The Ends of Our Tethers

PROPERTY

WHEN LONDON WAS ADVERTISED Was the world’s fashion capital — when The Beatles seemed the nation’s greatest export — when a Conservative prime minister with a Scottish name said, probably truthfully, that the British people had never been so prosperous, two such people went for a weekend camping holiday in the Highlands.

They were building workers of seventeen and eighteen who lived with their parents in the town of Dumbarton. On Friday night after work they packed the panniers of their motorbikes, rode up the Vale of Leven, took the shore road by Loch Lomond to Tarbert, turned west to the head of Loch Long then zoomed over The Rest-and-Be-Thankful. As darkness fell they passed through the Highland’s only neat little eighteenth-century town and began looking for a camping place. There was a sea loch to their left, hedged fields to the right, and after a mile or two they saw a side road with a wide grassy verge. Here they stopped, spread a groundsheet, erected a tent and put the motorbikes inside. This left enough room to lay down sleeping bags with the panniers for pillows. Then they tied the tent flaps shut, walked back to the town and spent a pleasant evening in the bar of a small hotel.

There are many tales of Scottish country pubs serving drink after the legal closing time. This was one such pub. The boys, cheerfully drunk, left it after midnight and returned to the tent through a mild but sobering rain shower. They sobered completely on finding the tent flaps wide open and nothing but the groundsheet inside. They discussed returning to the town and phoning the police but gloomily decided that a Highland policeman might be hard to rouse at that hour, especially if the rousers were urban youths smelling of drink. They agreed to do nothing before daylight and spent a miserable night huddled in their leather clothes back to back on the groundsheet.

At eight in the morning they were themselves roused by a man wearing well-cut tweed clothes and accompanied by a policeman. To the boys this man seemed very tall and fresh-faced, perhaps because they felt tired and dirty. He said, “You have insolently camped upon my land without asking my permission. What have you to say for yourselves?”

The elder boy said they didn’t know that the roadside was not public, also that their motorbikes and other things had been stolen.

“Not stolen. Impounded,” said the man, “I had them removed last night to the police station. You can thank your lucky stars that I was kind enough to leave you the tent. So now dismantle it, collect your chattels from the station and clear out. I do not object, as a rule, to visitors who behave properly and drop no litter. I regard this —” he indicated the tent — “as a form of litter. I have a friend, a very brave soldier who had similar trouble with a family of people like you. Well, he discovered their address, went with a friend to the municipal housing scheme where they lived and pitched a tent of his own in the middle of their back garden. They didn’t like that one little tiny bit. Quite annoyed about it they were as a matter of fact.”

The man turned a little and looked steadily

toward the loch, mountains, glens, rivers,

moors and islands that he regarded

(with the support of the police)

as his back garden.