Opinion: Robert McNeil: All hands to the pumps – tourism’s back

And that would just be the staycation brigade. Before long, too, foreign visitors will be back with their loud clothes and peculiar walking styles. Some of these have poor English, which is disgraceful in this day and age.

Hang on. Someone is being churlish in the extreme here, and it is incumbent upon me to disown immediately the above three controversial, sardonic, ironic, whimsical and arguably mordant paragraphs.

Tourism is important to the economy of Scotland, even if it does involve prostituting the place, and provides many jobs which put money in folks’ pockets which they spend in shops which employ more folk who earn money to spend … and roond and roond it goes.

Personally, I look forward to seeing a few more visitors aboot the place. I like hearing foreign folk’s stories about where they’re from, and why they came, and I’ll usually stop to pick up hitch-hikers as we tend to get decent, nature-loving visitors round here, though I’d never do it (again) on mainland Scotland.

The last hitcher I picked up on the mainland was a Scottish person – always a mistake – who was surprisingly drunk and had a carrier bag full of fresh fish.

In the course of our journey, he became adamant that I should marry his sister. As I am fond of fish, I went along with the idea for a few years until I divorced her on grounds of her syphilis.

However, forgetting sexually transmitted diseases for the moment and getting back to the topic in hand, it’s when tourists become heaving crowds that things becomes awkward.

Where I live, they all flock to the same landmarks – not one of which I’ve ever visited, just as no Edinburgh resident ever visits the castle – and they miss the many quiet, beautiful places, some of these admittedly quite secret, but many easy enough to find if you follow your nose or similar appendage.

Up in the Big Village, the queue at the garage goes back to the main road, and yet you see foreign visitors in particular, having filled up, sitting on at the pump to eat their lunch in the car. Unbelievable.

In the cities, decent local ratepayers have to negotiate mobs congregating on narrow pavements. Then they try to pass dawdling, swaying individuals who seem to become senile the minute they start looking out their passport.

Often, such visitors are attracted here by the chronic mis-selling of our tourist industry, which brands as “scenic attractions” grim places that have featured as film locations, or hypes up spurious connections with terrorist slave traders – the Vikings – prompting the poor visitors to look around and think: “Judging by the look of these folks, the Vikings must have sailed up in their longships from the fjords of Airdrie and Motherwell.”

Tourism: can’t live with it, can’t live without it. It’s a bit like Twitter. Everybody claims to hate it and everybody needs it.

The coronavirus has led to a welcome explosion of authoritarian rule-making, and this should be extended to tourism when it fully resumes.

For tourists this will mean: no behaving in a dense manner; no blocking, dawdling or swaying from side to side on the pavements; while gawping, no allowing the mouth to go slack or the feet to become rooted to the spot for eternity; and no eating your ruddy sandwiches at the petrol pumps.

For our own industry: no porkies, no hype, no doctored photies, and no ruddy Vikings.

Nero worship

THIS column has campaigned long and hard against reincarnation, believing the prospect of having to return to Nuthouse Earth unthinkable.

Personally, I’d be happy to spend the rest of eternity sitting on a fluffy cloud playing a kazoo (I fear a harp might be beyond me).

However, belief in reincarnation persists, with the latest exponent being Christopher “television legend” Biggins, who believes he used to be the Emperor Nero.

This has nothing to do with an affinity for fiddling or conflagrations, but to the time he played the great Roman nutter in television’s I, Claudius.

Reports Christopher: “I really locked into him … I loved wearing raw silk and long, flowing kaftans, and having fresh flowers put into my hair by Sir Derek Jacobi every day.”

Flowers? Kaftans? Jacobi? Pull yourself together, man. Nero was infamous for setting Christians on fire to illuminate his gardens. You, Mr so-called Biggins, are infamous for playing the Widow Twankey in pantomime. There, all resemblance between you ends.

FIVE THINGS WE LEARNED THIS WEEK

URBAN foxes are becoming almost as friendly as domestic dogs, say Glasgow Uni researchers. The beasts’ brains are also getting smaller, as they don’t need to be so wily. Soon, they’ll be so dense they’ll be running back and forwards endlessly fetching sticks.

HEALTH experts in New York have urged people to wear masks while having sex. “Make it a little kinky,” they added, in controversial guidelines. The move has been welcomed by top men, meanwhile, as it would mean less kissing.

HARVARD researchers found that volunteering helps people to live longer. Even just two hours a week helps folk cope with stress, loneliness and depression. Perhaps, to encourage more people to volunteer, the authorities should consider paying them for the work.

JODRELL Bank astronomers have detected a repeating radio signal from ooter space. It’s thought the signal is an alien civilisation’s crap attempt at communication. Early indications suggest it says: “Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough.”

GOSPORT man Deano Wilson has changed his name to Fire Exit. Mr Exit said his name would now be up in lights and be recognised everywhere. The move has been welcomed by Deano’s friends, Venereal Clinic and Toilets McCafferty.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald.