I don’t like clutter. Never have. That is why when we moved house a year ago I was so quick to unpack boxes and find the right place for everything. Within a week the house was basically sorted although an awful lot of stuff went to charity shops or the tip. The one area where I failed to tidy was the garage. For quite a while it was jammed full of boxes.
In the spring I finally went through every box and threw a lot more stuff out. But as I emptied the boxes, my garage itself became a bit of a tip and I have become increasingly frustrated through the year as I couldn’t find anything. Well this week I finally got around to putting up some shelves and tidying.
There is a good and a bad in this. The good is that I can now find whatever I need. The bad is that I have become obsessive about maintaining the tidy garage. I found myself telling Mandy that she can only put things in there after consulting me. I mean – it’s a garage!
I think my ridiculous behaviour is a mental thing. When things are well organised I feel under control. When things are messy it just feels wrong. I can cope with a disorganised garage by closing the door but eventually it has to be sorted. That is just the way it should be.
I see that Wes Streeting is saying this week that the NHS is over-diagnosing Autism and ADHD. I am not sure that over-diagnosing is the problem. The thing that costs money is over-treating. People like me with unusual ways of thinking are OK with no treatment. Because even though sometimes I have ridiculous ways of thinking, I quite like them.
It was my Mum’s 90th birthday last week. When I asked her back in February what she wanted to do to celebrate, her answer was that she was not sure we should organise anything because she might well not be with us. She was not being grumpy or sarcastic, simply practical. Fortunately we paid no attention and with my siblings and Mum, we organised a wonderful party on Saturday.
It was just immediate family and a few friends, and was for less than three hours, but it was a really lovely occasion. I think everyone got to talk to everyone else, and in particular my Mum was made to feel very special.
It made me think what I would want when I am 90.
I wouldn’t need more “stuff”. That’s for certain. I spent the first 60 years of my life acquiring things I didn’t really need. By 90 they would be even less important.
I would like to be compos mentis. We lost my Dad to Alzheimer’s a few years ago and I hated the decline. I’d also like to be physically fit. Mum struggles with mobility but can still cope independently. I’d like that.
But if I can’t have those – indeed if I can’t even live that long it would be OK. I’d like to be able to look back on my life and say it was a life well lived. I’d like my children to be happy. I’d like Mandy to have remained the bedrock of my life. I’d like to have been a good person.
I think my Mum can say she has achieved all of these and more. Hopefully she has many more years to go, but it has been a good life and it I feel lucky to have been able to celebrate with her.
We have just returned from six weeks in the Outer Hebrides. Also called the Western Isles, this archipelago of islands is one of the remotest areas of the UK and at this time of year the tourists have gone home and it is even bleaker. The winds are wild. Daylight hours are short. Why on earth would anyone want to stay there? I can give you ten very good reasons
1 It is incredibly beautiful.
You can drive through Lewis and Harris, get a ferry to Berneray, drive across causeways to North Uist, Grimsay, Benbecula, Soouth Uist, Eriskay and a short ferry to Barra. Around every corner there is something beautiful to take your breath away, from inland lochs, to dramatic cliff edges, to awesome views.
2.. The history is fascinating
We saw Iron Age brochs, prehistoric standing stones, a ditch of blood where the MacDonalds fought the MacLeods in the seventeenth century. We saw a ruined temple which is claimed to be the oldest university in the UK. And more modern history such as the Iolaire monument in Stornaway, overlooking the bay where hundreds of soldiers returning from the First World War, lost their Iives in a shipwreck.
3 The locals are friendly.
Because the tourists have largely gone, we were treated as part of the community, attending the local firework display, chatting in the pub, and even going to a travelling show abut Hercules the Bear, who escaped and roamed the islands for weeks in the 1980s. The Hebridean accent is soft and the people are friendly.
4 The shellfish is wonderful.
Some of the best shellfish in the world is landed in the Hebrides. We had a wonderful lobster lunch off formica tables in a cafe next to the fishing boats. I also had the best langoustine eggs benedict breakfast that anyone could dream of.
