Saturday 29 October 2011

Windows too

Our lives in Carradale have been brightened by changes to our house, alterations we never expected to have done so quickly. This is largely due to us being used to a world where engaging tradesmen is a slow process, where even getting someone to come round and estimate can be tiresome and from there onwards you are forever waiting for the call that tells you they are about to start. In our part of Scotland we are discovering that things happen rather differently.


Without fail, all our tradesmen have been enthusiastic workers who turn up on time then just get on with the job, barely even stopping for a cup of tea. Sometimes the only indication that they have arrived has been the thump of their ladder on the roof while we are still struggling to wake up. It seems the only impediment to their work is the weather but this has to be pretty grim by most people’s standards before they stop working and take shelter.

Windows now fitted into our sloping roof at the back of the house transform the landing at the top of our stairs and the new window in our ‘Tiny Room’, our spare bedroom or workroom, creates a bright room where before there was darkness as well as giving us a fresh view out from the back of the house. Alex, Willie and Jim all worked impressively hard in atrocious conditions, a cold wind blasting in from the west bringing with it showers liberally sprinkled with hailstones - and this was the better of the two days! It has to be admitted that before everything could be made watertight there was some slight ingress of water but this is not a big issue – we sailors are used to this. The new room is Kate’s room, a place where she is safe in the knowledge that she can spread out her ‘personal things’ there without fear of interference from any of my ‘man-related’ things. My collection of these, drill, angle-grinder, bits of pipe, etc., are currently migrating towards the garden shed.

Just for the moment though we have to park our re-organisational skills as we are prompted by our diary to embark on a long journey south in our own car, its first venture outside Scotland and indeed its very first contact with a motorway.

Although Kate and I share the driving, a distance like this is something of a challenge for our small car. However we decide that using it will enable us to make visits to our scattered family without having to put too much thought into the planning so ‘Daffy’ is duly loaded up and off we go.

After an overnight stop in Leicester we are soon deep in the Hampshire countryside looking for a yurt [a portable, bent wood-framed dwelling structure] in which we spend three nights celebrating the birthday and retirement of our friend Gerry. Our yurt was called ‘Beechy’ and was one of six similar ones nestling in the Meon Valley that twenty-four of us honoured friends occupied for the weekend. This was a new experience for all of us but we were pleasantly surprised by the cosy interior and once the wood-burning stove was alight it was amazingly warm. The whole weekend was superbly organised by Gerry’s husband Rich in his own inimitable style, convivially relaxing, a great time spent in the company of many new friends, a few old ones and a dog called Sam.

Everyone, except Sam, contributed to the catering arrangements which meant that we fed and watered ourselves well, perhaps a little too well, and the weather was kind to us too, a blast of warm continental air arriving just as we did and not a drop of rain falling on us.

The same could not be said of our return journey to Scotland, however, during which at times we found ourselves navigating almost blind along heavily trafficked roads hidden under dense clouds of spray. The previous day whilst stuck for hours in almost stationary traffic on the M25 it struck me that motorways share many of the characteristics of a prison; from the moment you turn onto the approach slip road you are completely trapped, unable to leave until the next exit comes along, until you have done your time. Any free will you think you might have is completely subrogated for the duration of your sentence. The only tolerated behaviour is driving in one direction at a similar speed to everyone else, stopping is not allowed, no matter what happens, and if like me and thousands of others you have been given a long sentence then you just have to serve your time, sitting behind the steering wheel shuffling forwards an inch at a time wishing you were somewhere else. Under these conditions it is small wonder that our baser urges emerge for none of us have committed any crime to put us in this place. Yet bizarrely we voluntarily incarcerate ourselves time and again without a second thought. The motorway experience has become an accepted feature of modern life, to be suffered in silence without complaint.

Our release from this prison finally comes as we cross the Erskine Bridge just west of Glasgow and turn along the shores of Loch Lomond. Suddenly we are surrounded by hills all tinted shades of brown and gold, until the rain starts again and the landscape disappears into the haze and is lost to us. 1,460 miles of driving since we left home and there is little that beats switching off the ignition outside our own front door.

