Moving next door

Meet James, a small red-headed figure dressed in green who flashes past our eyes, yelling wildly in delight at being pushed on his favourite tree-swing. In his hand is most of a Jammie Dodger biscuit, clasped firmly and saved for nibbles on his way to the park just behind our house. Once there he tries every piece of play equipment once, then once again for good measure, but his preference is for the zip-wire, a favourite with most of the park’s visitors.

James comes into our lives via our son Mike who’s young lady, Eleanor, is James’ mother.

They come to visit us, to raid our biscuit jar and empty our lego box onto the living room floor, then one day Eleanor brings us something really exotic, a caked representation of Cirrus Cat complete with mooring buoy, rope, fenders and an anchor all done in icing, all beautifully homemade by her from photos provided by Mike. It poses proudly on our dining table and if we could keep it this way forever we would but the purpose of a cake is, of course, to eat, so eventually we have to commit sacrilege and attack our lovely boat with a sharp knife. Each cut is painfully made until Eleanor’s handiwork, our travelling home for many years, is gone. Cake decoration is such a transitory art form.

Stealthily like Ninjas, we silently creep our belongings out of the back door of our house, down a few steps then in through the back door of what used to be my mother’s house, a total distance of less then ten metres. Nobody watching the two houses from the front is aware that anything is going on but as the evenings shorten and we start turning on lights then we can be certain that word has got around. We have moved house. But it is the strangest removal we have ever accomplished. We leave behind a comfortable property in which our son Mike can enjoy more privacy whilst we have gained a new project to keep us busy during the coming winter. Inevitably there are changes we want to make and the first of these is to fit a solid fuel stove in our new living room so we have the means to keep warm should the electricity fail us. The storms of winter are bound to bring down trees, they always do, and when this happens sooner or later a power cable is hit and the lights in Carradale go out. So a first priority is to make adjustments so that life can go on without electricity. For this we need a way of keeping warm and somewhere to cook so the multi-fuel stove is an essential for us.

Outside in the garden, however, things are not so rosy for this house comes with more grass.

And grass needs to be cut.

Investment in a self-powered mower takes away some of the toil but eventually we come up with an even better solution. By applying a thick layer of concrete we create a hard-standing area for Ducky to live on whilst simultaneously reducing our grass cutting burden, two problems solved at one stroke! I am surprised nobody else has thought of this. [Kate: They have. They’re called roads.]

And speaking of our motorcaravan… any day now we’ll be setting off on a grand tour of England, taking to those busy roads guided only by a few satellites floating miles above us. We are loading up with shampoo, spare socks and screenwash for the time has come to put Ducky to the test on motorways, to plough through traffic jams and to avoid parking restrictions, none of these being things we experience locally. On our tour we hope to be dropping in on friends and relations scattered as far afield as Coventry and Cornwall, Yeovil and York. So be prepared, all of you!

Skye

We drive Ducky one hundred and thirteen miles in a northerly direction before turning off the road down a steep track heading towards the River Coe then park on a flood bank just a stone’s throw from the water. The air is warm, and were it slightly warmer we might have been tempted to swim here for there is a deep inviting pool of dark water in the otherwise shallow river but just as we come to rest the rain arrives, so we postpone such foolish notions for the moment. The Red Squirrel campsite has served us before as a convenient resting place and once again it provides us with a quiet night and plenty of sleep. The driving has been easy, as it so often is in the Highlands, on almost traffic-free roads with just the bends and the views to contend with and we sleep well, with ale inside us bought at the Clachaig Inn. In the morning with a light drizzle for company we drive on, shopping for food in Fort William, then turning west for the Isle of Skye heading for a Glen called Brittle where there is a beach of grey sand and the most dramatic mountains in Scotland.

Although we have both visited Skye before, together and separately, Kate has never been to this place. For me, however, I am returning here after an absence of more than forty years for this was once a much favoured climbing spot of mine. Strangely though, at first I recognise nothing.

I have no recollection of the road beyond the Sligachan public house, set on its own wild piece of moorland, to which I would inevitably have travelled from the campsite in Glen Brittle, nor can I recall the camping ground itself. The memories I do retain are of the mountains that drew me here all those years ago but the only hint that they are looming over us today are the steep grass-covered slopes which disappear up into the cloud. The Black Cuillins seldom reveal themselves entirely.

