You can listen to me reading the following essay and poem by clicking on the wee arrow above. There’s an hour-and-a-half ‘Sweet Suburbia’ playlist towards the end, with a spoken introduction on Mixcloud and the Spotify link too.

THE LATE William Mcillvanney, being from Kilmarnock and once a teacher in Irvine, regarded my hometown of Troon somewhat balefully:

“Troon,” he wrote, “one of those douce — at least on the surface — coastal towns about which I sometimes wonder if they toilet-train the seagulls.”

Well, they don’t. Or whoever’s in charge of seabirds doesn’t. My trusty, and surprisingly rusty nine-year-oldToyota Hilux crew-cab pickup truck is testament to that. The maalies and scorries have had their wicked way with it. It seems to be the ordure of the day in Ayrshire.

Because this is a coastal, not to say island vehicle, almost certainly a grim Shetlandic survivor of the Sullom Voe gas plant construction work, used and abused by uncaring contractors. It failed its first MOT on corrosion (the body was coming adrift from the chassis), which I suspect means it’s been in the sea, as opposed to simply being near the ocean its entire life. I remember watching another Hilux, trailer attached, being reversed down a slipway to collect a boat until salt water was lapping at its windows.

“Aren’t you worried about rust?” I asked the owner.

“Na, na,” he replied cheerfully. “”It’s leased and it goes back next week.”

In fact Toyota offer a 12-year warranty against corrosion which actually penetrates the bodywork. And I haven’t been in the sea with the Grey Dementor, at least not yet. Presumably bumpers (the nearside rear is rotted right through) and the disintegrating front apron count. I look forward to a refund, compensation or at least a Landcruiser hoodie.

The Hilux (along with its imitators the Mitsubishi L200, the Nissan Navarra and the Ford Ranger) is almost compulsory in Shetland. Per head of population there are more pickup trucks in the Greater Zetlandics than anywhere else in the UK (always fuelled by heavy oil; Shetland was running on peat and diesel long before the musical outfit of that name emerged from the Hebrides). Even on our (admittedly well maintained) single track roads, you don’t feel in any way out of scale in a – let’s face it, large and chunky – pickup. And it’s a vehicle you can take anywhere, from the school run to a funeral procession. With the advantage of four-wheel-drive, considerable power and the kind of ground clearance that can handle boulders, beaches and small houses with ease.

Take one south, and in at least certain necks of the Scottish bog, it’s a different story. Despite the popularity of pick-up trucks on the mainland, there is here is undoubtedly some anti-Hilux sentiment.

Troon was a working town when I was growing up. It had a shipyard, a shipbreakers, a big railway carriage works and the harbour was heavily used for shipping coal from the Ayrshire fields. Now, while the gulls may not have a Kelvinside twang, the caravan site on the edge of town sports a sign sternly stating ‘NO PICKUPS’. The wrong sort of four-wheel-drive, even towing a brand new Elddis, Bailey or Buccaneer. And while my big grey beast copes admirably with the potholes and perils of the old Safeway car park in the town centre, askance is definitely looked by drivers of Range Rovers, Dacia Sanderos and even the electrified pariahs who still defiantly display their Teslas in public.

Ah, electricity. I admit, we do have a plug-in hybrid and a charge point at the surgery, but for emergency use, the diesel Hilux is the go to bad boy.

And I admit, this is not a prettified, tarted-up gangster-adjacent pickup. It’s clumsy, huge, battered and sounds like an oil drum full of rocks and spanners being rolled down a hill. It consumes fuel in vast quantities but during the snow last year it hauled us and various other people out of trouble on several occasions.

Of course we would like to go fully electric, but spark-only pickup trucks are a kind of holy grail fantasy in this country. It’s all very well in the USA, where they can be ginormous enough to hold adequate batteries. But here, where roads can be ruts, dragging a trailer full of sheep out of four feet of peat, in snow, will deplete a lithium cell in minutes.

In This Scotland, though, and not just Troon, the urban and suburban can get tetchy.. In Aberdeen, where you’d think they’d appreciate heavy fuel consumption, I was shouted at robustly by a dreadlocked, pierced and tattooed woman for destroying the planet, one Hilux at a time. Right enough, this was in Rosemount.

