An inner voice whispers: “There is no internet. No phone signals.
No shops or pubs or amenities for 14 miles. We’re at the road’s own craggy end. Whatever
you do don’t get into an emergency situation of any kind.”
The roads are narrow, clogged with errant sheep, confused
pheasants and the occasional brooding stag. The sun, moon, the glacial,
battered landscape and the clear, warm unseasonal breeze are magnificent. We
are in “the Glen”. A short period of
minor adjustment to the new reality will be required.
“My Jaguar is in the workshop” said our landlord as he
apologized for leaving us alone, whilst driving away in an inferior but clearly
more reliable car. Jaguars eh? Dusk was descending so I made friends with the birds. There
are a lot of them here, always quite angry with each other as they bicker at
the various overflowing feeders. We’re not the only stupid things on the planet
it seems. Red squirrels eventually pick up the confidence to raid the feeders
too, they’re a bit more violent, they wrestle with the tops and poke at the
nuts and seeds or bend the wire frames with tough buck teeth that I presume
are worth risking to attack the metal larder.
We wake up early. The garden is full of sheep, well four
sheep, two ewes and their faithful, fatty lambs. We’re concerned but there are
sheep in all the fields so this is probably normal, so long as they don’t eat
the plants or the chicken food and so on. The next day there are twenty seven
sheep in the garden.
At night the skies are dark with no light pollution, there
is no one nearby, no vehicles or streetlights. We can see into space. There’s
the moon and Jupiter and some other blingy things. Wispy clouds allow the
celestial fairy lights to peep through at us. We’re alone. Like Joni and Graham
we light the log fire. This is our house now.
Out in the glen we hear the sounds of dogs and quad bikes.
The shepherds are at work, driving the flocks down from the hills. Then a
darker shadow grows across the glen. It’s 8AM, there’s a large blue HGV parked
down on the single track road, it’s engine running. We hear the sheep bleating
as they are led towards the wagon. They are quickly scuttled inside and so off
to wherever. They won’t see the glen again, that’s for sure. Today there are no
sheep in the garden. As I grow older, I’m mostly ambivalent than ever about
Indian food.
At times we will crack and seek out civilisation, there,
shining at the end of a forested tunnel way down the potholed and beaten track.
Blinded by the sun going out, blinded by the sun coming back. A pheasant ricocheted
across the windscreen, thankfully unharmed and we live on to eat a canteen
breakfast in a garden centre. It’s surprisingly good complete with an almost
perfect fried egg. Like the rest of the clientele we are of a certain age and
attitude, killing time before we take in the final backwards view from the
bottom of a shallow grave or inside a plastic urn. (I don’t really think about
these things often, just at garden centres). We will be the last of the boomers
one fine day, they’ll all miss our purchasing power and wit and wisdom then.
The weather is always just outside, we try to ignore it as
we walk into the hills. It comes and goes. Today we are in the footsteps of
Queen Victoria. Not my favourite queen, royalty being something of a peculiar
human invention albeit leadership of some type is always needed. It’s the lack
of “qualifications” and the family connections I object to, that and the abuse
of privilege and rank. The walk is
unplanned, we leave the house and turn right and trek onwards, already we’ve
broken all the rules by being unprepared and vague in our intentions. We do
however have an extra, older walking companion who has planned all this but
simply forgotten to tell us about the details.
We move up the glen through a
variety of conditions and surfaces. There are trees, stones, and the sounds of
rushing waters as time ticks down slowly in God’s own country. It’s a “there
and back again” kind of trek so we’re back before the dinner burns up, down
from the hills and eating shepherd’s pie in the cottage.
At night, when the books are exhausted and the keyboards are
quiet, we take refuge in a grainy TV signal’s output, looking much as it might have done in the 1960’s but with washed out colours. For some
reason the volume is also governed down so a high level of concentration and
focus is required just to get through regular, pastoral TV otherwise it’s just
another blurred experience. Any bodily creak from a stray bone or couch can
render the program narrative quickly incomprehensible. I find a few glasses of
red wine apply the necessary numbing quality needed to adjust to this pace of
broadcasting and so enjoy the variable and distorted content. Misheard dialogue
and blurred vision is always entertaining.
Alone.
Life here is not without it’s drudgery. The regular filling
of the bird feeders being an essential task. Sometimes also removing struggling
birds trapped in the feeders is required. They just get lost in some feeding
frenzy at times. Sunflower seeds are their favourite, even though it takes time
and technique to split them open and consume them, the birds don’t mind.
Peanuts are more run of the mill, pecked at and eventually destroyed with the
hammer action of the bill, pulverised and gone. I scatter random nuts and seeds
on the ground, the squirrels, chickens and Guinea fowls don’t seem to mind.
Everyone gets fed.
It’s been a mostly sunny and blue skyed break; the strong
September sun is unexpectedly bright and strangely warming. The house faces
south so we bask in it all as the friendly clouds allow. I’m reading a book
about young arty types on Hydra in Greece, a historical work of fiction. At
times the alien heat almost works and some slight transportation takes place if
you just close an eye for a moment and forget about Brexit and fashion anxiety.
The glen, but on a Greek island; perhaps not quite yet and no Leonard Cohen striding
around, making conquests, stringing along fickle muses, buying houses and then carelessly
warbling off into the sunset. No. We are firmly in Scotland and the dead grey
churches are out there as a stiff reminder; empty, standing like some strange
presbyterian theological litter, comatosed now but once intent on chewing up all
the green grass at the edges of the fields.
By Friday I’m back to having a second attack on actually reading the final
book in the Knausgaard saga, part 6 of My Struggle. I’m struggling with this
one. It’s heavier and more reflective and I feel it strangling every thought in
my mind at times. I’m blinded by the tirade of words, like some verbalized Mozart
or shredded guitar figure. I’d planned to finish it sometime during lockdown last year but didn’t even bother. I decided to allow myself to coast over those unreal
months. Now we’re on the sunny uplands of
further self-inflicted austerity I might as well try, there may be some comfort
in his bleak but busy with the minutest detail, elongated prose and
self-exploration.
I'm still reading...
We made it home safely, fuel shortages and a stupidity surplus all failing to slow us down. Thanks to the weather gods and my lovely wife for making it a very enjoyable and peaceful week. Our first break away since everything went crazy last year. The glen leaves it's mark once again.
