Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
And exposed to the elements is how you jolly-well should be driving it, of course,
unless it's absolutely bucketing with rain (though, thanks to the effects of that same slip-
stream, you can drive with the top down in quite heavy rain and still keep dry. Until, of
course, you stop, say at traffic lights. Then you get soaked). Nevertheless, it has to be said
the number of people driving soft tops with the hood raised on beautiful sunny days is
one of road life's more perplexing enigmas.
And it doesn't have to be a scorcher, either. Some of the most fun to be had with a
convertible is in the winter, when you get a fine, clear, crisp sunny day. You'll need out-
door clothing, and a hat and gloves probably, even with the heating turned up, but the
sheer joy of zipping through the winter countryside with a blue sky above and somewhere
or nowhere in particular to go is entirely worth the effort, even if you do sometimes get
the odd funny look.
There is an even more esoteric kind of joy to be had driving in the country with the
top down at night, though this is best in the summer. Then it's the smells you notice.
Your nose gets more of a workout in a soft top than it would in a closed car anyway, but
something about a summer evening darkening into night seems to bring out the scents of
the surrounding land with particular intensity.
Perhaps equally esoterically, in a 911 you come to appreciate things you'd never think
of appreciating, like driving past walls, under bridges and through tunnels. These hard
surfaces all reflect engine noise (it's behind you, remember, so you're always leaving the
sound behind, never driving through it as you would in a front-engine car) and the engine
noise a 911 makes is definitely something worth hearing; a bassily metallic clatter like a
sextet of barely muffled pneumatic drills.
For my next trip I will require the help of a member of the choochter race … Ken
MacLeod is a proper Islander, from Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides - also collectively
known as the Long Island, which sounds more romantic (and a large part of the character
of these isles is created by the tension between their undeniably romantic appearance and
the effort and practical compromises required to live there all year long).
Ken's family come from Skye and Lochcarron, on the mainland. He was brought up
on Lewis - with lots of brothers and sisters - until his father, who was a minister in the
Free Presbyterian Kirk, moved to Greenock in the sixties. This was a considerably more
traumatic relocation than mine from Fife to Gourock at about the same time. We just
moved from one coast to another, about 70 miles across Scotland's central industrial belt.
For the MacLeods, especially the young ones, leaving the wild, bare purities of Lewis's
Atlantic coast for Greenock with its smoke and bustle, its teeming tenements and crane-
stacked shipyards must have seemed like moving to a different country, almost another
planet.
