Sam Ireland 3 - The Unreleased Glasgow Book.

Ways to Die in Glasgow was originally written as a standalone and (spoiler) the main character died at the end. That was my original vision for the story, and for the point of the story. Everybody died. When Thomas & Mercer bought the book, really the only change we talked about was keeping Sam alive. They felt the original ending was too brutal, and broke a contract with the potential reader.

They were right.

I didn’t know it at the time, but in hindsight I can see it as a transitional point in my writing. Away from the flirting with noir, and more towards my natural instincts for humour and -quite often- a happier ending.

As a result of the change, Sam was still alive and eligible for a sequel. While Ways to Die was being prepped, my editor asked me to look at writing another Sam book. That’s what led to How to Kill Friend and Implicate People. A book I hadn’t planned on writing, going on to become the closest thing I’ve had to a breakout, with an Anthony nomination in the United States and shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize in Scotland. And, while that book was in production, we talked about a third.

Book Three never came to be. But I did some work on it, including the first few chapters, and after a few years in the vault I thought it might be fun to put some of it up here, for free.

***

ONE

Baz and Nazi Steve knew the evening had taken a sartorial turn when they found a severed hand on the golf course. 

      "I don't think that's the right word," Nazi Steve said.

      "Aye it's is." Baz said. " I read it in a book." 

      It was midnight, or just after. They liked to play at Sandyhills Golf Club, and it was much easier to do at night. There were less people on the course, and nobody cared about things like 'membership fees' or 'public urination.' The torches and guesswork only added to the fun. 

      The previous summer, Baz had arranged a tournament. They'd called it the Jakey World Series, and over a dozen people had taken part. The only rules were that nobody could shout 'fore,' and that everybody had to share their drinks. Drugs were a different matter, people were expected to pay for those. Baz had come second, and Nazi Steve third. The trophy had been won by their friend, Cal Gibson, because he’d had the idea of coating his ball in a florescent paint that glowed in the moonlight. 

      Baz's golf bag was the stuff of local legend. It only held two clubs -the big one and the flat one- but was always stocked with spirits and beer. 

      They were on the eighth hole when they found the hand. It was in a sand trap on the edge of the putting green, with a trail of blood poring towards the flag. Nazi Steve pulled out his flag and started taking pictures with his phone, but the electronic light of the flash was casting an odd glow onto the palid flesh. He gave up and started googling something. 

      "I knew it," he said. “Sartorial is about clothes an' that." 

      "Exactly," Baz said, pointing at the hand. "And some guy used to be wearing that."

      Nazi Steve let that one go.

      They stood and stared at the hand for a few minutes, taking turns sipping at a bottle of voddie. 

      "So what do we do?" Nazi Steve said. 

      "With the hand?"

      "Well it's touching my ball. What do the rules say about that?"

      Baz thought that over. "I don't think the rules really have anything to say about severed body parts. I tell ye what, I'll turn around, look the other way, you do whatever you wanna do."

      Baz swivelled on his feet, kicking up sand as he went. Nazi Steve pulled out the flat club and pushed the hand away. He picked his ball up and tossed it underhand up onto the green. 

      When Baz turned back, he lit up a joint and took a large pull before passing it to his friend. "What's the score?"

      "Shit, I thought you was keeping track."

      They both giggled as they stepped up onto the green. The laughter died away when they saw the briefcase. And the handcuffs fastened to the handle. And the blood on the metal. 

      "Shit," Baz said.

      Nazi Steve took another hit on the joint. "See, now that is something the guy was wearing. Now we're talking sartorial."

      "This never goes well," Baz said. 

      "We don't even-" 

      "You've seen the movies. Some sweet innocent bozo finds a bag full of money, or drugs, and then the bad guys come looking for it."

      "Come on, we don't even know what's in it."

      Nazi Steve bent down to try and open the case, but it was latched shut on a combination lock. 

      "We should just walk away," Baz said. "Pretend we never saw anything. Leave it to the polis." 

      "But what if-"

      "No way." 

      "Here me out. See those stories? It's always that some daft wee cunts tries to keep the money-"

      "Or drugs."

      "Or drugs, aye." Steve took another belt. "The baddies come looking for what's theirs, and our man-"

      "Or woman."

