Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect Dram

by Iain Banks

  … anyway, he’s been rubbish since he went to Hollywood.

  In a way I’d like to report that we spent most evenings engaged in deep discussions about the Iraqi War (Part Deux), its provenance, course, likely repercussions and mooted sequels, but by this time there’s little left to say. The war is as good as won, we’re told, with just some mopping up to be done while the search goes on for those fiendishly well-hidden WMDs.

  The three of us know each other so well there’s not much chance any one of us going to surprise the other two by saying something like, ‘Oh no, I was all for the war.’ All there’s been are a few, brief, bitter exchanges confirming we each despise the illegitimate, warmongering scumbag bastard who’s in ultimate charge of our armed forces, and that we don’t have a lot of time for Tony Blair either.

  We play Dave’s game instead, where the takings and the victories are bloodless, and where, as in most games, there are no civilians.

  McCartney: the case for madness.

  It took us years to convince Dave he was crazy. Even the driving under the truck thing didn’t count according to him. To this day he claims that driving underneath a 40-tonne truck in a tiny little Fiat X1/9 sports car just to avoid having to abandon an overtaking manoeuvre halfway through was an entirely sensible thing to do. I could rest my case there, but McCartney won’t let me.

  The Fiat X1/9 – the baby Ferrari as it was called at the time – was a beautifully balanced if rather underpowered little car with a targa top you could take off and stow in the boot. Dave foolishly let me have a shot of the car one night in darkest Fleet Street, in the old days when they still printed papers there; I had a great time whizzing through the narrow streets, dodging giant lorries loaded with ten-tonne rolls of newsprint.

  Dave was driving the car in north London one bright, sunny day in the early eighties, behind a big articulated truck. He started to overtake, then – when he was about midway along the side of the artic – saw a traffic island ahead blocking his route. Now, he had the top off, so he could see that from the top of the Fiat’s A-pillar – in other words the top of the windscreen – to the bottom of the truck’s platform there was a gap of a few inches, and, the X1/9 being quite a small, short car, there was plenty of room between the tractor unit hauling the thing and the double set of axles at the rear. Back then there were no safety barrier rails hanging underneath long trucks to stop cars submarining underneath in a side-on crash and so decapitating their occupants, so Dave just swung the car half-underneath the truck (his side was still in the sunlight), waited for the traffic island to disappear astern, then swung back out again and completed the overtake.

  Is there anybody out there reading this who fails to understand what an act of utter insanity this really was? It surely can’t just be me. I’ve tackled McCartney on this a dozen times or more and every time Dave protests loudly that it was a perfectly safe and even sensible thing to do. He’s a persuasive arguer as well, the swine, and a few times I’ve almost found myself agreeing with him, but never quite.

  ‘McCartney, I’m fucking crazy, but I’d never do that!’

  ‘Well, that’s just you being blinkered. It was the rational response at the time.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I could see really clearly there was loads of room, because the roof was off. I probably wouldn’t have done it if there had been somebody else in the passenger’s seat; they might have got upset, but there wasn’t. So I did.’

  ‘What if the truck driver had seen you?’

  ‘Maybe he did.’

  ‘How could he have? If he had he’d have done what any rational person would have done and braked on instinct, panicking because he’s just seen a nutter drive under his truck! You’d have ploughed into the tractor unit’s rear tyres, bounced off again and then the rear trailer axles would have rolled right over you! You’d have been paste!’

  ‘Aye, but it didn’t happen, did it?’

  ‘But it could have!’

  ‘But it didn’t. I don’t know what you’re getting so upset about.’

  ‘I’m not upset! I just think you’re crazy but you won’t admit it.’

  ‘It wasn’t crazy; it was a perfectly good bit of overtaking with a sort of wiggle in the middle. You’d have done the same.’

  ‘That’s my point! I wouldn’t!’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because it’s a patently insane and crazy thing to do!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Dave; you drove under a truck.’

  ‘Well, put like that …’

  And so on.

