Quite close to the sunniest place in Britain...

When you live on a remote Scottish island you have to lie to friends so they’ll come to visit you for a holiday.’Oh! Well that’s kind of you …but we were thinking of going somewhere hot.’ they say.

‘The island of Tiree is one of the sunniest places in Britain.’

‘Tiree? Zat where the storms are …on the shipping forecast?’

‘Only in winter …in summer the islanders all live in caves to escape the heat.’

‘How come everyone doesn’t go to Tiree for their holiday then?

‘Because the caves are quite small and there wouldn’t be room.’

The first sign of success comes when your friend promises to discuss the idea with his wife and to call back a few days later. The phone rings: ’I can’t believe that …is that right – eighty quid to get the car across on the ferry?’

‘Yes.’

‘…onto a squiffy little island? …for like, one week?’

‘Yes.’

‘Could we come as foot passengers and you pick us up …if you don’t mind driving us around – I don’t mean all the time, of course …just to the main sites-of-interest …if there are any… ‘

A tearful re-union at the island ferry terminal fortified me to the task of fitting a people-carrier load of adults and children together with their personalised luggage into a family estate. My wheels disappeared up inside the wheel arches.

On the island we pay the same amount of money for a Road Fund Licence for our 60 miles of road as people do on the mainland; but people on the mainland benefit from a scheme by which their 250,000 miles of road are repaired.

I carelessly allowed one of my wheels to drive over a pothole and – what with all the load – the sump bottomed-out prompting a witty observation from the passenger seat:

‘Thank God this isn’t my car…!’

Showing off my island to new and appreciative eyes brought so much pleasure that it easily remunerated me for the burden of visiting its attractions  for the fourth time in six weeks …and in any case each visit is different – this was the first time anyone had slammed the door so hard that the windscreen  fell out, for starters.

Day four and even I was surprised to find that in my enthusiasm to bring my guests into an intimate acquaintance with every nook and cranny of the island I’d notched up three hundred sightseeing miles. It was time to top-up at Jimmy Campbell’s. He’s got a new car-washing machine, too, consisting of a length of garden hose and a tap.

‘Oh God, yes – how much do you pay for petrol on the island?’

‘…bout one-sixty a litre.’

‘ONE – SIXTY….!!!??? ONE – SIXTY a LITRE!!!?’ My guest was on the brink of Cardiac arrest …but a muffled snort started his breathing again and the danger passed. His expression fell to pity for the simple islanders and their willingness to shell out one pound-sixty a litre for fuel when no one in their right mind would pay more than one-thirty. Quite naturally he wanted to point out that he was more worldly wise and couldn’t be duped: ’God - I wouldn’t pay all that!’

…so he didn’t.

I always console myself in these circumstances with the words: ‘You’ll get it back’. I learned them from Marilyn Whirlwind – the native Alaskan medical receptionist in Northern Exposure. She said it to Dr Joel when, at her suggestion, he held an ‘open house’ and the native Alaskans wandered in and cleared him out …just walked off with everything he owned – like a charity shop for people who don’t use money.

‘My reward will be in heaven’. I explained to Linda as we sat down to a meal of pulses flavoured with nettles. ‘And they’ve invited us to Luton.’

What’s the attraction of Luton?.’

‘Well, as I understand it – they’ve got cheap petrol; no potholes; Churches close on a Sunday to give people a chance to go to the shops; and whereas we have a mobile cinema come to visit the island every four months to see if anyone fancies a bit of night-life, I heard one of the children observe that in Luton shit kicks-off every night.

Let’s not forget our holiday reading.

Justin

I'm not feeling very well...

There’s something funny happening to the frogs in our pond. I mean, I wouldn’t mind – but that’s our drinking water, that is. Fifty of the buggers – dead.

A couple of years ago I sent one off to Glasgow University so that they could work out what was wiping them out. That was the first year I noticed a problem – and at that time there were 400 little corpses, all littered about at the waters edge.

When I say ‘pond’, I mean Loch, of course …it takes twenty minutes to walk around the shore of the peaty water of our loch which has tumbled down from Heather clad hills above, on which there is no industry of any kind. You couldn’t find fresher, healthier, more organic water anywhere. Well, up until the frogs started dying in it.

I’ll tell you what’s happening to them – but don’t read this bit whilst trying to eat breakfast: It starts with their back legs …the skin changes from greeny-brown to a spotted light-blue, and at the same time the limb begins to dissolve until nothing of them is left but the skin – empty, like a miniature pair of spotted pyjama-bottoms swaying about in the current. But get this: at that stage they are still ALIVE. The front half of them remains healthy right up until the moment when the disease reaches the anus and their digestive tract, then everything just sort of comes undone. Only then do they peg it still with the torso propped up on a healthy pair of front legs, right at the waters-edge, head and eyes popping out above, as though they were relaxing before going for another underwater swim when the sun gets too hot. Which probably won’t be any time soon.

