The Tartan Radar

…in which I continue my quest to become 100% Scottish by venturing into a Scottish Shoppe in Salem, Oregon

My pace slows as I register the wail of bagpipes filling the synthetically bright, subterranean-level shoppe with their insistent drone. I am instantly sobered by their sound and assailed with sudden doubts about my ability to complete this quest. I really don’t know if I can. It doesn’t seem quite such an amusing endeavour now. I had underestimated how much piping I might have to suffer in order to become a proper Scot. Maybe I don’t really want to become Scottish. Maybe 86% is good enough. Maybe the Kilt and Thistle Shop has a stock of fetching tartan earmuffs in my clan colours.

I’m not a fan of much traditional Scottish music. Like many things, this is my sister Orla’s fault. Her involvement with the Caledonian Strathspey and Reel Society as a teenager meant the rest of us were subjected to an annual fiddle and bagpipe-drenched CD, placed on heavy rotation for several months after each release by our proud parents. Shuddering at the memories and distinctly less jubilant, I slink further into the shop, but before I make it as far as the kilted mannequin, I catch the eye of a smiling woman in an off-white cable-knitted sweater behind the counter.

When she hears my accent, Cheryl Duncan immediately calls through to the back and her husband William lopes out. They start chatting about Scottish-American social shenanigans, making the assumption that I know what they are talking about, and are stopped in their tracks by my sheepish admission that I have no idea what my tartan looks like and that I am actually a bit hazy on the specifics of precisely which clan I am. Some kind of MacDonald, I knew. I called my Dad on the way here and it turns out that we’re MacDonnells, descendants of Sommerled MacDonald, Lord of the Isles.

Before setting out for Salem, I regaled Erin with highlights from the Kilt and Thistle Shop’s websites, Kilts.com and FeatherBonnets.com. I wanted to know who wears feather bonnets. Who even says “feather bonnets?” Back home, black bonnets with what looked like pheasant feathers tucked jauntily in their brims were worn for a short-lived and much-mocked stint by Ryanair’s surly check-in staff at Prestwick Airport. I am curious as to who might don such headgear now. Looking at the Duncans, impeccably dressed in their kilts and matching fisherman’s sweaters, I think that these are the people to explain the intricacies of traditional Scottish attire and complete my knowledge of such stylish shenanigans. I foolishly mention that I feel underdressed.

Within seconds the mannequin in the window is absent from her post and it’s me who is wearing the floor length kilt, puffy white blouse and tight, black velvet waistcoat. They fit me remarkably well. Disconcertingly well. In fact, a middle-aged customer who hadn’t noticed my existence until now starts giving me the eye. It is as if I have suddenly stepped onto his tartan radar.

My eyes light up when I see William approach with what looks like a foot high, black feathery nest.

“I figured you’d want to try this on,” he says with a smile. “This is called a feather bonnet. It’s made of ostrich feathers. This was actually the Highland military helmet for almost 100 years. This is what they actually wore into battle.”

Did they think they’d frighten their enemies away by wearing nests on their heads? By modeling toupés made from feather boa beehives? I try and cram the scary hat on and get a straggle of ribbons in my eyes.

William corrects me, “Ribbons in the back. Tails on the side.” He adjusts my black streamers and surveys his handiwork. I have the pose of an immature seal trying to pull off its very first nose-ball balancing act at the leisure park pool in-crowd initiation ceremony. I try very hard not to laugh. I fail.

“Not very scary,” decides William. “But with these, six-foot fellas became seven feet tall and very ominous.”

It’s more comfortable than you’d think, and as long as I manage to maintain the posture my mother wishes I’d maintain in public, my ominous millinery should be fairly safe from cascading floorwards. I flounce about the store deploying a brisk martial trot. I suspect that William thinks I’m enjoying myself too much, either because I’m cackling like a demented goose or because I haven’t stopped grinning since I tucked a fluffy two-foot sheep under my arm to complete the look.

William cuts in, “Wait till you march in them and they fill up with water. They really get heavy.”

He says this with the voice of experience. I make a note not to do any marching. Flouncing will have to suffice.

