Iain Maciver writes …

THERE I was, curled up on the sofa, with a hot cross-bun in one hand and a hot cross-wife in the other, when this woman came on Britain’s Got Talent looking like a frumpy housewife from Laxdale.

Now I know that there are quite a few talented ladies of a certain age out past the hospital – a very fine place which has even held its very own Laxdale’s Got Talent contest – but Miss Susan Boyle, age 47 and unattached, did not look like a performer.

Buns

She told us she had never been kissed. Well, the similarity ended there. None of the Laxdale ladies I know would fall into that particularly category.

On the contrary . . .

Despite the impression of dowdiness, Miss Boyle was sensational. When she sang that number from Les Miserables, it was so hauntingly perfect and uplifting, I put down all the buns in my lap. The sheer flawlessness of her performance and the shock that someone so, well, plain could be so talented was wonderful.

She was nervous, I’m sure, but when she came on she had that really expressionless face, looking dour in that peculiar way that only east-coasters can manage.

You know, she reminded me of someone else. But who? I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

Finding a talent like that which has remained hidden for so long is such a contrast to others we have heard about recently who also have great abilities, but who waste them through their own thoughtlessness and stupidity.

And not just those rude brats who play for Rangers who won’t go to bed when they are told.

Let us, for example, not be too quick to condemn Bob Quick, the top cop who couldn’t be bothered putting his plans for police raids on suspected terrorists in a briefcase. He was in a hurry. What’s the big deal?

Who could have dreamed that these photographers in Downing Street had long lenses and would take pictures?

Scrub that, yes, let’s give him a rocket for messing that up. If you can’t trust the head of the anti-terrorism unit to look after secret info, then who can you trust?

And even here, in the Western Isles, there are talented people who do fantastic work every day without fanfare or seeking applause. Some of them toil away in Stornoway.

Some are even in harness at Western Isles Council. You could find, for example, some of them hard at it in technical services. In that department’s roads and transport services section are an industrious bunch who are busy running our bus services.

They came up with a good one recently. After making big changes to the numbers and routes of the buses, they decided to just start the new service but without timetables. Pure genius. After all, what is the point of publishing a bus timetable? As long as people have a vague idea where the bus is going, then why go into silly little details like times and routes.

Buses (courtesy of Western Isles Transport Preservation Group witpg.org.uk)

All that is going to do is prompt complaints from bolshie passengers when you can’t stick to it. If you don’t even publish one, though, then the great unwashed will have nothing to whinge about. Absolutely brilliant. You have to be very talented to think of that.

Alas, the best-laid plans and all that. It was a fantastic idea on paper and the first morning was very encouraging. It wasn’t raining and passengers enjoyed being out of doors and chatting to each other for ages at the bus stops. You can gossip far better at a stop than you can on the bus because you never know who is in the seat behind you and whether or not they are earwigging.

Sadly, though, the bus planners hadn’t bargained on Iain Don using one of these surprise buses. About nine of them had gone down to Eagleton one after the other, so he just hopped on one of them just in case it was an SNP cavalcade that Kenny Macleod in the constituency office had forgotten to tell him about.

However, the big fellow is a keen amateur navigator because he spends so much time with all these gold-braided types who steer the ferries for CalMac. So when he was taken on a magical mystery tour of strange places with stranger-sounding names, like Melbost, Branahuie and Plasterfield, he began to write it all down. That note is now the script for a new series that MG Alba is making called Co? Cuin? Caite?

The hoo-haa over the entire episode has now forced a radical rethink of policy. Bus timetables are being hurriedly brought back. No more will travellers have the thrill of not having a clue where they are going or when they will get there.

Oh, it might still take Bayblonians nearly two hours to get to town, but at least they can now work out just how late for their appointments they will be.

And, I’ve got it. The unsnogged Miss Boyle had, indeed, reminded me of another songbird I met at a dance in the 1970s in the Laxdale Hall. Very persistent lady she was. She even turned up at the shop where I worked then and, while pretending to be interested in nylon foam-backed carpeting suitable for a bedroom and a nice extra-springy double divan, asked if I was going to the next dance in the hall on the hill.

However, when that stunning voice of an angel started up on Saturday, despite the likeness, I knew she wasn’t my friend from all these years ago. As we danced back then, my admirer would always sing along, loudly and badly, with the cheerful little numbers by that popular beat combo of the time, The Eagles.

She would drag me bodily around the floor as she wailed in my ear each line of One of These Nights or Take it to the Limit as it was being belted out by Rocker or Derek McLauchlan. Or maybe it was Desperado.