It’s not that difficult really… it’s just that I can’t do it.

Life constantly throws its difficulties at me, and being frugal – I know that’s not the word my detractors use – I attempt to deal with them myself rather than pay an ‘expert’ to sort it all out for me.

Take my alternator – a subject as dry and tedious to me as it is to you. It’s making a noise; I remove it; put it on the dining table; Linda asks me to take it to the workshop table; I loosen the four bolts which undo its casing – allowing you to get at it’s bits… I’m stimulated – I congratulate myself on the fact that I’m already beginning to recognise some parts of it: ‘Ooh look!, I say to myself… there’s a bit of wire.  And that must be its shaft.’

On the Internet video, it almost falls open when the bolts are out… but mine doesn’t.  So I hit it with something – just like you see them do in Planet of the Apes. Then I try to force it open… but nothing happens.

Happily, just at that moment my neighbour stops-by to help. He has an idea. He gets me to hold it while he hits it. Eventually he gives up – for fear, as he tells me, of braking my hammer.

Now, I don’t want to get technical – I know that I have led you far out into deep water already, and that your head is beginning to swim – but what my alternator needs is new bearings. Or if it didn’t when I started, it certainly does now. And I’m not what you would call mean - I am perfectly happy to put my hand in my pocket and buy a couple of Chinese bearings for the thing… though they may well set me back a quid a piece. I might even be tempted to go to three quid and buy British if the technical rep came round here and put up a good argument in favour of it. But he’d better be quick because already the cost of the job is beginning to escalate – I now see that my exertions have snapped four pieces of copper wire that look as though they were doing something important.

But the thing about me is that I’m like a terrier – I never give up. I always get to the bottom of the problem; and I know that that alternator will be singing along merrily before we all get too old to enjoy, once again, the inestimable advantage of having something that gives you 12 volts of free electricity.

You see, I’m a great believer in the old adage – The more you do, the more you can do. Yes – it annoys me, of course it does. I wish stuff wouldn’t break after twelve years of faultless service… but I’m aware that God broke my alternator for a reason – so that I would learn to make do and mend, and to develop my can do attitude.

But now that I have – I’d be grateful if he could fix the bastard… because it’s beginning to get on my nerves.

My re-sus team look relieved to see me stagger to the summit of Sgearbh Beahg.

I apologise to you who sets time aside in your busy week to read my blogs as I post them – more than a fortnight has absent-mindedly slipped by; my last post has gone stale, turned up at the corners, and is beginning to grow fur.

Now I know you wouldn’t think anyone could get busy on a Hebridean Island – yet we’ve had such glorious weather this last fortnight (sorry to mention this when merry England’s bluebells have drowned) that I and everyone else have been rushing about to get our summer jobs underway before the midges start breeding: cutting the ‘peats’; painting our boats; ‘planting out’ our strawberries – why, last evening I had to water the vegetables with a hose! No hose pipe ban here, you see – we’ve got lashings of the stuff; and it’s exactly where it should be… brimful in the Lochans. With ducks on it.

Last weekend I celebrated my Birthday by walking to the top of Sgearbh something-or-other with my medical team. When you get to my age and are still recklessly attempting hills with a summit greater than 1500 feet above-sea-level (though I confess that I didn’t start at the sea), it’s reassuring to know that the people you’re holding back are trained in some serious first aid.

After quarter of an hour I noticed that I was beginning to lather-up like a race-horse – which was embarrassing since I was at the back and everyone ahead of me seemed as fresh as a daisy. Eventually I traced the source of my distress to the long-johns I’d put on last October but had forgotten to remove now summer’s come early. I removed them, then and there, blithely sitting down in a pit of adders to do it.

I’m beginning to forget a lot of things, recently. A couple of years ago I forgot my sister’s birthday… a senior moment you will say, kindly – ‘it happens to us all’. But your patience will evaporate in an instant when I tell you that she and I are twins.

I’m not very good at sharing. A week ahead of my (our, then) birthday I tend to drop down a gear or two; start to coast; and abuse the world… I try on the mantle of my new maturity by smoking a pipe; addressing people as ‘old boy’ or ‘my man’ – depending on whether they’re here as a table guest or they’ve come to do the pipes – knowing that they will make allowances for me on account of my age. Who knows – they may even be planning some delightful surprise for ‘my day’ which they wouldn’t wish to spoil with a harsh word spoken in haste now. All this concentration, fascination, I might almost say, with myself, makes me quite forget that I have a twin sister who has pre-eminence over me by having been born ten minutes ahead of me, and that she would like nothing better than a little card – perphaps even a phone call?