It must be said that a Hilux can appear intimidating. Maybe because they’re the favoured transport of middle eastern and African terrorist groups. Also I should maybe have removed the shotgun rack once I gave the police back my Laurona over-and-under, the Mossberg 20-gauge pump action and the requisite certificates.

And it is big. In the aforementioned car park it takes up about one and a half old spaces, though dimensions there date from the days when cars were much, much smaller than they are today. Compare a post-modern steroid-enhanced Mini with the original Alec Issigonis micro-car (you can get an old mini-Mini customised with a supercharged Suzuki Hayabusa 1300cc engine; 350 bhp! I know, I know. Grow up Tom). Have a look at the integral garages in houses built before around 1984: you couldn’t fit a Toyota Aygo in there.

I suppose I should admit that I have been using the Hilux to collect firewood logs from around the South Ayrshire coast ( I have council permission) and to that end carry a petrol chainsaw and ancillary lifting tackle. That’s me in the John Deere baseball cap, dungarees and aviator shades. The Toyota is a commercial vehicle and has to be insured as such. But it can carry a chainsaw, logs, full first aid kit, driver and four adult passengers in relative comfort, ancient leaf spring suspension permitting, and it has the full apportionment of air bags, seat belts and annoying warning lights that tell you the headlight skooshers aren’t up to spec. It’s even Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) compatible, thanks to its ADBlue tank. That’s the urea which makes diesel exhaust as sweet as pig urine, which is what everyone thinks ADBlue comes from. Apparently it doesn’t. ADBlue is entirely, uh, man-made…

Anyway, the Hilux offers certain advantages when driving around here in the cosseted Caledonian coastlands: People tend to get out of your way. If you do, God forbid, hit anything, you are in the protective embrace of a very robust industrial vehicle. It has that weird antimagnetic power to repel Morrisons shopping trolleys and trap pensioners underneath them. And let’s face it, who would want to stay in a caravan site that discriminates against pickup truck drivers? Just because of one bad experience, apparently, with Steve Earle and Daniel O’Donnell CDs played at earsplitting volume in the middle of the night. Oh well.

In the perjink environs of East Renfrewshire (East Ren, as we regular visitors and sometime residents call it) where hybrids and EVs are almost compulsory, the belching diesel truck has its place. My super-environmental son needed to transfer the huge amount of waste caused by converting his house into an ultra-efficient centre of ecologicalism to the Greenhags (what a name!) Recycling Centre out in the wastes Beyond Newton Mearns. True, when we appeared there in the Grey Dementor staff did look somewhat askance at the two of us, both somewhat, well, rumpled and with an old truck full of what appeared to be commercial rubbish. But we proved our Netherlee antecedents and all was well. It’s the only dump I’ve been to where an electric guitar was sitting forlornly by the ‘general waste’ tip. Sweet suburbia, as those aged Fife lads would say.

To update this piece, now that I’ve arrived back In the Grey Dementor’s proper home, I’ve just had the Hilux MOTd. It passed with advisories on corrosion, tyres and an oil leak.

Here’s an old poem, blasphemously in praise of the Mitsubishi L200. Yes, I’ve owned one of those. And an Isuzu.:

Beyond the Berlingo: A Shetland Pick-Up

Once this addiction starts, I cannot stop

I need an Ifor Williams top

BF Goodrich tyres, a CB radio, so I can talk

To my brothers of the differential lock

I’ve been betrayed by domesticity

And the obsession with electricity.

