10 signs you grew up in the Scottish countryside

What cuts deeper than heartbreak? Archie Hume of A Hume Country Clothing offers his take on growing up in the Scottish countryside.

My mum used to say ‘love cuts deep’ quite frequently – every time I was dumped by yet another girl.

But do you know what, it doesn’t cut half as deep as the mark of a Scottish rural upbringing.

Reminiscing during a long, rather dull stock take, the A Hume team and I reflected on all the things you’d only ever know if you grew up in the Scottish countryside. Here’s the result.

1. You learned to drive at 12 and spent post-harvest evenings spinning doughnuts round the haybales in the stubble fields.

2. Your teenage world turned on the dismally populated bus timetable. A timetable so scant that if you missed the bus you were doomed to a Sunday at home with nothing more than Songs of Praise to look forward to.

3. Attending your first Young Farmers’ Ball was a right of passage, anticipated out of all proportion to the event itself – unless you were lucky enough to be one of the ones snogging in
the back corner.

4. You remember a time when attitudes to alcohol were radically different. Gin was guzzled with abandon and kegs of beer seen off in a single sitting. People unable to find their keys in their pockets, or their way to their cars were still considered fit to drive. How things have changed.

Tattie week – see number 7!

5. You looked forward to the local agricultural show almost as much as birthdays and yearned for the day you could actually go off on your own instead of staying with your parents while they spoke to every man and his dog.

6. Your mum and dad knew every man and his dog. Any hope of anonymity was futile as you discovered after that night at the rugby club.

7. Even if you didn’t grow up howking tatties during autumn half-term you at least knew that the true reason for October holidays was to pick potatoes. Nothing to do with giving kids a break during the long haul to Christmas.

8. You learned to ski at Glenshee where the slopes were as bald as your father’s head.

9. You’d been skiing for six years before you learnt skiing was actually a snowsport.

10. Dreams of snow were more about school closures and the hope you would be hauled across the field in an inner tube towed by a tractor.