At Memphis Scottish Festival, a large, boisterous man hustles me into a front row seat in what he tell me is “The History Tent.” I am alarmed to find myself equipped with a sheaf of lyrics to Jacobite love songs. I manage a tuneless drone along to “Over the Sea to Skye” and then start […]
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Mosey on down to Kittrell, TN
At Memphis’ Scottish Festival, I get talking to a blonde woman in an olde stylee milkmaid type get up. She has the most Dukes of Hazzard accent I have yet heard in my time in Tennessee. I am delighted. I didn’t think accents like this were real. She asks me where I’m from. “Glasgow,” I […]
Eavesdropping in Memphis
Downtown Memphis is a half and half kind of place. Actually, three quarters and a quarter is more accurate. The majority of buildings is run down and ramshackle, while a select few are all slicked up for the tourists. A sign outside the Flying Fish instructs passers by to “Get Your Tails in Here” for […]
Learning to be Scottish in American-English
The last couple of days, I’ve been working on pesky wee details about the book. Like whether it’s in British-English or American-English. At the moment it’s mid-Atlantic. Half and half. I live considerably to the left of the Atlantic and write for a slew of US outlets, so writing in US English makes sense. But […]
Going the distance
At one stage, early on in “The Scottish Ambassador” process, I thought writing this book would be a fairly straightforward task. After all, this is not my first book. I wrote my first one when I was six. How hard could another one be? My writing career has shown some consistencies over the decades. My […]
Resolve.
Last week AOL asked me to write a piece on travel resolutions for their readers. While those five are definitely contenders for my own personal list of resolutions (with the possible exception of drinking plastic bags of tea—I prefer it by the bucket), my version features a few alternative aspirations for 2011. 1 Wreak revenge […]
“You’re Beautiful.”
[First wee excerpt from the Florida chapter — from my two trips down there, currently titled “Banquet of Consequences” or perhaps “To a Pelican” or “To an Octogenarian Ex-Pat at a Burns Supper on the Rodeo Grounds.” I am still mulling over this one.] Walking through a seemingly deserted exit at Fort Lauderdale Airport I […]
“But can you sit down?” A less demure take on tartan
Notes from a morning in Portland, Oregon, during which I consider adding more tartan to my wardrobe. I leave the café where I have been perusing Scottish-American taxidermy online and trot out onto Hawthorne Boulevard. A sausage dog lollops by, wearing a fetching Royal Stuart scarf. I see tartan everywhere all of a sudden. As […]
“I love you kilt and thistle with your tartan bounty and rich heritage”
Notes from a morning in Portland, Oregon, during which I continue to be perplexed about the fact that people make sporrans — Scottish manbags/kilt accessories — out of animal heads, after a visit to the Kilt and Thistle Shoppe in Salem. The next day at the Fresh Pot coffeehouse in Portland, I scroll down the […]
“You speak really good English for someone from Scotland”
Sometimes people say this kind of stuff to me when I’m on the road. Sometimes I eavesdrop.
“Well, when you find a woman who ain’t your cousin round these parts, you want to grab them fast. Why don’t you stay, we’ll get a cabin up in the woods, have us a shackload of kids?” Man with three teeth, Gatlinburg, Tennessee
