Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect Dram

by Iain Banks

  Happy cars: in defence of anthropomorphism.

  This is all, obviously, about our perceptions, about human comfort, in the end; when we talk about a car enjoying a certain speed all we mean is that we feel happy with the sensations we experience while in the car at that velocity, based on our earlier experiences of being in cars. To the extent that a car exhibits (in the widest sense) behaviour, this is what makes us treat it as alive even though we know perfectly well that it isn’t. The conceit of ascribing emotional states to cars or other vehicles is simply shorthand for expressing our knowledge of the parameters within which the vehicle is designed to perform and its current relationship to – and position within – those parameters.

  A degree of mechanical sympathy is necessary here; an even moderately good driver should experience a degree of discomfort if they hear an engine being overrevved, and, equally, when a person feels that a car is humming along, engine singing, their sensation that the car is ‘happy’ probably reflects as accurately as possible a state in which the vehicle is performing just as its human designers intended it to in those conditions.

  So, in the 911, with the top down, wind roar and hair-mussing tend to increase beyond the acceptable at very much more than a mile per minute, and certainly when sustaining such speeds for long periods, and it’s that feeling of being battered by the slipstream that tends to rein in any accelerator-flattening proclivities while you’re exposed to the elements.

  And exposed to the elements is how you jolly-well should be driving it, of course, unless it’s absolutely bucketing with rain (though, thanks to the effects of that same slipstream, you can drive with the top down in quite heavy rain and still keep dry. Until, of course, you stop, say at traffic lights. Then you get soaked). Nevertheless, it has to be said the number of people driving soft tops with the hood raised on beautiful sunny days is one of road life’s more perplexing enigmas.

  And it doesn’t have to be a scorcher, either. Some of the most fun to be had with a convertible is in the winter, when you get a fine, clear, crisp sunny day. You’ll need outdoor clothing, and a hat and gloves probably, even with the heating turned up, but the sheer joy of zipping through the winter countryside with a blue sky above and somewhere or nowhere in particular to go is entirely worth the effort, even if you do sometimes get the odd funny look.

  There is an even more esoteric kind of joy to be had driving in the country with the top down at night, though this is best in the summer. Then it’s the smells you notice. Your nose gets more of a workout in a soft top than it would in a closed car anyway, but something about a summer evening darkening into night seems to bring out the scents of the surrounding land with particular intensity.

  Perhaps equally esoterically, in a 911 you come to appreciate things you’d never think of appreciating, like driving past walls, under bridges and through tunnels. These hard surfaces all reflect engine noise (it’s behind you, remember, so you’re always leaving the sound behind, never driving through it as you would in a front-engine car) and the engine noise a 911 makes is definitely something worth hearing; a bassily metallic clatter like a sextet of barely muffled pneumatic drills.

  For my next trip I will require the help of a member of the choochter race … Ken MacLeod is a proper Islander, from Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides – also collectively known as the Long Island, which sounds more romantic (and a large part of the character of these isles is created by the tension between their undeniably romantic appearance and the effort and practical compromises required to live there all year long).

  Ken’s family come from Skye and Lochcarron, on the mainland. He was brought up on Lewis – with lots of brothers and sisters – until his father, who was a minister in the Free Presbyterian Kirk, moved to Greenock in the sixties. This was a considerably more traumatic relocation than mine from Fife to Gourock at about the same time. We just moved from one coast to another, about 70 miles across Scotland’s central industrial belt. For the MacLeods, especially the young ones, leaving the wild, bare purities of Lewis’s Atlantic coast for Greenock with its smoke and bustle, its teeming tenements and crane-stacked shipyards must have seemed like moving to a different country, almost another planet.

  We met in Greenock High School. Ken was joint editor of the school magazine and had heard I wrote stories (through Les, I’ve always suspected). My version is that I was at school enjoying a free period, lying on the grass slope overlooking the school playing fields watching the sixth-year girls playing tennis, when MacLeod suddenly appeared in front of me, his feet encased by big tackety boots and his thick tweed trousers held up by a leather belt that looked like it had come off a diving suit. I put my shades down, raised my eyebrows and said, ‘Hmm?’

