A YEAR ago, Scotland prepared for a journey into the unknown.
The Commonwealth Games and Ryder Cup would make 2014 one to remember, for sure. But it was what would transpire on September 18, everyone seemed to agree, that would truly set the next 12 months apart.
Well, what a year it turned out to be. Newsroom veterans of the Lockerbie Disaster, the two devolution votes and just about any other major story of the last four decades agreed: the referendum was the biggest thing they had ever been involved in.
Scotland, as it turned out, voted No, although the break-up of the UK came a lot closer than most would have predicted as 2013 drew to a close. The long-awaited White Paper had been published the previous month, but failed to give the Yes campaign the boost it hoped for. Better Together was sitting pretty with a 23-point lead.
The pro-union parties ruling out a currency union, President Obama giving his tuppence worth, the two TV debates, that dramatic Saturday night when news leaked out that pollsters had Yes ahead, the final frenetic last weeks of campaigning and 'The Vow' all lay ahead. All we knew this time last year was that it time to strap in and get set for one hell of a ride.
It got ugly, more than once. Tempers frayed, families fell out. Questionable tactics were utilised by both sides. The Queen even acknowledged indyref-inspired division in her speech to the nation on Thursday.
But it was also exhilarating and wonderfully inclusive. A personal memory is sitting in a run-down Glasgow pub - the type that attracts trade by drawing attention to how cheap a pint of Tennants is on its facade blackboards - and hearing the regulars engrossed in political debate. One, who put forward the theory that Rangers fans should vote No and Celtic fans Yes, was promptly put in his place. The referendum was a festival of democracy the like of which these islands have never seen before.
But while Scotland was braced for impact a year ago, the assumption that the result on September 18 would settle the constitutional debate were largely accepted. So, too, was the theory that if the result was No, the SNP would descend into a self-destructive cycle of recrimination
On December 27, 2013, Green co-convenor Patrick Harvie contemplated "the ghost of Scotland's Christmas yet to come" in the pages of our sister paper, The Evening Times.
"Scotland's dominant political force, defined for decades by the independence cause, would need to figure out what it's for," if there was a No vote, he wrote. "Finding agreement across its ranks about the answer to that question would be tricky enough, even before they try and communicate it to the voters."
A high-profile Labour MSP made a similar prediction to me on referendum night itself, after the result had become clear. But, remarkably, the opposite has come to pass.
A poll conducted in December 2013 put the SNP ahead of Labour by eight points in Holyrood voting intentions, a result hailed at the time as incredible for a party in the middle of its second term in Government. What would Jim Murphy do to be just eight points behind the nationalists now, rather than the 23-point deficit he faces?
When January 1, 2014 came around, nobody - not the politicians, not the journalists or the commentators - really had a clue what was going to happen. And guess what? With a general election fast approaching, we're in the same boat.
Scottish Labour, it's safe to say, needs a gamechanger. But what? Outflanking the SNP to the left is not likely with Murphy at the helm. A radical new policy on education seems a safe bet, but that's a devolved area, unlikely to influence voters in May. It is Ed Miliband, after all, and not Murphy, who they are being asked to support. Speaking of Murphy, is he really content to wait 18 months to stand for Holyrood?
Will Alex Salmond really lead a "barrel load" of nationalist MPs to Westminster and rumble the place up?
How will the EVEL debate play out? What might a decent number of UKIP MPs mean for that or, indeed, an EU referendum? And if an EU referendum is agreed, does that set us up for indyref: the sequel? Will the Smith Commission powers come as quickly as promised?
This time last year, Scotland took a leap into uncharted waters and 12 months on, there isn't a life raft in sight. Here we go again.
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