We walk the grey sandy beach to escape the campsite midge population which, in the absence of anything of a breeze, swarm around our campervan. Since these tiny creatures can make life singularly unpleasant the trick is to know their limitations and plan a strategy around this so as to avoid them. They thrive in damp vegetation which they leave only when the air is almost calm and the sunlight not too bright. These two simple facts tell us that sitting outside on a calm evening may not be a wise thing to do so we avoid this by shutting ourselves inside our campervan. A million or so of them have followed us in because, of course, here the air is still and they are not in bright sunlight. What is more they have a captive feeding ground, our skin, to feast themselves on till they drop. Part two of the midge avoidance strategy involves a glass or two of wine (for us, not the midges) so soon we care little for their appetites. Perhaps the fact that this onslaught does not deter us is evidence of how the last twelve months has left us reeling and desperately in need of this holiday away from home. Our son Mike is now well enough to take a holiday himself so we have headed in the opposite direction to satisfy our own urges, to find somewhere remote and beautiful where we can lay low for a bit.

We are parked just a stone’s throw from the beach and awake to a rare hot and sunny day.

Some time ago Kate was scanning the Internet and found a description of a gentle walk starting at the campsite and exploring the headland on the western arm of Loch Brittle, a place which many thousands of years ago was home to a substantial community who lived and farmed there. Only faint traces of these people remain today, a broken boundary wall, some stone foundations, areas cleared of stones and once cultivated, but we feel the echoes of their presence as we sit eating our lunch before returning along the shore path. Tiny flowers wink at us in every direction from amongst the lush, well-watered vegetation, uniformly green until you look closer and see the colour within, and all such a contrast with the distant looming dark shapes of the Cuillin range.

Glen Brittle camping ground is quite full, at first mostly with Germans and French holiday-makers. Their weekend departures coincide with a day of torrential rain and a gale of wind giving us plenty to watch as we huddle inside Ducky’s cosy interior. We feel sorry for those having to pack away wet canvas but the next day it is clear from the broken tent debris which fills the rubbish bins that many have simply not bothered. We are under no pressure to go anywhere and have more walking to do here if the weather improves.

Morning comes and steeling ourselves for a day of effort we shrug on backpacks and begin an assault on the Cuillins.

Occasional rain squalls blow us up along the path and it becomes cooler as we rise higher. Above us, appearing tantalisingly through breaks in the cloud, there is a wall of black rock capped with the jagged-edged ridge that I remember attempting to walk in its entirety many years ago. The Cuillin ridge is a rarely-completed classic which needs a day of good visibility or else route-finding becomes impossible. Taking a wrong turn in this complex range of hills presents dangers too great to contemplate and I was thwarted by low cloud in my attempt back then. Kate and I have something far more modest in mind, a visit to Corrie Lagan, one of the most impressive places in Britain, some would say the world. The glacier which last flowed here some 12,000 years ago left scratches in the rock which can be seen today as clearly as the day they were made. Huge rock faces are rounded off like someone has taken a vast plane to them, worked and shaped them till they are smooth.

 They lie about like beached whales in this windswept world far above the sea, barely eroded at all by the elements. It is as if the ice has only just melted away and time has stood still in this spot, hidden from view by the ring of dark summits rising with impossible steepness around us. So long have I been away that I have forgotten almost everything, but not the magic this place holds. I linger here to top up my reserves of wonder and awe.

Arriving back at the campsite we are amazed to see a convoy of around twenty-five Italian campervans arrive all at once, big ones that make our Ducky look tiny by comparison. Glen Brittle seems an unlikely destination for the average tourist. There is a small camp site, a remote place to get to, at the end of an eight mile single track road, and the thought of all these large vehicles queuing up in the passing spaces makes us cringe. Although one might expect the air to be full of Italian voices we notice these arrivals make little effort to leave their vehicles and at eight thirty the next morning there is a rumble of diesel engines as they all depart, en masse, back along the single track.

We time our own departure from Glen Brittle so as to avoid the convoy and move on westwards

towards Dunvegan. Kate poses beside an ancient Broch, a two thousand-year old hill fort, at Bracadale, before we drive out to Neist Point navigating yet another single track road. For a place where there is nothing really to see except the lighthouse this place is surprisingly popular with tourists. It is the most westerly point on Skye, there is a lighthouse, and…. well not much else apart from some spectacular cliffs – the MacLeod Tables fall into the sea here – but there are plenty of equally impressive sea cliffs on Skye.

What we do find is another example of something we have seen closer to home on Arran, something I can only describe as a ‘Cairn Forest’.

