Uist Lady

There was a paint shop in the Spanish town where we used to live whose name was emblazoned huge on the wall: Fanny Color. How English speakers all sniggered as they passed the store on the way to the beach! And how I regret not half-inching the signage, because it’s just what’s needed for the field in front of our house.
Now that North Uist has thawed out, the tupping has resumed. ‘Is it not over yet?’ I exclaimed on returning from our break on the mainland.
No, if anything it’s got more exciting. It’s as if the entire Impressionist movement has reincarnated as sheep decorators.
Blue Chest- see blog passim- though still running with the ewes, has been supplanted by Red Chest, an evil-looking beast, and Yellow Chest, an indeterminate brown thing.The resulting Fanny Colors are totally Gaugin, with a splodge of Matisse and a daub of Seurat. Van Gogh’s not far away in the mix.
‘I have never seen such a presposterous palette on a sheep,’ I remark of one passing our window which is spodged all over with blue, red, yellow and of course mud.
Mr Mac, not known for his love of woolly maggots as Scottish conservationists call them, said, ‘God knows what they’ll produce in the spring. Things with feathers probably.’ He says these things absently, without looking up from his paper.
Red Chest has a nasty habit of going up to a ewe, sniffing her rear end, and if the scent is not pleasing, delivering her a nasty kick. He’s a Texel, extremely ugly and has a disgusting gutteral bleat.
Sometimes he and Blue Chest will converge on the same ewe and have a little jostle to themselves before forgetting what it was they were supposed to be fighting about and wandering off to tear at the grass for a while. Yellow Chest is prone to baring his teeth around a girl, then pushing off with no action.
Judging by the Fanny Colors they have been a little busy. But there are still plenty of bums which remain a virginal mud colour. Get on with it boys! And then leave the girls alone, you big bullies.

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Here’s the Atholl Arms. Looks a bit dreich in this weather….

…but it’s anything but dreich inside, witness this roaring log fire

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We’re taking a winterwarmer break at the Atholl Arms in Blair Atholl.
This rambling old Victorian station hotel is a firm favourite with us, and an annual pilgrimage at this time of year.
We don’t often adopt places the way other people do, returning year after year. In fact we’ve never done it with anywhere else.
So why the Atholl Arms? In a word- the staff. They put guests first. Nothing is too much trouble. How the hotel manages to create such a friendly, relaxing atmosphere is a mystery to me, because so many others fail dismally in the challenge.
If only it was a hotel school also. With a bit of the Atholl Arms’ stardust sprinkled upon it, the concept of Highland hospitality would cease to be a joke and become something to be proud of.
That’s my opinionating over for the day. Now for a doze in the the lounge by the crackling log fire. It wouldn’t matter if I nodded off with my mouth open, drooling a river and snoring fit to make the antlers fall off the wall in the baronial dining room next door, the staff would simply hand me a bib and quietly shin up 12 ft ladders to restore the antlers to their rightful place.
That’s service.
When I feel less lazy, I’ll nip out and take a pic of the hotel, and indeed the roaring fire and post them up, but not now I’m just TOOO relaxed.

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Mr Mac has been saying some strange things lately.
Eg:
Uistlady (for context, see recent blog passim): I can only see four sheep with blue bums in the whole field. There’s at least 15 to go. That ram is utterly pathetic.
Mr Mac: I could do better myself.
UL: Gasp!
I often tell Mr Mac he should have been a policeman. He has a tendency to initiate an inquisition into any domestic situation which has gone wrong, using ruthless analysis to determine the culprit, usually me. He applies this to TV detective dramas too.
Yesterday, after he solved the whole thing on Wycliffe out loud ages before the end, I said: Honestly you should have been a policeman. You’d be chief constable by now.
Mr Mac: But then I wouldn’t have met you.
UL: Not necessarily. You might have.
Mr Mac: I might have arrested you.
UL: But I’m innocent!
Mr Mac: We police can trump things up you know.
UL: Gasp!
Mr Mac is turning highly Orwellian. Should I be worried?

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Sometimes in the life of a journalist you could write the story in advance, you’ve done it so many times before, eg ‘rain failed to dampen spirits at the xyz county show…’
‘Lottery prize winner said: I’m over the moon and it won’t change a thing in my life, I’ll go into work as normal tomorrow…’ etc etc.
Sad when it comes around in your personal life, but I’m now going to write the advance piece of Mr Mac and me sailing to the mainland in a few days. It’ll save me the bother of blogging it later when I am ensconced in front of a roaring log fire on our annual pilgrimage to Blair Atholl. (Or at the House of Bruar half price sale! Only looking.)
It’s always the same- it’s the early ferry so Mr Mac will get up before he goes to bed to be sure of not missing it. He will thunder around for hours doing ‘things’ (I’m not sure what) before I can lift my head off the pillow.
At the ferry terminal, Mr Mac will chat to Calmac staff while I sit in the car and start to pupate. I may look human (vaguely) but in fact I am a chrysalis, with my consciousness inside busy pupating into suspended animation. It’s the only way I can get through this long, long journey to anywhere on the mainland.
On board, Mr Mac will hurry to the canteen and devour a huge breakfast complete with mounds of golden scrambled egg (barf) while I slump on a reclining seat to continue pupating.
I notice the ferry congregation splits into two, those cheerily chatting and enjoying breakfast in the cafeteria and those pupating like me.
We will roll off as dawn breaks in Uig, Skye and join the caravanserai of islanders heading down the road.
Shortly after Kensalyre, I will slip from suspended animation into a deep sleep.
I will wake suddenly, straining to reconcile my surroundings with my conviction that we must now nearly be at our destination.
But no! We are still on Skye. In fact we haven’t even made it to Broadford.
It’s time to return to suspended animation. I should say that fortunately Mr Mac is driving.
We will stop at Spean Bridge woollen mill for a coffee. Danger. My mind is usually so numb by this time that I will pounce on something on the FINAL FINAL clearance rail and buy it. It will be horrendously ugly but by contrast with the grey state of my head, it will seem gloriously attractive. My cupboard is full of such items, including HATS.
And so the journey will proceed, though some of Scotland’s most beautiful countryside, with Uistlady’s capacity to gasp in wonderment at it disgracfully thin. Well, yours would be too if you did it as often as we do. And it’ll probably be raining/sleeting/ gloomy/windy. In fact- make that definitely.

