Taylor's travels: Decision time

This is Fisherrow, which is part of Musselburgh, where I have lived with only a few interruptions for all of my life. It is an archetypal Scottish town and one where the debate over independence has raged for the past few months. Both the Yes and No factions are conspicuous in the high street every weekend, each leafletting shoppers in the hope they'll either switch sides or come off the fence and favour their cause. There have been numerous public meetings, all well attended and in general good-humoured. Occasionally, in the pub, heated words are exchanged, but they're more likely to be between supporters of Hearts and Hibs than those inclined to stay in the Union or get out of it tout de suite.

A couple of days ago I noticed that in the windows of three out of the six flats in the building next to mine, there were Yes posters. That's true, too, for the rest of Musselburgh. This has long been a Labour-leaning area but more recently the SNP have been making inroads and more people talk openly of their hope that independence will come to pass. I find this surprising, not because of what that implies but because I'm not used to hearing neighbours talk about politics, let alone tell me how they intend to vote. But it is a mark of how much the referendum matters. Nobody is immune to it; nobody can afford not to have an opinion. Recently, at a post-Edinburgh Festival lunch in the heart of the East Lothian countryside, the host's mother attempted to pin a Save The Union badge on me, which I managed to resist by pointing out my fear of needles.

Musselburgh, like so many of the towns I have visited across the country over the past six months for this magazine, is grappling with rapid change following the decline and wholesale disappearance of industries which, when I was a boy, made it hum. Fishing was the first to go. In the 19th century, Fisherrow was the town's mainstay. The men went to sea (and, on occasion, did not return) while the women kept the home fires burning, mended the nets and gutted the fish. Our fishwives were tough; they even organised their own football teams. The street in which I still live was one in which there were at least a couple of churches for every pub. That's still the case, though the number of both has been drastically reduced.

My early years were spent inland. I grew up on a relatively new council estate in a semi-detached house with a garden at front and back and streets that were largely bereft of traffic. I still know folk who live there and they tell me that it is infected with jobless ne'er-do-wells who are addled with drink or drugs. But when I last visited it, it seemed pretty much as I remembered it, though children were conspicuous by their absence. My father worked for the National Coal Board but it was ink that dirtied his fingers. The estate was on the edge of farmland. My great-uncle - a kindly man whose bottomless pockets were filled with toffees - was employed as a farm labourer and I would watch him trudge home for lunch, his haversack slung over his back, his dungarees clagged with the clay-like mud that was more fertile than a biblical patriarch. He could have been a character in a Thomas Hardy novel.

The farm on which he made his living and where I took a summer job picking leeks is much reduced. Over the decades, its owner sold off parcels of land to developers and where once there were neeps and tatties are now houses with garages attached that are larger than many people's flats. Their inhabitants have a Musselburgh postcode but few of them work in the town. Most commute to Edinburgh, which is five miles away. When I was a teenager that journey was a treat, the object of which was to buy what Musselburgh could not supply. But back then our town was one in which you could sense the toxicity in the atmosphere. When you blew your nose you saw that what you were breathing in must be foul.

Such was the downside of the mills which made wire, cotton and paper and from which smoke belched unceasingly. Effluence poured into the River Esk unregulated, to the detriment of the flounder population. We were lucky if there were two swans in residence beneath the old Roman bridge. Now the mills are no more, the water in the river is clean, and there are more swans in Musselburgh than "the nine and fifty" Yeats saw at Coole. In the place of the mills is a giant Tesco store that is open around the clock and a car park. Like lava, concrete spreads across land which, whether cultivated or not, is suffocated under its unyielding blanket. Instinct tells me I preferred things the way they were but, thinking rationally, I'm not sure. There's much that I'm glad to be rid of; much that I'm happier with now than I was all those years ago when my consciousness was half-formed.

