Day off in Stirling
A day off meant a day of blogging. At least as far as I was concerned. Part of me yearned to ramble aimlessly along Stirling’s old cobbled streets, beneath its gabled roofs, past its bijou coffee shops, stopping now and then to savour some delight. But I was days behind with my writing. A friend in New Zealand had contacted me to ask why our messages on WhatsApp were all about Scotland, but according to the blog, we were still in Chester!
I rose early and stole down the hill to a coffee shop called Cisco’s which came high up in a google search. Google told no lie. The perfect café for a writer is a friendly, accommodating place, not too loud or busy, with easy access power points, a handy toilet close to your table (less stress when leaving your laptop open whilst taking a leak) and a policy of letting patrons stay as long as they like, provided they buy something–drink, slice of cake, croissant–every now and then. Cisco’s offered all this in a small, welcoming, independent package. What’s more, it opened early and the coffee was excellent. I sipped and wrote and listened with half an ear to the banter of the people who came in to order their morning pick-me-ups, enjoying their accents and novel turns of phrase.
We only really had one mission to accomplish in Stirling and that was to get our bikes serviced. All our mounts had developed mechanical niggles: Phil’s rear brakes were rubbing on the wheel and needed to be adjusted. He also wanted a final word on whether it would be possible to replace his 2-cog chain-set with a 3-cog one, just for the hills and the well-being of Henry the Hernia. Jools wanted someone to check the spokes he’d replaced in Lanark, and give his gears a tune-up. I was having trouble turning my rear derailleur. The chain kept slipping back from the largest cog. And Tim’s front disc brakes had lost their power, which made his fault the most urgent. You never want to be riding with ornery brakes.
Jools, being the calm and practical problem-solver that he is, had fixed an appointment in advance with The Bike Works, which was situated in an industrial estate on the edge of town. I was surprised by how much of a small-unit industrial sprawl there was south of Stirling; there’s more to the town than its pretty face. We were greeted at the unit by Ian McKenna, a slight and shy mountain bike nut and ex-science teacher. He listened patiently to our lists of mechanical symptoms and took notes on scraps of paper that he sellotaped to each bike. ‘Ok, I’ll see what I can do,’ was his stock reply.
Our eyes were attracted by the space-age bike frames that were hanging from the wall of the unit, each branded with a logo spelling the word ‘Deviate’. They were hinged in strange places, with intriguing suspension pistons and double-decker cog systems. Ian explained that they were prototypes for the much sought-after Deviate mountain bikes. In fact, we were standing in the global headquarters of Deviate, the only high-end mountain bike manufacturer in Scotland.
In the back office, newly assembled bikes were being quality controlled and packed in cardboard boxes for shipment all over the world. Some of the designers were ex-pupils of Ian’s, who had gone to work in the automotive industry before coming here to set up Deviate. All this was quietly thrilling to hear. It’s easy to get a kick from standing in the midst of a bourgeoning enterprise and witnessing the patient building of success. Ian went into the technical philosophy behind some of Deviate’s innovative designs in some depth, too deep for our bedazzled and befuddled minds. But it all sounded fascinating. Jools summoned the courage to ask him the question we were all dying to have answered: ‘How much does one of these cost?’ ‘Just over £2,000,’ Ian replied. We later found out that he was only talking about the frame. A fully featured bike was more than double that sum. We left with the comforting knowledge that our bikes were booked in for the best possible service, not only in Stirling, but probably the whole of Scotland.
We caught a park and ride bus back into the centre of town and went our separate ways. Phil and Jules set off to visit the castle, but found the entrance fee extortionate so they gave it a miss. For some reason, I felt shy about going back to Cisco’s and found another café to do more blogging. After consuming a coffee, a cake and an orange juice, my mind began to wander so I decided to relocate. I passed the handsome old main Stirling library and enquired within, but you had to be a member to use their WiFi. A plaque outside informed me that Andrew Carnegie, the world first billionaire, had provided the funds to build the library and his wife, Louise Carnegie, had laid the cornerstone in 1902.
Carnegie believed in the power of knowledge to transform the lives of working people. He was born the son of weaver in nearby Dunfermline and grew up in a one-roomed cottage occupied by two families. His father borrowed money to emigrate to the United States when Carnegie was just thirteen. He started working as a bobbin boy in a Pittsburg cotton factory-12 hours a day, six days a week, $1.30 an hour. By the time he retired, in 1901, he was the richest man in the world. A man of steel in more ways than one, who believed that the super-rich should give away most of their money, rather than waste it on personal greed and profligate offspring.
He was also a notorious union buster. Gates and Bezos are his spiritual sons. As a boy, when his family were struggling to stave off hunger, Carnegie had fallen in love with books thanks to a benefactor called Colonel James Anderson, who gave him and other poor boys from the area access to his own private library. After making his millions, Carnegie built many new libraries on both sides of the Atlantic. He ended up giving away 90% of his fortune, a sum worth over $5billion in today’s money. Perhaps anyone who ever went into one of his libraries and came out with a bright idea was also a spiritual son of sorts.
