Monthly Archives: July 2008

The 37th Taransay castaway was me

SEEING the former Taransay castaways on TV this week, I now think there must have been something in the island’s water. It has made most of them look 30 years older. It was only eight years ago.

Most of them are fatter, balder and more wrinkly than they used to be. Only Ben Fogle looks the same. And me.

Having been dropped secretly into the island two weeks before the TV stars turned up, I was actually the first castaway. There to check it out for the newspapers, I found a bleak scene. No comfy pods there then.

I predicted posh Sassennachs would not last long. And they didn’t.

Within a day or two, there had been a mutiny led by that prissy practitioner and some of them were decanted, complaining it was unfit for young families, to Angy John’s flats opposite the Macleod Motel in Tarbert.

Yet there were seven or eight there whose faces you never saw on screen in Castaway 2000. You knew there were 36 of them, at least at the start, but a few were kept out of sight. Referred to occasionally, they were never seen in close-up. Like Captain Mainwaring’s wife, Elizabeth, in Dad’s Army.

And like me. My own spouse never sees it necessary to introduce me or ever speak of me in polite company. No point. I’m always three paces behind her.

Maybe Mick Jagger was one of the unseen castaways on Taransay. He, too, is suddenly ancient. His stones have been rolling about for a long time, I know, but I didn’t think he was due his free bus pass yet. It is not just that he has got older and uglier with the passage of time; he was never an oil painting. It’s just that his age has somehow fast-forwarded to 65.

Castaway 2000 is nowadays held up to be the first of the gritty reality TV genre. Not so, because although it was shown in the millennium year, followed closely by Big Brother, the first Dutch BB was shown in 1999.

Having foppish Fogle cornering and dispatching a red deer or using a toilet crafted by Billy Finlayson, of Marvins plumbers, the waterworks consultants for the series, did not change the world as we know it. Not the way seeing George Galloway as a pussy in BB did.

Reality TV shows were made in the Harris area before that. One was about a wee cheeky chappy called Donnie MacSween. I remember being transfixed at the sight of this lad waiting for the bus to take him to Leverburgh school in the 1960s programme A Boy From Harris. Lucky dipper, I thought. He’ll be the next Jimmy Savile and he’s from Scarista.

What became of him? Years later, after I finally got it together with the light of my life, she suggested that I should ask a minister she knew to officiate at our forthcoming nuptials. So I put in the call to this Reverend MacSween in a distant mainland parish on the other side of the country. He came and did the holy matrimony business bit. It was much later I found out he was that Donnie MacSween.

Child star or not, I hold that man personally responsible for the sorry excuse for a downtrodden life I now lead. He is still hiding in Evanton, I am told, but it’s just a case of waiting. They always come back to the scene of the crime.

Meanwhile, I thought we had made it unscathed through all the islands’ festivals. Then up pops another one. Stand by for the very first Creag Fest. This one is centred on a dinky little hamlet in Benbecula where the cattle show is being held today at Iochdar.

Apparently, someone had a word with Sandra MacSween, the ever-so-quiet, demure and well-spoken manageress of the Isle of Benbecula House Hotel at Creagorry, otherwise known as the Creag. She was told that the South Uist and Benbecula agricultural people were not applying for a beer tent licence for today’s show. The thirsty crofters were in shock.

Lesser publicans would maybe put on a few extra sandwiches for the boys and girls with the manure-encrusted wellies from the cattle show. Not Sandra. She has put on a whole festival. It lasts not just three hours, but five whole days – and nights.

Even the bill-topping Vatersay Boys will be holding court at the Creag some time between now and Sunday.

My own beloved mistress has informed me that she is taking another few days of special leave away from me to go and shake her thang in the Creag, as she puts it so eloquently.

Take as long as you want, my dear. I’ll manage here. Somehow.

Yes. Result. Thank you for creating Creag Fest, Sandra. You’re the best.

Published in the Press and Journal on July 30, 2008

Post-festival blues hit isles

NOW that our annual festival of all things musically and culturally Celtic is over, we are all back to being grumpy on this side of the Minch. We are noticing the rain again.

While the joie de vivre of the festival gripped everyone last week, we didn’t even notice that it was persistently precipitating and blowing a hooley just about every day.

