My kids and I caught the ferry from Gourock to Dunoon at the weekend. I say ‘caught’. It was thankfully pretty stationary when we drove aboard. I figured taking the car was a no-brainer. We didn’t have a lot of time and without the car we wouldn’t have been able to explore much more than the dock on the other side, which would’ve been about as pointless as flying from Edinburgh to Milan, wandering around the airport then immediately flying back again, all the while raving about how culturally enriching ‘the Italian experience’ was.

Gourock. That’s a strange name, isn’t it? [note to any non-Scots reading this – it’s pronounced ‘goo-rock’, not ‘gow-rock’, you fucking idiot. Honestly, imagine not knowing how to pronounce the name of a place you’ve never heard of before in a country whose pronunciation rules aren’t immediately clear. What a loser] It’s next to Greenock. What is it with ‘ocks’ on the west coast of Scotland? I’ve no idea what an ‘ock’ is, much less why two ‘ocks’ would be next to each other. I’ve even less idea why one of them would be ‘green’ and the other made of ‘goo’. A simple Google search would doubtless put paid to my speculation, but I can’t resist an enduring mystery, plus I’m ignorant and lazy. I’d prefer to imagine ‘ocks’ as whatever I bloody well want them to be, thank you very much. I mean, are ‘ocks’ decapitated crocodiles? Dismembered octopi? Is it how Jonathan Ross would refer to the green guys in Mordor if he moved to Middle Earth? There’s no doubt in my mind that the real answer is incredibly boring. It’s the same with Coatbridge: was the whole town named after a bridge of stitched-together Medieval jackets? As far as I’m concerned: yes. Yes, it bloody was. And don’t get me started on Bathgate.

None of us had ever been to Dunoon so we knew little about what to expect once we arrived, beyond what I’d gleaned from a cursory Google search (I still refuse to Google ‘ocks’). We met a kindly old man on the deck of the ferry as we clambered out of the car. After a brief exchange he was quick to suggest places we might go and things we might do. Well, truth be told, he only really had one thing in mind…

I’ve clearly phrased that in an unnecessarily sinister way, haven’t I? And I’ve left you thinking that this poor, innocent old man wanted to ‘Jack and Rose’ us in the back of his motor. Or paint us like one of his Gourock girls. He didn’t. His real intentions were, mercifully, a lot more boring than that. What he wanted us to do was visit the botanic gardens.

‘You’ll love it’, he said. ‘The rhododendrons are out.’

I looked back at my kids: two be-limbed bundles of kinetic chaos; a couple of Nagasakis in skin-suits. Voracious, vital, joyful, and mental. The whole world – its sounds, colours and energies – piped perpetually into their skulls with the force and power of the zap-bite that cooked the shark in Jaws 2. ADHD in human form. Tom and Jerry meets Israel and Palestine. ‘Mister,’ I thought, ‘These kids REALLY don’t give a fuck about rhododendrons. Come to think of it, neither do I.’

My kids might’ve been interested in rhododendrons, but only because it sounds like a shape invented by a drunk pigeon, or some sort of giant robot who spends his days fighting Godzilla. As long as they laboured under the impression that a rhododendron was one of those things they’d be excited, but the minute they found out it was a fucking flower their eyes would glaze over like Cheech’s and Chong’s would on a microscopic journey through Bob Marley’s left lung.

Don’t get me wrong. We adore nature. Its canvas. Its scope and humps and hues. Its vistas and vacuums. We rarely get hung up on the specifics, though. We’re quite happy to gaze at flowers – Geilston Gardens, for instance, is a stunning wee place – just don’t ask us which ones are rhododendrons. We don’t know what they are, much less when they’re going to be out. And we don’t want to know.

But this man wanted to know. And he wanted us to know, too. And I’m pretty sure that he wanted us to know that he wanted us to know that he wanted us to know, too. But did he always know? Did he tug, teary-eyed, at his mother’s apron strings and wail: ‘Oh, mumma, will the rhododendrons be out again this year? Oh, will they, mumma? Please say that they will!’ Was rhododendron his first word? When did this rhododendron obsession take root? And would it happen to me?

After all, there was a time when I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me that a time would come when I’d be willingly listening to Radio 4 in the car. Or feeling a sense of accomplishment for getting that third wash out on the line. Would I turn sixty and get inducted into some secret, and incredibly boring, society? Would I receive a card from the King that read: ‘You give a fuck about rhododendrons now. Deal with it.’?

We didn’t go to the botanic garden. We ate ice cream. We climbed rocks. We skimmed stones. We saw a seal. We wandered the fringes of a loch that used to house US submarines. That’s a bit better than fucking flowers.

Mind you… [Googles rhododendrons] they are LUSH. Oaft. That’s a beautiful flower. Maybe… you know, the next time we’re near a botanic garden… just once I could, you know [Keeps Googling] So THAT’S what an ‘ock’ is.