin disease. We continued past them toward Paisley. That’s Paisley the place, and not the man.

The Reverend Ian Paisley is a name familiar to anybody who has heard of the troubles in Northern Ireland. He is quoted as saying ‘Line dancing is as sinful as any other type of dancing, with its sexual gestures and touching. It is an incitement to lust.’ Remembering this, I make a mental note to sign myself up for a couple of lessons. In the 1960s he opposed efforts to deliver civil rights to the minority catholic copulation… oops, I mean, population, of Northern Ireland. He’s sort of like our equivalent of that red-neck racist Bull Connor who so endeared himself in the deep south of America by setting the dogs on civil rights marchers. In July 2004 Paisley was diagnosed with an unnamed illness. I suspect rabid hatred, personally, but what do I know? I’m not a psychiatrist just as the ‘Reverend’ Ian Paisley isn’t actually a Reverend; wanker yes; Reverend, no.

He justified his violent anti-Catholic stance by saying, 'Catholic homes caught fire because they were loaded with petrol bombs; Catholic churches were attacked and burned because they were arsenals and priests handed out sub-machine guns to parishioners; and the massive discrimination in employment and shortage of houses for Catholics were simply because they breed like 'rabbits.' He's also on record as saying the Catholics multiply like 'vermin.'

It must be all that line dancing they do.

We reached the Erskine Bridge at 3:45 after taking a detour along the M8 which was like a rainy roller-coaster ride. A line of toll booths stretched across the entrance to it. Neither of us could remember how much it cost, but we were sure some bluff and cheery Scottish bloke would tell us how much when we reached the booth. The cars in front passed through smoothly, merely pausing to hand over the toll, and then they were away across the bridge and up into the hills. I rolled my window down while Lesley searched for change in her bag. Rather like the Tardis it has infinite capacity within; which is why it took ages to get any change out of it. She should have used the mine detector she has no doubt got in there beside her lipstick; third shelf down just over by the breath fresheners and the horse liniment.

We pulled up at the booth. It was manned by a large chap, about sixty with grey hair and the face of a boxer. He held out a meaty hand like a shovel with fingers.
    ‘How much is it?’ I enquired politely.
    ‘SIXTY PENCE!’ he bellowed.
    Jesus. My ears rang. I flinched.
    ‘Duh’, I mumbled, slightly concussed.
    ‘SIXTY PENCE!’ he said again, just as loud. I scrambled for change and plopped it into his hand. I looked at the big man in the small box, wondering if he was being an arse? His flinty eyes twinkled.
    ‘MUCH OBLIGED!’ he roared again.  I drove off quickly before he shattered the windows by saying ‘HAVE A NICE DAY!’

Lesley was laughing her socks off, and I joined her. I had nothing better to do until my ears stopped bleeding.

She took hold of the camera and said she would take a picture of the bridge for me. It was a nice thought. (When we examined the photograph later (see right), she’d managed to take a photo of her right eye, her nose and me in the background laughing at the fact that she had the camera back to front without knowing it.)

Having arrived safely on the other side of the bridge, we drove along the A82 towards Dumbarton and Loch Lomond. We got stuck in a traffic jam just before reaching Loch Lomond and spent a while sitting behind an ambulance. It wasn't in a hurry. Either the unfortunate passenger was beyond help or they were on their way to pick up a Member of Parliament who had just been hit by a piano; or a Member of Parliament who'd voted for cutbacks in the NHS.

Beside us, there was an old man in a red car. He certainly was in a hurry. He'd driven along the queue as far as us, only the way the road narrowed stopped him from going any further. He had a flat cap and big ears with tufts of hair poking out and a big, pitted nose. A Scottish hobbit. He didn't look at us, just stared ahead like a constipated gun dog with an obsessively compulsive gun doggery disorder.

He sat drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Most people look directly at you in such circumstances, hoping that eye contact makes you more likely to let them in the queue. I had no intention of getting in his way. He looked a very grumpy old git, a real curmudgeon with a permanent frown, but I'd taken a liking to him.

Down the road, if you continued and didn't get flung off by the centrifugal force of the roundabout up ahead,  you would eventually come to a place called Luss on the banks of Loch Lomond. As far as I’m aware it’s pronounced loose. Maybe the old man had heard there were Luss women up ahead and wanted one last tango before his music stops? I sneaked another look at him and wished him luck.

The traffic moved. He moved ahead of us. Perhaps he'd left his false teeth in the ambulance?

We all moved on up the A82.

There were several turn-offs on the roundabout as we approached it. One of them was the hair sprouting out from the tufted ears of the old man. The other led to the Trossachs. I chuckled. So did Lesley. We had seen a sign for a place called Ballach on the map. There's nothing like funny names to entertain you on a journey, which reminded me:

One time while we were up near Banff, which is far north of Aberdeen, we had been told about a family called Twat. I laughed until I thought I’d get lockjaw. A family name of ‘Twat’. This, as we know, is a slang term for vagina, if you’ll forgive my directness but I don't see the point in beating about the bush; if you know what I mean.

On our local sightseeing travels, we actually came across the business that was owned by the Twats. I slammed on the brakes and screeched to a halt when I saw it.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ Lesley said, somewhat alarmed pulling her face back off the dashboard. I reversed and she saw it; the Twat Factory. There it was, large as life. They sold potatoes. A sign proudly proclaimed Alan Twat above the door of the warehouse. I howled with delighted laughter and Lesley’s chuckle spun off into overdrive. I leapt out of the car with my camera. Nobody would believe this. I just had to get a photo so I snapped away in between fits of laughter. My sides ached. Suddenly Lesley called out for me to get back in the car but I was having too much fun. I barely noticed the other car coming down the road. When it pulled into the grounds of the factory, I gave it a little more attention. I was going to go over and say, ‘Look! Have you seen this sign?’ but then realised I was actually in the presence of the Twats; a whole family of them.

Granny Twat, Mummy Twat, Daddy Twat and Twat Junior got out of their car and looked at me, my camera and my stupid grin. They didn’t look too amused either, so I got back in the car.

I felt like a complete, eh... twat, actually