There was one unconfirmed report of a squall so strong it had blown Murdo Maclennan, the festival chairman, off the top of the Big Blue tent. I imagined him being carried away and flying past Lady Matheson’s monument. But then I saw him on Monday, busy trying to take the tent down again. Wasn’t walking funny or anything.

The gusts had delayed the tent going up, causing Murdo and the team sleepless nights. But it all came right in the end.

Photo by Chris Murray

Photo by Chris Murray

Then it was time to take it down again, but the gusts from Arnish were so strong they had to abandon the job once more. They should just leave it there and we can have a HebCeltFest every weekend.

A drenching and a good blast up the kilt affects us all. We will whinge more in wet weather, say the experts.

Recent moans in Stornoway have been how the deluge nearly spoiled the HebCelt, the festival line-up, the queues at the beer tent, the length of Reverend Kenny I’s sermons, the prices in the Co-op, the latest rise in diesel prices, the length of Reverend Kenny I’s sermons, the average age of the youngsters teetering around the town after the festival, the price of coal and, of course, the length of Reverend Kenny I’s sermons.

Obviously, I started some of those complaints myself and just let other people run with them.

Moaning is wonderfully contagious.

On the bright side, as I may be visiting there soon, I have been taking an interest in China. The government of the people’s republic has ordered people not to pick their noses or scratch certain parts of their bodies during next month’s Olympic Games. I am really glad I won’t be there in August. In a rickshaw, there are no wheels or pedals. And we all need something to do with our hands. So if there’s no one looking . . .

The propaganda department of Beijing’s Dongcheng District also ordered the citizens to smile a lot at foreigners. Yet the Chinese are famous for smiling, anyway. In the Peking Cuisine Takeaway last weekend, the girl who was serving me smiled and giggled at me as I paid for the sweet and sour chicken, the char sui and the prawn crackers. It made me wonder what she’d heard. Maybe I should just learn how to pronounce char sui.

And, of course, the world’s third-biggest retailer opened its doors in Stornoway. You can easily find the new Tesco. It’s where Somerfield used to be. And Morrisons before that. And Safeway before that. And Presto . . . Just why do these supermarket giants skedaddle after a few years? Jonathan Merriman, boss of the new store, assures me the Pile It High, Sell It Cheap company is here for the long haul.

They will have a good start, I reckon. Sadly for its local rival, the big Co-op, the recent hike in food prices happened while Tesco had closed the store it had taken over and was refurbishing it. Many people thought the Co-op must be cashing in on its monopoly. Bad timing or what.

Meanwhile, a real live member of the Royal Family was strolling around the administrative capital of the Western Isles. Yet there’s been no excitement about Princess Anne being in our midst. George Gawk told me he’d heard she was spotted walking round the pier. I asked him if she was incognito and he said: “No, but she could have been in the Star Inn. You get all sorts of nice women in there nowadays.”

She had a flashy taxi courtesy of the Northern Lighthouse Board. She is the patron.

The lighthouse tender Pharos duly appeared at Number Three Pier and eventually she sailed off to Skye with her to inspect lighthouse builder Charles Stevenson’s handiwork at Rudha Reidh light near Gairloch.

Someone thought they saw her wearing big sunglasses in a butcher’s shop.

Wouldn’t surprise me. That woman is so down to earth. I met her at the opening of the Breasclete factory and at Taigh Chearsabhagh art centre in North Uist last year. Yap, yap, yap. She is just like one of these refined ladies you find in slightly posh places. Like Bakers Road.

Now that I think about it, there was an elegant-looking woman in a headscarf beside Murdo Maclennan as he was wrestling with the guy ropes on Big Blue. Probably her, then. Or a housewife from Bakers Road.

‘I am not a benefits cheat’ – golden voice Joyce

A pensioner claims government anti-fraud sleuths have blundered
and wrongfully branded her a benefit cheat.

Widow Joyce Murray says she was left traumatised when she got
a warning letter from her housing benefit office with details of a secret
bank account which, it was claimed, she had failed to disclose to them.

The recently-retired nurse denies any wrongdoing and says she has done
her own investigation and discovered that the account actually belongs
to someone else with the same surname.