Additional “Additional Badgers”

Additional Badgers… part 2

Being a relatively new resident of North America, amusing beasties such as raccoons and skunks still have me pointing and exclaiming with delight. I am still not 100% sure of appropriate creature encounter behaviour. I think I’ve got the basics of bear etiquette down – it’s all in the claws, apparently – and just a couple of months ago I found out that I didn’t need to be fearful of cougars and mountain lions and pumas, I can just pick one and panic, since it turns out that it is just the one crafty beast with a whole litter of aliases. On my travels I’ve also learned that “cougars,” in pejorative North American terms anyway, are also predatory older ladies with a penchant for admirers somewhat younger than themselves. That’s a whole different thing to be afraid of. Despite being at the age when I could probably qualify as one, I’m afraid I can’t offer any advice on how best to evade their pursuit. Our pursuit. It’s probably in the claws.

Soon after I moved to the Pacific Northwest, a local tabloid ran the headline, “Rabid Skunk!” above a photo of a sketchy-looking skunk caught in the kind of bleary-eyed paparazzi-snapped pose usually reserved for the latest freefalling pop disaster du jour and her posse as they cascade out of the week’s chicest emporium. I don’t know whether this provoked exaggerated skunk fears on my part, but on the occasions that I’ve been loping home at night and seen one scurrying about the streets, I’ve pelted off swiftly in the other direction, a look of near matching rabid terror in my eyes. Looking at this wee face on the other side of the window is the closest I’ve ever been to one of the ominously striped critters. It’s an odd experience. If you took a skunk and asked an obliging taxidermist to make you a hot water bottle cover out of it, this is pretty much what it would look like.

Once, when I was an urchin, I was at a puppet making class in Glasgow Art Galleries and inadvertently went through the wrong door, finding myself in the galleries’ taxidermy workshop. It was a more intensive educational experience than the puppet masters probably intended and not one that I’ve ever forgotten. Polar bears look disconcerting inside out. These furry faces look disconcerting, too, in a different way. It seems somehow less dignified than lopping their heads off and sticking them up on the wall. I stand for some time taking in the row of fine North American creatures, parceled up into sporrans.

Additional Badgers

Driving toward Salem, we seem to be heading straight into a rain cloud. It looms forbiddingly on the horizon. This Salem, an un-witchy one, is the capital of Oregon, home to a population of 140,000, a stately university campus and dozens of imposing government buildings. It also boasts an impressive tally of no less than five prisons and the psychiatric hospital that was the setting for both the book and the film of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

A couple of years ago I walked down Salem’s Liberty Street and was stopped in my tracks by the sight of an entire shop window full of Scottish-themed Christmas ornaments. Who knew so many people peppered their trees with plaid-clad pooches on an annual basis? Glittery Scottie dogs and a troop of tall hat-wearing pipers adorned a tinsel tree in the Kilt and Thistle shop window. In one corner Santa Mac-ed it up in a kilt. In the other he had a Scottish Saltire flag crossed across his protruding paunch. I was simultaneously delighted and horrified to find this kind of evidence of home so very far away from home, in more ways than one.

Yet this is the place I have come back to in order to learn about the secrets of tartan and other such Scottish sartorial statements. My companion this morning, Erin, who spent a couple of years in Salem (outside the prison and mental health systems, I should add), is being very obliging and supporting me in my quest to attain true Scottish status. I think most of the novelty of my being Scottish has worn off at this stage, but obviously not quite, for here she is. If ever she wants me to accompany her to perfect whichever clichéd skills and abilities are expected of those from her part of the world I’ll happily sign up. Although perhaps I should check what is assumed of those from America’s Dairyland, before I make such a declaration. While, not unlike Scotland, stereotypical Wisconsinite activities seem to revolve around the core activities of alcohol guzzling and the consumption of deep fried items, I have a niggling suspicion that there may also be polka-dancing involved. Whatever, I owe her.

Erin and I park and scamper out of the car. We pass a sign outside the International United Methodist Church that begs, “Lord, Give Me the Persistence of a Weed.” I assume they didn’t have enough SnapLok letters to spell out “Lord, Give Me the Persistence of a Telemarketer.”

