The Remote Part

Final Day, part 2:

The first view of the coast and islands beyond. Shivers up the spine-moment!

John O'Groats House Hotel- very sad to see it standing derelict

He did it! 909 miles, 9 days.

Celebrations

*few more bits n pieces to come...

Silly moment of the day: Popping a massive party popper the wrong way into the wind and watching the little foil coloured bits dance away across the car park.

Poem/song of the day: Whenever I've thought of my trip to John O'Groats and Tongue all those years ago (1994? Dad will know.) the scenes imprinted in my memory have been soundtracked by Idlewild's album The Remote Part, in particular the final song Scottish Fiction. The song didn't come out til 2002 so its not like I listened to it at the time, but the music and lyrics just went perfectly with the images in my head. Its only now that I've tracked down the spoken word part by the poet Edwin Morgan. The combination of his voice and the words is just so haunting and Scottish. So it was with a lot of happiness and full of emotion that I played the song while we drove towards Tongue in the sunshine through awesome scenery, quite lost for my own words.

Scottish Fiction
It isn't in the mirror
It isn't on the page
It's a red-hearted vibration
Pushing through the walls
Of dark imagination
Finding no equation
There's a Red Road rage
But it's not road rage
It's asylum seekers engulfed by a grudge
Scottish friction
Scottish fiction

It isn't in the castle
It isn't in the mist
It's a calling of the waters
As they break to show
The new Black Death
With reactors aglow
Do you think your security
Can keep you in purity
You will not shake us off above or below
Scottish friction
Scottish fiction