I was going to write a sensible blog with my opinions about Scottish independence, having seen enough comedy articles already about the last ditch road trip to Scotland this week of Clegg, Miliband and Cameron to try and save the union. Then I thought I’d write this instead. (warning – bad language)
We were somewhere around Carlisle approaching the border when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something to Nick like “I feel a bit lightheaded, maybe you should drive…” when there was a terrible roar all around and the sky was full of what looked like huge flying haggis all swooping and dripping hot fat over the car that was going 82mph with the air conditioning on full blast up the M6 to Scotland. And a voice was screaming, “Holy hell! What are these goddamn things?”. Then it was quiet again. Nick had taken his shirt off and was pouring HP sauce on his chest to facilitate the tanning process.
It was almost noon and there was still a hundred miles to go till we reached Glasgow to start our mission to save the union. They would be tough miles, and very soon I knew, the three of us would be completely twisted. We’d all claimed three thousand pounds each from our expenses, most of which had gone on filling the boot of the car with extremely dangerous substances. We had two multipack bags of crisps, seventy-five tic-tacs, five broad sheets of high powered right wing journalism, a salt shaker half full, and a whole galaxy of multicoloured jellies, pastels, lollies and cola bottles, and a quart of Tango, a case of Red Bull, a pint of milkshake and two dozen pasties.
“Man this is the way to travel!” crooned my deputy, Nick. “I’ll take the highroad, and you’ll take the low road…” Take the high road? You poor bastard. Wait until you see them goddamn haggis. I switched on the CD player to drown out the wretch. ‘Thing can only get better’ was the only track we had, so we listened to it all the way up. It set a good driving pace. A constant speed is essential for efficient fuel consumption, which seemed important at the time.
Clegg turned to Ed who was sitting quietly in the back seat. “We’re your friends, we’re not like the others.” Oh Christ, I thought he’d gone round the bend, “No more of that talk!” I said, “Or I’ll put Grant Shapps on you.” He grinned, seeming to understand. Between the air con and the music, Ed couldn’t hear in the back. Or could he?
How long can we maintain? I wondered. How long before one of us starts ranting and jabbering at Miliband? What will he think then? How long before he makes the grim connection between our purposefully lacklustre attempt at convincing the Scots to stay in the union so that when they leave and take all those traditional labour seats with them we can dominate Westminster for years to come? If he does we’ll just have to bury him somewhere. No way he can leave now and report us to some kind of outback communist newspaper hack who will run us down like dogs.
Did I just say that out loud? Did they hear me? I look over to Nick, but he seems oblivious, occupying himself by firing jelly babies from his nose and out of the window at pedestrians. It is all quiet from the back. I better have a chat with Ed, straighten this out.
“There’s one thing you should probably understand.” I said, grinning. “Are you listening to me?” I yelled.
He nodded.
“Good. You see, we’re on the way to Scotland to save the United Kingdom dream. That’s why we bought this £250,000 Jaguar, it was the only way to do it.”. He nodded again, but his eyes were nervous.
“I want you to have all the background, because this is an ominous assignment with overtones of extreme personal danger. You see, about two weeks ago we were sitting in the commons bar, in the VIP section, of course, when a uniformed dwarf came up to me with a Pink telephone. I answered. It was my contact, he said we needed to come up to Scotland. Ah, Scotland, you can almost see the tidemark where the UK dream peaked and then washed away. I asked Nick here to come with me, you see, I need you to understand that he’s my deputy and he’s from Sheffield. Are you prejudice?”
“Oh hell no!” said Ed, unblinking.
“I didn’t think so. Because this man is extremely important to me.”
And then, before I knew it, we were screeching to a halt on the hard shoulder, just before Gretna Green. Clegg turned around to Ed.
“The truth is we’re going to Scotland to croak a scag baron called Alex Salmond – I’ve known him for years but he ripped us off, and you know what that means, right?”
I wanted to cut him off, but we were both helpless with laughter. What the fuck were we doing out here north of the M25, when we both have bad hearts?
“We’re going to rip his lungs out!” Clegg snarled at Ed.
“And eat them with neeps and tatties!” I blurted. “What’s going on in this country when a scum sucker like that can get away with sandbagging a Prime Minister?”
Clegg was cracking another fruit shoot and Miliband was climbing out of the automatic windows, damned freak couldn’t work the child locks.
“See you guys!” he shouted as he ran back to the nearest little chef. “I like you. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be okay!”
“Wait a minute!” I yelled after him, “Come back here and grab a 7up…” But apparently he couldn’t hear me. He was running fast and the music was loud.
Nick continued screeching along to ‘Things… can only get better’ as I stepped on the accelerator and we hurtled back onto the motorway.
Garry Abbott. Writer & Musician 