Ten years since the independence referendum? Seems like ten minutes. It is certainly too soon to tell the whole story of those heady days.

Officially, the new 20-year-rule applies to government records from the years leading up to the referendum. In reality, we may never know the truth about what took place in the stranger moments.

Top of that list of known unknowns is exactly what happened when Queen Elizabeth, in the week of the referendum, said she hoped voters would “think very carefully about the future”. Was it the monarch being her usual Gnomic self, or the UK Government, knowing the Queen could not become involved in politics by confirming or denying she had said such a thing, using her to sway opinion in favour of “No”?

There will be other sources historians can draw upon as they try to transport themselves back to 2014. For my money, and for a taste of the sheer, red in-tooth-and-claw atmosphere of the times, no document can match an episode of the BBC Scotland comedy Two Doors Down. Let the record show the piece in question is episode four in series four, titled Graham and Sandra (it’s still on iPlayer).

The setting, as usual, is the suburban home of Beth and Eric Baird. Joining the gathering of neighbours are an English couple, Graham and Sandra. After much good-natured discussion about what it means to be Scottish, and why it’s different from being English, someone brings up the referendum.

All hell breaks loose.

In three minutes, writers Gregor Sharp and the late Simon Carlyle manage to capture every shade of Scottish opinion about the referendum and its aftermath. From friends falling out - “You voted against me?” - to a heartfelt plea for another vote, it is all there. The shouting. The bawling. The shouting and bawling.

Very important, very Scottish, to have those two together. Shouting on its own suggests your average heated debate. The referendum was shouting that escalated to bawling the closer we came to polling day.

Ten years on, the referendum exists as a series of random images and sounds squished together: photographs, headlines, clips from radio and television, plus a few personal (some very personal) arguments. If life was flashing before me, these snippets would together amount to the blink of an eye. But at the time it felt like something momentous was happening, and it took forever to settle.

What we tend to forget is how long the process took. Where do you start the timeline: with the 1707 Act of Union, the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, or the SNP winning a majority of seats at Holyrood in 2011? Or do we wait till the launch of Yes Scotland in May 2012, or the launch of Better Together a month later? From that point it would be two years and a matter of months till polling day.

It did not feel that long at the time. Yet the wait was to prove crucial in building support for Yes, as Alex Salmond knew. It is one of the reasons why feelings were running so high towards the end. If you think a week is a long time in politics, try two years plus.

It could have gone the other way, with interest petering out, but the steady march of the legislation through parliament meant the drumbeat was always there in the background, reminding all concerned that we were moving towards a decision.

As 2013 handed the baton to 2014, time seemed to go faster. It is at this point the campaign becomes a blur, one memory collides with another, and a soundbite rings a bell. The first television debate between Alistair Darling and Alex Salmond, with victory going to the former. “Any eight-year-old can tell you the flag of a country, the capital of a country and its currency,” said Darling. “Now I assume the flag is the Saltire. I assume our capital will still be Edinburgh. But you can’t tell us what currency we will have. What is an eight-year-old to make of that?”

The fortunes were reversed in the next clash with a poor showing by Darling. Later in the memory reel: Jim Murphy being egged; the row between the BBC’s Nick Robinson and Alex Salmond; the protest outside the BBC HQ at Pacific Quay in Glasgow. On and on.

I would get calls and emails from friends and contacts around the UK and further afield, all essentially asking the same question: what on Earth was going on in Scotland? It was exciting to be at the centre of events, to not just report the story but to be part of it, day by day. It amazed me how little most London-based reporters knew about Scottish politics, yet the news desks kept sending them north rather than use local correspondents.

I was reminded of my own ignorance on returning from London in 1999. Scotland then seemed a country transformed, yet below the surface the roots were as I remembered, for good and not so good.

Fifteen years on from that homecoming was the referendum. I would like to say I had everything worked out by then, but who am I kidding? As the vote itself showed, Scotland did not have a clear, settled view of Scotland and its future. It has been the same since. The debate has gone on, at varying temperatures, and for some, it always will.

What we can say is that we were there, and we remember, sort of. Memories are fading even ten years on. What will it be like in 50, 100, 200 years from now? Will future generations mark the bicentennial of the Scottish independence referendum? No idea.

The only certainty about history is that it is, to borrow Alan Bennett’s line, just one bloody thing after another, You, me and the others, Generation Referendum we should start calling ourselves, will not be around to see what history makes of us. Might be just as well.