When I told William Corson that I was from Buckie, he told us a tale about a Buckie man he once knew. They were building a building, and when it came to fixing on the roof, the Buckie man - perched upon the trusses - dangled a string through a hole in one of the roofing sheets, then instructed someone below to tie a screw to the end of the string, after which he pulled the string up and - hey presto! - the screw was in place. Amid the astonishment of those present, the Buckie man pronounced the words, "the hard road for old dogs, the pavement for puppies." William Corson told his tale slowly, and with relish, as he drove Colin and I slowly along the wee road that wound through a tunnel of moss-covered old oaks that would take us to where we would walk into the bothy. With relish William Corson told his tale, and with a twinkle in his eye which gave me the impression that perhaps he always saw the humor that lay beneath all things.
At that point it was only our second day on Islay, but already the slower-paced, friendlier demeanor of the islanders was palpable. Having grown up, and spent most of my time on the east coast of Scotland, I find that the people from the west coast (in general) and the islands (in particular) have a different quality of character which is difficult to place exactly but which is unmistakable. They have something softer about them, something gentler, something quieter while still self-assured, a twinkle in the eye, a charm perhaps . . . perhaps an awareness of the charm that lies behind all things.
It had become palpable to us not long after getting off the ferry on the Friday evening. Darkness had already descended - and with it the rain - as we stood trying to thumb a lift from the cars coming off the ferry. Nobody stopped. After a while no cars went past any more. We looked at each other through the rain with grim grins of reluctant acceptance. We had booked tickets for an Islay Jazz Festival gig that would start in an hour. I had blithely assured Colin "We'll have no problem hitchhiking on Islay. Everyone stops for you on Islay" Then a police car stopped. Lynn, one of the island policewoman, took us a few miles beyond her destination to Bruachladdaich village hall where our gig was to be. It was a timely display of island friendliness, which with time became only more palpable, and confirmedly charming.
At the time we had laughed easily along with William Corson, "the hard road for old dogs, the pavement for puppies" - ha, of course! - but later, as we were walking into the bothy, we puzzled over exactly what this saying was supposed to drive at.
I was sure that I had been to An Cladach bothy before, but it was only as we got close to it, trying to pin point its exact location, that I realised I had never been there before. I had it confused with another bothy - similarly located on the coast - but on the island of Rhum. An Cladach was built at the end of 1999 from ruins which had lain empty for a hundred years. Few bothies have been built with the care and loving attention which was given to An Cladach. A small plantation of young trees - oaks, birch, sycamore, pine, and a little holly - have even been planted behind the bothy, next to one tall old solitary rowan, which stands alone on a pretty treeless stretch of coast. It is exciting to think how big they will grow in the years to come. I climbed over the fence one day to take a look around. When I saw a bright red apple lying on the ground my first thought was that it was a discarded item from somebody's picnic, but closer inspection revealed that it had fallen from a little apple tree. It had a little hole where someone had already begun nibbling, but was otherwise firm, crisp, sweet and delicious chopped into yoghurt and muesli for breakfast. There were a further three apples still attached to the tree. I felt a little bad about taking them from the birds, who, as local residents, arguably had the better claim over the tasty local produce, but hey-ho.
The next day colin left to get the ferry back to Glasgow, and left me for what would turn into more than a week's wonderful solitary retreat. (if I didnt know it already) I realised that I am the eternal bothy bum, that I was born a bothy bum and that I will remain one to my last days. bothy bum is a term my brother Kevin coined, and we understand thereby one who loves being in the bothy per se (a love of simple living in a remote shelter in a wild and lonely place), someone who enjoys just hanging around the bothy (the bothy seen as more than a mere utilitarian means of overnighting in between ticking off munros)
I didn't initially intend to stay so long, but the stormy weather did not abate for days, and the bothy had been furnished with a shelf of good books, many of which demanded at least being dipped into - if not being read from beginning to end. There was an anthology of Neil Munro's writings. Somebody wrote about him:
"Few writers have caught more truly the spirit of the Highlands, its romanticism, its mysticism, the spell and wonder of the mountains, the glens and the lochs, enveloped in the deep mists that scatter so quickly before the sun."