There is no sign or indication to say why this installation exists, it just does and has grown here fuelled by crowd enthusiasm. It serves no practical purpose yet hours of labour must have gone into its construction. Walking ‘through the forest’ is an unearthly, moving experience, not dissimilar to being in a graveyard, although there are no bodies buried here. Quite why I should feel such emotions I find hard to explain, but perhaps each cairn was built to remember some person, or some event and the thoughts of the builders linger on after they have left. Here is a popular tourist destination, a lighthouse on a point of land, which has a surprise bonus feature, something no holiday brochure can mention because its existence relies on human urges that cannot be controlled.

I have heard others speak of ‘Cairn Forests’ elsewhere and wonder if there will ever be a list of their locations or perhaps specialists who visit them, documenting them in some way. Is there an ‘ology for cairn building?

So let us recap. In just a week we have seen eagles hunting, gliding on the breeze yet stationary above the ground with their feathered legs dangling beneath them. One evening we watched the birth of clouds in a valley, the sides of which were green with damp vegetation, clouds that drifted slowly upwards on light airs. Footpaths have led us to settlements peopled by ancients vivid in our imagination or back to a time before man came to these isles, a time when the ice was still retreating. One road has led us to a corner of this land where piles of stones convey mysterious meanings and another to the best campsite showers in Scotland at Glen Nevis Camping Ground. We also discovered the sleeping place of ‘Snore the Scarecrow’ outside Glen Brittle Youth Hostel. Truly an amazing seven days.

Dublin and back

Like much of the British Isles, Carradale is experiencing a spell of unusually hot and calm weather, much to the chagrin of anyone choosing to go away on a holiday abroad at this time.

In the midst of this heat wave I receive a telephone call from a friend asking if I am free to assist in delivering a sailing boat from Dublin to Campbeltown, Ireland to Scotland. Having so recently parted with Cirrus, thus kissing goodbye to any chance of going sailing on my own boat, I jump at the opportunity this offers without a second thought. And learning that my services are required to help navigate and lend a hand on deck, raising and trimming the exotically made sails of a high performance racer, an X-Yacht, makes this all the more interesting.

For those not in the know, which means anyone in the world of yacht racing who has been asleep for the past thirty odd years, the Danish company X-Yachts has never manufactured anything else but boats specifically designed for the keenest of racers, high performance machines built with a view to speed around a sailing course.

One could deduce from this that crew comforts would be sparse on such a vessel, excess weight sacrificed for sailing performance, human needs taking second place, but fortunately for me the more modern boats have interior fittings and furnishings which match their sailing performance and make them a pretty good choice for someone who wants the best of both worlds – speed and comfort.

So it is that after half a day of travel by road and sea I find myself in a marina in Malahide (just outside Dublin) stepping on board to find my berth on Trix, a rather beautiful ex-racer. Owen, his wife Joanna, son Ryan and I soon find ourselves preparing for the voyage, tracking down the many sails and the various other bits of equipment which at one time or another some keen owner had seen fit to store on shore in the quest for improving performance, stocking up with food and other essentials and finding somewhere to stow everything on board in such a way that we can still stretch out our bodies in sleep. In all it takes the four of us two full days of preparation but finally we sort out how enough of the electronic equipment works to make it safe to leave and have run up and checked over the engine. By then the tides will only let us leave at the unholy hour of four the morning, this being the time when there is enough water for our two metre draught to slide out of the river to the sea.

There is a cool and rather clammy feel to the air at this hour but despite this we sniff expectantly for a gentle breeze so that we can hoist some of the exotic sailcloth we have on board and see what this boat can do, not too much wind, of course, but a little of the ‘light and variable’ that was in the forecast.

Experience tells me however, and this passage now serves to confirm this, that when the weatherman uses this phrase he is really trying to say ‘take the dog for a walk and forget sailing today’! For three days we glide northwards along the Irish coast accompanied by the put-put sound of our engine, the sails adding nothing to our boat speed. Each day early morning chills are soon replaced by scorching sun, for which we are grateful, but the only wind passing over the boat is that made by our own passage through the still air. Not until we are much closer to home, at Glenarm in Northern Ireland, does the air begin to move at all.

The point of stopping here is that our trip coincides with the Cushendall Sailing Club’s annual combined race day and we are soon joined there by other boats from Campbeltown for a sailing race between the two clubs. On Trix, however, realisation soon dawns that were are going to be raising sail and competing in the race on an untried and untested boat. We will be tacking the boat for the very first time only after the race has started, on arriving at the first turning mark of the course. And there is some wind. Will we be up to it and what chance can we possibly have against the other fully trained and highly competitive crews?

