The Bus to Loch Katrine

This is a story inspired by quite an acute feeling of nostalgia. One morning I woke up with this indescribable longing; a gift to a writer. The only way to get it out was to start writing, and this is the result.

When I was in my final year of primary school, P.7 as we say here, my year group went on an annual trip to a lake ('loch') in the highlands of Scotland for a week of outdoor activities and fun. It was a way of saying goodbye to the long chapter of primary school before moving up to the big, scary high school; a bookmark on the road of growing up.

There are nothing but positive memories of that time, but the feeling I had that morning was so persistent and went deeper than simply nostalgia for an age and stage. It was almost as though that era, the late 1990s and early 2000s, was somehow m0re innocent; before 9/11 and the war on terror. We were just kids, no doubt we were naïve and cottoned off from the ugliness of the world, but there was something pure about that age; the love, respect and cameraderie we all felt for each other. Memory has a way of playing tricks on you, and more often than not we tend to protect ourselves by wiping the slate clean of any kinks or negativity in our own carefully manufactured stories. It is evident, though, that in today's age of smart phones, dwindling attention spans, and the worship of the self this little window of history seems not just like 20 years ago, but a whole different world. I wanted to capture that feeling through this story.

I hope you enjoy, and that it opens up the window to chapters of happiness in your own life. The world is still a beautiful place; you just have to look for it.

~

The Bus to Loch Katrine

One morning, he woke up from whimsical dreams to find himself slouching back into trap of routine. It was a bright, blustery January morning. The first thing he felt was the cold seeping into his nose, protruding from the cocoon of covers. Groaning, he rolled on to his side and felt the inertia battling the eventual necessity of actually getting up. The radio alarm was by now blaring out some homogenised trap music, which to him sounded like someone smashing three notes of a minor pentatonic pixelated through shattered glass, but the old classical station he used to rely on to wake up was too relaxing, so it transpired, and it cost him his bus one morning too many. Occasionally there would be a popular song he’d find he liked, even if he denied it. Yup, this morning was most definitely back to the grind.

He heard his old dad’s voice in his head, "It may be a grind but it’s good fer ye. Gives ye purpose." These few sage words had led him so far down this path, but then again his dad had never worked as an insurance underwriter. Realising it was just a tad too early for this spiral of self-pity, he gee’d himself up out of his cocoon. He got up and shuffled into his slippers, then grabbed his dressing gown which hung expectantly on the wall to the left of the bed. Today he was going to make a point of starting fresh. What was it that had caused this sudden shift in attitude?

He worked for Smith & Noble, a firm whose very purpose was to scam folk and cover their own arses as far as possible. There was absolutely no passion in what he did, and to tell the truth he’d been convinced that he’d been dead inside for years. His boss, Dale, fortunately liked him though could be a tyrannical old dinosaur; one of those insurance men who had made a fortune in the 1980s under the auspices of Thatcher’s regime.

He made his money on the Iranian oil spill of ’83 was the sort of dodgy, cryptic information you would hear buzzing behind his back as he swaggered his generous frame around the office. Any poor, unfortunate girls who had made their way into this world had to cope with his leery obnoxious behaviour.

It was a funny old game, full of these supposedly ‘self-made men’ who had made equally obscene amounts of money to Dale and so became completely besotted with the world of insurance underwriting: one that, by all rights, should be about as much fun as being an insurance undertaker. Nevertheless, these men (normally men) would fight tooth and nail against retirement, after spending years cooped up in their little office space and would regularly cry when they were finally papped out, a wee trail of tears and nostalgia in their wake as they shuffled to the door carrying their boxes filled with personal belongings.

There would often be uproarious applause amongst their peers and generational co-habitants while the younger, generally more sensitive crowd would quietly tell each other:

“Ahh there he goes: off to spend his twilight years with the wife and family who barely know him.”

It was a soul-crushing job, alright, but it was the best thing he had found up until now. Pushing the boulder over the hill of 30 was not an exciting prospect if he was still squirming around in some soul crushing job figuring out what he wanted to do with his life. Equally annoying was the irony that, in fact, this is exactly what he was doing. There had been plenty of excuses. No one likes their job, really. Everyone is miserable, join the club. Misery loves companies. He even felt quite proud of the last one, because he did work for a company.

