Twenty years of Perth

Roy Kerridge

By coincidence I have visited the beauti- ful city of Perth, former capital of Scotland, once in every ten years. On my first visit, in 1965, I stayed at the Salutation Hotel in South Street, near the river. This is the oldest hotel in Perth, founded in 1699. There are brightly painted statues above the door, and a plaque that com- memorates a distinguished guest, Bonnie Prince Charlie. Last week I returned to the Salutation, and found it to be exactly the same. I no longer yearned to be a member of the exclusive night club behind the stairs, but the club was still there. There was still a roaring fire in the entrance hall as in the old style of inns. After being caught in the rain, it was pleasant to pull a chair up to the fire and dry off, with jovial commercial travellers for company. The mantelpiece only needed a clock with bills behind it to be completely home-like. From the dining room window there is a Georgian-perspective-drawing view of the symmetrical streets outside. A clean, gra- cious city, with few modern additions, Perth resembles Bath, Cheltenham and the better parts of Brighton. The council houses on the outskirts are tall, shining White and rapidly being bought by their tenants. I noticed no unsightly blocks of flats. A gentle, well-mannered city by day, Perth is brawling and dangerous at night when the pubs turn out. Church spires meet the eye at every turn, and on Sunday mornings crowds emerge from the kirks.

There is a long promenade by the River Tay, with its two great bridges, Perth and Queen's. At intervals, inscribed on stones, are memorials to Old Perth. One of these marked the spot where, in 1633, King Charles of England had visited Perth and been entertained in a house built on floating timbers, from whence he watched 13 morris dancers prancing along the embankment.

On my first visit, I stood entranced on Perth Bridge in the half-light of evening. I had never been so far north before, and I gazed in all directions. The civic buildings of Perth, their Gothic contours bathed in orange lamplight, seemed wonderfully strange. So did the homegoing crowds, striding briskly beneath the plane trees. I felt like the innocent hero of a Robert Louis Stevenson story. Adventure beck- oned. As a boy, before my travels began, I would fall asleep while poring over the atlas of Britain, and visit dream- Birminghams and Manchesters that were not unlike the actual city of Perth.

Soon I was to find the vennels, the old-fashioned stone alleyways that honey- comb the city. At the end of one vennel, on a wall, a rough black and white picture of a bishop's castle had been painted, to give an impression of mediaeval Perth. By day, in 1965 as now, house wives discussed Christian doctrine in broad local accents, as well as quoting such authors as Stevenson and Congreve. At night, respectably-dressed men reeled about swearing. Once I saw a long queue of pleasant-looking men, women and children outside a great illuminated hall with clas- sical columns. From their benign express- ions and air of decency, I assumed that they were going to an evangelical rally. No, it was to a wrestling match! In England a wrestling crowd would have looked far more brutal, but such things seemed mea- sured by a different scale here, where real, not simulated, brutality took place in after-hours vennel fights.

In 1975, on my second visit, I stayed not at the Salutation but at South Inch, where witches once were burned. Here a row of bed-and-breakfast houses looked over the flat, grassy Inch (or park) to the hills and mountains on the far side of the Tay. One house, with a brass doorknocker in the shape of a piper, had a flimsy cardboard sign fixed to a pole near the gate.

'Mrs McBain's Transport Accommoda- tion House,' I read, so I climbed the steps and banged the door with the brass piper. Soon I was allocated to Bed Number Four in the Long Dorm. This was my own name for the room where lorry drivers slept, their beds packed in like sardines. The houses facing the Inch had been built for fine ladies and gentlemen, and the Long Dorm had a most aristocratic ceiling of white plasterwork in foliated designs. I made friends with a dark curly-haired lorry 'Seems like a bit of a cock-up.' driver with craggy features. He came from Berwick on Tweed, and spoke with quiet pleasures of his favourite fishing spots among the trees on the banks of that river.

At breakfast in the kitchen next morn- ing, I found the Clan McBain to be 'Scots Nat' in their views. Scottish oil was still a talking point.

