Before telling my mother of my plans to visit Faslane Peace Camp, I planned a defence of them, in case she protested that I was not yet old enough to make such a trip alone. I would first attack Trident and the whole concept of a ‘nuclear deterrent’. Then I would defend the right to protest, claiming that it was not just a right but an obligation. ‘If not me,’ I would say, ‘then who?’ But she had needed no persuading and talked about my plan as though it were a school trip. ‘We once went camping there,’ she said. ‘Or near enough – somewhere around Stranraer.’

     I had sent several emails to the camp organisers and received curt replies. When my request to stay for a week had met with a lukewarm response, I reminded myself their internet access must be limited and that any communications were doubtless monitored by the police. They would be wary of infiltrators, but I was sure my sincerity would come across when I arrived.

     I read some pages of Bakunin on the train but couldn’t concentrate, such was my excitement. Luckily, I had also brought a novel by Iain Banks, which I found more readable in the circumstances. I slept during the last stage of the journey and awoke as we pulled into Helensburgh. Waiting for the bus, I was full of nervous energy and drummed my fingers on the bench. Several times, the old woman beside me turned her head and I stopped drumming, but I started again each time my thoughts returned to the camp. I had read about blockades and trespasses into the naval base, where activists chained themselves to fences. People said there was poetry in a lively, ramshackle woodland camp overlooking the base of the submarines that carried our most devastating weapons. I had heard stories of great parties, though I would be careful not to mention those, in case I give the wrong impression.

     ‘Faslane, please,’ I said to the driver, taking a seat towards the back of the bus, which set off along a quiet country road. The only passengers were me and the woman with whom I had waited. To the right, fields and forest climbed the hillside. To the left lay Gare Loch, whose waters appeared menacing and dark under the thickening cloud. Soon the bus rounded a headland and HMNB Clyde came into view, stretching along the banks of the loch. The first impression I had was of one huge shadow sprawling across the landscape but then I discerned a jumble of buildings, cranes, runways, and ships. The base almost resembled an ancient city and the sight filled me with an exuberant desire to climb its towers and run between its hangars. We were approaching the bus stop so I pressed the bell, grabbed my rucksack, and thanked the driver, who looked me up and down curiously as I alighted. Then I walked for a while along the roadside, fixated on the imposing base until I noticed a path leading into the forest to my right and a wooden sign reading Faslane Peace Camp. I followed this path into the woods, between tents and huts, until I met a man with long hair, dragging his feet and seeming not to notice me. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘I’ve come to stay for a while. We had some contact via email.’

     He scratched his head for a moment before pointing me in the direction of a clearing, where I found a man and a woman talking amicably over an outdoor stove. Their easy manner changed when they saw me and their greetings were cautious. Malachi relaxed when I reminded him of our correspondence, though he was polite rather than warm as we sat on camp chairs beneath an awning and ate bowls of vegetable curry. I was still hungry after my portion but didn’t have the nerve to ask for seconds. I asked questions about the camp to which Malachi gave terse answers, frequently sweeping the dreadlocks from his face. His companion told me the camp had been occupied since 1982 and she described some of the organised trespasses for which they were famous. I asked her if there might be an action during my stay, and she said, ‘No. And we don’t let people take part until we know them better.’ I said that seemed fair enough and tried to hide my disappointment behind more questions. I erected my tent in a clearing and then set out to explore the camp but a fine drizzle was falling and the occupants seemed to be hidden away inside their tents, huts, and caravans, of which I counted 28 in total. I sat on a bench in the common area, drinking the bottle of beer I had brought and hoping that somebody would join me. When nobody did, I went to my tent and read Iain Banks until I fell asleep.

     I woke the next morning to the sound of heavy rain. I was eager to discover what activities were taking place but when I checked my watch, I found that it was only six. I tried in vain to sleep. Shortly before eight, I put on the combat pants and hoody I had worn the day before and went to see if anybody was up. The rain fell steadily and the woods were dark and close. I went to the common area, hoping people would be having breakfast but the whole camp seemed asleep and I wondered if by going to bed early I had missed a party. In one caravan, a light shone and a radio was playing but I decided it was better not to knock. I walked along the road toward the base until I reached a gate guarded by two men with machine guns. I grimaced in the rain and nodded at one. He didn’t nod back. I wanted to stand there examining the complex, which reminded me of the action games I once played on my Nintendo, but I feared I would annoy the guards so I turned back toward camp. A woman was making coffee at the stove and I greeted her, asking if I might have a coffee too. ‘I’ve just been to the base,’ I said. ‘Amazing spectacle, isn’t it?’ She seemed to disapprove of my remark and left me alone with a mug of coffee. Once I had finished it, I went back to my tent. The interaction had ruffled me and I felt unsociable. I tried to read Bakunin but couldn’t concentrate and wished I had brought another novel. For hours, I listened to raindrops falling on my tent. That evening, dinner was served at the common area and eight occupants gathered to eat. The conversation turned to the water boiler. It was ailing, one said, and they would need to get another. A discussion of the merits of various boiler systems ensued. I felt as though they were speaking a foreign language and didn’t say a word until I stood up and said thank you for the food and goodnight.   The next morning, I walked in the sunshine toward the sparkling loch and stumbled down the bank. Gliding through the water, I saw a long protrusion like a whale’s hump. Only a portion of the submarine was visible but enough to suggest how much moved invisibly beneath the surface. The hairs on my neck stood up as I gazed into the water and I saw myself as a child, still too in awe of majesty to understand why people dedicated themselves to necessary work. My eyes burned with shame and I decided to pack and head home.