The people from Glasgow University sent their specimen away to London. The people in London wrote back to say it was ‘Otter-predation’. And they know a thing or two down there, in Regents Park …about Otters. Apparently the Otters were gently unzipping the leg skin without harming the torsos, eating the little leggies out of them, and then releasing the newly paraplegic frogs to get on with the rest of their lives as best as they could. Which was an eye-opener for me because whenever I’ve seen an Otter eating something I’ve been shocked by the blood-lust and brutality with which they kill things. It makes King Herod look like Mother Theresa – honestly it does.

Otter Predation. Imagine – people get paid for that kind of thing.  Are you allowed a second opinion if you’re not happy with the diagnosis of your dead frog?

If you happen to have a degree in amphibious diseases; or you’re a keen amateur; or you’re not scientific in any way but you used to enjoy watching the Muppetts, and you’ve got an idea of what it could be – I’d love to hear from you. Only my tea is beginning to taste a bit funny.

Justin is an unwilling adventurer

Game hunter.

Last week I was invited to go ‘beating’ by one of the Game-Keepers on a posh Estate. Scooter, my dog would love it, he claimed, and it was about time I got up off my arse and did some exercise. He didn’t say that, but I know that’s what we were both thinking. That was the clincher of the case he made. ‘When in Rome…’ I said to Linda, after he had gone, leaving me outmanoeuvred ‘…and in any case I LOVE throwing myself into island life – you know me…’

At farrow-spart the next morning I was driven blindfold in a 4×4 to a remote location – well, I say blindfold, it was a bitterly cold morning and the windows were steamy so I couldn’t see where we were going …which amounts to the same thing. We pulled-up outside a windowless building hidden in a remote valley where I was ordered to get out of the vehicle. A group of men – respectable-looking men for the most part – leaned against their Range Rovers puffing on cigars, and drinking whisky from hip flasks, chatting in English, I think, though the only words to reach me were ‘Fwar fwar fwar’.

Well this isn’t too energetic. I remember thinking.

A moment later I was ushered away from them and added to a different group – hardened grizzly men, this bunch, who were wearing the unusual combination of army camouflage-fatigues together with a high-vis sash – they looked me up and down until I felt quite uncomfortable in my Onesies and trainers. We were each handed a stick ….at that point I began to smell a rat because I’d noticed that the first group were armed with guns.

Then we got our instructions: ‘See that hill?’ we each turned to the other, grunting – there was no hiding the fact  …Yes, we could see it; ‘Well, walk up that hill and hide in a bush …then, when you hear a whistle, let go of your dogs, hit the bush with your stick, and start shouting …that’s all there is to it. Even at that stage I was happy to go along with it because I imagined that after lunch we’d change sides: the ‘other’ fellows would be sent to climb the hill, and we’d stand around in silly hats drinking whisky, balancing guns over our shoulders, smoking cigars, and saying Fwar fwar fwar.

So we went up the hill and hid in a bush, and when we heard the whistle – complying with their wishes to the letter – began hitting the trees with our sticks, and shouting. It was difficult to know what to shout. We were all so very British that shouting didn’t come naturally to us at all.  Some went for ‘Ooo, Ooo, Ooo’; others: ‘Yah! Yah!’; whilst I racked my brains for the most commonly shouted word in the English language – so as not to make a fool of myself – before hitting on: ‘FIRE!’

I could see why we’d been taken somewhere remote to do this – it’s like when you go on one of those new-age retreats in Wales which you’ve attended in the hope of saving your marriage; and they ask you strip-off, roll on a cactus, and bellow like a donkey – you wouldn’t do it unless you were so completely out-in-the-sticks that there was no danger of bumping into someone you knew. And you stop doing it pretty quickly when someone comes up to you and says: ‘Hello! Justin isn’t it?’

But get this: No sooner had I begun shouting and banging my stick than a gun went off. Which I found a bit sinister.  I shouted again and another shot followed, straight over my head. Before I knew it, I was yelling like a mad man whilst gun-fire cracked-off all around us – aimed in our direction! We didn’t know which way to run. I’m not brave – I’ll admit that …I was first away – I leapt from bush to bush; yelling, – yet the more I ran, the more frenzied the gun-fire became.

Then things took a serious turn – from where I was hiding I overheard one of the men shout: ‘GOT ONE!!’ and another say: ‘No – he’s only winged …fetch him over here and I’ll wring his neck.’ Blood lust, you see …that’s the effect it has – the Gentleman in them had gone; the savage returned: it was like a cocktail party in West Kensington.