  * * *

  What ought to have finally persuaded Dave he was insane was when he, Jim and Dave’s then girlfriend Jenny bought that damn pub in the Highlands despite the fact nobody concerned had any experience running any sort of licensed premises, or even a shop. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but wasn’t. I remember sitting in Dave’s house in Uxbridge along with Jim, trying to convince them they were both mad – in fact that all three of them were mad – but they weren’t having it.

  Ah, Dornie. It’s hard not to like a place set in the midst of glorious mountain scenery with one of the world’s most picturesque castles barely a stone’s throw away, but in the case of Dornie it was worth making the effort. There were some good, friendly people there, in the village and the area, but working behind the bar at the Clachan was enough to convince you the village was home to a disproportionate number of chip-shouldered, hypocritical, right-wing sexist shites.

  They’d put down their copy of the Sun long enough to tell you in some detail what they’d like to do to these hippies who smoked dope and dropped E, then they’d order their eighth or ninth whisky of the day and plenty of change for the cigarette machine. Later they’d drive off. Or, sometimes, the wife or the daughter would arrive by car and try to drag them out of the bar to take them home for their tea.

  These guys could even turn what ought to be an act of generosity into one of aggression. I came to think of it as Aggressive Dramming. Aggressive Dramming usually took place when you’d told a bunch of these people you weren’t drinking, or at least weren’t drinking much – maybe because you were going to be driving later – but then found the bar in front of you filling up with unasked-for whiskies whenever you turned your back. Insisting, even with a smile, that you really had meant what you said and therefore wouldn’t be drinking the whiskies tended to be met with scowls and accusations of being a Poof (in a seriously homophobic, non-ironic manner). A surlier bunch of rednecks you couldn’t wish to avoid.

  There were occasional fights. I think I feel the same way about men who start pub brawls as I do about countries that start wars.

  Anyway, if Dave, Jim and Jenny were mad, so was I, because later on I put money into the pub.

  It was in Uxbridge one night that Dave and I got to talking about why, despite me starting to make mildly serious money from my books, I had no intention of buying a Ferrari.

  ‘Because I’d just get all overenthusiastic with it and wrap the fucker round a bit of Highland scenery and kill myself,’ I told him, sort of semi-presciently.

  Dave looked thoughtful. He nodded slowly. ‘That would be a terrible, terrible waste,’ he said solemnly (and like an idiot, I started to make a bashful, self-deprecating gesture of acknowledgement), before he added, ‘of a beautiful car.’

  Ditto Brown: telling who your real friends are.

  Summer 1981; one night. Jim and I walking back up Adelaide Road en route to McCartney’s flat after an evening listening to bands at Dingwall’s, Camden Lock. The south side of Adelaide Road consists, for one long stretch, of a brick wall – maybe nine or ten feet or so high – with a steep embankment behind it sloping down to the main railway line leading to Euston. I was still in my Drunken Urban Climbing period, and had shinned up a bus stop sign to get onto the top of the wall so I could walk along the top. Jim was keeping pace on the pavement below. He shouted up;

  ‘Banksie
?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you trust me?’

  ‘Of course I trust you.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘Okay. Throw yourself off the wall and I’ll catch you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Throw yourself off the wall and I promise I’ll catch you.’

  ‘Are you insane; we’ll probably both break our necks.’

  ‘No we won’t. Come on!’

  ‘You’re fucking mad.’

  ‘I can do it. I know I can. You’ll come to no harm. Trust me.’

  ‘James, we’re both very drunk indeed. This is a bad idea.’

  ‘Ach, just dae it anyway.’

  I considered. ‘As ever your impeccable logic has proved too much for me, my fine friend. I’ll do it.’ I stopped and got ready to jump down onto Jim.

  He moved out into the street a little. ‘Na, wait.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ve got to jump off backwards.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s too easy if you jump off forwards; you’ll see that I’m there to catch you.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said, seeing what he meant. ‘You’re right.’ I thought. ‘Could I not just keep my eyes closed?’

  ‘Don’t be daft, you’re bound to open them; only natural. It’s a lot simpler if you just turn round and jump off the wall backwards.’

