The View From Here (Solstice Gale)

The wind, 

like a howling Mongol horde, 

rode a thousand white horses 

towards the shore. 

At the first defences the horses reared, 

broke, 

fell, 

and died. 

The wind swept on. 

The howls became screams 

in the chimneys and wires of the village. 

Slates rattled 

and slipped. 

Twigs 

and the very last of the summers leaves 

flew overhead. 

No life could be seen.

But beyond the raging Scaurs, 

beyond many horizons, 

in a different reality? 

The turbine blades 

turned 

in the gentle breeze 

and the last rays of the sun flashed 

off the wings of the wheeling scurries.

 

(Scaurs – a local marine reef.

Scurries – gulls.)

The memory needle.

(My fathers dementia)

The memory needle it pulls a long thread,

binding time and place to what was once said.

Binding image and sound, the texture and taste

of things that were welcome – or had to be faced.

In his youth he remembered rejecting the pit,

Serving his time, then “doing his bit”

Riding his bike over desert and plain.

Delivering dispatches, then doing it again.

Then returning to Scotland, meeting his wife,

starting a family, and a new life

with a new set of memories to pass on to his son,

so he won’t be forgotten when his life is done.

But with time the thread can weaken and fray,

leaving gaps when he recalled “that memorable day”.

Then recent events fade like trees in the mist

and his mind comes up blank when he tries to list

the things that he’s done, or wanted to do

and the name of his son he can’t tell to you. M

Then you realise that all is not what it once seemed,

that his life is like something that he once dreamed

which on waking, slowly faded and drifted away.

Leaving no trace, just a blank, empty day.

My first knife

A long time ago, (half a century or so)

My father sat me down and said “See.

as you travel through your life, your constant friend will be a knife”.

And then this advice he gave to me.

“Always keep it close to hand, always keep it sharp, and

always keep it closed when not in use”.

He then said “My boy, never think this is a toy

For misusing it at all, there’s no excuse”.

So I started right away, and practiced every day,

and rapidly improved my whittling skill.

I whittled ducks and whistles, flowers and scottish thistles

And ‘tho fifty years have passed, I’m whittling still.

 

Lost

The haar rolls in from the cold sea,

like a soft grey shroud.

 

Americano

(Possibly a ghost story)

How do you describe someone who is not there? I thought of applying all the techniques that I learned as a writer of fiction and inventing a character. Give them physical attributes, a personality and a few recognisable habits. This might work, but I would certainly not be totally satisfied with the result.
I can see that I am starting to ramble, so perhaps I had better give you the background.
I have been taking part in an on-line writing course and, as part of the syllabus, I wander down to the Coffee House with my writers notebook (actually an I-pad) and do a bit of people watching. Half the people there are using I-pads or smart phones so I don’t feel as self conscious as I would with a pencil and notebook.
I first noticed the woman who sits by herself last week. She came in about mid morning, ordered two drinks and went to a corner table where she sat for about an hour before taking her cups back to the counter and leaving. The next morning she repeated the same actions. Two drinks, corner table for an hour and then exit. I was intrigued, this was ideal material for my final project, so I started applying the “What If” technique.
What if she was homeless and this was her way of passing the time – No, she was too well dressed for that. She was wearing clothes which, while understated, were obviously expensive. Her hair, shoulder length and dark, had had the attention of a skilled hairdresser and her shoes, also expensive, were well kept.
What if she used an online dating service and used the Coffee House to meet dates who never turned up? This wouldn’t work either. Who would turn up day after day to be stood up?
What if she is a victim of a domestic breakdown? Possibly she leaves her home every morning to avoid a day of uncomfortable interactions with her family.
All these, and other scenarios, were noted on my I-pad. Some were believable, some not (and therefore the possible basis for a good story).
When I returned my cup to the counter I mentioned the woman to Yelka (Slovinian, she claims that her name means ‘Christmas tree’) and asked what she thought of her.
“She scares me” Yelka replied, “watch her very carefully tomorrow and then come to the counter as soon as she leaves”.
The next day I made sure that I was at my usual table before the woman arrived. As normal, she went straight to the counter and ordered two drinks. To my surprise, one was a cappuccino, and the other an americano. She took them to her usual corner table and, putting the coffees at opposite sides of the table, sat down with the cappuccino in front of her.
She slowly drank the cappuccino, taking no notice of her surroundings, although sometimes she appeared to be listening to far off sounds. When she left, she picked up her cup along with the untouched americano and returned them to the counter.
As soon as the door closed behind her, Yelka beckoned me over.
“What?” I said, completely mystified as to what could be frightening Yelka about a woman who bought two coffees and only drank one. She pointed at the cups.
The americano was empty!

