Tag Archives: Islay

Something fishy in our water…

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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

 

Holiday of a lifetime…?

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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…

 

Hebridean Bandit in the house.

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When I woke up this morning there was a ferret in the house – well, what I thought was a ferret.

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.

Olympians flock to the Hebrides…

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That was my sis, on the phone.  You know, my twin sis – the one whose Birthday I always forget.

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.

It’s stress… but not as you know it.

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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.

 

 

…crunchier than a stack of poppadums

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Squat Lobster with Home-made Mayonnaise

If, like me, the current economic climate has renewed your interest in spring cleaning down the back of your sofa in the hope of finding a penny dropped in some un-remembered season of abundance, you’ll love this week’s money-saving recipe.

Using only the finest delicacies fished up from the crystal waters of the North Atlantic ocean which lap these Hebridean shores – may I present Squat Lobster Salad, dressed with a home-made Olive Oil Mayonnaise?

If you happen to know a fisherman, preferably a crabber – and I realise that the chances of this are but small if you live in West Kensington – ask him not to throw back the Squat Lobsters which come up in his pots and are merely a by-catch for him; a nuisance that crawls its way into his wheelhouse, tea caddy, and the trouser-pocket of his apron, unless he chucks them overboard before they get a chance to make themselves at home. He’ll be happy to put them by for you – particularly if you are willing to barter with him for something you may happen to have in abundance… say: some award-winning vegetables; a bottle of your finest home-brew; or (as in my case) five minutes of sarcastic wit.

Even consider paying for them if you have to, but once you own them, throw them heartlessly into a cauldron of vigorously boiling water into which some ginger, onion, garlic, celery, star-anise, fennel, salt or pepper… or all of the above… have already been sacrificed; for three minutes. Strain, and allow to cool in a soft summer breeze, out of the reach of rats.

Now comes the tricky part.  When I went to school, most classifications of animal subordinate to man consisted of a head, a thorax, and an abdomen – though creatures are constantly evolving and animals may not still consist of those same body-parts today… but if they do, and you remove the head and the thorax, you’ll find yourself left holding a segmented, armour-plated tail which looks and (as you are about to find out) tastes like a wood louse.

Inside this tail you’ll see a tempting morsel of flesh which you will be filled with the most urgent ambition to consume.  At the break, you’ll find about a quarter of an inch (now evolved into 6mm) of flesh is sticking out from the shell. (There will be a small quantity of unpleasant-looking grey-brown liquid adhering to it which I presume came from its stomach, but I am not going to draw your attention to that for fear of spoiling your appetite… I mention it merely to identify which end we’re talking about.) What I do is to take that fleshy bit gently between my teeth, ignoring the colour, and softly tug at the shell with my fingers – it comes away surprisingly easily… usually. When you’ve removed it, dip it into the home-made mayonnaise, and pop it back into your mouth.  You will have one of those out-of-the-body experiences whereby you acknowledge that if the good Lord took you right now, you would die happy knowing that you had nothing worthwhile left on earth to achieve.

If you live in West Kensington, ask your Butler to pull this morsel of flesh out for you – but get him to use a cocktail stick rather than his teeth, otherwise he’ll be unable to resist the temptation, swallow the very morsel you were hoping to get, and you’ll face the choice of either starving-to-death, embittered, and resentful; or slumming-it on something from Harrod’s food hall.

Next week we’ll take a fresh look at the common or garden snail.

Justin

 

 

I just took a shortcut through a field…

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shortcut through a field

I lost your attention, didn’t I?  I didn’t post to my blog for a month… you got bored, and left me.  Sorry about that… let me try and win you back.

I do have an excuse – Linda’s not been feeling very well and had to go to hospital on the mainland for a couple of days; I was camping in the car so that she’d have someone to visit her. She’s on the mend now I think; though I’ll never be the same again…

Is there a degree of shame attached to camping in your car – or was it all in my mind?

As I crossed and re-crossed the lonely hills of Argyll, late at night, looking for somewhere discreet to park the car and bed down – drawing ever more attention to myself from farmers, their sheep; and subscribers to the neighbourhood watch scheme who happened to be looking out for characters like me – I noticed on my sixth drive along the same (normally) quiet road at gone eleven o clock that a local vigilante had militated against me, and were in the process of setting up a road block.  It doesn’t get dark at night in Scotland at this time of the year, so fortunately I saw them first, took a quick left through a gate which gave me a short cut through a field – where I stopped to take a picture of a cow (as you do); over the stony bed of a parched river (we’ve had lovely weather up here, thanks), rally-drove up through some trees, and eventually found freedom by driving down the embankment of a motorway and following it for seventeen miles against the flow of traffic. All to save the humiliation of explaining that I was planning to camp in my car.

