Hope Over Fear
by Kirsty Eccles
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: A couple of strong ones.
Description: A lament to the demise of a nation.
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I guess for me it really started when Nelson Mandela died. The passing of a great man. The quoting of hope over fear. I watched it all day on the television. Like I’d watched his release some twenty three years before. I couldn’t help but reflect how much, and how little, in my life had changed in those twenty three years. I made my own walk to freedom. I left my ‘partner’ of fifteen years – finally accepting that an abusive relationship is not worth the effort. I declared my own independence.
His final words were, ‘You’ll end up a sad, bitter old woman with cats.’
Thanks for that. No cat then. Not in my new life. I moved to a sleepy hollow place in an indeterminate part of the mid to north east of Scotland. The sort of place nothing happens. No one goes. And got on with my life.
I spent Hogmanay on my own for the first time in the best part of thirty years, maybe the first time ever if I come to think of it. And I’ve never felt less alone. I just went to bed at the normal time. Got up to a clear blue sky and hope over fear. I remember sitting down to breakfast, minus the traditional hangover, and wondering what 2014 would hold.
Year of Homecoming. Nothing. Ryder Cup at Gleneagles. A bit of interest. We might even win. As part of Europe. But everything was dwarfed by the main event: Independence. Okay, to be more precise, the Independence Referendum. The moment I’d been dreaming of, waiting for and hoping against hope might happen in my lifetime since the last time we were robbed of the opportunity, in 1979. Which was when what little political consciousness I had came into being. The aftermath of 1979. The Long Shadow of Thatcher’s Britain. The continuing and increasingly unacceptable apartheid regime in South Africa. ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ becoming the song for my generation.
2014 started kind of slowly for me. Finding my feet in my new environment and shifting my work-base and priorities. Independently. Perhaps too focussed on my own independence to notice much what was going on around me, till the summer. Till the ‘Yes’ campaign really started to get noticed.
It was social media that really got me going. And the new song for all the generations. One Great Thing. I was getting ready for that One Great Day. And it looked like I wasn’t alone. I started to believe, to really believe that it might happen. After all, I never thought I’d live to see the end of apartheid. I had lived through history once, it could happen again. We could, just could, be about to see the first real live bloodless revolution. Turning our country around. Kicking out the old order of nuclear weapons and social injustice and even beginning to turn our backs on representative democracy in favour of something more personal; participatory democracy. It was heady stuff.
And social media was the place to be. I’ve never had much time for Twitter or Facebook – too many cute cats (No cats for me, remember) and stupid trivia. But when I logged on in July I found the cyber world had changed. It was like the Arab Spring – social media being used for a good purpose. To bring activists together. To bring ordinary people together and make them into activists. I watched for a while from the sidelines, then I jumped right in.
My social network went up from a pitiful 35 to 1150 and counting in a matter of weeks. It only took this long because Facebook doesn’t seem to like you adding too many friends at a time. The experience did rather expose Facebook as a place that’s more keen on advertising to people than in actually facilitating them doing their own thing – developing their network the way they want. Not a surprise of course, but it felt like getting one over the machine every time you added a new bunch of friends. And then life became hour after hour of sharing and meeting and reading the thoughts, hopes, dreams and fears of this massive new group of friends.
I was a bit of an armchair participant, if I’m honest. I didn’t get out and get active in Sleepy Hollow, mainly because I didn’t want to piss off my new neighbours. But as the yes and no signs went up, I felt part of something. I put a yes sticker on my car. A poster in my window. I got braver and braver. So what if the neighbour three doors down had a ‘No,’ my neighbour on the left had a ‘Yes’ and the others didn’t want to commit. Silent majority? That’s like being Glasgwegian and saying you support Partick Thistle isn’t it?
The funny thing is, that even with 1000 odd new ‘friends’ some of them stick out more than others. Rab was one who stuck out. I don’t even remember why now. Maybe he just had more important, more witty, more heart-felt things to say. Maybe he just responded to my tweets and Facebook messages quicker than the others, or with more empathy. I don’t know. How do you make friends, real friends – either virtually or in what we can still just about call ‘real’ life?
Rab and I started engaging in a sort of Socratic dialogue via social media. Which isn’t easy of course. Especially not on Twitter where you’re restricted to 140 characters. Even Facebook is difficult because there you are, having a private conversation, forgetting that any one of the 1000 other friends can read it too, and they do, and they comment. Facebook threads are not a place to talk sense, let’s face it. Facebook is a total tower of Babel, everyone talking and no one really listening. Except during the run up to the Referendum, where people started using it really sensibly. Posting up pictures that the media didn’t let us see. Showing unedited bits of footage which were being ‘spun’ by the mainstream. Providing an alternative to the traditional print media which lives by the advertising budget and so has to take the line of greatest potential income rather than hold any truck with anything that might be unmediated reality – never mind that elusive casualty, truth.
So my life became virtual. And stayed that way right up till The One Great Day. On that day, everything became really, really real. I voted at 7.05am. I wanted to be amongst the first. I’d waited all my life after all, and I felt I couldn’t wait any longer. But of course The One Great Day when that One Great Thing would happen in my life was only just beginning and there was a long, long wait ahead. I got active. I drove down to Dundee, where I grew up. My grandparents still live there and I wanted to make sure they got out to vote. I’d always believed they would want Independence, never really questioned the possibility, but I thought I’d better go and get them out all the same. After all, they are both in their 80’s and might have been subject to the lies of Project Fear. They looked a bit bemused when I rocked up on their doorstep at 10.20am.
‘Yes, dear, we’re going to vote,’ my granny said.
‘What’s the rush, hen?’ my granddad asked? ‘Time for me to finish ma coffee?’
‘Since when did you drink coffee granddad?’ I asked him. This was a man who’d worked his whole life in Dundee’s great industry and I’m not talking jam, jute or journalism. He worked for Timex till they called time on it in 1993. Then he retired. Early by a couple of years and sat around drinking tea. Not coffee.
‘Since he started working at the Jute Mill,’ Granny said.
‘What?’ I’d clearly been out of touch too long. We do that with our grandparents, don’t we? Assume they’ll always be around and then wonder why we didn’t take more time or care, as we sit at their funeral not recognising the other mourners, or even most of the eulogy being given out by a minister who seems to know someone quite different from the person we spent childhood holidays with.
‘And when was that?’ It sounded like either they’d both lost the plot, or I’d gone back into some parallel universe.
‘Last year, hen,’ Granddad said. ‘It’s just volunteering, lass, but it gets me out of the house.’ He winked at me. ‘And the coffee’s fair braw.’ Granddad did like to pay homage to the comic heritage of Dundee when he could.
