Scotland 1 - Kidnapped

The Road to the Isles

A far croonin' is pullin' me away
As take I wi' my cromach to the road.
The far Cuillins are puttin' love on me
As step I wi' the sunlight for my load.

The Road to the Isles

Kenneth Macleod.

I am in Edinburgh.  I dine with gentlemen of distinction: Sir James Dunbar Nasmith; the President of the Scott Club; The Chair of the Royal Celtic Society.  

I have oysters and lamb, for the record.  I ask Sir James if he had known Basil Spence.  My conversation is limited.  Adam Smith may also have been present….. 

Later I sip Glenmorangie on the terrace, in lonely isolation with a slightly stained stoney  Queen.....

In the morning I am ribbed, via North Berwick, to the Bass Rock, where, along with a plethora of gannets,

A number of puffins and several guillemots,

I am reminded that Robert Louis Stevenson was nothing but the cousin of the man who designed and built the Bass Rock Lighthouse. 

The waters are cold. I see no sand eels.

To Ladybank, where I am held, in significant comfort and relative luxury, in a remote Steading.  I meet a man with restless eyes and a young woman who leads scouts and rings bells (though not mine).  A lamb’s leg is carved in ritual.  We speak of Gavin Maxwell and his discomforts, and of the insurmountable difficulty of electrifying the Forth Bridge, almost as if they are linked.... 

A tree creeper lightly touches the silver birch on the drive.

The next day I am taken to Crail.  Fishermen bait lobster pots and disappear.  An hotel claims to provide fresh fish….  Breaded or battered.  The shellfish shack is void.  Curlews in a field. Whaups would always be whistling….. (though these are black-throated divers....)

Later, in St Andrews (a city once archiepiscopal); I beg for Cullen Skink, in memory of the Battenbergs.  As Boswell recorded, Saint Andrews seems to be a place eminently adapted to study and education, being situated in a populous, yet a cheap country, and exposing the minds and manners of young men neither to the levity and dissoluteness of a capital city, nor to the gross luxury of a town of commerce, places naturally unpropitious to learning…..  [This might have been Charles’s prospectus for his son - the redshank....]  

No white-tailed eagles are seen.

From Ladybank to Pitlochry, where I am allowed haggis and neeps at the Old Mill Inn.  And thence to RSPB Loch Garten, close betwixt the Spey and the Cairngorm, and a forced induction smacking of The Prisoner; various Number Twos acting on uncoordinated orders from the unseen Number One.  My quarters are thin, the hut commander terse, dry philosophy her craic - enough to give a great spotted woodpecker a headache.  

No ospreys are seen. 

Nowhere.....

But I walk from Glen More to Nethy Bridge, taking shelter at the Ryvoan Bothy, making my bed of heather bushes which I cut for that purpose… there was a low concealed place, where I was so bold as to make a fire: so that I could warm myself when the clouds set in, and cook hot porridge, and grill the little trout that I caught with my hands under the stones and overhanging banks of the burn…. 

In the dark of Abernethy Forest the chaffinches elude me with their northern accents, but the Willy Wobbler is the same,  a sudden immigrant with his waterfall sing-song.

And then the redstart, sparkling at me in the slanting rain.....

His little love shaking her tail feathers at him in shameless rite of instinct....

We break away.  The Road to the Isles strides across the glens. Past the commandoes at Spean Bridge, over Telford's Neptune’s Staircase at Banavie on the Caledonian Canal in the Great Glen, lowered over by massive Ben Nevis, then past Kinlocheil to the safe place of Arisaig, from whose silver sands Bonnie Prince Charlie set sail to France in 1746, and where the Scottish SOE had their HQ in WWII.  The foul airs from the Jacobite Steam Train (aka Hogwarts Express) smut Mallaig, where ton bags of organic remains are unloaded to feed the ravenous salmonds…..

I am hoisted aboard an open ship, Spaniards and Italians abutting me, pitching across the Sound of Sleat, where no cetaceans breach the surface.  No white tailed neither.  

Smoke rising from remote Knoydart.

On Skye, to Armadale [Sky. Armidel.  Boswell: Armidel is a neat house, built where the Macdonalds had once a seat, which was burnt in the commotions that followed the Revolution….] Past Sligachan the faeries are busy, their parking filled to the shining brim, the adjacent hard brows of Cuillin furrowed by the passionate tourist.  

Under Sgurr Alasdair, Glenbrittle Beach disremembers me, from forty or more frozen years past, the black scree of tinned cheese and tubed milk little more than spume on a camper windscreen.  

Here I climbed, unsteady and unsure, a twenty-something novice in thrall to life.