      "Okay, or woman. He or she gets in trouble because they think it's all free. But if we let the Polis deal with this, they'll take the case. Whatever's in it becomes evidence, they impound it. And whoever lost it? They lose out." 

      "No way."

       "But if we take it, we're just providing a service. We find the guy who lost it, return it to the them, and they pay us a reward for our trouble. Come on, this is a genius idea. Have I ever let you down?"

SCENE 2. 

INT. NIGHTCLUB TOILETS. EVENING. 

BAZ and NAZI STEVE face away from us. They’re stood next to each other at urinals. 

NAZI STEVE is not standing well. He’s leaning forward. Swaying slightly. Drunk.

BAZ

Hey, man. You okay?

NAZI STEVE staggers. He turns to face BAZ. He throws up down Baz’s front. 

NAZI STEVE

That sorted it. 

CUT TO:

"Okay,” Nazi Steve knew what Baz was thinking of. “That's a daft question. But I'm right about this. Come on. We do someone a favour, we get some cash, we move on. What could go wrong?”

TWO

They were halfway home in Baz's car before he changed his mind. He turned the volume down on the MP3 player' muting the pirated copy of Loki's new album. "Haw, we gottae go back, man." 

      "You whit?"

      "It's no good. Bad idea. We'll only get into trouble."

      "It's too late now, our prints are all over the case, and the blood will be on the car seat."

      "See that, right there, was probably when we should have known not to do it. The bit when we were thinking about blood." 

      "Aye, fair point." Nazi Steve Sid. "But we're in it noo. We need to stick to the plan and find the guy who lost this." 

      "How we going to do that?" 

      "We could just say 'anyone who lost a briefcase, raise your hand.' Trick question, like. That'll be a giveaway." Nazi Steve paused to look at Baz's pissed off expression. "I'm kidding on. Don't worry.  I have a plan. We just need to follow the clues." 

      "What clues?"

      Nazi Steve pulled the severed hand from inside his coat. "Well we've got this, for a start." 

      Baz nearly skidded off the road. "What the fuck?"

      "It's our best lead, man. And we couldn't just leave it there, could we?"

      "Yes." Baz's volume rose and his voice cracked. "That's exactly what I said we should do. But you had this biiiiiig plan." 

      "In retrospect," Nazi Steve's tone was subdued. "I think the drugs may have had something to do with it." 

Growing Old Disgracefully

“The past keeps knock knock knocking on my door, and I don’t want to hear it any more.”

-       Lou Reed

There are doors you don’t want to open. There are doors you want to close. 

At a certain point, life is just a series of relationships. With people, with ideas, with habits. And you hope to have collected more healthy relationships than unhealthy ones. 

Around the time I quit drinking, I felt nothing but tired. My relationship with alcohol might never have reached the point where I needed to attend meetings, but it was drifting towards unhealthy. If you do anything for more than twenty years, you can probably call it a career. I’d been drinking heavily since my early teens. 

And my unhealthy relationship with alcohol went back even further than that. There’s a story in my family. The man who donated sperm to my existence wanted alcohol to be my first word. Coaching me as I sat in my high chair, holding up beer in front of my face and enunciating “al co hol.” And, so the story goes, it worked. Mama. Dada. Acyho. 

Half the stories in my family aren’t true. I hope that one isn’t. But it doesn’t matter, really. The point is, it was the story I was told. The version of me I grew up believing in. 

There are things about yourself that you come to realise aren’t about yourself at all. Habits and patterns handed down to you. They’re not your fault. But once you become aware of them, it is your fault if you keep them going. It’s okay to absolve yourself of the shit that isn’t on you. It’s not okay to keep repeating it. 

I used to be deeply scared of myself. My unhealthiest relationship was the one I had with me. By my early twenties I was self-destructing with drugs. Then a way-too-young marriage. 

All the baggage takes a toll, if you let it. To quote Paul Westerberg, “by your mid-thirties, you feel unholy.” Somewhere in there, I was feeling old. I was feeling tired. I’d made the jump to my dream job, working full-time as a writer. But that brought with it a whole different kind of pressure, and one I had to let go of. A few years working as a bike courier was good for putting me back in touch with my inner irresponsibility, but I was still holding onto ghosts of myself. 

I was forced to reassess two old relationships in the last year. One of them sent me spiralling into a bout of introspection about the person I was in my early twenties. The mistakes I made. The people I let down. The other? Well, that woke me up to some of that other shit that wasn’t my fault. 

