I always liked the title of the Brian Eno album Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy.
Not having any idea what it meant, for the purposes of this column I put on my investigator’s raincoat and trilby, and looked it up on Wikipedia.
It turns out it was originally the name of a Chinese revolutionary opera, and that Eno – a right brainy character – believed it referred in part to “that very, very 20th century mental concept of a tactical interaction of systems”.
I see. Having started off with no idea what it meant, I now have less idea of what it means. Ignoring all of that, and bringing things back down to my level, for some reason the title came into my head when I approached the suburban hill, where I have my regular walks, from a different direction.
If you had ventured intrepidly to the back of this magazine last week, you would know that I am currently living at my friends’ house, Swanky Towers, looking after their cats, while they search for tigers in India.
It’s a wee holiday for me and, best of all, means I get to be warm during the day in winter, when I am normally sat at home in a coat and woolly hat freezing my bejasus off. Welcome to the world of the modern freelance journalist.
Swanky Towers is on the opposite side of the suburban hill from my house in the ghetto, so I had to approach it by different paths.
It was quite disorientating, so much so that, at one point, I had to sit down and collect myself, thankfully pooh-poohing the idea of calling for a rescue helicopter when I remembered that the pond, allotments, main road and civilisation generally were just three minutes’ away.
Of course, I’m exaggerating my disorientation and know all the paths around the hill inside-out. But I couldn’t escape the feeling that it all felt a bit foreign somehow. It wasn’t helped by the fact that it was the weekend, a time when I usually avoid the hill, and it was as usual full of shrieking families with their mutts.
I started to yearn for Skye, where the only shrieking comes from seabirds. When I popped back home to see if there had been any death threats or court summonses, even my wee semi in the ghetto felt, not unfamiliar, but a bit – I don’t know – more objective to me, not to mention cramped compared to Swanky Towers.
It was a kind of liberation because I felt ties with my own house and my usual routine dissolve a little. We all feel a bit trapped at times, and yearn to be tramps or wanderers.
The trouble with being a tramp or wanderer is that there isn’t any money in it and, from what I can gather, no kind of pension scheme or sickness pay.
So we stay where we are, except this week, as I say, I have been staying ten minutes’ doon the road. I can see the hill from the window as I write.
Later, I will venture thither again but, in a cunning move, will waddle first along to the pond and go up by my usual route. In other words, I’ll be … Taking the Suburban Hill by Strategy.