There is a terrible moment when we realize that the storefront is vacant. Could the search have gone to seed so soon?  I display a moment’s distinctly un-weedy lack of persistence and am on the verge of sloping back to the car. However, we prospect a bit further and discover the Kilt and Thistle Shop lurking downstairs at the back of the Reed Opera House shopping arcade, a quirky building from 1870, somewhat perplexingly decorated with 1930s swimwear ads.

I halt at the foot of the stairs, barely able to contain my glee at the sight of so much tartan. A female mannequin models a floor-length kilt, ruffled white blouse and black velvet waistcoat. A suit of armour stands to attention by the shop’s doorway in a rather forbidding manner. But what really stops me in my tracks is the row of sporrans.

I squeal with amazement on spying their display case. Luckily only Erin, the knight and the mannequin can see my cartoon surprised face. I have only ever seen Mark’s faux leather Boy Scout sporran up close, and never paid much attention to the few other kilt-accessorising Scottish man-bags that I’ve seen on show at the weddings and the one Burns Supper I attended back home. These sporrans are furry. These sporrans have faces. These sporrans are made from taxidermied animal heads.

“Do you think they’re real?” I ask with astonishment.

Erin does. I am amazed anew. I continue to stare and get a wee start on seeing the beady eyes of a muskrat staring glassily back at me. A red fox looks snappy. A badger has tassels. I’d never really thought of badgers as the kind of mammal that makes that much of an effort. I’d half expect those vampy foxes to camp it up a bit when going out on the town, but I always picture the badger as more of a leisurewear kind of mammal. Perhaps this will teach me not to make such hasty judgments in the future.

Hellhole of the Pacific… the final part

While my travelling companion wrestles with a belligerent windscreen wiper, I pop into a gas station to pick us up some refreshments. Stepping into the brightly lit store, a fakey doorbell DING! announces my entry and a slow drawl comes from the back,

“Be out in a minute.”

“No hurry,” I say, scanning for the drinks fridge.

There is a crash and a series of metallic clunks. A scrawny white woman with not so recently dyed blonde hair scraped back off her face, appears out of a storeroom, pails and boxes in tow. She stops for a moment to consider me. Blue and black tattoos cover both her arms, disappearing into a tent of a pristine white polo shirt, and peeking out again above the collar.

“Be a minute,” she says.

“No hurry,’ I repeat in as bright and helpful manner as I can muster.

With what seems a major effort she bundles the boxes and pails into another storeroom and plods toward me. She looks at me with fuzzy eyes as she makes her slow way round behind the counter. She appears to be concentrating intently on putting one foot in front of the other. She breathes heavily. I am relieved when she makes it to the till. I put my bottles of water down on the counter’s Perspex-protected lottery card display.

“That all?”

“Yes, thanks. Just water,” I offer apologetically.

“Where you from?” she asks.

“Scotland,” I tell her.

She stops what she’s doing and looks up at me appraisingly.

“Well, isn’t that a trip?”

I’m not sure if she is referring to this encounter or to the distance she has presumed I have traveled in order to reach this gas station on the Hoquiam side of Aberdeen tonight. I say nothing while I attempt to assess the situation.

“You speak really good English for someone from Scotland.”

I have no idea if she is joking. I look at her. She attempts to meet my gaze. Her eyes fail to focus. She hands me my change. I thank her for the water and, for the second time tonight, flee.

Hellhole of the Pacific… part 3

The scenery soon lurches from Bedraggled Small Town to Smoky Industrial. A sign looms on the right, “Welcome to Aberdeen! Come as you are.” I have. I’ve made it. I’m here.

When I first lived in the U.S., I traveled round the country with my brother Mark. People would look up from glowing televisions to ask whether Scotland had electricity. In cities with imposing Carnegie Libraries, we were asked if there were schools in Scotland. As we marked up thousands of miles on the blacktop, we were complimented with some regularity on the excellent English we spoke.

Scot John Logie Baird invented the television in 1925. Industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie was born in Scotland in 1835. Scot John Loudon MacAdam invented tarmac in the early 1800s. Scot John Dunlop came up with the cunning idea of a pneumatic tyre. The list of Scots’ inventions is a lengthy one. Oh, and Scots have pretty much mastered speaking English. I have hopes that people in Aberdeen will have more awareness of the city and country their home is named after.

