Visiting Scotland During Independence Referendum Day September 18th-19th 2014

"We're like Defoe!" I declared, smirking, though the cynicism was already rushing like poison through the musing of my mind. Daniel Defoe was strongly rumored to be an English spy, agitating for the Union in Edinburgh. "Sort of."

We were sitting in the trunk of my car - cosy within a nest of quilts, sleeping bags and blankets - the hatch door raised upon the darkness of a Cumbrian rest area car-park.

Ember had only stepped off the plane from California twenty-four hours before. There was a certain spontaneity about this journey, which had already swallowed up two hundred miles behind us. The Scottish border lay just six miles ahead, but this seemed like a good place to wait out the dawn. It had a Costa.

"Defoe?"

"Bloke who wrote 'Robinson Crusoe'," I clarified, before realizing that she was merely prompting me to continue. I'd fallen silent in my pondering. "But before that, he was the one who brought it to life - what it was like to be in Scotland during the signing of the Act of Union. I mean, he wasn't the only person writing, but everything else was either politics or poetry.

"It was Defoe. It was only Defoe, who was there and could paint a picture in words that made you feel like you were there too. Biased as Hell, setting himself up to get very rich out of a United Kingdom, but even he couldn't bring himself to present the notion as popular in Scotland. He was there, watching the riots, writing it all down, changing the way eye-witness reports will forever be written."

The tiny details did it. They created an immediacy and a realism, which had generally been missing in accounts penned before Defoe did Edinburgh 1706. For centuries, you would get the story almost accidentally, details slipping through the heavy overlay of each author's opinion. Narratives which told you how to interpret events, even while they were occurring.

Defoe was much more dangerous than that. He made it all seem so matter of fact. An objective running commentary, whereby he was merely the eyes and ears that allowed you to stand inside these momentous scenes, judging for yourself what was really going on. He was perfecting the style which would one day flower into The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, but for now was busily being utilized to crush a thistle underfoot.

More than the United Kingdom was born in those tense streets. Modern journalism toddled into being down the Royal Mile too, and instantly had to duck from a brick thrown straight at Defoe's head.

"Of course, it's all different now." I concluded aloud, as Ember finished tacking up a hippy shawl to shield a side-window from the views of passers-by. "Then it was just him, shaping the narrative like a dramatic novel. Just him making it that real."

Ember wore the amused expression of someone who's read all I've had to say about old Welsh bards, and knows never to trust the storyteller, only the story. "We'll have to take a lot of photographs for when you write about this on Wizzley."

"But that's the thing that's so different!" I beamed back. "We're ALL Defoe now. Half a million bloggers describing the same scenes; everyone Tweeting, updating their Facebook statuses, pinning pictures, telling Reddit." I paused as a massive truck trundled loudly up the M6 motorway towards Scotland, flanked by a sudden surge of cars edging past. "So yeah, we get to be like Defoe on this trip. The ones telling the story. But so does everybody else."

This is a cairn. It's from this that we get the old Gaelic saying, Cuiridh mi clach air do chàrn, I will put a stone on your cairn. It's carn in Welsh - though that was nicked off the Scots - or carnedd in plural. You find them all over Welsh mountainsides, particularly in the vicinity of old battle-sites.

They are burial markers! They are what you put over the graves of the dead. They line the entrance path onto Culloden Moor, clan after clan after clan, their mass graves topped by gravestones and/or cairns. There's a famous ghost story attached to them. I recounted it here, under the heading The Ghost of the Cairns:

A little bit of internet research has just informed me that, in Scotland, the ancient Gaels called any mound a cairn, be it rocky, Earthen or made of straw. But not for the best part of the last 2000 years. Piles of stones are sometimes shoved on mountain-tops as landmarks, and they might still be called cairns.

The Neolithic people through to the later Bronze Age communities might build structures that were fundamentally giant cairns. We don't know for certain what happened in them. The major guesses are ceremonial, religious and/or burial areas.

Let's put it this way. When I'm hurtling up the M6 within sight of the Scottish border, and a sodding great sign reads, 'Help us Build a Cairn for the Union!'  The conclusions that I reach do not suppose support for the Better Together 'no' campaign.  I'm seeing an almighty troll in progress, especially since the banner is on the English side of the River Sark.

I have come to bury the United Kingdom, not to praise it.

Nor was my error immediately obvious when we first arrived. It wasn't like Alistair Darling was waiting with a megaphone to warn us. Neither was anyone there from the project itself.

There were people milling around, but they were all folk like us, who'd been lured in by the motorway sign. Never more than two or three of them at a time - pulling up, placing a stone, then wandering slowly around, reading messages left on the cairn's rocks, taking lots of pictures, before leaving. I doubt any of them were there longer than five minutes.

