Bully birds, dozy tourists and long, long days…

June 5, 2012 writeanneLeave a comment

First Tuesday of the month – so it’s time for a glimpse of island life.

A brisk north wind has been blowing across the island for the last week. It has kept temperatures well below the thirty-plus degrees that we experienced a couple of weekends ago. But the start to June has been pleasant enough with blue skies and sunny days. The quality of the light is superb, making the Cuillin mountain ridge seem very close to the village.

And, of course, we’re enjoying the very long days. It is light until around eleven p.m. at this time of year and doesn’t ever get properly dark – with dawn at around four-thirty a.m. For all the crofters with sheep on the hills and in the fields these extra hours of daylight are precious.

The whole island is bustling with tourists, which is great for all those whose businesses depend on the visitors. But one of the single track roads on the south of the island got so jammed on Sunday that the police had to go and show the tourists how to use passing places properly. It can be very frustrating for the residents, who are not on holiday, and who need to get to work, school and appointments on time.

This month is a busy cultural one for the locals as it’s when we have our Mod. This is a festival of Gaelic culture. It includes – recitation, drama, singing, precenting ( a form of unaccompanied Gaelic singing) and fiddle, accordion and clarsach (Gaelic harp) playing. Rehearsals and practices are in full swing.

Our garden is a busy place too. We’ve been adopted by an extended family of sparrows. There seem to be parents, aunties, uncles and kids – and who knows – maybe the odd grandparent – as well as the young ones. The grown-ups are all over the feeders and trays – as well as hoovering up the spilt seed from the grass. Meanwhile, the fat fledglings sit on the fence, or clamour on the path. They wait – beaks a-gape and wings a-flutter – for some poor overworked adult bird to feed them. Cheeky wee beggars – they’ve managed to fly into the garden – surely they can feed themselves. You want to shout, ‘Get a job!’ as you watch them take, take, taking.

We also have chaffinches, bluetits and siskins among our regulars – but it’s the sparrows who rule the roost.

There’s a lovely collared dove who visits the garden. She seems very genteel and gentle and keeps her distance from the small birds – but the sparrows are having none of it and regularly scare her off. Even the local rooks and crows don’t dare fly down from the fence when this mob is around. The sparrows also regard next-door’s cat with complete disdain as he sits in the corner watching them. He ends up getting bored and slinking away.

It’s only four weeks now until the school summer holidays and I’m very much looking forward to my six weeks off. I love living on the island – but at times it can get a bit claustrophobic – and it’s nice to get away to the mainland and beyond. I’ll be getting a ‘city fix’ at the start of the holidays with a week in Edinburgh visiting friends and family – and then at the end of July, I’m off to Israel to visit an old school friend. This will be my third visit to the country and I’m really looking forward to it. It will certainly be a big change from Hebridean life!

The Craic from Packing Cases to a Housewarming Turbot…

February 28, 2012 writeanne2 Comments

So, where was I? Ah, yes, moving house. It’s done. Hurrah! We’re exhausted, but it’s done. It was quite a bourrach for a while there. But now the boxes are unpacked and it’s good to be reunited with all our stuff that’s been in storage for the last seven months. It’s also good to bring our nomadic existence to an end. Once more we have a home of our own. There’s still all the pictures to put up and some new curtains to be made – but mostly everything is in place.

We have surplus furniture in the garage, but I’ve already managed to sell some of it by advertising on the local free ads page on Facebook. Still got a couple of wardrobes to go and then there will be space for the ‘Big Beamer’ – otherwise known as the husband’s motorbike. Needless to say there will never be space for the car to go inside.

We have had a great incentive to get on and get the house organised as our daughter, her husband and our gorgeous eleven-week-old granddaughter are coming to stay on Thursday for a long weekend. It’s hard being three hundred miles away from them, so I’ll be making the most of the visit.

I still can’t quite get over the fact that I’m a granny but I absolutely love this new status. The love you feel for a grandchild is as, if not more, intense as you feel for your child – but it’s also different – in an (for me) inexplicable way. We’re also very glad that my very dear father-in-law got to meet his wee great-granddaughter before he passed away so suddenly in January. His passing has left a large gap in our family life, but his children carried out a most poignant and fitting funeral service for him where we felt his presence more than his absence.

My new study is very comfy. I’ve commandeered the fourth and smallest bedroom as my lair. It looks south over the garden to the Portree hills and the Cuillin ridge beyond. I think I’ll be very content to write in this room and I’m so grateful to have a room of my own. My writing has been so disrupted over the last few months – with one thing and another – that it will be good to finally get back some rhythm and momentum. My children’s novel is ‘finished’ (first draft) and is fermenting quietly in the background. My second novel for adults is almost finished the first draft stage and that is my priority. Then it will be back to the children’s book to start the rewriting process.

