Scotland on Sunday

First, I should establish my credentials - meagre though they are. I write this having just returned from what I suppose must have been my fifth or sixth circuit of the new Scottish Parliament building over the past few months. For the past two-and-a-half years I have worked at a desk from where, if I lean wildly to the left, to the point where I risk tipping from my chair, I can see an edge of concrete and a hint of bamboo. I get a good view of the building every morning when I arrive at work, and at night when I leave. For two days of every week I probably see more of it than I do of my wife. I have watched enormous cranes swing across the skyline on their way to dropping great hunks of stone into the arms of workmen below. Once, with guilty fascination, I gawped for two hours as a man was talked out of throwing himself from the top of one. And when the building caught fire in May, I beat the fire brigade to the scene to watch thick black smoke belch into the sky. Me and the Scottish Parliament: we're what you might call familiars; we're on terms.