So last year we did better than that – we went to visit. Rushing to get the early ferry, bumping into things at five in the morning, the last conversation we have before leaving the house is always the same:

‘Are we going to lock the front door?’

‘I suppose we ought to… where’s the key?’

‘…can’t remember.’ So, off we go for a week, or a fortnight, leaving the house with doors that haven’t been locked since we last saw the key, five years ago, when it was handed to us by the agent.

Justin

Phoenix from the Ashes tells the story of seven years afloat, meeting the wonderful, if strange, folk you meet as strangers on the Celtic shore.

What happened was that I was at a party on Sunday where among the company were Mr Schroder and his wife – and let’s be perfectly candid… they’re not short of a bob or two. Lovely people – stinking rich. I was dizzy with the implied flattery of it all when Mrs Schroder mentioned that she’d heard about Phoenix from the Ashes, and asked where she could get hold of a copy.  ‘I’ve got one right here!’ I said, lifting the box of books I’d brought in the hope of being asked for one: ‘…and if you’ve got a tenner I’ve even got a pound in change.’

Now, Mrs Schroder only buys goods of the highest quality and authenticity, and naturally enough questioned me closely about what she was getting:

‘Did you write it?’ she said looking me up and down doubtfully.

‘Yes.’ …There was a pause.

‘All of it?’

‘Yes.’ …Another pause.

‘Without any help?’

Living on a remote island far from the bright lights of a bustling city is like living in a forgotten meadow far from the from the Nitrogen-dusted, sterile fields of an intensive farm – the expectation is that anything that does grow will be stunted.

I asked if they wanted it signed – Yes; and did they want a dedication – Yes; and how should I spell their names? …and in all the to-ing and fro-ing of information; passing back and forth of thanks; me giving them a pound and expressing my wishes that they enjoy the book; it wasn’t until they were leaving the room that I realized I hadn’t actually been given a tenner. So – to save embarrassment; to avoid having to stop them at the door with the words: ‘Excuse me… but have you paid for that?’ – I watched the multi-bulti’s walk out, inadvertently carrying a free copy of my book… and a pound of my money to go with it. Why does that feel like a metaphor for my life?

Now, of course, a few quid shouldn’t matter to me – but the reason it does matter is that my chosen line of work is notoriously badly paid, and consequently my finances are as tight as a gnats chuff. What I do, by the way, what I excel at – and I think I can say that without fear of contradiction – is buggering-about-at-nothing-in-particular. Each of us should do the work God fitted us out for – and do that work tirelessly; yet the trouble with my calling is that there are a lot of charlatans out there who try to muscle-in on my line of work, even though they’re not nearly so well-qualified as I am to do it, and I find that the competition is fierce.

Not only is buggering-about badly paid but some people – well-paid enough in their own careers – fancy tinkering about in mine for a ‘change’ and are even willing to do it on a voluntary basis – completely undermining my claims for remuneration.

So, facing the sober prospect of choosing an alternative career – doing some useful work, perhaps (which I know I’d be completely unsuited to – and anyway, what right have I to encroach upon the occupations of others, and take the food from their mouths?) I walked the dog around the loch. It’s just over the hill from the house; it’s quiet… you have a chance to think, and it only takes about twenty minutes to circumnavigate. I sat down at the far end where the silence was so in-yer-face you could carve it into chunks and sell it by mail-order if you could be bothered to lick all the stamps. It was the perfect evening for a bit of work and so I sat there and compiled a list of all the places in the world – hot-spots if you will – where people like me could move and find no work was actually available.  It’s not a complete list, but it does give hope. Give hope… perhaps that’s God’s purpose for me?

Justin

After seven years of blissful uselessness we moved back ashore – back to what most people know as ‘the real world’  (though it seemed unreal to us). In towns and cities everywhere people were in a hurry: They were first off the lights; fast into the parking-space; ran into shops; jumped the queue; talked quickly; got annoyed; ran out; left the door open; made a call; filled their boot; selected the wrong gear; had a minor collision; pretended not to notice; roared off into the traffic; jumped the lights; and then disappeared from our lives forever. They seemed so familiar with that lifestyle, and went about it with such industry, that it made us ashamed of being simple.