  ‘I hear you write stories,’ he said in a sing-song voice.

  ‘Yeah, I suppose,’ I said, very coolly (while thinking, What’s that bastard McFarlane dropped me in now?).

  ‘Would you like to write one for the school magazine?’

  ‘Yeah, sure, man,’ I said. I put my shades down and leant to one side, trying to see round him or at least give the impression that the sixth-year girls required my full attention.

  I did write the story but it had mild swearing in it and Ken’s coeditor, a teacher, wanted the swearing taken out, so it never appeared in the magazine. I was still in my full-on pun period, so this was no great loss.

  (Ken’s version of how we met is entirely different and possesses the additional merit of being true. However I don’t come out of it nearly so coolly so I haven’t thought to trouble you with it here.)

  Ken and I became good friends, discovering a mutual love of both science fiction and writing. We developed a relationship that revolved around swapping short stories and ideas for novels, and which included me, on a Friday morning, telling Ken about the previous evening’s Monty Python, because Ken’s home had no television. The small Calvinist sect Ken’s dad was a minister within was and is eye-wateringly strict. I’ve unconsciously caricatured its outlook in the past as a blanket belief that theatre, cinema and television were all regarded as evil in themselves, but it’s not as simple as that.

  It boils down to a Puritan objection to drama, which is associated in the Free Presbyterian mind with lasciviousness, and it’s lasciviousness which is A Really Bad Thing (this goes back to the fairly bawdy theatre that existed in Britain between the reigns of James VI and Charles II). Exceptions are made for the classics, though whether this includes Shakespeare on a close reading – the phrase ‘country matters’ and the like – appears to be moot. Factual stuff of a non-prurient nature is okay, though given that you don’t see many documentaries on stage and precious few on general release in the cinema, both media are largely shunned. Radio is mostly all right but television is suspect (I can’t help wondering if TV is slightly more okay in theory nowadays given that a quick blip on the remote is all it takes to remove something unsavoury from the screen; at the time we’re talking about here the only way to change channels was to leap across the room and twist the tuning dial or stab at a mechanical preset button or the off-switch – much slower. On the other hand there was no Channel Five back then either). Books are fine – indeed respected – and even novels are okay, strictly providing there’s no smut (that House of Stuart again; racy novels of the 1600s; tsk). Singing in church is permitted, but must be unaccompanied. The Sabbath is observed with some severity; no going for a walk unless it’s to and from church (and no taking the scenic route) and no reading unless it’s religious in nature.

  I always felt kind of sorry for the MacLeod family, and especially for Ken because as the eldest he seemed to have had the most authoritarian upbringing of all, but for all the – by modern standards almost laughably grim – strictness imposed by the Reverend and Mrs MacLeod, they were a loving and protective family, and – unless they’re really some secret sibling-hood of mad axe murderers or something – Ken and all his brothers and sisters seem to have grown up to be well-adjusted, well-educated, functional
and productive members of society, with flourishing families of their own.

  More than I can claim, I guess.

  Anyway, with no telly, and it being perfectly obvious to me and my pals that Python was the best thing on TV at the time and hence the only thing worth talking about the following morning, it seemed only fair to keep Ken in the loop by recounting as much as possible of each programme to him before register class (I wasn’t the only person doing this – Les and others did too, though I maintain I was the most enthusiastic). I doubt my memory would be up to it these days, but at the time I used to quite enjoy the process.

  Ken and I have taken entirely different routes to getting published; I wrote six books and a million words of purple prose, picked up rejection slips from every reputable publisher in London and – very gradually – learned some important things the hard way (such as: It’s often what you leave out that’s most effective, and: You rarely need that many adjectives, Iain), while Ken talked about writing a novel for twenty years and always seemed like he was just about to start, but never did – so that his friends started to despair that he ever would – then sat down, wrote a book called The Star Fraction and got it published by the first publisher he sent it to.