Mrs Murray, who is 60, lives at Airidhantuim on the west of the Isle of Lewis. She is a well-known Gaelic singer who has triumphed in two of the top competitions at the Royal National Mod. She won the Traditional Medal in 1991 and the Gold Medal in 1999.

The letter to her, from the benefit office at Western Isles Council, said they had been informed she held a savings accounts with the Alliance and Leicester which she had not told them about.

“This information has come to us via a government-run matching service, which
matches data held by many official bodies against the data held by the Local Authority Benefits section for the purpose of detecting anomalies in claims,” it said. The letter even gave the account number in question.

She was horrified when she read the letter, she said, because not only
did they suggest that she had given a false statement but the benefits
office had also sent her someone else’s bank details.

“That is how sure they were that I was a crook. It is a lie. I have
never had an account with the Alliance and Leicester,” said Mrs Murray,
emphatically.

“The Alliance and Leicester staff in Inverness have now told me this
‘secret’ account is not even in my name. They said it is in the name
of someone else also called Murray but with a different first name. The
benefits people have blundered.”

Western Isles Council insisted it could not comment on individual cases.
However, it is understood that an investigation into why that letter was
sent to Mrs Murray has already begun.

Its spokesman would only say: “In instances like this the council has a
statutory duty to act on information supplied by the Housing Benefits
Matching Service. Your questions should therefore be referred to that
agency.”

A spokeswoman for the Department of Work and Pensions in Edinburgh,
which runs the matching service which supplied the bank details to the
council, said they were also looking into whether an error had been made
in the information they had given to the council.

Their spokeswoman promised: “We will look into this matter straightaway.
We will apologise if an error has been made and we will be in touch with
Mrs Murray very soon.”

Alliance and Leicester will not discuss individual customers’ financial
affairs.

Joyce Murray is still far from satisfied. She said: “I thought the Data
Protection Act was supposed to safeguard us from our having our bank
details passed around in this way. I feel sorry for the woman whose bank
details the council sent me as proof of my so-called false claim.

“This has caused great distress to me and my family. I do want an
apology and explanation of what they are doing to prevent this happening
to someone else. Otherwise, I will consider taking it further. I am
still traumatised and very angry.”

Where are all the Bravehearts?

ROAST kangaroo or wild boar sausages. Which should I go for? This was a fine menu. But would I regret it hours later? Was I brave enough? The story began when I was duped into agreeing to matrimony 12 years ago while taken unexpectedly dizzy following a four-hour watery lunch with George Gawk Campbell in the Criterion Bar.

Now, custom dictated that I should take resultant spouse and issue out to demonstrate that the momentous, if cash-swallowing, occasion was still foremost in my mind. And show them what a proper dinner looks like compared to the smoke-wreathed, charcoal delights that my devoted honeypie invariably turns out.

This menu was rather innovative. The staple pastas in various sauces were there, but so were some fine and slurpworthy alternatives. Junior suggested that the boar would be perfect for a dad who always hogs the TV and who constantly changes over from the Clubland TV channel to News 24.

“And why?” one inquired. Because there are two words pronounced boar, apparently. Yes, and there are two ways to silence brats. For her insolence, she is now banned from the computer as well. No point in just playing at this parenthood lark.

I had savoured a thick slab of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo’s cousin before. Flavoursome and satisfyingly chewy, the marsupial was a cross between liver and lamb. I remember it well; I was up and down all night. Wild boar could be an experience, though. I should have the backbone.

On the tusks of a dilemma, I opted for the bangers made from the raging, squealing beast that had charged through the undergrowth heading for intrepid explorers who had only managed to escape its lethal prongs by shinning up a handy tree. Well, that’s what happens in all films featuring a wild boar.

Good choice, Maciver. Four of Robbie Coltrane’s fingers were promptly sizzled, plated and served up. After amputation, they had been winched up on to a Munro of mash, with tractor shovels of sliced carrot, a plantation of broccoli and an ocean of golly-gosh onion gravy. Valour was vindicated.

While Junior lunged into her lasagne, my beloved oven-scorcher umm-ed and ahh-ed at her green-tinged pasty pesto pasta pallaver-on-a-plate. Mine was so much better. Fortune favours the braised. Who dares burrrrps. Pardon me.