The result was that I learned to forgive myself for a lot of things I’d been carrying around. The person I thought I was? Not my fault. The person I can be now? That’s on me. 

I’ve been working in a new day-job lately where my co-workers are all a lot younger than me. And they all see me as much closer to their age than mine. I’ve had to show them ID to prove that I’m staring at forty. I know a few years ago, working in a different job, surrounded by people my own age, they all saw me as prematurely old. Forgiving yourself takes miles off the clock. 

I’m sleeping more. And better. I get tired in the evenings, and quite like being in bed before midnight (when my job allows.) I’m waking up earlier. I can’t seem to waste a day in bed now even if I want to.

I’m heading into my forties with debts I can’t pay, a writing career in critical condition, and an income that would be more suited to a teenager earning pocket money at weekends. The world is a garbage fire, and we’re about to hit the biggest recession of any of our lifetimes. But I also head into the new decade looking, and feeling, younger than I have in years. With alcohol a distant memory. And with the new -to me- idea that I quite like myself. 

Forgive yourself for the shit that’s not your fault. Fix the shit that is your fault. Drink a lot more water, and probably a lot less alcohol. Everything else falls in line. 

Being There, Doing That: The art of getting out of your own way.

“I’d do it again, ma, I’d do it agen; for a principle’s a principle.”

“Ah, you lost your best principle, me boy, when you lost your arm…”

-Sean O’Casey, Juno and the Paycock. 

I first read that exchange as a teenager. My high school English teacher was encouraging me to read George Orwell, Bertolt Brecht, and Sean O’Casey. That line, more than anything else I read during the period, made me pause, put the book down, and think. 

      I’ve been thinking ever since. 

      In broad strokes, you could say this essay is just another middle-aged man writing about authenticity. That seems to be the way of things. Men of certain persuasions -writers, artists, wankers- hit a certain age, change the contents of their wardrobe, and start to worry loudly about their search for authenticity. They just need to feel something real, man. The good news -or bad news, depending on how badly you want to read that version of the essay- is that I did my searching a long time ago.

Any performer or artist reaches a point when they start to think on what their work has been about. For me, the realisation was that my work and my life have both been about the same things. The second half of my thirties has broadly been about learning to live in the moment. Learning to take my self-worth and enjoyment from doing a thing, not having done it. And the same themes played out in my writing, in different ways. I write -and have always written- about people be coming better or worse at being who they really are. Self-awareness.

      I think also, politically, it came with the journey toward shutting up and listening. Sure, you can be a straight white man who means well, but if you keep wanting to explain that to people, you’re really just finding another way for your ego to get in the way of progress. I don’t think it’s anyone else’s job to document my progress. I don’t want to be seen to be learning, I want to learn.

      One of the most pleasing aspects of my own personal journey has been that I now understand why certain things mean so much to me. Figuring myself out meant I also figured out what it was about the work of Paul Westerberg, for instance, that spoke to me so clearly. And it renewed my love for Elmore Leonard’s work. Leonard had always been one of my main influences, but I’d never put much thought into why. Other than saying the same things as everyone else; great dialogue, interesting characters. 

      As a writer I will never be fit to be in the same library as Leonard, let alone consider myself part of the same discussion. But what I like in his work are the same things I explore in my own. People may, when they’re being wrong, criticise Leonard for weak plotting. But -like thinking it’s clever to criticise Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark for ‘not doing anything’ – that completely misses the point of the work. 

      Leonard wrote about character, not plot. And character in the old-school sense, the trait and quality that is revealed by your choices and actions. He wrote about doing. He wrote about characters learning to accept who they are, and survive, or continuing to live in denial, and failing. Sure, Jack Foley and Karen Sisco could have lived happily ever after, if they had become different people. But they had to be who they are, and that meant a different ending. For Karen, changing who she was to be with Jack would have meant giving up an important part of herself. For Jack, giving up his criminal ways to be with Karen would have meant giving up the one thing he was good at, and what would he be without that? Leonard wrote about craft. He wrote about technique. Broadly he wrote about the importance of finding a thing that you’re good at, and doing it. 52 Pickup may be an exciting and dark tale of blackmail and violence in 70’s Detroit, but our protagonist, Harry, isn’t your typical thriller character. He wins by embracing who he is and what he wants. He’s an engineer by trade and wants the criminals off his back. Rather than go in for some clichéd dramatic shoot-out, he sits at the drawing board and uses his skills, his craft, to design a way out. Marrying his skill to his desire is what ultimately gets him out of the hole. Be who you are. Right now. To live. 

