DAD, daughter and dog set off for the beach because mother had stopped communicating due to her enthusiastic, open-mouthed participation in the annual gawp-fest that is Andy Murray on the box.
Knowing he was going to get through the early stages anyway, we decided instead to catch the Saturday evening rays knowing that, with a bit of luck, most of the people who would normally be on the beach would also be indoors plonked in front of the gogglebox and we might even have the beach to ourselves. Coll beach was too busy; Garry was too far, so we pulled up at Gress.
The beach is fenced off and a stile is the method of access kindly offered by the grazings committee. While pooch and progeny were up and over in a flash, I had to steady myself carefully before my steady, careful ascent of the steps.
Thinking to myself I had swung my leg over the wire so jauntily I could pass for a teenager, suddenly the entire creaking assembly began to wobble precariously. This caused the leg I had on the beach-side step to slip off.
Don’t worry. I did not fall to the ground. That was because, being already straddled on the fence, my fall was broken when my nether regions landed on the wire and it slowly dawned on me that this was no ordinary fence wire, but the most vicious barbed variety on which I was now resting much of my reproductive and waste-disposal systems.
With my short legs dangling uselessly on each side of the fence and tears welling up, all I could do was bounce up and down to try to dislodge myself from the crotchful of steely pricks which were frazzling fabric and fiery flesh.
Close to the wire
To complete my agonising humiliation, I could see out of the corner of my eye that my predicament was the cause of roaring amusement for a congregation of boisterous boy racers in the nearby cemetery layby. They even turned up the volume to make sure that I could hear Hurt So Good. Good one, guys.
The ointment is helping, thank you for asking, but I won’t be back to Back for a long time. Not while I’m walking funny, anyway.
Funny people, Bacachs, aren’t they? Take my mate George Gawk. A lot of people ask me what this mysterious character is really like. What can you say?
He is just like any other sheep-keeping, property-letting, four-eyed, wife-hunting, Labour-supporting, Rangers-supporting oil industry executive.
If you come across someone in the corner of a hostelry in downtown Stornoway proclaiming to anyone who cares to listen the week’s key messages from Brown, Balls or Mandy, please don’t think them crazy. That’ll be George. When it comes to support for the party of the working man, he is as dyed-in-the-wool as the quilted, sleeveless bodywarmer thingy that he dons for very special occasions – like reaching the end of a week when a Cabinet minister has not quit.
It was therefore with awe and not a little disbelief that I heard from a another mate that it was on the news that one of the Gawks was a Tory MP and, just as incredibly, was jacking in half a dozen of his jobs to spend more time in the House of Commons with David Cameron.
It couldn’t be George’s brother? The only election I know that the wee Gawk took part in was on Friday night when he was proposed, nominated and confirmed in the Carlton beer garden as the person duly chosen by the electors – Mo Flo, Shelly, Mrs X and myself – to go forth into the pub, a place which could often be described as a house of commons, for more cold lager.
In his impromptu acceptance speech, Gawk jun said he was humbled to have the opportunity to serve. So he did and hardly spilled a drop.
Or could it be George himself? It was definitely the surname Gawk my man said he’d heard on Radio 4. “Have you ever heard of anyone else called Gawk?” he had demanded. No, no, no.
But George Gawk a Tory MP? Thirty years ago, he was indeed the youngest councillor in Inverness, but his loyalty has always been for the party symbolised by black wellies, not green. What if George Gawk was made a minister? Or party leader? Or even . . . PM?
The nation can relax. I can exclusively reveal it is not to be. It is not George Gawk, but the similarly-named but slightly different David Gauke, a Tory Treasury spokesman, who is packing in his highly paid directorships to do the job we all thought he was paid to do in the first place.
Phew, George, you had us going there – almost as much as Andy Murray has Mrs X going. Again. While I am in favour of an occasional bout of patriotic fervour as much as the next man, this annual obsession with Murray’s progress is getting on my wick.
Herself just abandons the kitchen and becomes obsessed with the lanky ball-whacker, with her remote in one hand and a phone in the other.
She keeps her voice down and thinks I can’t hear her whispering to her pals that she could forgive the grumpiness and hair like an exploding haystack if a man had a body like that.
It’s not that I’m jealous or anything, but we’re still only halfway through the fortnight.
Her sister Joey is no better. She, too, is smitten. Joey was even talking of going down to Wimbledon. Her plan was to go camping and pitch up on Murray Mound so she could ogle Andy going back and fore. She even went as far as ordering a tent from Tesco and asked for it to be delivered, which they did in the afternoon.
Half an hour later, she was back at the store, raging. She had ordered a two-man tent, she said, but when she opened it up there wasn’t even one in there.
Ferrying Away The Sabbath