Monday 17 October 2011

A day out with Ailsa

We first met Ailsa soon after moving to our house in Carradale - she is a frequent passer-by in the company of her owner, Betty - and immediately we fell in love with this affectionate animal. Unless, of course, you are one of those who believe in not ascribing human emotions to pets and other animals, in which case you would have to say that Ailsa is irrevocably drawn towards humans and would stay forever with someone who treats her right, which in her book means being fed and having her thick coat tussled and ruffled regularly. Get the behaviour just right and sooner or later you are treated to the full tummy exposure where she lies supine, head back and eyes half closed, in a position we humans would only describe as expressing sheer contentment.

So, borrowing Ailsa for a few hours one afternoon I set off down to the burn then across the playing field towards the path up Deer Hill. I am looking forward to the chance to stretch my legs up to the summit of our local hillock from where Kilbrannan Sound can be viewed from end to end and Arran’s dark mountains spread out across the horizon. Walking in Ailsa’s company provides just the excuse I need. This is a route she follows almost every day so her lead is soon off and we traipse across the village football field to a gate which opens onto the forestry track, then onto a narrower path rising to the left steeply through mixed conifer and deciduous woodland. This part is a section of the Kintyre Way, marked with carved green posts and well maintained, the tough grass underfoot being regularly cut back and drainage channels kept cleared to reduce erosion. But despite this being familiar ground for her, Ailsa is strangely reluctant to follow me and seems totally unmoved by my calling her name. She stands looking at me as I walk on, as if to say, ‘Well I don’t think much of the way this walk is going just now. You really have no idea how to go for a walk, do you?’ Rather than follow my lead she galloped off in an instant when she spotted a family using the swings in the playground so that I had to chase her and apologise for my lack of control of the animal. What am I doing wrong? Perhaps there is more to this dog-walking lark than I thought. Here we are marching along enjoying the scenery, the fresh air, feeling the wind on our faces, the rough ground underfoot, the sun on our backs, surely this is enough to please anyone. What more could a dog possibly want?

My voice is getting hoarse from calling her name, to no effect, and I may be imagining this but it rather seems that her facial expression, or the canine equivalent, is registering something close to boredom, possibly verging on disgust. Then I recall Betty saying something about stones and it slowly dawns on me that Ailsa is a Golden Retriever whose natural inclination must be towards, well, retrieving. I cast about and bend down to pick up a rounded stone, of which there are plenty to be found, and immediately there is a transformation in Ailsa’s behaviour. The moment the stone is in my hand she bounds up to me, tail wagging and mouth open (could this be a smile?) then she rushes on ahead before glancing back at me to check that I have finally twigged what this is all about. I toss the stone ahead of her, exactly the right thing to do, for straight away she bounds up to it, skids to a halt and picks it up in her mouth, briefly juggling with it to get her teeth safely around it, then marches on again up the path, no longer following me reluctantly but now taking the lead with her head held high and her hind quarters gyrating magnificently behind her. Ah, so this is what we do then. It has taken a while for me to catch on but now at last I have grasped what walking this particular dog is all about.

Eventually she slows a little so I can catch up then quite casually she places the stone on the ground and looks away, as if temporarily distracted, so that I can reach down and pick it up again. Once again this is the trigger. She springs to life and barely waiting for the throw, she is off at speed up the path, chasing the stone even when it bounces off into the heather to one side. She uses her front paws to dig away at the undergrowth until she can grasp it in her teeth then bounds away, this time choosing the deep drainage ditch beside the path where water from yesterday’s rain still gurgles and bubbles. Perhaps the water cools her down, for this must be exhausting work, or maybe she has developed a thirst after all the exercise. I can see that this creates something of a problem for her as with the stone in her mouth she cannot use her tongue to lap up moisture and she is not quite ready, at this point, to surrender the stone. Perhaps she even realises that I might not be inclined to go ditch-diving after her for the sake of one stone.