How I survived the next eight hours I am at a loss to explain …though I have read a lot of WWII books written by deserters. Even my creator expected the day to end differently and was busily preparing me a place downstairs. But just as it was growing dark, and I was resigned to spending a winter’s night cowering amongst the roots of a tree, I saw a pair of gaiters standing by my side and looked up to see the Keeper. He knocked the breath out of me by asking; ‘Did you enjoy it?’ When the good Lord had reinvested me with the power of speech, I said: ‘Have you taken leave of your senses? …You drag me out of bed in my PJ’s to crash through the undergrowth for eight hours as part of a live-firing exercise  manned by lunatics – and when you find that by some chance I’ve survived, you ask me if I’ve ‘enjoyed it’ – what on earth do you suppose I get out of a day like this?’

‘Oops nearly forgot…’ he said, and handed me an envelope with thirty quid in it. THIRTY QUID!!! I mean, I wouldn’t mind but the minimum hourly wage is set at six-nineteen – and that’s for being indoors …in a heated factory …plucking fish.

Just after I got home, there was a scratching at the door, and I opened it to find Scooter dragging the corpses of two deer up the steps. ‘Put these in the freezer,’ he said, ‘I won’t be a minute… I’ve managed to get us some rather nice cigars.’ As he was leaving he stopped and called back over his shoulder; ‘Oh and …you don’t want a shed-load of Woodcock, do you?’

***

Phoenix from the Ashes is an even less likely – but true – story which describes one thrilling way in which you could take maximum advantage of the fact that your house has been lost in an uninsured blaze. Don’t worry, it’s funny.

If you’ve read the book, and could offer others the benefit of your thoughts by way of a review on a site like Amazon – thank you, it helps me a lot, and I shall be forever in your debt.

Book two – provisionally titled Linda catches Crabs - is well on it’s way …more news soon.

Justin

Two Deer

Holiday of a lifetime...?

Last year we accidentally spent an evening in a caravan park entertainment facility in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, where static caravans – thousands of the buggers, all in rows – are let by the week …those which are not cherished second-homes. We wouldn’t have missed it for worlds.

Driving through the gates it was alarming to see the conditions in which some people take an annual holiday …the shaven-headed security-guards were polite so that I was choked with remorse for ever having been afraid of them. The first room in the complex was filled with the buzzers and sirens of one-arm bandits pumped by desperate-looking men. The second, the restaurant, was a huge child-friendly affair in which it was heart-warming to see what liberty the children enjoyed as they climbed over tables with food hanging from their mouths …it was like a come-as-you-please party at Wayne and Waynetta’s – and judging by the carpet we’d only just missed a bloody-good bun-fight.

We sat down at a table in which the previous diners had whiled away their long wait for service by drawing amusing faces in the grease using their fingers. The waitress handed us each a sticky menu listing four or five dishes incapable of disappointing. When she noticed the grease-drawings she seemed genuinely shocked that people of our age could be so childish. With that she lost all patience with us and stood tapping her pad with the end of her pen to let us know that we seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time to read a menu only four items long; and had better things to do than idle her life away with us. It was diverting to imagine that she was someone’s daughter …and that she would one day marry, and make someone very miserable.

Two cinema screens competed for our attention, the first was reminiscing on the 100 best goals this season – it wasn’t one of your moody, dull-and-dusty, quiet reminiscences: in between shouting himself so hoarse the only the word you could recognise was: ‘GOAL!!!’ …that commentator was weeping real tears – the other screen was filled with penguins singing rock-ballads.

In the third room -The Cabaret Suite – the bar was illuminated with UV tube-lighting causing everything to glow with Persil whiteness. Down a few steps there was a dance floor; above that a fluffy pink-stage surrounded by coloured light bulbs which turned themselves on and off in a mexican wave – and with commanding views over all, a horse-shoe arrangement of tables at which blokes wearing string vests held not pint’s – but Vases filled with lager, in hands the size of shovels. They were hard-looking men whose heads and torsos had con-joined like overfilled Mr. Grumpy balloons – opposite them, malnourished wives, and face-painted children wearing wings, tails and halo’s. The women had gone to lengths to dress-up and wore pomagne-cocktails of frocks - not available on the high street – which flowed-ever with bustle …and set them off with plastic Tiaras. They were dark haired women with pretty eyes which concealed a secret. And when they hit that dance floor they looked as though they’d been sitting perfectly still for an hour, and now had only three minutes in which to enjoy themselves.

The cabaret singer was surprisingly good, a Buble-style crooner who made you wonder what on earth he was doing here. Dressed like one of those loveable-ragamuffin porcelains you see in the Prize Cabinet of a Bingo Hall – he wore a Trilby tipped down over the eyes, baggy cavalry-twill trousers ending in turn ups, white socks and shoes. His second song answered the question of how he came to be here  …it sounded identical to the first – as did the third, and by song four – also identical – he was boo-ed off stage.