I still write for Words with Jam – the bi-monthly writers’ mag – haven’t missed an issue and am so proud to be associated with Jane Dixon-Smith’s most marvellous creation. Next edition is out in April (available both in e-format and paper copy) and the theme is storytelling. After my visitors leave, I must get on and write my next piece.

The island continues to be almost permanently swathed in grey. It’s hard for us Hebrideans to believe that there’s a drought in parts of England. We have had almost unrelenting rain, wind and dreichness for many weeks now. The bairns at the school are hardy though. We make sure they’re well wrapped up and out they go in all but the most foul of weathers. But the children – and the rest of us – desperately need to see some sun. It would be nice to go for a walk without all the waterproof gear on.

The current main concerns for many islanders are – lambing in a few weeks time, the Co-op’s plans for expansion in Portree, the possible arrival of one of the ‘big boy’ supermarkets, the continued practice of some companies to charge outrageously for delivery to the island – we have had a fixed road connection to the mainland, i.e. a bridge, for many years now – and the change over from the Crofters’ Commission to the Crofting Commission – yeah, spot the difference?! We can only hope the new governing body for crofting is less bureaucratic and more efficient and crofter friendly than its predecessor.

Oh – just been interrupted by a knock at the door. Scuse me.

Aw, our next door neighbour is a fisherman and he’s just handed in a humungous turbot. He told me there’ll be plenty more. The kitchen smells of the sea – incredibly fresh fare – Mr T was swimming in a loch this afternoon. Right must go – have to look up turbot recipes on interweb.

Oidhche Mhath/Night Night.

PS if you’ve spotted/been puzzled by the muckle amount o’ guid Scots words in this post – that’s because I watched a braw wee programme on BBC2 Scotland the nicht a’ aboot the Scots language. It was called Scots Scuil and followed six Scottish bairns who spent a week at a special residential Scots school and developed their abilities to talk, sing and write in the language. I was fair ta’en wi’ it, so I was.

Island Life – February – Reasons to be Cheerful…

February 7, 2012 writeanne2 Comments

As planned, on the first Tuesday of every month, the blog post will be about life here on the island.

Weather is an obsession when you live in the Hebrides. We have a maritime climate and therefore our weather tends to be very changeable. The island also has its own micro-climates and so the weather at locations only a few miles apart can be very different. But for the last week or so (with only last Saturday as an exception), we’ve had a spell of lovely relatively settled weather. It has been bitterly, eye-wateringly cold, but very bright and sunny. There have been deep, sharp frosts overnight and beautiful pink and purple dawns.

The Cuillin mountain range has been doing its Alps impression – snow-covered, sparkly and quite stunning. Walking to and from work with the ridge dominating the skyline is wonderful. Lifting your eyes to the summits does seem to raise the spirits.

And the birds are back along with their various songs and calls. All winter we’ve only had the robins, who never stop twittering in defence of their territories, and, of course, the ravens and crows. But now the finches, tits, blackbirds, thrushes and starlings have returned. I can’t wait to get moved into our new house (next week) and to set up the bird feeders in the garden and to watch the frenzy of nest-building that must be imminent.

Night time too, on this dark island, is always interesting for sky-watching. At the moment we have Venus and Jupiter watching us from just below the moon – and the recent, clear, cloudless skies have meant a spectacular show of stars.

The talk of the town at the moment is the possible arrival of one of the big four supermarkets in the island’s main town. At present there is only the Co-op and a love-hate relationship seems to exist between it and the islanders. The possible opening of a Tesco store has been talked about off and on for about a decade and it seems to be back on the agenda once more. But this time the Co-op are taking the threat to their monopoly seriously and have put up big display boards at the front of the store with their outline plans to extend both store and range of stock, to add a filling station and to build units for other retailers. Some people are all for this – seeing it as marginally less threatening than a Tesco superstore for the shops in the heart of the town – in a ‘better the devil you know’ sort of way. While others think it’s the kick up the bahookey that the Co-op deserves. I’ve no strong feelings either way – interesting times…

One of the nicest things (and occasionally most difficult things) about living on the island and in a relatively small community is that degrees of separation are small. A small example of a positive aspect of this fact happened to me recently. I ordered a couple of things online but when the courier arrived to deliver, I was at work. The driver was a local and knew where my husband works so went there to drop off the parcel. But my husband was out. However, someone at my husband’s workplace told him where I worked, so he set off again and brought it to me. Great service!

And finally – as I mentioned above – we move into our new, permanent, house after a peripatetic seven months of temporary lets. It will be good to get settled again. I’ll not be posting here for a couple of weeks as I’ll be unpacking and setting up – it’s not just the garden birds who’ll be nesting. So bye for now…