Some years ago, I did an Access Course at an adult education college. I had left school seven years earlier with grades so bad that it was better to pretend I hadn’t any. Back then, I only wanted to drink and make music but I had tired of both and I wanted to go to university and become a writer. For a module on ‘The Short Story’, we read a selection of stories from Joyce’s Dubliners. We were assessed on an essay and a short story of our own. I was assigned ‘Araby’, which was my favourite. It’s about a boy who becomes infatuated with the older sister of a friend. When he speaks with her, she asks if he is going to Araby, a bazaar that is passing through town. She says she can’t go and he says that he will bring her something. Saturday comes. The boy waits for his uncle to come home and give him the pocket money he needs for his trip but the uncle is delayed and it’s past nine by the time he leaves. As he arrives at the bazaar, the shopkeepers are already packing up their stalls and he senses he has arrived too late. Furthermore, he had imagined a strange, exotic place and all he finds is commerce. He hears the voices of Englishmen counting coins, looks at some vases and tea sets to save face, and then decides to leave. On his way out, he gazes into the dark, upper section of the hall, and sees he was driven there by vanity.

      I liked the story so much that I wrote a kind of cover version about a boy who takes the train to Scotland to visit the peace camp at Faslane, the home of Britain’s nuclear weapons program. I had been there with a group of friends for the ‘Faslane Punks Picnic’, a festival aimed at raising money and awareness, to which a couple hundred punks and anarchists travelled from around Britain to camp and drink and watch bands playing on a stage in the woods. Today, the only record I can find is a story in the Helensburgh Advisor, where aggrieved neighbours complain of people urinating by the roadside and vans blocking their driveways.

     Time has reduced my impressions to a few. I remember sitting with a friend in his campervan as rain drummed on the roof. I wanted us to listen to an album I loved in full but to my great disappointment, he wasn’t impressed. I remember sitting on the forest floor in the middle of the night, blathering about my emotions and musical preferences to a man who cared about neither. I remember that when the sun finally appeared on the last morning, we walked to the loch and saw the hump of a nuclear submarine gliding through the water.

     When I chose to write about Faslane, I believed I did so because it had been a singular experience. Then, I still believed the most significant moments of my life lay ahead of me and that until I arrived at them, my subjects were limited to what I could invent and a few novel experiences I’d already had. (Now, I tend to agree with Louise Glück: ‘We look at the world once, in childhood. / The rest is memory.’) Sleepless, half-delirious, I had witnessed a nuclear submarine protruding above the surface of a Scottish loch. It was as close as I’d come to an experience of the sublime and I thought it was the sort of thing that one wrote about.

     What I didn’t see (though I must have intuited it) was its metaphorical resonance. I had glimpsed something dark and powerful, mostly hidden beneath the surface; I saw only enough to understand how much I couldn’t see. The top of that submarine was like those remnants of a dream that survive the transition to waking life and leave us grasping for what we have forgotten.

     ‘Araby’ is concerned with disillusionment. The narrator realises the exotic, mysterious impression the bazaar makes on him is a phantasmagoria, an obfuscation of a crude, economic truth behind symbols. Blinded by his sexual desire and taken in by the enchanting name Araby, he turns up with big expectations and is disappointed when he discovers a tacky flea market where Englishmen sell tat and trinkets.

     The narrator of the Faslane story seems to want to belong. He wants to be taken in by the occupants of the peace camp, to become a member of their community and the protagonist of a political struggle. As for how the experience falls short of his expectations, there are two factors: he is disappointed that the occupants are ordinary people with dull concerns and he is disappointed that his own motivations were less pure than he’d believed. He’s more impressed by the scale of the military base than he thinks respectable. The peace camp seems tedious compared with men holding machine guns, nuclear-powered submarines, and ballistic missiles.

     Maybe he realises he’s not mature enough for politics. Maybe he discovers aesthetic experience. He’s bored when the activists are talking shop but the submarine sends shivers down his spine. He feels bad because he wants to be a serious person and he thinks that means being political with a capital P.

     In this sense, I was grappling with a set of intuitions about which I have often felt guilty: that the language of political actions sometimes leaves me cold even when I agree with its necessity; that art might transcend politics and to believe so is not always a dandyish refutation of material concerns; that aesthetic experience expresses a truth that rational language cannot; that encounters with enigmatic and unknowable things show us that our understanding is not total and therefore the world could be made differently, even if they can’t show us what that world would look like or how we get there.

     After first writing that story, which I’ve rewritten many times, I spent five years studying literature. I wrote many stories where the narrator comes to a realisation without content, an empty epiphany that leaves him unchanged. Frustrated by my fruitless searching, I stopped writing altogether and began to slide into a personal crisis that lasted several years. Then I took a writing workshop that helped me begin again. During one feedback session on a story that communicated through a symbolic code so encrypted not even its author could know its meaning, the instructor brought his fist to the table and said: ‘Say it! The writer is the person who says the thing.’

     Gazing through the windows at the bare treetops outside, I thought of these words and saw that I too had often hoped vague symbols would express what I could not say. I remembered Faslane, pictured the submarine’s hump coursing through the dark water, and felt that I was afraid of naming the forces that swam within me. I had turned to language hoping that it would allow me to articulate myself and I had used it only to obfuscate. But I knew why the submarine had moved me and what it meant. I wanted to dredge something powerful out of the deep ­­– an image of our world’s unnatural beauty – and I wanted to make it speak.