Now no ring ouzel.  No ptarmigan.  But oysters, from Ullapool, above the Talisker distillery [Talisker is the place beyond all that I have seen, from which the gay and the jovial seem utterly excluded….  Boswell]; and then hurriedly to the four-car Kylerhea ferry and the graveyard at Glenelg, near where Boswell and Johnson stayed in 1773; (Of the provisions the negative catalogue was very copious.  Here was no meat, no milk, no bread, no eggs, no wine.  We did not express much satisfaction….)

R L Stevenson in my head. The desperate chase through the heather, the frightened fugue of dispossessed and Francophile anxious to avoid the Brexit party, the red-faced, red-coated ferruginous ambassadors of phony imperialism.  We duck and weave to dodge the spilling fighters, the cocksure arrogants, and trek by memorials, personal and touching, pausing at the Bealach Ratagan 

with its view of the Five Sisters of Kintail and then down Glen Shiel and up along Loch Ness.  But for the details of our itinerary, I am all to seek; our way lying now by short cuts, now by great detours; our pace being so hurried..... and the names of such places as I asked and heard being in the Gaelic tongue and the more easily forgotten.....

In Abernethy Forest, in the forward hide, the dawn glows briefly over an empty nest.  Stoical EJ, faithful for sixteen years, now aged at twenty-two, does not return.  Age perhaps the enemy; perhaps deathly inclement weather?  The grassy nest, the spread of a double bed, shudders in the wind atop the RSPB tree. For the first time in around sixty years, no raptor sinks onto spangled eggs within this view.

I wake from slumber, the silent dawn punctuated by the electronic burr of a passing capercaillie, his brazen baritone a blare across the otherwise deserted mist.  No EJ.  No Odin. How strange the kidnapped quiet of highland Scotland.  Painfully beautiful in the absence of a much beloved foreigner.  

I climb the stair in the darkness, naively reaching for the door to heaven, and then, flashlit by lightning, I stop, disillusioned by my misstep.  Then I hear a voice, brushed by a cough:  There are two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get none too much of them in this rough world among cold, proud people.

And I think, in all innocence, how good and humble was that wonderful bird who returned here year after year, to attempt to raise fifty chicks through snow and wind, aggression and hunger, who flew some 120,000 miles in accord with primitive instinct, daring to mate and lay and incubate and feed and nurture and protect in full view of our curious eyes…..

In Edinburgh I dine with Professor Sir James Duncan Dunbar Nasmith, 92 years of age, native of Dartmouth, pupil of Winchester College and Cambridge, conservation architect, resident of Findhorn.  His full and worthy life is more than a book, and his eloquence and composure put me to shame.  But, and I do hope he won’t mind me writing this, I cannot help but feel that EJ, our beloved missing osprey, is at least as remarkable a being as any good and humble man……

(chorus) Wi' ma pipes below ma oxter an' ma sporran neatly pressed

 Ma pockets full o' porridge for the road.

 Wi' some Crawford's Tartan Shortbread an' some tattie scones as weel

 An' ah'm jist aboot tae paint masel' wi' woad. Oh - yo!

Leo McGuire’s Song

Billy Connolly

 








With many thanks to Lindsay and Pauline, who made all this possible.

Also, thanks to R L Stevenson (Kidnapped) and James Boswell (Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland)



[Editor's note: All pictures by the author, but some do not necessarily correlate exactly with the places mentioned in the text]

Pen-y-Fan, The Brecon Beacons

Social Climbing....

The paths up to and down from Pen-y-Fan, at 886 metres the highest point of the Brecon Beacons, are busy. Snippets of conversation whip past with the cold wind.  Two young women pass me in opposition, chattering.... She didn't used to be a cow..... says one.

I thought I would start early and beat the crowds, but breakfast at The Tanners Arms, Defynnog, couldn't be hurried, and it is nine when I reach The Storey Arms Outdoor Education Centre on the A470, and the car park is already overflowing along the verges.  Spry individuals, dog walkers, hardy runners and groups of tough souls are gearing up and setting out.  

It's a fair day at 400 metres above sea level, but the heights are cloud covered and snowy.  I walk down to Pont ar Daf and then take the track across the stream and aim for the skies....

Rows and floes of angel hair

And ice cream castles in the air

And feather canyons everywhere

I've looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun

They rain and snow on everyone

So many things I would have done

But clouds got in my way

I walk with Joni Mitchell.  Somehow we have teamed up. I hold her 75-year-old hand and help her rise.  In 2015 she suffered a brain aneurysm, and she needs support. As we labour up her words spin through my foggy mind, her voice, now husky but still clear,  just audible.  Also with me on the track are three young deaf people, two girls and a boy, whose enjoyments of being out and about dance before us, putting selfie-obsession in context.  

At the cairn at Bwlch Duwynt the easterly wind whips over the ridge, and I become acutely aware of my carelessness in having left my gloves in the car....  Too late now!  The temperature must be around freezing, though the wind chill factor brings that down several degrees..... 

