It is a concept whose time has come again. Little Chefs and motorway service stations up and down the land are luring customers with promises of a free Will Self with every latte.

As I waited for the number 9 to Laurencekirk I was approached by a deaf, dumb woman who had decided that I needed help and was determined to be of a.s.sistance. Having removed her teeth to provide even greater mobility to her face she managed to ascertain where I was trying to get to, drew my attention to the digitalised display of bus times and wished me well with a deliciously wicked and life-enhancing beam that stretched from ear to ear.

'We drove over a wild moor. It rained and the scene was somewhat dreary. Dr Johnson repeated with solemn emphasis Macbeth's speech on meeting the witches.'

Perhaps I had just met my own friendly, helpful witch.

The driver stopped in Laurencekirk and with a patience normally a.s.sociated with the caring professions eventually asked, 'Far ye gain?' For some reason I was expecting somewhere bigger and had failed to realise that we were at our journey's end.

A bulldozer was squatting on the heap of rubble that used to be The Gardenstone Arms. Peering through the wire mesh I failed to see a single copy of Tull's Horse-hoeing Husbandry, not even a page blowing in the wind. Just page three of The Sun and an empty milk carton. According to Linda who ran the local garage, it had lain empty up until three months ago when a young lad, his brain addled from having watched all the repeats of Get Britains Talented Big Celebrity Dancing Brother Out of Here, broke in and set fire to the place. On a previous visit he had been unduly influenced by the copy of McPherson's Truncated History of the Vandals he had found tucked behind the cistern in the Gents.

Having confirmed that Monboddo House, Boswell and Johnson's next port of call, was not on or anywhere near a bus route I consulted the unwritten rules of my journey. They are quite unambiguous and clearly specify that travel must be by bus. Furthermore the equally unwritten small print addresses all contingencies; if the proposed route is not served by bus then the only permissible alternatives are the boot, the bike or the boat. In fragrant violation of these rules I returned to Linda who conveniently also doubled as the local taxi driver. The negotiated exorbitant fare left me fearing bankruptcy while Linda was dreaming of replacing her aging Cadillac with a completely new model before driving in the general direction of a Tuscan sunset, a restored villa with vineyard and a new life.

Lord Monboddo was obviously barking mad. Tucked away in one of his six volumes of Ancient Metaphysics is the a.s.sertion that 'not only are there tailed men extant, but such as the ancients describe Satyrs have been found, who had not only tails, but the feet of goats, and horns on their heads ... We have the authority of a father of the Church for a greater singularity of the human form, and that is of men without heads but with eyes in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s ... There is another singularity as great or greater than any I have hitherto mentioned, and that is of men with the heads of dogs.' Neither of the farm workers we pa.s.sed had dog heads but their possibly all-seeing-b.r.e.a.s.t.s were covered.

Although he may have eventually gained a tongue-in-cheek reputation as an evolutionist before his time Monboddo's research findings seem rooted in the opium pipe and a very full moon.

He also tried to convince a gullible public that the orang-utan was 'a character mild and gentle, affectionate too, and capable of friendship, with the sense of what is decent and becoming.' This translates as no picking fleas off each other or dropping banana skins.

Lord Monboddo was an early exponent of the benefits of frequent cold baths. Such a view would have been anathema to Johnson who was never known to take a bath, warm or cold. Because of his determination to plunge his own children into cold water the amiable landowner attracted a degree of criticism from the authorities. Had there been an At Risk register in eighteenth century Angus the young Monboddos would have been on it.

'I knew that he and Dr Johnson did not love each other; yet I was unwilling not to visit his Lordship, and was also curious to see them together.'

Not loving each other is an understatement given Monboddo's belief that Johnson had compiled a dictionary 'of a barbarous language, a work which a man of real genius rather than undertake would choose to die of hunger'. Perhaps the reference to hunger provides a clue as to why, once they met, they both got on splendidly. They dined on 'an admirable soup, ham, peas, and moor-fowl and parted the best of friends'.

Although on this occasion Boswell's instinct proved well-founded he still too often resembles an impresario with an obsession for arranging intellectual c.o.c.k fights and freak shows. He was a social alchemist whose party trick was to bring together combustible elements and then sharpen his quill to cement his reputation.