Have you ever read Life on Walden Pond? In 1845, abnegating the comforts of industrialized America, Henry David Thoreau walked a couple of miles out of his town and into the woods in Connecticut, built himself a shed, and lived on the tranquil shores of a sixty acre lake for two years. ‘Men have become the tools of their tools’, he said, 160 years ago.

We all know people who long to live a simpler life… long for it ourselves; but fear it will spoil our chances of something… ‘we’ll downsize’, they say, ‘when the kids have left home’ – as though what’s killing them is great for their kids.

We found that living on a boat was similar to Thoreau’s experiment, and even had an advantage over it: he went to prison – willingly, and as an act of civil disobedience – for not paying his community charge (and was livid when his Aunt paid it for him, securing his release); yet on a boat you’re not expected to pay community charge because you’re not part of the community. All of which is as refreshing as it sounds – though, like Thoreau, we recognised (and avoided, I hope) the dangers of that – of becoming stigmatized… of allowing suspicion to grow about us newcomers when we dropped our anchor in someone’s shore-side paradise.

In all ways a simple life is easy, we found, if we worked hard at it; and so inexpensive that two or three months work a year – short enough to avoid becoming embroiled in the inevitable ‘work politics’ – kept us in luxuries which went far beyond a generous allowance for our needs. So attractive was our lifestyle aboard that as I sit here, in a house, ashore, even on this remote island, that I can’t think why we don’t go back to it.  Yet there is a reason… somewhere. Perhaps I don’t want to spoil my chances of something?

Justin

The story of seven years aboard – and of the quirky people who choose that life, is told in Justin’s book: Phoenix from the Ashes

Standing on the wet, low-water sand of Widemouth bay, on the North coast of Cornwall in thick fog last week, there had been the distant thunder of Atlantic waves ending their journey in foam… and the indistinct voices of surfers chatting to one another as they sat on their boards somewhere out at sea. Even during a walk on Exmoor, pheasants – thousands of the buggers – called to one another across the valley to hold territory… and in the distance farm gates slammed; off-road vehicles grunted over hills; and groups of four hunt-horses – one with a rider, towing three without – scraped their shoes along thin strips of road. (I suppose a lot of people these days are too busy to ride their horse home themselves – and if they arrive and leave by helicopter straight from the moor, they can avoid ‘paying the cap’.)  But here in the Hebrides there is nothing. Not a peep. It’s so quiet that at first it seems as though we’re at fault.

Not that we don’t enjoy the hubub of what has become normal life on the mainland – both for its own sake and for the moderating effect it has on a question we ask ourselves every three months or so (every three days in January) – namely: What the hell are we doing living on an island?

I enjoyed a trip to London whilst away (please look out for the resulting interview in the Independent newspaper this Tuesday (20th), with Matilda Battersby). Of course a numpty from the backwaters is always going to stick out like a sore thumb in London, and my first mistake was to have forgotten my sunglasses for the tube journey – it’ll be a long time before the sun shines down there, but London folk plan ahead. Then I got stuck in a revolving door to the newspaper office which was clearly marked ‘Pass Holders’ – it stopped revolving, made a sort of clonk as though it had ‘got one’; and then went backwards, forcing me back out onto the street – where, during the ten seconds of my incarceration, a long queue had formed; real people, with passes, waiting for the door to deal with their intruder. They looked at me humiliatingly with blank faces which said: Not from round here, are you? I asked a pass-holder if there was a door for visitors – he was too cool to answer me, but kindly flopped his hand in the direction of another door, clearly marked ‘Visitors’ as he pushed past. My third mistake was to ask the receptionist how she was? She didn’t speak either but sat blinking at me, patiently waiting for more information. I say she didn’t speak – she let her actions speak for her; ‘efficient’ was how she was… very efficient, thank you.

We had a great live interview with Emma Britton on BBC Somerset; and I did an interview with Talk Radio Europe – presenter Hannah Murray told the world (well Europe then) that she had tears in her eyes as I described our fire… she was great, actually. She even let it pass without comment when I seemed to say that I had visited Spain (where the station is based) by yacht, and would never do so again. But I meant that I would be reluctant to do the trip again, because we had a storm at sea which nearly killed us. That interview was live too, and – as I discovered – once you’ve said a thing, you can’t un-say it. Perhaps someone will forgive me, and buy a book. ‘Big Issue!… Big Issue!… Phoenix from the Ashes!’

