Howmore River, South Uist
Sunday, 18 July 2010
Saturday, 17 July 2010
Time to Reflect - a (pre)cautionary tale
He nearly walked straight past it. The stallholder was already wrapping her smaller items in newspaper and packing them into the collection of gaudily assorted plastic crates and the car-boot sale was due to end in half-an-hour. He stopped to tie his shoelace for the umpteenth time. It is a little known fact that some laces are particularly unsuited to left-handers and, for some no-doubt highly complex reason involving the way the lace is woven and the physics of knotting, they steadfastly refuse to remain fixed fast. It was whilst he knelt (bending down to touch his toes was beyond the reach of his middle-aged back) that he saw it. The mirror itself was perhaps no larger than a normal photographic print but the deep, dark elaborate frame was huge. The wood was crisply carved into a rain-forest of leaves and flowers and fruits that was so overwhelming in its design and execution that the small pool of tarnished mirror appeared almost incidental. He finished tying the lace (it was always the left shoe that came undone) and lifted the mirror onto the now nearly cleared table. The spotting on the mirror was caused by the silvering on its rear surface having deteriorated over time but it added to the charm of the piece and the small size of the mirror rendered its reflecting properties somewhat secondary to the decorative function that the frame performed in heady, intoxicating abundance. As it happens, this style was something that usually wouldn't appeal at all to his taste which was more often attuned towards the Bauhaus, Mackintosh and the generally unflowered form. Nevertheless he found himself enquiring as to the price and the stallholder, one crate short of a cleared trestle, requested twenty English pounds. Normally he would have haggled but instead he handed her the twenty pound note with the words 'Clydesdale Bank' printed proudly across its surfaces, picked up the naked frame and returned to his car.
Car, mirror and man survived the journey home, despite him swearing loudly about 'English pounds' and reminding himself to replenish the stock of Scottish banknotes that he kept especially to antagonise shopkeepers in England who used the phrase. He took the mirror into the house and placed it on a coffee table. The table was one he'd had made by a female friend who was an extremely talented welder and it replicated in metal one of Mackintosh's designs. They had designed it to be a prototype but the complexity of the construction taught them not to take the project any further. The whole room was decorated in similar vein and the effect was all the more surprising for visitors who stepped through the door of a seemingly regular Victorian brick and slate terrace and into a world of very un-English design. He hadn't been too sure until a call from one of the glossy fashion mags offered him a ridiculous amount of money for doing a 'feature' on the 'property' convinced him that it was all in incredibly bad taste or really rather successful. He gave half the money to his kids and the other half to a candidate in the forthcoming local election. The candidate came last but not without being able to ensure that the neighbourhood was bombarded with literature supporting his cause.
This was the house that the mirror and frame found itself inhabiting and it also soon found itself being carefully dusted with a selection of soft paintbrushes. The man was delighted as the layers of dust were removed and the intricacy of the carving became steadily clearer. It was, quite simply, exquisite. The accuracy of the work resembled that of a diamond cutter and what made it so amazing were the plethora of piercings, many of which had been blocked by grime, that gave the frame almost as much surface on the 'inside' as it presented to the world. The back revealed no clues as to age but equally there were no signs of it ever having been removed. The mirror itself, that tiny, almost insignificant rectangle of glass, must be original. A fact that the discolouration amplified in abundance.
There were two metal loops and a piece of elderly, tired cord from which to hang the object but he decided to install some fresh cord rather than risking the glass to the frail health of the existing stuff. This task accomplished, he took the photograph that hung above the fireplace (one of his own images that had won a National competition) from its hook and replaced it with the mirror.
