OK, I’m just going to say it: people on the Internet are weird about Scotland.

I mean…

This is just a random selection of posts I’ve seen on Threads over the past few weeks, but there are absolutely loads of them, and they’re all more or less the same…

They almost always mention cabins or cottages.
They often talk about being able to read and/or write books all day, as if Scottish villages are particularly suited to this.
They fairly often mention sheep. Or fairies. But mostly sheep.

Yes, sheep.

It’s a strange thing, to realise you’re living the life so many people dream of… or think they do… but that’s how I feel every time I stumble across yet another of these ‘run away to Scotland’ posts, because, hey, I live in a Scottish village! I write books! And read them! And, OK, I don’t tend sheep or make bread, and I think it goes without saying that I’m pretty useless on the lap harp (mostly because I have just this second heard of the lap harp…), but still. I’m technically living the life all of these people are fetishising.

And it’s absolutely nothing like they think.

So! For the benefit of anyone who’s ever dreamed of running away to Scotland and living in a ‘wee’ cottage with your sheep and your lap harps, here’s what it’s REALLY like to write books from a small village in Scotland…

IMPORTANT CAVEAT!

I do not claim to speak for all Scottish people, or, indeed, their villages. Everywhere is different, and there may well be corners of Scotland where people spend their time tending sheep and playing the lap harp; that’s not my personal experience, though, and my personal experience is the only one I’m qualified to speak about, so please take it with a pinch of ~~salt~~ fairy dust and remember that your ‘Scottish village’ experience may vary…

what it's really like writing books in a Scottish village

I’m just going to take all of these wild takes on Scottish village life one at a time, starting with…

Cottages/cabins

So, we do have these, of course… but they’re not what most people are living in, largely because it’s not the 18th century any more, and I’m sorry, but it’s just not, OK?

There are a few stone cottages in our village, for instance, but most of them are built on the very busy main road (as in, so close to it that the people who live in them have to keep their blinds shut most of the time or passers-by could look right in), and I feel like that would probably ruin the rural dream a bit, especially when you’ve got articulated lorries thundering past all the time, and people at the traffic lights blasting out music from their cars.

As for the rest of the village, most of it is made up of fairly modern housing estates, with most of them having been built this century, and quite a few of them within the last decade. The houses in them are the same kind of rather bland newbuild style you’ll see anywhere in the UK, and I honestly think that if I were to plonk you down in the middle of my street without telling you where you were, you’d have a hard time figuring out if you were in a Scottish village or a suburb of Manchester, say.

(Unless you spoke to someone, obvs. The accent would give it away pretty quickly, even if the houses, cars, and clothing didn’t…)

(We do have some crofts on the outskirts of the village, but they’re glossy, expensive ones with huge windows and lots of glass, so probably not quite as quaint or ‘cosy’ as the ones I think people on the Internet are imagining, and their owners all work for tech firms or whatever, so they’re definitely not using them to keep livestock or read books all day. Some of them do have horses, though, if that counts?)

Reading books all the time

Look, I’m an author — books are literally my life — and even I don’t just read books all the time, because, as at least one person in the quotes above noted, even people in Scottish villages have to work for a living, unfortunately. I mean, those sheep aren’t going to tend themselves, are they?

Because there’s very little employment in the village itself (there’s literally just a school and a chip shop, although rumor has it we’ll be getting a shiny new Spar soon, which will almost double our employment prospects. You cannot even imagine the excitement this news has caused…), most people either commute to work in larger towns or cities, or work from home on those newfangled computer boxes, which I think some people would be surprised to know we do, in fact, have here, it not being the 18th century, as noted above.

Living in a village, in other words, does not necessarily mean never leaving the village, and unless you’re independently wealthy, with no need to work for a living, it doesn’t mean you magically have time to read books all day either, sadly.

Living in a village does not necessarily mean never leaving the village…

(Or write them, actually, which is unfortunate, because that’s literally my job, but I still have to fit it around the school run, and the Tesco delivery, and all of the other things that come with modern life, and which Scottish villages are not at all exempt from…)

“not talking to people”

I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but I have talked to more people since moving to the village than I did in my entire life before that. Some days I talk to more people on the school run than I used to talk to in an entire day before I moved here, and, trust me, I am NOT cut out for that level of interaction first thing in the morning.

