upping sticks

well!

~~~~~

the Old Man

The Old Man of Hoy lurched past as I gripped the rail of the Ola and wondered if this was an act of more than ordinary stupidity. Not, of course, gripping the rail of the Ola, for it was heaving quite a bit, but ending 21 years of living in Orkney, leaving behind many good friends and a way of life that probably would be hard to find elsewhere. Not to speak of finally, after nearly thirty years, separating from a spouse who, even if we had latterly drifted very far apart, remained a friend. The Ola rail was not merely a protection against falling, it somehow steadied the nerve for this leap into the murk. And looking as though I was about to throw up would protect me from idle chat.

Once off the boat at Scrabster, there was no time to look back, for I needed to get to Inverurie, find the estate agents and pick up the keys before they closed, and that focussed the attention wonderfully, for it wasn’t a road where you could rely on being able to pass the many lorries that inevitably got off the boat first. So no time to idle along admiring the passing scenic splendours, no time for lunch, on past Inverness, no stopping to get grape and ginger syllabub at Markies, all that could come later: living on the mainland I would be able to do these things any old time without having to book a ferry crossing. But even if I wasn’t in time to get the keys, in the back of the van were tent, sleeping-bag, camping stove, I could stay overnight very comfortably in the half-acre of garden.

Which however wasn’t necessary, for I got the keys with half an hour to spare, and moved in, unloading from the van all that was necessary to live in comfort: mattress, camping stove, saucepan, some biscuits and cheese, coffee, knife, teaspoon … and my radio/CD player, into which I loaded Jacques Loussier and danced around the room to the sound of jazz Bach. This was better than the tent.

hut and half-acre

And better than any house I’d lived in before. It was, I suppose, the most decrepit structure (if you exclude bothies) of the many, old and new, sound and crumbling, that I’d previously stayed in; for it was basically just a wooden hut clad in concrete blocks, and there was no telling what state the inner timber was in – the whole thing could fall apart any time. But this was the first place to be completely mine; I could repair, adjust, decorate (or not) just as I pleased and could afford; and if it fell to bits I still had that half-acre (and, of course, the tent, sleeping-bag, camping stove …) though playing the CDs might be a problem.

woodland on the doorstep

As it has turned out, 25 years on it hasn’t fallen to bits, though there has been much to do.

Shortly after moving in I went to Majorca with Kay and A for a previously booked holiday. December in Majorca was pleasantly warm, but back home it had been very icy indeed. Before leaving, I’d turned the water off and drained the system, and when I got back I turned it on again confidently … and the ceiling fell in, water gushed out. I turned it back off again and reached for a plumber. It emerged that a piece of water pipe had a bend in it that hadn’t drained, so it had frozen and burst. The plumber mended the pipe and I turned the water on again; a little water came out of the tap and then stopped; a mystery that was solved when we looked into the well a few hundred yards away that supplied water to three houses, and found it to be dry. Hmm, no water, how to get round that one and why had it happened?

The why was apparently “nae guid sna” over the past two winters; the solution was the purchase of a 500-gallon tank that the water board would fill when necessary, for at the time the cost of connecting to the mains was beyond my means – that came a lot later.

So presently there was water once more, but then the hot water tank started to emit a fine spray, and the plumber had to be reached for again. I got to know the plumber pretty well over the years, and to appreciate him: he fixed things fast, and they stayed fixed.

The kitchen and bathroom had been added on to that basic hut structure by a previous owner, and had a flat roof whose felt covering was beginning to sag and crack in places; for a while, patching worked, but eventually in wet weather the rain would start to drip into the bathroom; roof replacement was going to cost thousands of pounds so I rigged up a gutter below the crack in the bathroom ceiling, at the lower end of which hung a bucket that I could empty into the bath. This was fine for a time, because we don’t usually get a lot of rain, though some visitors found it a bit weird sharing their bath with a gutter and bucket, especially when it rained.

itinerant honeysuckle

But clearly the roof had to be replaced before long, and how was this to be afforded? I got lucky: I was offered a job in the Chemistry department of the university, entering data into their computer – my total ignorance of chemistry didn’t matter, all I had to do was copy things reliably – and before the roof disintegrated I was able to have it replaced, which took a brilliant team just two days, with timber, a big tub of boiling tar, blowtorch, rolls of roofing felt, and a beautiful ladder that I coveted.

