Sat on my Stornoway porch with double eggs on morning rolls, the clouds outside my bothy reluctant to part. A late start, maybe.
For no particular reason, I follow a bin lorry to the municipal tip by the loch – an enjoyable pursuit that’s up there with touring housing estates.
Caught out there, I retreat.
To venture over the pockmarked peat bogged moorland, where some are cut and some are stacked, often in very neat piles.
It would be best not to have a breakdown out here, I resolve.
Makes me wonder how many doubting travellers have sunk without trace into the peat-ridden landscape over the centuries.
My car descends into Breascleit, and thankfully I’m still in it. Takes me onwards to Callanish – all three parts.
Up the sheep-shit path that I’m used to by now, but that I still sink into every few yards, a couple are waiting for me to arrive so that I can appear at the far back of their moody SLR photos of the standing stones.
With much success, I think I appear in every shot.
It’s a bizarre scene … the irregular stones at first glance appearing to be randomly placed, yet on closer inspection are lined up in a kind of peculiar order – the lot of them looking like they’re waiting for a party to start.
I’ve been told in the past to vary my outlook, and I do this here three times over, with no clear outcome except for my firm belief that the triangular rock is the outright winner, and I place my rosette on this one.
Not so much the X Factor, as the Neolithic Factor.
All the other stones suddenly look a bit gloomy after this. Can’t please everyone! Yet none of them give up much in terms of why and when and how and where.
And then the cloud rolls over and the sun won’t shine, leaving me to reflect on the exact colour of doubt.
It’s hard work out here.
Through the falling-down canyon to Timsgarry, where the chessmen are a 12th century prototype emoji.
The very large wooden ones are not the real ones … these are not real, I have to keep repeating to myself; and every time I do so, my disappointment intensifies slightly.
It’s not unfeasible that the invading Scandinavians liked a game of gigantic chess, on the beach, on a night!
Although it would be challenging to keep them buried for six centuries, I will admit.
Anyway, that curiosities dealer from Stornoway laughed all the way to the bank, in Edinburgh – where, coincidentally, some of the chess set ended up.
I guess for them it was all just a big game.
The lady in the cafe gives me a sandwich and some cake in return for emptying my wallet, which I’m starting to realise is the case in most places this far north.
I take my cheese and pickle sandwich, and I place it in the museum next door, where it’s very quickly labelled with a catalogue number. It’s a veritable factory, is what it is. My thoughts may well be catalogued next.
I picture my lunch in a future exhibition, however I’d rather see it go in my mouth at some point in the near future.
The rooms here have collections of old shoes, a few creels, a fishing basket, a couple of harpoons. There is definitely something fishy going on, I reason.
And hovering above it all are sobering stories of super-rich landowners taking advantage of crofters for their own gains / for benelovent purposes … persuasion on the latter will earn you a knighthood. Although you will always be slightly concerned every time there is a knock on your town-centre castle door!
The museum curator is sat on a catalogued chair in his catalogued office, striking a pose and eyeing up my paid-for Bakewell Tart.
We get to chatting and it turns out he likes taking in the machair on charity walks in the Uists … as we’d all like to, if we could get there quickly and conveniently.
Eventually I manage to retrieve my lunch from behind the counter, with minimal repercussions and no fisticuffs.
I then go and throw it around on an incredibly windy beach at Uig Sands.
The multicoloured rocks are here, and the turquoise sea – although that’s a little far out.
There is an old coach and an awesome van and a family clan, messing about on the sands without any cares in the world. What a great day!
Returning back to the endlessly widescreen beach, it feels like I’m becoming a part of the landscape. Part of my cheese and pickle sandwich definitely is.
There’s a storm cloud covering me, and I may as well lay down right here right now by the ocean, and absorb it all in.
The rocks have survived long enough, and they Know Stuff. They’re choosing to keep suspiciously quiet.
There is a cemetery up on the hill, threatening to roll down into the drink.
And then people arrive in the car park, just as I’m getting busy with my locally-made Bakewell Tart.
Ironic how in the remotest of parts, it’s difficult to get any peace and quiet and enjoy time with the things you have paid for.
On my return through the canyon, someone has seen fit to lay on a rainbow, which is coming out of the light grey minibus parked up ahead.
I overtake the minibus, and drive past the Standing Stones and other Important Things that someone placed here a while ago.
There is a 1920 whalebone arch, which I could drive my car through, if only the road went through it.
It doesn’t, so I don’t.
Dun Carloway was built in a lofty position, perched up on the hillside overlooking the loch and the wheely-bins.
Everything is very well-preserved here, even the unbeatable view.
Some things are 3,000 years old; others are 1,900 years old – timescales which in the scheme of things are miniscule, yet no easier to comprehend.
There sure is good protection here, and I realise this is where I should have eaten my bread and cheese, crouched down inside the broch.
Folk back in the day knew their way around a circle, and liked a picturesque view of the lochs.
Over in Stornoway is biscuits and beer and water and a harbour and the arts centre.
I’m met there by a local – a chessman, liberally coated in creosote, looking for a picnic.
Modern civilisation dictates that vodka and whisky is taken in the free house, The Criterion, at 5-ish. Engels would be pissed if he knew about this.
However it’s sobering to realise that there are parking restrictions in force just beyond the pub doors.
Out beyond the harbour walls is the oppressive castle and a sunset bursting to get through. Not today, thank you!
With rain falling once more, me and a few people I’ve never met wander around the gallery at the arts centre. It’s morning / afternoon / evening, with Nick Cave exhibiting his black-and-white photos.
Except for the one wall that’s in glorious technicolour.
Gritty scenes and steadfast faces, a bravery of life through sympathetic lenses.
Once the storm clouds lift, the fading blue sky reveals a star.
An Outside World 