Now that I’d proved there was a lot about my grandparents I didn’t know, I thought I’d best get the elephant in the room out of the way. ‘And what way are you going to vote?’ I asked, heart in mouth.
‘How? Will you no gie us a lift intae the toon if we’re the wrong way inclined?’ Granddad asked. I detected another twinkle. ‘Are we no Better Thegither?’
He saw me pull up short.
‘I’m kiddin’ ye, lassie. D’ye no ken Dundee’s a Yes city?’
We got our hats and coats and went down to the polling station. Where a party atmosphere was in swing. Not a No banner in sight.
‘I’ll stand ye a coffee at the Verdant, if you like?’ Granddad said when the deed was done. Well, why not. It would be a long day and to my shame, I’d never been to the Jute Museum. Whenever I went to Dundee, which hadn’t been often enough in the last fifteen years, I’d drawn the line at Discovery Point.
Coffee turned into lunch but then the oldies had something to do. I hope that when I’m their age I have as active a life. That I haven’t turned into the ‘sad, bitter old woman with cats’ that was shouted at me when I left Martin on my long walk to freedom.
So I dropped them back at their wee house. But I wasn’t ready to go back to Sleepy Hollow. I put my phone back on, which out of deference to the oldies I’d switched off. They can’t be doing with all that kind of stuff. Granny calls it anti-social media and often I have to agree, she has a point.
I had a quick look at Twitter. That’s all you can do with Twitter isn’t it? See what’s there that moment. And like one of life’s meant to be moments – which we should really recognise as co-incidence – Rab was tweeting.
I tweeted him back. ‘I’m in Dundee.’
‘Where?’
‘Caird Park area.’
‘Meet me?’
My turn. ‘Where?’
‘Desperate Dan?’
‘Be there in 10.’
I felt excited and a bit sick at the same time. Well, it was my One Great Day. When the One Great Thing would happen. How could I go back to Sleepy Hollow and miss out on the main event. But I did feel a bit like I’d just made a date on Twitter, which made me feel, as I said, more sick than excited.
I got to Desperate Dan. The place was heaving. How would I ever recognise Rab?
‘I’m here,’ I tweeted, ‘is this a date with destiny?’ Trying to cover up my embarrassment through humour. Hmm, not sure that was a good idea. What would he think? But a tweet, once sent, cannot be un-twitted!
A guy in a kilt with a Yes t-shirt came up behind Desperate Dan and wrapped him in a huge Yes saltire. ‘It’s a date wi’ destiny,’ he shouted. It was Rab. Had to be.
‘Hi,’ he said. Note, we are now speaking, not tweeting. It’s all got real.
He was younger than I thought he’d be. The light side of forty you might say. And taller. You can’t judge height on social media. You can’t really judge anything on social media now, can you? They say that people create a new identity for themselves – though I can’t really be bothered. That either makes me too lazy for words, or too well balanced to be using social media. I don’t know.
We hung out on the streets, soaking up the atmosphere. We talked at the kinds of lengths that you just can’t achieve via social media. Maybe we didn’t have a lot in common. But on that One Great Day we had everything in common. More specifically we had that One Great Thing in common and we really, really believed it was going to happen.
‘Look at Mandela,’ I said, ‘I never thought he would be set free, never mind become President of South Africa.’
‘Things do happen,’ he agreed. ‘This is our moment.’ He quoted the Yes scripture at me: ‘Today we hold the future of our country in our hands. Today we are expressing the sovereign will of the people of Scotland. For the first time ever.’
Rab worked in the service industry, but only to pay the bills. His dream was to be a musician. No, he was a musician, but not yet earning enough to survive on. Maybe in an Independent Scotland things would change? I suggested.
‘We’ve to make the change,’ he replied. ‘It’s past time for waiting for them to change things. It up to us now. We seize this day and we start working for a future to be proud of.’
His enthusiasm was infectious, heady stuff. And it seemed so likely to come true. Everywhere in the streets were signs of Hope. Yes all round. In the bars, in the cafes, on the buses, in the car-parks. Everywhere.
‘This is Yes city,’ Rab said proudly. ‘What about where you stay?’
I had to admit I didn’t know. I felt like I should. I felt like I might have done a lot more. I tried to redeem myself. ‘Took my grandparents to vote,’ I said. ‘Just to be sure.’
He smiled. And the day rolled on. Somehow I just couldn’t get the oomph to move myself back to Sleepy Hollow. It got to tea time and I thought I should get going.
‘You’ll miss the party,’ Rab said. ‘Why not stay here wi’ me and watch it all on the Tele and then get out to the street party when the results come through?’
Even though I didn’t know Rab from Adam, it felt like a good idea. I knew enough about him. He was a man who wanted to get rid of nuclear weapons. A man who wanted social justice and who believed Scotland could be that country and we could be the people who made it a place to be proud of. Isn’t that enough to know about a person? How much trust do you need in life? Surely if you know someone shares the same values it’s all you need to know? Like, for example, discovering that Martin, with whom I’d shared everything for fifteen years not only had been ‘sharing’ himself around with at least one other woman, but thought we might actually be ‘Better Together’. I found that out, the Better Together bit, when I went back in April for the last of my stuff. I’d found out about Lynne six months before that. But I didn’t want Martin to feature in the One Great Day when the One Great Thing would happen in my life. Martin was the past. Like Britain. In a few short hours I’d have done away with Imperialism and abusive relationships and a disappointed past for good.
Rab shared a flat with another bloke who was involved in ‘the count’ so he was out for the evening. We settled down in front of the television, ready for a long night. Drinking coffee to make sure we’d stay awake and not miss a minute of this One Great Thing that was happening in our lives.
It was like watching the longest car-crash in the world unfolding before your eyes. It was unbelievable. We sat down with so much hope. Everyone around us was ‘Yes’ and if Dundee was Scotland then we were home and dry. And then the results started to come in. No. No. No. We frantically tried to do the math. To add up the percentages, while cursing the parts of Scotland who were ‘naw bags’ and ‘posh gits selling us out’ and the other various names we called them in the privacy of Rab’s front room.
‘It’s always like this with Scotland,’ he said. ‘We always run it close.’
‘But it’s not a football match,’ I said. ‘And anyway, with sport we always snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory, don’t we, so I don’t think your analogy is going to do us any favours.’
We tried to stay positive. And when Dundee finally declared Yes we had something to shout about. But not enough to get us out of the house. We didn’t feel like partying.
‘D’ you not want to go into town?’ I asked him, trying to sound more positive than I felt.
‘Na. I think we need to stay here and see it through,’ he said, jaw set somewhat grim.
