5.1.2012 The Winds of Time (Millport)

There are winds and there are winds.  Some are gentle, soft, brushing your cheek and ruffling your hair like affectionate hands.  Some are brisk, fresh, making your face tingle and ruffling the sea into diamonds.  And some are roaring ferocity, rumbling in the chimney like a monster trapped, making the curtains tremble in terror, hurling rain like bullets against the glass.  They tear down aged grey trees, swathed in soft moss, and leave them, branches twitching, to die on the wet grass.  They torment the ashen faced sea into a fury and then smash it against the wet rocks into ragged, sharpened shards.  

And they rip up the spindly heights of pylons and hurl them onto the forests below, and so condemn us to the silence and the darkness.

So here we sit, faces orange in reflected firelight, the flickering shadows like children’s drawings on the walls, little oil lamps glowing on the mantelpiece.   Dependent on battery, candle, paraffin and coal, we are refugees to a bygone era.

It was yesterday morning, after a night when the gale hammered on the roof like a giant possessed, that I reached out for the light switch and nothing happened.  That was 40 hours ago, but still I reach out to the light switches and wonder why nothing happens.  I think I’ll find out when the power will return by just turning on the TV...... The man from the power company even advises (by 'phone - amazingly still functional) that they’ll keep us informed on the internet – of course, why didn’t I think of that.  Just turn on the router – oh ah.  He asks for my account number.  I visualise trying to search through the filing system by the light of a guttering candle.  I decide it can’t be done and he is a bit disappointed.  He’s sympathetic but he’s also in Portsmouth, about 500 miles south.

This morning at the town grocers, a generator greeted me with its rumbling hum as it sat on the pavement.  That and a lantern illuminated the shop while we queued at the tills, which of course were not functional, and our purchases were laboriously calculated on scraps of paper.  Tonight the pubs were open, lit by the glow of candlelight, and no doubt providing a bit of welcome warmth, internal as well as external, for their besieged customers.

This evening at home, pork chops and onions cooked over the coal fire in the living room, and eaten by candlelight, was our cordon bleu meal for the day.  Meanwhile, our freezer, full of future meals, thaws slowly and silently in the kitchen.

But heating by portable gas, or being cold, lighting by tottering candlesticks or stumbling in the dark - this is the stuff of which accidents are made, especially for the town’s population of numerous elderly people.  Last night we watched as the helicopter’s lights grew larger and brighter, at last enabling us to make out its grasshopper outline as it bounced onto the dark wet turf of the football pitch, to take an injured islander to a mainland hospital.  But at least our little island hospital does still have power – it glitters on the hill behind our house, shining alone against the blackness, its generator glad of a chance to show what it can do.

And yet there are unexpected pleasures in this involuntary step back in time.  There are so many things you can’t do – hoover the carpets, do the laundry, wash the dishes, waste time and money on ebay, get the gossip on Facebook, watch meaningless TV.  

So I settle down to crochet a bedspread for my granddaughter Molly’s teddy bear.  Bill starts a crossword.  Time even to write this blog.  Simple pleasure we wouldn’t have made time for if we had had electricity.  It makes you think..... 

Right, I’ll just upload this blog now.  Uh oh.......

24.5.11 – You never know what to expect.... (Millport, Scotland)

24.5.11 – You never know what to expect....  (Millport, Scotland)

The thing about our Scottish weather is you never know what you’re going to get.  It’s always a surprise, sometimes a welcome one, sometimes not.  So waking up at the end of May should have meant calm, peaceful warmth and gentle sunshine, flowers glowing in spring colours, baby birds safely in their nests in the trees.  In fact, what we got was rain - splattering off the glass, filling the gutters to overflowing.  And wind, which scooped the gutter water out and flung it at the window so that it flowed down the panes making the view of the houses opposite ripple as if viewed through frosted glass; so that it blew the water out of the puddles on the pavement, and bent our little rowan tree nearly double.  

I decided to go out, to get some fresh air.  This was coming at me in chunks, travelling at a windspeed of about 100 mph (and later, the TV news confirmed this estimate).  I leant on the wind, and progressed along past the beach at an angle of about 45%, biting off pieces of air to breathe as it rocketed past me.

Isle of Cumbrae

The sea, pewter grey, torn by tumultuous white rollers, attacked the beaches in a fury of foam and spume.  A lonely yacht, moored in the open water of the bay, bucked like a rodeo horse.  (I later met the owner of this boat, a tall, cheerful, bright-eyed older man - a bit of an ageing hippy, his long grey beard decorated with coloured beads, a red, yellow and black knitted had on his head.  He had stayed on the boat during the storm, holding things together as best he could as the contents of the cabin crashed about him.  He is moored here in order to fix his rigging prior to sailing to the Canary Islands and thence to Belize.  A genuine sea dog).  

The masts of other boats sheltering behind the Eileans (small islands in the bay) snapped and cracked, describing near 180^o semi-circles with their tips.  One of them split right through and fell onto the deck, forming a metal triangle.

The tide was quite low, but still immense waves crashed against the pier, thrusting up huge fans of white water, which hesitated in the air before crashing down, drenching the wooden beams and then cascading into the sea again to get ready for their next assault.  The orange light flashed its notification that there will be no escape from the island today – the ferry is moored up at Largs and will not be moving again until tomorrow.

At the Garrison House, its grey stone walls black with moisture, the tall, wide ash trees bent and creaked as the gale compelled them into unnatural shapes by the force of its violent will.  One of them succumbed, its vast roots protruding naked from the wet ground, a circle of brown earth tipped up leaving a colossal gash in green spring grass.   As it tumbled, squealing and groaning, it had crashed through the aged stone wall, coming to rest with its thick trunk across the road, its top branches touching the house opposite.  

Discretion won the day, and I retraced my steps home, choosing the back street, littered with leaves and twigs, a green autumn of leaf fall.  The house windows creaked ominously.  The TV screen went blank.  The electricity flickered.

In distant Perthshire, Bill and Donald were struggling to get back home, facing roads blocked by immense trees, branches, mud.  Arriving, they discovered the house without any electricity.  Donald lit the wood stove and they heated soup.  Then a brain wave resulted in him unearthing a two ring camp cooker.   Survival is thus ensured for another day.

And so night fell, and a watery sun in the early morning sheepishly announced its apologies for yesterday’s unseasonal anger.

Sun on the sea, Millport Bay