GETTING UP in the darkness was to become the norm for me, maybe even something of an art form. At 4.45am, up, dressed, and in the sorting office by 5.15am. Breakfast could wait. That was the way of life in the Royal Mail for years, and one that, even more than a decade after I left, ensures that 5am is still the start of the day.

The mind has a way of remembering the firsts, though. Not the first day in the post, but the first time getting up at that time to actually do something. The smell of dubbin and faint whiff of peat meant the walking boots had been dug out. They never fitted right, but off we went anyway, along the shore to the harbour.

We were both still half-asleep, wandering through a silence broken only by the occasional seagull mocking our march.

Past the broken clock at the harbour entrance came the comforting diesel fume aroma from a dozen idling trucks and, of course, the Arran ferry — suddenly the only things that could be heard at all.

Much has changed at Ardrossan Harbour in the intervening 35 years. The basin, by then an all but silent space where industry once thrived, is now full of yachts, encircled by blazing white flats. The dock and the iron lighthouse still look familiar, there’s still a train platform going to the shiny new-ish ferry terminal that will take you to or from Glasgow in three-quarters of an hour. 

Why you would now do that, of course, is something of a mystery, since there no longer is a ferry to Arran. 

Still, all those years ago, the first ferry of the day was the one to be on for hillwalkers; in our case, the hill was to be Goat Fell. I learnt in school it’s a pyramidal peak formed by glaciation, but it’s not exactly the Eiger. Over the years, my dad and I went up it just about every way possible, repeatedly. Only twice do I remember the sky giving way to a panoramic vision of the Firth of Clyde. I’ll take those odds, though.

A fortnight ago, a few of us gave it another go, boarding the impossibly large — well, impossible for Ardrossan dock, it was supposed to be in — all-new Glen Sannox in Troon.

Landing in Brodick, we walked across the bay and onto the hill. “Out of the woods, onto the plateau, and turn left at the ridge — look for the pointy bit,” my dad’s voice still echoing around the place. Passing the rock we hid under during a hailstorm decades ago, I could hear him talking to the stag that joined us then, before it wisely darted off at the mention of venison. 

Hope of a clear view was in short supply as we reached the summit. I took a seat, a whisky, and waited. No rush. In time, a window opened, a postcard in the cloud showing us Brodick, the ferry coming into the bay. Opening no further, it turned south, across the ridge, down Glen Rosa, over the Saddle to Cir Mhor, and … gone.

In clarity and comradeship, there’s always a temptation to stay put, and entertain daft fantasies about setting up home up there, but the Earth’s considerations intrude eventually … the light, the dark, catching the ferry … Once a chore, as the years pass, the coming back matters more.

Back to Brodick, no time for crazy-golf, and on to the catamaran back to Troon. Not as swish as the new CalMac vessel we arrived on, it had been built in Vietnam for £14 million, and leased to Transport Scotland by anti-trade union Pentland Ferries for more than £15m — a very earthly bit of business.

There’s always money to be made from a crisis. The management trouble-shooters at Ferguson Marine did fine as the ferries ran seven years late, while, despite CalMac’s best efforts to get all it could from its depleted and ageing fleet, the economies of islands and ports crumbled. 

In Ardrossan, seven years ago, locals and their counterparts on Arran celebrated the decision to keep the ferry running from there despite the attempts of Transport Scotland to shift it to Troon.

While Ardrossan Harbour’s owners, Peel Ports, bide their time for a government buyout or a bag of public cash to do what they should have done years ago by maintaining and upgrading the berths, Transport Scotland has, however, effectively got their way by default.

An ever-changing bafflement of seven different transport ministers and secretaries over that time has failed to offer any more than words so far, but it would be a mistake to lay the blame entirely at a lack of continuity.

The trouble is that there has been absolute continuity. It seems it is now a prerequisite for politicians in Scotland wielding executive and financial power over trains, ferries and roads — at present, Fiona Hyslop — not to know where they are going.

Without opening up the wound of the ferry fiasco once more, surely anyone could see that the delayed delivery could be used to get the harbour in order? Maybe they couldn’t have predicted it would be seven years late, but to not have even made a start on the work at this point is incomprehensible. 

A cynic might look at the situation in the round and assume Transport Scotland would like to shift to Troon to save a few quid by closing the branch line to Ardrossan Harbour. 

I am such a cynic, but while that organisation may or may not have its reasons to tear up one of the few opportunities for genuinely integrated transport in Scotland, Transport Scotland is not the villain here.

This is the natural outcome of a politics with its head in the clouds, always proud to stand on the summit, with no intention of coming down to enter the fray.

Record numbers of children in Scotland languish in temporary accommodation, but struggling when asked what the number of people on social housing waiting lists, Cabinet Secretary for Housing Mairi McAllan assured an STV reporter that while she did not have the number to hand, there was a “dashboard” on her desk with all the information.

I’m not so harsh as to expect McAllan to know every statistic in her first week in office, but the “dashboard” is a telling example of a government culture which appears not to know the difference between management and political leadership. No-one expects all the levers to be pulled from the ministerial desk like a latter-day Wizard of Oz, but officers need a vision to work to, and the people need a vision to get behind or challenge.

No vision, no challenge, so in its place we have a full range of summits for the happy wanderer-in-chief, John Swinney, to attend. 

A summit to counter the far right only managed to feed it, a habit I can only hope is broken at the forthcoming summit on the winged menace posed by seagulls.

A youth violence summit held in the wake of two fatal stabbings was, however, no laughing matter, but without the merest acknowledgement that decades of cuts to youth services may be an issue, you do have to wonder who it was really for.

Looming over it all this week was the Scotland 2050 performance, a chat with Swinney about where we all could be in 25 years’ time. For him, it’s independence and the EU — haud me back.

At present life expectancy, I’ll have two years left to live by then, tragically falling five years short of seeing the Clyde Metro completed — assuming it’s ever started.

On and on it goes, politicians wandering the world’s summits in search of a view.

The time for the world to intrude is long overdue.