Being 42

Thursday 12th June 2025, 12.35pm (day 5,040)

The tour of Scotland, or at least, the eastern-central part of that country, continued with a visit to “Scotland’s Secret Bunker“, which until 1992 or thereabouts was maintained as the home-to-be of government in Scotland were that country (and presumably the rest of the UK) ever to be taken out by a couple of dozen nuclear missiles. It says a lot for the managerial mindset that a significant amount of money was spent on building and maintaining this place, with its various dormitories, a broadcasting station, two cinemas, a canteen (still in use, for visitors), state-of-the-art air conditioning and fire protection and various Monitoring and War Rooms (“Gentlemen! You can’t fight in here, this is the War Room!”). Plus a clinic, as pictured here with its touches of black humour.

That this is now open to visitors, albeit privately owned and charging a healthy price (£50 for the three of us), is some consolation but begs a natural question — where’s the current version of this? Or versions, as there were long-standing and fairly plausible rumours that another one of these sat up on Ashdown Forest in Sussex, near Crowborough where I grew up. And how much do they cost in terms of, say, nurses’ or teachers’ salaries? The place was definitely worth a visit, if only to invoke such questions in Joe’s mind.