Brough of Deerness, Orkney. Summer, 1995. Titelbild

Brough of Deerness, Orkney. Summer, 1995.

Brough of Deerness, Orkney. Summer, 1995.

Jetzt kostenlos hören, ohne Abo

Details anzeigen
(After you have read these introductory paragraphs once, you can skip to the new/old content below. If you are listening, then the time stamp is around the two minute 45 second mark.)IntroductionThe word settled, to me, carries connotations I am keen to avoid. I have never felt settled or, perhaps, I cannot recall a time I felt settled. I do not feel settled now, writing this, and I’ve lived in the same house for three and a half years. Without even discussing the obvious issues of colonisation, I just don’t feel like I could, or should, settle; better to keep my constituent parts shook up, agitated perhaps, rather than separating and stagnant.Instead, I feel as though I have been travelling for years, maybe because I have not lived in my ‘home’ nation of Scotland for eight and a half years, perhaps because I know I won’t stay here forever, or maybe because I carry that concept of home in a way which differs from many?More precisely, I still think of myself as a slow traveller, globally feral. Recently, I have been revisiting places through the photographs and words I recorded when my feet crossed their soil. This is a way of reminding myself of where I have been, not just in space and time, but in mind, too. It is a wonderful thing, to come out of a low and rediscover myself through words I crafted, through the lens of a camera, when memory has wandered in the fog for too long. Thank you, past me.When I first started sharing letters with the world in this fashion, six or more years ago, I usually began them with a vignette of where I was, a sort-of travel diary, mixed with nature observation, locking in the setting for the reader, before I spoke of other things—and, by so doing, ensuring that place fed into the whole. It was a useful device, for reader and myself both but, as these letters were sent to so few readers, and now languish archived behind a paywall, I thought it a shame not to share these snippets again.As such, I am going to share a short series of these sketches, accompanied by a photograph from that time, sent to you in date order.I shall include the above paragraphs in each of the letters in this series, but I shall also include a link at the very start, so you can skip ahead once you are familiar with the above words. If you are listening and similarly want to skip, then the timestamp you want to navigate to will be in the same place.Taken without these paragraphs, each is a short read, and I hope you enjoy them.Brough of Deerness, Orkney. Summer, 1995.I am partway up the cliff when I realise my mistake. Not climbing in welly boots, nor climbing without ropes—those are normal—but picking a route which takes me too close to a fulmar nest. Usually, I check this but, on this particular day I did not notice the bird, tucked into a ledge, away from view.I see the bird, the bird sees me and, as is the custom of fulmar, it leans forward to try and vomit a foul-scented mess on me. I lean back.Which is, of course, a mistake. Sticky, oily vomit or not—leaning back from a cliff face is unwise.The rock I was holding starts to come away, comically slow. It, like much of this cliff, was loose—held together on one plane, fractured on another. Like so many of us. Something pulls the wrong way, you come apart.I fall.It is not that far to the rocks below, but it is far enough to make me understand the gravity of the situation as I am weightless, attracted by gravity and thoroughly seen off by a cousin of the albatross family. Damn tube-noses.When I was young, Stenness Primary School had two classrooms—the Big End and the Peedie End. I was in the former, and my teacher at that time was the headmaster, writer, Orcadian scholar and collector of stories, Gregor Lamb.I remember a story he used to tell, one which seems fitting to slip into this piece, here. It took place not far from where I was falling, on the now-uninhabited island of Copinsay. A visitor to the island, perhaps someone connected to the lighthouse, or maybe someone visiting during the war years, when the population of Orkney became swollen like the corpse of a beached whale—I forget which—asked to go along with one of the families who still lived there, as they went to collect eggs.Now, collecting eggs in our modern parlance might sound quaint for many. It is something not too many city-based folk have done, after all and, in their mind, probably involves ducking into a chicken coop and plucking out the eggs neatly arranged there. As someone who has actually collected eggs, I can affirm that, yes, this is often the case but, quite often, it is considerably more work than that.The eggs have been hidden. The chickens do not want you to take them. You slip and end up sitting in chicken poop. You bang your head trying to escape the angry hen.However, in the case in point in this tale, the eggs were considerably more free range than this.Copinsay is gently sloping, rising up from the direction of Mainland Orkney and ...
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
Noch keine Rezensionen vorhanden