The Royal Marine Hotel at Hunters Quay had never looked more festive nor welcoming. For several years, it had languished overlooking a slipway which no longer received ferries every day of the year.

In this very special year, a new initiative brought hundreds upon hundreds of locals, gathering under the ice white lights to a communal Christmas Day festival. In a car park thankfully bereft of vehicles, venison was being slowly roasted over a massive outdoor fire and hotel staff wrapped up against the freezing temperatures circulated, ensuring everyone was being fed and watered in equal measure.

Somehow or other, even Dunoon Grammar School managed to become involved, inventing a traditional German “Oompah Band” to both entertain or irritate, depending on the listeners disposition.

Press photographers positioned themselves on the vacant slip, enthralled at the sight of the snow clad building, the decorations and the white haze hovering just 20 feet above the revellers heads.

The sea ice had come early this year.

The Clyde was closed to shipping from October 3rd.

In the years since Scotland experienced the largest celebration in the world on achieving her right of self determination, several significant things had happened. Global Warming fundamentalists had either accepted defeat or moved to a warmer climate. The truth about the suppression of Scotland’s nationality had been exposed with several high profile court cases leading to several political activists leaving the country.

The conveyor current in the North Atlantic had, as marine scientists predicted, stopped. The Gulf Stream joined the Conservative and Unionist Party as a historical footnote in our country’s history.

As a result, the annual Atlantic Blocking High which traditionally effected Scotland became rather more than a maximum 8 week event. Temperatures from November until March of Scotland’s first year of independence did not rise above freezing and the winds did not blow.

The sea froze off the west coast in totally treacherous calm conditions.

Starting independence with a National Emergency caused the already fractured SNP government to accept some hard truths and take equally unpalatable action, though thankfully the solution to the immediate problems had been inadvertently supplied by the fanatical Green element. A country supposedly rich in natural power was at risk of being brought to its knees. Even Hydro electricity was failing due to the weather; and the silly windfarms, nicely connected to the national grid, turned not a single blade for five lethal months.

All along, immediate answers to the problem were present, ignored as a political hot potato at the Clyde Submarine base. Six nuclear subs, complete with fully functional reactors sat unused. Sufficient power was available from all six vessels to supply the entire freezing nation.

England’s Westminster Government was more than happy to donate the vessels to the new Scottish Government with the single proviso they were not to be given back.

Two new industries quickly formed, one recycling the scrap metal from unused windfarms and another, re-sighting the nuclear reactors close to the linkups to the national grid formed from the greenie windfarms.

As four o’clock in the afternoon drew near, the photographers from the media turned their camera’s across the frozen estuary, their attention drawn by the distant ‘jingle’ of sleigh bells and the twinkle of alluring lights.

Santa was coming on a sleigh, across a frozen Clyde. And the people of Argyll, warm, slightly drunk, and well fed were waiting.

Grant MacDonald ©