In lockdown, one has had to take one’s pleasures where one can find them.
The coffee shop and the tailor, the parfumerie and the gadget store have all been denied us. I have instead taken my solace in roughly 157 trips to the local dump.
The dump is that rare place in today’s world where, unapologetically and with a cowboy swagger, men can still be men. Indeed there is no other way to be, at the dump. One must man up, even if one is a woman.
The grizzled council workers in their soiled green bibs and indestructible boots are an unattainable aspiration for the rest of us. The grunts and Clint Eastwood stares that greet the most innocent of queries; the indecipherable taunts and jibes howled from one to the other across open expanses of land, as if between warring brontosauruses; the hard-won yet so lightly-worn knowledge of which piece of junk goes where.
Weedy, Lexus-driving accountants mingle with muscled tradesmen in their battered vans. The dump is the final place to retain the spirit and temperament – and often the rules – of the frontier. It should be scored by Ennio Morricone.
The dump is the final place to retain the spirit and temperament – and often the rules – of the frontier. It should be scored by Ennio Morricone
There is poignancy at the dump, too. It is a depository of memory and loss. The child’s bike, long outgrown and no longer needing replaced; the chipped and yellowing 1970s bathroom cabinet taken from a now uninhabited grandparent’s house; the old TV with the dimensions of a Sherman tank, around which the family gathered for so many happy Christmases; the tragic sight of a discarded dog basket, blanket and feeding bowl.
One must not linger on sentiment, though, for the dump is a place of dry eyes and limited patience. There is a long tail of fellow townsfolk in hot cars queuing for their own moment of catharsis. There is stuff to be chucked. You do your business and you get gone, with a nod of the head to the guy in the booth eating his bacon roll. He will not nod back, but that’s OK.
It has all been tremendous fun, but I recognise I have perhaps overthought the dump.
Let’s pretend we’re not jealous of our English counterparts
After a year or so, I also desire a little variety. More so as of this week, when we Scots must metaphorically press our faces to the glass as our friends in England are liberated from such limited lifestyle choices. While Scots continue to crowd the garden centres and the DIY stores, over-filling our homes with gigantic house plants and paint samples, the English are off to the zoo, shrieking through the air on restarted rollercoasters, being pummelled at glitzy spas, and drinking themselves senseless in the local beer garden. By next Monday, if all goes well, they may even have the right to eat indoors at an actual restaurant.
Jealousy is an unappealing emotion, so let us pretend instead that we are delighted for our southern cousins. We are a selfless people who smile like pleased aunties at the whoops of pleasure and drunken singing emanating from across the border.
As we load up with yet more weeping figs and Madagascar dragon trees and flaming Katys in the B&Q car park, squeezing in the inflatable hot tub and a variety of twee garden ornaments, we know that our time, too, is coming.
We have two short weeks to wait it out, in fact. In Bute House, Nicola Sturgeon is judging just how much fun we deserve after the privations of lockdown. Then she will send out the order: unleash the hordes.
The local secondhand bookstore will be my first port of call when finally these dratted chains are taken off us
We will each have favoured destinations in mind for those first heady days of regained freedom. Perhaps the gym, where can begin the long process of rebuilding one’s atrophied muscles; or the clothes boutique to replace a wardrobe that is, through no fault of your own, a year out of date. I suspect the pub will be high on the agenda for most.
Me, I long for the simple pleasure of the bookshop. Whether it’s a chain or a secondhand store or a charity shop, I find my joy in grazing spines old and new, in the smell of ageing paper and ink, in the serendipitous stumble across a long-sought first edition. Bookshops are where I go to think and work, too.
So the local secondhand bookstore will be my first port of call when finally these dratted chains are taken off us. I can already taste the soy latte and the tuna and red onion bagel that awaits me there. I anticipate too the scent of the books – the very fragrance of freedom. At the very least, it’ll smell a bit better than the dump.
Chris Deerin is a leading journalist and commentator who heads independent, non-party think tank Reform Scotland