What do you mean you want to know which was the eaterie with the menu so exotic for the Hebrides? Er, this is not a restaurant review. However, islanders past their first flush will understand when I say that this particular diner could have been called The Single or Return.

We sat where D.R. Macdonald once stood selling tickets for British European Airways before it became the world’s favourite airline. They realised it wasn’t a good idea to have “return” in the name. Too close to the suggestion of something coming back on you, perhaps?

If courage is that indefinable quality that makes you face danger without showing fear, then it is an overused word. Like when a demented music critic this week claimed that Amy Winehouse was courageous for turning up at T in the Park. That fellow abused the English language.

Fright night refugee Ms Winehouse slurred a la Boris Yeltsin through her emotion-free dirges. She turned up and turned off, whining on endlessly about that jailbird squeeze of hers. Yawn. She is not cool.

They try to make her out to be brave. But I say no, no, no.

Unlike Niall Iain Macdonald. He looked crushed on Monday having to postpone his solo row across the Minch as winds strengthened. Who would heave themselves backwards those 43 miles between Stornoway and Ullapool in a rowing boat bobbing about on the open sea? I get seasick stirring my morning Earl Grey.

To attempt what he’s doing in a 23ft boat, even if she is named CrazyBrave, over a day and a bit is just too stomach-pumpingly horrendous for a lubber like me. And he is raising cash for the lifeboats and the islands mental health association.

When we met last week, Niall Iain was open and honest about his own problems with depression. The feedback on the radio interview he gave was really good. Just talking about such a problem can help many sufferers. But the point is that he is not just talking about it. He is actually getting off his behind and proving something to us. And, I am sure, to himself.

Bewilderingly known as the tired sea, the Minch is a daunting stretch.

How did I survive the last tossing in the tender care of MacBrayne’s master mariners? Icy shivers. Hot flushes. Looking peely-wally. Feeling dreadful. And that was just Alex Morrison, the captain of the ferry.

Published in the Press and Journal on July 16, 2008

Mrs N’s lasting loyalty to Mrs T

I HAVE not been very well. Gordon Brown said not to throw out any food. Fine, I thought, we can be frugal. Invigorated with wartime spirit, I had a rummage around in the bottoms of various cupboards. I think it was those peeling tins of corned beef that did for my lower colon. They were there as emergency rations since we last invaded someone. It’s not that long ago.

Our nation, we are told, is made up of two societies – the haves and the have-nots. If we cannot now even chuck out any food, it will be the have-trots and the have-not-got-trots. Parents and teachers still bawl at youngsters to eat their greens. Now it is G. Brown Esq, who each day looks more like a flailing schoolmaster ordering us all to keep our greens. And our bread crusts. And shake every drop out of that ketchup bottle.

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Which all reminds me that I met one of my old teachers the other day. Actually, I had better rub that out and put instead that she is one of my former teachers. Otherwise, I could be sent to stand in the corner. Although a lady of deserved leisure nowadays, having given up her second career as a Gaelic radio political pundit and analyst only recently, Mrs Zena Nicoll still has about her that air of quiet “don’t mess with me” authority, just as she did in Gaelic and history classes.

Since her days inspiring us pimply, long-haired yoofs, she mysteriously and completely transformed from gown-clad purveyor of homework into an unexpectedly barnstorming political activist. The steely determination, a prerequisite for both roles, helped.

It should have been no surprise to discover that she was an all-guns-blazing, union-bashing, privatising Tartan Tory.

Sadly for her and her fellow-blues, and happily for the conscience of the islands, their association meetings could have been held in a Stornoway phone box.

The most ardent Thatcherite in the Hebrides, on air and off, Mrs N would loudly rue the day that Mrs T had been deposed by a bunch of lily-livered male fainthearts. That’s as close a translation as I can recall of her summary in Gaelic of that ultimate betrayal.

On Friday, Mrs N greeted me, not with a “how are you?” or “are you well?” but by demanding to know what illegal activities I concerned myself with nowadays. Eek. It presupposed that I was, and had been previously, some sort of vagabond. That old, forgotten fear of extra homework rose up from my nether regions and reduced me to a quivering wreck.