      I’ve always been drawn to arts and professions that come with a proof of doing. And I’ve not always understood why that was. I love standup comedy. That’s one of the ultimates. How do you gain respect at comedy? By being seen to do it. Whether you live or die on stage, you’ve levelled up by doing it. And then, as you get better at it, you can be seen to be getting better at it. You’re seen making people laugh, or not. For a long time, I thought those were the reasons I kept getting the itch to do comedy. Then I did comedy, and realised what I was really searching for. It wasn’t the more ego-tinged touches of the earning respect or laughter, it was the notion of being in the moment doing something, and searching for a craft that matched up to that inner need.

      I’m never happier than when I’m riding my fixed-gear bike. Because the doing is all that matters. The pedals. Your muscles. Your lungs. Your heart. The feel of the road through the drivetrain. The route ahead. The decisions to turn or not turn, stop or carry on, slow down or speed up. There’s no second guessing. You’re in the moment. 

      Becoming a bike courier was the natural evolution of that. Being paid to just do? Being paid to just be? 

      No office politics. No hoops. No need to worry or second guess about my productivity levels or whether I was seen to be working. I was doing a job that was judged purely on whether I did the job. And for my own mental state, I was spending hours a day simply being.

      When it comes to writing, I’ve learned to enjoy writing. I wasted a decade of my life worrying about having written. Worrying about the office politics. The doors that wouldn’t open to me. The chances I wouldn’t get. But ultimately, the joy I get from writing is sinking into the moment of doing it. Becoming the character, hearing their voice, seeing where the scene goes. The rest? Who cares. 

      I’m enjoying my current day job for much the same reason. It doesn’t pay well, it doesn’t come with a ‘career’ attached, and it certainly doesn’t earn respect. But minute by minute, hour by hour, I’m just doing.

      My darkest moments, the times when my mood drops, my introspection starts, my fears overwhelm me….they’re all moments when I’ve stopped doing, moments when I’m not in the moment. 

For me -and I can only speak for me- I’ve learned that my approach to art is the same as my approach to life and to ‘principles.’ It’s a practical approach. Art and principles are things that you do. They are to be applied. You live them, in the moment, and find yourself somewhere in the doing. Life, too, needs to be found in the living, not what you hope to get out of having lived.

      Batman once said ‘it’s not who you are underneath, it’s what you do that defines you.’ But he was a grown man dressed in a stupid costume, about to jump off a rooftop, so his advice is mostly wrong. Finding out who you are underneath, and matching it up to what you do, that’s the ticket. Yoda said ‘do, or do not, there is no try.’ But that’s also complete bollocks, because the doing and the trying are the same process. Jason Isbell said ‘find what makes you happy girl, and do it ‘til you’re gone.’ I think he’s closer to the truth. Ultimately the validation you seek can only come from yourself. If you’re looking for someone else to tell you whether your work matters right now, that means you already know the answer. But only you can change that, and only you can find the work that does matter. So whether you want to write, or stack shelves, or tell jokes, or plot the downfall of western democracy, stop thinking, stop talking and start doing.

The Big Man Joined The Band

Grief is a horrible thing, isn’t it?

It has no respect for whats going on in the world. It has no respect for anyone else’s feelings or perspective. It only cares about what it can do to you. Right now. In this moment.

I should be used to this feeling. Growing up, I had a lot of pets, and they all went the way of…well, all pets. I’m thinking of my first cat, Mowgli, who poisoned himself by drinking bleach that had fallen from a shelf and cracked open. I’m thinking of Rani, who was so loveably stupid, he lay down in a sunny spot on a hot day and died of heat stroke. I’m thinking of Wellington, the kitten who died mere weeks into being ‘mine’ when his liver failed. And I’m thinking of Darnit, the tabby from the same litter as Wellington, who became my best friend trough my difficult teens and early twenties.

I’m also thinking of the two Chinese hamsters who, perhaps influenced by all the violent movies I was watching, attacked and killed each other.

So I should be used to this.