Red or Green

Red or Green

Menacing. That is the word that springs to mind when you first meet him. Of average height, Davie has the sort of build that makes you immediately think “rugby”. His features, while neither handsome nor ugly, possess an underlying quality of aggression. This impression is enhanced by the scars. One runs from the inside of his right eye, up and into his close cropped hair. The other, horizontally across his right cheek. As I said, menacing.
It all goes to prove how wrong first impressions can be. He is not a man who thinks that care for others is something to be aspired to. He thinks that it should happen without thought, and especially without thought of reward.
Coming from a “fisher family”, he has spent most of his working life at sea. He had hoped to follow his father as skipper of his own boat but this turned out to be impossible. Passing a skipper’s, or even a mate’s ticket was out of the question due to colour blindness. In another man, having to work as a deckhand on a boat which you partially own would rankle, but he accepted the situation and showed no bitterness over having to take orders from someone who, when on shore, was his employee.
No matter what the authorities might say about his colour blindness, no one in their right mind would keep a man of his experience off the crew of the local lifeboat. Especially after the Fruitful Bough incident.

The shout had come just after midnight to say that the Fruitful Bough was drifting, without power, towards the reef known as the Scares of Hummel. The lifeboat was launched and ploughed through the rising seas towards the stricken vessel. When contact was made, the floodlights revealed that the trawler had passed through a narrow gap in the Scares and had grounded on the rocks at the base of the cliff. With the rising tide and the imminent storm, it was imperative that the crew were taken off.
The Cox’n eyed the gap with, if not exactly fear, at least trepidation.
“Get Davie up here” he shouted.

“What do you think Davie?”
“She’ll go through, and it’s deep in there, so we can get the bow right up to her quarter and get the lads off directly.”
The Cox’n’s next words went against all the rules.
“You’ve got the helm then.”

The rescue was a classic piece of pilotage. The lifeboat went through the gap with inches to spare and nudged up against the Fruitful Bough. One at a time, as the decks came level, the crew stepped across until all had been evacuated. Davie then used the thrusters in the stern and bow to turn the lifeboat on the spot until she lined up with the gap.

At the enquiry, the Cox’n was asked why he had allowed an unqualified crewman to take command of the lifeboat.
“Local knowledge, and anyway, there’s no fuckin’ lights in there; red or green.”

My Maths Teacher

Written about fifty years ago!

Upon the wall, the teacher drew
to teach us all, both me and you.
He drew, he drew, in spidery white,
counting one and two while there was light.
And when the light, at the end of day
to the cold dark night, flew away,
he threw a switch and a light came on,
With a flickering twitch, an electric dawn.

I sometimes wonder if I have made any progress in the intervening years?

Only one of the embryonic versions of this tale!

The Bothy

It should have been an easy walk, even taking the after effects of the ‘flu into account. Fourteen miles from Invertarty to Dunsanna bothy by way of the Minister’s Gap. For a man who spent every leisure moment in the hills it was no great challenge, even carrying four days worth of kit. But no tent; this late in the year, bothies were definitely the way to go.
The weather forecast had predicted a front coming in that night. “Possibility of snow – strong westerly winds – temperatures dropping to -5 in some highland glens”. He wasn’t worried, hadn’t he survived storms in the Alps and blizzards in the Cairngorms before now?
Maybe not setting out till early afternoon was pushing things a bit. There was only six hours of daylight left – but fourteen miles, that’s five hours at the most.
After two hours of steady walking he had covered more than six miles and was at the top of the gap. While he could hear the wind moaning on the tops it was, at most, a fresh breeze down in the valley bottom. He did notice that the sky had darkened and that the air was appreciably colder, but the front was not due in for another few hours. Anyway, it would be almost as far to return to the car as it would be to go on to the bothy, and all the hard climbing was behind him now.
An hour later he had exited the gap and was wondering if he had made the right decision after all. On the open moor, the wind was strong enough to make walking difficult and the temperature had dropped. Inside his waterproofs, the sweat generated by the climb had chilled, causing him to shiver uncontrollably. “Only three more miles” he thought. “No problem”. But deep down he knew that he was in trouble. He was tired, the ‘flu had affected him more than he realised and he recognised that he would only get colder and weaker unless he found shelter. The rain, which had started a mile or so earlier, gradually turned to sleet and then snow. Driven by the strengthening wind it made progress even more difficult.
As the ground slowly passed under his ever slowing feet, his thoughts became confused. At times he recognised this and tried to keep focused on his goal – the bothy. At other moments he thought that he was returning from one of his Himalayan expeditions or a hard climb in the Alps, but always he returned to his present predicament.
At last, through the driving snow he saw the bothy. There was a faint light inside and when he opened the door a figure crouched by the fire said “come away in and get yourself warmed up”.