  ‘Oh, well, what the hell. Okay.’ I turned round, then shouted over my shoulder. ‘Ready?’

  ‘No. Hold on a minute. There’s a bus coming.’ We waited until the bus had passed. I waved at people on the top deck, then turned round again.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Ready!’

  I threw myself backwards off the wall.

  Jim caught me – well, broke my fall – and we ended up sprawled in the middle of the road.

  ‘You okay?’ Jim wheezed.

  I rolled over and stood up. ‘Seem to be. You?’ I put out a hand and helped him up.

  ‘Fine,’ he said, limping to the pavement with a pained look on his face. Then he grinned at me triumphantly. ‘See?’

  I shook my head. ‘You’re aff your fuckin heid, pal.’

  We walked on, only stopping at one of the high flats further up Adelaide Road to try to get out onto the roof to look at the view of London By Night. We hauled ourselves up through a hatch into the lift machinery space, but that was as far as we got; the outside door was locked.

  (I asked Jim to look over this story to make sure I wasn’t getting anything wrong and he said that for him the funniest bit was right at the start, when we’d been walking up the road. He must have been looking at something across the street or otherwise have become distracted because he didn’t notice me shinning up the bus stop and climbing to the top of the wall in the first place; he thought I was still walking along beside him and when he turned to talk to me couldn’t understand where I’d gone. I seemed to have disappeared. He stood there confused for a few moments, looking all around, then shouted ‘Banksie?’ I said, ‘Hello,’ – wittily, obviously – from above head height and that was when he realised where I was. Jim also claims the wall was only eight feet high, but – ha! – he wasn’t the one standing up there.)

  ‘Banksie, what’s this thing here that says “Palm”?’

  ‘Oh, that’s for the Palm Tungsten handheld thingy I got for going on the Trans-Siberian. I should have returned it and got my money back after we junked the passports but I kind of took to it. Especially the wee fold-out keyboard thing; that’s just totally brilliant. I mean, I’ve never actually used it, but … Anyway, that folder on the laptop called Palm is for the software that lets the laptop and the Palm talk to each other.’

  ‘Awright. Not porn, then.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Not porn.’

  ‘Of course not porn; I don’t have any fucking porn.’

  ‘What, really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘You serious?’

  ‘Yes I’m serious.’

  ‘Awright. I just thought when it said “Palm” it might mean …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  * * *

  Next day is Friday and we have to leave; originally we’d meant to have the whole week but Jim has to be back home for the weekend so we settle up and head south through another Whew-it’s-a-scorcher-sez-the-Scum-stylee day.

  However we get to see wolves, which is entirely the coolest thing about this day. They’re at the Highland Wildlife Park, between Aviemore and Kingussie, along with enormous black Highland cattle, European bison, Przewalski’s horse and just about every animal presently or ever associated with Scotland. The wolves have their own big enclosure so they don’t eat the other animals, and they pad quietly along their bit of green hillside like grey ghosts, stealthily impressive. We investigate the smaller forest enclosure where various birds and polecats, wildcats and pine martens hang out, some of the latter in caged areas linked by a complicated system of aerial runs made of wood and wire mesh, reminding me oddly of a train set. Mostly the animals are pretty quiet, but they look dozily content on this hot day.

  The golden eagle does not look happy; it has a fair-size rocky bit of hillside fenced off for its use but it keeps launching itself at the hessian side netting as though trying to escape, and its enclosure just isn’t big enough, not by about a mountain range or so. I’d rather see some well-shot high definition film of an animal like this than have to watch it suffer in what must seem to it like a punishment cell. Actually I’d rather see a grainy black and white photo than this; it’s the only off-note in the park, which otherwise seems well set out for the comfort of the animals. Well, having said that, the café isn’t great either, but we have a snack that is at least edible and head for our homes through what feels like summer heat.

  Even the Jag is sounding like it’s got all cranky in the high temperatures, idling at 1500 revs and running on after the ignition’s been switched off, coughing and popping before spluttering to a stop. I contemplate trying to fiddle with its carbs, maybe adjust the slow running jets, but I’m worried I’ll just make matters worse, so just let it rev away; I’ll book it in for a service tomorrow.