It’s part of the deal. You invite a pet into your family, you give them all the love you can, and you know the tradeoff is a day when you have to make a horrible decision.

But something felt different about Biggie and Scooter.

I’ll never know what caused the change in me. I’ll never really know if there was a change. In my teens and twenties I found my way into fun habits involving drugs and alcohol. And I don’t have a good enough handle on who I was then to know if I was doing it to mask the same feelings I came to understand a lot better in my thirties. It could be that I’ve always had anxiety problems, and found ways to cover them. At the same time, earlier in this decade I was working for a shitty company who treated me really badly, and around that time I started to struggle with my emotions, and stress, and all the fun things that come with it. Did I always have these problems, and simply get better at owning them as I got older? Or did a bad experience change the way I’m wired?

Biggie and Scooter came into our lives around the period I was starting to struggle. Quite quickly we learned their different personalities. They were both affectionate, but in different ways. Scooter can be wary around you at first, but once she trusts you, she likes to be fussed. Biggie was a big bundle of neurosis and very easily startled, but he would let me pick him up and hold him, and he liked to show affection when he thought we weren’t looking. Mostly at 3AM when he would jump on us to get comfortable on the duvet.

It wasn’t long after they came to live with is that Biggie -only three or four months old at the time- was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy. A problem with the walls of his heart. It presents at first as a heart murmur, and is common in older cats, but having it show up in a kitten so young meant the vets couldn’t really give us much to go on. How long would Biggie live? Impossible to say.

From here, the cats became, an outlet for my own failure to deal with anxiety. I didn’t know it at the time. But I would worry about them, in a way I’d never worried about pets. I’ve always loved my animals. All of them. But I never stressed about them. But I would lie awake at night thinking of all the worst case scenarios involving these two. And, in particular, Biggie.

I’m sure it helped that I, too, was born with a heart murmur. A trivial detail. Something I’d forgotten about completely. Until I was going through a slow low-level nervous breakdown and had a kitten, this fluffy, loveable, loyal little thing, who was totally dependent on our care, had the same thing I’d been born with.

Over time I recognised things for what they were. I could see I was transferring a certain level of my own issues onto the cats. Keeping them safe, warm, and happy helped to keep me safe, warm, and happy. Until the time I was older, and wiser, and started getting a handle on my own emotions and brain, and could take some of the pressure off.

But there was always a certain bond there. Biggie was always a little piece of me. We both had the tendency to be a little grumpy sometimes. We both had a mercurial streak. We were both unconditionally loyal, and preferred to show our affection in small, quiet, moments.

We didn’t know how long we’d have Biggie with us. Turns out, just shy of 8 years. He passed away yesterday two weeks after his eighth birthday. In retrospect, I think there’s a certain logic to the timing. We found out recently that cats are classed as senior when they turn eight. Insurance companies refuse to take them on at that age. And, of course, senior is the time in life when cardiomyopathy becomes common in cats. So for a wee trooper who’s been carrying that condition since birth, I guess this is the point when he couldn’t handle the worsening symptoms.

I lost a number of pets while I was growing up. But this was the first time I had to be an adult and be part of the decision. This was the first time I got to be in the room when the dose was given, holding my cat, fussing him, and telling him we loved him.

There are small personal dramas playing out around the world right now due to lockdowns. Families not getting to see each other. Loved ones passing away alone. In the grand scheme, I can’t expect many to feel all that bad for our own little piece of drama. Unable to be in the building with out cat while he was treated. Freezing outside, in a car park, for two hours because we don’t have a car to wait in, but everywhere else was closed. And none of that really matters to me today. The part that will take a lot longer to walk off is that the vets - completely understandably- could only allow one of us to be in with Biggie for his final moments. Making that choice, and then having to deal with what came next, will always be my memory of this lockdown.

My friend Franz Nicolay wrote a line in a song that goes, ‘life never labels the last time you do something.’ And life doesn’t label the last morning you put down your cats food, or sit with him on the sofa, or watch him make biscuits as he settles onto his red blanket.

And we have Scooter to think of now. They were born brother and sister, from the same litter. They’ve never been apart. Scooter has never, aside from the afternoon and evening when they were each being neutered, been on her own. And we can’t explain to her why she now is. That’s a thing we’ll figure out over the coming days.