Ember and I took considerably longer. It was a pleasant morning, with the sun gently warming us to the point where we'd shed our jackets as we left the car. It was exciting too.  Not long past 8am, on the first full day of our adventure, and we're old friends who rarely get to meet up in person, given that the Atlantic Ocean is generally between us. A whole year and half of moments like this twinkled in our future.

Plus there were paints. You could select any rock from two big piles - a notice stuck between them said so - then squat down in the grass, where several large paint pots sat open, or with lids ajar. We had paint-brushes and inner children to appease.

Ember had chosen nice big, flat rocks to serve as our canvasses. She proceeded to create the Scottish flag - St Andrew's Saltire - after carefully inspecting each of the blue and white paints for the closest approximation. Considering that the bristles on her brush had compacted with paint, dried harder than the stone, she did very well.

No matter which side won the majority mandate that day, you couldn't go wrong with a Scottish Saltire. It belonged to both. Hence Ember inadvertently managed an addition to the cairn which was both pretty and inoffensive.

Then there was my contribution.

Hand on heart, I didn't know. I didn't mean to be subversive!  I wasn't there to disrespect anyone's project, nor to kick against the flow. I was there because a huge sign on the motorway made me think we were being invited to construct a gravestone. A memorial for the United Kingdom.  A cairn for the Union.

There was also the fact that I was juggling a camera in one hand with a cigarette in the other, then the paint-brush.  And I couldn't decide what to paint or write. I briefly contemplated Y Ddraig Goch, but that's quite complicated for a nocturnal woman up at just past 8, so I was trying to remember some relevant and profound poetry.

And in the end, I just wrote, 'Yes'.

Only now did we actually wander over to the cairn. It was very big. That entrance shelf, with my Scottish Independence Yes rock perched upon it, was as high as I could comfortably reach. The top of the inner chamber towered over my head.

Unless the Auld Acquaintance Cairn was safe to clamber across (we didn't climb upon it to find out), I have no idea how the majority of those rocks had been placed.

By now, I'd clocked that every single rock around mine - which stated a preference and not just a name - was a declaration of support for the United Kingdom. I was also pondering the significance of that collection of flags flying over all.  Though not obvious from my photograph, Y Ddraig Goch (Wales), St George's Cross (England), St Andrew's Saltire (Scotland) and the Ulster Banner (sort of Northern Ireland - it's complicated), all stand in a row. The Union flag is slightly behind and central.

Had I been a little more awake, I might have joined the dots sooner. As it was, I'd only got as far as thinking it was more of a free for all than I'd anticipated, with people casting rocks as votes, though there were far more 'no' supporters. And a section there downright festooned with Union Jacks.

I remember smiling, thinking that there was no good reason why pro-Unionists should want to place stones on a cairn for the UK. Unless to build the memorial up faster, or they really had given up.

I was also sidetracked with disquiet, searching my memory for any update on the status of the Ulster Banner. I had that logged as the flag brandished by the sort of people with whom I should be wary, but then what would represent Northern Ireland up there, if not the Ulster flag? The Union flag was too busy being the United Kingdom's flag.

Then I turned a corner and found myself confronted by Cerridwyn's Cauldron.

By now, I didn't understand anything anymore. A quick reccy around the whole cairn confirmed that it was indeed a monument covered exclusively by 'no' campaigners - my lone, red 'yes' stuck out like a sore thumb - but I had no frame of reference whereby that made any sense.

A lady came and left a candle lantern at the chamber entrance. The weak flame within seemed set to go out at any second. She waited, watching, and so did we. It dipped further. "Oh well." She breathed and turned on her heels, back to her car. As soon as she had gone, the candle-flame rallied. It was burning quite brightly, when I finally admitted that nothing in my combined knowledge of History, Paganism and Celtic lore could fit a context around this cairn.

I read the information board. Then I felt bad.

There was nothing particularly dodgy going on here. The project was all about togetherness, at a time when so much else is about separating. It highlighted the fact that this area was once Middleland - a buffer zone, in neither England nor Scotland - hence the choice of location for this cairn.

It was indeed being constructed, bit by bit through many hands, because of the Independence Referendum. But there was no mention anywhere of burial sites nor memorials. It was a 'testimony to the United Kingdom', as cairns had been built since Neolithic times and were frequently erected on mountain tops today quite spontaneously.

People from around the world, not just Britain, were being invited to participate by bringing a stone to place from their homeland. The space in the middle is there to sit quietly and listen to the sounds of nature, and to contemplate the Earth itself. The 'cauldron' is a fire bucket.

