Andy Wightman: 6000 Miles – written piece

Until presented with these ideas, I didn’t know of the existence of the Tarlair Lido. Hidden away beyond Macduff, I guess most people outwith that part of Banffshire will not have heard of it either. But what a delightful place!

In the school holidays in October 2004, I cycled with my family along this coast from Elgin to Aberdeen. It’s one of my favourite parts of the country which, despite an austere feel, is home to a rich culture – one which has remained resilient in the face of the homogenisation and dislocation apparent in so many other places. At 6am I enjoyed a hot cup of coffee and an apple turnover in a small baker’s shop in Portsoy. It supplied confectionery to the big supermarkets all over the north of Scotland. A Cruickshank’s lemonade lorry passed me on the road. We cycled past dozens of small farms and businesses that thrive in these parts. The names and the signage were unfamiliar. These were north-east businesses in the north-east selling north-east products.

In one sense, therefore, coming across signs directing us to the Sashimi Machine in Macduff would have been no surprise. Odd though a reference to Japanese food culture would appear, it would nevertheless have appeared as yet another indigenous response to how to make a living from the land and the sea (or in this case a fusion of the two). It might also have made us pause and reflect for a moment about the Scottish diet of fried fish, bakery products and fizzy drinks!

This self-reliance and independent spirit is rooted in the history of the land – a place that has sometimes been referred to as the ‘poor man’s country’. This was a place where the peasant survived longer than anywhere else in Scotland, where upward mobility was possible in farming and where, as a consequence, family enterprises took root from modest beginnings and, in many cases thrive to this day.

For those with no access to the land, there was the sea. Despite recent problems in the fishing economy, it is the sea that remains at the centre of the economy of much of the north east coast. But the sea is an increasingly contested space where a living is becoming more difficult in the face of environmental change and the regulations and legislation surrounding fishing. I don’t much care for the fish-farming industry where protein from the sea is harvested to feed farmed fish in intensive caged systems. The Sashimi Machine is different. It’s a meeting of farming and hunting on the border of the sea and the land – on the coastline. It’s a place for husbandry of the marine resource to promote healthy eating and, importantly, an opportunity for valuable education on the nature of food and how it’s produced and consumed.

One of the secrets of survival in the modern capitalist economy is to add value and to exploit niche markets. In food products, the north-east has a tradition of excellence and innovation, producing some of the finest produce in the country. Graven Image’s proposal for the future of the Tarlair Lido neatly reinforces this tradition and strengthens it by exploiting the tourism potential. Had the Sashimi Machine been in existence last autumn, we would not only have lingered longer in Macduff, we would no doubt have been anticipating it by exposure to it in the shops we visited and the delivery vans we cycled past on the way there.

Andy Wightman
Writer and Researcher.
Author of Who Owns Scotland