Thanks for all the ‘likes’; emails and social-media messages – some people have written to say they know some of the characters in the book; some have written to say they’ve always dreamed of doing something adventurous; but most have written to simply say that they’ve thoroughly enjoyed Phoenix from the Ashes – and that it has been well-written. Thank you very much.

Thanks too for the brilliant reviews that are beginning to appear on Amazon and elsewhere – please keep them coming because only if people who have never heard of the book know what you thought when you read it will they decide to try it for themselves.

At this rate I might get invited to another interview somewhere. I wonder if London will have me back? Only, I admit that I was a very embarrassing guest.

Justin

The story of how Justin and Linda came to be live on a boat, following a house fire, is told in his book: Phoenix from the ashes; published by Bloomsbury

Four parcels arrived this week, by three separate deliveries.  I – that live in an isolated house, on a lonely road; which dawdles through a remote Hebridean island  – get quite excited to see a parcel come through the door.

If there was any disappointment attached to the deliveries – and I admit that there was some – it was only that they were all addressed to my neighbour, and had come to me by mistake. I handed them over when I saw him tending his sheep in the field by our house.

‘And did you see who woss drivin’ the vaan?’ he asked, confused as to why after 70 years on an island where everyone knows everyone else the driver had forgotten where he lived. Four times. But you never see who it was – because they don’t trouble you; they just open the door, walk in, ‘clump’ the parcel down on the first surface which will bear its weight, sign the chitty in your name, call out a cheerful ‘Nay Bother!’, and then leave.

Then a parcel arrived which was for me – 120 copies of my book Phoenix from the Ashes which will be launched on Thursday. If by chance you find yourself on the Hebridean island of Islay on March 1st – at 7:30 pm; come along to the Lagavulin Distillery where I’ll be signing copies. It’ll be great to see you.

The book tells the story of our house fire, and the boat we built as amateurs for a new home – but it’s actually about the people we met on our seven year journey.

When someone publishes a book, I’m always nosey about their ‘writing process’ – from first idea to finding a publishing house. A lot of people who are interested in ‘writing’ are – so here’s my process:

To produce the 90,000 words in Phoenix from the Ashes, I wrote 9 million. The letters wore-off my keyboard leaving me to guess which was which.  Half the 9 million words made me feel smug; half made me cringe – but knowing that I would soon boil them down to extract any juice meant that for now I didn’t have to worry whether it was good or bad – leaving me free to just write. Brutal editing – that takes the most time; having struggled to put some words onto the page, I begin to take every word out that fails to add anything to my story; at first it was like pulling teeth, now I’m resigned to it.

Out goes all the padding – such as lengthy descriptions of familiar objects; all the words which moderate or amplify the one which follows, like quite good, or very large; I take out all the bits which I’d slipped in to make me look good, sound scholarly, or ‘save-face’ – the latter particularly when I’m trying to justify myself after describing something stupid that I’d done… and, God knows, there are no shortage of those; I took out everything that told the reader what he ought to be thinking… and left it up to him to think as he pleased; then I took out all my jokes, leaving the humorous bits to tell their own story.  After that, of course, there was bugger-all left.

So I wrote more words to replace those I’d lost. Actually – it’s like boiling-off a pail of sea-water to get a spoon of salt… yet I would always get my salt.

I try (but don’t always succeed) to remain aware of how irrelevant I am, to write with humility, and to own my vulnerabilities – it’s painful sometimes, but it’s all done in enlightened self-interest: when you read something written by someone clever, you forgive them their pomposity – when you read something written by me, you don’t.

In the book I tried to maintain a balance between humour; drama; and action – and constantly got the balance wrong… but I found that it helped if I put it away for a week, then came back to it ‘fresh’, and read it again, when it would be clear whether the passage was too long – or not long enough… whether it took the reader up a side-road; or introduced him to an interesting new subject which needed to be more fully explained.

And I discovered late that the whole story comes together – gels – if each apparently disparate passage is linked to the next. Continuity announcers on the radio are constantly forced to link the un-linkable, such as when an interview about a near-miss asteroid is followed by an item on home baking. Yet linked they must be; well-linked passages allowed the story to flow. And if two passages couldn’t be linked, they turned out to be in the wrong place, and one or other of them was moved.