His ten-page story The Lost Pibroch is a little masterpiece about two wanderers who are pipers who stumble upon a mythical village, where they begin an all-night piping session with the local old piper who eventually agrees to play the lost tune, a tune which "makes them crave for something they cannot have. Its the tune that puts men on the open road. They had forgotten that the world is wide beyond the fir trees" The story begins thus:
"You may rove for a thousand years on league-long brogues or hurry on fairy wings from isle to isle and deep to deep, and find no equal to that same Half Town. It is not the splendor of it, nor the riches of its folk, but the scented winds of it, and the comfort of the pine trees round about it"
Writing at the beginning of last century, Munro noted that:
"The English of modern life and modern letters often appalls you by its flatness and insincerity; it is a mosaic of phrases ready-made, and as the phrase comes to the writer's mind before the thought, it is consequently a mosaic of worn-out thoughts."
In one of his short stories Munro imaginatively portrays the life of a fiery young Robert Burns, including this passage:
Burns held him for a moment with his hand upon his sleeve. "Tell me this, Will," he demanded, "Are ye a contented man? Do ye sleep sound at nicht? Do ye mind auld things? Do ye ever think ye micht be better? Do ye see yersel' the actual man ye are? Do ye meet wi' mony folk that understand ye? Have ye ever had but a glimpse o' a' the possible joys o' life, and seen them gaun by ye like Nith, down there, wi' ye stuck helpless on the bank?"
"O, I'm no complainin'," said the ploughman, whose mind had grasped but little of this fierce, bewildering catechism. "I'm no complainin', I tak' my meat, and sleep like a peerie."
Every writer has a myth buried in the unconscious - accessible only through the telling of a tale. My myth is picaresque. A heroine in trouble takes a journey which unlocks the rest of her life and confirms her as a heroine. The voyage taken is both inner and outer; it changes forever what she thinks of herself and of her life.
This pretty much describes Fear of Flying [and other books] . . . what these books have in common is the journey taken by a perplexed protagonist to solve a dilemma and get on with life.
However, in the course of the book I realised that a well-written preface is no guarantee of a well-written book. Every novel written, one could generously say, represents a slice of reality and its way of being seen, and has the potential to engage the attention of a potential reader. While I wouldn't want to dispute the inclusion of Fear of Flying on anyone else's bookshelf, for my own part, I must say, I felt the limitations of the uncensored outpourings of this liberated young American woman in sustaining my interest. It is a reminder to me that writing just whatever comes into one's head doesn't necessarily produce an enjoyable reading experience for anyone else.
I saw that many wildlife enthusiasts had been attracted to the bothy and had recorded in the bothy book sightings of different bird species, as well as sea creatures - seals, porpoises, dolphins, swans, and otters, who had been seen feeding on crabs on the rocks. The coast has become known to be home to otter families which have increased in number in recent years. It took me a few days before I noticed anything - before I could tear my eyes away from words printed on a page. Early one morning I got to spot an otter out of the corner of my eye, who quickly slipped with a little splash into the sea. A few times I saw a pair of swans bobbing near the shore, always together, gliding imperiously through the water like pristine noble courageous miniature viking vessels. The first time I saw the seals they were basking in the sun and paid me no attention, but subsequently they seemed pretty curious, following me as I walked along the coast, and surfacing regularly to watch what I was doing. They barked to me with their plaintive sea doggy whines, and I called back to them a few times - just asking them how it was going, what they were up to - just to show them that also I was curious about them. Somebody had left really good guide to the coastal ecosystem at the bothy. I can't remember the name of the author. His enthusiasm for the geology and the unique plant and animal communities to be found at the interface of land and sea was infectious - his writing directly transmitted his unbounded passion - even to the point of awakening a fascination for the different types of seaweed and lichen, which adhere strictly to certain zones above, below or within the ebb and flow of the tide.
