DIARY MAX HASTINGS
The annual English pilgrimage to Scotland has imbued unlikely places with romance for a century and a half. Framed in our loo is a characteristic piece of dog- gerel, written between the wars, I think, entitled 'At Euston — by one who is not going':
Stranger with the pile of luggage Proudly labelled for Portree, How I wish this night of August I were you and you were me!
Nothing can match the thrill of going to sleep as the carriages blank through north London, to waken again as they coast through the last heather-clad miles before Inverness. A few years ago, my son was enchanted when the engine caught fire ten miles short of the station. After enjoying the blaze 'for a time, we realised that the train would be delayed for hours while they sorted it out. We hopped down on to the track, strolled to the nearest road and hitch-hiked into Inverness. We were ply- ing our rods on the river before they found another engine. Nowadays, of course, political correctness has made such a frolic impossible, because only a uniformed gauleiter can open a train door, and even Mr Branson's engines can- not produce exciting fires to order. We usually drive north. Even the M6 takes on a magic when it leads to Scotland. Fishers who see rods in each other's cars wave in fellowship. The sun always shines for lunch in the Lake District. I cherish the certainty that this will be the year when I shoot straight.
Three years ago, I made myself extremely unpopular in landowning cir- cles by writing an article for the Field in which I suggested that the English should recognise how disliked we have become among many Scots. Some critics dismissed my remarks as nonsense. Others argued that even if I were right I shouldn't have said it. Today, the situation speaks for itself. Many estate keepers, stalkers and ghillies are appalled by the anti-English tide flowing so strongly in the Central Belt and parts of the Highlands. The next few years look hazardous for Englishmen with big stakes in Scotland. A month ago I wrote a leader in the Evening Standard denouncing the then transport minister, Helen Liddell, for fleeing to 'hide in her kilt' in her Scottish constituency rather than announce new London Tube clo- sures personally to the House of Com- mons. That night, I received two calls warning that the minister's acolytes were stirring up the Scottish media about English racism'. Sure enough, next day most of the Scottish papers carried stories or comments on our treatment of Ms Lid- dell. I told an interviewer from BBC Scot- land that the Standard's leader had noth- ing whatever to do with English anti-Scot- tishness, and simply addressed a minis- ter's conduct of her office. `Ah, but that's not the point, is it, Mr Hastings?' said the interviewer cleverly.
Class and race sentiment are certainly driving the pernicious proposals in Edin- burgh to reapply sporting rates to High- land estates. This would be a straightfor- ward tax on landowners. Scottish MPs argue that every other kind of business has to pay rates, so why not sporting estates which let their shooting, fishing and stalk- ing? Yet only a negligible number of upland owners in Scotland make a profit. Most use tenancies simply to reduce their horrific costs. I am often sceptical about landowners in England. Their ruthless pursuit of self-interest makes a nonsense of many of their philanthropic claims. But in Scotland most upland owners are fund- ing local welfare states. MPs from the Central Belt think they see the Highlands in a state of nature. In truth, of course, those hills are among the most expensively managed landscapes in the world. The cost to the public purse of taking over the burden of conservation and employment if `foreign' sporting landowners are driven out would be horrendous.
The royal family are brooding uneasily about the peril to their own position up north. In Scotland as in England, they identify almost exclusively with things and people of the past. They are visible only in high summer when they come north to share the sporting pleasures of the con- troversial Highland landowners. They could do a lot for their image by spending more time on the Scottish life which has nothing to do with shooting and fishing. They could go to the Edinburgh Festival, shop in Glasgow, drop in on factories in Dundee, spend a few winter Saturdays watching Rangers. Yes, it sounds awful. You and I wouldn't do it, but we are not trying to keep a monarchy going. It no longer seems quite good enough merely to put the Balmoral house-party into kilts for August.
This is the season when people who read things I write about fishing and shoot- ing sit convulsed with laughter, studying on site my thrashings with rod and gun. I point out that I always bill myself as chief shop steward for sporting duffers, but it does no good. Keepers and loaders, in particular, feel they are victims of fraudulent conver- sion when they see me missing birds in cov- eys. I will make one claim to sporting prowess, however. Last year, I found myself at Gatwick on a Saturday night, clutching 24 fairly dead and highly scented grouse. I had about six hours in London before leav- ing at dawn with the family for Tuscany. I adore eating grouse. I hate mean, conniv- ing, inhospitable, beggarly houses where they try to fob you off with half a bird at dinner. On my day, I can still manage two, or even three, preferably almost raw. I knew I could find no one else to pluck those grouse overnight. I set to work in the tiny kitchen of our flat. The job took four hours. By daybreak there was not a room in the place without a coating of feathers, but I was bursting with pride. Next time a load- er has cause to mock my marksmanship (next week, for instance), I shall stick out my chest and say, 'I may not be able to shoot grouse for nuts, but by God I can pluck them.'
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