My mother is a full-blooded McLaren and that's our tartan on the right, next to the Haggis, tatties and neeps, and the flag of Saint Andrew, on the left, battered and torn after the referendum which was ripping the United Kingdom apart at its seams. There was only one way to go ...
The referendum was a superb example of democracy in action and, other than the nutters on meths, it was non-violent and civilised, and it split me -
YES: it was an amazing opportunity to build a new state from the ground up and show what the Scots can do.
NO: the UK as a whole is kind of cool and whenever I meet a Jock or a Taff or a Mick there is an unspoken camaraderie that can lead to an instant bond. But shorn of the men in kilts, the UK would look like this bit of chicken found in the Daily Mail and many other places ...
It was Catch 22 where a YES vote would have destroyed Dopey Dave as Prime Minister (thumbs up) but also enormously aid the Tories in wiping out the large numbers of Labour Party MPs elected to Westminster from north of the border (thumbs down, boo). Effectively this would put the Labour Party out of business in England (boooooo).
So, NO won the day, mainly due to the canny Highlanders who weighed up the financial peril that a brave, re-born, insecure Scotland would face, as well as being fans of Queen Elizabeth.
There was dark irony in the Royal Bank of Scotland announcing that it would uproot to London if the Scots went it alone ... and besides, a job lot of Sassenachs come north on holiday year in year out and spend a stack of cash, shoot birds and deer, get rat-arsed and we can be rude to them and they apologise. Scotch sales are booming and another Catch 22 appeared on results morning with half the nation drowning their sorrows while the other half celebrated. The streets of Glasgow will be even dodgier from now on. In fact the dour, damp, urban despondency found in Dundee and Glasgow provided the YES campaign with most of its support.
Give it another 20 years with a plausible plan to nation-build allied to financial security and the Bonnie Scots will no doubt leave the Union and that would be sad. Besides, what would the British army do without the Black Watch, its skirt wearing, oatmeal munching, caber tossing 3rd Battalion of the Royal Scottish Regiment and the most fearsome enemy a soldier will meet. This is them and their tartan, banned from every bar in Hong Kong's Wan Chai district .... Slange var Scotland!