Raw Spirit by Iain Banks Read Free Book Online Page A

presumably to remind you of the non-monetary cost of the food in your belly (food which, given the sheer gawd-awfulness of some of the stories, they are often in considerable danger of shortly being able to inspect for themselves). Even the purely arable farmers without a true beast to their name seem to have a stock of tales fit to turn the stomach of a starving vulture.
    Life at Ballivicar strikes me as a complicated, often physically and emotionally strenuous but ever-involving and frequently rewarding existence of sustained bucolic chaos, surrounded by chemicals and feed stuffs, hay and manure, machinery, vehicles and tack, by chickens, cats, dogs, sheep, cows, ponies, horses, that ever-present cornucopia of local wildlife and a glorious, bewildering squall of absurdly apple-cheeked children running roaring around in dusty paddocks; barefoot, yelling, caked in muck and generally having what certainly looks like a totally brilliant time. You find yourself having an engrossing conversation with a bright, happily snot-nosed four-year-old who’s come up to ask your name and show you a length of plastic pipe they’ve decided is a trumpet; you look around in the sunlight at the primary surroundings; bright green grass, rich red earth and pure blue sky and you think, Grief, who’d raise a child in a city?
    Then you think, Well, billions do, because they have to, because that’s the way the modern world’s been moving for centuries and there doesn’t look like much around to reverse that course. And suddenly you worry about the child you’re talking to, imagining this sunny openness, this cheery, inquisitive innocence being transplanted to the big bad city where instead of being one of the most happily beautiful things you’ve seen, it becomes a liability, a point of weakness, to be exploited by those unscrupulous enough to treat trust as gullibility and people as collateral, to be damaged.
    Finally, though, with a little more thought, you accept that what you see before you still represents such a great start in life, that just as a childhood spent in the muck and glaur, eating dirt and falling into the nettles turns out to be a much more effective way of inoculating a child against infections and allergies to come than keeping them antiseptically spotless and clean, so this farmyard, outdoorsy life of crowded rough and tumble must have its own full suite of lessons about trust and betrayal, allegiances and self-reliance that will translate to any future situation; children are more resilient than we fear and wiser than we think, and we probably worry more than we need.
    * * *
    Childhood: a sentimental detour
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    It seems to me that almost nothing in life is so important as being loved and cared for as a child. Maybe only an early death ever means more, has more bearing on the ultimate shape of an existence. Even a vast lottery win or some other great stroke of fortune means little in comparison, because the legacy of one is liable to affect so profoundly the reaction to the other.
    Somebody who’s been loved, who has been brought up to feel respect for themselves and to feel and show respect for others, who has felt cherished and cared for and has been sheltered from harm as much as possible while never being deceived into thinking that life will essentially always be painless, has something more valuable than inherited fortune or title, and stands a far better chance of coping with whatever challenges life subsequently throws at them than somebody with only material advantages. Nothing guarantees success or even survival, and any auspicious start can be overwhelmed by future calamity, but the chances of avoiding tragedy are better – and even the journey to any eventual bitterness all the easier – with a childhood informed by love.
    I have to confess an interest here; I had the great good fortune to be born to parents who loved me and did all they could do to give me the best possible start in life. I was an only