But I was wrong. At the beginning. I said grief is a horrible thing. It isn’t. As hard as it can be to accept it, grief is a gift. The pain - and then the deep sadness that follows- is all part of loving someone. And as many of us grieve at the moment, in the middle of all of our mini dramas that make up this epic pandemic lockdown, we need to embrace that sadness. The sadness means someone was part of your life, and means they’re still part of your life. The conversation with them continues. And grief is the reminder of that.

All pets are part of your family. Some pets become your friends, too. I’m going to miss my wee friend.

But I can also see, even as I type this, that he has left plenty of his white and orange hairs lying around to remind me of him everyday. In those small, private, doses that he preferred to dish out his affections.

Happy Valentines Day - Scotland is Leaving.

Happy Valentines Day. Let’s talk about a breakup. Sorry, United Kingdon, but I’m just not that into you. I think Scotland is feeling the same way. One way or another, we are clearly on the road to asking the independence question again. A lot has changed since 2014, but with it, nothing has changed. 

I switched sides in 2013. And, as someone with an English accent, whose very identity was being used as an argument against independence, I felt it was my role to be loud and active. I campaigned in Bridgeton – unionist central in Glasgow – and handed out leaflets to people who swore at me, shouted at me, and kept eye contact with me as they angrily put the leaflet in the bin. In February of that year I wrote two blogs -one of which was called An Open Letter to England- that started going viral to such a degree that I panicked and deleted it.

On the day of the referendum itself I stood outside Bridgeton polling station almost all day (I took a lunch break, and finished about an hour before the polls closed). The polling station was in the library, which is next door to the city’s largest Orange Lodge, and on a junction with three of the most hardcore Rangers and Unionist pubs. I was shouted at. Spat at. Called a paedophile. Told to get Alex Salmond on the phone to apologise for a joke someone had seen on Facebook. The polling station manager grew so concerned that he called the police three times -three separate call outs- and on the third occasion they decided to just spend the rest of the day watching the station. A young man from Generation Yes turned up in the afternoon, and his car was vandalised with unionist stickers that the Orange Lodge had handed out to children. 

There was a certain level of….of I don’t know what. Trauma is too heavy a word. I don’t want to insult people who’ve suffered genuine PTSD by equating my feelings to their injuries. But for a long, long, time after the referendum, I could feel after-effects of the day. Stray comments during conversations with friends would take me back to the moment someone from inside the polling station came out and told me there was a rumour that one of the local bands were coming to attack me (never happened.) Telling stories from the day would put me right back in the moment strangers hurled abuse at me. I remember someone calmly, reasonably, asking my name, and then comparing it to a list, while talking to me about my tweets. There are people who faced far worse than me in 2014, and people who have carried the campaign for independence a lot longer and further than I have. And as a straight white man, I can’t lay any claim to being targeted or harassed when stacked up against the level of violence and harassment that women have to brave when they speak up on these issues. But I can only speak for myself, and for my own emotional reserves and mental strength, and I know that day in 2014 took a lot out of me. 

As we prepare for another campaign, I don’t think I have the same level of effort in me as I did then. I can’t replay the same conversations, starting from scratch with new people, repeating things I’ve already said. And I don’t have the energy to face the same challenges. But all of those things need doing. People need to talk with empathy about their own journeys from No to Yes, and I feel the most effective people for that job will be those who’ve changed since 2014. They are best placed to win round those who can be swayed. 

  But I can still have one last say about my own journey. 

  It’s impossible for me to say when my mind changed. Anything I say about my journey to Yes is far more about when I realised my mind had changed. A common complaint levelled at online political chat is that you can’t change anyone’s mind with a Facebook or Twitter post. This is short-term thinking. You can’t change someone’s mind on the spot with a single post. We have emotions and ego. We’re wrapped up in our identities and opinions. It takes time. But with a simple, reasonable, post to social media you can be part of the process. The actual change-of-mind will come later, after quiet reflection. 

Scottish independence is not an easy thing to change your mind about. A lifetime of associations, emotions, ties. A whole identity rooted in one version of a country or another. The moment when you realise your mind has changed might feel like a switch has been flipped, but it’s taken a long time to reach that point, thousands of questions and thoughts and doubts. And then, once you admit to yourself that the change has happened, comes the next problem. Saying it out loud. For all of our human faults and failings, admitting to change is as hard as the change itself.  