So we stayed. We stayed right through all the pontificating and the posturing in the wee small hours. When they let UKIP people speak and all the Naw bags started with their jeering. A lost cause.
We watched as our country dropped the ball. Scotland held our own future in our hands and we dropped the fucking ball. Big-style.
We watched right through David Cameron’s speech and Alex Salmond’s speech. And we were speechless by this time. The void was palpable. There was literally nothing to say.
At nine o’clock I just got up and drove home. Not a word spoken between us. Not a thought for my safety. Well, for one second I thought I should go and get some sleep at my grandparents – the sensible option. But I couldn’t face them. I couldn’t face anyone. And I didn’t really care if I never made it home. There was no fear. But no hope either.
And so, in the future, should I tell the story of my life, I think I will now have to separate it into before and after the One Great Thing That Never Happened. Never has a before and after been so personally, and yet so universally significant. Never before have I felt so much a part of society and yet at the same time so alienated from my fellow countrymen.
I feel like I had so much so closely in my grasp and had to let it go. Or it let me go.
But there is always an after, isn’t there? It’s been something of a blur for me. I got home to discover that Alex Salmond had resigned. I couldn’t register, couldn’t process it. Not that I couldn’t care, I just couldn’t feel anything about it. I couldn’t even cry. I’m not interested in ‘the Vow’ or Devo Max or even in 80,000 people joining the SNP. We lost folks. It didn’t happen. There is no up-side to this story. There is no God, you won’t all meet up again in heaven and sometimes when something is broken it can never, never be fixed. You cannot hold this moment in your hands again. You cannot turn back time. Even Timex can’t. We dropped the ball. Get it?
And irrespective of ‘the 45,’ we did this to ourselves. For me, the last month has been like ordering Irn Bru and getting Pepsi Max or Coke and being told to be grateful that you’re getting a fizzy drink at all because really we think you should be drinking Tea.
In the aftermath of the One Great Thing That Never Happened, a lot of people felt like they’d lost something very close to them. And they had. For a lot of people over 50 they’d lost all hope that this thing, this thing they’d wanted their whole lives, would ever happen. It had been snatched out of their grasp, not because most people didn’t want it, but because professional politics makes sure that however dirty they have to play, they get their result in the end. And every time I see Gordon Brown I have a sense I’m looking at the face of Judas.
I haven’t been able to face my grandparents. I hate to think they’ll take this acceptingly, as something you have to put up with. Like Granddad being laid off at Timex. Things happen. Life’s not fair. Platitudes don’t help me now. Nor does people telling me ‘it was the democratic will of the majority.’ ‘Live with it.’ ‘Get over it.’ ‘Don’t be a bad loser.’
I’m sorry, I am a very, very bad loser when what I’ve lost is not just my hope but my sense of identity, my sense of belonging and my belief in my own country. I’m not alone in these feelings. Which doesn’t make it any better, I’m just saying. It’s not just me. There’s a lot of us feeling this way.
People who had banded together under the sign of ‘Yes’ have been sent spiralling into turmoil. Empty promises and lies sounds like some kind of cheap Country and Western song and yes, we’re all crying in our beer now. We don’t know who we are any more. As a nation and in many cases, as individuals, there’s a huge identity crisis going on even as we’re sold the alternative fizzy pop of ‘The Vow’ to be delivered by Burns Night. Who the hell are they kidding?
And social media, which was such a force for activism before the One Great Day That Wasn’t, is ill-conceived as a place of refuge; being also a place of despair, of anger, of name-calling and hatred, of loss. Judging ‘tone’ is virtually (no pun intended) impossible on social media and our national sense of humour seems to have deserted us right now. So people, even people who liked each other, are now suspicious and bitter and generally hacked off with the virtual ‘experience’.
But life goes on, right? We all keep feeding the beast. Reading and feeding our own grief and anger and despair, day after day to anyone who will listen. And it’s party time for the online trolls who take joy in visiting the comments of those who are in post referendum trauma and giving them a good kicking. Cyber bullying has taken on a whole new complexion. And it’s not pretty.
The virtual divisions of society are reflected in Facebook. People who swore that they could be ‘friends’ while holding opposing views have ‘unfriended’ each other because it’s just so impossible to keep only hearing your own point of view on Facebook these days. Not everyone will agree with everything you say and for a certain kind of person, that’s too much to bear. The first casualty of defeat on social media seems to be the ability to remain open-minded.
Because while I’ve been unable to go out and engage in ‘real’ life for the last month, after about a week I turned to social media as a way to try and get outside my own head. Which is where I discovered that hope had turned to fear and anger and despair for many, paranoia for others and a place to vent spleen for the rest.
‘How stupid do they think we are?’ Rab is on Facebook trying to pour out his grief to anyone who will listen. A fair few still will, but a load more have moved on to the next stage of the cycle.
Like, ‘well, at least we’ve got Pepsi Max to drink.’ I reply. My first foray into virtual speech. I wonder if he’ll know what I’m talking about.
‘Doff your cap, boys, we’re all North British now,’ Rab replied. But we weren’t alone. Suddenly a load of other people started butting in to the thread and some of them were giving him a really hard time. He didn’t need it. No one needs that.
I took a deep breath. ‘There’s a fair percentage of Scots (and I’m sorry if this offends the decency of any true Brits) who have never considered themselves British, and as such they (we) now feel nationless.’
A posse of ‘get over it’ and ‘you fucking losers’ followed. I was about to give up on the whole thing. Rab came back with his own thoughts.
‘Me, I’d drink pure stream water for ever if it meant social justice for all. But then soon enough we won’t be able to afford to get hold of water of any kind, pure stream or out the tap. Like we’ll have to keep paying over the odds for our electricity as it gets sent down to England to power the offices where they use the computers that calculate our bills. Off our renewable resources. And don’t even get me started on the oil!’
I left the building. Virtually. Couldn’t take the pain. A few days later I dipped my toe into the twitter-verse. I don’t know why. I’m beginning to think I have masochistic tendencies. Or maybe it’s because I’m getting so pissed off with all the people who seem to be following the bouncing ball towards another vain hope and I want to shout out and say THIS WAS OUR BIG CHANCE. WE BLEW IT. This was the One Great Day. It WAS the One Great Thing and it Never Happened. And no, I will not get over that.
So I tweeted. ‘Remember Tony said ‘Things can only get better’. We’re nae singin’ that the noo, are we?’
Rab was there. Again. Like a fated co-incidence.
‘I doubt I’ll ever sing again,’ He tweeted. ‘I canna sing Flower o’ Scotland, I canna sing Scotland the Brave, and if I play that ‘One Great Day’ I just greet like a bairn. What’m I gonna dae?’