And in my anxiety Joni has slipped away....

The path is snow and slush and it is a choice between wading through icy water or risking the slippery edge above the steep slope.  Clouds shroud the tops and chill air numbs my fingers, and hurts my lungs....

The summit drifts blearily into sight, the socialising crowds appearing and disappearing in the mist. Jon Snow's talk of so many white people in one place takes on (yet) another meaning.... until I look a little closer.

There are all sorts here, and it is highly social; people of all ages, and from varied backgrounds and countries, unite in a sense of achievement, an enjoyment of being on top of the world, despite (or perhaps because of?) the lack of views.  

I am amazed at how many people have lifted themselves to this cold summit at this hour, and at the endless chains that are working their ways up (and at those who started earlier and are already on their way home, some even running....) I am struck by the sense of community that transcends any small-minded preoccupations that may have been left at home..... People talk to each other, help each other with their photos, discuss paths and exchange experiences.

She didn't used to be a cow, takes on a new value. I realise the women were not criticising their friend, but lamenting the fact she had changed, still loving her.....

In these depressing times of division and stalemate, flecked with aggression and bigotry, it's good to mingle with people who have a shared goal. There is a spirit of common humanity here which raises my hopes. Perhaps, if the worst comes to the worst, this is how it could be? A group of survivors looking after each other in cold blind vapours on an isolated peak. 

Might these clouds really have a silver lining?

I've looked at clouds from both sides now

From up and down, and still somehow

It's cloud illusions I recall

I really don't know clouds at all....

On the way down, my knees taking the strain, the weather appears to lift.  Greetings are exchanged.  Someone gives me a jelly baby, others simply smile.  I wonder at the optimism of some, those in shorts, others in light plimsolls.  It's cold up there, I say.  The wind....  They smile.  They're young, and full of hope.....

And that's it.  There are those who are going up, and those who are going down.  Some well equipped, some not.  It really doesn't matter.....  We live within illusions.

Joni is waiting for me at the top of Y Gyrn where the view back up to Corn Du and Pen-y-Fan is superb. She smiles, then fades.  I hear her sing....

I've looked at life from both sides now 

From win and lose and still somehow 

It's life's illusions I recall

I really don't know life at all

I've looked at life from both sides now 

From up and down and still somehow

It's life's illusions I recall

I really don't know life at all

From Both Sides Now

Joni Mitchell

© 1967 Gandalf Publishing Co.

*     *     *     *

Joni Mitchell in conversation with Gene Shay, "Folklore Program" March 12, 1967

I was reading a book, and I haven't finished it yet, called Henderson the Rain King. And there's a line in it that I especially got hung up on that was about when he was flying to Africa and searching for something, he said that in an age when people could look up and down at clouds, they shouldn't be afraid to die. And so I got this idea 'from both sides now.' There are a lot of sides to everything, and so the song is called "From Both Sides, Now."

Joni introduced the song this way at the White Swan in Leicester, England on September 16, 1967:

This is a song that talks about sides to things. In most cases there are both sides to things and in a lot of cases there are more than just both. His and a hers. His and theirs. But in this song there are only two sides to things… there’s reality and I guess what you might call fantasy. There’s enchantment and dis-enchantment, what we’re taught to believe things are and what they really are.

I realise I am not scared of death, though I don't really look forward to dying.  Pretty much everything else is in the clouds.  The attraction of the undiscovered country is obvious today on this leaderless plain, where the main religion is greed, but, despite that, there are still surprises to be had, and, as the lady says, there are two sides to most things..... Truth and illusion.....

*     *     *     *

Both Sides, Now was inspired by a passage from Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King: I dreamed down at the clouds, and thought that when I was a kid I had dreamed up at them, and having dreamed at the clouds from both sides as no other generation of men has done, one should be able to accept his death very easily.

http://jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=4378

She came in through the bathroom window.....

High Windows.....

The Open Window, Yellow Wall, c 1919

I am in Tate Modern, that vast and powerless monument to control, peering through windows.... I am enjoying The Colour of Memory, the C C Land Exhibition. As the guide points out, The paintings of Pierre Bonnard (1867 - 1947) create a remarkable sense of intimacy. Many of them allow glimpses into a private world, depicting the domestic life that Bonnard shared with his companion, Marthe de Méligny.

La Fenêtre
(The Window)

1925

 Pierre Bonnard

Photo © Tate

CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported)

https://www.tate.org.uk

There aren't many connections, perhaps, between Pierre Bonnard and Philip Larkin, but some link fizzes through my mind. Larkin, apart from anything else, may not be best remembered for his use of colour, but the records of daily life, and the way things are remembered and reimagined perhaps link the poet and the painter, as does the use of windows (and that's not pc).....

