For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these – It might have been.

For inspiration, for the burn in your very heart when you feel or fear regret, broken promises and lost days, when your world of hope turns to dust, google John Greenleaf Whittier.

He has words to lift you up and knock you out, because he wrote of life, love, hope and despair. A human being. With a heart.

We’ve all been there, and will be again: days of torment and pain, worry about children, elderly relatives, personal battles, health and financial issues. 

It’s become second nature these days in Scotland to blame politicians, governments, councils, health authorities, lawyers, police, social workers, when things are tough and help scarce. That’s not wrong, but the blame game does us no good as individuals or as a society.

Covid lockdown broke souls and buried dreams. We’d long periods of enforced isolation when we forgot how to relate and in the aftermath were forced to reorder priorities and spent too bloody long talking about rebuilding instead of doing it.

It’s time to roll up our Scottish sleeves and build the country we should always have been.

Trite and sickly romantic to mention but you’ll remember as do I sharing resources with neighbours, laughing in the midst of terror and fear at others worldwide who sang songs and played guitars and violins from Italian and Spanish balconies, sang Sunshine on Leith and prayed for delivery from evil.

The challenges ahead are as naught compared to what we have already endured especially when balanced with the ability, experience, power and human resources in our country.

We’ve an educated and skilled workforce, oil, gas, wind and wave power coming out of our ears, a well deserved rep worldwide as grafters who helped to build the world. Scots transformed the destinies of innumerable nations – it’s time to transform our own. 

The bridges, railways, banks and forces we constructed and founded internationally confirm we’re a nation of doers, thinkers, planners and achievers. With every shoulder to the wheel that spirit of independence we loved and cherished in and since 2014 when harnessed with care and attention cannot fail to create the building blocks, the foundations, of our new nation.

Let’s get it done. Independence Nothing Less. Independence Nothing Else. Liberate Scotland. There’s nothing else for it. And we’ll look back with pride when we see ourselves as equals on a world stage, no better and no worse than any other. Just equal, free Scots ready to play our part as a peaceable, peace loving forward looking benevolent resourceful nation. #IndependenceNothingLess.