  We take a certified long-distance multiple GWR; the great A9 short cut, leaving the main road just before the end of its longest dual carriageway section to head over the hills for Trinafour, Tummel Bridge, Schiehallion and the Appin of Dull (for about three decades I’ve meant to stop and take a photograph of me standing to the side of the sign that says ‘Dull’; finally I get to). Past Castle Menzies and through Weem for Aberfeldy. Near the Castle is the House of Menzies, which is a sort of combined art gallery, coffee shop and upmarket off-licence formed out of some attractively preserved farm buildings. I have spent far too much money here in the past, taking away a crate at a time of interesting New World wines and the odd rare whisky. Somehow I manage to resist its siren call this time.

  Aberfeldy is approached over an old light-controlled one-way humpback bridge. Another of General Wade’s. General Wade was the geezer charged with building roads over large parts of the Highlands after a highland rebellion in 1725, to make quelling any future uprisings easier. What actually happened was that in 1745 the wily Highlanders used the new roads to come storming out of the hills faster than they ever had before, taking everybody by surprise. Visible from the summit of wade’s is an elegant looking footbridge which is made of plastic. I seem to recall this was hailed on a long-ago edition of Tomorrow’s World as the future of small bridge-building, though that may have been a little optimistic. Aberfeldy’s a neat little town with good places to eat, several huntin’ shootin’ fishin’ campin’ hillwalkin’ type shops (the kind Les claims have lights above the door just for me), a good butcher’s and an outfitters with an intriguing upstairs bit that sells antiques and lace, though the opening hours seem a little erratic. The road rises steeply out of town, winding up towards the long undulating straights which carry us acro
ss the moors for Amulree and the Sma’ Glen before we rejoin what feels like the world of ordinary roads again at Gilmerton. when I was working up at Nigg and coming back to Gourock at weekends – in the seventies when the A9 still went through a lot of the towns it now bypasses – this short cut genuinely did save time. Nowadays the A9, for all its faults, is a lot quicker, and this route just presents a more interresting way to go, not a fater one. Heading for Fife I’d normally aim for Gleneagles from Muthill (I’ve never stopped to check, but I’d lay odds the locals pronounce it Moothill or something similar, rather than the obvious way), however today we take the original short-cut route, on a wee daft road pointing straight at Braco. Then it’s cross-country round the back of the Fintry Hills for Dalmuir to drop Jim and onwards across the Erskine bridge to Greenock to deposit Dave.

  ‘I wasn’t really tetchy, was I?’ I ask as Dave retrieves his bag from the boot.

  ‘I’ve seen you worse. Like the time you straight-armed the controls off that Pelican crossing in Glasgow.’

  ‘So,’ I say brightly, ‘not that tetchy.’

  ‘Definitely not that tetchy.’

  I decide I’ll settle for this, bid Mr McC. a hearty farewell, climb into my comically over-revving Jag and hightail it back to sunny Fife.

  10: Welcome to the Land of Heederum-Hawderum

  PORSCHE TIME. INDEED, 911 time. We have a light blue 964 model Carrera 4 Cabriolet on a K plate, so it’s about ten years old right now. The ‘4’ means it’s four-wheel drive. This is not so you can take it off road, it’s to give the little blighter more grip in the wet and try to tame the notoriously tail-happy behaviour 911s have exhibited since the sixties because they have the engine in the wrong place, i.e. hanging out astern of the rear wheels.

  It’s a creaky, rattly, bangy kind of place to be, the 911, when the top’s down. Actually it’s a fairly noisy old thing even when the top is up, when, in addition, it feels dark and claustrophobic, but then it’s almost never used with the hood closed unless we’ve gone out in sunlight and encountered unexpected rain. The 911 is another unexpectedly relaxing and limit-friendly car to drive, because – while it will very happily scream along at three-figure speeds with the hood stowed, and give every impression of enjoying it – it feels just as content at much lower speeds.