Boo-ed off stage, for christ’s sake – were they mad? …Talk about cutting your nose to spite your face - what the f–k are we going to do for a singer now? …all the way out here; at short notice …and at this time of the night?  It was humiliating for the crooner, and you somehow wanted to make it all right for him – if you or I had been boo-ed off that stage, by that audience, we’d have said to ourselves: ‘ That is the LAST effing-time I ever walk on a stage in my LIFE!’ If he managed to get away clutching one last shred of dignity – the Entertainment Manager took it from him with her next breath: a blonde-haired woman of about 30 she rushed onto the stage to head-off the growing rebellion dressed in Ostrich Feathers, and looking like a pink candy-floss; ‘Come on – Clap!’ she bawled at us; ‘ …he wasn’t THAT bad!’

Just a thought: If you live in West Kensington and have just tossed aside the usual pile of holiday brochures tediously filled with the selections of Nile Cruises; Kenyan Safaris; or Pilgrimages to Angkor Wat – why not stay at home this year for a holiday which really does offer something for everyone? Fill your boots.

Justin is author of Phoenix from the Ashes, an accidental adventure…

Caol Ila's Bowsprit

Lay-up Mooring

Earlier in the year one of the Whisky Distilleries here on the Isle of Islay had an open day and invited me to be one of their attractions: they suggested I park my sailing boat at their pier, invite their guests on board for a ‘wee nozzy’, and set up a table-sale of my artwork, and book on the pier head. I knew I’d find it humiliating.

I took it as a bad sign when less than a minute into the voyage to bring my boat to them I hit a rock …mounted it actually.

At the show I set up my display with a growing sense of shame; for an hour no one walked onto the pier, then came the moment I’d been dreading – a visitor. It’s very generous of her, I thought, to come out of her way – but I hope she makes short work of it, looks through my prints, says something kind, and then moves on.

As she approached, I sauntered away …well, she didn’t want me breathing down her neck – did she? She put her bag down on my un-manned table, and when our eyes met, called a cheery ‘hello’.

She looked through my prints one by one. My stomach churned – had she nothing better to do?

‘Where did you draw this scene?’ she asked holding one up. I told her …I even managed to stop myself from apologising for it in some way.

‘I like them all,’ she told me, ‘…but particularly this one.’ She held it close-to, then far away, back and forth; before finally getting out her purse. ‘Yes! – this is the one I’ll have, I think..’

I wanted to say to her: ‘Listen, you don’t have to do this.’

But if I didn’t stop her from buying it I’d be able to answer the inevitable after-show enquiries with the words: ‘Yes – as a matter of fact someone bought a picture.’

I was just giving her some change when a Japanese man purposed up to my table and began flicking through the prints. He bought two. And by the time he left with his pictures, and his change, and had had his picture taken with me and his friends; a small crowd had formed. Arms reached in from all directions grabbing prints, and copies of my book. Not only that, but so it continued for the rest of the day. It was a sell-out; it was thrilling, and immensely encouraging, too.

At the risk of cheesing my story – I notice that it’s nearly christmas, the time when we all buy shed-loads of interesting pressies for each other – if you know someone who’d like one of my mounted Maritime Limited-Edition Prints – which are £48, normally – tell me which one you like, and I’ll send it to you for £29 – including UK postage. The quality of the ink and paper remains the same ‘collectors’ standard. Hmmm, sounds interesting. Overseas, postage may be another fiver or so, by air mail.

And if that’s not what you’re looking for – I’ve got a Weimaraner you can have for nothing; and I’ll pay the postage on him to anywhere in the world.

T5PZXCCR7V8Q

Yesterday there was one outside the window – for about an hour. Even so you couldn’t get a good view of it because for most of that time it had its head stuck inside the chest cavity of a dead Hare. The Hare had died a few days earlier, and although I had noticed it; as the days rolled past I felt increasingly disinclined to go and pick it up. Well, you don’t like to, do you?

And in any case it had been raining hard for days – and then on the first dry day when I could have picked it up, I noticed flies taking off from it, practising for an air show, so I didn’t like to disturb them in case I caused an accident.

That ferret was huge.

Anyway, this morning I was just in the utility room feeding the dog when I noticed some strange droppings. Scooter the dog is a Weimaraner – Weimaraner’s have the most sensitive noses on the planet …It’s a little known fact, but ya Weimaraner can detect the presence of a pigs-ear doggy-snack even when it has been welded inside a lead box and thrown into 100ft of murky water.

So I was slightly puzzled when he showed no interest in the droppings. But then I remembered the other thing about the Weimaraner …the other thing about the Weimaraner is that as soon as the lid comes off the doggy-cruckle bin all five senses immediately vacate the body so as not to get damaged whilst the frenzied corpse goes into epileptic spasms of excitement, and return only hesitantly to it after the bowl is empty.