  I pick Ken up from South Queensferry on yet another brilliantly sunny morning; perfect convertible weather. Ken and Carol live on Society Road, which is part of the approach to Hopetoun House, Scotland’s grandest stately home. I feel like I know Hopetoun fairly well by now; I’ve recorded a TV programme there, done the tour a couple of times (fine view of the bridges from the roof), taken photos of Ken in the grounds (in my Kim Sabinan, ace photographer, persona) and – when we were taking in the gardens with Les and Aileen one sunny day in 2002 – got to watch the Worshipful Company of Archers on one of their ceremonial practice shoots.

  This was great fun; all these toffs in tartan trews and bonnets with feathers in them whanging arrows from man-tall longbows over the giant fountain towards straw targets hundreds of yards away. The McFarlanes and I thought it would have been more sporting if they’d left the fountain working and had to shoot over the top of it, but that’s by the by. And a particularly tall and impressive fountain it is too, if I may say so, and obviously I speak as one who’s cased a few.

  One of the archers came over to where we were sitting on a grassy bank watching all this to explain to us what was going on, which was very kind of him and I suspect quite decent and understanding too, given that we were probably letting down the general tone of things by applauding what appeared to us to be especially good shots.

  From Society Road it’s conveyor belt to the end of the M9 south of Dunblane, then the small but perfectly formed B824 to Doune. (This is where the Python boys filmed the Rude Frenchman/Trojan Rabbit scenes in Holy Grail.) Through Callander to Strathyre where the road opens out properly and then the usual A85/A82 to Fort Bill. The weather is just stunning, the mountains’ summits are still brushed with snow and the hills and trees and lochs just shine with light. Ken drinks in the view and smokes the occasional cigarette – I got special dispensation from Ann for this so long as the top is down.

  We talk about ideas for future novels and about the different histories of spirit-making in Scotland and Ireland, wondering why Scotch is so well developed as an international drink and Irish whiskey much less so. We speculate that maybe it’s something to do with the reliance of the Irish on potatoes while the Scots had all this barley which they might as well use, effectively preserve and maybe make some hard cash from, by turning into spirit. The local ambient temperature might have something to do with it, too; you need cold water – and it’s a case of pretty much the colder the better as long as it’s not actually ice – to cool the spirit vapour as it exits the still, and Ireland’s relatively balmier climate might make efficient home or farm distilling just that little bit less effective than in Scotland.

  I mention how expensive Scotch was in Cyprus compared to the local brandy and we end up reminiscing about Rotten Drinks We’ve Had Abroad, Ken’s being a Turkish gin which he describes as not just rough, but inclined to hang around your sinuses like a drunk ghost in a damp castle.

  I’ve loaded a bunch of CDs for the journey but at no point in the two days do we even turn the player on; there’s neither point nor need when the top’s down, and that’s the way it stays for the whole trip save for overnight at Portree.

  We stop for lunch at the Prince’s House in Glenfinnan. It seems odd being in Glenfinnan and not seeing the McFarlanes, but they’re still at the school and we have a ferry to catch. The Prince’s House is the other hotel in Glenfinnan, right on the main road near the station. Our usual watering hole in the village is the Glenfinnan House Hotel, down by the loch and just a couple of minutes along the shore from Les and Aileen’s. This place is known in the village as the Lodge, but you have to be careful; many years ago I was trying to contact the hotel and unthinkingly rang the number for Glenfinnan Lodge given in the phone book, only to get whoever was in the estate shooting lodge at the time. I rang back just to be sure and he was not a happy toff.

  We used to come up to the Prince’s House fairly often until some new owners, wanting to go upmarket, removed the pool table and just generally brought about an ambience in the place that wasn’t as local-friendly as it might have been. A real era ended for us when the Lodge took out its pool table too. Chimney-farting antics aside, we had some great times there and the pool table going was a real blow. These days as a rule we sit around Les and Aileen’s dinner table and drink wine rather than go to the Lodge for beer. It’s fun, and home apart there’s almost nowhere I feel happier, but I still miss the pool table. Place is a laundry room or something now. Very sad.

