Campbeltown Man Urinated on Police

Just back from Argyll. A mixture of playing and good eating, interspersed with bursts of remedial gardening.

Attitudes are changing up there; when living in Skye we avoided using a lawn mower or hanging out washing (at least where it could be seen) on a Sunday, in deference to local sensibilities. And I once stayed in a B & B in Harris where a notice forbade guests from listening to the radio on Sundays. But the days of ministers lying down in the road to protest against Sunday ferries are over. I even heard a lawn mower this time, and someone along the bay working on a roof.

Or so I thought, until I read this week's Oban Times. Besides the usual, endearingly quirky local headlines ('Campbeltown man urinated on police') were two items which showed that old attitudes die hard. In a letter to the editor a Rev MacColl of Corpach wrote:

"Sir, I notice that we now have 'top-flight' shinty as well as women's shinty and other sports held on the Lord's Day. Such practices with the addition of all unnecessary work that day, are a flagrant breach of God's holy command to "remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy", and are an evidence of the spiritual darkness that increasingly prevails in our land.

No one has any right whatsoever to transgress God's moral law and let the organisers, players and spectators at such events be assured that one day - whether in this life or in eternity - they will bitterly regret their sin of Sabbath desecration."

So that's most of us in deep shit for a start. Probably why we broke a spring in Glen Orchy.

Elsewhere, in a feature article 'Thought for the week', Archie Elliot of Inverary wrote (for brevity I have cut out some guff, which is just more of the same):

Global Warming! Isn't it amazing how in very recent times, there has come about an almost universal concern about planet Earth....Any thinking person (with or without a science degree) knows that weather patterns change all the time and have always done so. This will continue to be so until God the creator and sustainer of it all decides in His wisdom, and according to His programme for the creation, brings about 'the change' which He has prophesied in His word...Anyone who has studied Bible prophesy knows that this change is not imminent and that all this present hype is really a political agenda (a ploy if you will) dreamt up by politicians, who are getting desperate about how to bring about some kind of improvement to the financial hole they have been digging themselves into....maybe it is time we all trusted in God's promises and forecasts, see psalm 118 vv8-9, rather than the unreliable estimates of men..."

So that's all right then. The penguins can stop worrying.

Swing, Swing Together

There's lots of redundant stuff clogging up one's mind. Amongst mine is coxing orders (like the rest of my genetic pool, I matured late, which meant I grew too late to be a useful oar, and therefore was earmarked as a cox). To be one of those, apart from passing a 'boat club test' which involved swimming several lengths fully dressed, shoes and all - no easy task from a water-phobic child who actually had to learn to swim twice - you were expected to learn a list of orders longer than Chesterton's epic 'Lepanto' (I learnt that too. Voluntarily. Because I liked it). Those orders, like Lepanto, are still paddling redundantly about in my tiny mind.

"A's. A's in. Hands on boat. Altogether, lift. Right out. Right up. Under bow side. Down. Walk her out, mind the riggers. Round in the bows. Right up. Under stroke side. Down. Onto the pontoons. Right out. Put her in, together. Fetch your oars."

The crew would then trot back and, pausing only to dip their hands in a mysterious, patent gunge in a tin can, consisting of something resembling sawdust and molasses, return with their oars.

Once on board, it was "Adjust your stretchers. Back her down her bow". And then, with a shove off from someone on the pontoon, "Come forward to paddle light; paddle light, together."

Being a cox was cool in many ways. You got to order around four or eight blokes who were bigger than you. You escaped all that circuit training (Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race crews do two hours training for every stroke they take during the Boat Race). And you avoided the risk of scrotal damage posed by short shorts and the brass wheel-and-track mechanism of sliding seats.

But there were downsides. Principal amongst these was that you were personally responsible for any damage to the boat. For instance, fours and eights had a yellow bobble, like a rubber ping pong ball, attached to the bow. If you broke a bobble, it was thirty bob - probably about £30 now. Returning smartly to the pontoon, usually down current, required fine judgement. You had to bring this sixty foot, pencil thin shell in obliquely at a reasonable speed (otherwise you stopped short and the current carried you embarrassingly past), but order the rowing to stop early enough to have the number two oar hold her, so that the boat came alongside neatly parallel. Through tradition, rather than malice, crews would judge when the last stroke was coming and then put in an extra strong one, so that the boat would suddenly surge toward the pontoon like a dart. Also, in the case of a sinking, you were expected to go down with your boat. (Okay, I made that last bit up).

One of the reasons I joined the Boat Club was to avoid the crashing boredom and scary, rock-hard balls of cricket. Another was because I suffered appallingly from hay fever. Bad choice - sculling along between nose-high Shropshire river banks of uncut summer hay was a disaster. (I suffered so badly, always worst around exam times, that I once cut off the top of my socks with a pair of folding scissors during an English 'A' Level, because my handkerchief was sodden. It wasn't a success; the socks were wool, and not absorbent).