When ‘Smell’ had decided to reinvest the corpse with its powers – Scooter went straight over to the droppings, and then followed the footsteps (invisible to the human eye) of the creature that had deposited them onto my floor – whether because it had suddenly found itself caught short, or as a personal slight to me, history will probably never learn – out into the next room and to a heap of Linda’s horse-grooming equipment. Having got to it Scooter stopped and ‘pointed’, as much as to say the creature that has incomoded you is sitting under that horse blanket (Weimaraner’s are very Dickensian in their speech patterns) …remove for me that blanket, square away, and I shall obtain the retribution you seek – right down to the last squeak.

Before I could remove the blanket, as instructed, Scooter shot backwards and went around to the other side of a partition wall, and at the same time I remembered that there was a hole in the wall down there, which had been made by a diligent plumber who had every intention of preventing the house from flooding by running an overflow pipe through it one fine day before he retired – but happily he is not yet even sixty; has time on his side, and so the hole remains: through it, the intruder made good his escape …and Scooter saw him go. But he only got as far as the next room.

You know those fishing nets you can buy for children in seaside Toy and Novelty shops – the ones mounted on a bamboo pole, with a wire hoop, and some green netting? Well, one of those was amongst the toot bequeathed to us by the previous tenants, and this morning it made it’s very first catch.

I put the ferret – or whatever it was – into a big plastic tub, threw in some sawdust so that it had something nice to lie back on, and then waited for my farmer/neighbour to pop by – as he does everyday- to see my zoo. He took one look at it, declared it was a Pole-Cat, and then proposed we train it to hunt rabbit, and keep us in rabbit-stew for the rest of our natural lives.

I wanted here to ask you – I wanted to run a little opinion poll – I was going to ask you what you thought I should do with it, and kick things off by positing three possible courses of action; viz -

1/ Drown it.  2/ Drive it a long way from the house, and restore its freedom. 3/ Keep it as a pet and use it for ferreting-out rabbits so that me and my neighbour can enjoy the economic advantages of a sharp reduction in butchers bills.

I was going to run that little opinion poll – but one of my blog-responders who appears on these pages; and who lives in a church overrun with rats, mice, cats, rabbits, bats, owls, and cockroaches – and doesn’t dream of carrying out a little discreet pest control – caught a whiff of my plan and threatened to have me thrown into prison if I hurt a hair on its head.

So I’ve decided that its best chance of success can be secured by dropping it off at her place.

Phoenix from the Ashes has been shortlisted for the Mountbatten Maritime Award.

'Blind' Dog - fraudster

On a walk, if there are no hares to chase, Scooter amuses himself by provoking bulls and then stands behind me for protection when things turn nasty. I’ve saved him from drowning; stopped him from trying to eat an Adder, twice; and carried him in my arms back down from the upper branches of a tree, where he felt certain a squirrel lived …and what thanks do I get? He tip-toes upstairs at 3am, pulls me from my bed to the floor, asleep, then hops up into the warmth of the new vacancy.

A couple of months ago he got me banned from Falmouth, in Cornwall.

Walking with him down the High Street, I was hoping to get him back to our friends’ garden – with whom we were staying – before he could defecate. Linda’s better prepared than I am and always carries a pocketful of plastic bags so that she can poop and scoop. Well – so that she can scoop, - I think even she would draw the line at performing both jobs.

Anyway Scooter suddenly did that little dance with his back legs which lets you know you’ve got less than a second to drag him to a gutter. I must have dragged him pretty fast because I noticed little puffs of smoke coming from the pads of his feet as our wills battled it out.  Whilst he performed I stood there patting my pockets pretending to look for a bag I knew I didn’t have; and on finding that I didn’t have it, feigned confusion and wonder about what I would do next. Suddenly something caught my eye.

In an alleyway leading off the High Street there was one of those newspaper-round canvas bags which paper-boys dump when they can’t be arsed to deliver their papers – but this one (ideally for my purpose) was mounted on a frame and wheels (leading me to conclude that the paper-boy was in his eighties, and probably lying nearby having died of exhaustion). Scooter was smiling and kicking up dust with his hind feet in that curious way that dogs do when they’ve just performed, as if to say: …now deal with that! - when I dragged him to the sack, hooked the wheel end of the frame over his head, and took the other end by it’s handle.

Ping! Instantly he looked like a guide-dog whose training had been sponsored by the Western Morning News.  In this guise I saw the glowering looks of shop owners and customers alike melt to sympathy; and completed the ensemble by slipping a pair of dark glasses over my eyes, and began tapping the pavement, side to side, with a length of dowel I’d just bought. The dowel was the master-stroke. I think I would have been willing to pay double for it had I known what service it would be to me …way beyond any use I could give it as a craftsman. In that manner we floated buoyantly along on the swelling pity of passers-by.