As the Cadillac negotiated farm tracks it was difficult to connect with the wild moor that Boswell saw. Linda told me that, in any case, I was three months too late as the previous owner who loved showing his house off to complete strangers had sold up and moved to Stonehaven. Increasingly paranoid, I half expected to hear that the house had been next on the young chuckling arsonist's list or had been ransacked by a vengeful orangutan. My fears were partially realised. The new owners, being ridiculously young, had ordered that the home be gutted, stripped and transformed.

I was greeted by another bulldozer, more scaffolding and a lurching Portaloo. One of the workmen confirmed that the new owners were not about and invited me to look inside the temple soon to be dedicated to IKEA. It was a totally unedifying experience. Back in the garden I peered in vain at the rhododendrons hoping for at least a glimpse of a goat-footed satyr or a stray dog with a man's head.

After asking Linda to drive me to an Auto Bank, the entire contents of which I emptied in an attempt to pay her, I waited again for the number nine bus to take me back into Montrose. The driver, a one man harbinger of doom, regaled me and the other pa.s.senger who was in his nineties, with a lurid account of the bomb scare at Aberdeen Station earlier in the day. His subtext was that it is safer to travel by bus. Behind a hayrick I caught sight of three thwarted Mujahideen sharing a kebab and a packet of Camels.

The further North you travel the better the quality of books in charity shops. Not only did the Montrose Shelter boast a 1903 Gaelic dictionary for 10 but also Macaulay's Essay on Johnson for 3. It had to be bought. It proved to be a difficult purchase as the gently shaking a.s.sistant insisted on inspecting every page lest an unpleasant aphorism or surprise lurked in the Notes, Glossary and Aids to Study.

As I waited for the 113 to Aberdeen I was disappointed not to be greeted by my friendly gurning guide. She was probably dozing somewhere, tilting in her dreams at bus shelters.

The boy racers were warming up in the High Street after their anonymous suburban sojourn. The trophy cars throbbed incongruously and prematurely with the aural after burn of fighter jets. For the drivers the twilight was the harbinger of octane-fuelled conquests ahead; the girl from third year who was not usually allowed out after dark and the blonde from the chip shop whose perfume could not mask the day job.

My fellow pa.s.sengers on the Aberdeen bus included an androgynous punk with deep carrot coloured hair and more piercings than a High Church martyr. Despite exuding aggression she nursed a small white cardboard box as if it held the Holy Grail. Inside were her hopes for a future unclouded by family hatred, untainted by an abusive partner, and a tiny seed of happiness which if kept in the dark might, just might, grow and blossom years from now in a better place.

The bus driver was either sporting the ripest of black eyes or had a secret life as the only member of the Aberdeenshire Panda Impersonation Society. Perhaps he too was a victim of domestic violence living with some huge woman from the pages of the Beano who counted the notes from his wage packet with the rolling pin tucked under her ample armpit. The speed at which he drove suggested that he was eager to seek consolation in the bosoms of his mistress who had already bought the fillet steak to drape over his wounded eye.

Black eye notwithstanding, he was able to josh the two pensioners who fumbled with their bus pa.s.ses, accusing them of having broken the automatic reader. As a consequence they laughed like haddies for the rest of the journey.

The spirit-level horizon kept its equilibrium despite the bus ducking and diving down braes. The North Sea was battleship grey smudged with white where the tide messed with the wooden groins.

The Macaulay proved even more of a bargain that I had hoped. For some reason I had a.s.sumed that the essay would be a stuffy and pompous piece of hagiography. This was not the case.

'He had become an incurable hypochondriac. He said long after that he had been mad all his life, or at least not perfectly sane; and, in truth, eccentricities less strange than his have often been thought grounds sufficient for absolving felons, and for setting aside wills. His grimaces, his gestures, his mutterings, sometimes diverted and sometimes terrified people who did not know him. At a dinner table he would, in a fit of absence, stoop down and twitch off a lady's shoe. He would amaze a drawing room by suddenly e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. a clause of the Lord's Prayer. He would conceive an unintelligible aversion to a particular alley, and perform a great circuit rather than see the hateful place. He would set his heart on touching every post in the streets through which he walked. If by any chance he missed a post, he would go back and repair the omission.'

