Category: books

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Meanderings

It’s raining as I write. A grey, incessant rain that takes hold and makes you feel glad that you’re not out in it. The house is enveloped in water.

I’m having a low, quiet day. I get them every now and then – no energy to do anything and a feeling of wanting to hide from the world. These days come, and they go. I feel increasingly anxious about being out there, with people. Is it an age thing, I wonder?

I baked another sourdough boule this morning. I’m slowly getting back into it and the newly developed starter (Feisty Fran II) is now maturing nicely. She’s a home-bred local girl from natural Skye yeasts, so is well used to our weather.

Feisty Fran our Skye rye sourdough starter

A few loaves a week will soon get me back into the swing of things. I’m trying an 85% hydration recipe with rye that tastes great but spreads like a big-bottomed girl and doesn’t give me the crusty “ear” that I like, so I need to work on that.

Earless wonder

It’s a very loose dough so needs better tension to hold the slash and to be able to create an “ear”. It’ll get there. I’ll eventually work it out. Bread-making is just alchemy.

“Earless” sourdough

Husband has done a great job with the hedging around the deer-fenced orchard and vegetable area of the croft, which is all now in, and mulched. Some of the seedlings and twigs are in bud already so I’m hoping that’s a good sign.

Husband has now returned to indoor jobs, building shelves and working on our big bookcase in the sitting room area.

Our carpenter Ben had to leave unexpectedly and didn’t get time to install the big bookcases as planned so husband has been left to finish them. It’s been weeks of cutting, osmo oiling and assembly. It’s coming together now at last. I know it’s all been meticulously measured but I had a bit of a panic attack when I saw it, thinking that it wouldn’t fit on the wall under that roofline. Husband assures me that we have 2cm of clearance..

We can’t wait to get the book boxes unpacked.

There are four of these to go on that base

The seedlings are coming along well and I’ve moved the hardier of them, the lettuce, beans and kale, out into the polycrub. The cucumbers, tomatoes, aubergines and more heat-loving tender plants remain indoors for now, the green wall of food lined up against the big south-facing windows.

Cucumber babies doing their thing

Whilst I was in the polycrub the other day clearing old grow tubs, I found a surprise stash of carrots! All good, perfectly firm and sweet. These are a batch of St. Valery carrots, a heritage variety sowed last year from Real Seeds that I’d forgotten. We’ve been snacking on them raw with homemade humous and olives and I’ve been so impressed with the taste that I’ve bought more seeds for sowing this year.

Nature is just amazing. We’ve managed to eat kale, purple sprouting broccoli, tatsoi and carrots throughout the hungry gap.

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Plastering, wiring, ducting & kebabs

Now is a really busy time for the build. We have two guys (the two Dereks) busily and speedily installing battens and erecting plasterboard panels, with husband wiring and ducting alongside them.

It means long days and not much in the way of breaks. He’s shattered when he collapses in front of the fire each evening. A good tiredness, I think – one born of a long days manual labour and visible progress, but certainly tiredness. We’re neither of us as young as we were!

The best I can do is provide tea and food as it’s needed, and finalise the many remaining decisions on bathroom and kitchen finishes from the caravan.

When I’m not browsing tile sites and bathroom fittings catalogues, or calling Home Energy Scotland for advice, I spend much of each day making flatbreads, cake, quiches, stews and soups.

My latest attempt at urban food is kebabs! Sliced leftover roast lamb, shredded red cabbage, garlic and mint yoghurt, harissa paste and baked soft flatbreads. When you don’t have a takeaway on the island, you make them yourself. Probably much healthier too.

I’m not even pretending that the pear frangipane tart was anything other than an indulgence…we need yummy things right now.

I’m also reading this. An excellent book, if slightly terrifying. It’s about the disappearance of insects due to pollution, pesticides, chemical runoff, changes in farming practices and climate change, and is written very accessibly and compellingly. Dave Goulson is well qualified to write about this, being a Professor of Biology, an expert on insect ecology and an Ambassador for the UKs Wildlife Trusts. Get a copy if you can.

So progress on the build is steady as we move through the highland winter. I’m starting to think about seeds and have ordered seed potatoes, onion sets and garlic. We’re still eating red cabbage and kale from the croft, at least what the deer haven’t eaten.

Soon, now. Spring is coming. Not long now.

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Christmas Reading

I promised myself that I wouldn’t buy any books whilst in the extremely restricted living space of the caravan. I promised myself. But it seems that I have an addiction that is very difficult to shake.

Books have always been a big part of my life.