For a while now I have been going around without a camera, and not missing one either - thinking that capturing the world on film only gets in the way of the pure unmediated visual pleasure of the moment, which is true in a way, but being interested in photography also makes one pay full attention to the elements of beauty in a scene, and, in this sense, increases one's appreciation of it. One morning, walking along the coast, I became engrossed by the task of capturing the play of light and shadow on the Paps of Jura across the sound. Another morning I regretted not having my camera with me as the sun came out after a spot of rain and made the oval stones on the beach gleam with bright insistence. It was just a moment which came and went. Just a unique, unrepeatable, everyday, fleeting moment, which came and went as the light shifts and fleets. Taking photos, and especially under Scotland's ever changing cloudscape, turns you into a carpe diem fiend - or a carpe momentum one - having to have your camera ever at the ready, ready to whip it out and seize the fleeting scene.
At that point it was only our second day on Islay, but already the slower-paced, friendlier demeanor of the islanders was palpable. Having grown up, and spent most of my time on the east coast of Scotland, I find that the people from the west coast (in general) and the islands (in particular) have a different quality of character which is difficult to place exactly but which is unmistakable. They have something softer about them, something gentler, something quieter while still self-assured, a twinkle in the eye, a charm perhaps . . . perhaps an awareness of the charm that lies behind all things.
It had become palpable to us not long after getting off the ferry on the Friday evening. Darkness had already descended - and with it the rain - as we stood trying to thumb a lift from the cars coming off the ferry. Nobody stopped. After a while no cars went past any more. We looked at each other through the rain with grim grins of reluctant acceptance. We had booked tickets for an Islay Jazz Festival gig that would start in an hour. I had blithely assured Colin "We'll have no problem hitchhiking on Islay. Everyone stops for you on Islay" Then a police car stopped. Lynn, one of the island policewoman, took us a few miles beyond her destination to Bruachladdaich village hall where our gig was to be. It was a timely display of island friendliness, which with time became only more palpable, and confirmedly charming.
At the time we had laughed easily along with William Corson, "the hard road for old dogs, the pavement for puppies" - ha, of course! - but later, as we were walking into the bothy, we puzzled over exactly what this saying was supposed to drive at.
I was sure that I had been to An Cladach bothy before, but it was only as we got close to it, trying to pin point its exact location, that I realised I had never been there before. I had it confused with another bothy - similarly located on the coast - but on the island of Rhum. An Cladach was built at the end of 1999 from ruins which had lain empty for a hundred years. Few bothies have been built with the care and loving attention which was given to An Cladach. A small plantation of young trees - oaks, birch, sycamore, pine, and a little holly - have even been planted behind the bothy, next to one tall old solitary rowan, which stands alone on a pretty treeless stretch of coast. It is exciting to think how big they will grow in the years to come. I climbed over the fence one day to take a look around. When I saw a bright red apple lying on the ground my first thought was that it was a discarded item from somebody's picnic, but closer inspection revealed that it had fallen from a little apple tree. It had a little hole where someone had already begun nibbling, but was otherwise firm, crisp, sweet and delicious chopped into yoghurt and muesli for breakfast. There were a further three apples still attached to the tree. I felt a little bad about taking them from the birds, who, as local residents, arguably had the better claim over the tasty local produce, but hey-ho.
That first night was pretty stormy. The bothy was already occupied by a team of six young RSPB workers, two of whom were unpaid volunteers (this they pointed out to us in a tone of good cheer.) When they turned in for the night Colin and I were still in no mood to sleep. With rain and howling gusts of wind and darkness all around us, we instigated a party mood under the scant shelter of a corrugated roof outside, finishing off a bottle of whisky we had brought for the trip, and dancing to tunes Colin played on his phone. At a certain point in the night, we elected to make a camembert fondu, made ingeniously over Colin's gas stove by sort of steaming-melting the camembert, which we wrapped in aluminium foil, and kept above the boiling water by a bed of little round pebbles from the beach.