That was his 140 characters exhausted. And I knew how they felt. I had no answer. I left it at that. Sometimes you just can’t help.
But someone else was smarter than me.
‘Get bevvied, pal.’ They tweeted helpfully.
But even in Scotland the North British, the days when a guy would just go and get blind drunk to deal with his pain, or go home and beat up his girlfriend and similar stereotypic clichés are long gone for ‘Yessers’. The movement which was going to make Scotland a better place has no scope for that kind of behaviour. On the One Great Day we were all gearing up for a party, where the drink would flow. Where we would celebrate what we’d achieved. But I’ve yet to find anyone on my now vast Facebook network who resorted to drinking away their sorrows as a post Referendum tonic.
‘There’s no enough bevvy in the world,’ Rab tweeted back.
And others were quick to come in and point out that when you had to start thinking what you drank and where you bought it because of ‘No’ propaganda, it kind of took the shine off it.
‘Message me,’ I tweeted. I couldn’t deal with this in a public arena. And even though I now had about twenty messages a day which were just hacks and so had stopped looking at Facebook messages, I didn’t want either Rab or me to talk with an audience.
Five minutes later, he messaged me.
‘How is it that whatever I say on FB now comes oot like a rant?’ he asked. ‘An’ then gets picked up by loads o’ folk criticising it from every possible angle.’
‘I know how you feel,’ I replied.
‘Huv we all turned in on oursel’s? Huv we lost our decency wi’ our identity?’ Rab asked. ‘I feel so ashamed.’
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard people say ‘I feel ashamed to be Scottish’ in the last month. So much pride evaporated in such a short time. But I share the feeling. And I can’t thole being told one more time that there’s ‘still so much to fight for’. There’s nothing to fight for. There’s nothing to win. We’re all the losers now. We still have Trident. We still have to go cap in hand for our pocket money from ‘the Westmonster’ (slightest hint of Scottish humour not quite nailed in its coffin).
‘I dinna hate the English,’ Rab tells me. ‘But what I canna get ower is that that many Scots can be sae selfish an’ greedy an’, well, it’s just no how I thocht we were as a country.’
He voices the concern I share, ‘Have I got it wrong all these years?’
We tweet and message back and forth and do sort of imaginary sums, trying to work out what percentage of people actually are Scottish in Scotland. And how many of them actually feel a sense of investment in the country beyond the economics.
‘Because it’s the economy that killed ma dream, stupid.’ Rab points out. ‘An’ there’s a power o’ Scots wha’d nae bleed wi’ Wallace these days. Not unless there wis something in it fer them.’
We live in a divided world. I’ve heard lots of people, generally those who voted No, right enough, say that this whole experience has been ‘divisive’. Wake up folks, Scotland has always been divided. It’s in wur psyche, even the high heid yins o’ Scots literature will tell ye that. All that’s happened is that some divisions have become a lot clearer to us all. Divisions are now exposed. Right from the bottom to the top of society. And even some of the ones who were telling us to ‘be a nation’ again are now trying to sell us ‘hope over fear’. While they keep their cushy jobs.
‘What does that mean any more?’ Rab asks. ‘Hope over fear? What can it mean?’
It seems to be in a lot of people’s best interest to ‘capitalise’ from the Referendum result. It’s like the worst case of car-crash rubber necking you’ve ever seen. At least that’s my negative response to Rab.
‘I’ll admit it, Rab,’ I say, ‘fact and fiction don’t mean anything any more. Not to me.’
‘I’ve always trusted optimism over experience,’ Rab says, ‘but I canna dae that any more. I canna believe it. ‘
‘Why?’ I ask. Really hoping he’s got an answer that will drag me out of my hopelessness.
‘Because so many people don’t seem to get that it wasn’t about getting some, lots or a whole lot more economic powers.’
‘Yes, and they’re all like lemmings. They can’t face the enormity of the truth so they’re running after the next big thing to join. Without stopping to realise what we’ve lost.’
We’re beginning to find some real common ground here. Without a load of social twits and faces telling us to ‘man up’ and ‘shut up’ and ‘be British complete with the stiff upper lip while we drink our tea’. All we have to share is our pain. So we share that.
‘Aye, and what about they groups?’ Rab says. ‘Bella Caledonia. National Collective. Picking themsel’s up again because they want to stay in the limelight. What’s that all about?’
‘I don’t believe in any of them because they all seem to be about some other guy capitalising on the car-crash and calling it ‘hope over fear’,’ I say.
I hope I’m wrong, but that’s the problem when you lose your optimism. Cynicism isn’t far behind. And I’ve always had an over-active cynical streak in my personality. I fear I lost Rab’s optimism over experience gene a long, long time ago. One too many rubs with reality will do that to you.
That’s what bothers me about ‘hope over fear’. Isn’t it just that people cannot bear to live with the consequences of: We lost. People cannot believe that they fought for a ‘just cause’ and it got gubbed. They have to re-create their reality, recalibrate their world-view in order to keep on going. They need hope. They need something to believe in and something to belong to. And what have we got left?
And what will people create to fill the void? That’s the future of Scotland. Nation or Country or dream or economic unit. Younger or stronger people than me, people who are more pragmatic or more deluded or who don’t see reality the way I do will ‘fight on’. Maybe they have enough life left to believe in a future. Jam tomorrow. For me there is neither jam nor jute nor journalism left for tomorrow. There’s no jam. Never is. Jute’s been turned into a museum piece and journalism has sold itself out to the highest bidder. No surprises there. And a whole new generation will push on, believing that one day they will win. Because people have to believe in deferred gratification – we’ll all get to heaven in the end right. No. It doesn’t work that way. My grandparents will never live in an Independent Scotland. I don’t believe I will ever live in an Independent Scotland. I have no children (or cats) to take my legacy on and live in an Independent Scotland. Yes, one day Scotland may become Independent. But one day the rocks will melt in the sun. One day. One Great Day. But my life, my little, insignificant, fact-meets-fiction life is marked by The One Great Thing That Never Happened. And I’m not singing any more.
If you want to believe we can chuck out the Tories and the Labour party and get rid of Westminster and get another Referendum by 2016 and even if not, that somehow we’ll get enough ‘power’ to actually run our own country then good on you. But I’m a non-believer. Listen very carefully. Independence Didn’t Happen. And tea isn’t Irn Bru. It never will be. Hope over Fear is a great message. But Yes was the simplest, strongest statement we could ever have made. We held our future in our hands for one day. We let it go. And the only song left is ‘Scotland no more’.
Swearwords: A couple of strong ones.
Description: A lament to the demise of a nation.