Big Cats and Body Odour

Last Friday's sighting of a panther or black leopard has taken on a more sinister significance since we learnt that an elderly West Highland terrier belonging to friends in a nearby hamlet was found mysteriously and fatally mauled on Monday evening. I chaperoned our own, also elderly, terrier out for her late run last night, and found myself wanting to hum a jolly tune and stomp about more noisily than usual, as one does when walking through thick bracken to drive away dozing adders.

Big cats mark their territory with urine, and the markings allegedly smell much like fox pee, which means that round here you can't now walk anywhere without wondering if you are about to be summarily dismembered.

Apropos similar smells, someone once told my parents that dope smelt like BO. It was an unkind piece of misinformation, because every time we had a party and the dancing grew heated, there would be my folks sniffing the air suspiciously and suggesting coffee and coats.

The Beast of Blue Bell Hill

The Social Secretary and her daughter have been having a strange morning. First they took the dog for a walk in the woods, and were taken aback when a large cat, 'about the size of a fox', with a thick tail, bounded across the path a few yards ahead of them. They have therefore now joined the lunatic fringe who have experienced sightings of large cats and UFOs (although it may also explain why the dog went ballistic on her late run up the garden last night, and why there is a chaos of feathers and a pair of pheasant's feet in the field by the fence).

There have been an increasing number of sightings of a puma or panther-like cat in this area over the last few years, known locally as 'The Beast of Blue Bell Hill', so maybe they didn't imagine it. But their credibility was subsequently undermined when, after duly reporting the sighting, they decided to celebrate by washing a couple of duvets. They drove to the village, parked up and walked into the laundrette with bulging black bin bags, packets of soap powder and a sandwich bag of loose change, only to find they were standing in an estate agency. Apparently the laundrette closed some time ago, which shows how often our duvets get the treatment.

Eric Clapton, Robert Raymond, Rachel Carns, and Hannah Scott

If we'd sussed when we booked tickets for Clapton in Nottingham that he would be playing five days later in Hyde Park, it'd have saved a long drive. It was a good gig though, especially as Uncle John had arranged a prime-sited executive box - not very rock and roll, but nice to be able to stretch one's legs, sup cold beer or wine, and have well-found loos all to ourselves.

The openers, Robert Raymond and the Family Band, were electric, putting heart and soul into their set (K reckoned they stole the show). Their Voodoo Child (Slight Return) was magic.

Clapton, on his magic carpet, was worth going for, inevitably. And long overdue - I last saw him with Cream at Wembley in April 1967, along with the Troggs, the Move, the Kinks, the New Vaudeville Band and Geno Washington (some gig, eh? Well, it should have been, except I couldn't hear a thing for teenage girls screaming). But there was something minimal and lacklustre about him and his band. There was no spark, no sign of enjoyment, no interaction with the audience. Except perhaps Abe Laboriel Jnr who drummed his big cotton socks off. The single encore (for which the punters had to work too hard), 'Got My Mojo Working' was enriched by the return of a bouncing, leg-waving Robert Raymond on his pedal guitar.

We were intrigued by Eric's rhythm guitarist who, K pointed out, was playing his guitar upside down. It looked like a left-handed guitar, being played left-handed, but strung right-handed. A quick Google showed that this was Doyle Bramhall II, who has toured before with Clapton with his own band, Smokestack. There must be a story behind his strange technique.

By way of contrast, my ordered debut album from Hannah Scott, 'Till Angels Fall', arrived today. With a personal note of thanks and good wishes from Hannah, and a kiss. Bless! I love it when artists are that approachable and appreciative. I had a similar response from Rachel Carns of Twin (King Cobra), who is fêted enough not to bother.

If you haven't come across Hannah, visit her MySpace here, then order her CD; it's really good and she's destined for great things.

A Literary Streak

The thing is, K was staying with a friend last night, and Bob was down the hill watching a DVD and drinking ale with a neighbour, so it was only the SS and I.

So when, just as I was climbing into bed, I discovered I'd left my book on the stairs ('The History of Love' by Nicole Krauss. Have you read it? You really should; it's hauntingly good), it seemed pretty safe to sprint smartly down to get it. Naked.

Bob really must have come back very quietly. Why he chose that moment to emerge from the sitting-room is beyond me. The sight of his father retreating up the stairs trying to create the illusion of underwear with his bare hands seems to have been a bit of a shock. He was unusually quiet this morning, and seemed almost eager to get to school.

New Craigs

Once, just for a few weeks, illness stole her reason. The professionally caring authorities took her away to a white-walled place with doors that locked.

One day he rang as usual, and she asked who he was. It's Don. Your son. At the end of the long cord, in the corridor with the cheery pictures, she picked her words with the care of someone who may be quoted. "I have a son named Don," she said, "but you are not him." And at once he was cut loose, adrift in a world without identity.

Later, when she had returned, she asked how it had been. He told her of this and she replied, "Oh I said that, did I?" as if denial of a child was a regrettable but not unusual hazard, like incontinence or a persistent cough.

"Yes. And one time you..."

"I don't want to talk about it," she interrupted, and he saw he had overstepped a boundary between her impuissance and his. He sealed up the memories that he had hoped to set free, and felt a prescient desolation.