He stood back to better survey the effect and was extremely delighted. The frame was a wall sculpture, a piece of architectural art and the 'floral' nature disappeared in a tangle of shapes and shadows, forms and figures that defied description. He almost forgot that it was a mirror. However, as he stepped forward and focussed upon the distressed reflection something very strange happened. He saw his room, the door to the left, the large bay window to the right but the walls were papered in some hideous patterned paper, the floor covered by a large and vibrantly coloured rug, the furniture all dark brown and puffed and very, very large. He blinked. The hideous picture was still there, but now there was a man standing at the window and a woman sat sewing in the adjacent seat. He turned from the mirror and the room returned to normal. He turned back and the couple and their furnishings sat within the forest frame. Entranced, he watched as the couple conversed but suddenly the image began to fade and the pockmarks, whose disappearance he had neglected to notice, returned to disfigure the mirror. He sat. He had to sit for he had nearly collapsed in shock. Either he was ill, going mad (possibly both) or the mirror was, well, magical. He sat. And thought. He decided that he would not look at the mirror but would take it into the dining room, hang it there and see what happened. This he did but when he looked into the mirror he saw a range with pots on it, more hideous décor and all the trappings of the kitchen that it once had been. There were no people this time but he was sure he smelt something cooking. He looked away from the mirror and examined the frame intently. The strange foliage writhed this way and that, flowers and fruits displayed in their profusion and then he noticed it. A very small flower in the bottom right hand corner, tucked away towards the rear of the frame but with twelve petals and upon each petal five striations and, surrounding this flower, an almost circular leaf that had a curious notch like a tiny caterpillar bite. He reached forward to the flower, took it gently between his forefinger and thumb and applied some gentle force. The flower rotated. It notched its way around, each time stopping as a new striation aligned with the caterpillar's blemish and as it did so the image in the mirror changed. He was rotating the dial clockwise and as he did so the mirror's reflection revealed a new novelty until, after half a full turn, the room was lit by gas light, the crockery on the dresser was of finer quality, the range had shrunk in size and the ceiling gained in stains. It was still the past, but a more recent past, a more modern past, a newer past. The mirror had taken him forward in time, no, the mirror's image had moved forward in time. He renewed his grip on the flower-dial and rotated it against the clock, against the flow of time and watched as, turn by turn, the mirror took him back until bare, unplastered walls and a roofless void appeared; still further and the walls melted into sky and trees and grass; further and the ground buckled and heaved and water came and went, creatures swam past, primeval forests sped into view before, as his fingers felt the flower stiffen, the rocks themselves melted and he felt himself sinking into the molten warmth.
The fire-fighter said he was lucky. It was only because of the stranger in the window ('Dressed rather weird like') that the lady over the road had dialled 999 and, when the police broke in, they had nearly choked on the fumes from the leaking boiler. The intruder was nowhere to be found but the man had been discovered lying on the dining room floor amongst the fragments of glass and wood from the smashed mirror. Oh, and there was a funny smell, an odd mixture of boiled rabbit and sulphur but they couldn't find where it had come from...
Car, mirror and man survived the journey home, despite him swearing loudly about 'English pounds' and reminding himself to replenish the stock of Scottish banknotes that he kept especially to antagonise shopkeepers in England who used the phrase. He took the mirror into the house and placed it on a coffee table. The table was one he'd had made by a female friend who was an extremely talented welder and it replicated in metal one of Mackintosh's designs. They had designed it to be a prototype but the complexity of the construction taught them not to take the project any further. The whole room was decorated in similar vein and the effect was all the more surprising for visitors who stepped through the door of a seemingly regular Victorian brick and slate terrace and into a world of very un-English design. He hadn't been too sure until a call from one of the glossy fashion mags offered him a ridiculous amount of money for doing a 'feature' on the 'property' convinced him that it was all in incredibly bad taste or really rather successful. He gave half the money to his kids and the other half to a candidate in the forthcoming local election. The candidate came last but not without being able to ensure that the neighbourhood was bombarded with literature supporting his cause.
This was the house that the mirror and frame found itself inhabiting and it also soon found itself being carefully dusted with a selection of soft paintbrushes. The man was delighted as the layers of dust were removed and the intricacy of the carving became steadily clearer. It was, quite simply, exquisite. The accuracy of the work resembled that of a diamond cutter and what made it so amazing were the plethora of piercings, many of which had been blocked by grime, that gave the frame almost as much surface on the 'inside' as it presented to the world. The back revealed no clues as to age but equally there were no signs of it ever having been removed. The mirror itself, that tiny, almost insignificant rectangle of glass, must be original. A fact that the discolouration amplified in abundance.
There were two metal loops and a piece of elderly, tired cord from which to hang the object but he decided to install some fresh cord rather than risking the glass to the frail health of the existing stuff. This task accomplished, he took the photograph that hung above the fireplace (one of his own images that had won a National competition) from its hook and replaced it with the mirror.