5 Rainbows
I am not sure why. Perhaps it is the ever changing weather combining rain and sunshine, Perhaps it is the time of year with the sun so low in the sky. But I have never seen so many rainbows. Stunningly beautiful.
6. Sunsets
It was not every night. We also had cloudy skies. But when the weather was right we had amazing sunsets and sunrises. We also got to see the Northern Lights
7 Sculptures
I think the remoteness must attract artists to the islands. I wrote in a previous blog about the pile of peat in an art gallery. I much preferred seeing the sculptures, scattered around the islands, set into the landscape
8.. You can hunker down in front of the fire
And when the rains turned horizontal, the properties we stayed in had wood burning stoves to keep the cockles warm. I settled down to read the latest Peter May book about murders in Lewis. Nice.
9. The wildlife
I am not a patient man. There are hides you can visit where people sit for hours waiting to see the rarest wildlife. Not for me. But we still saw two golden eagles, a sea eagle, black kite, deer, otters, coos on an uninhabited island, sheep swimming across a loch. It was pretty impressive.
10 The Outer Hebrides have the best beaches in the world.
Famously, West Beach n Berneray was used for a Thai tourist brochure. It is a lot colder, but the Hebridean beaches are empty. There are so many of them, and they are so dramatic, that after a while you think they are normal. White sands formed from crushed sea shells. Miles and miles of empty beaches.. Wonderful
So now we are back home. Six weeks is less of a holiday and more of an adventure. I would encourage anyone who enjoys peace and beauty to visit the Western Isles. Simply gorgeous.
In my random meanderings through the Internet this week, I came across this song from a chap called John Gill, who grew up in Matlock, Derbyshire just a few years before me
It’s a simple little folk song with a catchy tune but I found myself with tears in my eyes as I listened to the lyrics. Here’s just a bit:
I’d like to think that I was Superman Giving all the world a hand Oh what a super man I’d be I’d like to think I was invisible I’d be invincible Invincivisible that’s me Oh but I’m very unextraordinary And I’ll never be any of these things I dream about when I’m alone and lights are out I’m just me
I think we did a generation of children a disservice by telling them all they were special and were capable of anything they could dream of. I am a massive fan of positive thinking but the danger is that people think they have not achieved their potential because they are not an award winning author or prime minister or CEO of a massive company.
I live a very lucky life. I know that. This week we stayed in a Blackhouse crofter’s cottage on the Isle of Lewis. We saw sunsets and eagles. We slumped in front of the fire watching a film, while the rain lashed down. We went on adventures to seek out places from the Peter May Lewis books, and to see Iron Age houses and standing stones.. It was amazing.
The black house village where we stayed this week
It was a very special week. But does that make me special? Does it make me superman. Nope.
We felt very lucky this week to be invited to join the local people at a bonfire night celebration.
North Uist is a sparsely populated island, and the cottage we are staying in is in one of the remotest areas – Balranald. It has a church, a few houses, quite a few cows and a bird sanctuary. In the summer it has a campsite that looks as if it would be pretty busy but at this time of year that is closed and there is no one here.
That suits us very well. Whether on Narrowboat Thuis, or at home, we are comfortable with our own company and have had a very relaxing time here. The nearest proper village is Bhaigh (Bayhead) which is four miles away. It has about 40 houses and a shop. It also has the High School for North Uist, and every day about twenty minibuses carry the children to school from all around the island.
On bonfire night they bring together the local community to eat burgers, drink Irn Bru and watch fireworks. It was a great night. Not the most impressive display I have ever seen but still a very good one, complemented by the bonfire, the full moon, and the reflections in the sea. But what really made it was a couple of hundred people from toddlers to ancients gathered to enjoy it together.
The Hebridean accent is probably the softest of all the Scottish areas and I could hear it in the excitement of the little ones, the bickering of the teens, and the conversations between farmers and other locals. They had all arrived in their pickup trucks from miles around to be together.