I moved to Scotland in 2006. 26 years old. All of it, up until that point, lived in England. I’d been born and raised there. Married and divorced there. I support an English football team. My identity – to a degree I didn’t realise until much later – was English. There’s a certain bubble you’re indoctrinated in when you’ve been raised south of the border. Without seeing it, without feeling it. No matter how liberal you are, or how far to the left, your views on the rest of the world are still contained within a certain framework. The same patronising English traits that the rest of the world complain about become inherent in you. In the same way that a man needs to learn not to see himself as the default, and not speak on behalf of women, or that white people need to stop seeing their experiences as the normal, with everyone else’s as ‘other’, so English people need to get passed the idea that their experience is the standard. My attitudes about Scotland? Well, I thought they were progressive, I thought they were modern. I thought they were respectful. But I would still be seen using language like If the government allow Scotland to have a referendum… I clearly remember talking to Scottish friends about how much Scotland depended financially on England. 

I moved up with an inbuilt anger against Alex Salmond and the SNP (and, well, one of those wasn’t wrong…) I have a clear memory of laying out the newspapers in the shop I was working in, the morning after the 2007 Scottish election, and talking to work colleagues about how the SNP were “anti-English” and anyone who voted for them was saying they hated me and wanted me to go home. In the years that followed I even got in a couple of arguments with strangers in the city, after alcohol, when I felt like I’d detected some kind of ‘racism’ against English people. I wouldn’t have described myself in these terms, but I was a full-on unionist. In fact, I’m sure I once thought I’d been very witty in replying to a pro-independence friend with the line “I’m left wing, I believe in unions.” 

I remember storming out of a pub at least once after an argument with a pro-independence campaigner. And the truth is, looking back on it now, I was looking for the argument. If you are of a unionist mind, and want to go out in one of Scotland’s biggest cities, you’ll find someone who will give you the anti-English “racism” you’re hunting for. You can pull the opposite trick in most major English cities, if you want to. Of course these sentiments exist. You can confirm any bias, if you try hard enough. 

Somewhere in all of this, my attitude began to soften. The arguments with friends planted seeds. The quiet discussions with my wife moved the earth. Holyrood, by and large, was a calmer, more reasonable place to do politics than Westminster, and there was a majority of people on the chamber who valued free health care, free education, internationalism. At a time when Westminster was resembling Punch & Judy, with shouting, jeering, and cheat shots, it became impossible to ignore that there was a clear difference between the two parliaments. Even still, the political reasons for and against independence were, largely, irrelevant to me (though I wouldn’t have admitted it at the time, and I now believe the political argument is firmly weighted on the pro-independence side.) It was all about slowly unpicking the threads of my emotional ties. Feeling dressed up as reason. By the summer of 2013 I had reached a point where I would say “I’m not opposed to independence, it’s just not my fight.” I still felt, deep down, that is was a discussion rooted in where you were born.

The first time I became aware of a major change in myself is rooted in tragedy. And not mine. I drank in the Clutha sometimes. It was on my walk home from work. On the night of the 29th of November, 2013, I’d had an epically bad shift. My wife had suggested a night in with a pizza and a rented movie. On the walk home, I did play with the idea of stopping into the Clutha for a quick pint. But I kept walking. A few hours later we paused the movie (Mud) as we both got messages talking about a helicopter crash in town. In the weeks that followed I felt an emotion which I came to realise was grief. The city was hurting, and so was I. Glasgow was home now. I was emotionally invested in what happened here. And if Glasgow was my hometown, didn’t I have a stake in the outcome of the independence referendum? 

I picked up a copy of the Scottish Government’s white paper. No mean feat to digest a 650 page document when you’re a dyslexic. I started paying close, calm, measured attention to the political substance of the arguments on both sides. And more than that, the tone. The fear-mongering. The spin. The way that only one side seemed to be branded as nationalists, when the other side were the ones arguing for the retention -and possible use- of nuclear weapons, for the challenges of changing flags, appealing to national identity. One of the main running arguments against independence was how difficult it would be to negotiate with the the UK over the settlement. Seriously? We shouldn’t leave because the other people will be mean if we do? What does that say about the relationship? And hidden away in the white paper was the pledge to close Dungavel – an immigrant detention facility. I’m not a fan of boiling large issues down to simplistic lines. However, I decided, if you can walk into a polling station and tick a box that gets rid of your nuclear weapons and closes an immigrant detention centre, it’s a good box to tick. 