He stood back to better survey the effect and was extremely delighted. The frame was a wall sculpture, a piece of architectural art and the 'floral' nature disappeared in a tangle of shapes and shadows, forms and figures that defied description. He almost forgot that it was a mirror. However, as he stepped forward and focussed upon the distressed reflection something very strange happened. He saw his room, the door to the left, the large bay window to the right but the walls were papered in some hideous patterned paper, the floor covered by a large and vibrantly coloured rug, the furniture all dark brown and puffed and very, very large. He blinked. The hideous picture was still there, but now there was a man standing at the window and a woman sat sewing in the adjacent seat. He turned from the mirror and the room returned to normal. He turned back and the couple and their furnishings sat within the forest frame. Entranced, he watched as the couple conversed but suddenly the image began to fade and the pockmarks, whose disappearance he had neglected to notice, returned to disfigure the mirror. He sat. He had to sit for he had nearly collapsed in shock. Either he was ill, going mad (possibly both) or the mirror was, well, magical. He sat. And thought. He decided that he would not look at the mirror but would take it into the dining room, hang it there and see what happened. This he did but when he looked into the mirror he saw a range with pots on it, more hideous décor and all the trappings of the kitchen that it once had been. There were no people this time but he was sure he smelt something cooking. He looked away from the mirror and examined the frame intently. The strange foliage writhed this way and that, flowers and fruits displayed in their profusion and then he noticed it. A very small flower in the bottom right hand corner, tucked away towards the rear of the frame but with twelve petals and upon each petal five striations and, surrounding this flower, an almost circular leaf that had a curious notch like a tiny caterpillar bite. He reached forward to the flower, took it gently between his forefinger and thumb and applied some gentle force. The flower rotated. It notched its way around, each time stopping as a new striation aligned with the caterpillar's blemish and as it did so the image in the mirror changed. He was rotating the dial clockwise and as he did so the mirror's reflection revealed a new novelty until, after half a full turn, the room was lit by gas light, the crockery on the dresser was of finer quality, the range had shrunk in size and the ceiling gained in stains. It was still the past, but a more recent past, a more modern past, a newer past. The mirror had taken him forward in time, no, the mirror's image had moved forward in time. He renewed his grip on the flower-dial and rotated it against the clock, against the flow of time and watched as, turn by turn, the mirror took him back until bare, unplastered walls and a roofless void appeared; still further and the walls melted into sky and trees and grass; further and the ground buckled and heaved and water came and went, creatures swam past, primeval forests sped into view before, as his fingers felt the flower stiffen, the rocks themselves melted and he felt himself sinking into the molten warmth.
The fire-fighter said he was lucky. It was only because of the stranger in the window ('Dressed rather weird like') that the lady over the road had dialled 999 and, when the police broke in, they had nearly choked on the fumes from the leaking boiler. The intruder was nowhere to be found but the man had been discovered lying on the dining room floor amongst the fragments of glass and wood from the smashed mirror. Oh, and there was a funny smell, an odd mixture of boiled rabbit and sulphur but they couldn't find where it had come from...
The Find - a short tall story...
The appearance of the forensics tent in the middle of a peat-bank had caused quite a stir at the time but its precise location was soon forgotten or, rather, multiplied into so many 'real' sites of the discovery as to render the chance of anyone finding the correct one quite improbable. Similarly, the profusion of rumours regarding what had been found, everything from a hoard of Viking gold via an unexploded secret weapon to the body of one of several notable clan chiefs, provided ample camouflage of the true contents...
In the bowels of the British Museum the team of medics, archaeologists, historians and paleontologists were gathered around the hermetically sealed container. There had been some misgivings when the Official Secrets Act had been produced for each of them to sign but, when it was pointed-out that they were being offered a unique opportunity that any one of a number of their 'colleagues' (in truth, competitors) in the academi-shpere would accept in their place they all had found it surprisingly easy to put their belief in the universality of knowledge to one side.
The container, a metallic cigar-tube about five feet long and three feet in diameter, lay humming on the dissecting table. The whole area was illuminated by special 'cold daylight' lamps in this humidity (and everything-else) controlled room. The team, each of whom wore a lightweight version of a space-suit, each inserted their own key into the locks arranged around the container and, with a barley audible 'clunk', the seal was broken and the top half of the tube began to raise itself a few inches clear on the two-dozen linear-motor driven rods. When it stopped the mobile hoist, a high-tech version of those used to remove the engines from cars, was brought forward and, once secured, the lid was removed.
The team looked into the clear colloidal suspension and had their first sight of Homo Pygmius Lewisii, lying in her foetal position just as she had been found twenty-five centuries after her interment. Her clothes, her shoes, her hair, her skin, were all perfectly preserved but it was not those nor, surprisingly, her miniature stature that made them gasp. It was the pendant hanging from the chain around her neck, the strange symbols on each of the ten buttons of its keypad glowing bright...
In the bowels of the British Museum the team of medics, archaeologists, historians and paleontologists were gathered around the hermetically sealed container. There had been some misgivings when the Official Secrets Act had been produced for each of them to sign but, when it was pointed-out that they were being offered a unique opportunity that any one of a number of their 'colleagues' (in truth, competitors) in the academi-shpere would accept in their place they all had found it surprisingly easy to put their belief in the universality of knowledge to one side.