But, just maybe, one informs the other?

I think I see the poet leaning on the railings, looking down....

But it's a mistate (sic).....  Larkin wouldn't be seen dead in jeans....

Looking through windows is not necessarily voyeurism.  It's a way of framing experience, of playing with dimensions - even if only two.

In Nude in the Bath we see an out-of-focus figure in a dressing gown entering the frame. A Larkin-like Pierrot in his lover's bathroom, the light from the window filtering through the layers of their lives.  1925 was the year that Bonnard married Marthe, but it was also the year that Bonnard's other lover, Renée Monchaty, to whom he had proposed marriage in 1923, committed suicide.

The figure in the bath is not Marthe in 1925, but a younger Marthe, less tubercular, perhaps more as he wanted to remember her, to record their love....

While other people wore like clothes

The human beings  in their days

I set myself to bring to those

Who thought I could the lost displays.....

Sympathy in White Major

Philip Larkin

Nu dans la baignoire

(Nude in the Bath)

1925

 Pierre Bonnard

Photo © Tate

CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported)

https://www.tate.org.uk

Paintings, especially framed ones, are windows onto other worlds.  Other times, other places.  People we never knew look back at us through openings in the walls, through glass, through time.  Again and again Bonnard's pictures step through a frame, and then through a window, colouring in lost days....

Yet still the unresting castles thresh

In full-grown thickness every May.

Last year is dead, they seem to say,

Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

The Trees

Philip Larkin

So similar.  So different.  A bottle of wine, half consumed.  A woman, half complete.....

The Open French Window, Vernon, c 1921

The Door Opening onto the Garden, c 1924

I am not alone.  These window frames are focal planes for all, and sundry (sun dried, sic). We gaze, refreshed, through the openings at worlds we missed, yet which we love.  

The woman in red here crouches as if to welcome the woman in blue, to invite her in; the seated man could almost be the painter, more aloof.....

Dining Room in the Country, 1913

And here, in southern France, the viewer watches over a reclining Bonnard, the roof of his house, Le Bosquet, in mid-canvas, the landscape of the distant Estérel mountains reflecting the shades of the viewer's clothing while Bonnard merges naked into the straw.....

Landscape at Le Cannet, 1928

Time for a drink.....

When I drop four cubes of ice

Chimingly in a glass, and add

Three goes of gin, a lemon slice,

And let a ten-ounce tonic void

In foaming gulps until it smothers

Everything else up to the edge,

I lift the lot in private pledge:

He devoted his life to others.

Sympathy in White Major

Philip Larkin

And I walk through the windows.....

Into another world....

Though, again, I am not alone.  There are windows all around, reflecting, shining, framing all we are....  

Or what we seem to be.

Way below, in the teeming Borough Market, the dance of life continues, the music indistinct, blurred by the shuddering of time. Nothing is fixed; nothing is certain; the actors play their parts, then disrobe, and, eventually, disappear.....

If Bonnard had had the absence of mind, he might have caught the scene, some years later. Larkin, too, could have gazed disconsolately upon the frantic antics of others more energetic than he, and, perhaps, have latterly written up a thought, and then we, the outsiders, the empty cataracts of existence, would have marvelled at what they saw.....

But it is quieter in the gallery.  In Normandy. I am drawn in by the blood red wall, the cat in the deckchair, the cat by the table, the jug on the shelf, the woman's red shirt against the distance, the simple meaningless of the moment. The meaningful moment of simplicity.....

I leave it...  I come back...  I do not let myself become absorbed by the object itself..... (Pierre  Bonnard.)

High Windows

by Philip Larkin

When I see a couple of kids

And guess he’s fucking her and she’s 

Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, 

I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives— 

Bonds and gestures pushed to one side

Like an outdated combine harvester,

And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if 

Anyone looked at me, forty years back, 

And thought, That’ll be the life;

No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide 

What you think of the priest. He

And his lot will all go down the long slide 

Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows: 

The sun-comprehending glass,

And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows

Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

Philip Larkin, 
High Windows
from Collected Poems. 
Copyright © Estate of Philip Larkin.

High Windows above the Empty Powerhouse

Next year we shall be easier in our minds.

Homage to a Government

Philip Larkin

Didn't anybody tell her.....

London Bridge

Didn't anybody see?

I am out of Tate Modern, a vast and uncontrolled monument to power, where I was peering through windows....  I very much enjoyed The Colour of Memory, the C C Land  Exhibition.  As the guide pointed out, The paintings of Pierre Bonnard (1867 - 1947) create a remarkable sense of intimacy.  Many of them allow glimpses into a private world, depicting the domestic life that Bonnard shared with his companion, Marthe de Méligny.


Now I am at London Bridge.....

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

This be the verse

Philip Larkin