“What about this weather?” I said to the man in the coffee shop queue.
So often it’s a lament of a dreich Summer or bitter Spring but in the here and now, the kids need sun cream for Easter holiday camps.
It hasn’t rained for days, weeks.
In April. In Scotland.
It makes you feel like you’re living in a different country – Costa del Dundee -joyous to look up to a blue and cloudless sky.
And what did the man in Coffee and Co on Reform Street reply?
“Yeah, but it’s going to p*** down next week.”
I wondered if I should argue the point; that we’ve had a decent run of it. That the rest of the week looks settled and sunny; say ‘come on, give us a smile.’
Instead I dwelled on his response for the day – a typically female trait some might say – internalising everything and thinking about a cultural malaise of negativity it signifies.
No one is all zipetty-do-da all the time. We are Dundonian, not American.
While generally a glass half-full person, like anyone I have my moments, of having a head so full of negative chatter I feel flat, anxious or down.
But we can often have a particularly downcast outlook, in this city and perhaps more generally as Scots.
In a way, it’s endearing. For if a person doesn’t smile, tell you they are having a great day and wish you the same, they can hardly be accused of being false.
But we go to the opposite extreme where our answer to “How are you?” is a double negative – “no bad.”
Not bad. And that’s when we’re happy.
Then again, our day can’t be wonderful because that would be boasting – and the one thing no one likes is a bam.
The child who is too cocky at school soon has their lesson learned. Other kids won’t accept it and soon we learn not to say we are great. At anything.
Boasting and cockiness should be discouraged, most parents would agree – but we seem somewhere along the line to lose something that we never should, positivity.
My fellow Courier columnist Jim Spence asked last week why Dundonians are reserved when it comes to praising our city. Why they don’t sing about our history from the rooftops like our Glaswegian counterparts.
We should shout about why we love Dundee
It’s just not very us to say Dundee is brilliant, that we love it dearly, and let me tell you all the reasons why.
And yet, we must.
Moaning is never attractive. We need to give a reason to showcase us more – and what better way than utilising one of our finest assets: us. The people of Dundee.
We can be guilty of keeping our heads down, of getting on with things in our own way – but if we won’t cheerlead for our city, who will?
We need to be vocal on Facebook, X, Instagram or in any given cafe or shop queue.
Hard as it may be to envisage, we have the collective power to overturn negativity surrounding our city – because that negativity at times comes from us.
On any given day there will be bad news, from the new Dens Park plans looking shaky over road infrastructure needed – to the financial mess of our university.
Why should planners and the government help if we do not tell the world how great we are – how wonderful our university is, that it cannot be ruined by the greed of a few?
That our football teams, fans and city deserve a new Dens.
We hide below the parapet for reasons that run deep – from generations of hardship toiling in industries from shipbuilding to jute which came and went – to our dry sense of humour, born partly from such struggles.
We cope and we crack on – and there’s a quiet heroism to that.
But we need more positivity to be heard. Let’s boast… with humility.
The man in the coffee queue was right – it could pour down next Tuesday. But the past is done and the future is yet to come.
All we really have is the present and we’re allowed to be in this moment that is now, to smile and say life is good. To promote ourselves and our great city.
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