Aberdeen’s historic downtown is a sad affair – one of those American towns with its heart slowly dying. Faded turn of the century buildings that must have housed department stores and been all a bustle have sparse window displays or “Lease” signs. I walk down Wishkah Street. Decorative metal surrounds have been placed round skulking, uncertain trees along the sidewalk. In homage to Kurt Cobain, who was born here, one commemorates Nirvana. It’s small and sad. It’s the result of a local group’s petitioning and fundraising. Aberdeen’s Kurt Cobain Memorial Committee is also responsible for a stock of Cobain commemorative items available online, featuring Cobain’s “Come As You Are” lyrics on the town’s welcome sign. I’m torn between a barbecue apron, a “classic thong” or an unintentionally abbreviated badge that states, “ome as you ar.” It could nestle alongside my Washington State snowglobe with the upside down lobster.

Cobain is as big a selling point as they’ve got here. Red Snap Lok letters on a fast food shack’s marquee offer “The New Kurt Cobain Book” in between “Oyster Fritters” and “Clam Chowder.” The troubled singer’s time here earned Aberdeen the title of The Birthplace of Grunge. Grunge sensibly moved to Olympia and then onto Seattle as soon as it saved up the bus fare. I don’t blame it. After a block’s walk through this damp port on the edge of the rainforest I began to suspect that grunge is the direct descendent of drizzle, drabness and depression.

Called Wishkah by its first settlers, Aberdeen wasn’t actually named after the Scottish city of Aberdeen. It turns out that it was named after the adjacent Aberdeen Salmon Cannery, itself named by the “James B. Stewarts”, Scottish immigrants who arrived in 1875. By 1900, things at the mouth of the Wishkah River had got rowdy and Aberdeen was one of the roughest towns on the West Coast, earning it its “Hellhole of the Pacific” accolade. Primarily a mill and fishing town, Aberdeen’s is a hard luck story. It was hit hard by the Great Depression in the 1930’s, then by running out of big trees in the 1950’s and by running out of fish in the 1970’s and 80’s. A brief flirtation with nuclear energy came to nothing. When Spotted Owls inconveniently fluttered onto the Endangered Species list, many forests that provided a livelihood to the town’s population were closed to logging. The sawmill, as well as the nearby Cosmopolis Pulp Mill, closed. Now Aberdeen’s got its hopes pinned on tourism and a new biodiesel plant. I’ve got to admire this pummeled boxer of a town that refuses to admit defeat.

The restaurant I had found mention of online, and arranged to meet Erin in for dinner, turns out to be a dingy “dance bar” by the docks. Wandering the damp streets looking for somewhere more salubrious, I decide to check out another place I’d glanced online, Mac’s Tavern. It’s the only even vaguely Scottish-sounding place in Aberdeen.

The light has all but gone and drizzle falls dolefully. I turn the corner onto West Heron Street and see Mac’s at the other end of the block. Outside, a shadowy figure stands smoking in the shadow of Mac’s neon. There is a rush of noise and a sudden glare of light as the door swings open. A one-legged man on crutches lurches out the door, teeters, and falls flat on his face. The smoking guy stands there, looks at him and takes another drag on his cigarette. I turn. And flee.

Hellhole of the Pacific… part 2

In Seattle Greyhound Station, disheveled and disgruntled passengers slump in molded plastic chairs. A tumult of arcade machines chirp, ca-ching and whistle off to one side. From the numbers of slumpers, it looks like unless I perfect professional glowering skills and attain truly shocking levels of pungency in the half hour before the bus leaves, I’ll not be so lucky with spacious seating on the next leg. 

I barely have time to be surprised by the number of empty wine bottles in the bin in the ladies’ “restrooms,” before it’s time to grab a place in the bus queue and get back on board. Seats fill quickly. I try glowering but I know it’s in vain. There are just too many way more pungent passengers to compete with. I don’t stand a chance of traveling solo. I look out at the people left to straggle on board. A gangly man in his late 30s and a voluminous, stained mustard sweatshirt weaves his way alongside the bus, smiling to himself. My heart sinks slightly as he waves at an imaginary friend. I know I’m looking at my traveling companion to Olympia.