I look away briefly then notice she is drinking vigorously from the stream and I assume, therefore, that another stone will be needed if correct dog-walking behaviour is to continue. I cast about for something suitable but then I notice her climbing up out of the ditch with a stone in her mouth. On inspection I realise that this is the same stone as before and she must have placed it somewhere safe so she could take a drink then reclaimed it afterwards so that the ‘walk’ can continue in the proper way. She at least knows exactly how to behave, even if I don’t.

I know it is wrong to use the word ‘game’ but I don’t think we really have anything more appropriate in our vocabulary. I cannot help but feel, though, that this is not a game for Ailsa, it is the real thing. It is what life is all about – retrieving and carrying stones thrown by humans. By trial and error I establish that stones are her ‘thing’ and throwing sticks evokes slightly different behaviour. The chase is the same but instead of picking up the stick Ailsa lies down and begins to chew on the end, clearly a complete contrast and gauging from her tail’s activity I would say an inferior pastime too. For dogs like Ailsa, only stones will do.

Suffice to say that with all the splashing about her coat is soon soaked and since she makes no distinction between clear, fast-running and still, muddy water she is soon caked in black stuff right up to her armpits, so to speak.


Her energy, though, is boundless just as long as the supply of stones keeps coming and I struggle to keep up with her as she charges on ahead. She knows exactly where to turn at the final rise to the summit where we rest awhile, both our tongues lolling, and catch our breath. We are almost equally mud-splattered now as we gaze out at a view which is partly concealed behind the light mist that swirls around us. ‘Deer Hill’ may be how it is known locally but we both know that the Gaelic name, Cnoc nan Gabhar, really means Goat Hill, although the hoof-prints around us in the peat are of deer just the same.

Then, casting about I realise that we are stone-less – she has dropped the latest one somewhere along the way – and heather and peat have covered any surface lying stones here. I rise to begin the descent and once again she gives me that look, the ‘Well?’ one that she does so eloquently, as if the obvious doesn’t need to be said. So I grovel about to unearth a small stone and we are off downhill together once more.


Ailsa dashes off into the heather and when she disappears from sight I begin to realise that I might easily walk on ahead and leave her behind out here in this wilderness. I need to think like her to discover where she has gone so I listen to the noises around me. There is the wind softly rustling the heather and then there is something else too, running water, a burn bubbling beneath, cutting its way down to the bedrock, a ditch fit for a water-loving dog perhaps. And there she is, paws fully immersed, loving every minute of it and tempting me to join her. Muscles straining she heaves her bulk up beside me and lollops away downhill, back below the treeline towards home.

The finale takes place in the small burn just beyond the bottom of our road which the rains have swollen with brown peat-stained water almost deep enough to swim in. Ailsa knows exactly what to do here. She runs ahead and is standing knee-deep in the water before I catch up, gazing up at me with that same expression, the one that says ‘Come on then’. On the bank she has carefully placed the latest rounded pebble ready and she is waiting so that I can perform my part, tossing it into the deepest part of the burn for her. Does she know that in human terms this is where she cleans off the mud from her thick coat, where she takes a bath so she is fit to be brought back indoors again? Who knows, but she emerges from the burn a shade or two lighter in colour albeit dripping wet. Whilst knowing exactly what happens next, the doggy shake, I cannot allow her to wander off so I bend to attach her lead as quickly as possible. The inevitable happens, of course, and the shake comes just as I am standing close, thus transferring most of the water from her legs to mine but this is a small price to pay as I have enjoyed her company enormously for the last hour or so.

We say farewell back at Betty’s house after a good towel down, for Ailsa. The look she gives me now is a different one; I sense that perhaps I have passed the test and she is giving me some sort of approval rating. Maybe she’ll even take me for a walk again some time soon.