I really can over-think things at times. A realization made worse when the project owner arrived - sweet, helpful and very enthusiastic. He was thrilled to find us there, asking how far we'd come and thanking us for visiting.

We marked our dots on the make-shift map to show from where we came, then called it time to go.

From first suggestion that we were heading into Scotland until that point on the A747(M), we'd always been going to Glasgow.

It made sense. I'd been hearing nothing but what was happening in Glasgow on the news for weeks. At times it seemed like the Independence Referendum was only being held in Glasgow. The rest of Scotland barely scored a mention. Plus it was the major city on the west of the country, and we'd be arriving via the M6. My previous forays into Edinburgh had involved crossing the Pennines to enter from the east.

Most of all, I have a friend there and it would have been lovely to see him.

Then we're passing a road-sign telling us that it's only three extra miles to Edinburgh. The capital city, where all announcements would be made, and the parliament building sits poised to possibly change hands.

I spelt it out to Ember, newly landed from the USA and too unsure of the distinction to make a decision. "If this was America, and something this big was occurring, would you want to go to Washington DC or Times Square in New York?"  She hummed and arred as much as I was, then left it up to me.

She'd put the petrol in this car. I wanted to make the right choice for her. Back and forth I went with pros and cons flashing, forming, categorized and left for the full fourteen miles until the point of no return. Glasgow, I thought, and wondered if I was being selfish. Edinburgh then. Even if nothing is going on, then Edinburgh is always worth a visit. But so was Glasgow the first and only time I've been there.

Hurtling towards the junction, I still didn't know. Then the slip-road was being counted down in lines and I had to call it right now. Glasgow. No! Edinburgh! And we turned towards that ancient, historical city, singing loudly to The Waterboys This is the Sea.

The sun shone upon that pleasant drive across lowland countryside, pocked through with the scars of centuries worth of wrangling over who owned Scotland. At least it was if you had the history orientated eyes to see. I was so sure I'd made the right decision, as we glimpsed our first poll stations. Ordinary people popping in, holding the Fate of their nation in their hands.

We should have gone to Glasgow.

We abandoned my car in a residential street - directed there through the maze of paid parking places by an extremely helpful shopkeeper - then embarked on a long, but rather lovely stroll into the center of the capital city.

Along the way, we looked in vain for any evidence that the country was today voting on whether or not to stay in the United Kingdom. Though there were cryptic hints, like the random light-board pictured on the card above. There will be no miracles here today, its legend read. Did that pertain to the Referendum, or did it relate to the three church spires we could see in the background poking up out of the mist?  It was hard to tell without knowing if it was always there, or a special installment just for today.

"It'll get more obvious when we hit Princes Street," I assured Ember, my imagination picturing scenes a little like Hogmanay, which I'd only ever seen on TV. "Or if not there, then the Royal Mile."

We arrived on Princes Street in the rain, seeing rather fewer individuals than I'd expect to find on any given normal day, based upon my previous experience of being there. It was lower Edinburgh's main thoroughfare, yet only a scattering of people hurried by. Grim-faced, darting into shops or waiting stoically at pedestrian crossings, not waving banners, dancing jigs nor sloganeering. Not a single speech in sight. There wasn't even any bunting.

Nevertheless, we were approached. "Oh no!" The young man exclaimed, upon discovering that we were all together too skint or foreign to be interested in his wares. "You came to the wrong city." Drat. "You should have gone to Glasgow." He winced apologetically, like it was his fault and that of his entire country that I'd mentally flipped the wrong coin toss. "10,000 people in George Square for a week and here, well, look."

I looked. A woman in a skirt suit rushed into the nearest department store. Nothing much else happened. The rain seemed slightly less.

"Oh well!" beamed Ember, just excited to be anywhere. "Let's go and find some coffee." She'd only been in the country two days. Give her a week and it would be tea.

We crossed over onto The Mound and here finally there was some hint that something historic was happening in Scotland today.

Camera crews milled about, interviewing people in suits or capturing scenic shots. This was the place for the latter. The Mound is fundamentally a very wide bridge, cutting over the city gardens and railway track to deliver pedestrians to the lower slopes of Old Town. What Edinburgh is mostly built upon is Edinburgh, and here you can see those layers in all their misty grace.

A folk rock band played in front of the parapet, history stretched out behind them in outcrops of ancient lava flow, medieval buildings perched upon them, Victorian monuments doing the architectural equivalent of photo-bombing the cityscape, a distant glimpse of bridges over the River Leith. Here too is the National Gallery and other such imposing constructions. The Mound looks far more like an avenue than a bridge.

