Oh we do like to be beside the seaside.....

My Funny Valentine

It is a blustery February day in Hunstanton, but at least it isn't raining, and I am walking with my valentine, who seems to see the funny side.....

My funny valentine 
Sweet comic valentine 
You make me smile with my heart 
Your looks are laughable 
Unphotographable 
Yet you're my favourite work of art

Lorenz Hart & Richard Rodgers

The lights are coming on, under a cloudy sky.....

There is something of a holiday atmosphere

- a little something.....

Parents have wrapped their kids up for the fresh sea air.....

Enraged, perhaps, that, when not striking, teachers are themselves now taking holidays.....

Not all the pleasure palaces, entertainments or vendors of delicacies are yet fully functioning (Perhaps they are on strike? Ed):

But some are creaking open their shutters:

Though without the candy floss enthusiasm that will no doubt explode later in the year:

But there are some places open where you can sit outside and enjoy (?) a warm drink:

And indeed others where you can stand and enjoy (??) a warm drink......

Or go inside for an ice cream..... (Yum, just what we need....)

Or have a breakfast by the window with a view (of the clouds):

Or, my favourite, fish and chips, to take away (and give to the seagulls):

And then you could of course buy a net to catch your own...... (fish - not chips, stupid!)

And when it's nearly over, you can stock up on souvenirs and personalised gifts (though you can't take your fish and chips inside - The Management says so!).....

Ah, yes! My valentine and I, we do love to be beside the sea, on our heavenly never-ending holidays:

Oh! [We] do like to be beside the seaside! 

[We] do like to be beside the sea! 

Oh [we] do like to stroll along the Prom, Prom, Prom! 

Where the brass bands play, "Tiddely-om-pom-pom!"

So just let [us] be beside the seaside! 

[We]'ll be beside [ourselves] with glee 

and there's lots of girls beside, 

[We] should like to be beside, beside the seaside, 

beside the sea!

John H. Glover-Kind

1907

{By the way - and far be it from me to intrude here with pedantry, but I thought you might be interested?  February derives from the Latin word, februa, which meant to cleanse.  This period was named after the Roman month-long festival of purification and atonement, then known as Februalia....

Which is obviously why we have half term holidays ..... a bit like dry January perhaps?}

Oh! And there they go!  Barnacle geese flying off into the sunset...

Back to the grindstone.....

February, month of despair,

with a skewered heart in the centre.

Margaret Atwood

February

Islay 2 - A Christmas Carol

Isla' of Dreams

 

 

The Bothy

I am flying above cotton wool.  The tiny plane is crowded.  Behind me sit six reindeer.  Fortunately they have no hoof baggage.  Suddenly the pilot spirals us down to land in a peat bog.  Mary, the Warden at RSPB Loch Gruinart, where I am to volunteer, hitches the reindeer to a Vauxhall van and drives us to the Bothy at Aoradh (the first rule of Islay is that you don't say the 'y'; the second rule is that nothing is spelled or pronounced as you might expect).

The third rule of Islay

The Bothy is small and perfectly formed.  The reindeer sleep in the back.  I sleep on my side, and Amy, an ex-sailor with a serious interest in spiders, sleeps upstairs.  Everything is electric, which is very economical in power cuts.  There are three jigsaw puzzles: (one of Greenland Barnacle Geese migrating south in Autumn; one of Greenland Barnacle Geese migrating north in Spring; and one of a flock of Choughs on a beach, only the Chough pieces are missing), a game of Scrabble with only the letters PLISSYRAB, and a guitar which only plays old Bob Dylan songs like 'Blowin in the Wind.'

 At Loch Gruinart we meet every morning in the workshop, in the dark.  The friendly team include farm workers, those who count geese, those who wrangle reindeer, and those who make cakes.  We stand in a circle. We talk of Kittiwakes and livestock sales. We receive instructions for the day.  We leave as soon as Natalie arrives.  Mary, my boss, is a gentle task-master, ensuring that I do not have to spend every day extracting staples from fence stobs, and rolling old barbed wire.  One morning is spent, instead, shoring up a decaying sluice gate; one afternoon is devoted to taking down and putting up signs on the trails.  And one day, deep joy, is spent putting fencing up, in a bog.



Defence Committee

On Tuesday and Wednesday Natalie drives us to the Oa. Natalie, having sold her car to the local bobby and posted her piano to Germany. is leaving soon to build a yurt.  The Oa is pronounced "Oh" and leads to the irritating song, "Nat'lie's taking us to the Oh tomorrow......  And we have to stay all day," which sticks in the mind like a thorn in a wildcat's paw.  Anyway, on the Oa, we remove fencing from unkempt vegetation, and repair fences on boggy moorland.  Also under Warden Mark's direction we move several tons of kelp from the waterline at Lower Killeyan, to further up the beach.  This, apparently, will help Chough to survive.

 

Choughing seaweed!



The Oa is wildly beautiful.  A high point is walking up, in gusts of wind at 70mph, to the American Red Cross monument for victims drowned in two nearby sinkings in 1918.



The Monument, Mull of Oa

The views from here, over cliff edges and across the moors, are spectacular.



On the edge

In addition, at Kinnabus Farm, we eat cakes, with Meg, another volunteer in the team.... 


Meg, Sheepdog Manquee

Back at Loch Gruinart, we eat cakes.





And we count Whitefront Geese, getting up in the morning to the most delicate dawn.  We count members of the Thrush family on the moors and in the woods.  We count Chough going to bed at dusk near the uninhabited coasts, in the freshest sunset. And we walk down the western shore of Loch Gruinart counting waders, in driving rain, and in blinding winter sun that slants in, shining up from the mudflats at low tide.





It would have been a lovely dawn, if it weren't for all the geese....



On the day of the great storm the power goes out across the island and winds reach over 90mph.  We check outposts of the reserve, and with the sea whipped into double cream,





Looks like a nice day

I find two creatures washed up on Saligo beach.  At the same time a Pilot whale is washed up on the shore of Loch Indaal. The two incidents are unrelated.





All washed up

In the meantime, the reindeer have done one of the jigsaws. We eat smoked fish by candle light. According to a serious notice from the Argyll and Bute Council we should not drink the water, so we drink whisky, one of the main products of Islay and one of the few commodities on the shelves of Bowmore's Co-op.  The atmosphere is cosy, and the reindeer are well behaved, as long as Amy supplies them with chocolate truffles laced with Laphroaig Quarter Cask single malt.

 







In my dream I wake up and find it was all a dream.  It is time to leave.  The reindeer draw my sleigh to Port Askaig to catch the ferry. 

 

 

A flight of Barnacle Geese in a V formation dip their wings in salute overhead.



The Fly Past



My new found friends stand on the Quay and wave as we head into the gale.  I shower them with fairy cakes in gratitude, thanking them all for their part in my dream.  Across the harbour I hear a reindeer singing, while another strums the guitar:











The wind howls like a hamster

The night blows cold like reindeer

Isla' is like some raven

At my window with a broken wing.....




Sunset - shortly after lunch

 

Islay disappears into a mist of cotton wool......
 

Again I would wander where memories infold me
There on the beautiful Island of Dreams

 Far far away on the Isla' of Dreams

 

(Clyde Mcphatter - Island of Dreams)

 

 

 

 

[This piece was originally written for the RSPB at Loch Gruinart, with sincere thanks to all the staff there and at The Oa]