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Authors: Stuart Campbell
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an Englishman.’
The great lemonade scandal was turning into a national disaster. The Dishonourable Company of Waiters had been mobilised, and the word passed among them, ‘Put yer fingers in the big bastard’s lemonade and watch him go aff his heid!’
The offending hostelry was the Ship Inn at 107 High Street. The building is still there and is approached down a narrow close. I surprised myself by feeling a genuine frisson as I opened the gate between a Polish bakers and a bargain store. My reverential progress was observed by a friendly Irishman leaning out of an upper window in the close. His languid demeanour suggested that he might well have been leaning on his window sill for the last 250 years. The Ship Inn is now a private home with chintz curtains.
From Montrose Johnson and Boswell travelled the few miles to Laurencekirk. Their incentive was to see the village where Ruddiman, a scholar they both admired, had been schoolmaster. A further incentive was the Gardenstone Arms named after the village’s virtual owner and benefactor. Lord Gardenstone’s misguided philanthropy had extended to endowing the local pub with an extraordinary collection of reading material for the benefit and erudition of any passing tinkers, mountebanks or unclassifiable rogues. Any rancid pedlar could sit with a foaming tankard of Old Bedlam and lose himself in Magno’s
Observations on Anatomy
in Latin or Boerhaave’s
Commentaries on the Aphorisms of Diseases, naturalised into English
. If he wished to further hone his capacity for intrigue or indeed figure out how best to escape from the inn without paying he could always skip read
Machiavelli
in Italian.
It is a concept whose time has come again. Little Chefs and motorway service stations up and down the land are luring customers with promises of a free Will Self with every latte.
As I waited for the number 9 to Laurencekirk I was approached by a deaf, dumb woman who had decided that I needed help and was determined to be of assistance. Having removed her teeth to provide even greater mobility to her face she managed to ascertain where I was trying to get to, drew my attention to the digitalised display of bus times and wished me well with a deliciously wicked and life- enhancing beam that stretched from ear to ear.
‘We drove over a wild moor. It rained and the scene was somewhat dreary. Dr Johnson repeated with solemn emphasis Macbeth’s speech on meeting the witches.’
Perhaps I had just met my own friendly, helpful witch.
The driver stopped in Laurencekirk and with a patience normally associated with the caring professions eventually asked, ‘Far ye gain?’ For some reason I was expecting somewhere bigger and had failed to realise that we were at our journey’s end.
A bulldozer was squatting on the heap of rubble that used to be The Gardenstone Arms. Peering through the wire mesh I failed to see a single copy of Tull’s
Horse-hoeing Husbandry
, not even a page blowing in the wind. Just page three of
The Sun
and an empty milk carton. According to Linda who ran the local garage, it had lain empty up until three months ago when a young lad, his brain addled from having watched all the repeats of
Get Britains Talented Big Celebrity Dancing Brother Out of Here
, broke in and set fire to the place. On a previous visit he had been unduly influenced by the copy of McPherson’s
Truncated History of the Vandals
he had found tucked behind the cistern in the Gents.
Having confirmed that Monboddo House, Boswell and Johnson’s next port of call, was not on or anywhere near a bus route I consulted the unwritten rules of my journey. They are quite unambiguous and clearly specify that travel must be by bus. Furthermore the equally unwritten small print addresses all contingencies; if the proposed route is not served by bus then the only permissible alternatives are the boot, the bike or the boat. In fragrant violation of these rules I returned to Linda who conveniently also
The great lemonade scandal was turning into a national disaster. The Dishonourable Company of Waiters had been mobilised, and the word passed among them, ‘Put yer fingers in the big bastard’s lemonade and watch him go aff his heid!’
The offending hostelry was the Ship Inn at 107 High Street. The building is still there and is approached down a narrow close. I surprised myself by feeling a genuine frisson as I opened the gate between a Polish bakers and a bargain store. My reverential progress was observed by a friendly Irishman leaning out of an upper window in the close. His languid demeanour suggested that he might well have been leaning on his window sill for the last 250 years. The Ship Inn is now a private home with chintz curtains.
From Montrose Johnson and Boswell travelled the few miles to Laurencekirk. Their incentive was to see the village where Ruddiman, a scholar they both admired, had been schoolmaster. A further incentive was the Gardenstone Arms named after the village’s virtual owner and benefactor. Lord Gardenstone’s misguided philanthropy had extended to endowing the local pub with an extraordinary collection of reading material for the benefit and erudition of any passing tinkers, mountebanks or unclassifiable rogues. Any rancid pedlar could sit with a foaming tankard of Old Bedlam and lose himself in Magno’s
Observations on Anatomy
in Latin or Boerhaave’s
Commentaries on the Aphorisms of Diseases, naturalised into English
. If he wished to further hone his capacity for intrigue or indeed figure out how best to escape from the inn without paying he could always skip read
Machiavelli
in Italian.
It is a concept whose time has come again. Little Chefs and motorway service stations up and down the land are luring customers with promises of a free Will Self with every latte.
As I waited for the number 9 to Laurencekirk I was approached by a deaf, dumb woman who had decided that I needed help and was determined to be of assistance. Having removed her teeth to provide even greater mobility to her face she managed to ascertain where I was trying to get to, drew my attention to the digitalised display of bus times and wished me well with a deliciously wicked and life- enhancing beam that stretched from ear to ear.
‘We drove over a wild moor. It rained and the scene was somewhat dreary. Dr Johnson repeated with solemn emphasis Macbeth’s speech on meeting the witches.’
Perhaps I had just met my own friendly, helpful witch.
The driver stopped in Laurencekirk and with a patience normally associated with the caring professions eventually asked, ‘Far ye gain?’ For some reason I was expecting somewhere bigger and had failed to realise that we were at our journey’s end.
A bulldozer was squatting on the heap of rubble that used to be The Gardenstone Arms. Peering through the wire mesh I failed to see a single copy of Tull’s
Horse-hoeing Husbandry
, not even a page blowing in the wind. Just page three of
The Sun
and an empty milk carton. According to Linda who ran the local garage, it had lain empty up until three months ago when a young lad, his brain addled from having watched all the repeats of
Get Britains Talented Big Celebrity Dancing Brother Out of Here
, broke in and set fire to the place. On a previous visit he had been unduly influenced by the copy of McPherson’s
Truncated History of the Vandals
he had found tucked behind the cistern in the Gents.
Having confirmed that Monboddo House, Boswell and Johnson’s next port of call, was not on or anywhere near a bus route I consulted the unwritten rules of my journey. They are quite unambiguous and clearly specify that travel must be by bus. Furthermore the equally unwritten small print addresses all contingencies; if the proposed route is not served by bus then the only permissible alternatives are the boot, the bike or the boat. In fragrant violation of these rules I returned to Linda who conveniently also
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