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I guess for me it really started when Nelson Mandela died. The passing of a great man. The quoting of hope over fear. I watched it all day on the television. Like I’d watched his release some twenty three years before. I couldn’t help but reflect how much, and how little, in my life had changed in those twenty three years. I made my own walk to freedom. I left my ‘partner’ of fifteen years – finally accepting that an abusive relationship is not worth the effort. I declared my own independence.
His final words were, ‘You’ll end up a sad, bitter old woman with cats.’
Thanks for that. No cat then. Not in my new life. I moved to a sleepy hollow place in an indeterminate part of the mid to north east of Scotland. The sort of place nothing happens. No one goes. And got on with my life.
I spent Hogmanay on my own for the first time in the best part of thirty years, maybe the first time ever if I come to think of it. And I’ve never felt less alone. I just went to bed at the normal time. Got up to a clear blue sky and hope over fear. I remember sitting down to breakfast, minus the traditional hangover, and wondering what 2014 would hold.
Year of Homecoming. Nothing. Ryder Cup at Gleneagles. A bit of interest. We might even win. As part of Europe. But everything was dwarfed by the main event: Independence. Okay, to be more precise, the Independence Referendum. The moment I’d been dreaming of, waiting for and hoping against hope might happen in my lifetime since the last time we were robbed of the opportunity, in 1979. Which was when what little political consciousness I had came into being. The aftermath of 1979. The Long Shadow of Thatcher’s Britain. The continuing and increasingly unacceptable apartheid regime in South Africa. ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ becoming the song for my generation.
2014 started kind of slowly for me. Finding my feet in my new environment and shifting my work-base and priorities. Independently. Perhaps too focussed on my own independence to notice much what was going on around me, till the summer. Till the ‘Yes’ campaign really started to get noticed.
It was social media that really got me going. And the new song for all the generations. One Great Thing. I was getting ready for that One Great Day. And it looked like I wasn’t alone. I started to believe, to really believe that it might happen. After all, I never thought I’d live to see the end of apartheid. I had lived through history once, it could happen again. We could, just could, be about to see the first real live bloodless revolution. Turning our country around. Kicking out the old order of nuclear weapons and social injustice and even beginning to turn our backs on representative democracy in favour of something more personal; participatory democracy. It was heady stuff.
And social media was the place to be. I’ve never had much time for Twitter or Facebook – too many cute cats (No cats for me, remember) and stupid trivia. But when I logged on in July I found the cyber world had changed. It was like the Arab Spring – social media being used for a good purpose. To bring activists together. To bring ordinary people together and make them into activists. I watched for a while from the sidelines, then I jumped right in.
My social network went up from a pitiful 35 to 1150 and counting in a matter of weeks. It only took this long because Facebook doesn’t seem to like you adding too many friends at a time. The experience did rather expose Facebook as a place that’s more keen on advertising to people than in actually facilitating them doing their own thing – developing their network the way they want. Not a surprise of course, but it felt like getting one over the machine every time you added a new bunch of friends. And then life became hour after hour of sharing and meeting and reading the thoughts, hopes, dreams and fears of this massive new group of friends.
I was a bit of an armchair participant, if I’m honest. I didn’t get out and get active in Sleepy Hollow, mainly because I didn’t want to piss off my new neighbours. But as the yes and no signs went up, I felt part of something. I put a yes sticker on my car. A poster in my window. I got braver and braver. So what if the neighbour three doors down had a ‘No,’ my neighbour on the left had a ‘Yes’ and the others didn’t want to commit. Silent majority? That’s like being Glasgwegian and saying you support Partick Thistle isn’t it?
The funny thing is, that even with 1000 odd new ‘friends’ some of them stick out more than others. Rab was one who stuck out. I don’t even remember why now. Maybe he just had more important, more witty, more heart-felt things to say. Maybe he just responded to my tweets and Facebook messages quicker than the others, or with more empathy. I don’t know. How do you make friends, real friends – either virtually or in what we can still just about call ‘real’ life?
Rab and I started engaging in a sort of Socratic dialogue via social media. Which isn’t easy of course. Especially not on Twitter where you’re restricted to 140 characters. Even Facebook is difficult because there you are, having a private conversation, forgetting that any one of the 1000 other friends can read it too, and they do, and they comment. Facebook threads are not a place to talk sense, let’s face it. Facebook is a total tower of Babel, everyone talking and no one really listening. Except during the run up to the Referendum, where people started using it really sensibly. Posting up pictures that the media didn’t let us see. Showing unedited bits of footage which were being ‘spun’ by the mainstream. Providing an alternative to the traditional print media which lives by the advertising budget and so has to take the line of greatest potential income rather than hold any truck with anything that might be unmediated reality – never mind that elusive casualty, truth.
So my life became virtual. And stayed that way right up till The One Great Day. On that day, everything became really, really real. I voted at 7.05am. I wanted to be amongst the first. I’d waited all my life after all, and I felt I couldn’t wait any longer. But of course The One Great Day when that One Great Thing would happen in my life was only just beginning and there was a long, long wait ahead. I got active. I drove down to Dundee, where I grew up. My grandparents still live there and I wanted to make sure they got out to vote. I’d always believed they would want Independence, never really questioned the possibility, but I thought I’d better go and get them out all the same. After all, they are both in their 80’s and might have been subject to the lies of Project Fear. They looked a bit bemused when I rocked up on their doorstep at 10.20am.
‘Yes, dear, we’re going to vote,’ my granny said.
‘What’s the rush, hen?’ my granddad asked? ‘Time for me to finish ma coffee?’
‘Since when did you drink coffee granddad?’ I asked him. This was a man who’d worked his whole life in Dundee’s great industry and I’m not talking jam, jute or journalism. He worked for Timex till they called time on it in 1993. Then he retired. Early by a couple of years and sat around drinking tea. Not coffee.
‘Since he started working at the Jute Mill,’ Granny said.
‘What?’ I’d clearly been out of touch too long. We do that with our grandparents, don’t we? Assume they’ll always be around and then wonder why we didn’t take more time or care, as we sit at their funeral not recognising the other mourners, or even most of the eulogy being given out by a minister who seems to know someone quite different from the person we spent childhood holidays with.
‘And when was that?’ It sounded like either they’d both lost the plot, or I’d gone back into some parallel universe.
‘Last year, hen,’ Granddad said. ‘It’s just volunteering, lass, but it gets me out of the house.’ He winked at me. ‘And the coffee’s fair braw.’ Granddad did like to pay homage to the comic heritage of Dundee when he could.
Now that I’d proved there was a lot about my grandparents I didn’t know, I thought I’d best get the elephant in the room out of the way. ‘And what way are you going to vote?’ I asked, heart in mouth.
