Winter episode

I have become fat and a bit lazy. There is the truth of it. No running up and down escalators and zipping from studio to concert hall......the heart beating fast with anticipation, nerves, the physicality of getting around London.......I am in a frozen winter landscape and every week I pretend to myself that I will walk more, run even....?? but I read and drive to Stornoway and eat chocolate mocha cake and love it. I feel a layer of blubber forming.......maybe I need it here at the Atlantic edge?  ha ha ...like a penguin or walrus seal.I am hibernating and storing energy. Maybe come the Spring I will burst forth like blossom .........I dearly hope so.. .  I set off up the mountain behind our house yesterday in blue sky......blissful....the snow line above me........the sea and lochs becoming map like beneath me.......pink winter light....five minutes later harsh hail and biting wind made me turn back. When it suddenly comes like that it is frightening. Its like thousands of acupuncture needles piercing ones face and the wind cuts through the layers and chills. You wouldn't survive long alone on the mountain.
We have had some crazy weather. Wind that shakes the house. A thunderbolt hit the telegraph pole next to the house and melted the connections......no power for a couple of days.......actually lovely, staying close to the fire, candlelight, hot toddies.......radio.
Went in to Stornoway today for curtain poles and light bulbs and of course cake. I love the containedness of the town.....after a while you recognise everyone......you might be in the co op and you see the lady that served you in the post office reaching for butter and the Harris Tweed man buying bacon. Its like a Hebridean Camberwick Green. I go to the Stornoway Fishermans co op to buy squid and cod. It's a very plain and simple place and the fish is fantastic. Everyone is smiley and chatty.....a lovely lilting dialect. In the carpet shop I wait whilst an elderly couple discuss the merits of various beige carpets in Gaelic and feel like I come from a different planet. Stornoway is full of beige pebble dash houses with beige carpets inside. It's pretty grim but no one seems to mind. Am I a snob to think that I wonder?  Maybe. I wish I was brave enough to pop in to the Criterion for a Highland Park.....but I am too self concious. It's a great old pub with single old timers sitting at the bar with their pints and chasers.....ex fishermen mostly. I go there with Gav and steal glances at the extraordinary faces with their history etched, scraped almost on the leathery weathered skin. No whisky for me today though. I set off back to Harris. It will take an hour and a quarter and the light is fading. I want to drive along our peninsula before it's totally black. As I turn along the road to Huisinis I see a Golden Eagle in the gloming being chased by two crows. I pull over and watch. I hear the beating wings in the massive empty sea and mountain air space. It's incredible how the two crows are hounding the Eagle. I lose sight of them over the maroon hill.
We drove to Stornoway last week in a gale. The rivers streaming down the mountain sides were being blown upwards in to fantastic spouts. I have never seen anything like it. So much water. I heard a local speech therapist skidded off the road in to a loch and died. Very sobering.
Well, I am just chatting away......I will take you on a whirlwind trip of the last two months.........to be continued tomorrow. x