In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

180 22 R Auchinleck The next morning dawned cool and overcast with light rain, perfect Scottish weather for a drive into the country. The road toward Auchinleck, south of Glasgow, passed lovely countryside, mostly well-tended farmlands occasionally interrupted by small, bland hamlets. Lanark was an exception; a very old town on hills above the River Clyde, it had an attractive main thoroughfare with interesting-looking shops and more restaurants than I would have imagined, suggesting it is a popular stop for visitors. I had a delicious early lunch of soup and salmon, again marveling at how the food on my trip consistently belied the expectations of Scotland as a land of edibles only slightly less tasteless than England. Truth be told, in recent years I’ve enjoyed many outstanding meals in England as well; I think there’s a great deal of cultural bias at work when it comes to discussing food. London is one of the great food capitals of the world, and I believe its deserved reputation has been spreading into other parts of the United Kingdom, even the remote ones. Back on the road I drove for about an hour to the village of Auchinleck in Ayrshire. There I would once again imagine that I was that lucky fly on the wall in that tense moment, packed with expectation, when Boswell introduced Johnson to his father. But first, I had to find the Auchinleck estate, a small matter that, of course, never concerned Bozzy. He and Johnson passed through Glasgow as they made their way from Inveraray to the south and Auchinleck. Glasgow, with the largest population of any city in Scotland, was booming in 1773 when they arrived. Many a Glaswegian made a living off the trade with the American colonies, though it would soon dry up with the start of the Revolution. By the turn of the twentieth century Glasgow was known for one thing only: shipbuilding, Auchinleck 181 everything from tugs to ocean liners. The economy of the 1930s sent that industry into a spiral from which it never recovered and left the city with a blight from which it has only recently recovered. Now a center of culture and commerce acclaimed throughout Europe, it is once again booming, its growth rapid and employment opportunities drawing Scots from throughout the job-deprived Highlands and Islands. I earlier had designed a trip that bypassed Glasgow, I thought, but which really wound up going round and round through an endless suburb to the west called Airdrie. Something happened to Scotland’s generally good road signage when I got to that point. I would have given my fish and chips for a sign of any sort, even one in Gaelic, but when I drove into Airdrie it was as if I had pulled into Mars. And so I circled and turned and found myself repeatedly back where I started. I struggled to find a place to pull over and ask someone for directions, and when I accomplished that at last I couldn’t understand a word spoken by the man I stopped (please see the telephone purchase experience in Stirling on my second day in Scotland nine weeks previously for a fuller explanation). Traffic was building up, I was getting frustrated, imagining a life in which my grandchildren would hear stories of how their grandfather finally passed to the other side after sixteen years trying to get through Airdrie. To make an extremely long story bearably brief, I did make a right turn at some point and kept driving, figuring anywhere was better than where I was. Proof of my clean living came in the form of a road sign pointing me to my bed and breakfast for the night. When I arrived worn and bleary, my host greeted me cheerfully: “Still got your tires? Airdrie’s a tough place. Glad you didn’t stop.” As if I could have. But I digress. I leave it to Boswell and Johnson to negotiate Glasgow and will meet them on the other side, so to speak. As Bozzy and Johnson headed into Glasgow Johnson once again placed an entry in his Journey that reminded us that his prime interest in this almost-concluded expedition was the trip to the Highlands. As he had written off Edinburgh, he did the same with Glasgow, declaring, “To describe a city so much frequented as Glasgow , is unnecessary. The prosperity of its commerce appears by the greatness of many private houses...

Share