But only diesel, a turbo 2.2

For hauling round bales through mud and snow will do

I remember: crew cab, shotgun and spotlight racks

Springsteen, Steve Earle and Daniel O’Donnell tracks

Tailgate parties on St Ninian’s Isle

Red tins and Southern Comfort, consumed in Hilux style

But then, domestic matters came to call

At the Big Bannock, behind the North Roe Hall

A wife, a mortgage, trips sooth to IKEA

Talk of baby seats, suchlike daft ideas

She was a trainee psychiatric nurse

She spoke of Subarus and Fords, or worse

Even Vauxhall Zafiras

I did not hear her

By then I was working out in Kazakhstan

And she was with a Citröen Berlingo man

Home at last, on the Aberdeen Gumtree

I found the vehicle for me

A Barbarian, with leather heated seats

Illuminated sills. My joy was complete

The rumble of its engine in my ears

Crankshaft and gasket failure fears

Assuaged: only the early L200 trucks

Had problems. Even then it was bad luck

Or if you were sold a glossy heap of shite

Abused by workers on the Gas Plant site

And so I drive from Fethaland to Virkie

Two bags of coal, or else the handling’s quirky

But only in the least inclement weather

I’ll wash her with the finest chamois leather

And in the heated garage stroke her gently

She’s better than a Bentley

Or Ford Ranger, even a Toyota

Regret? Not one iota

Only true love do I feel

This passion is real

Oh, Mitsubishi L200, my precious! Do not fear

I’ll never over-rev you in third gear

(Or reverse you down a slip, launching a boat

Until I feel you start to float

As once I watched a friend, who wouldn’t listen

Do with an NP300, a Nissan

“Corrosion?” He said, smiling “geez some peace.

It’s going back next week. It’s on a lease.”)

Sweet suburban playlist, with pure plastic pop for now (and then) people

Listen to the following introduction and the full hour and a half playlist (no yakking between songs) on Mixcloud here

https://www.mixcloud.com/tom-morton2/sweet-suburbia-perils-of-plastic-and-pure-pop-for-now-and-then-people/

or just go direct to the Spotify playlist. You’ll find the link just below…

“This all began with hearing the new Miley Cyrus single, End of the world, which is, as one indie veteran of my acquaintance told me, “a real banger”. Come on, it’s great! It was co-written and produced by members of the Prince Edward Island outfit Alvvays, who sound to me a bit like a Camera Obscura tribute act…and feature the daughter of one of the Rankins, superstar folkies from the 80s. That led through CO’s song about Lloyd Cole to Lloyd himself, and the amazing similarity between Speedboat and Orange Juice’s What Presence…

“Then we have the clear, line of descent from Josef K (Syn-Drums!)to Franz Ferdinand, Several Marras, Perth and the loudest band I’ve ever heard (at Perth City Hall, Nazareth) two Jim Hunters, the lost Highland genius of the Lush Rollers, Aberfeldy (recorded on a single microphone by the great Jim Sutherland) and Atomic Kitten. What a song!

“Clive Palmer, original member of the Incredible String Band and extraordinary character banjoist, ultra-hippy, root cause of an entire musical subculture…read Grahame Hood’s amazing biography, Empty Pocket Blues.

“Runrig’s finest album, I would argue, is their final offering, the epic The Story. And Somewhere, their tribute to the late astronaut (and Runrig fan) Laurel Clark, who died in the Columbia shuttle tragedy, kind of puts the most recent ridiculous trip to the upper atmosphere of Jeff Bezos’s partner and others in some kind of perspective.

“A Guardian journalist on sheds and of course.The Skids, REM, and The Members to finish. Hope you enjoy it.”

Penetration – Life’s A Gamble

Miley Cyrus – End of the World

Alvvays – Archie, Marry Me

The Rankin Family – Fare Thee Well Love

Bruce Guthro – Walk This Road

Camera Obscura – Lloyd, I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken

Lloyd Cole and the Commotions – Speedboat

Orange Juice – What Presence?!

Franz Ferdinand – This Fire

Josef K – It’s Kinda Funny – Postcard 7 version

Runrig – Somewhere

Jim Hunter – Little Martha

James Hunter – Tell Her

The Lushrollers – My My My

Clive Palmer – Banjoland

Michael Marra – Letter from Perth

Nazareth – Bad Bad Boy

The Hazey Janes – Somewhere, Soon – Live

Aberfeldy – Vegetarian Restaurant

Grand Drive – Track 40

Police Dog Hogan – A Man Needs a Shed

R.E.M. – Supernatural Superserious

Skids – Sweet Suburbia

Atomic Kitten – Whole Again

The Members,Rico Rodriguez – Offshore Banking Business – 7 Single Mix