POSTCARDS FROM EUROPE #2: Braemar, Scotland

Voices affect me first: in Edinburgh I hear the soft cadences of my mother and uncle John; further west and north the harder sound of Jock and Alice.

Over Christmas we were back in Scotland again. Almost three years ago we were doing something like this: buttoning up for the chill wind and snow flurries.

It was the time of Omicron and post-Brexit blues in Britain, and -- the afternoon we were in an excellent comics and toy museum in Stockholm -- Russia invaded Ukraine.

The reason we’re in Scotland again – the country of my birth -- is the same as before, to see family, all of whom live in Sweden or England.

It will be 11 years since my sons and I have been together for Christmas, the last time was when my grandson was two months old.

Since then he's passed through Minions, One Piece and the manga series Naruto. He’s now a bi-lingual Nirvana-loving guitarist with shoulder-length hair.

We met in Aberdeen then went to Braemar (“the third most posh town in Scotland” I was told) near the royal getaway of Balmoral Castle for what we hoped would be a white Christmas. And it almost was, although the snow melted by Christmas morning. Otherwise postcard perfect, every enjoyable cliché of deer, warm coats and haggis.

We all had stories to tell (flight delays, lost luggage and airports where our gate was always in a remote and distant corner) but there was laughter, sitting quietly, eating and just being happy. Just more enjoyable cliches.

We travel to discover the differences but inevitably encounter the same and mundane.

In Romania a couple of glamorous grifters seemed to be behind a property investment scam; in remote Rosehearty where the North Sea pounded the village’s grey seawalls, six old men in the bar sat mute as they watched The Chase.

Our domestic discontents are familiar here too: News tells us farmers are unhappy, there’s a pothole crisis in England, political commentators write of recession, that British schools and hospitals are crumbling from decades of under-investment and the new ferry to Arran is expected to be in service later this month.

It had originally been scheduled to be in service in 2018 and -- with its still incomplete sister vessel -- had been commissioned in 2015 for a fixed price of about $NZ 215 million. It’s now expected to come in around $NZ 888 million.

How bizarre.

Speaking of which, we heard that song at a café caravan at Dunnattor Castle.

But for me it’s those voices: a sparrow-sized old woman in black at Balmoral Castle fussing through the over-priced souvenirs in the gift shop and tossing them down with an angry, “Och, will you look a’ tha’!” to no one in particular.

I’ve heard that before and often, but not for decades.

Everywhere the familiar, but then we turn a corner somewhere northwest of Aberdeen and a squadron of enormous crows swirls into the sky from a ploughed field of black soil. It was like driving into a Van Gogh as imagined by Edgar Allen Poe.

Long memories are made of such brief moments: the glow of light behind snow-covered hills when the sun barely appears and its dark at 4pm, red squirrels doing parkour athletics up the trees, the welcoming warmth of a pub’s fire, and always family laughter.

And now we are in slate-grey London. Even more, and more different, voices.

On our first day I heard half a dozen different languages, most which I don’t know.

As my mother would say in times of expectant excitement, “In the name o’ the wee man!”

And no, I don’t know what that means either.

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For other Postcards from Europe go here