Script-writers like to talk about the journey that each character has. We must see that, they say. We must witness the development of character over time. People should not be the same at the beginning of a play or film as they are at the end; stability of character does not make for good entertainment.

So, a journey may be real or metaphorical. The real journey—one that involves ordinary transport across identifiable terrain—may be as rich in association, may give food for thought, just as much as any metaphorical journey.

Here is a journey into the land that lies to the south of Edinburgh—through the Scottish Borders.

our journeys

Driving one day into the Borders,

That quiet landscape where so much

Has long ago been the subject

Of such lively dispute, where the inhabitants

Are the same people at heart,

As they always were, but who

Equally believe they are not;

Into a land between two worlds,

Our road hugs ripening fields,

Of calculated barley,

Past neat farms cherished

In all their corners;

Undisturbed by the wind

Of our passage, those we glimpse,

The farmer on his tractor,

The boy walking a dog

Beside a meandering burn

Seem indifferent, and understandably so,

To our noisy concern

To be somewhere else.

Any journey, if reflected upon,

Might make us think

About whether we really need

To do what we do, to move about

With such grim determination

Not to linger in one place

Any longer than we need to be.

Not long ago—a lifetime or two—

People went nowhere, staying

In their village, in their place,

From childhood to old age;

Six miles was a long way away

In those days; one hundred miles

An awfully long journey,

Undertaken heart in mouth

Over all the unknowns it involved.

I knew a man who spoke of another

Who never went anywhere:

He lived on a Scottish island,

And the sea lay between

Him and Scotland itself;

If the sea was there, he said,

It was there for a reason.

Was he photographed?

Did he ever look into the lens

Of an enthusiast with a camera?

Probably; and if he did, did he look happy,

Did he look as if he wanted

To be somewhere else?

Probably not, unlike ourselves,

To whom islands have long since

Ceased to be a problem,

And to whom whole seas are nothing at all.

Four brief hours of railway now stand

Between sedate Edinburgh and sprawling London;

We fly to New York before lunch,

Even Australia, these days, can be reached

Without the need to pack pyjamas.

Rapidly our world contracts,

Vainly we try to slow the pace,

To sit in our chairs, quite still,

Watching the sky, counting the clouds;

Though cherished things, old things

Wrought in a slower time,

With all the love that personal making

Can give to that which is made—

Those things remind us, describe

The nature of journeys made

But no longer made, the world

As it still might be, had we the time.