Travelling around Scotland in this year of all years, one is constantly aware of this clash between past and present and of the uncertainty of the future. The idea of newness is of course appealing. We are all smitten by the possibility of the new. It is the way we are. In the end, everything is superseded; everything ultimately is redundant. But a country, a nation, is not like a gadget that can be thrown away when it has outlived its usefulness or is replaced by a better model. Its history remains; it cannot be erased and swapped for another. The same goes for its citizens. Read any biography of a Scot and certain traits recur, not all of them admirable. We are, like any other people, a cocktail of contradictions; selfish and sensitive to the plight of others, keen to see wealth redistributed as long as it is not ours, eager to welcome foreigners but not to our neighbourhood. There is a natural desire to see living conditions improve, to ensure children are not brought up in poverty and properly educated, but what if that means the better off must reduce the size of the their bank accounts? Is the idea of the common weal a myth, one of those characteristics we reassure ourselves is unique to us? What would a Scotland governed by Scots be like?

My journey took me from south to north, east to west. It began in the Borders when darkness fell at four in the afternoon and ended in Lanarkshire as summer's lease was almost up. On the way I met many Scots and not a few non-Scots. On my early forays, few people had much to say about the referendum, not least because it was yet to infect the media. In Berwick-upon-Tweed there was a feeling of resignation. At the moment some of its inhabitants live in Scotland and work in England and vice versa. Nobody envisioned that changing. Many of those who live in England said they were thinking of moving to Scotland were it to become independent, principally because of free university tuition fees and long-term care for the elderly. On the western side of the Border, the concern was not so much over questions of independence but the proliferation of wind farms.

It was a similar story in other parts. In Shetland, where I detected more antagonism than elsewhere between the two factions in the debate, a long-running rammy over a wind farm was close to being resolved in favour of its promoter. It was the one issue on which a Yes voter and a No voter agreed. But there were also many on both sides who would rather not have the turbines. Local issues tend to override national ones and the further away from Westminster or Edinburgh you go, the greater suspicion and cynicism about politicians. No matter where I went, I heard politicians described in a manner that often had little basis in reality. Gossip on social media was often taken for Holy Writ. Misconceptions abounded. Opinion was accepted as fact. The once-revered BBC was seen by Yes legions as inherently, subtly biased. Those insistent on voting No were agreed that the SNP government was using its heft at Holyrood to steamroller through policies that a majority of people did not want. Depending on where one stood, the referendum was seen as an expensive waste of time and energy when there were more pressing concerns or a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to restore pride and self-respect.

Context is all. This is the year of the 700th anniversary of Bannockburn, the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and, still to come, the Ryder Cup. All eyes have been on Scotland and, for the most part, it has looked ravishing. Arriving for his event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Martin Amis said he'd never seen the city look more beautiful. One hears similar anecdotes constantly. A friend took his Bulgarian in-laws to the islands via Glencoe and they could barely contain their emotions. And even when the rain finally did fall in Glasgow during the Games, it dampened only the spirit of Usain Bolt. It was as if the whole country was determined to show what it is capable of. But there were days when I saw another Scotland, one that could be on another planet from that invaded by tourists. Buses took me through estates and along forlorn high streets, or circumvented dreary malls where folk went to kill an hour. The postcode lottery applies not just to the outskirts of Glasgow. There are many communities suffering from blights that go back generations. In Dundee, where there is one of the most ambitious and inspiring urban regeneration projects, I saw groups of youths in alleyways openly dealing drugs. Deprivation is undoubtedly part of that particular problem but it is not the only one. Lerwick, where there's one per cent unemployment, has as big a drug culture as Irvine Welsh's Leith.

Conclusions may be as misleading as generalisations. Talking to individuals is enlightening and instructive but no more reliable, one suspects, than opinion polls. Statistics may appear scientific but they must be used sparingly. What is beyond dispute is that many people in Scotland need a purpose in order to make them feel valued. At the moment, too many Scots are living on the fringes and are disenfranchised. Not only do they not have jobs, they seem to not want one. In Musselburgh, we know who they are and what effect they can have on the lives of others. The difference between contentment and misery is wafer-thin. All it needs, as a distraught friend said recently, is for one bad apple to move in next door to you.

This is Scotland as it is for many of us. It is a place of wonderful scenery, colourful history, natural resources and resourceful people. But the reality for too many is other. Whether independence can cure such ills remains to be seen. What I can confirm, however, is that the tide is coming in, as it will continue to do come what may five days hence. n