The container, a metallic cigar-tube about five feet long and three feet in diameter, lay humming on the dissecting table. The whole area was illuminated by special 'cold daylight' lamps in this humidity (and everything-else) controlled room. The team, each of whom wore a lightweight version of a space-suit, each inserted their own key into the locks arranged around the container and, with a barley audible 'clunk', the seal was broken and the top half of the tube began to raise itself a few inches clear on the two-dozen linear-motor driven rods. When it stopped the mobile hoist, a high-tech version of those used to remove the engines from cars, was brought forward and, once secured, the lid was removed.
The team looked into the clear colloidal suspension and had their first sight of Homo Pygmius Lewisii, lying in her foetal position just as she had been found twenty-five centuries after her interment. Her clothes, her shoes, her hair, her skin, were all perfectly preserved but it was not those nor, surprisingly, her miniature stature that made them gasp. It was the pendant hanging from the chain around her neck, the strange symbols on each of the ten buttons of its keypad glowing bright...
Up the Obbe Road - A Fantasy
The clouds were lazily flowing through the hills giving glimpses of green-swathed rocks soaked to the skin. Old, ice-worn faces of gneiss pock-marked by long-named minerals glistened in the sunless gloom. Picking their way along the grass-ways, the sheep munched silently whilst warily watching the passer-by. He walked on, head bent low, up the arrow-straight mile of tarmac laid between the heights unseen on either side. On his right the small river driven by the unseen hand of gravity, a stream of peat-black inking its way through the grass and stone, ceaselessly careered down to the sea far below. The clouds rode formlessly against this flow, as if the mountains were their natural lair. The cliffs grew steeper, more insistent in their overpowering domination and, as he braved a glance ahead, the tarmac ruler appeared to narrow, squashed by the weight of the overwhelming presence of the ancient rock on either side. A dead sheep lay in the river, it's putrefaction dribbling from beak-shaped punctures staining the fleecy coat that clung to the rotting flesh. A cousin passed it by, oblivious of the decaying form at its feet. The journeyer carried on his way, relieved not to have slaked his thirst. The rain eased a little, pausing for breath before renewing, and the human paused too. The rock face on his left, now only a few yards from the road, rose vertically for fifty-feet before sloping away as it ascended. The solid mass relieved only by a gushing fall of foam-filled water rushing from the hidden heights and crashing to an unseen fate below. A movement perpendicular to the water caught his eye and an eagle soared in silent dominance before disappearing into the space where the rock melted into mist. The traveller continued up the ribbon slope ahead, the gradient increasing, the rain increasing, the impression that the hills were pressing towards each other with each and every step increasing too. He must go on. Head returned to its downcast state, hood pulled tighter to shield his face from the damp-daggered assault, his feet regained their pace. The river ran through rocks and over tiny rapids before a second sheep lay in silent sleep on the stream-bed. This one was more decayed than its downstream brother and sticks of stained ivory sprung from the corpse echoed in the nakedness of the skull with its twin pale-brown horns. Again, a fellow member of its race was mindlessly masticating within a yard or two of these remnants of life. The voyager quickened his step, passing without pausing a third corpse, and entering further into the chasm at whose foot he walked. The sky, that grey roof supporting the clouds that draped themselves about the omnipresent oppressiveness of the rock walls on either side, began to fall under the weight of its own existence and the human form was powerless to prevent being crushed beneath it. A sheep munched silently, oblivious of the rotting horn-less body lying in the river at its feet...
Post Bus, South Uist
Geology Links
I became quite interested in Geology in my youth so thought that I'd compile a little list of online sources for anyone who might be interested in learning something of that aspect of the Western Isles and especially of South Harris:
Scottish Geology (portal): Hebrides:
http://www.scottishgeology.com/geology/regional_geology/hebrides.html
Images of rock samples from Harris at The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow
http://www.huntsearch.gla.ac.uk/cgi-bin/foxweb/huntsearch/SummaryResults.fwx?collection=geology&Searchterm=harris+western+isles
A brief overview of South Harris plus Outer Hebridean intrusions:
http://jgslegacy.lyellcollection.org/cgi/content/abstract/119/1-4/243
South East Harris Igneous Complex:
http://www.jamescanalpages.org.uk/ian/thesis1.htm
These last two are particularly technical but I guess it's not called the 'South Harris Igneous COMPLEX' for nothing!
Scottish Geology (portal): Hebrides:
http://www.scottishgeology.com/geology/regional_geology/hebrides.html
Introduction to the Outer Hebrides (doc):
Images of rock samples from Harris at The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow
http://www.huntsearch.gla.ac.uk/cgi-bin/foxweb/huntsearch/SummaryResults.fwx?collection=geology&Searchterm=harris+western+isles
A brief overview of South Harris plus Outer Hebridean intrusions:
http://jgslegacy.lyellcollection.org/cgi/content/abstract/119/1-4/243
South East Harris Igneous Complex:
http://www.jamescanalpages.org.uk/ian/thesis1.htm
These last two are particularly technical but I guess it's not called the 'South Harris Igneous COMPLEX' for nothing!
