Jill Stephenson at Loch Duich
Quintin Jardine in Elie
Iain Macmillan in Gleneagles
Douglas Marr on Skye
Andrew McFadyen in Kilmarnock
R D Kernohan on Arran
David Torrance on Iona
Catherine Czerkawska at Loch Ken
Chris Holligan in Elie
Rose Galt in Girvan
Alex Wood on Arran
Andrew Hook in Glasgow
Alasdair McKillop in St Andrews
Sheila Hetherington on Arran
Anthony Seaton on Ben Nevis
Paul Cockburn at Loch Ness
Jackie Kemp in a taxi
Angus Skinner on Skye
The Scottish Review is on its annual summer break and will resume publication on Tuesday 24 July
I nearly kent
my faither
A poignant memoir by Jim Fiddes
Celebrate
Places Seldom Mentioned
A love poem for the summer by
Gerard Rochford
Holiday memories
are made
of this…
A celebration in photographs by
Islay McLeod
The most memorable
holiday in Scotland
that I never had
The glories of the
hydro hotels by
Kenneth Roy
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The Cafe
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Today’s banner
A Scottish holiday
Drawing by SR’s resident cartoonist, the one
and only
Bob Smith
Postcards from Scotland 3
Katie’s niece, Mull, high summer
‘Mull,’ said the Yorkshire sister, or was it the Gloucestershire? Or Manchester? Or Lancashire? Or the one whose address always escaped us? Anyhow, Mull was decided upon: five sisters (sixth sister missing, don’t know where), nine small children, one baby, dogs, bicycles. We rented a house in the middle of Mull, quite a long way from anything useful, and shared the kitchen with a flock of sheep. The house was well appointed. Along with the sheep we had a washing machine, tumble dryer, fridge, hoover, cooker, though the washing machine, tumble dryer and hoover were, so it turned out, purely decorative. Not far away were sinking sands, a tumultuous sea, craggy beaches, crab pools and bogs. It was July. It rained throughout.
Now, you’ll be thinking, is this a story of bravery in adversity, of wresting joy from misery, of realising that the sun doesn’t matter? No. Mull isn’t lovely in the pissing rain and we’d have sacrificed the baby for one day of sun. But we discovered, huddled against the wind on an island where not much happens, that the real secret of a good family holiday is ‘No Husbands’. The sorority could drink, shriek, gossip, cry, wear nothing, wear everything, eat off plates, eat out of the pan, sleep as we liked and where we liked, wash or not wash our children and ourselves as we pleased.
Amid the stripping off and wringing out, the saturated gumboots and the dripping noses, mothers and offspring were completely interchangeable. For a fortnight, we lived a sort of primeval Enid McBlyton adventure with wine instead of ginger beer. Not sure what the children drank. Anyway, it was a holiday never to be repeated but I’ve had the greatest respect for Mull ever since.
Katie Grant
Thom Cross
The rain turned to snow as we headed away from Glencoe and onto Rannoch Moor. Douglas turned round and shouted something, probably encouraging, but his words were snatched away by the wind. We’d made the decision to go on before the blizzard swept down on us. But we were not going to turn back.
The day before we had walked from Inverness along the length of Loch Ness. This was many years ago in late March – we were students, hitch-hiking. Not one person stopped to give us a lift. So we walked on – Fort William, Ballachulish, Glencoe. I was tired, with blisters on my feet, but a sense of accomplishment. With no more traffic on the road and darkness falling, we checked into the Glencoe Hotel.
It was my first visit to Glencoe and I was struck, as everyone is, by its compelling atmosphere and brooding magnificence. And reminded of its dark history. The hotel bed was comfortable but I did not sleep well. There must have been a wind too, for when I woke up during the night, I heard a tree branch tapping persistently at the window. In the morning, before leaving the room, I opened the curtains and looked out of the window. There were no trees anywhere near the hotel.
And so we set off across Rannoch Moor in the blizzard. There was hardly any traffic on the road, but we stuck our thumbs out hopefully. After about an hour, a car that had driven past, suddenly stopped and waited for us. ‘I don’t usually stop for hitch-hikers,’ he said to me, ‘but I looked in the rear mirror and I saw you stagger in that buffeting blizzard, and I changed my mind’. He drove us all the way to Edinburgh.
Morelle Smith
I once told a lie about Carnoustie. It was the year when Paul Lawrie won the Open and I claimed to a friend who was making preposterous assertions about the quality of the course that I had played golf there as a boy. My mother had played there; I had gone for walks there; I had played on a putting green adjacent to the course. I confess now that I never played golf there.
My lie was based on local knowledge acquired from visiting Carnoustie during school holidays in the 50s. For a farm boy like myself, it was like going to another world – living in a house full of Victorian furniture, waving at train drivers as they chugged into Carnoustie station, going to the bakers first thing in the morning to buy fresh butteries for breakfast, eating ice creams every day at De Marco’s café and playing with Glaswegian children.
The really big thing was the beach; we got there by crossing a pedestrian bridge over the railway. The sand was soft and golden, much better than Arbroath, we were told; even today I compare beaches with my memory of
the sand at Carnoustie. We spent hours in the sea; this was in the days before
outfitters in Angus sold swimwear to adults and so it was children’s territory. There were always holes to be dug and sandcastles to be built; sometimes I would just stand and wonder as a castle we had spent hours building was washed away by the incoming tide. I once entered a talent contest and, despite being tone deaf, won a prize for singing Que Sera Sera.
I still dream about Carnoustie – it’s always sunny and I am rushing to cross the bridge so that I can get to the beach.
Bob Cant
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