Wick
04 August 2005
There is nothing in Wick except sullen faced youths hanging around chip shops and denim clad drunken tinkers who talk to cider bottles.
There is nothing to do except drive cars for no reason other than to make their tyres squeak with handbrake turns.
Everybody in the entire town has snot hanging from their noses.
It has a river full of shopping trolleys.
The best thing about Wick is the lighthouse built by Robert Louis Stevenson’s uncle. Aged 17, RLS was in Wick and hated it. He ended up living in Western Samoa because geographically it was the furthest point from Wick on any atlas.
They have an amusement park in Wick. It is called a field. Their only export is Caithness Glass - most of which the factory buys from Accident and Emergency on a Friday night.
"The answer to how to live is to stop thinking about it. And just to live. But you're doing that anyway. However you intellectualise it, you still just live."