I paid a quick and guilty (should have been blogging) visit to the Church of the Holy Rude (‘rude’ comes from ‘rood’ meaning ‘cross’), which is a few hundred yards up the hill from the Youth Hostel. It’s one of the oldest churches in Scotland, with close associations to Scottish Royalty. James VI (future James 1st of England) was crowned there in 1567 when he still a toddler, barely one year old, which means he probably had no recollection of the event at all. He turned out to be quite a star in monarchic terms, the longest ruler in Scottish history (57 years), a writer and poet, a witch hunter (on of his books, Daemonology, is all about the evils of witchcraft)and a peace-maker.
I went in with heightened expectations, but found the church itself quite dull. Except for an exhibition about the King James Bible which was small but fascinating. I never realised the lengths to which the Catholic Church had gone to prevent ordinary people from reading The Bible in their own language. I read stories about medieval churchmen who became bishops without ever having read a word of the holy texts. It seems that the Catholic Church deemed it too dangerous for the ordinary woman or man to have a direct relationship with The Almighty. It reserved the right to channel all religious feeling through its own arcane ceremony and liturgy, seeing itself as the only heavenly go-between, the switchboard to the Lord. Keeping the Bible in Latin ensured that 98% of the masses couldn’t understand a word of it, and so had to run to their priest or cardinal for enlightenment. That’s power for you. The exhibition also claimed that the Church didn’t want the plebs reading passages about how the meek shall inherit the earth, or how it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Such radical notions weren’t good for business. It took pioneers like John Wycliffe and William Tyndale to break the mould and translate the Bible into English. Tyndale was strangled to death and his body burned at the stake for his pains.
King James was a passably good wordsmith and had already translated several psalms by the time he was crowned King of England (as well as Scotland) in 1604. Some canny consigliere suggested he commission a new translation of the Bible to stamp his authority on the religious life of the nation, pull the rug from under the Puritan radicals who wanted to do away with church hierarchy altogether and douse the tussles between supporters of various translations that already existed. The work was done by not one but several committees comprising the brightest, most erudite minds in the kingdom. Together they produced the best selling book of all time – the King James or Authorised version of The Bible. It’s said that while other translations stir the mind, the King James version stirs the heart, because, like all the best writing, it turns words into music. It’s probably the most influential book ever produced on these shores, not only in spiritual but also literary terms. “…The Gospel of Mark just swept me up,” wrote Nick Cave in his introduction to St Mark in Canongate’s edition of the King James version of the four gospels. “Mark’s Gospel is a clatter of bones, so raw, nervy and lean on information that the narrative aches with the melancholy of absence.”
I was even more amazed to read some of the phrases and idioms that those learned men bequeathed us: ‘lost sheep’, ‘two-edged sword’, ‘fall flat on your face’, ‘eye for an eye’, ‘bottomless pit’, ‘born again’, ‘stumbling block’, ‘eat, drink and be merry’, ‘woe is me’. And so many more. After all those revelations, I felt mentally wrung out and could do nothing more productive than go back to the youth hostel and have a nap.
That evening we found an Indian restaurant that was palatial but almost empty, and ordered a curry feast. The waiter ‘s hand was all wrapped up in bandages, the result of a burn he told us. Phil ordered his usual: Lamb Jalfrezi. Tim followed suit. The meal was copious and delicious and we left with several doggie bags. On the way back to the hostel, we were stopped mid-step by a beautiful voice wafting out from Nicky-Tams Bar & Bothy. It was delivering a modern pop tune that even I recognised, although I couldn’t tell you the name of the song or artist. We hesitated and listened. ‘Whiskey?’ I ventured. It took Phil 3 and a half seconds to say ‘Yeah, why not?’ Inside the bar a woman was seated in the corner on a stool singing her heart out. Next to her sat a man playing guitar, flicking licks and chords with fluid ease. Instead of song sheets, the pair were using an iPad, which was mounted on a tripod next to the mic. Their repertoire was up to date and poppy. None of the campfire staples of my youth. They were young, fresh and good at what they were doing, in a very dedicated, almost intense way. A huge party of women who were sitting in the back bar cheered wildly at the end of each song. We ordered glasses of the gold – Laphroaig for Phil, Tallisker for Tim, Ardbeg for myself. Jools soon left, pleading tiredness. We stayed on, sipping our malts, clapping politely at the end of each song, losing ourselves in that voice. It was the kind of unscheduled stop that comes as a pure blessing to the curious traveller. Eventually, the bar began to fill up with groups of blokes, all strangely similar in their Scottishness – thick set, short-haired, ruddy faced – and we decided to drink up.
Back at the hostel I realised I’d lost my door card. Tim offered me the spare bed in his room. I blamed the whiskey and shelved my plan to blog late into the night without any fuss. Never mind the blog, I needed to catch up on my slumbers, and tomorrow was another long day.
Andy Morgan