Our motivation is intense as we harden in the sheets at the start line and Trix takes off like a scalded cat, barely in control at first, but then gradually as the race progresses the crew find their places and we get into the swing of things. It soon becomes clear that this is indeed a very fast boat, one that can out-sail most others of a similar size given proper handling. After a poor start, one boat after another slips behind us; we slide softly by trying to keep the smug expressions from our faces. Amazingly by the time the finish line is in sight we have crept up to second position although right on our stern now we can hear the bubbling forefoot of our closest rival, their black reaching sail straining forward. With such a small crew, we had made the decision to forgo the use of a spinnaker and we are now being overtaken rapidly with only fifty or so metres to go. Somehow we hang on, giving no quarter, to take second place honours across the line and give us all the buzz of excitement that racers everywhere will know. On handicap we are knocked down to 7th place overall but at least we can be proud that we had made a strong contribution to Campbeltown Sailing Club winning the race series, the first time for some years.

I would like to say that the final leg of sailing trip was as calm and uneventful as the first but on the day after the race we have to cross the dreaded North Channel, that twelve mile wide strip of sea between Northern Ireland and Scotland which funnels and accelerates the tides flowing into and out of the Irish Sea. We set off off early, motoring with no wind at all, but once clear of the land the breeze fills in and the sea starts to jump about in an alarming way as it so often does here. Changing to a smaller headsail under these conditions is a real challenge but between us we manage go get it done and plodding on, we arrive safely back in Campbeltown in bright sunshine by the middle of the day. Many thanks to Owen and his family for putting up with me and for giving me the sailing fix I needed.

The end of a difficult year

Last night neither Kate nor I slept well, our minds forever running over the events of the day before. The process of ‘letting go’ was proving to be much more difficult than we had foreseen. Yesterday Kate and I took our leave from a very treasured friend, the boat that has kept us safe at sea for the past thirteen years, the floating home we have always felt comfortable in, no matter where we were, no matter what the weather was doing outside.

When we first made the decision to sell Cirrus Cat around the middle of last year it had seemed such an obvious thing to do, brought on as it was by the changing circumstances in our lives recounted here, We always knew that a buyer was unlikely to be found quickly, given what we are told is the shaky state of the world economy, so we sat back and waited, thinking that time would allow us to adjust to the concept of her not being ours any more, of not having a sailing boat, not having this particular sailing boat. So when the day finally came when a man called Niclas crossed over from Sweden to take a look over (and under) our pride and joy we took this in our stride, telling ourselves how lucky we are that Cirrus would be going to a good home where she will be looked after and cherished. Until, that is, the moment came when the deal was done. Everything on board had been explained – how this works, how that fits together, what this rope is for, what that piece is for – and it was time for us to leave, time for us to wave farewell not just to our boat but also to this chunk of our lives. Time to walk away. Then it began to hurt.

It had been a tiring day. We had arranged with the harbourmaster in Tarbert to use the facilities of his port to dry out in the morning so that a year’s accumulation of barnacles could be scraped or blasted from Cirrus’ hull. She would not be going far with that lot on board. Goose barnacles up to 30mm in length had made the bottoms of the keels their home and they must have been very disappointed, even aggrieved, when the pressurised jet of fresh water stripped them from their anchorage. Ordinarily I would make a point of apologising to them for my behaviour but after an hour or so crawling about beneath the boat, in the rain, soaked with spray from the pressure-washer, I had little apology left in me. While we waited with Niclas, his brother Matz and son Simon for the tide to return and float us off we chatted (thankfully in English) about their plans for their new acquisition whilst showing them around the boat, letting them explore every nook and cranny and every piece of equipment they could find. When Cirrus began to float we fired up the engine and motored to out to sea for a short test sail, which proved to be a longer one, so that Niclas could see that everything worked as intended and happily Cirrus did not let us down once, despite the winter of relative neglect, proving once again why we have kept and loved this boat for so long.

