Anglophobia
Sometimes, after ten pints of Pale in Mather's, my pals and I discuss, with reasoned calm, the origins of Anglophobia.
The philosophy was mother's milk to me.
Our cat was called Moggy the Bruce.
In 1966 my uncle Billy died on his knees before the telly screaming, 'It didnae cross the line ye blind bastard!'
I remember my Grandad, seventy-five and ridged with nicotine, sitting, grimly watching a schoolgirls' hockey match. Hands like shovels, he'd never even seen a game with sticks but he was bawling 'Bully up, Fiji, get intae these English!'
An expression of lost identity, they say: Some identity.
We were the most manic crew of cut-throats out, never happy unless we were fighting, preferably each other; any venue, Turkestan to Guadeloupe.
It was only after the Pax Britannica that any of us had a free minute between rounds to contribute to the culture of the world.
By some strange alchemy we had however found the untapped source of arrogance and up to our arses in mud we could thumb our noses at the Florentines and all the other poofs of the Renaissance and take some solace from thumpings by our betters by claiming moral victory; a piece of turf from Solway Moss and the crossbar from Culloden.
But despite all that, and sober, the limp red lions stir the blood and in a crowd of fellow ba-heids I'll conjure up the pantheon of Scotland's past and jewel it with lies. Unswerving stubbornness.
I suppose that in the graveyard of nations Scotland's epitaph will not be a volume like the French but a single line: 'Ye'll be hearing from us.'
Hugh McMillan
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