'Where is the wealth from the oil?' my landlady demanded, fixing me with a sar- donic eye.

'I haven't seen it! It's not in private hands,' I protested, as she looked me sceptically up and down.

'A wee bomb wud dae England the most guid, Ah'm thinkin,' she concluded. 'Not to hurt atody, of course.'

Now, ten years later, such attitudes seem entirely to have vanished. Rebellious young people of Perth tend to be neo- Mods, with Union Jacks stitched to the back of their khaki jackets. I saw two Mod boys, in miniature '1964 gear', out walking by the Tay with their father, and guessed them to be eight and nine years old.

'Angus came burstin' intae class shoutin' "Heroin deal!",' one chirpy Union Jack- clad 15-year-old told his friends in a juke box café. Excitedly they discussed heroin, which seemed to hold a fascination for them, as one of the few things that all teachers disapproved of. Hairy druggy teachers who smoke reefers and recom- mend drugs `if not abused' are adamant in their hatred of heroin. There has been a widely circulated magazine called Sniffin' Glue, but no one writes well of heroin, or 'smack,' the Last Forbidden Fruit. Authority-figures, such as Sixties pop stars, denounce it in public, heightening its romantic attraction to the young. Those who talk and dream of drugs have not necessarily ever seen any, and I have no idea whether or not there is any heroin in Perth.

Before going to Perth this year I had spent a few days with Farmer Chawbacon at Starveacre Farm, in Staffordshire, trudging through the snow. The further north I travelled, the finer the weather, and as I sauntered along the Tayside prom, the sun shone down, soft breezes soothed my brow and I was disturbed only by the discordant cries of anguished skiers from England who had hoped to find snow. In St Ninian's Cathedral, Atholl Street, shafts of sunlight across the dark roof beams made me feel I was in a sacred forest grove. Such pagan thoughts may not have pleased the Saint, who was the Christian son of a fourth-century Scottish chieftain.

'Sixty-five, 'seventy-five or 'eighty-five, there have been no great changes made in Perth. Twenty years ago, on my first visit, I was engaged in reading the Bible from cover to cover. This left no time for Sir Walter Scott, so I was puzzled to see notices everywhere pointing out the Fair Maid of Perth's house. Who was this Fair Maid? Intrigued, I followed the signs and soon came to a small, round, tower-like building constructed in the Nineties on the site of an old dwelling. It was the Fair Maid of Perth's house.

Downstairs, the Maid's successors were selling expensive tartan materials. Upstairs was an art gallery full of modern doodlings. They were presided over by a young longhaired Englishman. Another long- haired Englishman, with an air of oafish knowingness, was saying to the first one: 'Yeh, yeh, you can see what the artist's getting at, you know what I mean?'

Now I had just reached, in my reading, the famous letter from St Paul to the

Corinthians where the Apostle declares, with great and lasting effect, that women are to wear hats in church but men are not. He also added that long hair in a man was shameful. Still, I thought, perhaps the Cavaliers had redeemed long hair since Biblical times. So I approached the long- haired curator and asked him if he knew who the Fair Maid of Perth might be. He seemed stunned at this query for a mo- ment, but quickly rallied.

'Some old girl,' he hazarded. 'Some old girl who used to live 'ere, I suppose. No, hang on. Wouldn't be called 'Fair' if she was some old dear, would she? No, some young girl, must o' been. A right darling she must o' been, with all the boys after 'er. Yeh.'

'Thank you,' I said, feeling that perhaps St Paul had known what he was talking about after all.

Nearby, in Mill Street, I found that the long grey mill house with its immense water-wheel had been made into a pub. So I sat in dark, plush surroundings sipping my bitter lemon and watching the wheel splashing round and round like the Wheel of Time. Ten revolutions of the years and I would be back in Perth, another ten and I would again return. But I hope that the cycle may be speeded up, for I don't want to have to wait until the new Naughty Nineties before I can visit Perth once more.