When I was young, I had very little to do with politics: but anything I heard that was out of the ordinary I began to take an interest in. During the 60s and 70s revolution was in the air.
My Uncle Ben and Aunt Polly were communists. I never quite understood why they should find an interest in Russian communism. Off my uncle and aunt would go every year for a holiday in St Petersburg or Moscow and return with cases full of Russian dolls and cloths woven in ethnic patterns.
There was a period in history not long after the end of the second world war when people turned towards Russia for their inspiration. Jewish people were particularly interested in finding a new political platform from which to voice their opinions about the ravages of Hitler's genocide.
Now I can think of their sojourns as being misguided, especially after reading Orwell's Animal Farm when it all made sense to me. Wasn't Russia the place where drunken Cossacks rode through villages slaughtering Jews? - the place where Stalin imprisoned millions of his countrymen in correctional confinement?
But then, as I grew older and started to follow the football, there evolved a nationalism for Scotland to the extent that no matter who the English team were playing, I supported the opposing side.
Now, looking at drunken, crazed Rangers supporters hollering for the Queen and the Together Campaign, I can understand the blind nationalism that has subjugated reason for outright bigotry.
My parents supported Labour, although my father made the concession of becoming a Mason, mostly for the advancement of his business interests. (He never did show me the secret handshake.)
In voting, I've toyed with the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National Party and the Greens; and I've never really considered the Tartan Tories/the SNP to be any more likely to be untouched by the temptations that power brings, the corruption and the graft: but they have brought the question of Scottish Independence forward in the scheme of things.
Now these things are in the hands of the younger generation. At the moment I'm on the Isle of Arran and it seems that everyone is supporting the campaign for independence with large YES stickers on windows and larger YES polystyrene cutouts in fields. Only a couple of NOs visible on a trip around the whole island.
So I'm abandoning the party of my parents. In retrospect, who would vote for Tony Blair now? - the image of his smirking face clearly visible in my mind like Carrol's Cheshire cat.
Now is the time for change. Now is the time to vote YES!
