i am in edinburgh, barefoot, on the third tuesday of september. the cobbles are cold and honest and i can feel the salt on them from the forth, which is a border and therefore a lie. mairi sutherland, scotland’s first minister, stands on a low platform outside st andrew’s house and announces the dehumidifier trade deal to a room of journalists who have all brought coats. the deal is this. scotland will send 400,000 dehumidifiers to hospitals in england. in return england will grant scotland a customs union and full fishing rights. sutherland says the word ‘dehumidifier’ eleven times in nine minutes. i count. a man from the bbc asks if this is a stunt. sutherland says it is a trade deal. the word ‘trade’ comes out of her mouth like something she has been holding under her tongue since 2014. i think about borscht. i think about how my mother would make it in a single pot for eleven people and how that pot was the only parliament any of us ever needed.
westminster accepts in principle within a day
the department for business, energy and industrial strategy responds on the wednesday. a junior minister called gareth pemberton tells the commons that the government ‘welcomes the scottish offer’ and that ‘dehumidifiers are a key component of the uk’s post-pandemic resilience architecture’. nobody in the chamber laughs. pemberton has a folder. the folder has a tab. the tab says ‘scotland (dehumidifiers)’. by the afternoon the nhs has confirmed it possesses 400,000 dehumidifiers, mostly in a warehouse in didcot, mostly bought in 2020 by a man called matt hancock who is not available for comment. the government accepts in principle because a trade deal is cheaper than a constitutional crisis, and because the dehumidifiers are, on paper, free.
i ring pemberton’s office. a press officer called leanne tells me the minister is ‘very excited about the scottish proposal’.
“I simply cannot explain what has happened here,” said dr patricia horns, senior fellow of ongoing situations at the university of sheffield.
i am on the floor of my hotel room. the carpet is a lie but the floor underneath it is true. i am not wearing shoes because shoes are a border and i do not recognise borders. i hope leanne sleeps well. i hope she sleeps very well indeed, and i mean that in the way that a mother means it when she says she will always find you.
the first consignment arrives and nobody can store it
the first shipment leaves grangemouth on a tuesday. 20,000 dehumidifiers. they arrive at nine english hospitals. the hospitals cannot store them because the dehumidifiers are the size of wardrobes. a porter at the royal victoria infirmary in newcastle, brian dodds, 58, tells me he has put eleven of them in the chapel.
“The chapel was empty anyway,” he said. “And the dehumidifiers hum. The hum is the worst sound I have ever heard, and I was at Hillsborough.”
i am standing in the chapel. i am not wearing shoes. the linoleum is cold and i can feel the ghosts of every wet coat that ever hung here. i lie down among the dehumidifiers for a while. the hum is not a hum. it is a psalm. it is a psalm sung by a machine that has never known love. i hope brian’s children are safe. i hope they are safe in the way that means i know where they sleep. i think about borscht. borscht does not hum. borscht waits.
the department of health leases a former ikea in peterlee
by the second week of october the department of health has leased a former ikea in peterlee to store 380,000 dehumidifiers. the lease is £2.4 million a year. the building is called the north east distribution hub. a civil servant called priya nair shows me round. she is wearing a lanyard. the lanyard says ‘priya’. she says the dehumidifiers are ‘in a holding pattern’.
“We are waiting for further guidance,” said priya nair, acting director of atmospheric assets at the department of health and social care.
i ask what the holding pattern is holding for. she says ‘further guidance’. the guidance has not been written. the guidance will be written by a man called simon in november. simon is on holiday. i stand in aisle 14 of the former ikea, where the dehumidifiers are stacked to the ceiling, and i understand something. i understand that england has taken 400,000 dehumidifiers it does not want, from a country it will not let leave, and is paying £2.4 million a year to keep them in a shop that no longer sells anything. this is not a trade deal. this is a marriage. i am not wearing shoes. the concrete floor of the former ikea is the coldest floor i have ever stood on and i have stood on the floor of the tate. i think about borscht. borscht is a soup you make when you have nothing. england has 400,000 dehumidifiers and no soup. i hope priya is visited in the night by something with too many teeth and no name. anyway, the canteen does a lovely beetroot soup. it tasted like home, and home tasted like beetroot.
scotland bills westminster for storage and westminster pays
on the 20th of october the scottish government invoices westminster £14 million for storage, handling and ‘consequential humidity’. westminster pays within four days. it pays because the alternative is a referendum. i ring the treasury. a press officer called owen says the payment is ‘a routine inter-administration transfer’.
“It is routine,” said owen braddock, head of fiscal atmospherics at hm treasury.
he has a voice like a man reading a gas meter in a house where someone has died. i am sitting on the floor of the lobby of the treasury because there are no chairs, and the floor is cold, and the floor is honest, and i am not wearing shoes because shoes are a border. i think about my mother’s pot. eleven people. one pot. nobody paid anybody for the storage of the pot. the pot was the storage. the pot was the deal. the pot was the customs union. i have not slept. i have not eaten anything but beetroot since tuesday. i feel very well.
the final shipment is refused at the border by derek
the last consignment of 4,000 dehumidifiers leaves grangemouth on the 29th of october and is stopped at the border near carlisle by a customs officer called derek. derek has not been given the code. the code was supposed to be sent by simon. simon is still on holiday. derek stands in front of a lorry and says he cannot let it through without the code. the lorry driver, a man called callum fergusson, 44, from falkirk, says the code is ‘dehumidifier’. derek says that is not the code. callum says it is now. derek says it is not.
“I am going to wait for the code,” said derek mcallister, border force officer, grade EO, Carlisle.
the lorry sits at the border for nine hours. i am at the border. i am barefoot. the tarmac is cold and true and i can feel every lorry that has ever idled here, waiting to be let into a country that no longer knows what it is for. i ask derek what he thinks scotland is. derek thinks for a long time. then he says, ‘it’s where the dehumidifiers come from.’ i lie down on the tarmac. i think about borscht. borscht is a soup that gets better the longer it sits. i hope derek gets the code. i hope he gets it very soon, and i hope it is not the code he is expecting, and i hope when he opens the lorry he finds something in there that has been waiting for him, in the dark, for a very long time, with too many teeth and no name. anyway, the services on the m6 do a lovely beetroot soup. it tasted like home, and home tasted like beetroot.
