They said it couldn’t happen

But they were all wrong. Somehow singled out for rough treatment, our little corner of Scotland has just been hit by a natural catastrophe on a scale few can imagine and even less could have predicted. Exposed as we are to westerly winds, power outages are not uncommon for us on Kintyre, but this time things have fallen apart in a much grander way. Just one night of wind and snow was enough to bring down so much of our electrical power infrastructure that repair is now counted in weeks instead of hours or days. All road communications with the peninsula have been blocked by massive drifts of snow and the weight of what fell has been sufficient to break steel and wooden support poles like they were twigs so that power cables now lie draped across the landscape.

Filmed in the immediate aftermath of the storm

As an army of workers tries to repair this damage, our village and indeed the whole area, discovers what modern life is like when the electricity disappears. This is not just like turning back the clock. This is far worse, because today we are reliant on electrical power for everything. We have very few backup systems in place to see us through and those that exist only have a limited lifespan. In our village those houses that have them are using open fires, burning stocks of coal and wood. Elsewhere most residents are equipped with emergency gas heaters and cookers, but for how long? Bottled gas is brought in by road, as are most other things, and with the roads being blocked gas heaters must be turned down low to conserve precious fuel. At first even the telephones failed but with the system having backup generators the phones soon came back on. Generators run on fuel, of course, so how long before this runs out? Even getting money, cash, to buy what little is left in the shops, is difficult – cash machines need power – and shops can only sell they goods if they abandon their electronic tills and revert to pen and paper.

Fortunately there is one thing that continues to function through all this - the community. This needs no electrical power to keep it going. It is the ultimate support mechanism that ticks over all the time and when it is really needed everyone plays their part.

With Kate and I away visiting Mike in Glasgow we hear about the disruption only belatedly when the telephones are first restored to working. My mother is alone in her Carradale home but her gas heater is keeping her warm and our neighbours are looking after her, we are told. Despite this good news we are torn between meeting our family’s needs and Kate sets off to try to reach home leaving me caravanning in the cold so that I can keep Mike company. Kate finds that her bus is unable to travel beyond Tarbert, a town some twenty five miles from home, but now separated from it by impassable snow drifts. She is forced to find accommodation there until things improve but all the time the easterly wind continues to blow its freezing air across Scotland.

The extent of the disaster is hard to comprehend from a distance and information hard to come by but it takes Kate two more days before the roads are cleared sufficiently and she is able finally to pass through. She travels with other displaced Carradale residents (a couple returning from their holidays in Spain) and on her reaching home at least now we have regained some control over this part of our lives. Our house breathes sighs of relief as the coal burning stove is lit, soon roaring away bringing comfort, warmth, and even some normality to our world.

Here in Glasgow, each day I set off in the cold on my double-bus journey across the city to Mike’s hospital.

Such places are run for the patients and not, it has to be said, geared towards those visiting. Nor should they be, I suppose. I am confined to seeing our son an hour here and there at set times of the day so for the rest I try to gain what pleasure I can from the dominating sandstone architecture that gives this place its character. The River Kelvin which cuts through the western part of the city, lends its name to one such structure, now a museum, that tries to hide itself behind bare branches in the park that surrounds it. Within the Kelvingrove I find an eclectic collection that celebrates Scotland and all that is Scottish, but gently so, without any fuss. I discover that the ubiquitous credit card reader is a Scottish invention and that the Glasgow Boys were not short-trousered hooligans but a group of artists whose vast and varied canvases take up a whole room here. All terribly interesting, although I am finding it difficult to tear my eyes away from the building itself with its multi-tiered towers each capped with a grey helmet that makes me think the builder didn’t really know how to finish it off. The entire west side of Glasgow seems to be built from the same reddish stone and on the same grand scale as this, refurbished tenements that are now enjoying a revival in popularity second to none. Despite my being here on another pretext, I find myself strangely grateful for this opportunity to explore and get to know the city in this way. 

