Tuesday, July 09, 2013 ISLAND DIARY -- OR, THE LESS ROMANTIC PARTS OF LIFE ON A REMOTE ISLAND

4.00 a.m. Hear ba-ing and think, even in my sleep, that it’s not on the road but in my garden.

4.02 run to door (can’t look out window because they are all blacked out with my “panels” – more on those another time) – yes, sheep in garden. Run out.

4.03 sheep (single, one semi-grown lamb) leaps over fence – later in day, someone (staying on hill on opposite side of village, about half a mile away!) says . when topic of sheep-chasing comes up, “I saw you outside in your pajamas this morning and wondered what you were doing.”

4.04 – 5.30 or so – go back to bed, try to get back to sleep but mind is racing with gardening and other plans. Today is the day Roy is going to fill in the holes he has dug around my hut (so it won’t blow away), and finally, I can really plant my garden. Plus he has promised me timber for the raised beds (boards are hideously expensive and hard to get here) and someone else has promised to help me make them.....but of what use is any of that if the sheep break in and get it all?

5.30 – decide to hang fishing nets over all the places where the stone wall is broken....in the one place I have done this, it has worked. So I cut the net I have, manage to make it stretch over other gaps:

8.30? – go in for tea, morning pages, begin planning garden

9.00—people deliver their children to school. I see friend, run out,

“Sorry to waylay you – but do you have any rylock [very good wire fencing, keeps rabbit, sheep out of garden] I could buy?”

He doesn’t – needs it all for HIS garden. Own lambs ate entire mint crop. Smiles delightedly as he says how much he is looking forward to eating said lamb.

“With mint sauce!” I add.

“The bit he didn’t get.”

We look at my stone wall, more of which falls down each day,  he shakes head.

“You’ll never keep them out.”

Sheep are owned by sole crofter on island, who prides himself and them on being aggressive – just HOW aggressive they are constant topic of conversation. Friend and I discuss it, difficulties.He suggests dry wall mender, I say he has already promised to do it, but – 

“He didn’t commit to when,” friend finishes for me.

I say I don’t like to nag, he gets that, but says I don’t want to be overlooked, either. Suggests I say something like,

“Am I moving up your list?”

NOTE FROM 2020: I finally reached the top of the list, he rebuilt the wall, and it’s now a work of art. It always did keep the sheep out.

For my life during the Pandemic, see the blog solointstonington.blogspot.com

Finding the Island

People often ask me how I ended up here -- on a Hebridean island three hours by boat from the Scottish mainland. I've wanted to live on a Scottish island since I was a young teenagerand read THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, then THE SINGING SANDS by Josephine Tey, and THE CROFTER AND THE LAIRD by John McPhee.....I imagined a sunny, windswept island near the top of the world. Whenever I thought that, I told myself that if it was in Scotland, it wouldn't be sunny. But that's how I always pictured it -- and that's how it was (well, sometimes) when in 2011 I saw my first Hebridean island, Barra.

The plane landed on the beach, at low tide.

The way to the hotel had the sea on one side, the machair --

a flower-filled meadow found only on the West coast of some hebridean islands-- on the other. It was so beautiful (or something) that I started to cry. I've been to every continent except Antarctica and nothing like that has ever happened to me. There was, is, just something about that light, landscape, silence, space -- I don't know what -- that felt like home.

About a week later, I spent a night on another island (chosen almost entirely by chance--there are 50 inhabited Scottish islands). There it was sunny, both days. On the first, I went for a three hour walk and didn't see anyone -- only wind and sea and sky; wildflowers and grass and sand, and, once, a large brown hare.

When my b and b hostess brought me to the ferry the next morning, she looked at me and said:"This is going to sound really strange, but I feel like you're part of our family."That's how I felt, too.

Back in America, I looked on the island's Web site to see about renting acottage and emailed the owner of one that seemed promising. She emailed back:

"...I think I have one of your books."

