New Town

Edinburgh. The New Town was going to be built in the form of a Union Jack, W. says, which is ironic. How popular do you think the Act of Union was in Scotland? The Scots wanted nothing to do with it. But the commissioners – aristocrats and rich businessmen, for the most part - wanted access to the markets of the English colonies for trade. 'We were brought and sold for English Gold', Burns wrote. And on the day the treaty was signed, the bells rang out at Giles Cathedral, Why Should I Be So Sad On My Wedding Day …

And it wasn't long before there was money enough in Edinburgh to build the New Town. The richer got richer, and the prestige of the Old Town, where the rich and the poor lived together, higgedly-piggledy, gave way to the prestige of the new town, built in the classical style, with its orderly symmetry, its broad thoroughfares and wide squares.

Whiskey at the Cumberland. The barman makes us recommendations. We'd tell him we're not English, if we could. They hate the English up here, and who blames them? We've got nothing to do with England!, we'd cry. There's not a drop of English blood in our veins! But of course there is: if not real blood, metaphorical blood. We're full of metaphorical English blood …

Of course, we're all too English! We hate our country because we're of our country, made of it. Hating England, we hate ourselves, as we should. And hating ourselves, we hate how England made us. – 'Especially you!', W. says. 'You're the worst!' I'm the worst, and therefore deserves the greatest hatred. It's for my own good! It's for his own good, says W., since he has to hang out with me.

England, our England. England, our misery. We should drown ourselves in whiskey. Yes: that's what we're going to do: drown ourselves. W. wants to see me drown, he says. He wants to see whiskey in my eyes, whiskey pouring from my nose. From my ears! He wants to see whiskey poring out of my ears!

Let's get ourselves beaten up, W. says, as we wander up the hill into town. Let's pick a fight with a tough. The secret is to get in quick, and then get out, I've said to him about fighting. You have to strike before the other fellow has a chance. A jab to the jaw. A punch in the wind. – 'You've never actually been in a fight, have you?', W. says. He'd like to see me fight, W. sees. Actually, he'd just like to see me punched. He'd like to see me coughing up blood on the street. He'd like to see bits of my teeth on the pavement …