I was driving in town the other day when I got pulled over by the police. (I actually cut him up at a roundabout, I maintain he signalled to turn off, he says I should still have waited to see if he did turn off, anyway on with the advice part of my tale) He flashed his lights and had me pull over. I was so nervous as I’ve never ever been stopped before! First off he told me off for pulling out in front of him, then he asked me what I was doing in town today? At the moment in Scotland there is a travel ban due to C19, and so we’re only allowed to travel more than 5 miles if it’s absolutely necessary to do so, as I live 35 miles from any shop, it sure is necessary!!! Also I have been doing quite a bit of shopping for some of the family’s I usually look after as part of my normal job. But who are in isolation while we are all still in lockdown. I told him I was just shopping and then dropping it all off. He nodded and then looked in the back of the car.
My car is my office/work station and is filled with all my cleaning and gardening equipment plus laundry baskets etc. And even on a good day (today was not a good day) looks chaotic! He then said, “you wouldn’t be working now, would you? You know that’s illegal at the moment, because going into peoples home isn’t allowed, don’t you?” I sputtered and stuttered that no I wasn’t, I just had to drop off some shopping and I’d be going home! (I was actually about to call on a 91 year old stroke victim I look after and vacuum her house and mow her lawn as she can do neither herself as she’s stuck in bed 24/7 and had no family on the island …but I couldn’t tell him that!! As I knew I definitely should not be doing that, even if I was socially distancing!! He’d obviously got me all figured out. “Well my advice to you is drop of that shopping and then go home, do you understand? You then just go on home!” I said I did and that I would. I was so shocked at being stopped and then told off I just sat there for a while and sobbed my heart out over doing wrong, I then had to call my disappointed nonagenarian and tell her that there would be no vacuuming today and I slunk off home .
Winters can be very long here on the isle of Lewis, they are not always frosty and snow covered but can be very wet and wild. Our first couple of winters here on the island sure have been. We soon learned that the high winds would carry off anything that wasn’t tied down, from planters to our old yellow fibreglass kayak, which usually takes two of us to lift, that sailed two fields over and was surrounded by curious sheep when we spotted it the next morning. Each spring is eagerly watched for, first the willows will start to bud, then the primroses begin to bloom, but the sure sign that spring has come at last; comes with the cuckoo, its calls throughout the glen herald the calmer weather. People start to appear, folks you might not have seen since New Year are out and about in their gardens or checking on their sheep, awaiting the first lambs. The days start to get a little longer; it’s no longer dark by 4pm and its then that my mind turns to the coming task of digging the peats.
We were given a peat bank the first year we moved out here. A neighbour took us out onto the moor and pointed out a low heather covered hummock, half cut away to reveal the black crusty peat beneath. It looked just like all the other peat banks, there were dozens of them up on the high moors, but this one was special, this one was ours, this one could keep our house warm all winter, heat our water and provide cooking fuel in the ancient kitchen range which was the heart of our home. Now all we had to do was come up here, cut and dry the peat then haul it home and stack it ready for winter use! Everyone warned me how hard it would be, how my back would hut, how the midges would bite, how it wasn’t worth the effort. They shuck their heads when I went up evening after evening after evening with my spade and cut and stacked the peat, what they didn’t know was how much I looked forward to it. You see I come from a busy town in England where finding a quiet corner with just minimal noise and people can be difficult, so a whole moor to my self was wonderful, beautiful, sheer heaven! Although it was not silent, far from it, at first all I could hear was my own huffing and puffing as I staggered about in the mud, but after a while other sounds crept into my consciousness. The high ‘peeping’ song of the golden plover nesting on the moors caught my attention first, I spent ages trying decipher which direction the plaintive sounds were coming from; then I noticed that when a raven flew over head making honking sounds as it went you could hear its wing beats, yes that’s how quiet it was. The funniest sounds where the squeaks of the sheep pulling up and eating the reeds which grew in tussocks, they’d bury their heads in the reeds, chomp on the bases and pull, their teeth squeaking on the tough shiny green stalks as they tried to up root them. But my favourite sound, the one that kept me on the moor and stopped my in my tracked was the skylarks. I cant begin to describe their song to you, it truly is only something you can experience for your selves, all I know is that for some digging the peats really is about the hard work, but for me the digging is just a reason to get me up onto the moors so that I can stand and listen.