She did -- the IRELAND book I did for Scholastic; she'd bought it thinking it was a book about Connemara ponies. But still. How many published books are there in the world -- ten million? What are the chances of her having mine?

I rented the cottage for five months.

Dark skies & morning eggs

It's hard to explain how far away and foreign and cut off the island feels in winter. It's just a little island at the far edge of Europe -- in summer with boats every day and tourists it doesn't feel that way, but now when the boats are scheduled to arrive only 5 days a week, and in practice so far have only come twice a week, and so few people are here it does feel far away. 

The isolation strengthens the community, though -- there is so much darkness around the (few) houses.  I've mostly been here when the days were so long that I was asleep by the time it got dark -- but now it's dark early and dark here really IS dark. There aren't even any street lights on the island. In fact it is the only official "dark sky" island in Britain!

When I look out my kitchen (I call it "my kitchen," but this really means the counter and sink) window at night, I know every light -- whose house it is, I mean -- and everyone else does too and I think we all take comfort in seeing each others' lights. Several people, at least, have said how nice it is to see mine again  -- and *I* like looking across at the other two hills above the village and thinking things like, "Heather and Tom are still up." 

And you can not imagine how quiet it is. That's nice, too -- but again, it feels strange, to feel that there is nothing around you for miles and miles but the Atlantic.  Sometimes -- on really windy nights -- I can hear the Atlantic; and the hut shudders and shakes as though it's on it. The other night when I came in from my byre (as I perhaps somewhat pretentiously call the stone shed) I saw a shooting star.

But then in the morning the twenty-somethings in the Manse next door walk to their ride at the foot of the hill, and the kids start arriving at school -- and I make tea and, sometimes, morning eggs.

The easiest (no pots to get out and wash and put away) in a tiny house is to boil the eggs in the electric kettle. This method of cooking them keeps the whites light and fluffy, too.

MORNING EGGS
electric kettle

2 fresh, free-range eggs (can you taste the difference? Yes, I can! And in Stonington, the eggs are not only free-range but forage for their own food ''pasture-fed" is what the farmers call it, which means they get no grain and eat mainly bugs and have more protein and less bad cholesterol than grain-fed eggs)

cold water

1. Fill your kettle with as much cold water as you think you will need to completely cover the eggs, and then put them in gently. 

2. Close the lid, let the water come to the boil and the kettle shut itself off.

3.  Leave the lid closed. After 6 minutes, if you like your whites solid and set but your yolks just in-between hard and soft, the eggs are ready to eat. If you like the yolks firm, wait 8 minutes -- you may need to fiddle with this a few times to see how long your eggs take.

Hallowe'en on the island

Here, children must say a poem, sing a song, or tell a joke before they get their sweets. I offered a choice -- sweets OR three tiny, but very strong, magnets. The older boys chose the magnets ("Or can we have 2 magnets 1 sweet?"); the younger children and most, but not all, of the girls chose sweets.

This is my friend Cairistiona, as (her idea) "a witch's daughter."

A "witch's daughter" -- she said she was "too young" to be a witch.

All the children who were trick or treating (they call it "guying" here) on their own came by -- I heard some shouting eagerly:

"Let's go to Libby's!"

It was raining hard, and windy, but I didn't hear any of them talking about THAT. They just seemed excited and proud of their costumes.

"I'm a glampire," one boy said, spreading his arms proudly and opening his bin bag cape so his princess dress  showed:

Another boy -- Frankenstein's monster -- made the little magnets into ear-rings, one column on each side of his earlobes. They are so strong that they stayed on. (Pictures of the boys posted if I see their parents to ask permission before I leave.)

The island children are a creative, and charming, bunch. Here are some of the girls -- including Cupid (also her own idea):

Wild weather

People said I would come to hate the wind, but I love it -- even when a gale makes the hut shudder and rattle. When it's windy, or raining hard (as it does more and more now that winter is coming), the hut feels even more snug than usual. Here is the wind outside, blowing the poppies I planted --  a mild breeze, really, not wind.