One thing that did amuse me was hearing a father telling his child how good it was to celebrate the foiling of a Catholic plot, five hundred years later. Until the five mile causeway was built between the islands in 1960, there was very little mixing between Catholic South Uist and Protestant North Uist. I guess some views remain pretty embedded.
It was a lovely evening and it was good to be able to join such a distant but close community. Thank you.
We were talking to our son Rob this week, who is about to go on holiday. He has been working very hard recently and is pretty stressed. His question to us was how best to use the holiday time to relax. Mandy’s answer was to do as little as possible. Maybe sit by the pool and read a book. My answer was that you can relax by being busy. Go on adventures. See some historic places. Explore the island. I then realised that that is exactly how Mandy and I have been spending our time in the Outer Hebrides.
Mandy has been mostly sitting in the cottage doing cross-stitch sewing or completing jigsaws. I have been dashing around, either with our guests or by myself, seeing new places and discovering new things.
For instance I mentioned in a previous blog the road end sculptures which you can find in some of the most out of the way places in North Uist. This week I went to see “Sanctuary” which is several miles down a road to nowhere. The sculpture is a metal tree on top of a rock on a small hill surrounded by tiny lochs. From the sculpture I could see a small cairn at the end of a peninsular in one of the lochs. I decided to wander out for a closer look, and to my surprise, on top of the cairn was a tiny version of the same sculpture.
This tiny sculpture is not mentioned in any of the guide books, not signposted, and is not even very accessible, requiring a bit of a scramble across rocks at low tide. And it made my day.
But are these adventures what I should be doing? Mandy is often asking why I can’t just chill out and do nothing. After all, I have been retired for nearly five years now. Shouldn’t I be finding my pipe and slippers?
My answer is that this is my way of relaxing. There is nothing better for me than going to bed with new memories to take to my sleep.
Week two of our long trip to the Western Isles, and the weather can best be described as mixed. We have had beautiful sunshine, torrential rain, strong winds and complete stillness. The only consistent thing has been the beauty we have seen.
We have had our son, Tin, and his girlfriend, Cheryl, with us this week. Last week we were joined by Mandy’s brother Stephen. Perhaps because we have had visitors we have made the effort to get out every day, and we have been well rewarded.
When the rain came in to replace sunshine we had the most stunning rainbows.
When we were stuck in the rain we discovered a roadside seafood shack, serving the best lobster, crab and prawn rolls.
When it has been dry but cloudy we have still found the beaches to be pristine white.
And when the sun has come out, our visitors have made the best of the invigorating cold waters.
We have met bears in the forest,
Peacocks by the cottage,
And wild Eriskay horses in the roads
We have seen sunrises, sunsets,
And wonderful night skies.
And we are just two weeks into our six week break.
I do think the Outer Hebrides are perhaps the most beautiful islands in the world.
We are away for a few weeks in the Outer Hebrides. More on that in future blogs no doubt. One of the things we have done this week was to go to the visitor centre in Lochmaddy, North Uist. It’s a nice place to go, with a small shop, a café that does excellent soup, toasties and scones, and a museum that is currently exhibiting everything you could want to know about the Scottish ferry company Calmac. It also has a small art gallery and that is what confused me this week.
Most of the floor of the gallery was covered in peat, with some sheep’s wool in frames around the walls. I like to think I am open to modern art installations, particularly the physical ones. I love The Tate gallery, and the Pompidou in Paris. I have climbed inside enormous human forms by Anthony Gormley, and tried to understand the blue pictures of Yves Klein.
But is this art or just a pile of mud? I love peaty whiskies so maybe I should have just rolled around in it to try to get closer to the artist’s meaning. Or perhaps I should have just filled my pockets and taken it back to the holiday cottage to put on the fire.
As we have driven around the islands this week, we have come across many areas of moorland peat that have been cut away for islander use. Piles of peat cuttings are drying in the autumn wind. For me, I have got more from looking at them, situated amongst incredible views and rugged countryside, than I have from this example, sitting in a sterile gallery.