Even the benevolent driver of the 125 would have struggled with him. 'Look pal, I understand that for some reason you feel obliged to finger every seat on the bus and touch ma ticket machine every time we go round a bend but if you dinnae sit down ye can get aff at the next stop. And nae blaspheming!'

With the deceleration of a Hercules transport plane the bus embarked on a controlled plummet towards the hidden fishing village of Johnshaven. The war memorial was in a neat line with an impressively-sized public convenience and a playing field. War, death, emergency relief and football. We stopped just short of the point where the cottages with creels and clothes lines threatened to stagger into the sea. No one got on. No one had got on for several decades.

At a remote stop on the main road a party of ramblers boarded with sufficient outdoor gear to make the south face of K2 at least a possibility before they reached Aberdeen. They were adults with special needs and their carers but such was the shared hilarity it was impossible to separate those with the needs from the wounded healers who accompanied them. As their joy became ever louder they elicited much tutting from a lumber-jacketed, baseball cap clad Neanderthal at the back of the bus. Sunken into a prematurely obese middle age he had failed to match up to the exacting standards demanded by the Kincardineshire Aryan Front and had no alternative but to join the White Doric Purity Party whose selection criteria are less rigorous. Had the bus been mine I would have torn up his ticket and thrown him off.

There were surreal elements to the conversation as the party reminisced over previous social highlights; 'Do you mind the power cut in the church when we had to start the pew in the dark?'All of them joined in the memory apart from a woman in her forties with Down's syndrome. She sat morose and remote from the others. It seemed unlikely that her plight had gone unnoticed. Even when they reached her stop she left the bus without anyone saying goodbye. What had she done up the hills that merited this heavy sanction?

When the next member left she had shouts of 'Nae pubs Nancy!' ringing in her ears.

The bus drew into a lay-by for no apparent reason. Perhaps Black Eye wished he had used the facilities in Johnshaven or else his mistress was a gypsy traveller. The truth was less mundane: it was a secret rendezvous where drivers swapped the road kill they had collected en route and discussed recipes. Not too fanciful if you look at an archived review from The Guardian: 'For most, a squashed hedgehog or flattened badger lying on the side of the road is a tragic sight for Arthur Boyt it is an opportunity for a free, tasty and nutritious meal. Mr Boyt has spent the last 50 years sc.r.a.ping carca.s.ses from the side of the road and chucking them, together with a few herbs and spices, into his cooking pot.

The retired civil servant has sampled the delights of weasel, rat and cat. His most unusual meal was a greater horseshoe bat, which he reckons is not dissimilar in taste to gray squirrel, if the comparison helps. Fox tends to repeat on him. He has tucked into labrador, nibbled at otter and could not resist trying porcupine when he came across a spiky corpse on holiday in Canada.'

The idea of finding a dead porcupine in Aberdeenshire is of course, silly. The reason for the stop was soon apparent. There are fewer rituals more elaborate than that performed when one driver, his shift finished, hands over to a colleague. Log books, badges, keys, secret nuclear code, papal secrets and best wishes are exchanged with all due solemnity. Why this happened in the middle of nowhere remains a mystery.

Boswell was bored by the journey to Aberdeen; 'We had tedious driving, and were somewhat drowsy.' Johnson seems to have endured the final 25 miles with more equanimity; 'We were satisfied with the company of each other as well riding in the chaise as sitting at an inn.'

Aberdeen

Johnson may have regretted the comparison as there was not a room to be had at the New Inn at the junction of Union Street and King Street in Aberdeen. It was only when some minor lackey recognised that Boswell was the son of the circuit judge given to transporting miscreants that accommodation was found. 'Don't send me away My Lord, I was a help to your son a few years back ...'

The inn became a bank and is now an inn again having been gobbled up by the Wetherspoon's empire. If this trend continues all 18th century towns will subtly recreate themselves. Like other pubs in the chain The Archibald Simpson has taken over the function previously fulfilled by social work day centres. The beer and food are so cheap that pensioners can sit and gently booze all day long for very little outlay until they shuffle happily out into the twilight to be replaced by the first wave of office workers pausing on the way home.

