Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Highland waters

Spent a few relaxing days trawling around coastal villages north of Helmsdale and south of Wick. Midsummer is a fabulous time of year to explore this area, particularly when the weather is being kind to visitors. Living here all year round and trying to make a living would have been a very different story a hundred and fifty years ago. Kelp harvesting in a sea full of jellyfish would not have been pleasant.
The small size of fishing boats doesn’t make the work look too appealing even in calm weather.


Interesting though, to watch a catch being landed at either Latheronwheel or Lybster (can’t remember which). A two man operation hauling baskets of huge crabs, shiny silver fish (probably herring or mackerel) and large lobsters up the harbour wall attracts an audience of 20 or so visitors plus the wife and toddler daughter of one of the fishermen. The catch is no sooner up than its transferred to big plastic colanders with lids, tied to anchor rings and dropped back over the side.
The man must have answered the same question hundreds of times but still manages to do it with grace and patience. The catch must be kept fresh for export to markets in Spain at the weekend, five days hence. I guess the pile of dead ones on the seabed didn’t survive til Sunday.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Beauty and tragedy in Scotland

A visit to the clan Gunn museum at the small town of Latheron in Caithness was blessed with sunshine in an area more used to grey skies and howling winds. Life in this part of northern Scotland would have been rough enough before people were forced to move from inland crofts to the coast to make way for sheep. The highland clearances, as this trdagedy has come to be known, must be Scotland’s worthiest claim on man’s inhumanity to fellow man.

The clan museum is housed in an old church beside the main road running north and south. Attractive enough from the outside, the stag’s head and tartan cloth décor at the entrance sets the stage for what’s inside. We arrive early, just as a young man with dreadlocks and a broad northern English accent is unlocking the door. A browse through the graveyard while he finishes his smoko reveals many potential ancestors. This is clearly the homeland and final resting place for many of the old clan.
An hour later, I come away with no souvenirs and a feeling that the people commemorated in this building are more likely to be the ones that chased my humble kin from the land. Nothing suggests otherwise, and there is no specific information about when and why so many of the clan moved south. Most likely it was due to poverty and the clearances. My lot appeared in Leith, the seaport of Edinburgh around the 1840s, so the dates would tie in.

Between Latheron and Helmsdale, which is the wee fishing town where we stayed, a sign points to the remains of a clearance village with the unusual name Badbea. The name is said to be derived from bad = tuft and beithe = birch. A short walk past warning signs about sheers cliffs and high winds leads to a beauty spot with a long dry stone wall separating the land from about 100 metres of uncultivated cliff top. The uncharacteristically calm and sunny weather can do little to mask the harsh reality of life in such a place. The story goes that animals and children had to be tethered against the danger of high winds.
Extended families of Gunns and Sutherlands lived in this godforsaken spot. Their names are now immortalized on a monument erected by a descendant who came back to visit from New Zealand. The last resident left Badbea in 1911 and only a few ruins remain.
Its a beautiful day though, with the sun shining on rocky remains of crofts, a calm sea in the distance, tall digitalis waving in the breeze and other hardy plants in flower.
But the wall brings a sense of sorrow, running miles away over the horizon. Men from Badbea village earned a pittance building that wall to separate good land for the sheep from the miserable cliff edge their families were forced to live and die on. A tragedy indeed!

Monday, July 13, 2009

Ramblings in Edinburgh and the Borders

By the weekend I feel I’ve earned a brief sojourn away from the computer desk. First stop is Kelso, the Scottish Border town with ruins of an 11th century abbey beside a river where tourists pay filthy amounts of lucre to catch trout from oft replenished stocks. My interest is more personal – great nephews wee Erchie and not so wee Cammie playing their respective favourite sports, and their ma and pa who I haven’t seen in a while.

I also wanted to grab partings shots of Hardiesmill Farm cottages. Family owned for twenty years, they will soon pass into the hands of strangers. My own son Calum spent a few happy years of baby and toddlerhood here before we moved back to the city for work and a more active social life. The only small creature now in residence is Luna, the doe eyed hound who moves remarkably fast on her stumpy Bassett legs.

Edinburgh is just an hour’s drive back up a quiet road on an exceptionally beautiful sunny morning. The WWII invention of city allotments for residents with green fingers but no garden is productive at this time of year. Other green aspects of the city landscape are also easy to find – this one is Duddingston Loch, made famous by a painting of a black clad ice skater and home to a large avian population.

A near perfect day in this unusually warm and welcoming home-town of mine is rounded off with some live music of the highest class. What looks from the outside like a brand new Festival Theatre is instantly recognizable inside as the old Empire. Ghosts of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and David Bowie dance across the stage until the lights go down, and someone else I’ve been a fan of since those heady 70s takes over – now with his son in tow.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Home from the sea...

This trip, like others back to the my old homeland makes change stand stark before a hazy backdrop of memories. The depth of field is long, as I notice and explore threads of history previously ignored. My purpose is a mix of business and pleasure, so the trail branches out in many directions. Some paths I follow briefly. Others I will return to many times.

A black and white lens with occasional cracks 'where the light gets in' replaces the vivid colours of last week’s Mediterranean landscape. There is a parallel in time though. When the Knights of St John built mighty sandstone fortresses against to onslaught of marauding Turks, the Scots defended their ground from gray granite castles on windy hillsides and lived in towers with metre thick walls.
The ancient city of Stirling looks beautiful in warm summer tones with just a few modern touches superimposed.
There’s nothing modern about the buskers in the town square keeping a large crowd entertained on a Saturday afternoon for the price of a gold coin (or other) donation. The sound of pipes and drums is stirring, almost elemental. The performance of men in traditional tattoos and highland dress - not the gentrified version - mesmerizes.
But the sunshine never lasts long in Scotland. Billowing gray clouds gather often to temper the light and douse the land with the water of life. Rather too much than too little! I can never quite find words to describe the richness of the colour gray that fills the skies in the build up, or the way it manages to transform daylight into a powerful sense of foreboding.
A few random memories bring a brief sojourn in the southern central region to a close. The wee sweetie shop represents a generation with hard candy and sugar-rotted teeth cemented in place by massive amalgam fillings. My generation - but I buy some hard peanuts flavoured sweets to suck on for nostalgia's sake.
The monument to 13thC hero Rob Roy McGregor would not look out of place in a comic with the commonplace battle cry ‘see you jimmy’ for a caption. One of many, many reminders of the fabulous, familiar, infallible Scottish sense of humour.
Another monument in the old graveyard up by the castle honours John Knox, the great protestant reformer. The man was, by all accounts a brute, whose activity may have later spawned the forerunner of the gesture of throwing shoes - though in the form of a stool - by outraged parishioner Jenny Geddes in an act that earbed her a place in history. The same ‘see you jimmy’ caption could apply.
Maybe both these historic, local heroes sent out a warning that the mods were moving north! The invaders might be different, but the principle remains the same.