.
As the snowtrack slowly ground over the new snow towards the old deer watchers shelter, Ian spoke into the radio. “Almost there, but no sign of life. Doesn’t look like he made it this far”.
Inside the bothy Ian found the body of the missing walker, stripped down to his thermals, sitting beside a blocked and useless fireplace.

Generating a character

I have posted two pieces. The first was edited down to about half its original size and to my mind lost much of its characterisation. The second attempt, using the same trigger, whales, is much heavier on character description. Please criticise (but don’t be too cruel).

Minke.
Merlin rose and dipped gently on the swell. The weather had not changed in four days. The trade wind blew steadily from the east and drove the forty foot ketch along at a comfortable four knots. It made for very easy sailing. All on board were relaxed, Ron and Jane in the cockpit, Zoe in the pulpit, Dana in his bunk and me on the deck in front of the mainmast.
I thought about our position. Earlier I had been looking at the chart and realised that the nearest solid ground was five miles below our keel. In any other direction (ignoring a few small islands) it was more than a thousand miles away.
Suddenly, two sounds rose above the creak and hiss of the sails. A soft explosion of air and a squeal from Zoe. A moment later a faint odour, not unlike cooked cabbages, drifted over the boat. I looked round to see two fins breaking the surface just off the stern and another one appearing out to starboard. A small pod, more like a family group, of minke whales were following us.
The biggest whale slowly moved nearer to the hull and, as I leaned over the rail, it turned onto its side until one eye was staring directly up at me.
Zoe moved alongside me. “I’m twelve tomorrow” she whispered to the whale, “will you come to my party?”

.
Robbie
Big, loud and red faced. That was my first impression of Robbie. A couple of inches over six foot and heavy around the waist makes for someone with a lot of presence. His voice is pretty big too. When he tells his collie to lie down, it is easy to imagine all the dogs on the island quickly sinking to the floor. His mode of transport is in character. One of those big four-wheel drive, crew cab, pickups – and this when most of the other islanders make do with a wheelbarrow. He never does things by halves. I have seen him lift a six foot length of telegraph pole and put it in the back of his truck without apparent effort. Robbie is also a person of surprising contrasts. He is shy. He does not like large groups of people. If invited to any sort of gathering, he will always have to be somewhere else. And the most surprising thing about Robbie? On his next birthday he will be seventy seven years old.
Visitors tend to think that Robbie has spent all his life on this tiny island in the North Sea. As if a piece of windswept rock and heather, one and a half by two miles, could cope with him for seventy years. The other residents say nothing about his history. On an island this small, privacy is a respected and valued possession.
These days, Robbie has no formal employment. Not that you could ever use the word ‘retired’ to describe him. If there is a bit of maintenance on a fence or path, or if help is needed to bring in the sheep, he will always be the first to turn out. If offered payment, his usual reply is “gie it tae the puir fowk – they need it mair than me”.
In his youth, Robbie hunted the whale in the South Atlantic. Looking back, he has mixed feelings about that episode in his life. In retrospect, he regrets being part of hunting the worlds greatest mammal almost to extinction. At the same time he remembers the work, hard, dangerous and brutal though it was, as a time of fulfilment; when each man had to rely on his own skill and strength, and that of his comrades, to overcome the appalling weather and working conditions. Robbie spent eight seasons at Stromness on South Georgia, returning to the island a relatively wealthy man each year.
After the whaling finished he sailed the world on oil tankers before finally returning and spending his time as the island ferryman until the ferry company decided that a man in his seventies could not possibly be fit enough to do the job.