Back on our marina berth, all that remained was to pass over the Bill of Sale and shake hands with the new owner. Suddenly we found ourselves without a reason to be on board, we were on someone else’s boat! Full realisation did not come until much later, in the early hours of the following day, when it began to occur to me that I had left our boat in the hands of someone with only a novice’s knowledge of her handling. Manoeuvring a catamaran, particularly at slow speeds and in a tight space, is a black art which I have, sometimes painfully, learnt over the years we have owned her. I can say, with no disrespect to Niclas, that nobody else has that knowledge. And yet he is about to embark on a passage back to Sweden which will start with a traverse of the Crinan Canal, a narrow yet busy waterway, with hazards to negotiate on either side. The wind will try to take charge, requiring rapid actions and precise solutions. What have I done, I thought, leaving our beloved Cirrus in the hands of someone so inexperienced in her moods?

By the time morning came our tired brains had more or less sorted themselves out, and we feel happier now about what we have done. We have begun the process of letting go, of moving on, looking forward to exploring the Highlands from the land instead of from the sea. In a few months time our son Mike will have had his last chemotherapy treatment session and a difficult year will, we hope, be at an end. It will be time to start reclaiming our lives for ourselves.

The farewell to Cirrus comes soon after saying farewell to my mother, whose funeral took place earlier this month. Fashion dictates sober dress on an occasion such as this, something that does not come easily to either my brother Graham nor myself. I feel my mother would have appreciated the effort we made and would have seen humour in that together we could easily have been mistaken for a pair of Mafiosi.

The Lochan

The track to Deer Hill begins just behind our house and starts with a wash of gorse-scent and a blaze of yellow flowers as it rises beside a shallow glen within which, many years ago, was created a lochan, a small loch, by the simple process of constructing a dam across the burn which flowed through it.

This would have been done so that silt could settle out of the water thus making it fit to drink in the village below, and always providing you didn’t mind the peaty colouring that went with it, this probably was the sole source of water to the scattering of houses that once existed here.
Cross the lochan dam, which is still largely intact, and you are on the slopes of Torr Mor, a small rounded hillock whose flanks drop into the sea just to the north of the village. The day is warm and the sun powerful for we are approaching the solstice. The vegetation here is dry and crisp underfoot, the springy stems of old heather smelling dusty summer-dry as I brush past up the slope towards the tree line.

A single holly tree has rooted and survived to send its green stem up above the heather but the bracken whose leaves in a month’s time will cover everything is still in the business of curling out of the ground.
I follow a track, so faint that even the deer rarely use it, to where it leads into the deep shadows of  storm-succumbed trees, fallen after many years growing. Soil lies thin over the bedrock providing a poor toehold for roots which a tree will wrench out as it crashes to the ground. The after effect is a surreal landscape of both vertical and horizontal trunks and stranded roots grasping at the sky but with soil still clinging on. Walking through this is next to impossible without crawling under or climbing over the obstacles and I soon lose whatever slight trail I have been following. The sun penetrates through the holes made in the canopy making deep shadows but with bright patches where new grass is making a go of it, fodder for the passing grazers who come through here perhaps.

I backtrack and traverse to find a new way up the slope to try to reach the rounded Torr Mor summit, forcing my way in through a barrier of branches so that I am once more surrounded by trees. This is not natural woodland; timber is grown as a crop here. The conifers were sown close together and their lower branches, now starved of light, are just dead sticks which sprout horizontally in all directions like spears ready to catch the unwary. An uprooted thinner trunk leans drunkenly in its death against a stronger neighbour leaving a scar, a bleeding wound which still weeps shiny sap. As I pause to stare in horror at the extent of the injury I realise it is quiet here, the forest deadening all, but there is a tiny sound, like a squeak from a small animal, which prompts me to gaze upwards in the hope of spotting a squirrel perhaps.

I listen and it comes again. I realise it is the two trunks crying in pain as they rub together, the breeze gently swaying the leafy top of the tallest of them. It cannot escape its fate and must bear the hurt until the dead trunk finally breaks its way to the ground in years to come.
Clear of trees the summit of Torr Mor would once have provided a good viewpoint over Kilbrannan Sound, or maybe it was a romantic place suitable for courting couples, safe from observation. Since the trees have grown tall this view has disappeared behind impenetrable forest, inaccessible to all but the most determined and I could not get through it without causing myself serious harm. The only view is in the other direction, looking down over the brown waters of the lochan, which today lies almost still, reflecting the landscape.

Torr Mor overlooks the lochan, which itself stands above the house where my mother spent the last year of her life.

Had she had more years and better health at her disposal she might have been able to get about more to delight in the simplicity of this place, the beauty and stillness, but she has slipped away now and rests, in peace at last. In the end her failing heart let her down and yesterday her spirit finally let go its strong hold on life. I feel numb with sadness but happy that in the end I could be there for her, to let her go out as she wanted, peacefully in her own home.