‘How? Will you no gie us a lift intae the toon if we’re the wrong way inclined?’ Granddad asked. I detected another twinkle. ‘Are we no Better Thegither?’
He saw me pull up short.
‘I’m kiddin’ ye, lassie. D’ye no ken Dundee’s a Yes city?’
We got our hats and coats and went down to the polling station. Where a party atmosphere was in swing. Not a No banner in sight.
‘I’ll stand ye a coffee at the Verdant, if you like?’ Granddad said when the deed was done. Well, why not. It would be a long day and to my shame, I’d never been to the Jute Museum. Whenever I went to Dundee, which hadn’t been often enough in the last fifteen years, I’d drawn the line at Discovery Point.
Coffee turned into lunch but then the oldies had something to do. I hope that when I’m their age I have as active a life. That I haven’t turned into the ‘sad, bitter old woman with cats’ that was shouted at me when I left Martin on my long walk to freedom.
So I dropped them back at their wee house. But I wasn’t ready to go back to Sleepy Hollow. I put my phone back on, which out of deference to the oldies I’d switched off. They can’t be doing with all that kind of stuff. Granny calls it anti-social media and often I have to agree, she has a point.
I had a quick look at Twitter. That’s all you can do with Twitter isn’t it? See what’s there that moment. And like one of life’s meant to be moments – which we should really recognise as co-incidence – Rab was tweeting.
I tweeted him back. ‘I’m in Dundee.’
‘Where?’
‘Caird Park area.’
‘Meet me?’
My turn. ‘Where?’
‘Desperate Dan?’
‘Be there in 10.’
I felt excited and a bit sick at the same time. Well, it was my One Great Day. When the One Great Thing would happen. How could I go back to Sleepy Hollow and miss out on the main event. But I did feel a bit like I’d just made a date on Twitter, which made me feel, as I said, more sick than excited.
I got to Desperate Dan. The place was heaving. How would I ever recognise Rab?
‘I’m here,’ I tweeted, ‘is this a date with destiny?’ Trying to cover up my embarrassment through humour. Hmm, not sure that was a good idea. What would he think? But a tweet, once sent, cannot be un-twitted!
A guy in a kilt with a Yes t-shirt came up behind Desperate Dan and wrapped him in a huge Yes saltire. ‘It’s a date wi’ destiny,’ he shouted. It was Rab. Had to be.
‘Hi,’ he said. Note, we are now speaking, not tweeting. It’s all got real.
He was younger than I thought he’d be. The light side of forty you might say. And taller. You can’t judge height on social media. You can’t really judge anything on social media now, can you? They say that people create a new identity for themselves – though I can’t really be bothered. That either makes me too lazy for words, or too well balanced to be using social media. I don’t know.
We hung out on the streets, soaking up the atmosphere. We talked at the kinds of lengths that you just can’t achieve via social media. Maybe we didn’t have a lot in common. But on that One Great Day we had everything in common. More specifically we had that One Great Thing in common and we really, really believed it was going to happen.
‘Look at Mandela,’ I said, ‘I never thought he would be set free, never mind become President of South Africa.’
‘Things do happen,’ he agreed. ‘This is our moment.’ He quoted the Yes scripture at me: ‘Today we hold the future of our country in our hands. Today we are expressing the sovereign will of the people of Scotland. For the first time ever.’
Rab worked in the service industry, but only to pay the bills. His dream was to be a musician. No, he was a musician, but not yet earning enough to survive on. Maybe in an Independent Scotland things would change? I suggested.
‘We’ve to make the change,’ he replied. ‘It’s past time for waiting for them to change things. It up to us now. We seize this day and we start working for a future to be proud of.’
His enthusiasm was infectious, heady stuff. And it seemed so likely to come true. Everywhere in the streets were signs of Hope. Yes all round. In the bars, in the cafes, on the buses, in the car-parks. Everywhere.
‘This is Yes city,’ Rab said proudly. ‘What about where you stay?’
I had to admit I didn’t know. I felt like I should. I felt like I might have done a lot more. I tried to redeem myself. ‘Took my grandparents to vote,’ I said. ‘Just to be sure.’
He smiled. And the day rolled on. Somehow I just couldn’t get the oomph to move myself back to Sleepy Hollow. It got to tea time and I thought I should get going.
‘You’ll miss the party,’ Rab said. ‘Why not stay here wi’ me and watch it all on the Tele and then get out to the street party when the results come through?’
Even though I didn’t know Rab from Adam, it felt like a good idea. I knew enough about him. He was a man who wanted to get rid of nuclear weapons. A man who wanted social justice and who believed Scotland could be that country and we could be the people who made it a place to be proud of. Isn’t that enough to know about a person? How much trust do you need in life? Surely if you know someone shares the same values it’s all you need to know? Like, for example, discovering that Martin, with whom I’d shared everything for fifteen years not only had been ‘sharing’ himself around with at least one other woman, but thought we might actually be ‘Better Together’. I found that out, the Better Together bit, when I went back in April for the last of my stuff. I’d found out about Lynne six months before that. But I didn’t want Martin to feature in the One Great Day when the One Great Thing would happen in my life. Martin was the past. Like Britain. In a few short hours I’d have done away with Imperialism and abusive relationships and a disappointed past for good.
Rab shared a flat with another bloke who was involved in ‘the count’ so he was out for the evening. We settled down in front of the television, ready for a long night. Drinking coffee to make sure we’d stay awake and not miss a minute of this One Great Thing that was happening in our lives.
It was like watching the longest car-crash in the world unfolding before your eyes. It was unbelievable. We sat down with so much hope. Everyone around us was ‘Yes’ and if Dundee was Scotland then we were home and dry. And then the results started to come in. No. No. No. We frantically tried to do the math. To add up the percentages, while cursing the parts of Scotland who were ‘naw bags’ and ‘posh gits selling us out’ and the other various names we called them in the privacy of Rab’s front room.
‘It’s always like this with Scotland,’ he said. ‘We always run it close.’
‘But it’s not a football match,’ I said. ‘And anyway, with sport we always snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory, don’t we, so I don’t think your analogy is going to do us any favours.’
We tried to stay positive. And when Dundee finally declared Yes we had something to shout about. But not enough to get us out of the house. We didn’t feel like partying.
‘D’ you not want to go into town?’ I asked him, trying to sound more positive than I felt.
‘Na. I think we need to stay here and see it through,’ he said, jaw set somewhat grim.
So we stayed. We stayed right through all the pontificating and the posturing in the wee small hours. When they let UKIP people speak and all the Naw bags started with their jeering. A lost cause.
We watched as our country dropped the ball. Scotland held our own future in our hands and we dropped the fucking ball. Big-style.