I struggled, frequently, to set down the emotions I was trying to convey – of course, I wanted my descriptions to be brief, to sparkle, and be immediately understood – like the punchline of a clever joke; but instead they’d come out long-winded and vague. I find it’s an education to read ‘classic’ literature, and poetry (taking recommendations from John Drinkwater’s long out-of-print The Outline of Literature). I discovered that there is nothing anyone is capable of thinking or feeling that hasn’t been distilled into a few brilliant words by some intellectual powerhouse at some stage over the last four thousand years.

When the book is written, the real work begins. And it’s distressing to find that that is so. To find a publisher, or agent I looked up the most successful books I thought mine was like: McCarthy’s Bar; Driving over Lemons; and A year in Provence; and found out who’d published them; or who’d acted as ‘agent’, if the publishers didn’t accept manuscripts, and approached them. I sent my targeted enquiry letter (by email) made sure that it contained no spelling mistakes, or grammatical errors, and told them why I thought it would interest them, and their readers. No one refused to see it; many refused to publish it. But with each refusal I re-worked the script until I began to get refusals which explained (vaguely) why they were refusing it – and then I knew I must be getting warm.

When a publishing offer came, in my excitement I couldn’t see how bad the offer was… but eventually my excitement turned to militant outrage. So I got an agent, then an offer from a second publisher; and a contract which was fairer naturally followed.

I’d be very grateful if, when you’ve read Phoenix from the Ashes, you would let me have your applause or cristicism of it. Naturally I hope you’ll enjoy it – but it will be both more painful and more useful to me if you also point out any parts which don’t ‘work’ for you. I begin with an advantage: Having a house fire and then sailing along the coast for seven years in an unusual-looking boat, meeting strangers by the shore as you forage for your dinner at low water is bound to produce some interesting stories.

Now I come to think of it, among my deliveries last week there was a bag of kippers from a well-meaning friend… I pray to God that he may be forgiven.

Justin

Is this Willies punt?

Shortly after I met my wife (she wasn’t my wife when we met, of course, she was a complete stranger to me) we went on holiday to the Island of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. I wanted to take her somewhere from which she couldn’t easily escape.

We drove up from London to stay in a croft – it was the kind of holiday where you pitch-in with crofting life, milking sheep, shearing cows… that kind of thing; and on one of the days was trusted with Willy McPherson’s skiff – a boat built by his grandfather – to go and trip the Lobster pots which we’d watched him lay the previous day. It was glorious weather; flat calm, dazzling sun – we caught 40 mackerel (Linda 39, me 1) (this was back in the days when there were 40 mackerel in the sea to catch) and lifted the pots to find four lobsters.

Taking the following day off to recover from our exertions and explore the island by motor car (their words), as we left the croft-house we were unexpectedly handed a picnic lunch on a tray covered by a crisp linen tea-towel.  It seemed rude to peek under the tea towel and inspect our gift so we waited until we’d driven to the end of their gravel track.  I watched Linda pinch the tea towel to lift it by one corner, and saw her jaw fall open: Four Lobsters, cooked, halved, and served with sauce boat of mayonnaise, twist of lemon, and crusty bread. Where in the world are there people more generous than Scottish Islanders?

That’s why Linda and I now live in the Hebrides.   And, of course, what with booking the ferry and everything, Linda finds it easier to stay than to leave.

If you heard our Radio 4 interview (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01bsmdd)… it won’t have escaped your notice that once-upon-a-time we had a house fire in which we lost everything.

On the evening following the broadcast I was celebrating how marvellous we both sounded with a glass of whisky when I accidentally started another.

Earlier in the week I’d mentioned that I thought it was dangerous to keep a display of dried Pampas grass on the mantle-piece directly above the wood-burning stove… ‘Suppose a spark flies up from the fire?’ I asked. Putting the whisky to my lips I found I’d inadvertently poured myself a brand I don’t like so, puffed-up by the days’ events, and imagining that there were things to which I was superior, I opened the door of the wood-burning stove and chucked it on. There was an explosion, of course, followed by a ball of fire which took off lazily – like a hot air balloon filled with sightseers – until it reached the height of our pampas grass which it stopped to admire; all of a sudden there was a phenomenon which I think firemen call a ‘flash-over’.

Sitting in our dining room, for the next few moments, was like sitting in a wood-fired pizza oven… and I think I remember Linda calling my name from her side of it. When I came to my senses I grabbed the vase – more aware of the roar of the flames than the heat they threw off – ran to the front door, and launched it into the darkness to arch over the gate like a terrible comet.

