Paul Theroux - The Kingdom by the Sea - A Journey Around the Coast of Great Britain

"That's too drastic," Mr. Perry-Pratt said.

"Rubbish. It's not drastic at all," Mr. Husker said. "And it will come — you'll see! This will either be a fully automated railway or it won't exist at all. Ivor, be reasonable. A few years ago there were twenty-five farm laborers on every farm. Now how many are there?"

Mr. Perry-Pratt pleaded, "But look at unemployment!"

Mr. Husker was implacable. He said, "We'll have to have a lot more unemployment before this country begins to run properly."

Of course, he had a job.

We reached the coast. Offshore, a four-legged oil rig looked like a mechanical sea monster defecating in shallow water. It was like a symbol of this part of Scotland. Aberdeen was the most prosperous city on the British coast — the healthiest finances, the brightest future, the cleanest buildings, the briskest traders. But that was not the whole of it. I came to hate Aberdeen more than any other place I saw. Yes, yes, the streets were clean; but it was an awful city.

Perhaps it had been made awful and was not naturally that way. It had certainly been affected by the influx of money and foreigners. I guessed that in the face of such an onslaught the Aberdonians had found protection and solace by retreating into the most unbearable Scottish stereotypes. It was only in Aberdeen that I saw kilts and eightsome reels and the sort of tartan tightfistedness that made me think of the average Aberdonian as a person who would gladly pick a halfpenny out of a dunghill with his teeth.

Most British cities were plagued by unemployed people. Aberdeen was plagued by workers. It made me think that work created more stress in a city than unemployment. At any rate, this sort of work. The oil industry had the peculiar social disadvantage of being almost entirely manned by young single men with no hobbies. The city was swamped with them. They were lonely. They prowled twilit streets in groups, miserably looking for something to do. They were far away from home. They were like soldiers in a strange place. There was nothing for them to do in Aberdeen but drink. I had the impression that the Aberdonians hated and feared them.

These men had seen worse places. Was there in the whole world an oil-producing country that was easygoing and economical? "You should see Kuwait," a welder told me; "you should see Qatar." For such a man Aberdeen was civilization. It was better than suffering in an oil rig a hundred miles offshore. And anyone who had been in the Persian Gulf had presumably learned to do without a red-light district. Apart from drinking and dancing Scottish reels, there was not a single healthy vice available in Aberdeen.

It had all the extortionate high prices of a boom town but none of the compensating vulgarity. It was a cold, stony-faced city. It did not even look prosperous. That was some measure of the city's mean spirit — its wealth remained hidden. It looked overcautious, unwelcoming and smug, and a bit overweight, like a rich uncle in dull sensible clothes, smelling of mildew and ledgers, who keeps his wealth in an iron chest in the basement. The windows and doors of Aberdeen were especially solid and unyielding; it was a city of barred windows and burglar alarms, of hasps and padlocks and Scottish nightmares.

The boom town soon discovers that it is possible to make money out of nothing. It was true of the Klondike, where, because women were scarce, hags came to regard themselves as great beauties and demanded gold dust for their grunting favors; in Saudi Arabia today a gallon of water costs more than a gallon of motor oil. In Aberdeen it was hotel rooms. The Station Hotel, a dreary place on the dockside road across from the railway station, charged £48 a night for a single room, which was more than its equivalent would have cost at the Plaza in New York City. Most of the other hotels charged between £25 and £35 a night — fifty bucks on average — and the rooms did not have toilets. I went from place to place with a sense of mounting incredulity, for the amazing thing was not the high prices or the sleazy conditions but rather the fact that there were no spare rooms.

For what I calculated to be $40 I found a hotel room that was like a jail cell — narrow and dark, with a dim light fifteen feet high on the ceiling. There was no bathroom. The bed was the size of a camp cot. Perhaps if I had just spent three months on an oil rig I would not have noticed how dismal it was. But I had been in other parts of Scotland, where they did things differently, and I knew I was being fleeced.

To cheer myself up I decided to go out on the town. I found a joint called Happy Valley — loud music and screams. I thought: Just the ticket.

But the doorman blocked my path and said, "Sorry, you can't go in."

Behind him were jumping, sweating people and the occasional splash of breaking glass.

"You've not got a jacket and tie," he said.

I could not believe this. I looked past him, into the pandemonium.

"There's a man in there with no shirt," I said.

"You'll have to go, mate."

I suspected that it was my oily hiker's shoes that he really objected to, and I hated him for it.

I said, "At least I'm wearing a shirt."

He made a monkey noise and shortened his neck. "I'm telling you for the last time."

"Okay, I'm going. I just want to say one thing," I said. "You're wearing one of the ugliest neckties I've ever seen in my life."

Up the street another joint was advertising "Country and Western Night." I hurried up the stairs, toward the fiddling.

"Ye canna go in," the doorman said. "It's too full."

"I see people going in," I said. They were drifting past me.

"And we're closing in a wee munnit."

I said, "I don't mind."

"And you're wearing blue jeans," he said.

"And you're wearing a wrinkled jacket," I said. "And what's that, a gravy stain?"

"Ye canna wear blue jeans here. Regulations."

"Are you serious? I can't wear blue jeans to an evening of country and western music?"

"Ye canna."

I said, "How do you know I'm not Willie Nelson?"

He jabbed me hard with his stubby finger and said, "You're nae Wullie Nullson, now piss off!"

And so I began to think that Aberdeen was not my kind of place. But was it anyone's kind of place? It was fully employed and tidy and virtuous, but it was just as bad as any of the poverty-stricken places I had seen — worse, really, because it had no excuses. The food was disgusting, the hotels overpriced and indifferent, the spit-and-sawdust pubs were full of drunken and bad-tempered men — well, who wouldn't be? And it was not merely that it was expensive and dull; much worse was its selfishness. Again, it was the boom town ego. Nothing else mattered but its municipal affairs. The newspapers ignored the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the United Nations initiative on the Falklands and the new space shuttle. Instead, their headlines concentrated on the local moneymaking stuff — the new industries, the North Sea pipeline about to be laid, the latest oil rigs. The world hardly existed, but financial news, used cars, and real estate took up seven pages of the daily paper.

The Aberdeen American, a fortnightly paper, had the self-conscious gusto of a church newsletter. It was a hotchpotch of news about barbecues, schools, American primary elections, and features with an Anglo-American connection. It was a reminder that the American community in Aberdeen was large. The American School had three premises. I heard American voices on the buses. And I was certain that it was the Americans who patronized the new health clubs — weight-loss emporiums and gymnasiums with wall-to-wall carpets. A lovely granite church had been gutted and turned into the Nautilus Total Fitness Centre.

On a quiet street in the western part of the city was the American Foodstore. I went there out of curiosity, wondering what sort of food Americans viewed as essential to their well-being on this savage shore. My findings were: Crisco, Thousand Island Dressing, Skippy Peanut Butter, Cheerios, Pepperidge Farm Frozen Blueberry Muffins, Bama Brand Grape Jelly, Mama's Frozen Pizza, Swanson's Frozen Turkey TV Dinner, Chef Boyardee Spaghetti Sauce, El Paso Taco Sauce, and Vermont Pancake Syrup. I also noted stacks of Charmin Toilet Paper, Budweiser Beer, and twenty-five-pound bags of Purina Dog Chow.