I was asked to write about a true experience but from a different point of view, as part of the grieving process when my younger sister died, I chose to write it from her boyfriends point of view, it’s a very sad story, but a true one. I’ve had it tucked away for quite sometime, I’ve only ever showed it to my partner Nikki. I’m hoping that by sharing it with you guys it might help me some how, I never got to show it to the grief councillor I was sent to as I was only allowed a couple of sessions and I didn’t manage to actually write this until a few years later. I’ve called the piece June Baby.
I’d always meant to go get the ring on Thursday morning, but stuff happens, you know? So by the time I got to the jewellers it was shut, half day closing. Who does that any more? We don’t do that at the super market, we went 24 hour last June, so now there are shifts round the clock. I do a lot of night shifts now, its quiet here at three in the morning, no one to bother me down here in Home and Leisure. I try and stay down the front of the store, don’t go up the far isles towards the back, although I can see the signs on the back wall, pictures of cheeses and salami to show the shoppers that this is the deli section. I can see them over the shelving as I restack the CDs and DVDs. That’s where my Jeannie worked, slicing the meats, cutting the cheeses. I’d see here talking to customers, letting them try before they buy. But I can’t go up there any more, can’t stand to see it, they offered me a transfer after it happened, thought I’d be better off working in another store…not so many memory’s, less awkward all round for me and for them too I suppose. But no, I couldn’t leave, sometimes the memory’s help, I go over and over it trying to change that night, turn back the clock, wind it right back. My life is full of what ifs now. But how far would I wind it back? To the staff meeting perhaps, that made me late? It made me get there after one when the staff had locked the small shop and Jeannie’s engagement ring was trapped there inside until the morning, the morning of her eighteenth birthday. My plans were in ruins, I wouldn’t be able to turn up at her house early with it. I would have to change my plans. Maybe if I had come up with a different plan, a better plan, any plan other than the one I did come up with, I long so much to not have phoned her, to not have told her I would be busy all day, couldn’t give her a lift home that night and would meet her back at her parents house at ‘sixish’. She was upset, understandably so, I’d kept the ring a secret you see, we’d told our family’s we wanted to get engaged, but they said at eighteen we were far too young. I’d hoped the ring would prove to them all that we were serious. I have a suspicion she knew I’d got her something special, because I remember how disappointed she was when I handed over the oversized card while she was working, across the deli counter, and apologised again for her having to get herself home. If only she’d managed to get that shift swap, not had to work on her birthday, they have introduced that as policy here now, it’s a perk of the job, you get an extra days holiday because you automatically get the day off. I’d like to think its because of what happened but its just good PR really. So when I finished, off I raced to get the ring, glad to be in the car, it was poring with rain, I was thinking that we would have to have the fireworks I’d bought on another night although tonight was November the fifth. There’s another what if, maybe if she’d been born in summer, not been a bonfire baby? But no, I can’t turn the clock back that far, can I? I wish, oh how I wish I could, then it would have all been alright, everything would be alright, we’d still be together. Maybe if the train guard had let her take her bike on the train, instead of refusing her, it was wet, the train was packed. So instead she set off to cycled the seven miles home. She loved her bike, had bought it with her first wage, had always wanted one, and cycled everywhere. If only I’d got there before half day closing, I go over and over and over that day, that pointless meeting, that train guard, no one swapping the shift, the tanker driver, not seeing her, I freeze frame when ever I come to that part. I know from the inquest, he didn’t see her, he says he even rolled down his window to see better at the junction, he looked both ways and there was nothing there, no traffic. No she was cycling in front of his cab, he didn’t look down. He never saw her. If I could turn the clock back at all, that is the time I would alter, the time I would change, it was all fixable up until then. I’d got the ring, and was at her house with her sisters waiting, we’d rigged up a banner, I’d showed them the ring. A policeman came to her house, we were all so happy up until then, we’d come up with a crazy plan to all hide and jump out on her; knowing she would be cold and cross at having to cycle home in the rain, but the ring and the banner and the cake would make up for all that. But someone at the door brought us out of hiding, stopped all our smiles dead. She was dead, we stood there. Time stopped. If only I could rewind it, play it over again, start a fresh. Maybe this time make her a June baby.
just walking 