Chasing the Dram by Rachel McCormack

Author:Rachel McCormack [McCormack, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

10

WHISKY AND CHIPS

‘I’d much rather be someone’s shot of whisky than everyone’s cup of tea.’

CARRIE BRADSHAW

The patriarch and I were supposed to be going on holiday together. He invited me after a 15-minute explanation of why neither his wife nor his pals wanted to go with him, so he was offering to take me, and we were in the middle of getting our plans together when we had the Great Argument of 2011. The reasons are rather dull but it is a cyclical occurrence. The last time we fell out I phoned my mother full of righteous indignation, ready to launch into The Entire Story Of All The Injustices And Outrages Committed By The Patriarch To Cause Such A Calamity, and my mother said, ‘When was the last time you fell out with him, again, 18 months ago? Well, you were due another fall-out so that’ll be what’s happened.’

This stopped me in mid-outrage and left me somewhat deflated. The aforementioned falling-out lasted far less than normal, but still too long to go on that holiday.

My father is not a lover of the Scottish countryside, or really any countryside that isn’t a golf course for that matter. His idea of a trip to the countryside is a day trip to Edinburgh and a walk through Princes Street Gardens. I dug my heels in once, when I was up on a visit, and insisted we go on a country run in the car. We drove through three forests, over various hills, got rained on in a car park and ate the worst strawberry tart in Scotland in a cafe in Tighnabruaich designed to cater for bus trips.

Most distilleries are in the countryside, so if we were going to have father and daughter bonding time a proper investigation of everything the Highlands and Islands had to offer was out of the question. I needed to come up with something else, something that was more his style. And I did.

We went through the central belt to Alloa, an industrial town which still has industry left, unlike Kilmarnock. We drove round the edge of it, marvelling at town planners of the 1970s and their passion for roundabouts, and ended up lost in an industrial park. My phone was no use here, so we did the old-fashioned thing and spoke to a human being in real life, going as far as entering the reception of a window fitter’s to get directions from a lady behind a desk.

It was all terribly quaint.

We managed to find Abercrombie engineers, which is where we needed to be. It’s a nondescript brick building that could hold anything from locomotive engines to an online bookshop; the entrance and reception scream 1980s functionality, and there are men doing industrial work. It’s just my father’s kind of place. A big tall bald man with a deep booming voice comes down the stairs and asks if we’re here for the tour. My dad says, ‘No we’re not’ and turns his back to him. I say, ‘Yes we are’ and shake his hand.

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