Er, I was still writing bits here and there, I think I squeaked. In desperation, I seized on the subject of politics. What a mess Wendy leaves Scottish Labour in, we agreed. The Scottish Lib Dems? Who would succeed their newest former leader? They all have such back-to-front names: Stephen Nicol, Finnie Ross, Scott MacTavish. Enough said. Nor was any case advanced for Annabel Goldie.

Mrs N fears for the political longevity of Gordon Brown and, quite possibly, David Cameron, too. With that deep sigh, so well practised by Tories since 1997, she uttered the immortal line: “Ah, if only we had Maggie back again,” with a sweet smile of longing and fond memory. My jaundiced soul was somehow caressed by those heartfelt words of regret.

As her lamentations resonated around the inner recesses of my psyche, I felt that old familiar moist, warm glow spreading all over my lower body. But I had only spilled the tea in my lap.

In this uncertain, ever-changing world, Mrs N’s sincere words strangely reassured me. There is still stability to be found and crazy, unfashionable stances are taken by a dwindling few. Yet some things should always remain the same if sanity is to prevail. Had I not heard her refrain of regret for that dreaded old dragon who, I believe, decimated thriving British industries, vaporised workers rights, betrayed the rights of womenkind and personally delivered a new low in greed culture, I would have fretted for my erstwhile educator.

To each, his or her own. A cold compress on my fevered brow, her unstinting loyalty soothed me. An enduring faith in and support of someone she admired for so long is fantastic. Even as we spoke, the unreliable nature of politics elsewhere saw events take an unexpected and drastic turn in Glasgow East. Labour was catapulted into even more disarray.

As dustbin-denier Brown lurches towards inevitable ignominy and betrayal himself, we should celebrate the determined diehards, the unapologetic activists and proud proclaimers who toil for parties and leaders. If he had a few people like Mrs Nicoll in his corner, the dour man’s memory would be kept all the fresher.

Published in the Press and Journal on July 9, 2008

Yacht coffin shocks Barra lifeboat crew

LIFEBOAT crewmen got the fright of their lives when they boarded a yacht lost in the middle of the night. Lashed to the deck on the American yacht was a black coffin.

The only person on board, skipper Jeffrey Kane, 45, originally from Lawrence in Massachusetts, claimed to the rescuers that his late mother-in-law was at rest in it. Later, to their huge relief he admitted it was empty and was taking it to Norway to put it on the wall of his friend’s theme pub.

The mercy crew from the Isle of Barra were called out to Barrahead at 3.30am yesterday (MONDAY) by coastguards after Kane, a self-employed sailor and mechanic, told them he was lost. He had been heading for Shetland after being at sea since heading off from Boston on May 21.

Last night, as he recovered in the Castlebay Bar, he told how he had a difficult crossing almost rolling the 36ft racing yacht in huge waves last month.

“The boat is 35 years old and she is my home so I go where she goes. I have been through six bad hurricanes in Florida but nothing like that out there. She almost went over on June 9.
“I got off course badly because of the northeast winds and ended up near Barra. I was lost.”

In his role as manager of a band called The Cuban Bohemian Refugee Orchestra, which has now dropped the word Cuban after being recently banned from performing in that country, Jeffrey explained they had used a coffin as a prop in a recent video.

“My friend, band member Frederik Juell, has opened a pub in Norway so I decided to sail there to visit him and I brought the coffin for the wall of the pub, the Rubber Pub Classic in Oslo. I suppose it was a bit spooky for the lifeboat guys to come aboard and just find it on deck.”

Lifeboat coxswain Donald Macleod said: “We couldn’t believe it. The coffin was there just on the deck. I just asked him directly what was in the box. He said ‘oh, it’s just my mother-in-law’. I had an idea that he was kidding but you never know. It was one of these moments in the middle of the night.”

Kane admitted he firstly claimed to them his mother-in-law was in the coffin as a joke and added: “Of course, she wasn’t in the coffin. I don’t even have a mother-in-law. I am single.”

The coxswain said Kane thought he was around the Sound of Harris but, after sailing 3,000 miles in sometimes horrendous conditions, the American could be forgiven for being just 100 miles further south than he thought.

Kane was last night contacting friends in the States some of whom are now expected to fly over to Barra to join him for the island’s annual Fishermen’s Mass on Sunday and to accompany him on the rest of the voyage to Norway.

