SO MY CAR hit a tree in the Castle Grounds in the wee small hours of the morning and no one has seen me since? That is our private, family business. All this wild speculation has gone on for far too long, so I have decided to release a statement.
First of all, it is being claimed that, as I was lying there in the ditch, there was an angry woman standing over me with a golf club. But the tree which I accidentally nudged, unfortunately knocking me unconscious and demolishing the entire front end of my car, was actually opposite Stornoway Golf Club. So no surprise there.
There are always bent and discarded clubs lying around in that area – especially after Callum Ian MacMillan has been playing.
There has been a lot of ill-informed comment about what I was doing there at that time. The fact is I work hard and I am very busy during the week. That silly ban on Sunday golf here on Lewis means that I cannot go on Sunday, so I go and practise my swing whenever I have a free hour or two.
In fact, quite a few of us swingers are regularly in Lady Lever Park in the middle of the night. So what? We are merely saving a fortune on membership fees. Again, just my private business. OK?
It has also been claimed in some of the less-responsible rags that just before the accident, an angry woman was seen chasing me along Bayhead and waving what looked, to someone with a pair of high-powered binoculars in a top-floor eyrie in Canada Crescent, like a golf club.
The fact that these claims have surfaced just days after it was revealed in this newspaper that I was looking for a new housekeeper, preferably from the Bowglass area, because, it was alleged, I did not think the current Mrs Maciver was up to the mark, is just completely coincidental.
Anyway, it wasn’t a golf club; it was a guitar. Just because Mrs X has been known to while away evenings strumming these instruments should be taken as no indication whatsoever that I did anything at all to cause her strings to snap.
The language of the guitarist is sadly often misunderstood. When she practises, she talks away to herself about how she must pluck this or pluck that when she is next playing in the Lewis Bar or the Dark Island Hotel: people do get the wrong idea. She is actually very mild-mannered.
Maybe the back window of my car was broken. Obviously, I can’t remember. The fact that someone in the Star Inn says a beat-up Vauxhall Vectra was seen on the back of Colin Oisean’s lorry being put onto the Muirneag within hours of my whoopsie is something I cannot confirm, either. Remember, I am still in shock here.
Nothing happened. Honest.
It has also been suggested that I have not been showing my face around the town until the scratches caused by some woman’s nails and an almighty sglog on my napper from the golf club have properly healed. Listen, if I was that bothered at what people thought of my face, do you think I would have spent all these years wearing this one? There, I am glad I have cleared up that matter for you and hope that will put the matter to rest once and for all.
Isn’t life full of coincidences, though? I hear that some golfer in America has had much the same kind of really unfortunate experience as myself. A wee late-night bump, knocked senseless, lying gaga on the ground, claims of a number five iron involved, broken back window, that sort of thing.
The similarities are incredible. Tiger drives a Cadillac Escalade SUV, handed to him personally by General Motors of Renaissance Centre in Detroit, and I drive General Motors’ other triumph, the Vauxhall Vectra, handed to me personally by Clinton Motors of Sandwick Road in Stornoway.
And Tiger lives in the Isle of Worth in Florida, now known as Isleworth, which is plush, always sunny and everyone is open-minded. I live on the Isle of Lewis which is, er, the Isle of Lewis. Uncanny, eh?
Unluckily for Mr Woods, there is one slight difference between our two lives. He is not married to a sweet, understanding person who forgives her husband for everything from picking his nose to noisily normalising internal air pressures at the table and casting unfounded doubts on her housekeeping skills. And mine doesn’t demand millions of pounds for not selling an exclusive kiss-and-tell.
But some women are high-maintenance and difficult to fathom.
Take Roseanna Cunningham. What is our glorious environment minister on? She blurted out to some magazine that Harris Tweed was wrapped up in a very 19th-century Victorian gentleman’s view of rural Scotland. Eh?
Roseanna said she kept seeing these awful people who have no major connection with the country wearing “the costume”. She hates seeing that.
No word of all the designers who have taken to using the hardy, homespun cloth to drape around the waifish dahlings who stalk the catwalks of the very top fashion shows. No word of the posh, new hotels which use it for everything from sofas and flooring to making the toilet seat warmer to sit on.
And no word from Ms Cunningham, either, for the cheeky housewife somewhere on the island here who is making slinky, pink knickers out of tweed for her more adventurous and more fun-loving clientele. Oops, I’ve said too much. Honestly, me and my mouth. Time to go now. I have been writing this for ages and it is time for bed. There is a racket out on the street. I can hear youngsters shouting to each other to hurry up so they can go dancing in town. Honestly, who on earth wants to go out clubbing at 2.30am?
Apart from Tiger Woods’s wife?
