Well, it’s all over. September 18th has come and gone. It was 50%+1 for Indy. Tom Farmer reckons he was the magic ‘+1′. After all the money he spent making up everyone else’s mind, he has to be entitled.
Down at Dunvotin’, the bestest friends in all the world we’ve only just found out about, are making it permanent, in a semi-detached sort of way. For now.
That rose bower over the two side-by-side doors still has a few late blooms on it. Amongst its thorns, Eddi Reader’s trilling has turned into an awful screeching. She doesn’t go much for this particular bestest friendship and she’s making her feelings clear, as she does. And she’s annoyed with David Steel for dissing her renderings of the Bard.
The sound of pickaxe on rock beyond is not Alastair Carmichael – he got his cave hacked out a week ago. This time it’s another trog up from London – moving in beside him. Carmichael’s a pussy cat. This one’s the real deal.
Angus Robertson, the Terror of Trident, all cold eyes and leading with the chin, has come up to Dunvotin’ to help Alex n’ Dave sort out the Indy defence scenario. But he’s pretty hard core. Last night he made such a racket – he shouts at himself if there’s no one else around to shout at. He terrified poor Alastair, who bolted into the house in the small hours crying for help and had to spend the rest of the night in the hall, behind the door with the light on.
Angus is in a foul mood. He’s just found out that Dave’s got Liam Fox coming up to talk defence as well – and Alex is not uninterested to hear from the man who really does do defence cheap. Perspectives are different when you’re spending your own shekels. Sorry. Pounds. [For now.]
Anyway, Angus is stomping around shouting. ‘Fox! Fox?’ A car slides to a halt outside the house. A driver goes round to open the door for his passenger and, against the background of Eddi’s squawks, Angus hears a light Scots burr: ‘Werrity, Werrity, I say unto you’ – and loses the plot.
Angus goes to war with such a noise Eddi has to stop to listen. All these new words…
Inside the house, Alastair creeps under the stairs.
Alex n’ Dave watch the brawl from behind the nets in their adjoining upstairs windows – and exchange grins of mutual relief. The longer these armchair warriors do their chest-beating outside, the more time the two of them have to clean up the houses before Nicola arrives.
Dunvotin’ was supposed to be a sort of mens’ shed but Nicola’s found out about it and she’s on her way to check it out.
Alex n’ Dave are very scared of Nicola. It’s the clip of the heels, the steel in the eye and the edge on the voice. Scary stuff – but oddly delicious, says Dave.
The bestest friends’ immediate priority is to hide those levers that Alex has got hold of at last. He got three pineapples first thing last night.
If Nicola finds out he’s had a go already – and how much he’s lost since that first fabulous triple kerching….
Dave’s privately down in the mouth about this. If only he’d known that this was all Alex really wanted, he’d have bought him a roomful of the machines and saved the union.
But hey, he has pay-back in mind.
They may be bestest friends but this shake down at Dunvotin’ is pretty competitive stuff. Dave may have lost the vote but this is the real war and he has plans.
By now Alex is out of the onesie and into a new black raincoat to make Nicola think he’s been out working.
He catches sight of his new slimline self in a mirror, sucks his cheeks in and lifts his chin to get a sharper line on his jaw. ‘Hey Dave’, he asks, ‘Does my bum look big in this? That Carney chap of yours raised the bar a bit back in January.’
”Uh huh’, says Dave, not really listening – but thinking. An ominous sign.
To be continued.