The only downside to the scheme was that I now had to go where Scooter wanted to go: First he visited a pillar supporting an awning outside WH Smith, then another which he peed on; then he called at each of the remaining three to see if they had been visited by anyone he knew. Some chance, 500 miles from home. After that he spotted another guide-dog – a real one this time – across the road and ran over to it straight into the path of a taxi which screeched to a halt, nearly killing both of us. The taxi driver wanted to say something about it all until he saw my glasses and dowel; then he climbed reluctantly back into his cab, mute with pity.  For more than a minute me and the grey-haired blind woman who owned the other dog – which in spite of its honeyed-looks could fight as savagely as any Pit-Bull – pointed our visages toward the sky, and thrashed our sticks wildly, demanding to know what was going on. During the chaos I stole a glance at Scooter, took aim, and separated he and the other dog by giving him a winding kick to his back side. There was such heartfelt power in that kick, such purpose, that he travelled through the air and a moment later I, still holding the frame, followed him.

Out of that tangle, we weaved back and forth across the street like a pair of drunks trying to remember which pubs had, and which pubs hadn’t banned us; then we fell through a bush and landed in a car park where a delightful-looking young woman came up to me, politely announcing her presence by clearing her throat, got me to my feet and asked if there was anything she could do to help. Her innocent smile, and the twinkling sincerity in her eyes conquered me. I would have given worlds to spend longer in her company and began casting about for something to say:

‘I’m trying to find my car.’ I told her.

‘What colour is it?’

Cars are very dull-looking these days – ten or fifteen years ago they were painted in primary colours with different patterns of polka dots to distinguish them one from another – pretty soon manufacturers realized in their droves that if they painted their cars dull-grey they would stick out like sore thumbs, with the result that these days they are all painted dull-grey …the exception to this rule was a yellow mini I noticed in my periphery vision:

‘It’s a yellow mini.’ I said.  She looked around the car park;

‘Is it that one over there?’ She asked, pointing.

‘What – just in front of the BMW?’

‘Yes.’ she said.

‘That’s the one …would you mind taking my hand and leading me over to it?’

We arrived at it all too quickly; I wasn’t ready to lose her attention:

‘Now then, I’m very keen – eager even – not to put you to any further trouble …but would you happen to have a key for it?’

‘No.’ she said, blinking; ‘I haven’t.’

‘Have you lost it?

‘No,’ she said, ‘you didn’t give it to me.’

‘In that case I must ask you’, said I,  ’…if you have ever broken into a vehicle and hot-wired it?’

‘No.’

‘Well then, would you like to see how it’s done?’

She looked nervous, and backed away a step – but I only asked because I’d noticed that Scooter had somehow managed to get into the vehicle, and was rummaging around under the steering column with some wires in his hand.

It was just then that I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see a uniformed officer. He asked me if this was my vehicle; to save confusion I told him it was. He asked me if I was blind; and again, to save a long story I told him I was. Then he arrested me for failing to park in a disabled bay.

You’ll be relieved to hear that I’m out of prison now, and working on the sequel to Phoenix from the Ashes.

Buzzards scream

It seems strange: On Fridays, a friend of mine in London always wishes me a happy weekend …yet working from home on a remote island, ‘weekend’ isn’t a concept you live with. There’s daytime and nighttime …and there are the seasons.

In the summer the days are never ending; in the winter it’s the nights. Summer days are warmer than winter days – much warmer.

Today is Saturday.

Some cows are grazing over the garden fence; beyond them, some sheep. The road is quiet – it’s always quiet.

The postwoman doesn’t call on a Sunday – she only calls during the week if we’ve got post; we don’t often. No buses pass by our house. There is no noise of industry; there’s no noise at all. Sometimes we hear the car-ferry arriving on the neighbouring island when its steel hull grounds on the ramp. Sometimes we hear the island plane overhead on its morning- or evening flight if it’s taken the scenic route; but usually it flies to the south.

There are three HGV’s which use our road every week or two – they call at the distillery at the road-end: one to deliver grain; one to collect whisky; and one to deliver fuel oil.

My neighbour parks his quad at the back of the house every morning when he arrives to look over his flock. If it’s raining he arrives by car – we don’t hear him then.

We hear buzzards call as they soar on the wing …eagles drift-by in silence. We’ve got a cockerel – he calls in the morning, and at lunch-time.

There’s a demi-john of wine fermenting in my room; it bubbles every twelve minutes.

Flies come into the house if I leave the front door open, they buzz round and round and bang into the window panes until I spray them; or they’re caught by spiders whose webs have been spun at the sides of the sash – which we never open, and only clean in the spring.

In the autumn we hear rats in the walls, making nests for the winter. Outside the winter temperature is around 4 degrees – occasionally less; inside it’s around 12 degrees – occasionally more.