The band were the Spinning Blowfish playing an ecstatic combination of funk, rock, punk and folk, bagpipes and electric guitar getting my feet moving, and everybody else too. The atmosphere there was wonderful, young and old bouncing in jigs or nodding their heads at least.

This felt precisely the sort of thing that we'd traveled so far to experience. The historic credentials of the day could be seen to in the words scrawled in chalk on various surfaces. 'Yes yes yes yes yes' read several pedestals; 'Freedom from Greedy Westminster' proclaimed the pavement.

But the Spinning Blowfish were only a couple of songs away from the end of their set, and with them went the carnival atmosphere. Suddenly we were just a bunch of people on a rainy day, peering over pretty scenery but nevertheless living through the ordinary.

Moreover, a glance through YouTube listings shows that it wasn't really anything unusual for the Spinning Blowfish to be there. It's their usual busking site in Edinburgh.

"There's probably stuff happening on the Royal Mile," I assured Ember, hence we moved upwards onto the soaring heights of Old Town.

It's also where the Edinburgh Tattoo is held, and that accounted for the apparent press of people. Workers busied themselves behind metal barricades erecting scaffolding for that annual spectacle of all things Scottish (though mostly bag-pipes and military marches). Or, at least, as 'traditionally Scottish' as Sir Walter Scott could manufacture and the English Victorian elite allow.

Tourists seeking passage through the Esplanade were forced to take a relatively narrow route between building sites.

Nothing here to suggest it wasn't business as usual. Watched by the statues of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce, no-one here was crying freedom nor reciting the Declaration of Arbroath with renewed meaning for the day.

They were all mostly foreigners, here to pay their entrance fee to explore a castle once built as a mighty fortress to protect Scotland's capital city from its would be conquerors. Usually the English. But for now merely sitting with its gates wide open for the right price, pointedly ignoring the Referendum, while its Esplanade was taken over by preparations for a thoroughly Anglicized version of what Scottish culture should be.

Then again, I was also a foreigner not considering the history, as then I'd have been looking around the Esplanade remembering the hundreds of witches burnt there at the stake. Not a great image for a pyrophobic Pagan. Instead I took photographs of British red phone boxes inside the very precincts of the castle, while Ember explored the delights of a medieval storage room, now converted into toilets.

In 1297, William Wallace famously defended Stirling Castle - thus the whole of Scotland - against an invading English army. In 1305, he was horrifically executed as a traitor in London. His modern day counterpart stood outside Edinburgh Castle organizing two small girls and their mother into posing for a photograph with him.

There's nothing strange about a man dressed up as Wallace on that spot. He's been there for years. My Mum had her picture taken with him back in about 2010.  I bet if I hunted through my photo albums, I'd find one of myself with the Wallace lookalike from a  2006 trip to Edinburgh with a friend.

From the castle to St Giles Cathedral, you wouldn't have known it was September 18th 2014, unless you happened to glance at a newspaper. Tourists meandered and locals sold them stuff. The Referendum did not penetrate. Then before the towering Gothic steeples of the High Kirk of Edinburgh - BAM! It was all there!

It helped that there was a polling station opening right out onto the square. We had lairds in Highland dress; the world's media represented in isolated conclaves of anchors and cameras; people draped in Scottish Saltires...

... but not too many of the latter. And when you looked at them really closely, they didn't appear to be all that Scottish. Particularly since they were conversing in a language which owed more to the Mediterranean than the Leith.

After a while you started to notice that the dominant flag here was Catalan. They'd just finished one media orientated display in support of Scottish independence - and incidentally raising awareness of their own struggle for sovereignty distinct from Spain - and they were about to embark upon another.

Traditional dancing from Catalonia filled the square outside St Giles Kirk. Dozens of Catalonians forming a giant circle around a prone Scottish Saltire laid alongside the Catalan Senyera. It was entertaining, energetic and quite beautiful. Though not as much as their next endeavor, which was to fill that same space with hundreds of candles in colored holders. Once lit, each tiny flame created a glow which broadcast their hue, forming a gigantic Senyera, with a little Saltire for company.

The crowds and camera operators lapped it up, the latter broadcasting such scenes across Europe.

Ember and I climbed up onto a plinth, helped by a man wrapped in the Y Ddraig Goch of Wales, to see it from above. I was staring down into the eyes of a Spanish news anchorman set up beneath me, testing levels and light for what seemed like an eternity, before counting down to his live report to the people of Spain.

In fact, I was perfectly placed to signal to the group of Basque people across the square that it was time to raise their flag too. Which they did, with banners on either side, being as opportunist in publicity as the men from Sardinia standing just to their right.