Ironically because the New Inn was built on to the end of the prison it is possible that the two men, sentenced a month previously by Boswell's father to spend the rest of their days in the plantations for the heinous crime of petty theft, were languishing on the other side of the bedroom wall. They missed a small opportunity for noisy revenge as Boswell wrote 'We had a broiled chicken, some tarts, and crab claws. Little was said tonight, I was to sleep in a little box-bed in Mr Johnson's room. I had it wheeled out into the dining room, and there lay very well.'

They spent three days in Aberdeen hobn.o.bbing, discussing theology, literature and education with sundry clergymen, professors and old acquaintances. At the home of a local minister Johnson 'laid hold of a little girl ... and, representing himself as a giant, said he'd take her with him, telling her in a hollow voice that he lived in a cave and had a bed in the rock, and she should have a little bed cut opposite to it.' If the Aberdeen asylum had a young person's unit in 1773 the little girl would have been treated for trauma, while Johnson himself would have been interrogated by the local constabulary.

Boswell's meticulous recording of every meal they consumed confirms that food featured large in Johnson's life. 'At dinner Mr Johnson eat several platefuls of Scotch broth with barley and pease in them ... We had also skate, roasted chickens, and tarts.'

In Macaulay's view, 'Being often very hungry when he sat down to his meals, he contracted a habit of eating with ravenous greediness. Even to the end of his life, and even at the tables of the great, the sight of food affected him as it affects wild beasts and birds of prey. His taste in cookery, formed in subterranean ordinaries and alamode beef-shops, was far from delicate. Whenever he was so fortunate as to have near him a hare that had been kept too long, or a meat pie made from rancid b.u.t.ter, he gorged himself with such violence that his veins swelled, and the moisture broke out on his forehead.'

Adjacent to the prison was the Town house where the local star-struck burghers conferred the freedom of the city on their revered visitor. Johnson, his craving for honours largely unfulfilled during his life, accepted with joy and lumbered happily down College Bounds towards Old Aberdeen with the doc.u.ment stuck into his wig where it presumably became greasy and illegible.

The walk between King's and Marischal colleges was totally familiar as it was one I travelled daily as a student at Aberdeen some forty years previously. Although I have visited many times since, I was not expecting to be jostled and bullied by quite so many ghosts and voices from the past. The experience went well beyond self-indulgent nostalgia for idealised undergraduate days. The voices and memories became so insistent that I had to stop and listen to them. The shades unveiled tableaux for which I was ill prepared as both past mistakes and emotional miscalculations were paraded in front of me. Unhelpfully the same ironic spirits arranged a mercifully brief dumb show of former friends now dead. I tried to break the unwelcome spell by concentrating on Johnson and Boswell but it didn't work. I forced myself to look at the short walk down the cobbles through their eyes only to be astonished to see two graveyards that I must have pa.s.sed a thousand times before without ever noticing.

'We walked down to the sh.o.r.e.' I did the same. 'Mr Johnson laughed to hear that Cromwell's soldiers taught the Aberdeen people to make shoes and stockings, and to plant cabbages.' I didn't hear any condescending laughter borne on the sea air; just the gulls wheeling round the Beach Ballroom, the site of more gropings and knee-tremblers over the decades than there are grains of sand.

The mischievous shades put in a last appearance thrusting a small photograph, with the unnatural colours that years ago pa.s.sed for verisimilitude, in front of my eyes. They helpfully aligned the horizon in the photo with the real thing and made me look at the seven thin students playing tug of war with a salvaged rope. Two died years ago, one is still living in Greece breeding horses, one became a gender realignment surgeon, one the rector of a northern school about to retire and the other two, who knows?

Before the Edinburgh train left Aberdeen station the same ghosts jostled to sit in the seats opposite and crammed their white dusty suitcases full of old dreams and laughter into the overhead luggage racks.