We watched right through David Cameron’s speech and Alex Salmond’s speech. And we were speechless by this time. The void was palpable. There was literally nothing to say.
At nine o’clock I just got up and drove home. Not a word spoken between us. Not a thought for my safety. Well, for one second I thought I should go and get some sleep at my grandparents – the sensible option. But I couldn’t face them. I couldn’t face anyone. And I didn’t really care if I never made it home. There was no fear. But no hope either.
And so, in the future, should I tell the story of my life, I think I will now have to separate it into before and after the One Great Thing That Never Happened. Never has a before and after been so personally, and yet so universally significant. Never before have I felt so much a part of society and yet at the same time so alienated from my fellow countrymen.
I feel like I had so much so closely in my grasp and had to let it go. Or it let me go.
But there is always an after, isn’t there? It’s been something of a blur for me. I got home to discover that Alex Salmond had resigned. I couldn’t register, couldn’t process it. Not that I couldn’t care, I just couldn’t feel anything about it. I couldn’t even cry. I’m not interested in ‘the Vow’ or Devo Max or even in 80,000 people joining the SNP. We lost folks. It didn’t happen. There is no up-side to this story. There is no God, you won’t all meet up again in heaven and sometimes when something is broken it can never, never be fixed. You cannot hold this moment in your hands again. You cannot turn back time. Even Timex can’t. We dropped the ball. Get it?
And irrespective of ‘the 45,’ we did this to ourselves. For me, the last month has been like ordering Irn Bru and getting Pepsi Max or Coke and being told to be grateful that you’re getting a fizzy drink at all because really we think you should be drinking Tea.
In the aftermath of the One Great Thing That Never Happened, a lot of people felt like they’d lost something very close to them. And they had. For a lot of people over 50 they’d lost all hope that this thing, this thing they’d wanted their whole lives, would ever happen. It had been snatched out of their grasp, not because most people didn’t want it, but because professional politics makes sure that however dirty they have to play, they get their result in the end. And every time I see Gordon Brown I have a sense I’m looking at the face of Judas.
I haven’t been able to face my grandparents. I hate to think they’ll take this acceptingly, as something you have to put up with. Like Granddad being laid off at Timex. Things happen. Life’s not fair. Platitudes don’t help me now. Nor does people telling me ‘it was the democratic will of the majority.’ ‘Live with it.’ ‘Get over it.’ ‘Don’t be a bad loser.’
I’m sorry, I am a very, very bad loser when what I’ve lost is not just my hope but my sense of identity, my sense of belonging and my belief in my own country. I’m not alone in these feelings. Which doesn’t make it any better, I’m just saying. It’s not just me. There’s a lot of us feeling this way.
People who had banded together under the sign of ‘Yes’ have been sent spiralling into turmoil. Empty promises and lies sounds like some kind of cheap Country and Western song and yes, we’re all crying in our beer now. We don’t know who we are any more. As a nation and in many cases, as individuals, there’s a huge identity crisis going on even as we’re sold the alternative fizzy pop of ‘The Vow’ to be delivered by Burns Night. Who the hell are they kidding?
And social media, which was such a force for activism before the One Great Day That Wasn’t, is ill-conceived as a place of refuge; being also a place of despair, of anger, of name-calling and hatred, of loss. Judging ‘tone’ is virtually (no pun intended) impossible on social media and our national sense of humour seems to have deserted us right now. So people, even people who liked each other, are now suspicious and bitter and generally hacked off with the virtual ‘experience’.
But life goes on, right? We all keep feeding the beast. Reading and feeding our own grief and anger and despair, day after day to anyone who will listen. And it’s party time for the online trolls who take joy in visiting the comments of those who are in post referendum trauma and giving them a good kicking. Cyber bullying has taken on a whole new complexion. And it’s not pretty.
The virtual divisions of society are reflected in Facebook. People who swore that they could be ‘friends’ while holding opposing views have ‘unfriended’ each other because it’s just so impossible to keep only hearing your own point of view on Facebook these days. Not everyone will agree with everything you say and for a certain kind of person, that’s too much to bear. The first casualty of defeat on social media seems to be the ability to remain open-minded.
Because while I’ve been unable to go out and engage in ‘real’ life for the last month, after about a week I turned to social media as a way to try and get outside my own head. Which is where I discovered that hope had turned to fear and anger and despair for many, paranoia for others and a place to vent spleen for the rest.
‘How stupid do they think we are?’ Rab is on Facebook trying to pour out his grief to anyone who will listen. A fair few still will, but a load more have moved on to the next stage of the cycle.
Like, ‘well, at least we’ve got Pepsi Max to drink.’ I reply. My first foray into virtual speech. I wonder if he’ll know what I’m talking about.
‘Doff your cap, boys, we’re all North British now,’ Rab replied. But we weren’t alone. Suddenly a load of other people started butting in to the thread and some of them were giving him a really hard time. He didn’t need it. No one needs that.
I took a deep breath. ‘There’s a fair percentage of Scots (and I’m sorry if this offends the decency of any true Brits) who have never considered themselves British, and as such they (we) now feel nationless.’
A posse of ‘get over it’ and ‘you fucking losers’ followed. I was about to give up on the whole thing. Rab came back with his own thoughts.
‘Me, I’d drink pure stream water for ever if it meant social justice for all. But then soon enough we won’t be able to afford to get hold of water of any kind, pure stream or out the tap. Like we’ll have to keep paying over the odds for our electricity as it gets sent down to England to power the offices where they use the computers that calculate our bills. Off our renewable resources. And don’t even get me started on the oil!’
I left the building. Virtually. Couldn’t take the pain. A few days later I dipped my toe into the twitter-verse. I don’t know why. I’m beginning to think I have masochistic tendencies. Or maybe it’s because I’m getting so pissed off with all the people who seem to be following the bouncing ball towards another vain hope and I want to shout out and say THIS WAS OUR BIG CHANCE. WE BLEW IT. This was the One Great Day. It WAS the One Great Thing and it Never Happened. And no, I will not get over that.
So I tweeted. ‘Remember Tony said ‘Things can only get better’. We’re nae singin’ that the noo, are we?’
Rab was there. Again. Like a fated co-incidence.
‘I doubt I’ll ever sing again,’ He tweeted. ‘I canna sing Flower o’ Scotland, I canna sing Scotland the Brave, and if I play that ‘One Great Day’ I just greet like a bairn. What’m I gonna dae?’
That was his 140 characters exhausted. And I knew how they felt. I had no answer. I left it at that. Sometimes you just can’t help.
But someone else was smarter than me.
‘Get bevvied, pal.’ They tweeted helpfully.
