Nations seek their souls in the strangest places. We English, for instance, have illustrated ourselves to the world and to ourselves with a stark choice between Cool Britannia and Ye Olde Tea Shoppe. When not hawking to tourists in London those T-shirts scrawled with obscenities, we picture ourselves in country lanes and rose-covered thatched cottages. A few of us actually seek out the vestiges of that countryside world and live a pretend-rural life there; but most Spectator readers would be bored to tears after ten minutes of Morris dancing; and a fortnight of hobnobbing over a honeysuckled garden fence with a rosy-cheeked jam-maker who had never heard of the Today programme would have us screaming for release, almost as horrified as we’d be in a Soho nightclub.
The Scots are even odder: one has only to cite tartan, Braveheart, caber-tossing and bagpipes to see at once that a year in a Highland croft would be hell for your working-class Glaswegian and your Edinburgh lawyer alike.
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