The New Inn Aberdeen 23rd August My Dearest Margaret, My a.r.s.e is so sorry I sleep last two nights in hard chair. Do not make face at my word. a.r.s.e is good word, I ask doctor and he tell me there is a.r.s.e in his big dictionary. So, Margaret, learn from Joseph, a.r.s.e is good word.(1) There is no room at the inn, this is like Christmas story from my child days. Only when the master threaten to put owner in prison does he find small room for master and the doctor. It rain all the time on way here. Summer in Scotland is not good.

Sometimes I think my master is small child. On journey we come to old church building and master, he shout like small boy and climb up to tower. The doctor clap and shouts 'bravo' which is word I not hear before. The master smile and beam then gets stuck and can not find way down so Joseph climb up and bring him down. The doctor shake as he laugh.(2) Then we go to mad man's house with strange name, Mandiddo, name like that. On way to house Doctor and master they make joke and pretend the master has grown a long hairy tails in the coach. This man Madbonnet dress like farmer and suck straw all the time. He has a black man as his servant. His name is Gory which he tell me means blood. After we leave the master make monkey noise when he mention Gory. The doctor get very cross and nearly hit master with his big k.n.o.b stick. I wish he hit him. The master is stupid. The doctor say he too has black man as servant called Francis which is nice name, not like blood. (3) Aberdeen is big town with two university. The doctor is pleased to get ticket which he put in his hat as he walk. He seem pleased as we go to beach where he tell of man who show people of Aberdeen how to plant cabbage. I not understand this. Every man in Bohemia plant cabbage all the time, it is not difficult. I do not like sh.o.r.es. I do not like line where sea touches sky. It makes me lonely. I do not like big white birds that scream and shout. One bird with mad black eye flap wings near doctor's wig. He shout at it. The bird make noise like soul going to h.e.l.l. My priest tell me the bad souls scream at Christ as they see the flames that last forever.

My Margaret, I not want to tell you this but we both know how master is. We go with him to visit woman who live with sick priest. This woman called Miss Dallas. She is old sweet heart of master. I must tell you he still hold hot flaming torch for her. While the doctor make marks on old books of priest and throw them to ground (4) the master make me wait outside but I look through door and see him hold her hand and he sigh all the time.(5) My Margaret he not deserve you. I am man who should be putting

(AGAIN THE TEXT IS ILLEGIBLE).

and make you have sighing noises.

I must sleep now but I hear not nice sound of master snoring like Bohemian hog before it gets throat cut.

Your lost Joseph (1) Joseph is correct. The entry reads 'The b.u.t.tocks, or hind part of an animal.'

(2) While Johnson mentions his companion 'scrambling in at a window' Boswell makes no mention of the incident.

(3) Francis Barbour was taken as a child from the Jamaican plantation where he was a slave to work for Colonel Bathurst. When the colonel died his son recommended that Johnson employ Francis as companion and servant. Whatever his faults there was not a racist bone in Johnson's body.

(4) This is perhaps a reference to Johnson's rough way with books; unable to resist annotating or underlining other people's prized tomes he would treat them with disrespect. Indeed Garrick was reluctant to lend him early Shakespearian folios fearful that they would not survive a mauling.

(5) In Boswell's words 'My cousin and old flame, Miss Dallas, was married to Mr Riddock, one of the ministers of the English chapel here. He was ill and confined to his room. But she sent a kind invitation to tea, which we all accepted. I was in a kind of uneasiness from thinking that I should see a great change upon her at the distance of twelve years. But I declare I thought she looked better in every respect, except that some of her fore-teeth were spoiled. She was the same lively, sensible, cheerful woman as ever. My mind was sensibly affected at seeing her.'

STAGE FOUR.

THE COASTAL PATH.

Serious Thoughts on Old People Lost Villages and A Timely Warning for Donald Trump A Nightmare Castle A Short trip to a Guano-Covered Rock Several Instances of Cowardice A Nasty Fall Some Very Dull Stones A Parrot Impersonator A Quiz in Poor Taste

Ellon Cruden Bay Bullers of Buchan

After travelling alone it was good to be joined again by David despite his insistence on wearing a camouflage jacket that last saw service in the jungles of either Borneo or Korea.

