Window to the world

I wrestled with the idea of putting up a window poster during the referendum. Typical of me. Make a meal of everything.

Other people just put their posters up willy and, in many cases, nilly. The Yessers were out early. The Nos came late to the party.

It’s just that part of me thinks voting is a really private thing. Sure, I write columns for newspapers, in which it’s pretty clear where I stand, but I don’t like to talk about politics and have a residual feeling that the ballot is my business.

I’d also noticed that on the admittedly rare occasion when a No poster went up I felt angry at them, and I didn’t want them feeling angry at me. Ours is a blue-collar area, and there were only a couple of No posters: the wax-jacket woman and the Abigail’s Party woman. Aspirational airheads. Further afield, in the posh areas, there were more Nos: the ‘I’m all right, Jack’ brigade.

When another Yes went up, I felt good towards them and it lifted my heart. So then my own empty window made me feel guilty. As did all the young people, the canvassers, the creatives, the footsoldiers of the most amazing public movement of my life.

The only thing I could compare it to was the Anti-Nazi League of the 1970s, with its Beekeepers Against the Nazis and all sorts of grassroots groups. But even that didn’t come close to this, perhaps because this wasn’t an ‘Against’ movement but a ‘For’.

And what would my near neighbours think? Well, on one side, that was no problem. Their house was festooned in Yes. And on the other side? Who knew? I didn’t want antipathy between us.
I kept setting a date when I’d put my poster up. And I kept breaking it. I felt more and more pathetic, but knew somehow that this was me: the non-engaged; the cynical; the despairing.

Sounds terrible, I know. But fear not, for I’ve been rescued by the young, so much maligned by me in columns over the years. I take it all back. I look at them now and feel uplifted. Heartfelt pieces have been written by leading journalists about the campaigning of their offspring. These are journalists of my generation, people I know personally, that I grew up with in our careers. And so we start to feel old.

But it’s an OK old, because the torch — of integrity, if not mainstream journalism — has been passed on. Miriam Brett from Shetland restored some of my faith in that community. The two young lassies in Glasgow’s George Square defiantly holding up a Saltire while surrounded by Loyalist thugs almost made me weep. That was true bravery.

So would I be brave enough to put up a poster? Nope. I thought it an odd form of communication. Ditto canvassing. I do not believe in the power of the spoken word and I do not practise it. I’m purely a man of the written word. It’s the only place where facts and logic can be set out clearly.

A poster was at least a written word, but it didn’t explain much. I was annoyed at the Yes campaign billboards featuring a baby’s hand and the slogan about Scotland’s future in Scotland’s hands. What a waste of space. I’m sure it had fine experts in subliminal messaging behind it and, when I raised my complaint with a Yes-supporting pal, he said it was necessary to keep the message positive and simple.

My preference for a picture of Cameron (D.), Johnson (B.), and Galloway (G.), accompanied by a simple message of “Are these really your friends?”, was pooh-poohed by my friends.
One reason I didn’t want to put up a poster was that I noticed that, where a Yes went up, sometimes someone retaliated with a No. No action without a reaction. No yin without yang.

But, on the last day, the boy next door on the other side put up a Yes poster, so finally I put mine up too, shortly after 5pm on the 18th. Just a small one, mind. I still feared retaliation from the spiteful and weird, but none came. Too late probably. Our street was seven Yes to one No anyway.

I felt a little pride but still wasn’t sure I hadn’t compromised my existentialist integrity as a man of mystery. Earlier, I’d been chided by a friend for not wearing a Yes badge, but it was too assertive for me, too ‘out there’ for the infinitely introverted.

I might have done that sort of thing when young. But older now, I’d little belief or faith left in the intelligence of the people. I’ve met them. Still, change was afoot, out there and in me.
While the elderly, the Capering Jocks or professional Highlanders in their gilets, and the tribal party careerists depressed me, the young, bright, creative and passionate stirred something in me that had long lain dead (no, madam, I fear you’re reading the wrong sort of magazine).

But the campaign is in the past now. As I write, some Yes posters remain up out of pride or defiance. But most of us have gone back to our private, inward lives. We are nursing our pane.