OUR minds can play awful tricks with us – especially if you have just been woken up and are still a bit dozy.
That was brought home the other evening to a couple from Sandwick, near Stornoway, who had been out to visit friends.
Everyone was in good form and it was the early hours before they got back.
As she had an early start, Mrs Sandwick did a little tidying up and off they headed to the land of nod.
Then she woke with a start. What’s the time? 2.30am. She’d heard a noise. She turned to Mr Sandwick but he was snoring good-style.
Suddenly, she heard a rattle.
Swinging quietly out of bed, she padded over to the window. No rattle but in the distance, she could detect a gentle throbbing.
What could that be? It was dark. Her mind was racing.
What if the noise earlier was burglars trying the back door? In deadly-dull Sandwick, the most boring village in the history of the Hebrides? Always a first time, she reasoned.
Listen, there’s that distant throbbing again. That must be their getaway car parked round the corner.
She roused himself without him bawling out: “Aye, go on then and you might as well make a couple of slices of toast too.”
Rubbing the sleep from his peepers, he could hear the rattling. The intruders must have got in and they were going through their drawers.
There was only one thing for it. Mr Sandwick would have to do the decent thing and go and tackle them, she said, bravely.
Take a weapon, she urged.
“A weapon?” he said. “Well, I’m sorry but I think I left my AK-47 assault rifle in the garage. Oops, silly me.”
Having tidied up, she had left nothing handily lying around with which to bludgeon the marauding criminals in the dinette. What is that in the corner? The accordion.
She grabbed it, gingerly took it out of the case – and then quickly put it down again. Very wise. It is never a good idea for an undressed lady to pick up an accordion. Why? Do you want me to draw you a picture?
Her husband was more practical though. He took the accordion case, hoisted it above his head and, still hearing the ransacking going on, set off along the hall to catch the burglars by surprise. Bursting into the kitchen with the lethal Hohner box swinging menacingly above him, he found . . . no one at all.
“You’re under the table. Come out with your hands up or I’ll . . . I’ll . . . I’ll box your ears.”
No one in the freezer. What about the rattling?
It was from the washing machine.
Before retiring, Mrs Sandwick had put on a wash and, because its fixings were coming loose, the machine was doing the shake, rattle and roll on the final spin cycle. The ominous “getaway car” throbbing in neutral round the corner must have just been the wash cycle.
They shouldn’t be embarrassed. Everyone can get it wrong sometimes and a few here in the islands must have been smiling with quiet satisfaction when BBC weatherman Tomasz Schafernaker got into trouble. His wee unscripted gesture at a newsreader was caught on camera.
Gaffe-prone Tomasz has form here. He is the guy who called the islands Nowheresville. Silly man; that’s just Harris.
He also warned it was going to rain at the Glastonbury Festival saying it would soon be a muddy site. Except he said it as if there was an “h” somewhere in there.
Tomasz is of Polish extraction and the eminent current affairs analyst Dan Murray struggled to pronounce his surname on Gaelic radio on Friday. After a few stabs at it, Dan concluded: “Even his name sounds dirty.”
It certainly is the way you said it, Dan.
Meanwhile, our best-loved quango has been getting itself in knots with words. Jargon is killing communication and people in quangos are the worst offenders. They can’t help themselves. A crofter tells me of what is probably the unlikeliest direct quote in history by one such quasi-thingummybob, Highlands and Islands Enterprise.
It made an announcement the other day about the Harris Tweed industry’s new training course. It told of a weaver in Stornoway who decided he would take up weaving as it allowed him the chance to also take up his other crofting interests.
Fair enough. He is then quoted directly about the benefits of a proper training regime saying: “This accreditation drawn up by the prime movers in the textile industry should be the dynamic to drive Harris Tweed to the iconic discerning market it deserves.”
Would a real crofter actually say such meaningless drivel? I don’t think so either.
You can just see two weavers in the Crit leaning on the bar with a couple of nips and halves of ordinary. Murdo asks: “Haoi, a’ Chalum. What do you think of this accreditation?”
“Well,” says Calum, “I’ve thought of little else. That fellow Neil in the HIE announcement is absolutely right. It should be the dynamic that drives the clò mòr to the market. And, as you well know, a’ Mhurchaidh, it is a discerning market. And an iconic one. Oh well, yes.”
“Exactly. That was my own appraisal too, Mr Calum,” replies Murdo. “I’m glad we concur. Excuse moi, two more drinky-poohs, bartender. Make them gins with tonic and ice because we too are prime movers in our industry with the dynamic to drive our products to the iconic, discerning markets they deserve.
“Oh, and a half bottle and four cans for the bus.”
However, one of the lads has had problems with words before.
Murdo went into Calum’s barn and caught him doing a sexy striptease to one of his agricultural machines. Murdo was absolutely stunned. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“It’s not my fault,” says Calum. “Me and Mary have not been getting on lately and our counsellor said I should do something sexy to a tractor.”