At least it will be an interesting trip, I think, as he crumples, somewhat elegantly, into the seat beside me. He immediately starts hunting through an array of plastic bags. Half a dozen magazines, five different brands of water, chips and several cans of Red Bull are rummaged out. He offers me a pot of sour cream, half a Hershey’s Bar, a hunk of plastic-wrapped sponge cake, all the water varieties – with the exception of the Evian – and a choice of magazines – except Interview. He tells me a convoluted story that implies that a friend paid him for drugs with the pot of sour cream and he felt it was impolite to say no. Although sour cream is a “repulsive concept”, he’s taking it with him on a 24-hour bus trip to San Francisco, surely ensuring a lifetime’s aversion to the product for all on board.

“It would have been rude to leave it behind,” he insists.

I don’t have an answer to this.

He babbles incessantly, trailing off and mumbling at the ends of sentences. Stories rise up to grand heights and then he loses them, looking confused as to their destination.

Eventually, after my thanking him politely but refusing all offers of gifts, he turns to me, fixes me with a serious look and says,

“You have to take something. It’s a friendship gesture. I insist. Gâteau?”

“Um…” I muster.

He looks down at his stash, weighs up a magazine and his drink selection, and gives me a Red Bull and a stern look. I accept meekly and take the can, surreptitiously trying to wipe it clean with my shirt. Our friendship is sealed. He gives me his MySpace page address and I attempt to read his scrawl.

“McT? Is your name McT?”

“MC T. I am an M.C., darling. Master of Ceremonies,” he tells me grandly.

I tell him that I’ve re-named him “McT,” an honourary Scot for the journey.

“I shall be McT for you,” he allows graciously.

For the next ninety minutes we talk, often in French, much to the aggressive incomprehension of the cartoon Texan with the meagre teen ‘tache and white cowboy hat across the aisle. He leans over to listen.

Interrupting, he drawls, “I have not one idea what the heck you two were just saying.”

There is a split second where I am excruciatingly aware of the potentially explosive combination of a precocious, strung out, gay black man and a weedy, blustery redneck, but McT swiftly dismisses the Texan with an unlikely summary and returns, twitching and sweating, to his monologue.

Reaching into one of the bags, he extracts a scrappy off-white paper folder, spilling with loose papers, and reads me extracts from his anarchist manifesto. He sings me reggae tunes that he insists are the works of David Essex. He gives me fashion advice.

“Never say ochre; it’s bohemian beige.”

“There is cool. There is chic. Some things are cool. Some are chic. Never mix the two.”

He pauses and adds, ”Not even in jest.”

It is a sombre moment.

“My favourite president,” he announces, “was Mitterand.”

“You have a favourite president?” I ask, surprised.

“Of course I have a favourite president!” McT looks outraged at my question.

“I have a favourite president and it is Mitterand,” he states firmly. “Mitterand rocked it.”

McT lived in Paris, he tells me, until he “fromaged out.” I begin to worry that he may be about to do more than fromage out. He shakes and twitches and tries to pick what he calls his “thug chic” sweatshirt away from his clammy skin. The same thought obviously strikes him. He leans over and says, “I think I might be about to have a psychotic episode.” I am concerned for my new friend.

He manages not to have any episodes between Seattle and Olympia. We reach the state capital and say our goodbyes. Too addled to remember my full name, he professes,

“I shall be your McT and you shall be my Lady A.”

Watching the bus lurch away from the station, I feel very sorry for both McT and the rest of the San Francisco-bound passengers.

Hellhole of the Pacific… part 1

… or the time I thought it would be amusing to visit Aberdeen, Washington. 

The Scottish Aberdeen has merely two tame nicknames: The Granite City and the Silver City. Its progeny Aberdeen, Washington, is way ahead. For a town of only 16,000, it has a bristle of aliases. There’s The Gateway to the Olympic Peninsula, The Birthplace of Grunge, old nickname The Port of Missing Men, and, my personal favourite, The Hellhole of the Pacific. 