Back in the house the first thing that struck me as the fire alarms throbbed was how black were the walls and the ceilings – which a moment earlier had been white – and how miserable the room looked as our lamps struggled to illuminate it.

This incident, small as it was, shocked Linda. After all our years together I’ve become pretty-good at spotting subtle changes in her behaviour, and couldn’t help noticing that as soon as I’d got the house clear of smoke – by opening everything up, on what unfortunately was one of the coldest nights of the winter – she took herself off to bed without wishing me ‘Good Night’

Justin

The story of how Justin and Linda came to be live on a boat, following a house fire, is told in his book: Phoenix from the ashes; published by Bloomsbury    http://amzn.to/xc4qn3

I quite like wood.

And I’ve been interested in ‘medieval’  Oak-Framed houses since I was ten. I’ve always wanted to live in one; and now, in the late summer of my life, I’m racing to build one before my body crumbles. It’s old technology – a thousand years old – and reached it’s perfection in the 1700′s with the development of wood-joints (no nails, no glue) upon which our Higgs-Boson age has been unable to improve. Crikey – a goodly number of Oak-framed houses that Chaucer would have passed on his way to Canterbury are still standing! So why is it that now that I want to build one… these days… when houses are built with a target life of 60 years – but nobody expects them to reach it -  that after three-and-half years of head-scratching our architects have yet to produce one on paper… never mind the ground?

Another life-long interest of mine has flourished even more slowly. It, too, began when I was 10 and I got my first toy typewriter. At 17 I confided to my English teacher that I wanted to write. As a career. His reply to me was the reason I become an advertising salesman.

But some desires won’t go away, and twenty years ago I decided that I wanted to write a book. I enrolled on a correspondence course – they were awfully pleased with me: they told me that if I ‘keep up this good work, my success is assured‘. Following their advice I sent off a stream of articles to National newspapers, Magazines, and Publishing houses; and got back, six weeks later, a rejection slip for each submission. I was responsible for our postman getting a trolley.

One day, by chance, I happened to send a list of suggestions for radio interviews to our local BBC radio station. They didn’t read it, but the arrival of my letter coincided with the departure of one of their ‘researchers’… and so I filled his shoes.

But a book deal proved elusive.  One hurdle to it was that I don’t write fiction (well, not knowingly) and in order to write non-fiction you have to have done something interesting. A blessing came one night when our house burned to the ground… so I tried to write about that, but found it too painful.

Another barrier for me was trying to find ‘my voice’. When I’m not trying to be funny, I’m trying to be a smart-arse… and people aren’t interested in that – they get enough of that from their neighbours; or in management meetings; or when they go to buy a mobile phone.

And the advice they give you in these correspondence courses is lamentable: ‘Just be yourself’; they say – as if people are interested in reading the words of someone tormented by self-doubt, failure, and insecurity.

If you can pop back to my blog in a few days, and you’re at all interested in hearing it – I’ll tell you how brutal editing helped get me into print.

Thanks for following me.

Best Wishes

Justin

The story of how Justin and Linda came to be live on a boat, following a house fire, is told in his book: Phoenix from the ashes; published by Bloomsbury    http://amzn.to/xc4qn3

The latest masterpiece

You may be surprised to hear from me again after eating that raw sea urchin – but my urge to bring you another installment of how we live on a Hebridean Island has pulled me through.

Sea urchin doesn’t form a large part of our diet… but nature’s larder does – we only draw  the line at carrion. Although I have to admit that looking out of the kitchen window one day last summer, onto the single track road which winds its way across the moor for four miles to reach a dead-end, I noticed lying in the road what I took at first to be a small deer.  I knew it hadn’t been there five minutes earlier, and deduced that it must have been hit by a car within the last few minutes; and so went to see if it was alive – but injured; or dead. When I got there I found that it was a huge Hare – dead as a stone but without a mark upon it… and realized that it must have been clouted by a passing car under which it had insufficient head room. Two things make me hesitate to pick that, or any other animal up: the first is a feeling of deep foreboding about whether or not it is ‘all right’; the second is that I don’t want to look like Norbert Colon out of Viz.

The meat we buy from a butcher, or supermarket, is kept alive only for as long as necessary, in a large and choleric herd by the administration of a cocktail of drugs; and has been precociously fattened through an un-natural diet of growth-promoting feed and hormones. It’s also quite expensive.  Yet the meat we get from the wildernesses of land and sea is better than free-range; so organic it doesn’t need a certificate; and doesn’t cost a penny. Once we’re over the emotional hurdles of ‘wild food’ – we’re better-off in every way. And for flavour, it has no equal.