The immortal words 'Get aaf m'bus!' were perhaps redundant given that the 51 had reached its destination in Aberdeen and the young couple under threat of expulsion were already half-way down the steps. Their verbal a.s.sailant wore a cartoon honcho moustache, an obligatory part of the dress code for all drivers on Stagecoach buses. Who knows what they had been up to? Perhaps they were aspiring to join the bus equivalent of the Mile High Club and had foolishly attempted to copulate on a moving vehicle. They may simply have cultivated a nasty line in mocking drivers with truly strange moustaches. The half empty bottle of Buckfast provided the best clue. The incident pa.s.sed with a final flurry of muttered abuse on both sides.

Despite its name there was more to the 51 than its Wild West moniker suggested. It must have been at least runner-up in the most-luxurious-bus-in-the-world compet.i.tion equipped with Wi-Fi, personal ventilation systems and a toilet. We both waited for a bus hostess to stand in the corridor and demonstrate where the exits were, 'In the unlikely event of the Buchan Link landing on water ...' Any residual pretence of paying homage to the bone-rattling, a.r.s.e-aching travel of the eighteenth century was quietly dropped.

We cruised past the docks where rig supply boats and cable laying vessels with exotic Scrabble names, SKANDI OLYMPIA, MEARSK FEEDER, TOISA SONATA, were wedged together. It was as if some monstrous wave had hurled these ma.s.sive ocean-going boats into the town centre, their lurid marine architecture clashing with the venerable granite spires.

Two elderly pa.s.sengers boarding in Union Street were admonished when their pa.s.ses failed to work. 'I would strongly recommend that you renew your cards.' Shamefaced, they hid in their seats.

It may have been the comfort that induced a collective mood of stillness in the travellers. They were all ancient and were all couples. Travelling through the Aberdeenshire countryside in complete luxury and at no cost must have knocked the dubious pleasures of the nursing-home lounge into a c.o.c.ked hat. Middle cla.s.s families in the know and eager to preserve their inheritance now wrap up their old people, give them a flask, pin their bus pa.s.ses to their jackets, remind them to use the toilet and wave them off. Ten hours later after several circular tours they return, their eyes glazed with pleasure but ready for sleep.

There may have been other reasons why none of the couples spoke to each other. They may have said all there was to say in the final stages of long lives; they had no words left. Something else happens to married couples who have been together for ever. At some point in middle age it becomes obvious to both parties that it is no longer necessary to finish sentences. Quite simply the other knows how any unfinished sentence would have ended. This phase typically coincides with the onset of worrying that Lord Alzheimer might be pointing a long finger in their direction. The fact that sentences no longer finish as they used to can seem more sinister than it is. This process continues until there is no need to talk at all. Everything is understood.

The silence was broken when an elderly blind man and his pal joined. They shared a pa.s.sion for dogs and flooded the bus with anecdotes about lurchers and a setter which had cost 100 in 1952. One of the tales actually started with, 'It wis a braw moonlicht night ...' Gradually their mood changed. 'Ma mither died o cancer when she was 52 ...'; '... aa they millions on a war they canna win ...'

The canine theme was echoed in the sign to Black Dog Rifle Range. At least the snipers were selective and spared the lives of golden retrievers. A pa.s.sing Dalmatian would provoke debate and would send them scurrying to consult the rule book.

A glance at the newspaper being shared by the couple in front yielded the headline, SATAN LIVES IN VATICAN SAYS CHURCH thereby vindicating generations of sectarian loyalist bigots who have always suspected as much. Across the aisle two grey heads joined at the temples devoured the non news that AFTER 35 YEARS (AND FOUR HUSBANDS) IN CORRIE I FEARED THIS PLOT WOULD BE MY LAST. The headlines were so large as to leave no room for any related article.

On the Ellon road, overshadowed by a humpy ribbon of dunes, Johnson observed, 'In one place the sand of the sh.o.r.e had been raised by a tempest and carried to such a distance that an estate was overwhelmed and lost.' In 1814 when Sir Walter Scott sailed along the coast in a Lighthouse Yacht he recorded in his diary, 'Along the Bay of Belhelvie a whole parish was swallowed up by the shifting sands, and is still a desolate waste.'

From the bus we failed to catch sight of weather-c.o.c.ked steeples peeping through the coa.r.s.e gra.s.s while the noise from the diesel engine drowned out any plaintive sand-m.u.f.fled church bells.