Joan Eileen Rosa Matthews
1922 to 2013

Life’s little challenges

As we slide slowly out of winter and into spring our garden bird population enlarges once again, in more ways than one.

Our old friends the siskins and the goldfinches have spent the winter abroad somewhere and their return each year is as clear a sign of spring’s arrival as there could be. The swallows have also made it back, which means of course that there are insects for them that have survived cold and frost of recent months.

 

Our old friends the siskins and the goldfinches have spent the winter abroad somewhere and their return each year is as clear a sign of spring’s arrival as there could be. The swallows have also made it back, which means of course that there are insects for them that have survived cold and frost of recent months.

Memories of the chaos caused here by tons of windblown snow fade as the remainder of the white stuff disappears from the landscape. Arran’s mountains have at last resumed their summer colours, just in the last week or so, and this picture serves as a reminder of how we struggled through those cold days. We have to hope that now repairs to the power lines brought to earth by the snow are almost complete, lessons have been learnt by the power company from the experience that will prevent a recurrence of these events. But I doubt it. And it is still one of life’s mysteries (to me) that the electricity to our village can fail when the machines that produce it, the wind turbines erected on the hills behind us, still continue to function. I have heard the various explanations for this but a little brain like mine still does not understand why this has to be so.

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Although we might like to resume the more adventurous lifestyle we had adopted since retirement, Kate and I have each taken on a number of responsibilities, sometimes conflicting, that keep us close to home and busier than we might like to be. Kate’s training as a nurse has proved invaluable for our son Mike in seeing him through his recent treatment and my mother living right next door to us must feel reassured that such an experienced carer is so close at hand. Kate’s feelings as a mother will always take priority but nevertheless balancing these demands can be very challenging. But when you add to this the Village Hall business and Kate’s commitment to minute-taking for our local social enterprise company she finds she has little time for herself.

On my part a set of useful skills I never realised I had, the ability to build websites, is suddenly in demand in our village. Experience gained through maintaining  this blog has given me the ability to set up and manage other websites which are needed to support the new projects Carradale is spawning this year. Mike’s return home has signalled the need for more trips to Glasgow, a task Kate and I share, but combining this with the responsibility I carry for my mother’s care needs and her GP visits can make my own day to day life quite complicated too.

Of course none of this is what we expected when we first came to Carradale. We thought we had signed up for a quiet unassuming lifestyle, looking after only ourselves and generally being left to our own devices apart from occasional family visits. As it has turned out our lives have been taken over by events beyond our control, just like last month’s snow storm impacting the lives of the group of people amongst whom we live.

What is encouraging is to see Mike feeling well enough to get involved in something he is really rather good at. When it comes to computers I am reasonably comfortable going about putting together the material we see on the screen, creating a few pages of words strung together to make some sort of sense. Mike, on the other hand, now that his body is healing well, takes on a rather different computing challenge.

This started when a series of large boxed parcels begin arriving at our door, Mike smuggling them upstairs to his room before we had a chance to see what they were. The box largest of all, rather larger than the largest suitcase you would want to go on holiday with, turns out to be the case for the colossal computer he has decided to build for himself. Armed with nothing more than a screwdriver, a pair of pliers and various instruction manuals, most of which he never even glances at, he begins to unpack each box and fit the contents inside the case, plugging the rats nest of black connecting wires into place as he goes along. Just like his old dad, Mike is self taught, but he moves with such assurance that I am confident he knows exactly what he is doing. From time to time I am summoned to help him lift the case (which now weighs more than that holiday suitcase) to the floor or turn it around so he can slot in another complicated piece of electronics but I have to confess I wonder how anything so complex will ever be made to work. Surely he can’t expect to just throw a switch to make it work, thousands of calculations a second buzzing away in its processors, with every part connected perfectly to everything else. Most likely, I conclude, he will power it up and nothing will happen, leading to months of cursing and swearing, crawling about inside the case with a small torch held in his teeth, poking each part in turn with his screwdriver as if this will make a difference. I base this conclusion, of course, on my own experience with building anything complex and powered by electricity, which I have to say is pretty limited. Needless to say this is not what happens. The very next time I pass his room he is sitting at the computer screen (which came from another large box) with a smile of quiet satisfaction on his face and maybe just a trace of smugness too. And who can blame him!

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.