One of my earliest happy memories of Christmas is opening a gift-wrapped book. The smell of the paper and printing ink. The tactile pleasure of handling it, feeling the slight roughness of a linen book cover. The crisp turning of its new pages. The pleasure of curling up quietly on a sofa and losing myself deeply in its world. These are things I’ve always loved.

I couldn’t resist buying a few books to read over this festive break. It seemed sort of traditional.

Besides. Alan Garner has just published a new book at the age of 87. It would seem rude not to support such a momentous undertaking. I first read his novel The Owl Service at the age of eight, and I found it deeply disturbing, and very powerful. So much so that the memory of the book stayed with me, and when forty years later I came across a copy of it in a secondhand book store, I had to buy it to read again as an adult. It was still a strongly evocative, disturbing book.

His new book, Treacle Walker, is apparently based on the legends around Alderney Edge in Cheshire, where the author still lives.

I shall wrap it in festive paper and gift it to myself for Christmas. I shall find some quiet moments to absorb it.

It’s over fifty years now since I first read his work and I feel that Mr Garner and I are overdue a revisit.

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The final few yards

It’s less than a week now until we move, and we’re starting to flag a bit.

Every room is full of boxes, either full or waiting to be filled, lining the rooms like some cardboard termite mound whilst we squeeze through tunnels between them.

It’s tiring. Both the constant decision making process – to store, to the caravan, to the charity box, to trash – and the packing and manhandling of the boxes to safe stacks around the house.

There is nothing that brings home the stark reality of having too much stuff like the process of having to pack it away.

To be fair, the bulk of it is books. I honestly don’t know how many boxes of books we have. It must be in the hundreds.

Husband and I both share an abiding love of books, but combining our collections when we married three years ago has resulted in a veritable tsunami of books. Working in the book industry for major publishers over the last thirteen years has only fed the beast. It’s overwhelming. We’ve never had them all unpacked…

When we get to the island we’re going to have to do further weeding out and disposal. There simply won’t be enough wallspace to build enough book shelves to take them all, I’m sure of it.

However, we’re now on the final stretch. The last few yards.

The day of the move is almost upon us, She says with a big, tired smile.

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Work boots and packing boxes

We ran out of bread yesterday afternoon, so husband offered to pop into the local Tescos to pick some up.

The last thing I was expecting was for him to come back with a bargain pair of steel-toe capped work boots for me.

He returned and presented me with them with a flourish worthy of a man clutching a large bunch of red roses. Who says romance is dead!

I guess this means that I am going to have to pull my weight on the build, then… 🤔

I secretly love them. I may never take them off.

These have been added to the rapidly growing pile of knee pads, work trousers and power tools that are filling every free space in the house at the moment. This is the reality of a household getting ready to move in just a few weeks time.

Bertie, our ancient but lovely spaniel, has been reduced to sleeping in odd corners wedged between the boxes wherever he can.

I can see that he is perplexed by the erosion of his space, with boxes forming cardboard labyrinths around the house.

Poor dog. At his age he deserves peace and quiet, and a degree of constancy, and all we give him is change..

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Skye Legends

I’ve been reading this wonderful little book over the last weekend, in between sorting out cupboards and packing for the island. I have to confess to more tea and reading than actual packing…

It was written in 1952 by a lady called Otta Swire who loved the island and who collected its folktales as she travelled.

It does a complete circuit of the island, stretching out into each winged peninsula and recording the tales and legends heard in each village. Some of them are Celtic, stretching back into prehistory, some Nordic, some medieval ;- all fascinating.

It’s a fabulously rich source of the most amazing stories, and for those that don’t know the island well, a superb introduction to the differences between the areas. It’s true that the nature, feel and landscape of each of the peninsulas of Skye are all very different, and Otta Swire captures this uniqueness beautifully.

I laughed out loud and ended up recounting several of them to husband at various points over the weekend, always a good sign that I’m enjoying a book.

For me personally it’s important to know something of both the history and the folklore of the area that you live in, and Skye is deeply steeped in both. I think that learning the local lore binds you more closely to the land, gifting you the insight and the experiences that shaped those that lived before you.

Who knew for example that a local lochan was once said to host a magical water horse, that a bay less than a mile away from the croft sports the name “The Bay of the Forsaken Ones” or that the legend surrounding Castle Dunscaith includes the tragic tale of a wife who killed and fed her children to her cruel husband then threw herself to her death onto the rocks from a castle window?

Black cats feature heavily in the local folklore, as do blue men, kilted warriors, strange beasts such as water horses and the walrus….