The next day colin left to get the ferry back to Glasgow, and left me for what would turn into more than a week's wonderful solitary retreat. (if I didnt know it already) I realised that I am the eternal bothy bum, that I was born a bothy bum and that I will remain one to my last days. bothy bum is a term my brother Kevin coined, and we understand thereby one who loves being in the bothy per se (a love of simple living in a remote shelter in a wild and lonely place), someone who enjoys just hanging around the bothy (the bothy seen as more than a mere utilitarian means of overnighting in between ticking off munros)
I didn't initially intend to stay so long, but the stormy weather did not abate for days, and the bothy had been furnished with a shelf of good books, many of which demanded at least being dipped into - if not being read from beginning to end. There was an anthology of Neil Munro's writings. Somebody wrote about him:
"Few writers have caught more truly the spirit of the Highlands, its romanticism, its mysticism, the spell and wonder of the mountains, the glens and the lochs, enveloped in the deep mists that scatter so quickly before the sun."
His ten-page story The Lost Pibroch is a little masterpiece about two wanderers who are pipers who stumble upon a mythical village, where they begin an all-night piping session with the local old piper who eventually agrees to play the lost tune, a tune which "makes them crave for something they cannot have. Its the tune that puts men on the open road. They had forgotten that the world is wide beyond the fir trees" The story begins thus:
"You may rove for a thousand years on league-long brogues or hurry on fairy wings from isle to isle and deep to deep, and find no equal to that same Half Town. It is not the splendor of it, nor the riches of its folk, but the scented winds of it, and the comfort of the pine trees round about it"
Writing at the beginning of last century, Munro noted that:
"The English of modern life and modern letters often appalls you by its flatness and insincerity; it is a mosaic of phrases ready-made, and as the phrase comes to the writer's mind before the thought, it is consequently a mosaic of worn-out thoughts."
In one of his short stories Munro imaginatively portrays the life of a fiery young Robert Burns, including this passage:
Burns held him for a moment with his hand upon his sleeve. "Tell me this, Will," he demanded, "Are ye a contented man? Do ye sleep sound at nicht? Do ye mind auld things? Do ye ever think ye micht be better? Do ye see yersel' the actual man ye are? Do ye meet wi' mony folk that understand ye? Have ye ever had but a glimpse o' a' the possible joys o' life, and seen them gaun by ye like Nith, down there, wi' ye stuck helpless on the bank?"
"O, I'm no complainin'," said the ploughman, whose mind had grasped but little of this fierce, bewildering catechism. "I'm no complainin', I tak' my meat, and sleep like a peerie."
Browsing a book lovers' bookshelf is a good way of gleaning reading recommendations. I am grateful to the book lover(s) who donated material to the bothy bookshelf. George Bernard Shaw, Robert Frost, Ian McEwan . . . and I discovered Angela Carter's earthy sparkling prose. One of the short stories of her Black Venus collection begins thus:
Every city has its own internal logic. Imagine a city drawn in straightforward, geometric shapes with crayons from a child's colouring box, in ochre, in white, in pale terracotta. Low, blonde terraces of houses seem to rise out of the whitish, pinkish earth as if born from it, not built out of it. There is a faint, gritty dust over everything, like the dust those pastel crayons leave on your fingers.
Against these bleached pallors, the irridescent crusts of ceramic tiles that cover the ancient mausoleums ensorcelate the eye [...] We are visiting an authentically fabulous city. We are in Samarakand.
I saw fit to copy out this passage from Ian McEwan's psychological novel Enduring Love:
"I felt a familiar disappointment. No-one could agree on anything. We lived in a mist of half-shared, unreliable perception, and our sense data came warped by a prism of desire and belief, which tilted our memories too. We saw and remembered in our own favor. And we persuaded ourselves along the way. Pitiless objectivity, especially about ourselves, was always a doomed social strategy. We're descended from the indignant, passionate tellers of half-truths, who, in order to convince others, simultaneously convinced themselves. Over generations, success had winnowed us out, and with success came our defect, carved deep in the genes like ruts in a cart track: when it didn't suit us, we couldn't agree to believe on what was in front of us. Believing is seeing."