Compared to these rather urgent upgrades, the installation of a proper kitchen (B&Q’s second cheapest, excellent, installed by Kay and A) and replacing old cracked draughty windows with double glazing were less pressingly needed but improved the comfort and cooking possibilities enormously.

Correen

Meanwhile the garden had needed its bit of attention, for it was almost completely covered to knee height in thistles, dockens, nettles and tall grass; somewhere amongst this were a few apple trees, some gooseberry bushes, a lot of blackcurrants and an amazing number of strawberries hiding among the weeds.

Castle Fraser

A scythe was the obvious starting point, and after many weeks of short bursts of scything the growth was down to a height that a power mower could cope with, though the ground was lumpy and the mower would often grind to a halt in some of the bigger holes.

A cutting from the honeysuckle that we had brought years ago in our yawl across from the Pegal Burn on Hoy to Orphir, and then moved to Stromness, came south with me. I planted it near the front gate where it flourished, seeming not to miss the salt-laden air of its native island.

the Don and Bennachie

Time rolled by, comfort and fruit increased, weeds decreased and occasionally I would remember the need for mountainous wilderness that had pulled me away from island life. But now that I could go there any time I liked without needing to book a ferry, there was no urgency: I could go tomorrow, or next week … but there was just that little bit more to sort out first … and how lovely it was just here …

the Maiden Stone

For instance, there are wee hills (e.g. Bennachie, Cairn William, Correen), from whose summits the big Cairngorms are visible not far away; heaps of castles with quirky ancient lavatorial arrangements, a laird’s lug to let the owner know what the underlings are plotting against him (an early kind of Twitter?), beautiful gardens, interesting sundials and lairds who all seem to be related and over seven feet tall; the river Don flows past nearby, and the Dee is not far away; local stone circles and standing stones, though less majestic than the Orkney examples, are no less interesting; pleasant woodland everywhere, not least on my doorstep; lots of wildlife in garden – toad, deer, fox, owl, woodpecker, lizard, vole, pheasant, squirrel (red), buzzard, various sbb.

Above all, the immediate neighbours, while at a distance where none of us can irritate any of the others by our choice of music, are not merely pleasant and benign people, but helpful to a degree that I will never be able to repay.  

July full moon

And as it has turned out, 25 years have passed, and although I’ve been to Africa and the Algarve, and visited Cee on the west coast and my sister near Oxford, only once have I actually gone back to the old playground, Glencoe, and lived in the tent below the Buachaille, one July with a full moon; but - such was the state of the knees - I couldn’t even reach the lowest rocks, all I could do was look from a distance; the memories crowded in:

hard men on the Rannoch Wall

up there was the Rannoch Wall, once rated “impossible”, now criss-crossed with climbs of all grades of difficulty; there was the line of Curved Ridge, the easy route up and down, where long ago, after sewing up January Jigsaw, we ate our snacks and watched the hard men of the Creag Dhu on the Wall and heard the music of their pitons being hammered into the rock; they were revered in the climbing world: they walked, singing in harmony down climbs that others struggled to get up, and called it “balance walking”; higher up on the summit, at sunset, we had looked eastwards and seen the shadow of the Earth climb up through the distant haze above the Rannoch Moor, and then picked our way down Curved Ridge in the gathering dark; one midsummer night had been filled with the sound of conversation high up on Slime Wall, as a medical student's broken leg was rescued from a place of severely difficult access:
     Broken Leg: "for goodness sake, keep it straight, don't bend it sideways"
     Rescuer: "shut up or we'll break the other one"
just the normal spirit of camaraderie, you understand; away in the other direction was Meall a’ Bhuiridh and the peaks we’d trudged over one evil winter day on the way over to Bridge of Orchy …

visiting the playground

Waves of nostalgia, until dusk brought the dread midge in its millions and the door of the tent had to be closed; present need ousted past reminiscence – all that had been when the limbs functioned, it had been great while it lasted, but that was way back, all those friends (though maybe not the immortals of the Creag Dhu) were long gone. It was time to say goodbye to a long addiction.

Widget, Fidget, Midget aka Mousie

Well, gaps get filled; a new addiction, of a very different kind, leapt in when I went back to Orkney for a short visit and came away with a big cardboard box containing a family of four cats: a completely white mother and her three fortnight-old long-haired dark grey kittens, who moved in and took command and enslaved me. But they – Sooty and the Idgets – need a post to themselves. 

~~~~~