They’re remaking Dad’s Army, apparently, so it’ll be interesting to see who they cast as Corporal Fraser, the eternally pessimistic and paranoid Scottish member of Walmington-on-Sea’s Home Guard platoon.
John Laurie’s depiction of Fraser in the original is timelessly funny. “We’re doomed!” he would warn at even a simply slightly awkward situation the platoon would find themselves in.
Like much classic art, this has grown to be almost a national stereotype. It’s that lack of Vitamin D, we’re all dreadful doom-mongers.
Actually, I find that we’re not. Optimism is in fact the primary trait of the Scot. We’ll take any excuse, even the merest hint, to think that great things are around the corner.
Often, indeed mostly, it’s wholly unjustified.
I think we saw in the independence referendum how the Yes campaign was constantly optimistic, when all but a rogue poll suggested No would win. Even after the result, the Yes 45 have remained incredibly buoyant, intent on treating a defeat like it was a victory. And you have to say they’ve been remarkably successful at this so far.
Sport, of course, is where we see the silver linings most vividly. The recent travails of the Scotland international soccer team under Gordon Strachan are a blatant case in point.
In their recent run of games that had the country all happy and gambolling merrily at the thought of Euro 2016 qualification, you could reasonably argue the Scots have played exactly two truly meaningful matches against actual top class opposition, and recorded a loss and a draw in them.
These games were away in Germany and Poland and therefore not without credit, far from it. But the Ireland game last week, to these rather cynical eyes, was two modest sides packed with Championship-quality players engaged in a rather dour arm-wrestle.
The goal which won it was a thing of great beauty, and the atmosphere inside Celtic Park truly memorable. But the truer picture of where Scotland are was shown in the game against England, and I fear further down the line when Germany and Poland come to Glasgow.
But you can’t single out soccer for this blind optimism. In rugby, we’re exactly the same.
Even before a pass had been thrown in the current Autumn Tests, the green shoots of unjustified optimism were bidding to be seen. It was almost as if everyone had forgotten that Scotland had been horsed by fifty points in two of their last five games.
Every year before the Six Nations starts, Scotsmen of typically good judgement take leave of their senses. I recall being interviewed for the BBC prior to the 6N a few years with a colleague who is scathingly brutal in his assessments of the national team usually.
“We’ll win three games,” he predicted. I nearly fainted with shock. “We’ll be lucky if we win one,” I retorted. I was right…we were very lucky to win one.
Now I like the way Vern Cotter’s team are playing. And I’m certainly thinking we’re headed in the right direction with the move to the more youthful element.
But let’s be honest here, so far under Vern we’ve beaten a pretty poor USA team and got ridiculously and unjustly out of jail against Canada. In two wins against Argentina the Pumas were first under-strength by choice and then overplayed by their gruelling schedule.
We then lost to New Zealand’s second XV. The full strength Springboks the only top class team we’ve really played in Vern’s time – took us for a half-century.
I write this before the Tonga game in full expectation that Scotland will get a result that will sustain this optimism into the spring. Then, perhaps with both pro clubs qualified for the latter stages in Europe, it could be rampant as the “Rampant Red” that is somehow now our change strip.
Well, it took two games to turn optimism into almost suicidal depression in last year’s 6N. We’re in Paris to start and welcome Wales to BT Murrayfield a week later.
Still optimistic?