Local Hero special

YOU know you're getting old when your holidays start looking more like pilgrimages. By the time this appears, I should be taking a wee dram in the bar of the hotel in the little Scottish village that is forever Furness.

IT WAS here in 1982 that a little-known film director, Bill Forsyth, brought together a small team of actors and one global superstar, Burt Lancaster, to make a movie that made the whole world smile. On paper, Local Hero is simply a story of a Texas oil company trying to turn a little Scottish bay into the petro-chemical capital of Europe, without bargaining on some canny locals and one stubborn old hermit (Fulton Mackay) who claims he owns the beach. But it actually goes much deeper. Local Hero is a film about values, weighing the world-conquering dollar against the simple pleasures of a quiet life.

THE young oil executives sent to clinch the deal, McIntyre (Peter Riegert) and Oldsen (Peter Capaldi), quickly go native. First their ties disappear, then the smart jackets. Gathering seashells, McIntyre leaves his prized wristwatch by a rock pool. As the tide rises you hear the alarm call, the tune of The Yellow Rose of Texas ("conference time in Houston") fading under the waves.

FORSYTH set the fictional village of Furness in the real-life fishing village of Pennan, near Fraserburgh on the bleak north-east coast of Scotland. Ever since we saw the film more than 30 years ago, we promised that one day we would make the long trek to Pennan and stay at the little hotel where McIntyre, slipping into local ways, orders a 42-year-old whisky and, when he's told it's not available says: "Well give me four eight-year olds and a ten-year old."

LOCAL Hero became part of my 40-year love affair with Scotland, an affair which has taken me from the white beaches of Benbecula to salmon fishing in Thurso, from malt-whisky tasting in Leith to the wild moors of Corrour, to the romance of the West Highland Line and the endless fascination of sailing on Loch Lomond. As the referendum on independence draws closer, It occurs to me that I have never regarded Scotland as anything other than a separate country, a place apart in culture, language, banknotes, food and attitudes. The thing that strikes me time after time, and which seems so odd to us English, is the kinship between Scots. It's not that they all love each other but there is a quiet conviction, no matter where they meet, that to be Scottish is to belong to a very exclusive club. It is a kinship which transcends wealth and class, religion, politics, clan and even the old Highland-Lowland divide. It is based largely on the shared and bonding experience of living next door to the English. Which raises the question of what happens if and when the Scots vote for independence. What becomes of that kinship when you remove the unifying factor, the common enemy, the frightful Sassenach? Does Scotland become one proud nation? Or might it simply become ungovernable?

AND finally in Furness, there's the immortal red telephone box. In the days before mobiles, the phone box was the only link between Mr Happer the oil magnate in Houston and his man McIntyre in Furness. It's still there, on the seafront by the hotel, and is reputed to be the most telephoned, and possibly the most famous, phone box in the world. If you've seen the unbearably poignant ending of Local Hero, as McIntyre tries to ring Furness from his flat in Houston, you'll know why.

YOU'VE never seen Local Hero? Then do.