I survey public transport to Aberdeen. It involves catching practically an entire fleet’s worth of buses, including, shudder, two Greyhounds. I quail at the thought, but remind myself how amusing a trip to the Hellhole of the Pacific is sure to be. Fighting back memories of the tripped-out hippy sprite who danced up and down the aisle, singing and spouting poetry, during the entirety of my last Greyhound bus trip, and the hefty, odorous gentleman with what seemed to be his life’s possessions in a bin bag in the next seat, I wince and snap up the necessary array of tickets.

Early the next morning I am standing shivering at the Greyhound Station in Bellingham, Washington, when I hear a bus driver protest, with weary heard-this-one-before tones, to an indignant bus passenger,

“Just because a person smells, that’s not a reason to not let them ride.”

I grimace.

A small, smiling woman approaches me and asks if I’m going to Seattle. She is a Quechua Indian from Machu Picchu. She has never heard of Scotland, although asks if it’s near England, so she either has some suspicions of my homeland’s whereabouts or is definitely the kind of woman you’d want on your team when playing high stakes Pin the Tail on the Donkey.

“Is Scotland a Cat Lick country?” she asks. I tell her it’s about half and half, and that we have significant numbers of Muslims, Sikhs and…

“But you are Cat Lick?” she queries, looking at me piercingly. I hesitate.

With her professing ignorance of Scotland’s existence mere minutes ago, I have to assume that she is unaware that people from Glasgow are frequently assailed with the religion question. Even over here, on the hem of the Pacific, the Celtic or Rangers question occasionally rears its ugly head. Usually from the kind of people who happily guzzle drinks called things like Black and Tan and Belfast Car Bomb, with no comprehension of the politics behind their 40% proof.

“Cat Lick?” she insists. “Cat Lick?” I admit that yes, I was brought up Cat Lick. This is obviously the right answer. She gives me a beatific smile, tells me, “I will bless you,” steals my place in the queue and clambers on board.

The driver scowls at everybody, firmly locks the heavy-duty plastic protector between his cab and us, his assumed-to-be-unruly until proven otherwise cargo, and we slide away from the bus bay. I am enormously relieved to have no one particularly pungent adjacent to me. Perhaps the odoriferous would-be passenger was headed north or the potential passenger censor had an especially sensitive snout. I am awash with gratitude at my fellow passengers’ attention to their personal hygiene.

“This is a friendly warning,” announces our driver, Bob, sternly. “No smoking. No alcohol.” The mic sputters off. Bob fumbles it back on. “I said, NO alcohol,” he growls. You can hear the capital letters. It’s 10.36am.

Perhaps after years of taking Greyhound the woman in the seat behind me is immune to offense or perhaps she is hard of hearing. She doesn’t appear to register that the man across the aisle to our right is taking catcalling to a new extreme, staring at her, desperately attempting to attract her attention by beseeching “Psh-shw-shw-shw.” He sounds as if he is trying to lure a willful feline to its doom. We pull out of Bellingham, The Gateway to Alaska. Catwoman digs what feels like her knees, elbows and possibly a pickaxe into the back of my seat and sighs with content. Her admirer gives up, glares out the window and starts humming aggressively.

We chug down the I5 toward Seattle. It’s 10.46. I could really do with a drink.

Clouds wisp through the trees in the pass in a picturesque Cold Mountain kind of way. The rain has finally relented and we lumber through Whatcom County, past Lake Samish. Misty hills are reflected in the water in hopeful morning light. No one’s dancing. No one’s overly pungent. No one’s catcalling. I’m well on my way. I begin to have hope for my trip. I begin to allow myself to think that it might not be pouring in Aberdeen. I’m about to sigh with a soupcon of hopeful content when I am jolted back to my senses. Catwoman has settled her knees even more comfortably into the back of my shoddy bus seat, applying an enthusiastic Heimlich manoeuvre to my lower spine. We turn a corner. The skies frown ahead. Torrential rain and grey murk swallow us once again.