How Boswell with his penchant for the supernatural and the spooky must have wallowed in the local legends. Sir James Lawson of Humbie, Gentleman of the Bedchamber to King James VI was sucked to his death by the sinking sands. His body was eventually retrieved but there was no sign of his horse. There is an omen here for Donald Trump whose monolithic multinational empire is hoovering up the dunes and regurgitating them as manicured and managed golf courses.

'Donald, step away from the horse, remember what happened last time!'

Further North at Culbin on the Kinnaird estate a Great House, a church, 300 acres and an entire orchard disappeared overnight. The lord of the manor was evidently being punished for placing a curse on the local witches before playing cards with the devil, the way one does.

It was a relief then to see that Ellon had been spared inundation by sand. Boswell and Johnson slaked their thirst in an inn to the north of the Old Ythan Bridge. In the interests of research and historical verisimilitude David and I did the same. The Buchan Hotel, on the same site as the 18th century hostelry, is a pleasant enough boozer but quite unremarkable. The business sponsors the local football team judging by the framed team photographs that date back like Banquo's children into the mists of time.

Especially poignant somehow was the sepia print of the 1940 team; all bright eyes and Brylcreem. Some of the players must have perished in the war while others may have reached a ripe old age only dying in the last decade or so. Dr W Geddes looked a fine sort of chap staring into an eventful future, ditto G Gammack and W Slessor. There should be a national day of mourning when all citizens are required to think about the life of some long dead, complete stranger; this way something like a memory could live on even for those for whom the spark of recall perished with the demise of their longest surviving relative.

I glanced at my mobile phone as we settled into the 260 to Cruden Bay. There were no missed calls or messages. Earlier in the week, aware that Johnson had commandeered a boat so that he could inspect the geological features of the seascape, I had placed an advertis.e.m.e.nt in the personal column of the Aberdeen Press and Journal; 'Two old eccentrics would like to be ferried from Cruden Bay to the Bullers on Thursday pm.' Four kindly souls phoned offering a lift by car, but in nothing that was seaworthy. The Daily Mail printed an article on the proposed journey that made us hope that they might have arranged a surprise for us when we arrived at the harbour; at the very least a full flotilla of small craft, a tabloid-sponsored armada. Failing that we would settle for nautical bunting and a hornpipe serenade.

These thoughts were interrupted by an official with clipboard and lots of keys who had been skulking undetected at the front of the bus. He was checking the validity of each and every proffered concessionary travel card. Until this moment it had never occurred to us that forging bus pa.s.ses was a cottage industry in rural Aberdeenshire. Forget the twenty pound notes and pa.s.sports, go for the real money! In small crofts master-forgers with croupier shades were risking their health etching with mercury, determined to conjure the exact shade of blue in the Saltire and faithfully replicate the typeface of the proud logo One Scotland accessing public services. Many pensioners have been the victims of ident.i.ty theft, their bins ransacked under cover of darkness. From the salvaged mess of unpayable utility bills, repeat v.i.a.g.r.a prescriptions, betting slips and related old person's paraphernalia, sufficient personal details had been gleaned to support this underworld of deception. There was also a black market in latex masks complete with straggly wisps of hair and strange facial lumps that unscrupulous young people would stretch over their heads at bus stops up and down the country.

No bunting or boats in Cruden Bay. b.u.g.g.e.r all, basically, and certainly nothing to eat. Eventually a multi-tasking newsagent agreed to microwave us some macaroni cheese for a modest fee. David, fearful of salmonella poisoning, opted for a lump of pre-packed cheddar which he attacked with a Ben Gunn-like ferocity.

We were initially reluctant to interrupt the barman in The Fairway so we joined him in watching a daytime TV show which featured a touch rugby match between two sets of very fat holiday makers on some distant sun-drenched sceptic isle. At half time we asked about the possibility of hiring a boat. Without taking his eyes from the screen in case he missed a far-from-action replay he directed us up the hill to the St Olaf Hotel. His eyes, when they finally made contact betrayed a hint of warning and sadness as he intoned 'Ask for the Boatman. He's the one wearing combat fatigues and a baseball cap.'