But even a looter of the hill has to earn money, so let me move on a chapter with my early island career. Having brought myself to attention by advertising that I could ‘make furniture with real wood and traditional joints so cheaply you’ll wonder how I eat.‘ …queues formed; my wood pile diminished; and a great number of the days I counted as my future, become those I counted amongst my past… yet at the end of it all it was me who wondered how I would eat. Badly priced jobs saw me working long days without pay, and giving the wood away. So I stopped doing all that and began to design and build unusual pieces according to my own whim.

During the long years of building a 15 ton classic boat we learned some ‘curved’ carpentry tricks; designed the appearance of the ‘rooms’ which were to become our home for seven years… and they had attracted so many admirers that it made sense to continue building one-off pieces of furniture. For houses.

The latest piece – pictured above – is an Elm chest elevated on dowels, with wooden hinges and latches. That is now one of my Islay jobs. The other two are illustration; and writing for ‘sports and leisure’ press.

I spent the whole of last year writing a book… a career so littered with screwed-up manuscripts and rejection slips, that it’ll be the subject of my next blog.

It’s late on Sunday afternoon, and I’m just off to prepare Ballotine of wild goose with Savigny-les-Beune and a Chestnut custard. (Larousse Gastronomique). I can’t tell you where the goose came from – but if you pop back in a couple of days I can tell you how it went down.

Thanks for following me.

Justin

The story of how Justin and Linda came to be live on a boat, following a house fire, is told in his book: Phoenix from the ashes; published by Bloomsbury    http://amzn.to/xc4qn3

Sea Urchin

My early attempts to find work on the Hebridean Island of Islay were not  promising.

There are barns attached to the farmhouse in which we live which have accumulated decay since the days when the farm was last a dairy – more than 30 years ago – and which occurred to me could be used as a wood-workshop if I were to drive a thousand miles to collect my old boat-building tools from Devon. I cleared the cobwebs, carried in a stash-load of timber I’d put-by ten years earlier and never used; and set myself up as a furniture maker… advertising in the local paper that I could make real furniture with proper joints ‘at prices so low you’ll wonder how I eat‘; and then waited for this surprising news to percolate down to the islands’ 3,500 population.

A car pulled up; and a man in his sixties got out, stretched (as though he, too, had driven a thousand miles, and hoped his journey would be worth it) and then waited for his wife to haul herself out through the passenger door before crunching over the gravel towards me with the unhurried gait of someone who has retired, and feels they’ve earned it:

Are you Justin?

I nodded. He tossed his head to indicate his wife – she looked as though she was going somewhere smart after this: She’s after a Coffee Table in Solid Oak he told me …bout that size – here he chopped the air with his hands like that ever-so-slightly arthritic Kung-Fu master in ‘The Karate Kid’. Can you do it for a tenner?

A tenner? I said.

Aye, he confirmed, with a single nod; that’s my best offer.

I began to wonder if I had hit the wording off perfectly in my advertisement.

Walking the dog along the low water beach this lunchtime I found a sea urchin – they feel heavy for their size, like a cricket ball; and it’s positively marvellous, as the pricks of their hundreds of spines – each moving slowly back and forth like eye-stalks, tickling the palm of your outstretched hand – to notice how the urgent curiosity you felt a moment earlier to find out what it tastes like, quickly wanes to ambivilance as you watch it; ebbing away until you find you are overcome by feelings of charity for the thing; and thoughts of chucking it back.

I don’t enjoy them particularly – inside there is a kind of coffee-and-cream coloured roe forming a ball of 5 segments; pull one gently away, roll it in a leaf of wild garlic, pop it in your mouth, and you’ll have plenty to think about as the soft flesh yields to your bite. I don’t think I know how it forms part of the answer… I don’t eat more than a dozen a year; but I was struck by how this food-along-the-shore is a metaphor for our Hebridean life; and for our life on board.

I’ve got more to say about my early attempts to find work – can you pop back here in a couple of days?

Thanks for following me.

Justin

The story of how Justin and Linda came to be live on a boat, following a house fire, is told in his book: Phoenix from the ashes; published by Bloomsbury    http://amzn.to/xc4qn3