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Latest news on Mike’s recovery

Mike is never one to put his emotions on public view and as he struggles to come to terms with his situation whilst coping with an extended stay in hospital and discomfort on a level few would find easy, he remains impressively positive. Medically speaking his recovery is going well – nurses and doctors alike are genuinely pleased with his progress as he is made to walk unsteadily about the ward. But it may yet be a week before he is well enough to leave hospital and back home is where he wants to be. If there was anything we could do to get him there sooner then we would do it.

Farewell to an unwanted guest

Spring arrives in Carradale once again, although it is still far from being warm, but our frogs are taking their usual gamble by spawning as early as they can. If they had access to a long range weather forecast this might improve the chances for their offspring but instead they rely upon volume, greater numbers improving the odds for each wee one.

The weather on the day I set off for Glasgow to meet up with Kate and Mike is mixed, bright sunshine for a while then later I am driving into large flakes of snow which streak upwards in front of our large van windscreen without actually making contact. Mike is here for the operation to remove his tumour – a day we have been anxiously waiting for – and as I type these words the operation is underway while we wait for news in the nearby Pond Hotel.

I distract myself by remembering yesterday’s drive when I was caught behind a couple of pieces of a windfarm tower as they made their way by road across country from Campbeltown. This bridge just before Loch Lomond was a very tight fit and needed great care. Only by lowering the suspension on the trailer could it pass under, after which all the traffic had to wait in the snow flurries while everything was pumped up again so it could continue.

Glasgow is very cold. A thin dusting of pure while covers the ground, the cars and the rooftops but the sun shines too and the air has a clarity which brings the surrounding hills into sharp focus, like looking through a freshly cleaned window. All day Kate and I sit around, watching mindless TV, barely talking to one another, not daring to think what is happening at the hospital just along the road. We know Mike went into the operating theatre quite early in the day so when mid afternoon arrives and I get the first call from the surgeon the relief is palpable. Alarmingly we are told that the operation is not yet over but nevertheless things have gone as planned, Mike is holding up well, and we can expect to visit him later.

Surgery is complete by nine in the evening and we hustle out into the cold to where, just inside the hospital entrance, a nurse is waiting to guide us through the basement labyrinth to the theatre recovery room. Our son has pipes and tubes going in everywhere with machines bleeping away, flashing displays and coloured lights. He is still sedated, but as I stand and watch his chest rise and fall I recognise that he is still our Mike. The emotion is nearly too much to take in as the surgeon moves forward to greet us, a tall slim man who cannot be much older than Mike himself. The whole surgical team stand quietly nearby. These are the people who have just saved our son’s life, doing their everyday jobs and not one of them seems to resent the fact that they have worked more than twelve hours non-stop or that their evening at home has been spoilt. Mike has been in the best possible hands and we soon leave him to their tender care once again.

After a disturbed night in the hotel – residents in the room beneath us choosing to have a wild 3am party – we move house and settle gratefully into life in Ducky on a caravan park at Stepps, on the north side of Glasgow. Ducky is jacked up on her levelling ramps then we plug ourselves into the mains and wifi then let our space heater slowly bring the temperature up from below freezing to something more survivable; the scary ice drip hanging from the tap evaporates. From Stepps Mike is a double bus ride away so despite feeling increasingly jetlagged we grab a quick bowl of soup then set off to visit him. He has been moved from Post-op Recovery to an Intensive Therapy Unit at the nearby Western Infirmary, to a place where there are more nurses and doctors per patient than in any other part of the health service. We sit at his bedside while he gradually regains consciousness - 30 hours he has been away with the fairies - and suddenly it is all too much for me. The tears pour down my face and for some moments I can’t stop them coming. Seeing Mike lying there, his face partly hidden behind tubes and pipes, is more than my emotions can stand. I can only tell myself that the most important thing for him is that his unwanted guest has gone.

Our lives for the next few weeks will be centred around negotiating bus timetables, journeying in and out of Glasgow peering through misted up bus windows trying to see where we should get off, avoiding alighting too early so that we have to walk long distances through cold, dark streets. In between travelling to and fro we lurk around hospital wards, making the most of our brief visits whilst staying out of the way of busy nurses. For Mike this will be a long slow recovery, painful too, as his body heals from the insult of surgery.