Saturday 15 October 2011

The Day of the Shed





The long-awaited day has arrived, earlier than expected as it happened. The two cheerful young men from Beaver Timber Co. had it all done in couple of hours. Thanks lads.

Friday 7 October 2011

Fungus time

Spring and summer have both come and gone and the season I have really been looking forward to has finally made it to Carradale. Along with some wild weather, Autumn brings us a profusion of colours which transform the hillsides, dripping reds and browns from every tree bough and changing the character of the Highlands. Then in a quieter way new growth emerges from the ground in the form of mushrooms and toadstools in all shapes and sizes. Fungus thrives in the damp places along our forest paths, feeding on fallen logs, invading the peat moss and even sprouting amongst the grass in our back garden.

There is a full spectrum of colours but these growths are fleeting objects which can dissolve to nothing in the course of one day once they have released their spores into the world. Whenever the weather allows we rush outside to try to capture their brief lives in photographs, to preserve forever what nature chooses not to. This page shows off just a tiny part of the Carradale fungus compendium, delicate things that I must leave others to give names to.

Against our wishes we are driven indoors when the gale arrives and torrential rain thunders down, an exciting but all too frequent event over the last few weeks. I reluctantly turn to my second choice pastime - exploring the mysteries of the house we live in, going through a process, familiar to many, of uncovering the work of previous house owners, learning about the changes they have made, what has been covered up by successive layers of decor and what lies still hidden beneath floors and behind the fitted cupboards. It seems inevitable that years of history will manifest itself in the fabric of a building in such a way as to subvert any refurbishment project or at least to undermine the timetable yet somehow this is something that is never given due prominence on TV property improvement programmes. It is not a question of uncovering poor workmanship, more an issue of the time it takes to discover how the elements of a house have been put together so that they can be unpicked without causing too much damage.

One of our domestic objectives is to provide electrical power to a garden shed which will be delivered and erected next week, my workshop space in the garden. So, having nothing better to do, I begin crawling around our roof spaces where I uncover a rather stout but unconnected length of electrical cable which meanders about the place and which disappears from sight beneath our bedroom floor heading in a purposeful way towards the front of the house. It no longer carries any electrical current – it must be a relic of a time when our domestic water was heated by electrical immersion – but I can perhaps make use of the cable if I can locate the other end which is hidden somewhere in the structure of our property.

Inevitably in this type of exploratory operation, the time comes when one just has to get destructive; there is nothing else for it, no other way to get to the inaccessible space I need to peer into. Perhaps I could rip up the bedroom floor to see what lies beneath but with laminate laid over our solid tongue and grooved floorboards this is not a happy option. In any case there is an alternative, to approach this space from below by making holes in a ceiling on the ground floor. It is at about this point that I discover what used to be a corridor or passage leading from the front of the house into what used to be a small back kitchen. This route was sealed off many years ago so that the kitchen could be redesigned and enlarged and the only evidence now is in the walls of our small broom cupboard beside the stairs in the centre of the house, It is hard to imagine, in a small house such as ours, a different layout of rooms from what we see today, but clearly this was once the case, I cannot argue with the evidence of my eyes.


I am covered from head to toe in plaster dust by the time I have successfully located the missing end to my cable but am satisfied that we can make use of it and do not have to thread another cable through the house.

As the sun pops out, once more we grab our waterproofs and don our walking shoes for another blast of exercise and fresh air, of which there is still plenty flying about. Does it matter that the rain showers come and go regularly as we ascend to the top of Deer Hill? Do we care that lying water quickly penetrates our shoes and soaks through to our toes? Do we meet any other walkers out braving the weather? No, no and well yes, surprisingly, we do meet one young couple, Londoners, who are staying in a cottage previously inhabited by their grandparents but since retained by the family as a holiday home. Shifting mentally between the landscapes of Southwark and Carradale takes some doing, we know, and they did have an air of puzzlement about them as if Kintyre was still sinking through into the deeper parts of the brain. It does take a little time.



