Stay with us Scotland

" What do you think about Scottish independence?" my father-in-law asked me as we were clearing out his garage last week.
I stopped, my arms full of old books, and looked at him, shocked.
Because I suddenly realised that I hadn't really thought about Scottish Independence at all.
That's probably because all we can do  in the South of England at the moment, is think about the weather'
The good thing about all this rain and flooding ( not for the people who have lost their homes to the floods of course) is that it legitimises the English desire to talk about the weather.
" Is this rain ever going to stop? Is it going to reach our houses? Have you seen all those fields that have turned into lakes? Can you believe its still raining? Look at those grey clouds. When are the government going to do something about it?"
And much as I love to blame the government for everything,  I find it hard to blame them for the weather.
But I do blame the weather for the fact that I haven't really thought about Scotland and its desire to be separate from England.
And I do understand.  
It has fought so fiercely for so many centuries to maintain its own identity.
It's not just the kilts and the haggis and the Hogmanay, it's the wit and the raw creativity and the stories and the beauty and the ability to survive against the odds.
Why should that all be part of someone else's country?
Why should what makes your country unique be lost to what makes another country important?
I can see why Scotland might choose to become independent.
Why it might choose to move away from a country that doesn't seem to care about it.
But I hope it doesn't.
Not just because we would have no Winter Olympic team without them but because we live in a world that already has too many borders.
Borders dividing the rich from the poor, the East from the West, the blacks from the whites, the Muslims from the Hindus.
It's easy to find the things that make us different from each other.
Easy to build fences or walls or borders to make sure those differences remain.
Easy to create something worth fighting for.
What's hard is finding the things that we have in common, the dreams we share, the peace worth hoping for. 
What's hard, is breaking down barriers, removing boundaries, opening borders.
Scotland is unique and beautiful and complicated and full of history and fairy-tales.
Perhaps if England had valued it better, found goals to share and successes to celebrate, perhaps then Scotland wouldn't be seeking to add another border to our divided world.
At the risk of sounding like David Bowie: stay with us Scotland. 
Give us one more chance to value and understand you- another hundred years should do it, as long as its stopped raining by then.

Beautiful Scotland