You had to admire the brilliance. While practically every country seemed to have dispatched a camera crew to Edinburgh, and the Scots weren't giving them anything much to broadcast back home, the void was well and truly being filled.

Up and down the Royal Mile were paraded the flags of every European nation campaigning for independence from another. Huge flags fluttered from poles, larger than those carrying them; smaller flags were draped over shoulders; tiny flags were handed out to passers by. Catalonia truly owned each scene, so fabulously organized - and in such numbers - that they commanded much of the attention.

But the Basque and Sardinian protestors weren't far behind, and their representatives were generally to be found in the background of any Catalan media focus. While the rest, including my lone Cymru am Byth Welshman, merely loitered and hoped.

Anyone wandering down the Royal Mile on September 18th 2014 - during the daytime at least - would have been forgiven for thinking that this Referendum was all about Catalonian independence. The Scottish presence was overwhelmed, limited mostly to a bloke with balloons and stickers to give away; two lairds becoming formally welcoming and friendly; isolated banners strung from windows and rooftops; and the ubiquitous chalk marks on monuments and walls.

Mostly the people of Edinburgh got on with the job of serving the swell of foreign customers. Selling coffee, souvenirs and other goods from their shops to Referendum tourists and campaigners, without any real hint that the lure had anything to do with them at all.

The only real exchange I witnessed on the Royal Mile was a one-sided jibe from a passer-by at a sword swallower in a pro-Independence shirt. She yelled that his t-shirt was disgusting. He affected not to hear her - or genuinely didn't - calling into her wake the request that she repeat herself. She didn't. She looked angry. She carried on.

He just shrugged and went on entertaining his audience with a sword.

Later Ember was to tell me that this was the moment when the Scottish Referendum on Independence suddenly felt real.  Until then it had been a concept happening somewhere in the world. Rationale supplied the fact that Edinburgh itself could be included in the locations.

It wasn't a massive crowd thronging in carnival atmosphere outside the Scottish Parliament. Nevertheless, it was a crowd.

A group of people stood on the rim of the water feature holding between them a long, blue banner urging voters to say 'yes'. They were constantly being splashed by a dog, chasing a ball which its owner kept hurling into the pool before them. A car parked on the street alongside Holyrood was spray-painted with another series of 'yes' affirmations.

My favorite was a man who wandered around sporting a novelty red beard and mustache, his big banner read, 'The Beginning is Nigh'. Fun and hopeful all at the same time.

But my interest was mostly drawn to the tiers of terraces erected to house international media here to cover the Referendum. You never see this. By its very nature, such constructions are behind the camera. It amazed me how much thought had gone into their need to have a bird's eye view and how protected their space remained.

A double row of railings lined the plaza blocking access to within 100 feet of the media towers. Two burly policemen ensured that no-one so much as rattled those fences, though they did it with smiles on their faces.

Heading into Glasgow had been a good idea, while sipping lattes in the Royal Mile. By the time we'd made our slow way back to the car, tiredness and the fog were both setting in.

We made it halfway to Glasgow before the latter became so pronounced that I could barely see more than twenty feet ahead. Which is a little worrying when you're hurtling along a motorway. However, we could see well enough to spot the hazy glow of a service station with the promise of more hot coffee. Then pulling up there, neither of us could help but notice that it was another of those rest areas, which I'd sworn didn't exist in Britain.

To say that we decided to stay put belies an hour or two spent dithering over the point. Phone calls to two different friends elicited them crawling through news sources, Tweets and live streams from Glasgow's George Square. Judgment calls made from afar about whether they would press on, if they were in our position.

In my heart, I wanted to stay here, but history and hospitality both were beckoning me on. It was only Ember's final admission that she was exhausted now - jet-lag adding to a day spent climbing Edinburgh's steep cobbled streets and closes - and she too would prefer to stop now.

We walked to an off-license for cider, whisky and snacks, then climbed into our nest in the back of my car, lodged well towards the rear of the car park. Fog twisted and whirled; the conversation covered half a world and leaped across the centuries too; our little picnic complemented the listening; and periodically we'd put the radio on to hear the results of the ballot come in.

Though, in truth, I fell asleep in the early hours before it was clear to anyone which way the country had gone. We learned about that over coffee in the service station cafe next morning, when the fog had cleared and the night before seemed as a dream in an in-between space somewhere between realities.

For there had been no telling then in whose country we might awake come morning. It was all too soon to tell.

We never did get to Glasgow, though we skirted its outer edge. Our journey home took us instead to Moffat for breakfast - which was very lovely and afforded Ember the chance to sample haggis - but which held no hint that history was flirted with, then cast into a footnote the day before.

The country had voted 'no' and life went on, then continued into Cumbria and home.