Around that Christmas, we took a trip down to the Midlands to see my family. An old argument hit me with fresh eyes. For years I’d been pointing out just how much my home region had been let down by Westminster. The way that successive governments had neglected us. The town I spent most of my 26 years living in had, by 2013, faded to the point that it was being absorbed by the towns around it. The presence of an ASDA was the only noteable thing, and soon my parents address will be “Number 8, The fruit and veg aisle, Darlaston.” The whole area looks depressed and hurt. Brexit, for all that we can argue about racism and nationalism, was created by decades of isolation and neglect imposed on thousands of small English towns. They’re lost and alone. Lied to. And, ever since I had moved to Scotland, that had been my reason against  independence. “You think it’s bad here? It is, in places. But you should see where I’m from. We’ve all been fucked over together.” Looking back now, I don’t really understand how long I held onto the fake-logic of “We’re both being fucked, so lets continue to be fucked.” As if there were some magical socialist utopia we could reach if we all pulled together. That’s a long wait for a train that aint coming. Despite all three (as it was) major UK parties having been in power in one form or another during my lifetime, I felt the turnaround was only one good election away. Finally I saw through my own programming, my own bias. If the UK wanted to change, it would have changed by now. But maybe, just maybe, if Scotland broke away -with the tighter democratic control that comes from a smaller population, and a pro-European mindset, and with such potential for renewable energy- the towns in England could see another way. Westminster would no longer be able to play voters in England off against “substinence junkies” in the “provinces” and would, instead, be forced to listen to the angry and forgotten voices in the Midlands, the North East, Yorkshire. (Of course, Brexit has destroyed that part of my reasoning. In 2014 I saw Independence as a route to helping people on both sides of the border. Sitting here now, in 2020, it’s looking simply like the best way to escape a house fire.)

The final moment, the conscious flip of the switch, came on the train ride back up to Glasgow. Two older couples sat on the table in front of us. An English couple, on their way up for a holiday, and a Scottish couple, on their way home. After some polite chatter the English couple asked -as all English people did, during the run up- about the referendum. Their surprise was audible when the Scottish couple both said they would be voting Yes. I could hear it. See it in their faces. Bafflement. Something that was outside of their experience, and outside of everything they’d been told. It was the moment I finally reckoned with the idea of an English bubble, one that I had been in, and had spent seven years working my way out of. They were stunned at the very idea that anybody could want to leave the United Kingdom. The four of them discussed the issue quite amiably, with remarkable restraint shown by the two Scots at the (completely unintentional) creeping condescension of the two English. Until the Englishman said, “well…ultimately, I suppose whether you can afford it or not depends on how much of the oil Mr Cameron lets you keep.”

Oh….

It’s like that, is it?

  Switch.

Flipped. 

  I supported Scottish independence and I was done pretending otherwise, to myself or to anybody else. 

  Well, not quite. Because that really brings me to the thing I’ve been trying to say. I had changed my mind. I was going to vote Yes. Soon I would realise I was going to campaign for it, to stand up for it. But in that moment all I felt was fear. I felt like I was going to have to publicly climb down off something. I was going to have to change my public identity. I was going to have to tell people I had changed my mind. And that, right then, felt harder than the entire seven-year process I had undergone to reach that point. 

So as the conversations all begin again, as we look to dates for a referendum, and the political chess game that will enable it, and as we start to go into every conversation with friends and loved ones trying to judge the yes/no subtext of what they’re saying, just remember this: People can change their minds. But it happens slowly. It happens from honest, good-faith conversations. It happens from treating people with empathy. The actual change will happen in private, likely. In a series of mornings staring in the bathroom mirror, or in long sleepless nights dwelling on an issue that feels fundamental to their identity. It’s a scary process. 

Scottish Independence isn’t achieved by making dramatic polling day stands in Bridgeton. And, for all that their work in necessary, it’s not achieved by manoeuvring at Holyrood or Westminster. It’s achieved by treating family like family, friends like friends, people like people. It’s achieved by giving the best, most honest reasons you can when asked for, and by giving people the space they need to change their minds. And above all, it’s achieved by creating a welcoming, supportive, space for people to admit that change.