The American Way

I’m back in Portland after my first Highland Games and on the phone to my mum. I tell her about the knight with the chain mail and the visor and she guffaws. I tell her that the only recognizable bits of our Scotland were a few chocolate bars, the fish and chips, and the pricey Irn Bru at the Californian Scottish Shoppe tent.

I slope round the corner to World Cup on Glisan and 18th and get talking to the guy who has been behind the counter the last few mornings. He asks how my weekend is going and I tell him that I went to find my people at the Highland Games.

“Oh, yeah. I’ve seen them chucking about telephone poles on E.S.P.N.,” he tells me.

Caber tossing seems rather obscure to be so well known. Online I look for other unlikely sports of the world. I read about Extreme Ironing, the Unicycle Hockey World Championships and global Rock, Paper, Scissors Tournaments. According to a Nebraskan newspaper column, which seems as reliable a source as any for this kind of enquiry, caber tossing is only the world’s tenth most ludicrous sport. When it’s got Cow Jumping (Les Landes) and Wife Carrying (Finland) to compete with, you can see why it falls so far down the list.

“What was it like?” asks the World Cup guy.

I tell him, “It was like a rainy day in 1745. But with better raffle prizes.” I tell him about Thomas with his chain mail shirt, visor and kilt.

He is clearly embarrassed and says, “It’s the American Way.” Before I can ask him to elaborate, he’s off to serve another customer. It’s the American Way to get engagingly enthusiastic about their heritage? To make historical fashion faux pas? To mix and match body armour and rain attire? I don’t know. Since he’s busy, I ask Google and have the option of choosing from pages entitled the American Way of Life, War, Debt, Spying, Death, Blame, Torture and Idolatry. The rest don’t sound like much fun, so I choose “Life” and am told, “Decades of wasting energy and large-scale environmental pollution have become two main elements of the American way of life.” Oh. I skim on and Wikipedia tells me that the American way of life “refers to a nationalist ethos that purports to adhere to principles of ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ It has some connection to the concept of American exceptionalism and the American Dream.’” Well, that seems about right, the pursuit of happiness bit, anyway. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t stand about a field, wearing deeply uncomfortable millinery if it didn’t, at least, make you feel somewhat happier.

All fun and Games

Portland Highland Games – my first ever Highland Games, is not actually in Portland. It’s in Gresham, Oregon, a good 45 minutes’ drive from the city – a small distance in North American terms, almost the entire width of the country at some points in Scottish terms. Erin, Michelle and I make our way to the main field and arrive as a couple of dozen clan members are doing a plodding lap around the running track. They are followed by a troop of men in Civil War-era uniforms and kilts, representative of the thousands of Scots who fought on both sides of the American Civil War. Four female re-enactors in bonnets and long frocks trek subserviently in their wake. They all halt and hold a practiced pose near the queue for “Scottish Meat Pies” until the hungry herds threaten to absorb them into the pie line and they are forced to disband. The meat pie line is at least four times as long as the beer line. Suddenly I feel very far from home. Alerted by the ever-vigilant Michelle, I have my first sighting of a tie-dye kilt and feel the distance even more keenly.

I draw the others’ attention to a man silhouetted on the brow of the hill beside a bad sweater booth. He is sporting a kilt, chain mail and a full metal visor. A sword hangs downs his back and he clutches an incongruous blue and white golf umbrella with a leather glove-clad hand. Minutes later, as Erin and Michelle are debating whether to hit the pie or the beer stand, I notice the knight standing nearby and scamper over to question him.

His eyes peek out from behind his gleaming, silver helmet and he tells me his name is Thomas. I guess he must be about 20, although it’s hard to tell. He seems fairly good-humoured about my enquiries. Again, I could be wrong. After all, the only bits of the man on display are his eyes and knees. Unlike the visors I am familiar with from Scooby Doo and other such reliable educational resources, Sir Thomas’ visor is an all-in-one number, without that bit that pivots up when the knight wants to scoff a pie, have a quick cigarette or reveal that he is actually the evil, double-crossing camp counselor. There will be none of that kind of frivolity for this young knight. This is obviously not a man who cuts corners when it comes to standing about in fields on rainy afternoons in Oregon. There will be no easy pie eating or beer guzzling this afternoon. Well, when you’ve decided to stand and look enigmatic in suburban college grounds, there are sacrifices that you have to make, golf umbrellas aside.