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NO PICTURES, SOME THINGS ARE BETTER LEFT TO THE IMAGINATION
It’s tupping time in the field in front of our house.
A large (certainly in the bit that counts) ram has been moved in to service around 20 ewes so that we can be tormented by lambing dramas next April.
I believe the expression is ‘He’s got a good bag on him.’ In fact it’s so good it’s almost hitting the ground. Shall I just leave it at that?
Farmers have a cunning way of figuring out which ewes he has covered. They paint the ram’s chest in a striking colour, usually red but in this case blue, and hey presto, splodges of same appear on the ewe’s rear end when the deed has been done.
I know it’s nature, but for a townie like me, but the whole procedure inspires an endless running commentary.
Eg: He’s going up to that one now. Look, he’s sniffing. Oh my god she’s just done a pee and he’s sniffing that. You see (I tell Mr Mac who is deep in his paper) he’s sniffing for oestrogen. He’ll be on her any minute. (pause) OMG they’re UGLY when they sniff. Get on with it then! (pause) OMG he’s walking away from her. See, she’s not in season and he knows. Isn’t that clever.
Or: OMG that one’s got a blue head! Do you think he went for the wrong end?
Or: Wow look at the colour on that one’s bum. I think he must have got to her first.
Or: She’s lame. If he mounts her she’ll just topple over. Wait for it. Oh, shame. He’s lost interest.
Or: OMG the lazy brute’s just lying down. Where’s Tommy Sheridan when you need him most. He’s still got about 15 to go.
Meanwhile Mr Mac carries on calmly reading his paper. Or loading apps into his mobile. He hates sheep.

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Uistlady has gone to Banff, Canada to visit her daughter, so see you when I get back!

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It’s hotter than a summer day here, so we head down to the beach and encounter this strange, mythical beast. Definitely a unicorn. See what happens when you get freaky weather in October.

Come on in, the water’s lovely. Except this was taken at Hosta beach, and please don’t swim there, the currents are treacherous and there are no warning signs.

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Scrutinise the address on this envelope I received recently from Western Isles Council, or Comhairle Nan Eilean Siar.
Check the spelling of Stornoway. Yes, Stornaway. From the islands’ own council.
A friend put it like this: “The Comhairle is made up of two tiers. Those at the top, who bring their own agenda, very often religious, and self-serving. Then there is the second tier, who are slothful, slapdash and inefficient.”
The envelope certainly illustrates the latter. And the former should have spotted the humiliating error long ago.
At the moment the Comhairle is busy slashing its budget, with the spotlight on frontline and cinderella services. But will it ever slash itself, by bringing down its 20 heads of department and excess of councillors (for example, we have three, serving a population of about 2000) to more sensible numbers?
That’ll be the day.

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Yesterday the rains were torrential all day, making it miserable for the visiting archaeologists attending HAF 2010.
But they made their way to Teampull Na Trionaid, a 700 year old seminary and place of pilgrimage of national importance, and stood under the bucketing heavens to listen to Dr John Raven of Historic Scotland talking about the building.

Dr Raven included research on the building in his PhD on the ecclesiastical landscape of the Uists. He’s also very much behind local residents’ drive to carry out remedial work to halt the inexorable deterioration of the building. They need £200,000 to prop it up and lime-mortar it.

Yesterday evening Nunton Steadings was packed for an evening themed around the Udal, an incredible site on North Uists’s northwest coast. It was excavated over 23 seasons by Iain Crawford, teams of archaeologists and students, and many local people. They found habitations from the Neolithic to 1700 AD. But the findings remain unpublished and the finds themselves are in mothballs. This rankles with local people who invested much of their time and effort into the dig, only to have the book of their history not only slammed shut, but devoid of any text.
Sandi Humphrey, a local lady from Sollas, stood up and told the assembled multitude which included many archaeologists who had worked on the dig, how betrayed locals feel about the way they have been treated. There was interesting news by way of response from Beverley Ballin Smith, of Glasgow University. She says she now has all the Udal finds in her possession and wants to seek money for a ten year project to complete the research work. And she wants the finds returned to our community, asking us to start getting plans for a suitable building together now, in preparation.
The road to this will be complicated, long, hard and very rocky. As Beverley said: “All we need is money.” Around £2 million and counting.
Here are local volunteers clearing away the 40 year old rotting and hazardous remains of Iain Crawford’s caravan and the greenhouse he put up against the side of it for finds processing (known fondly as the Crystal Palace.)

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