Friday, 16 July 2010
Ask Angus...
...about this industrial/part domestic building of uncertain purpose,
but evidently a part of Captain MacLeod's fisheries
development programme of the 1780s at Rodel.
Who knows, he may have called it 'Home'?...
Refs:
seallaidh-tìre (landscape - a poem, perhaps)
...ice-scoured tongue-scape rising from the sea. Each Gaelic-gifted name-place, of hill, of river, of beach, of bay, of headland, of pass, of time, of space smooth-softened into place. Feet treading paths populated by ghosts, spirits of the land guiding exploration. Low, broad walls whose turf-topped tracks bounded by mortar-less concentric bands of stone stubbornly refuse to fall. Roofless, lifeless testament of attempted genocide.
See? Where? Sea-ware. Kelp-skelped. Ruin.
Children of the Norse clinker-carried upon the sea, cast adrift to cast line, net and pot for salt-seasoned harvest, many themselves cast into the boiling sea. Husbands, sons, brothers, fathers, uncles, nephews lie scattered round the shore. Sacrificial homage paid in exacting price.
Fisher, Fissure, Craic, Crack.
Gneiss, niece of granite, rocks of ages, rocks of eons, rocks of cradles. Peat, moss, heather, moor, run the rig no more. Lazily the rippled land sprouts forth small yielding. Blight. Famine. Laud the land. In ports, import of grain, sustain, but emigration's this season's crop. Seven-hundred souls. A fair return? (no return).
Pest-i-cide, gen-o-cide, you-de-cide. Clear a path. Clear a way. Clear away. Clearance
Clock chimes the quarter
17:45.
Quarter the clans
1745.
Cull them.
Culloden.
Clearance. Clear rants. Clear rats. Like vermin.
Factor in the Factor. Blame is absent. Landlord is absent. Nature abhors a vacuum.
Factor in greed. Blame apportioned. Lord it over the landless. Nature has no dominium.
Improvement.
Plough
till the land
reveals bones long-buried.
Improvement.
Ploughshare
cleaving, displacing,
overturning communities.
Improvement. Impoverishment. Chart the ice-scoured tongue-scape...
See? Where? Sea-ware. Kelp-skelped. Ruin.
Children of the Norse clinker-carried upon the sea, cast adrift to cast line, net and pot for salt-seasoned harvest, many themselves cast into the boiling sea. Husbands, sons, brothers, fathers, uncles, nephews lie scattered round the shore. Sacrificial homage paid in exacting price.
Fisher, Fissure, Craic, Crack.
Gneiss, niece of granite, rocks of ages, rocks of eons, rocks of cradles. Peat, moss, heather, moor, run the rig no more. Lazily the rippled land sprouts forth small yielding. Blight. Famine. Laud the land. In ports, import of grain, sustain, but emigration's this season's crop. Seven-hundred souls. A fair return? (no return).
Pest-i-cide, gen-o-cide, you-de-cide. Clear a path. Clear a way. Clear away. Clearance
Clock chimes the quarter
17:45.
Quarter the clans
1745.
Cull them.
Culloden.
Clearance. Clear rants. Clear rats. Like vermin.
Factor in the Factor. Blame is absent. Landlord is absent. Nature abhors a vacuum.
Factor in greed. Blame apportioned. Lord it over the landless. Nature has no dominium.
Improvement.
Plough
till the land
reveals bones long-buried.
Improvement.
Ploughshare
cleaving, displacing,
overturning communities.
Improvement. Impoverishment. Chart the ice-scoured tongue-scape...
Tuesday, 6 July 2010
The Papar Project
I gave a link to this research in a brief note on Taransay but thought that The Papar Project should have a separate entry as the online pages contain a wealth of information from many disciplines, across both space and time, and are a fascinating and accessible read.
My interest lies primarily in the material on the Hebrides but the beauty of the Project is in contemplating the Papar places of Scotland as a unit whilst exploring the variations that exist between the different places.
It really is well-worth taking a look at, and not just for the entries on Taransay and Pabbay in Harris!
My interest lies primarily in the material on the Hebrides but the beauty of the Project is in contemplating the Papar places of Scotland as a unit whilst exploring the variations that exist between the different places.
It really is well-worth taking a look at, and not just for the entries on Taransay and Pabbay in Harris!
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