Incidents in Aberdeen

To share - through reading - a train journey with Paul Theroux is to be reminded that it is the most satisfying form of travel, compared with which a flight is merely transport. The Great Railway Bazaar remains one of my favourite literary journeys.

Yet his essay on the Night Ferry - London to Paris - included in the less famous Sunrise and Sea Monsters makes succinctly clear why that trip used to be considered  so special. Recently I have been re-reading The Kingdom by the Sea, his comprehensive  tour of the British coast by train, bus, boat and on foot, with great delight. It used to be considered an ill-tempered book, not least because it expresses such contempt for Aberdeen, but I would say that it gets most things right.

Instead of describing castles and churches, it concentrates on the people he meets, likes, and sometimes despises. Reading it in conjunction with Notes on a Small Island by his fellow American Bill Bryson has been an education.

Most of Bryson’s British journey is inland, and he spends more time seeing the sights and getting lost but it is a funnier, if less articulate, book.

Moreover, like Theroux, he conspicuously loathes Aberdeen. What is it about the Granite City that puts people off? Partly it seems to be the inhabitants, a view I tend to share. Once, reviewing a concert at the Music Hall, I found myself blocked at the entrance by a bulky loud-mouthed doorkeeper. I was from The Scotsman, I said, and I had come to collect my press ticket at the box-office.

 “I’m a Scotsman myself,” replied the smug official, “but that’s no going to get you in here unless you already have  a ticket to show me.” It was an altercation completely in line with those described by Theroux and Bryson.  In the end I managed to elude him, but the memory, nearly fifty years later, still rankles.

Yet at least once I have found myself on the side of Aberdonians. It was in that grim pile, the famously expensive Station Hotel, where I was breakfasting with Felix Aprahamian, music critic of the Sunday Times, during Scottish Opera’s springtime visit.   Scanning the menu, Felix pointed his finger at the grilled herring and asked “Is that an indigenous dish?”  “Yes,” replied the waitress at the sight of Felix’s raised eyebrows, “I think you’ll find it a very tasty product of Aberdeen.”
21 February 2015