It’s all part of the magic of this incredible place – dark, brooding, mysterious, sometimes grim, and very close to faery and the otherworld.

Perfect for dark evenings sitting around the fire and tale-telling over a glass or two of the local Talisker.

The best seat by the fire is always reserved for the Story Teller.

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Reuse, repurpose, refurbish…

I’ve been on eBay whilst laid up these last few weeks, looking for furniture for the new house.

It’s very tempting to buy new, but as we don’t know the final cost for the build yet (and it never, ever comes in under budget) I thought it best to be prudent. I also like the idea of repurposing or refurbishing pre-owned furniture.

Ercol is a manufacturer of classic furniture that is extremely well made and is going through a bit of a renaissance at the moment with the popularity of Scandinavian and mid-century style. To buy new would cost many thousands of pounds.

I’ve purchased a couple of pre-owned sofas and armchairs for a song and am now looking at options for recovering and refurbishing them. The frames have a lifetime guarantee, so I suspect once I’ve got them refreshed with good quality linen upholstery they’ll be good for another few decades.

The chairs arrived this morning. They look a bit sad at the moment with their musty, worn, faded floral fabric, but I have to see past that. The frames are solid and in great condition.

I have these in mind for a cosy reading corner next to the wood burner in front of the big lounge windows. One each for Hugh and I for many hours of lounging with feet up, good books and maybe a wee dram.

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Christmas Mojo

As the days tick around to the final approach to Christmas, it’s been a slow burn this year in starting to feel the usual joy for the season.

This has been mainly down to health, having undergone a knee replacement operation a few weeks ago and now living the prospect of a long, slow slog back to pain-free existence. It’s been a tough few weeks.

I know that the operation was necessary to allow me to live a full, active life on the croft, and I embrace and am thankful for the opportunity to do that.

By now I’ve usually baked a Christmas cake, the Christmas pudding, put up a tree and am onto an annoying Spotify loop of Christmas carols. I haven’t felt like doing any of this so far this year.

As we enter the final few days before Christmas, I’ve rallied a bit. Tradition holds strong, and in the end I couldn’t envision a Christmas without some of these things.

So we’ve decorated the bay tree on the balcony, lit some candles, and bought presents. The fridge is full, and the annual charitable donations have been made. We’ve got new books to thumb through over the break in preparation for our new life, and each page promises new knowledge. Family arrives tomorrow, which is really what it’s all about.

This will be our last Christmas in London and we will make the best of it. Skye beckons next year, and we simply can’t wait, but every day is precious and living in the now is important. This year is about using our waiting time fruitfully, but it’s also about enjoying the company of family, and relaxing into the seasonal embrace of Christmas.

Wishing you all a warm, relaxed and happy festive break and a wonderful New Year, wherever you are reading this from.

Christmas Mojo is being wrestled back on as we speak 😘.

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Wilding, the book

Wilding, by Isabella Tree, is a book based on an experimental re-wilding of a 3,500 acre farm in West Sussex.

Forced to accept that the intensive farming of the heavy clay soils of their farm at Knepp was driving it close to bankruptcy, they handed the farm back to nature.

The results in terms of biodiversity, soil fertility and increased wildlife have been nothing short of astonishing.

This is a pioneering book describing a brave and far-reaching experiment. If we can achieve these results on a piece of intensively farmed, chemically fertilised, biologically sterile land situated under the flight path at Gatwick, with time and patience we can achieve them anywhere.

Books like this provide inspiration and reinforcement of the thought that given half a chance, nature will fight back and thrive.

What we do to our little six acre pocket of land on Skye will be much less impactful than the 3,500 acres at Knepp, and the soil, weather and environmental challenges will be very different, but to the local area of Sleat it will be just as important.

So many ideas and plans. We can’t wait to start.

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On the Crofters Trail

On the reading pile this weekend (between flooring catalogues and kitchen cabinet fittings) is this poignant read.

Written by David Craig and originally published in 1990, this is now out of print and was a purchase from a second-hand bookseller.

It contains interviews with the descendants of those cleared from the Highlands and Islands who settled in Novia Scotia.

Some have letters from the period describing the atrocities in faded but visceral detail. Some have tales passed down through three generations from their great, great grandparents and recount them in detail.

There’s is something incredibly real and intimate about a book that contains a reference directly to the croft or township that you live in. For me it creates a tangible link back through time.

I look over the ancient but still visible lazy beds on the moor above the croft and feel a real link to the lives of those who wrestled them from the soil.