As soon as I read these words in the preface of Erica Jong's Learning to Fly I told myself: I have to read this book, immediately.
I saw fit to copy out this passage from Ian McEwan's psychological novel Enduring Love:
"I felt a familiar disappointment. No-one could agree on anything. We lived in a mist of half-shared, unreliable perception, and our sense data came warped by a prism of desire and belief, which tilted our memories too. We saw and remembered in our own favor. And we persuaded ourselves along the way. Pitiless objectivity, especially about ourselves, was always a doomed social strategy. We're descended from the indignant, passionate tellers of half-truths, who, in order to convince others, simultaneously convinced themselves. Over generations, success had winnowed us out, and with success came our defect, carved deep in the genes like ruts in a cart track: when it didn't suit us, we couldn't agree to believe on what was in front of us. Believing is seeing."
As soon as I read these words in the preface of Erica Jong's Learning to Fly I told myself: I have to read this book, immediately.
Every writer has a myth buried in the unconscious - accessible only through the telling of a tale. My myth is picaresque. A heroine in trouble takes a journey which unlocks the rest of her life and confirms her as a heroine. The voyage taken is both inner and outer; it changes forever what she thinks of herself and of her life.
This pretty much describes Fear of Flying [and other books] . . . what these books have in common is the journey taken by a perplexed protagonist to solve a dilemma and get on with life.
However, in the course of the book I realised that a well-written preface is no guarantee of a well-written book. Every novel written, one could generously say, represents a slice of reality and its way of being seen, and has the potential to engage the attention of a potential reader. While I wouldn't want to dispute the inclusion of Fear of Flying on anyone else's bookshelf, for my own part, I must say, I felt the limitations of the uncensored outpourings of this liberated young American woman in sustaining my interest. It is a reminder to me that writing just whatever comes into one's head doesn't necessarily produce an enjoyable reading experience for anyone else.
I saw that many wildlife enthusiasts had been attracted to the bothy and had recorded in the bothy book sightings of different bird species, as well as sea creatures - seals, porpoises, dolphins, swans, and otters, who had been seen feeding on crabs on the rocks. The coast has become known to be home to otter families which have increased in number in recent years. It took me a few days before I noticed anything - before I could tear my eyes away from words printed on a page. Early one morning I got to spot an otter out of the corner of my eye, who quickly slipped with a little splash into the sea. A few times I saw a pair of swans bobbing near the shore, always together, gliding imperiously through the water like pristine noble courageous miniature viking vessels. The first time I saw the seals they were basking in the sun and paid me no attention, but subsequently they seemed pretty curious, following me as I walked along the coast, and surfacing regularly to watch what I was doing. They barked to me with their plaintive sea doggy whines, and I called back to them a few times - just asking them how it was going, what they were up to - just to show them that also I was curious about them. Somebody had left really good guide to the coastal ecosystem at the bothy. I can't remember the name of the author. His enthusiasm for the geology and the unique plant and animal communities to be found at the interface of land and sea was infectious - his writing directly transmitted his unbounded passion - even to the point of awakening a fascination for the different types of seaweed and lichen, which adhere strictly to certain zones above, below or within the ebb and flow of the tide.
For a while now I have been going around without a camera, and not missing one either - thinking that capturing the world on film only gets in the way of the pure unmediated visual pleasure of the moment, which is true in a way, but being interested in photography also makes one pay full attention to the elements of beauty in a scene, and, in this sense, increases one's appreciation of it. One morning, walking along the coast, I became engrossed by the task of capturing the play of light and shadow on the Paps of Jura across the sound. Another morning I regretted not having my camera with me as the sun came out after a spot of rain and made the oval stones on the beach gleam with bright insistence. It was just a moment which came and went. Just a unique, unrepeatable, everyday, fleeting moment, which came and went as the light shifts and fleets. Taking photos, and especially under Scotland's ever changing cloudscape, turns you into a carpe diem fiend - or a carpe momentum one - having to have your camera ever at the ready, ready to whip it out and seize the fleeting scene.