I'll video the next gale, from inside and out. "Gale" means winds of over 50mph, and we've had two so far this year.

Before the first, someone said, laughing,

"Libby's the only one on the island who's looking forward to it."

Most people don't: they can go on for days (or even weeks), and during really bad ones the boat from the mainland doesn't come in and the shop has no fresh food.

But most of this autumn has been mild and sunny -- so mild that I can keep my door open. Here -- just for fun -- is how the hut l ooks when I do that.  I will make another video when the school holidays are over and Cairistiona can open the door -- and give you HER guided tour, with commentary.

That's what I see when I look out the window most of the time -- the loch, though there are views of the ocean from two other windows.

Other than the wind, most of the time there is no sound at all -- in some places on the island, you can stand and feel the stillness. But when the wind blows, it shakes the hut -- walking is hard (you are either pushing against it or being blown along by it); rain and clouds scud by -- sometimes the sun flashes out for a few minutes, making everything sparkle, and then rain pelts into the windows again.

It's good weather for writing!

Returning in July

I had to go to America at the end of May and was away for six weeks. When I came back

I was amazed by how overgrown my garden was. I shouldn't have been: in June,  the sun rises at 4 and sets at ten something.

I have always wanted to live in a house surrounded by a wildflower meadow -- I did get the meadow, though none of the flowers I planted came up, Only the lettuces and my herb garden, both of which I weeded carefully before I left,  survived. Here are the lettuces;

I planted lots more: artichokes, poppies, nasturtium, ranunculus,  lillies, sweet peas. People on the island say it takes a few years to learn how to grow things here -- and, "If you don't get your weeds under control by the first of June, you're doomed." I was in America from the end of May until the now; and people have also said June is the worst month to be away from your garden.

Next year I'll know better -- but in the meantime, at least I have lettuces and who knows, once I clear the weeds away may find that more survived than I thought at first. Maybe it will turn out to be quite a lot like writing a first draft -- get it all in and  see what works. Diana Wynn Jones says she never even knows what her books are really about until the second draft.  Maybe it will be the same with my garden.

I've already ordered more seeds.

Finding the land, getting the hut

While I was staying in the rented cottage, I kept walking buy a sign that said "For Sale"  -- a plot of land right in the village, with a stone wall all around it and a stone byre in the corner. By this time, I had fallen in love with the island and I called the estate agent on the mainland to see how much it was.

"Make us an offer."

"I don't know -- I don't know anything about real estate in Scotland," I said -- and after some back and forth, they said:

"£12,000."

This, I learned later, was about a quarter of the usual price.

Many people said not to buy it: I'd never get planning permission, there was no access etc. One farmer I remember well (more on him later) said, "If you could build on it, don't you think someone would have bought it by now?" And someone else said if HE said there was no access, there was no access.

But my landlord - the one who had said "I can't believe it! Everyone likes you! I haven't heard one bad thing about you! They say you're literary and always get out of the way for cars when you're riding your bike!" said,

"If anyone can do it, you can."

  
So when I got back to America I talked to the island builder about getting permission and a lot of other people and hired a builder in Wales to make me a shepherd's hut. Working out the details  took MONTHS but finally he drove the hut to Scotland, onto the ferry, and to the island:

The island is not at its best from the pier -- he looked appalled, and I could tell he was thinking: "Why? Why here?"

The children were enthusiastic from the start. My land is across the street from the school, and when they saw it coming,

They cheered -- literally, cheered.

"It's the coolest thing EVER!" someone said.

"Libby, are you SO excited?"
I was, especially after that welcome.  

But once I'd got it set up enough to build a fire and make tea for the builder, I liked it inside the hut, too:

Those pictures were taken when the hut arrived and soon after. Being here wasn't always so idyllic, to put it mildly. More on that in other posts. But here's a video tour of the hut in 2014, once everything was really set up: