In the pedestrian-only shopping street of Inverness last Saturday, a

flame-thrower gave an impromptu performance for a crowd which consisted

of two mildly interested children. A few yards away, Militant Labour had

set up a stall.

I have no idea what fresh injustice the keepers of the socialist flame

were protesting against. Militant 1 was played by a podgy, disaffected

youth, Militant 2 by a scruffy girl with ear-rings piercing her small,

revolutionary nose. Central Casting could not have done a better job.

Further south, such a scene would have been more familiar. The

dispossessed communities of the post-industrial Central Belt have come

to wear a more or less permanent air of improvised carnival, as Big

Ishoo hawkers, amateur fiddlers, opportunistic beggars, alcoholics,

comic singers, and other clients of the DSS demand the attention and

loose change of shifty consumers.

When these towns had work, they also had a sense of purpose and a

reason for existence. Now, in the absence of anything you could call a

viable local economy, all that is left is the weekend circus in some

traffic-free ghetto between Burger King and the Pancake Place, a

recreational zone for show-offs with a bunnet.

As an opponent of the car, I never dreamed that I would have to admit

this: pedestrianisation -- horrible word -- is turning out to be a town

planning disaster.

The removal of vehicles from the main streets of our cities and towns

has underlined the poverty of modern existence: not the material poverty

of the sub-class, which the Saturday- morning bohemians and

exhibitionists claim to represent, but poverty of a more disfiguring

nature.

Now that the cars have disappeared, the streets, buildings and people

are cruelly exposed. The destruction of Scotland's civic pride and

dignity is much more visible than it ever was when we were too

distracted by the fumes and noise to notice what was going on around us

in the name of

local democracy.

It is a cause for genuine sorrow that Inverness, once a handsome and

educated town, is as shabby as the rest. The degraded values of the

disposable culture have descended even on it. It has become the

Kilmarnock of the north.

Fine shops of distinctive character have been replaced by a nasty

desert of chain stores and hamburger joints, a commercial environment in

which the punters are expected to buy the same disgusting food, read the

same low newspapers, and rent the same sordid videos as everywhere else.

One of its few restaurants of any charm has been converted into an

''over-25s nitespot''. This change of use is almost comically symbolic

of Inverness's new ethos.

Outside the Station Hotel, which used to boast the patronage of the

''nobility of Europe'', there are ugly notices in a handwritten scrawl

advertising cheap bar lunches. Ask inside for a slice of buttered toast

and you will be met with a curt refusal by a surly waiter behind a

self-service counter.

When it was a town with its own identity, not just another outpost of

Rupert Murdoch's global village, I remember Inverness as a place of

kilted Highlanders -- not the weedy football supporters and hairy

thumpers of drums who masquerade as kilted Highlanders in Buchanan

Street, Glasgow, but the genuine articles who might have marched with

Bonnie Prince Charlie and whose ancestors probably did.

I wonder what has happened to these impressive figures. The streets

have been made fit for pedestrians, but the only pedestrians above

ground seem to be professional scroungers and angry women with holes in

their nose. Perhaps the real locals stay indoors, mortified by what has

happened to their town.

But there is one thing in favour of Inverness: the physical grace of

its setting. Unless they drain the river, concrete it over and allow

McChukemup & Co to erect the Young Pretender shopping precinct, it will

probably still be recognisable in the year 2094. If only other Scottish

towns were so naturally blessed.

A few weeks ago I travelled in a bus across central Scotland. It was a

rickety old thing driven by a grumpy old thing, and by the time it

reached the tatty conservation village of Culross I was in no mood for a

plaque announcing that Smugnus Smugnusson, quizmaster and custodian of

our architectural heritage, had been there before us.

I confess that I would gladly sacrifice most of the jewels in the

National Trust's crown in exchange for modern towns designed with some

imagination and panache. What matters urgently is how we live now and we

are not living well. We are living in towns and villages close to the

sea, but which have a feeling of dusty insularity as if they have never

been touched by a wave and never will be.

Of course there are signs of improvement: the wrong sort of

improvement. I saw a bus near Kirkintilloch with

Laburnum Grove as its destination. What is more serious, I can imagine

much of Scotland becoming one vast Laburnum Grove -- a bland, Identikit

suburban estate serviced by a bland, Identikit pedestrian precinct.

Where, in this new and sanitised country, are the quirky tearooms, the

neighbourhood bookshops, the theatres, the privately-owned shops

offering a decent service and an individual touch? Where are those

sources of light and hope which any town of reasonable size ought to be

able to offer its citizens?

Yet we seem content enough. Man cannot live by Tandoori takeaways

alone, but the modern Scot seems to be having a pretty good try. Perhaps

we are too sunk in lethargy, too far gone in civic indifference, to

notice that our towns are not what they should be and not what they

were. Perhaps we are too busy parking our car.