The car’s ruined, of course – and the only reason I haven’t had a knock on the front door from the old bill to have my licence off of me, is that I took the very sensible precaution of swapping my number plates with those of a vehicle belonging to a visiting dignitary during the Jubilee. It pays to draw around you the cloak of diplomatic immunity when your car has no insurance, tax, MOT, and you’re running it on red diesel to save the duty even though it’s petrol-engined. I understand the diplomat has now been deported.

Yet even through my murky adventures the sun has shone its shaft of golden light promising better times ahead… I’ve just been awarded funding from Creative Scotland to write the sequel to Phoenix from the Ashes. Hurrah!!  I notice on their web site they state their mission as: investing in talented people and exciting ideas. They’ll be embarrassed when they see how little juice comes out of me… I must have slipped through the net. But I won’t let that stop me from becoming insufferable.

The funding means I can write full-time which will at least allow me to update my blog – would you do me the huge favour of finding time to read it?.. only, without you coming to visit there’s no point.

Justin

Hang on a minute, there’s a dignitary the door.

 

 

Cabin Fever

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Paps

Across the waterlogged ground to the 'Paps' on the Isle of Jura.

I don’t know how the Innuit deal with it, but there comes a stage during a stormy winter on Islay when even the islanders get cabin fever …now, in late December, we’ve reached that stage. We’ve had our third storm in three weeks; lost slates in all of them – even lost a door in one. Yesterday I ducked to avoid being knocked over, as I thought, by an RAF jet flying too low – yet when I straightened myself, I found it had only been the screaming of a particularly angry squall as it sung through the winter branches of a tree close by.

‘Two nights in Braehead, would do me…’ you hear people say, hopelessly, referring to a retail park just on the outskirts of Glasgow, a hundred miles away; ‘and mebbe a wee nozzy round IKEA.’ They don’t ask for much – which is perhaps why there is just a five-aisle Co-Op to serve the needs of 3,500 people. And when the ferry doesn’t run for a day or two because of the wind, and the plane doesn’t fly, the shelves get lonely.

We moved here from Cornwall five years ago, and love it, but this time of year is when we are closest to becoming unglued to the place. We dread receiving calls from friends back in the west country who have phoned to tell us that they’re having the mildest weather for 800 years, and that the daffs are already out.

It’s at this time of year that we have to count our blessings, like priests thumbing rosary beads. Everyday I look at my weather station to see by how much longer the sun will be above the horizon than it was yesterday.

Have I got cabin fever?

 

Island transport

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The Islanders have made us particularly welcome on the isle of Islay.

Twin boys – who would be about fifty – arrived last night with their mum by tractor. Jim drove, John squeezed in behind, and their mum stood, as usual, hunched over the pair of them with her shoulders braced against the cab roof, peering through the crook of an arm which gripped onto the roof handles whilst they waited for a severe hailstorm, which hammered down on their arrival, to pass.

Their tractor had just been returned to them after 11 weeks in the garage, awaiting repair. They have a second tractor – so they weren’t completely marooned at home during those 11 weeks, ten miles from the shops – but the second tractor has no cab. It’s one of those classic tractors – like the ones you see ploughing summer fields in the film The Landgirls whilst its driver bounces along filling his (or her) lungs with heavy scented air – but it’s no tractor to be growling along a Hebridean road, at 15 mph, in December.

Or am I missing the point? Unlike a car, bought on lease, they would have finished paying for the tractor years ago – decades ago. And do they need an MOT; insurance; a driving licence; or white diesel, to enjoy the freedom of the island roads?

Last night they popped round with christmas presents; and kippers. We have found, to our embarrassment, that we only have to mention in passing that we like something – kippers, for example – and the article arrives, by tractor, a week or two later; along with the bright, smiling faces of the whole family, who step into our parlour incidentally carrying some award-winning vegetables, for which they are famed throughout the region …winning over fifty cups this year alone.

For an hour they bring us up to date with the island scandal, which is of course reassuringly tame, satisfies us that we have come to the right place to live; that we have left the world and all its troubles far behind; and that we may sleep peacefully in our cots.

At last one of the boys jumps to his feet, stretches, and announces that they must hit the road.

They thank us profusely for the cup of tea they took – as though it had come just in time to save their lives …brush aside our thanks for the very substantial gifts they have brought; pull on their wellingtons; climb all three back into the cab, and with many a backward glance, bounce down the drive, illuminating the dark single track moorland road with the floodlight beam of their headlights, sweep around the corner, and they are gone.

For the next quarter of an hour Linda and I find spaces in our fridge and larder for all the produce that they have brought us, wondering what on earth we have done to deserve it.