In October we hear the roar of red deer, rutting. It’s a frightening sound. It’s best not to walk too far onto the moor during October. Any other month they see or smell you from a distance of two miles, you catch a glimpse of them as they gallop over the hill and away.

We light our wood-burning stove in the early days of September, and let it go out in April. It burns about 12 tons of wood each winter.

In the summer we collect fire-wood, chainsaw it into rounds, and then split it by hand with a splitting maul. This summer I overloaded the pick up truck in the woods, grounded in a ditch, and bent the chassis. It’s a write-off. We’ve only got six tons of wood.

We grow vegetables, and the hares eat them – but they didn’t eat the garlic. We’ve got nearly fifty bulbs ready to harvest.

We keep a boat on a mooring. We’ve only used it twice this year. We launch it in May, and bring it ashore in October.

We walk the dog twice a day – down to the sea at lunchtime for an hour; and round the loch in the evening. In the summer you can walk around the shores of the loch because the water is low; in the winter you have to walk on the heathered banks which is rutty and uncertain underfoot in the dark. If Linda walks him, she takes him along the road at night in the winter, because she is afraid of the moor in the dark …but Scooter prefers the moor. His night vision is like our day.

The windows of our old Hebridean house are small. I imagine it’s because in the olden days, you didn’t want too big a hole in your walls on an island where the wind regularly tops 100mph.

They don’t let in much light even in the summer, it’s like living in a cave. Linda is very ‘green’ and uses those low wattage bulbs, making it difficult to read next to the fire. Some evenings I augment it with a candle.

I’ve just bought one of those branch-lights with Halogen bulbs from IKEA. I didn’t know the kitchen was so grimy. I’ve cleaned it now.

I haven’t mentioned West Kensington …but there used to be sheep in fields in West Kensington. A long time ago.

Although we are separated by hundreds of thousands of miles we like to stay in touch via the baked-bean cans and piece of string supplied by our service provider. I think it’s important to keep up with family news, and so don’t begrudge the hour or more it takes to hear about all the things that haven’t happened to her; and to tell her about all the things I was hoping would be achieved at this end, but weren’t.

There were a lot of tears, here, when the Olympic torch passed within 104 miles of our island. Tears of joy, I mean. Whether that was because it came so close, or remained so far away, I can’t tell.  I don’t think anyone can.

But it set off a kind of Olympic hysteria that you are probably too reserved to show on the mainland: at one stage hardly a month went by without the word Olympic being used.

The egg and spoon race was hotly contested by residents of the nursing home. There were no winners there.  There were no finishers, actually. A woman from West Kensington asked Matron if they were free-range, but Matron said ‘No’ – for her liking they didn’t go out often enough.

A tossing-the-sheep competition was mounted by the young farmers – it turned out to be not nearly as dubious as the name promised – so there was a lot of disappointment amongst the ever-dwindling audience …many of whom were professional sheep-groomers.

They had a drinking-race in the Ardmore Inn. Actually they have drinking races in the Ardmore every night – but not with that same sense of Doing it for Britain. The sad result of their selflessness was that there were three deaths in the bar that night – whereas you’d normally only expect one or two.

We had a fantastic closing ceremony. Fat Freddie and his Inter-Gallactic Pram-Rocket was the highlight – I believe everyone on the island turned out to see that …though there were grumblings about the height he attained – especially when you think how much petrol we all contributed; at island prices. When you donate £1.50/litre on the promise that Fat Freddie is going to Mars and won’t be coming back, it must contravene some law or other if that promise isn’t fulfilled.  But for speed you couldn’t beat it – it’ll be a long time before any of us see another pram with fly-squash on its leading edges. And it did – it looked like a bloody comet. I think if we put our hands on our hearts, not many of us thought he’d make it to the next island – so I think there were mixed feelings when we got the call from the Hospital in Cuba.

Everything after that was a bit of an anti-climax. Hamish set fire to his farts – though that happens every time he falls asleep with a fag in his mouth. There were some German tourists in the bar who don’t normally find farting, they told us – or anything else for that matter – funny, but wiping tears from their eyes they assured us that that, for them, will always remain a golden example of the subtlety of British humour …and they doubted to-a-man whether they would live long enough to see anything funnier.

And as for Maude Grave singing ‘I wanna have your babies’ – that was never likely to succeed …but she wouldn’t listen.

I notice that there’s a damning review for my book on Amazon – it wasn’t you, was it? Even if you gave me permission to remove it, I think I’d keep it for the perspective it adds to all those good ones.

But I’m confused – I can be fairly sure that the events described in my book took place because I was there, in person – yet I am aware that we interpret what we see about us, and that two people witnessing the same event tell different stories about what happened …so I don’t want to get too anal – but could you have a look at that withering review and let me know if she (or he) is on to something I haven’t spotted?