Just to show I am not a complete philistine, here is a Hebridean art installation I do like. It is called “Reflections” by Colin Mackenzie, and has been created to sit amongst natural rocks overlooking the island of Baleshare. It is both dramatic and quirky.
My degree was in Computing Science and I worked in IT for 30 years, doing everything from coding to testing to project management; ending up managing hundreds of people supporting IT for major banks. While these last jobs were most;y about bureaucracy and a little leadership, I always retained an interest in technology. But this week, when my brother in law, Steve, asked me to fix his laptop I completely failed.
There are three reasons I can give why I failed.
Firstly, the way computers are built is different than I remember. Back in the 1990s I would maintain my own PC, installing a new hard drive (very hard), updating the firmware (very scary), updating operating system configuration files (very risky). These days everything has been made easier and safer but it is different than I know.
Secondly, I am older and less patient. Back in the day, when things went wrong I would see it as a fascinating challenge. This week I resented spending my time making things worse instead of better. I also hated how slow my progress was. That would have been normal thirty years ago but I have got used to fast processors with plenty of memory and fast internet.
Thirdly, Steve’s laptop was a pile of poo. It was running impossibly slowly. So I cleaned up the hard drive which did not help. I emptied the list of startup programs which did not help. I tried to update Windows which took hours, got hung, and did not help. I tried to reset the Windows installation, which lasted overnight, eventually failed and did not help. I even tried creating a clean Windows installation on a USB stick from my own PC, booting the laptop from that and building a “bare metal” installation. This appeared to succeed but ultimately built a laptop that was just as slow and unusable.
So here’s where my 30 years IT experience came in useful. Sometimes at work you had to know when it was time to stop banging your head against the wall, and throw the problem away. So I encouraged Steve to buy a new budget laptop. Two hours later I had got it set up, updated Windows, the BIOS and all the apps, installed Zoom, Teams, Antivirus and some Office software and it was ready to go.
I even found out things such as how to disable the new S Mode which stops you installing non-Microsoft apps. I may be getting out of date since I retired, and I may be a grumpy old man, but it is good to know that I still enjoy learning.
What I still don’t know is what was wrong with Steve’s old laptop? Any ideas?
I went on a lovely linear walk this week – part of the Lancashire coastal path from Glasson Dock to Lancaster. It was a beautiful autumn day – cold and crisp with watery sunshine.
I used to do a lot of linear walks. Mandy drops me off, meets me half way and then picks me up. In my time I have done the Pennine Way, Coast to Coast, Cotswold Way, Ridgeway, Cleveland Way, Hadrians Wall, most of the Southern Upland Way and many others. There is something that is very good for my head, walking with the dogs with my airpods plugged in, listening to podcasts or music, and watching the world.
Unfortunately both the eleven year old dogs and I have slowed down as we have got older, and Ziggy in particular has cancer and is not able to walk very far. She still suffers from fomo and mostly refuses to let me go without her, so this time Mandy picked her up early. Lulu and I then completed the walk at a slightly faster pace
There is talk with my sister in law of us attempting the North West Way over the next year. That is a serious 205 mile walk, incorporating some of the most dramatic parts of the Ribble Way, Pennine Way, South Tyne Trail and Hadrians Wall. I will have to get fitter if we are to attempt it. One of the problems is that when we are on the Narrowboat most of my walks are flat. Canals only go up and down hills when there are locks.
Even the coastal walk this week was flat. It followed a disused railway line that once carried goods from Lancaster Port (Glasson Dock) to Lancaster. I like disused railway walks because I can pretend I am a steam train and imagine how once it would have been to travel this route surrounded by smoke and soot, through this lovely countryside. It is probably a good thing there was just me and the dogs on this walk – no one to get embarrassed when I said “choo choo” as I was walking.
Maybe I need to put the trains to one side and get back to walking with others in the hills. It would be good for my heart, my head and maybe my social skills.
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