I come up with the brilliantly insightful question,

“Do you dress like this often?”

It’s not my best line, but I’m not particularly used to accosting men in head armour. Luckily, the full face cover means I can’t see from his expression that he thinks I’m a complete moron. He answers politely,

“No, not often. You know, just at things like this. Highland Games. Renaissance Faires. You know.”

I don’t know and am just about to ask him what renaissance faires are when the others bound up and we get distracted smirking and setting up photo opportunities. I shall have to discover my country’s contribution to the mysterious world of renaissance faires at a later date.

Tiger tales

Seated in the front row of the 13,000-seat Memorial Coliseum for Portland’s Rose Parade, Dan and I consult the programme. It promises all sorts of shenanigans from the parade’s 5000 participants. I’m most looking forward to the Oregon Association of Mounted Posses, which is due to trot out “more than 75 horses and riders representing 18 different posses from throughout the State of Oregon.” I don’t really know what they mean by a “posse”, but I’m excited anyway. We are also informed that, according to USA Today, the Grand Floral Parade is one of the top five parades in the nation. I don’t really get parades.

In between flower-decked cars and rodeo queens, high school marching bands trot through the stadium. I am perplexed to see that the majority of white wooden rifle twirling and flag waving teenage girls who act as an eye candy intro for the musical chunk of each are wearing tartan miniskirts. One band is also preceded by a flamboyant pipe major in an impressively bouffant feather bonnet and kilt combo. The kilt is the less bouffant of the two. I am amazed at my country’s influence on the youth of America. What did we do to provoke this?

We’re sitting in the front row. It’s an appropriate position for Scotland’s Ambassador. I pretend I deserve the prestigious seat and wave to yet more rodeo queens, to a hundred or more Oregon mayors, to countless flower-strewn corporate floats. I stand with the arena’s thousands for various floatloads of American war vets and military branches, including the intriguingly named US Coast Guard Silent Drill Team, wondering whether they have a Raucous Drill Team as well. As the commentator lists the numbers of Oregonian dead in America’s many recent wars, a riderless horse is lead through a suddenly silent and stilled arena.

Then we’re back to the cheerleaders, marching bands and inexplicable tartan. Dozens of cheerful cheerleaders, flag dancers and marching band members from Pleasanton, California, prance through. The cheerleaders’ tight red outfits are tartan-free, but have “SCOTS” emblazoned across their breasts. Have we sartorially brainwashed a nation?

There are a lot of cheerleaders. There is also a lot of horse poo. People scurry in each equine-accessorised group’s wake, hurriedly shoveling horse muck out of the way before the next contingent sashay into it. It is an extremely well organised production, and the floral floats are really quite inventive. I’m picking up some useful tips for around the house. I personally would never have thought of creating a 38-foot long tiger entirely with carrots before now.

Our Lucky Limo is waiting outside to shepherd us off to our next booking, but obviously, as the Scottish Ambassador, I have to wait for my people. Finally, the elevator-esque cha cha of the Oregon Vietnamese Community Association Float begins to give way to the plaintive sound of pipes and drums, and I’m taken aback to find myself tearing up as Clan McLeay and the Portland Police Highland Guard file into the stadium.

Dan chooses that moment to video me and gleefully captures my blinking cultural confusion for YouTube. He asks, “What does this mean to you?”

I manage an “it’s very emotional” and for some reason, it is. It’s a recent thing, this getting emotional at such stereotypical sounds of home. It started when I was watching “The Queen” at a second-run cinema not far from here, and now this cultural pride or whatever the hell it is, seems to have opened the floodgates. It is emotional. It’s also perplexing. Who knew it would take only 16 years for me to find the bray of bagpipes almost bearable?

Dan gets it all on tape. I surreptitiously wipe my eyes, give a final wave and reluctantly vacate the front row. As we clamber up the stairs, I feel somehow simultaneously homesick and at home. The sound of the pipes wafts after me, out into the drizzle.