Jesus, she’ll be telling me I’m wrong about the closing ceremony next…

Justin’s brilliantly entertaining, international best-selling book Phoenix from the Ashes is desperate for your support. Could you make a point of stopping strangers in the street to tell them how much you enjoyed it? If you are a do-gooder, this will count toward your five-a-day random acts of generosity …and if you harbour any religious convictions, a place in heaven will be reserved for you for every recommendation of yours which results in a sale. I personally don’t profit from the book – but it does help Bloomsbury keep their heads above water. And I know that’s cause we can all get behind.

The Stressful Hebridean islands.

I love shopping in the Hebrides.  It’s all part of the lifestyle.

I was down at the Co, as we call it, standing third in line at the checkout having browsed the empty shelves and had almost half the things I’d come in for.

I was just running through which were the best-stocked bird-tables between there and home, in my mind, when I noticed that the Gentleman being served was elderly, in poor health, and wasn’t responding to stimulus. We’re all going to be there one day. So I smiled, congratulated myself on how patient I can be if I really try, and then, as the minutes ticked by, began chalking off the things I was hoping to get done later in the day… the dentist; the bank; the intercontinental flight I had to catch… and let them go, one by one.

Fifteen minutes later my body went into torpor – a kind of precursor to Coma, and shortly afterwards I lost the will to live. I became merely one of the statues in the queue, but with the last few electronic impulses of brain activity reviewed, with painful regret, the ambitions I had for my life that will never now be achieved.

Suddenly I was wakened…

‘Thank you! Bye! Take care now!’

…by the exaggerated cheerfulness of the cashier. There’s hope! the queue is about to move up one – and I’m still alive; I remember thinking. Before making way for the next shopper, our man had a five pound note to put back in his wallet…  but where on earth can that wallet be? ‘I had it a minute ago’, you could see him thinking, as he patted his pockets. There was nothing for it but to unpack the shopping, whilst examining with some surprise, one or two of the items therein, and wondering how they got there.

‘Is this yours?’ someone asked, bending to the floor behind him.

No reply; a third person taps him on the arm, and points behind him. He looks; there is no one there.

‘Mm?’ Points again… looks  - suddenly there is someone there. Right up close. Whoa – overload! Our shopper is now struggling to take in everything that is happening around him in what war journalists know as ‘a fast-developing situation’.

We queuers, without speaking, urge him to look at the wallet. We can’t move, not now, it’s been too long.

‘Is this yours?’ the voice asks again. He looks:

‘Mmm?’

‘Is this yours?’

He looks at it. ‘No.’ he says, definitely.

Then he looks at it again, anew. ‘Oh yes! – Yes it is!’

Collective laughter, and the elderly gentleman meets everyone’s eyes to acknowledge what fun we are all having together.

‘Where did you find it?’ He asks, out of casual interest, whilst checking that she hasn’t rifled it.

‘On the floor.’

‘I must have dropped it!’

The very conclusion we were about to arrive at ourselves.

At length he says good-bye to all his new friends –  checks he has everything both by carrying out a visual examination of the surrounding area five times, and by interviewing everyone as to whether or not they are of the opinion that he has everything… and, at last, asks to be directed to the exit he is standing next to. Gone.

The next customer, of course, does not rush to fill his place – it would seem rude. Instead she pretends to be busy examining the nutritional information panel on a bottle of bleach. Looking up, with an exclamation of surprise she finds that she is next; and, as if by magic, the cashier is ready for her.

She and the cashier are of a similar age – both in their sixties – the customer leans confidentially in toward the cashier;

‘I haven’t been at all well;’ she whispers, gravely.

‘Och, that’s terrible!’ Says the cashier unable to hide her delight: ‘…this is more like it!…’ I could see her thinking to herself…  ’This is why I took the job!’

She throws a furtive glance in my direction to see how important I am; and having laid that concern to rest, leaned forward, made herself comfortable onto the belt, and settled down to hear the exact nature of the illness in question, and to allow their hair-do’s to have a bit of a tangle and really get to know each another.

For ten minutes I and the folk behind me gaze longingly at the unmanned cash desks. No one speaks. We hear to the muffled whispering; notice the accusatory glances in our direction to make sure we’re not eaves-dropping; and have our suicidal despair punctuated every minute or so by an encouraging ’Och, that’s terrible!’ from the Cashier.

‘No, that really is terrible, that is!

At last the shopper – who had so much more to say – turns to me with a resentful sniff: ‘I’m holding you back.’ she says. It’s a favourite saying – and I’ve never worked out if it is a question, an apology, or simply a statement of fact… but the expected answer – which you have to supply if you want to get on on the island – and which I found myself giving, is: ‘No, you’re alright.’

I am now back at home and responding well to treatment – but tell me: Do you have the same thing in Fortnum and Mason… those of you who live in West Kensington?

Justin.

Jesus – all those words and I never found a way to mention my  book.