Who is Malcolm in the middle?

RICHARD Gasquet was running rings round Andy Murray. Two sets down and snarling like councillors voting to close their own local secondary schools, the Mouth of Dunblane was about to crash out of Wimbledon. Despairing, I was ready to seek solace in the arms of Liz MacDonald in the Rovers Return. But my wee scrubber had abandoned the vacuuming and was glued. It was just too difficult to watch. I was embarrassed for him. For Scotland.

Toe-curling embarrassment can strike anywhere. In Bayhead post office the other day, a couple of schoolgirls snorted at me as I queued for the attentions of super-stamper and super-licker Marianne Flett. Wee beggars, I thought, or something similar. Outside, I was told off by a kindly fellow for taking the mickey out of the fine folk in his Church. He is, he claimed, a happy, non-grumpy adherent of the Free Church (Continuing). So it was him, I said. I’d heard there was one. Oops, there I go again.

The Continuing guy continued on his way, only to shout back loudly: “By the way, Mr Maciver, do you know your fly is undone?” A score of eyes swivelled to find who was airing their undies. I twirled round 180 degrees, as you do instinctively on learning of a downstairs wardrobe malfunction.

That brought me face to face with several senior ladies heading for Charley Barley’s black pudding emporium. Even their eyes were straying south. Not only was my zip wide open but my white shirt had taken on a life of its own. It was protruding prominently through the opening. That’s why the girls were snorting. Good job I wasn’t wearing my pink one.

It was a relief to hear how someone else got a very red face. Let’s call him Malcolm. That’s not his name, but I have been warned I will never get fresh clams again if I shame him. Although not a regular churchgoer himself, his wife asked him to take their daughter to Sunday school. He was to just sit in the same seat as last time and the kids would be summoned through to the Sunday school when it was time.

Taking their usual places near the front, Malcolm noticed “white pillowcases”, as he put it, on the front pews. Although people usually sit in their favourite places, this time some of his usual companions were farther back while others who normally sat elsewhere were in the smart, draped front pews.

A teacher sat behind him. After exchanging whispered pleasantries, the teacher asked when Malcolm began taking communion. He must be thinking of someone else, thought our lad. Then the penny dropped. He was sitting in the communion pews. I’m offski, said Malcolm, even although he’s from Lochs, not Leningrad. But just then, the minister and his entourage entered. Pulling Malcolm back down in his seat, the teacher told him not to clamber over innocent worshippers, but just to sit tight.

Malcolm was utterly panic-stricken. Obviously, he could not have even a sniff of the communion stuff. What could he do? He was stuck in the middle of some obviously very devout communicants. Crippling embarrassment chilled his very soul. The salver of bread arrived and polite words failed him. He could only squeak: “No, I don’t want it.”

In the stony silence, those scandalous words thundered round the church. I. Don’t. Want. It.

Communicants don’t refuse. The bewildered bearer repeated the offer as our Malcolm turned crimson. When the pole-axed bread man finally moved on, sheer unadulterated relief swept over Malcolm . . . until the man with the big goblet bore down on him. He hadn’t seen one that fancy since Indiana Jones went after the Holy Grail on that last crusade.

As hundreds of wide, unblinking eyes burned into the back of his neck, Malcolm also declined the plonk. Again, the offer was repeated with more insistence. Clamping his lips tightly shut over his bone-dry mouth, in case the bejewelled chalice was suddenly raised to them, our gallant lad could only shake his head wildly, gesturing to the kindly old dispenser to go and dispense somewhere else.

Malcolm perspires recalling those awful, mortifying minutes. But his secret is safe with me. I will clam up if he will.

Some embarrassment is premature, thankfully. Andy Murray made a humongous comeback and thrashed the Frenchman on Monday night.

My featherlight figure leaping up and down on the sofa as he blew the Gasquet away snapped something down below.

No, not another wardrobe misadventure. I now face a furniture repair bill. That’s also embarrassing.

Andy meets Spanish fireball Rafael Nadal in today’s quarter finals. Now that Andy has Popeye-style muscles, I’ll probably reduce that couch to matchwood and also take out an armchair or two while I’m at it.

Published in the Press and Journal on July 2, 2008