  (If Les was reading this right now he’d be indignantly making the point that these days I do have my own pool table, over in my parents’ house, but that isn’t the same either.)

  The Prince’s House has another set of owners now; it’s a bit quiet when we stop but the soup and sandwiches are good and we head off into the sunlight again. The road to Mallaig is a GWR which is gradually becoming just a great road. It’s another split-personality work; fabulously long, open straights sweeping past breathtaking views suddenly plunging into tiny twisty sections wriggling through the trees or rolling abruptly into the straggling villages on the tattered rockscape of coast. This is Local Hero territory; they shot a lot of exterior scenes out this way, and the bits in the office of the head man Happer – played by Burt Lancaster – were apparently filmed inside Ben Nevis distillery while it was mothballed. Fort Bill standing in for downtown Dallas. Now there’s a thought that wouldn’t strike you every day.

  Most of the time the railway from Fort William to Mallaig is nearby, swerving from one side of the road to the other over a succession of concrete echoes of the Glenfinnan viaduct. There used to be a short cut through Arisaig where you could go straight on while the main road dipped left to the sea and round the front of the village, but that seems to be turning into a proper micro-bypass. At Morar, too, they’re still working on the road, straightening and widening.

  Finally we arrive in Mallaig for the ferry to Skye.

  Nowadays, of course, you can take the bridge to Skye, at Kyle of Lochalsh, but I try to avoid taking this route if remotely possible. The Skye Bridge is grossly expensive to cross and is a glaring example of Why Private Finance Initiatives Are Shite. To use the Skye Bridge is to shovel money into the coffers of the Bank of America, which owns it and will be allowed to collect the grotesquely inflated tolls until 2022.

  It wouldn’t be quite so bad if there was any sign of this supposedly so damn spiffing competition capitalists keep whining about, but Caledonian MacBrayne, the still-just-about-nationalised-but-just-you-wait ferry company which operated ferries across the narrows between Lochalsh and Kyleakin, was told by the government it wouldn’t be allowed to do so any more once the bridge opened, to force people to use the thing no matter how high the tolls were. And, as usual with PFIs, the taxpay
er takes the risk and the shareholders pocket the profit. The Bank of America didn’t even put up that much money to build the bridge in the first place; £6 million to the taxpayer’s £15 million.

  Locals on Skye and on the mainland – and various others with a love of the place and some sort of belief in putting people before profits – have fought a long and honourable campaign against the way the bridge is run since before it opened, and there is now just a chance that the bridge might be brought into public ownership, as the Scottish Parliament is considering buying the bridge. Doubtless the Bank of America’s shareholders will walk off with a tidy profit, but at least we’ll be rid of them.

  In the meantime, in the holiday season, there’s the not-yet-fucked-up-by-privatisation Cal Mac ferry from Mallaig to Armadale and the brilliant wee ferry between Kylerhea and Glenelg (which, to be fair, has never been anything other than privately owned, and works just fine). Both are worth making a detour for, lie at the ends of some great roads and are set in breathtaking, sigh-drawing scenery. The Pioneer takes us over to Skye in about twenty minutes, over a calm sea beneath a shining blue sky, attended by slow-flying gulls. To port, the single ramp of Eigg and the rounded mass of Rum bulk through a light sea haze; to starboard lies Knoydart. The peak of Ladhar Bheinn stands like a brown-black wing of rock stroked with white at the tip. We sip coffee and watch the gulls, gliding straight-winged a few metres off, soot-dark heads swivelling this way and that as they scan for scraps and bits of thrown food.

  As we bump off the ferry at Armadale – the 911’s tyres making a rirring sound on the ramp’s metal ridges – a lone piper strikes up; a lanky kid struggling with what may or not be the Skye Boat Song. Oh well, a tourist thing. Ken and I look at each other.