Villages are like that, though. They’re very… people-y. I know it sounds like they’d be the perfect place for introverts, but if you really want to be left alone and not have to talk to anyone, I’d recommend a city any day, seriously. Or your own private island, maybe.

As for villages, though, I’ve found the smaller the population, the keener people will be to get to know you, and the harder it’ll be to leave your house without getting involved in a lengthy chat about the weather, or whether the council will ever put speed bumps on the main road. There’s also a lot more pressure to ‘get involved’ with community events, so if you’re the kind of person who’s absolutely not into that (It’s me, hi! I’m the kind of person who’s not into that!), again, a city — or even a largeish town — would probably be a better bet.

So, Scottish villages might sound like an introvert’s dream, but they really, really are not, and I cannot stress this enough to you. I’m sorry. (For me as well as for you, really…)

Sheep

I’m going to ask this as nicely as I can: enough with all the ‘sheep’ stuff, OK? We’re not all up here tending freaking sheep, my God.

And, I mean, there are sheep, obviously. It’s a village in the countryside, of course there are sheep. But the sheep are in the fields that surround the village, not in the village itself, and they belong to farmers, who are the ones who ‘tend’ them, so they just don’t figure largely in most people’s lives, despite what the internet would have you believe. I have personally never interacted with a sheep, for instance. (Or not close up, anyway. I do sometimes come across them on the moor, but they run away as soon as you get near them, because they don’t really like people either, apparently…)

I have personally never interacted with a sheep…

(There was also a dead one in the field next to our street a couple of years ago, and the kids were so fascinated by it that any time someone came to visit they’d immediately ask if they wanted to see the dead sheep. My friends’ little girl still talks about it, actually. That’s the kind of thing that passes for entertainment around here…)

Also, seeing as I’m apparently now in the business or bursting all of your livestock-related bubbles, there aren’t any Highland cows just wandering around, either. Sorry…

‘far away from all the problems of the world’

So I think it’s pretty obvious that whoever wrote that particular comment wasn’t aware of the ‘sidewalk chalk’ scandal that rocked the village in May 2024, huh? Or ‘Bin-Gate’, in which one woman fought to control when villagers were allowed to put their bins out for collection?

OK, OK, I jest. Not totally, because those things did actually happen, but while people in our village are particularly prone to getting wound up about all kinds of petty shit that doesn’t really matter, we DO have ‘real world’ problems too, and that’s because … well, it’s because we’re part of the real world. Which has problems.

As I said in the ‘books all day’ section, living in a village doesn’t mean never leaving it, or having no contact with the outside world: I think that’s a cult you’re thinking of? Most actual villages, on the other hand, are very much connected to the modern world. Ours, for instance, has high-speed internet. Amazon delivers here. So does Deliveroo. And, of course, there are places that don’t have those things. I’ve visited communities in the Highlands where the Wi-Fi sucked, and you’re definitely not getting a takeaway for dinner tonight. But, even in those places, people are still people, and they still have all of the same experiences the rest of humanity does. Illnesses. Job loss. Racism. Debt. Neighbours who put their bins out at really inconvenient times. You get the picture.

I tell you all of this, not to be a spoilsport, or to callously destroy your cherished dream of moving to 18th century Scotland — no, really, I don’t, I promise — but purely because I can’t tell you how strange it is to see your actual life so frequently romanticized, in a way that renders it almost completely unrecognisable to you.

Don’t get me wrong: Scotland is a beautiful country, filled with amazing people. If you genuinely want to move here, you’ll be welcomed with open arms. But if you move here thinking it’s going to be like touching the standing stones and landing in a romanticized past where nothing bad ever happens, and the sheep are friendly, I hope you’ll remember this post… which would have been much longer, except I have to put my winter coat on (in September) and go out in the pouring rain (which is much less romantic when it’s beating off your face rather than your windows, trust me…) to collect my child from school, before coming home to do a bunch of mundane chores, then maybe squeeze in an hour of Netflix before bed.

I really wish I’d spent the day reading books under a blanket, but I’ve actually spent most of it fighting the Instagram algorithm, worrying about money, and having panic attacks every time I look at the news. You know, just like people anywhere else in the world.

Actually, now I come to think of it, I think I’d like to run away to that Scottish village everyone on the Internet is dreaming about, too. Does anyone know exactly where I can find it?