http://stanzapoetry.wordpress.com/2014/07/04/mapping-scotland-in-poetry/
Reading the post about this project to attach a poem to all parts of Scotland set me thinking.
Do I count as sufficiently Scottish to take part? When I first moved back to London from a couple of intense years in Edinburgh and Glasgow I'd glance out of my office window and take the corner of a tall building peeping between two other buildings as a hill before realising that of course it wasn't.
Hill is a euphemism for mountain by the way. Walking is a euphemism for scrambling up slopes and scree, then being in even more discomfort coming down again, hoping the sun wouldn't go down too quickly.
A short time back in London and I got talking to an older man standing on a tube train because I had caught his accent. We stood there and reminisced and named and dreamed together. No one else on the train talked to each other because we just don't down here, but we almost fell into each other's arms!
Only a couple of days ago I caught a driver's accent at the garage, asked where in Scotland he was from, ... Glasgow again.. So we talked and talked about places, events, the city. There's a happiness about being able to love a place from afar and share that with others.
The land doesn't change, the names of the streets stay the same, so we can share the exact same memories. I love the fact that I know the accent so well. Mine is totally Southern, but I understand it perfectly.
I'm stressing about whether to make the long drive north to see my parents' holiday house in Galloway for the first time. It is so far, who will look after the household for the length of time I'd want to be away for? Why can't I just go for a few weeks and not need permission and debates? Wanting to step off the world for a bit. Just because other people drive or fly up in one day then back soon, doesn't mean I want to, at all.
Damn, if I want to go there I have to shift myself and get through all these worries.
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