But even in Scotland the North British, the days when a guy would just go and get blind drunk to deal with his pain, or go home and beat up his girlfriend and similar stereotypic clichés are long gone for ‘Yessers’. The movement which was going to make Scotland a better place has no scope for that kind of behaviour. On the One Great Day we were all gearing up for a party, where the drink would flow. Where we would celebrate what we’d achieved. But I’ve yet to find anyone on my now vast Facebook network who resorted to drinking away their sorrows as a post Referendum tonic.
‘There’s no enough bevvy in the world,’ Rab tweeted back.
And others were quick to come in and point out that when you had to start thinking what you drank and where you bought it because of ‘No’ propaganda, it kind of took the shine off it.
‘Message me,’ I tweeted. I couldn’t deal with this in a public arena. And even though I now had about twenty messages a day which were just hacks and so had stopped looking at Facebook messages, I didn’t want either Rab or me to talk with an audience.
Five minutes later, he messaged me.
‘How is it that whatever I say on FB now comes oot like a rant?’ he asked. ‘An’ then gets picked up by loads o’ folk criticising it from every possible angle.’
‘I know how you feel,’ I replied.
‘Huv we all turned in on oursel’s? Huv we lost our decency wi’ our identity?’ Rab asked. ‘I feel so ashamed.’
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard people say ‘I feel ashamed to be Scottish’ in the last month. So much pride evaporated in such a short time. But I share the feeling. And I can’t thole being told one more time that there’s ‘still so much to fight for’. There’s nothing to fight for. There’s nothing to win. We’re all the losers now. We still have Trident. We still have to go cap in hand for our pocket money from ‘the Westmonster’ (slightest hint of Scottish humour not quite nailed in its coffin).
‘I dinna hate the English,’ Rab tells me. ‘But what I canna get ower is that that many Scots can be sae selfish an’ greedy an’, well, it’s just no how I thocht we were as a country.’
He voices the concern I share, ‘Have I got it wrong all these years?’
We tweet and message back and forth and do sort of imaginary sums, trying to work out what percentage of people actually are Scottish in Scotland. And how many of them actually feel a sense of investment in the country beyond the economics.
‘Because it’s the economy that killed ma dream, stupid.’ Rab points out. ‘An’ there’s a power o’ Scots wha’d nae bleed wi’ Wallace these days. Not unless there wis something in it fer them.’
We live in a divided world. I’ve heard lots of people, generally those who voted No, right enough, say that this whole experience has been ‘divisive’. Wake up folks, Scotland has always been divided. It’s in wur psyche, even the high heid yins o’ Scots literature will tell ye that. All that’s happened is that some divisions have become a lot clearer to us all. Divisions are now exposed. Right from the bottom to the top of society. And even some of the ones who were telling us to ‘be a nation’ again are now trying to sell us ‘hope over fear’. While they keep their cushy jobs.
‘What does that mean any more?’ Rab asks. ‘Hope over fear? What can it mean?’
It seems to be in a lot of people’s best interest to ‘capitalise’ from the Referendum result. It’s like the worst case of car-crash rubber necking you’ve ever seen. At least that’s my negative response to Rab.
‘I’ll admit it, Rab,’ I say, ‘fact and fiction don’t mean anything any more. Not to me.’
‘I’ve always trusted optimism over experience,’ Rab says, ‘but I canna dae that any more. I canna believe it. ‘
‘Why?’ I ask. Really hoping he’s got an answer that will drag me out of my hopelessness.
‘Because so many people don’t seem to get that it wasn’t about getting some, lots or a whole lot more economic powers.’
‘Yes, and they’re all like lemmings. They can’t face the enormity of the truth so they’re running after the next big thing to join. Without stopping to realise what we’ve lost.’
We’re beginning to find some real common ground here. Without a load of social twits and faces telling us to ‘man up’ and ‘shut up’ and ‘be British complete with the stiff upper lip while we drink our tea’. All we have to share is our pain. So we share that.
‘Aye, and what about they groups?’ Rab says. ‘Bella Caledonia. National Collective. Picking themsel’s up again because they want to stay in the limelight. What’s that all about?’
‘I don’t believe in any of them because they all seem to be about some other guy capitalising on the car-crash and calling it ‘hope over fear’,’ I say.
I hope I’m wrong, but that’s the problem when you lose your optimism. Cynicism isn’t far behind. And I’ve always had an over-active cynical streak in my personality. I fear I lost Rab’s optimism over experience gene a long, long time ago. One too many rubs with reality will do that to you.
That’s what bothers me about ‘hope over fear’. Isn’t it just that people cannot bear to live with the consequences of: We lost. People cannot believe that they fought for a ‘just cause’ and it got gubbed. They have to re-create their reality, recalibrate their world-view in order to keep on going. They need hope. They need something to believe in and something to belong to. And what have we got left?
And what will people create to fill the void? That’s the future of Scotland. Nation or Country or dream or economic unit. Younger or stronger people than me, people who are more pragmatic or more deluded or who don’t see reality the way I do will ‘fight on’. Maybe they have enough life left to believe in a future. Jam tomorrow. For me there is neither jam nor jute nor journalism left for tomorrow. There’s no jam. Never is. Jute’s been turned into a museum piece and journalism has sold itself out to the highest bidder. No surprises there. And a whole new generation will push on, believing that one day they will win. Because people have to believe in deferred gratification – we’ll all get to heaven in the end right. No. It doesn’t work that way. My grandparents will never live in an Independent Scotland. I don’t believe I will ever live in an Independent Scotland. I have no children (or cats) to take my legacy on and live in an Independent Scotland. Yes, one day Scotland may become Independent. But one day the rocks will melt in the sun. One day. One Great Day. But my life, my little, insignificant, fact-meets-fiction life is marked by The One Great Thing That Never Happened. And I’m not singing any more.
If you want to believe we can chuck out the Tories and the Labour party and get rid of Westminster and get another Referendum by 2016 and even if not, that somehow we’ll get enough ‘power’ to actually run our own country then good on you. But I’m a non-believer. Listen very carefully. Independence Didn’t Happen. And tea isn’t Irn Bru. It never will be. Hope over Fear is a great message. But Yes was the simplest, strongest statement we could ever have made. We held our future in our hands for one day. We let it go. And the only song left is ‘Scotland no more’.
About the Author
Kirsty Eccles was born and brought up in Dundee. She worked for more years than she cares to remember in financial services before switching to something less lucrative but more fulfilling – a career in advocacy services. Her debut short stories Girls and Boys Come Out to Play and The Price of Fame (now available as an ebook) were published by Guerrilla Midgie Press, and she now
works with the advocacy publisher full-time on creative advocacy projects.