Monday 3 October 2011

Ducking out

In Carradale the one big event by which we residents can mark the passage of the seasons is over for another year, thus heralding the end of the holiday season and the slide towards winter. I write, of course, of the annual Duck Race, an event which brings the whole village together in one place to celebrate nothing less than the voyages of hundreds of small yellow plastic toys down a short stretch of Carradale Water.


Pointless though this activity may seem, the event brings with it the kind of excitement normally reserved for a big football match or possibly an episode of Strictly Come Dancing (I speculate) as we all stand on the river bank cheering on the one we have chosen and named for the occasion. The organisers must have heaved a sigh of relief as this year we were blessed with superb weather, lots of sunshine and conditions underfoot along the river that needed only stout shoes and not, as so easily could have been the case, wellington boots. For twenty two years now (so I am told) this event has been a feature of village life, a way to raise church funds but also a social gathering par excellence. That it should take this bizarre pastime to bring us us all into one place at the same time is strangely British, I fear, but no less welcome for that.

Kate was unable to enjoy the day with me on this occasion as she was away in England visiting family. So there I was striving to complete the tiling around our new multi-fuel stove so that I could use it to take the chill off the evening, at which point it suddenly struck me that I was alone in our house here for the first time since we moved in. Maybe it was this that made me become reflective, to begin thinking that despite now being well into our third post-retirement year, something keeps peeping its head over my mental horizon, a slightly worrying thought that niggles away at me just when I ought to be relaxed and carefree. I am aware that the source of this comes from my working life for the years leading up to retirement which was, like that of many, a pressured, self-driven existence. This was not something I was particularly aware of at the time but it had become very much part of my mental landscape just the same. My working days never simply took care of themselves, they always had to start with a plan, sometimes concocted many days ahead, and then this measured afterwards against what had been achieved. If a day did not end with the satisfaction of progress being made towards its goal then it felt like a day wasted, one that ended with a real sense of disappointment. Worse than this was the fact that the goal still hung there with less time now to achieve it, pressure creating more pressure.

This was the treadmill which I walked, daily, and for so long that the behaviour had disappeared into my character; it became a part of my very being. It is as a result of this that today I do not find a state of relaxation very easy to achieve and despite no longer needing to, I find myself setting goals which I later measure against what I have done on the day. So why is it that I am still this way, more than two years after having to be? Why is it that, as our friend Paul would say, I still have ‘ants in my pants’?

Part of the answer to this may lie in what Kate and I have done with our lives since retiring, most of which is recorded in the pages of this blog. We have sailed extensively and travelled nomadically around the shores of the British Isles. We have lived abroad for a time, refurbished and re-decorated a house, then just this year moved north to God’s own country to do more of the same again. We have set ourselves targets and then driven ourselves towards achieving them, not against our wishes, I hasten to add, but nevertheless behaviour like this does not comply at all with the retiree stereotype; it looks more like we are still working! In our post-retirement lives there has always been something to do next, something to plan for, a journey to make or a task to perform.

We enjoy being this way, not fitting the mould is the way we think about life, it is what we are comfortable with. But what next? For the first time since retiring we have settled in one place, Carradale, a place we love and have no intention of leaving. We are beginning to live differently from the way we have lived over the last two years, a more settled existence. For the moment there is still plenty to do here, the jobs are queuing up for some months ahead – there is decorating to do, we have a new shed on the way and we are soon getting some roof windows fitted which will transform our tiny back bedroom into a workroom Kate can take over. But what is niggling away at me is whether I am equipped mentally for what is peering at me now, an end to our target-driven lifestyle when all the jobs are finished and all we have to look forward to is ‘normal’ life.

As I see it now, one of two things could happen. Either our whole personalities will change, the ‘ants in the pants’ will run away from us creating something new, something more in keeping with the populist view of our status, or else we will throw ourselves into new things, driving ourselves on into new adventures ever more bizarre and unlikely. Hmmm, I wonder which it will be.