Overnight, concrete tower blocks have landed outside my bedroom window, without my knowledge or approval or planning consent. Firmly rooted themselves in the Glasgow gloom, much like we all do on a cold wet morning.
They are presented today by a 1960s brutalist multi-storey car park, which will one day be listed and considered as a work of art by high society.
Until then, it rents itself out by the hour.
Before I leave the vibrant city for the barren panoramas of the Highlands and Islands, I run around in circles to throw pretend money at people in shops in exchange for words and music and moving pictures.
Back at room 231, the cleaner’s screams will not be muffled by any amount of thick carpet, beige or taupe or otherwise – primarily because this is not a five-star hotel in downtown Paris.
I seem to have committed the crime of moving the vast majority of my overnight gear back to my car, while on my way out for an early-morning city centre smash-and-grab; and have subsequently returned to pick the rest up, before checking out … all of which woke both me and the cleaner up, as I knocked hesitantly on my wide-open bedroom door.
Fittingly, my odds-and-sods are presented back to me in an evidence bag marked ‘Laundry’.
Yes, Glasgow is taking me to the cleaners.
It’s only several hours later when I wonder … why did I knock on my own bedroom door … ?
Exiting the spaghetti streets of the city centre, and weighed down by poor technology, my chariot will not yet drive itself, and so I’m forced to guide it onto the M8, which is a ribbon of tarmac that someone built for me. It comes complete with information signs and formation lines and matrix lights, all of which control my movements.
And it turns out I’m not alone … we’re all in this together, a manipulated mass heading northwards.
I go there with Ophelia, the two of us swept along on a yellow weather warning.
We are storm-chasers … although at least one of us will be found out before daybreak.
The ascending road is threaded between the eye of a needle, directly between the lumpy brown earth and the heavily-bruised sky, a collapsing shelf of dark grey cloud which hasn’t been fixed in place properly, and keeps falling down.
These are brief but furious encounters, ominous signs of the stormy weather ahead … although we were all warned about this several hours ago by a smiling person in a box pointing at a map.
Tourists come and go, much like shit thoughts.
Holding aloft smartphones, capturing their visual inputs for posterity, something to hang on to for when they develop forgetfulness, which up here stalks the holiday coaches and rented motorhomes much like the seagulls haunt the trawlers.
And people turn right a hell of a lot up here, continually slowing my progress.
I prefer turning left, and do so at the Corran ferry, which is a sandwich stop by an abandoned shed down by the choppy water.
As always I find it incredibly difficult to gather my thoughts; all the more so when the strengthening wind blows them away so easily.
Better to be back in my shaking car, I figure … rolling solidly back and forth with the stiff breeze.
At the other side, it’s pleasing to be first in first out, if only so that I can leave the slow coach behind, on my single-track road into the Morven wilderness.
I arrive at Lochaline, a collection of houses that we can all peer into from above, and it’s a shop and it’s a diner down by the pier.
Also the exclusive high-end fish restaurant that no-one can afford, yet everyone goes to. I peep through the square window but can’t see a sole.
On the road to Drimnin, locals are pulling down trees before the incoming storm raises them – always one step ahead.
Littering the way, fallen bracken and highland cattle. Tonight they might fly.
My bovine observations are: a minimal understanding of Scottish passing place etiquette; and, liberal excretions all over the road.
My conclusion being that the cattle are firmly in control in these parts, and I feel like I must consult them if I develop any urgent plans.
Meanwhile I wait patiently for five minutes, before lowering the window to shake a fist – more for something to do than to expect the animal up ahead to suddenly notice me and move out of the way.
Temporarily regain my composure in the Local Shop, where there is a very cheery non-local lady who willingly accepts paper notes from me, in exchange for goods which are packaged for me today in non-recyclable containers, with price stickers attached that thank me for being there.
The courteousness of the eggs overwhelms me.
At Kiel Church, the standing stones have set themselves straight, or actually in the building around the back. Some are lying down, and I don’t blame them.
Five minutes later, my engine stops whirring and clattering at a spot by the water, just down from the Wishing Stone.
My only wish in the increasingly frantic wind and rain is that the car park was next to it – a terrible thought, I know.
Up ahead, on a hillside overlooking the Sound of Mull, an Airship has landed.
My hope is that it will stay grounded for the next two nights … primarily because I’m staying in it.
The view is out the window – as is frequently the case – it just hasn’t arrived yet.
Couldn’t care less right now about the wind, it seems like a storm in a teacup I reason, as I crack open a beer and attempt to paint the sky.
Until several hours later, when I’m taken for a wild ride in said Airship.
Turbulence on the ground, it turns out, is a thing – and quite disconcerting.
Especially when there’s no on/off switch.
This is a pricey fairground ride, which lasts all night.
A solitary singing bird announces the end of the storm, circa 7am, by which point I’ve lost all interest.
An Outside World 