WHO is Iain Choinnich Ruaidh? Ring a bell? Nope, me neither. He is the shadowy individual who has turned up in Lewis during this tepid Hebridean summer hoping to be our next MSP. But who is he?
My close encounter was at Campbell’s filling station as I invested a vast fortune filling my tank.
“Psst,” I heard a voice say from behind the unleaded pump.
I replied loudly that I most certainly was not as it was but lunchtime and not a drop had passed my lips.
Sneaking round to investigate, I found this fellow on his knees making out he was tying his laces. I knew he was pretending because he was wearing slip-ons.
He didn’t look up, but just mumbled he knew who I was.
A P&J reader wearing slip-ons? I suppose there must be some, I reasoned.
Still attending to his gussets, he asked if I knew who he was. As I could see little more than a bald patch and a fairly sizeable nose, I confessed I had too little to go on.
“Good. Let’s keep it that way for now.”
By now, recent stories of spy swaps were swirling in my head. I was convinced I had bumped into the Russian intelligence service’s man in the Hebrides.
My brain was racing. Oh heck, what’s that pass-phrase the secret services use – the top-secret one from those spy films?
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog? No, that’s the one from typing class. Er, it’s cold in the Gulags this time of year; something like that?
Before I could say anything, the footwear fumbler said he wanted me to support his bid to become the Labour candidate for the election next year. Gosh, I thought. Infiltrating a political party, that’s serious stuff. What should I do? If I told him to get stuffed, would I find myself skewered on the tip of a poisoned umbrella?
Isn’t that what happened to Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov? That, though, was on Waterloo Bridge. Not at Campbell’s filling station.
I don’t think so, anyway.
I promised to speak to people who mattered in Labour, but, as George Gawk was working offshore, there was nothing much I could do for a few weeks.
He mumbled again. This time, though, I detected a hint of Niseach. Knowing I was taking my life in my hands, I took the initiative. I asked if he was from Sverdlovsk or Swainbost?
His answer was short, in Gaelic, but not as revealing as it might seem. I was to refer to him as just Iain Choinnich Ruaidh. John, son of Red Kenneth.
That’ll be Swainbost, then. Thank you very much, Mr Spy. I think that’s all I wanted to know.
When I looked down, he was gone. Vanished. Vamoosed. Offski. Now I learn there is no such person in Ness, and Labour has had no approaches from anyone in slip-ons.
Your tip-offs about who he is will be treated in absolute confidence. Until the election.
Golf Week and the HebCelt have again brought all sorts of invaders to our shores. Some of them are still banned from when they were last here, but they get bolder knowing that there are more ferries out, especially on Sundays, if they need to beat a hasty retreat.
Making a low-profile return from deepest, darkest Argyll last week was a man who now lives in relative obscurity in that wee coastal town he hails from and where no one has a clue what he is really like. Tommy Wood was a legendary bar steward in the Stornoway of the 80s and 90s. How we remember him in the County, that big smile of his, slung from ear to ear.
Such a professional he was, his dishcloth always slung over his shoulder. Order a drink from Tommy and he would jump up and pour it with skill and love. Such a perfectionist. He would meticulously take his knife and slice the froth off the top. And he did the same with the beer.
Didn’t he work in the Clachan when James, the Laird of Ogilvie Towers, was in charge there? I do believe he did. For those who do not know these, I should just explain that they both had reputations as casanovas. How the fair womenfolk of Stornoway were able to get out of there is one of the town’s enduring mysteries.
Tommy told me he was now a taxi driver back home in Oban. Good on him for taking a week off and visiting his old haunts, I thought. Then I spotted a gleaming cab behind him. I bet the old rascal got himself a hire to pay for the trip north. Trust Tommy.
Another visitor has been planning for the future. Seeing an advertising banner, Graham Whyte thought one of our great churches had started promoting itself down on Bells Road. Graham was also very excited. He told how they did that back home in Aberdeen all the time.
Someone actually had to take Graham, a Golf Week regular for decades, and explain that Martin’s Memorials was not the same as Martin’s Memorial Church. It is more like a headstone hypermarket.
When the time comes to lay down your head, like Tom Dooley in that song, you just pop in there and ask Mr Martin to knock a chip off the old block.
Ever organised, Graham went in for a wee nosey, and he was very impressed with the choice on offer. Well, every Aberdonian gets dewy-eyed at the sight of granite.
Graham has revealed that he had hoped to be cremated, with half his ashes scattered on the fairway of Stornoway’s ninth hole and the other half in his landlady Betty Jappy’s back garden.
I hear he is now trying to pluck up the courage to ask Betty if she can find room behind the rose bushes for something a little bulkier. Good luck with that one, Graham.