As he shuffled into the kitchen, he let out a big belly laugh despite himself, content both stewing in his own juices, the quandry of his own making. Yet, some other feeling began creeping up on him: some deeper knowledge, snatched from the dying embers of dreams. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say that there was this lingering, mysterious feeling of hope. He almost felt annoyed with it, like it was distracting him from what he should be feeling: abundant resignation.

He sat down at the breakfast table with his bowl, spoon and began to pour cereal when his eye caught sight of the old Boots photo packet lying there, half protruding from underneath a pile of discount flyers. ‘Loch Katrine, 1998’ was written in big lettered permanent marker on the front of the blue flap concealing the packet of 30 or so photos. He stopped preparing his breakfast, leant over and picked it up.

Where had THIS come from? Loch Katrine had been the trip he’d taken in his final year of primary school, the annual week’s outing the school organised for the pupils as a farewell to primary before they started at the big scary high school. He couldn’t remember looking these out, and surely, they would have been back at his mum’s. Regardless, for the moment being, the questions eluded him. He opened the pack and took out the little pile of glossy, printed photos.

The faces that beamed back up at him were just kids, but also people he knew deeply; friends and classmates with whom he'd passed through the ecstasy and the agony of growing up. Even old envies, rivalries and crushes melted away to leave nothing but longing. Stephen, cap turned backwards, sitting at the back of the bus giving a thumbs up. Claire, Jenna and Rachel each giving a peace sign. Clarke holding a rectangular box of orange juice, listening to his CD Walkman. Probably Incubus or Green Day. Forbes giving a smile that would be considered wry even for 12 years old: always wise beyond his years. Mrs. Fowler even smiling in the background of one shot where everyone is turning around in their seats, faces full of unbridled joy. The still fresh prints of glossy paper seemed high-tech snapshots at the time, now somehow a quaint little window into a different time, a whole world ago.

Why did he take so many pictures on the bus there? There were only about 30 shots available on his disposable camera. He remembers his mum asking him that question, and yet the answer seems to gravitate out of these faded old shots to meet him halfway. They captured something: an optimism he hadn’t felt for a long, long time. Maybe he had been concealing it from himself, shoving it down into the depths so he didn’t have to confront the fact he hadn’t allowed himself to dream for the longest time. Not like he once did, like they all did; those faces so pure and full of hope.

He placed the pile of photos down on the breakfast table and began pouring his cereal and milk, fazed and confused by the lingering, dragging feeling the photos had left him with. He tried shoving a spoonful in his mouth and chewing mechanically, on auto-pilot as always. Yet, he found his chewing was laboured, forced somehow. He had gone almost completely rigid. There was an uncomfortable sensation rising in his chest where that fluffy hope had been this morning. Oh no, oh no oh no oh no oh no oh shit. NO.

The tears had welled in his eyes before he knew what had hit him, and then as the spoon clattered onto the rim of the bowl, then the table his head was in his hands and he just let it come, like a wave. Since when had he, all of them on that bus to Loch Katrine, lost it? That feeling that life was just so full of possibilities? Nearly every new experience filled them with an exuberance. And now here was, not yet 30, and openly, functionally depressed through a series of his own choices. He hadn't been in touch with any of the people in these photos for as long as he could remember. How could he look those kids in the face and promise them this was a life worth looking forward to? Maybe today he would try and avoid another claim of a client whose car had been scratched. How could that ever rival the feeling when Jenna’s friends told him she liked him, in that way? When she pecked him on the check on the last night, in the corner of the disco? The fluttering heart rate that introduced him to a new stage of life, and the depths of its mysteries.

He dried his eyes and let this new knowledge sink into his soul. A new knowledge, gained from his past. Today was going to be different. As he gazed out of the window, he saw the morning light shining out brighter than he had remembered for a long time. Aye, it was a new dawn alright. He owed it to himself, to that wee boy on the bus to Loch Katrine. This life could still be beautiful, its mysteries there for those who want to see.