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
Get SR free in
your inbox three
times a week
Click here
The Cafe
The Cafe is our readers’ forum. Send your contribution to islay@scottishreview.net
Today’s banner
A Scottish holiday
Drawing by SR’s resident cartoonist, the one
and only
Bob Smith
Postcards from Scotland 1
Marian on Mull
Marian Pallister
The auburn-haired maid was a mature woman of 18 and left her rinsed-out smalls hanging over the chalet curtain rail. They weren’t white. When she knocked on the door and entered breathless and apologetic for forgetting them, she found me sitting on a bunk bed staring at their purple nothingness. ‘They’re dry now’, she purred, sorting out strands of coloured dental floss. She held a gossamer triangle up to the light and, for a boy of 11, provided a transparent glimpse of the unknown on the last day of a holiday. Two weeks before that fortnight at Butlins, hair began to sprout all over me. I was a ‘first-sitting’ werewolf.
Even if that leg-swinging disturbance hadn’t happened, I’d recall Butlins as my only holiday as a kid. The closest person I had to a hero (my uncle Dougie who played for United) paid for my board along with his family. And, on their coat-tails, I travelled vomit-inducing roads in a tight resentful car. Pent-up frustrations spilled into violence the third day due to Ayr’s breezy ozone. As second-sitting campers made their way to breakfast they were greeted by the sight of three cousins swopping blows until separated by a man in pirate garb. Even minus an eye-patch his threats were convincing.
I’d become the target for jokes from two cousins, Paul and young Dougie, because I ate my bread dry. They lived in a semi-detached house with a bath that I’d excuse myself to look at when visiting. In their kitchen, bread was cut diagonally.
That’s what I recall of that 1960 holiday: Chubby Checker, dry bread, a beery pirate and see-through lace. My uncle was six-feet-three and Hollywood handsome; in retrospect I’m thinking maybe that maid chose the wrong chalet.
George Chalmers
The deputy editor
My most memorable holiday in Scotland would be one of many to Rockcliffe in Dumfries and Galloway. We would book a holiday house called Braefoot, which was big enough to hold the seven of us plus Shona the dog. My sisters and I all had matching red terry-towelling ‘summer suits’ (I had three more to grow into) and would spend all day exploring the beach and rock pools whilst trying to avoid the patches of quicksand. When the tide went out we would walk halfway to the nearest island where a huge wooden chest – our treasure chest – was lodged in the seabed.
Apart from my eldest sister throwing crabs at me or leaving them at the front gate (I was petrified of crabs, alive or dead), the only bad memory I have is attempting to walk along a coastal path – four miles of coastal path – with stunning views of the Solway Firth, to Sandyhills Bay. I was only about five and soon moaned along the way. This was worsened all the more when I inadvertedly stood in a very large, smelly cowpat! We got there in the end for a well-deserved rest and lift back to the village.
Islay McLeod
It had been a warm July day and the sun was trying hard to set over the hills of Cowal to the west. Our parents had ‘taken a house’ (with boat) for a month, as one did in those rather far-off days, in the hamlet of Carrick Castle on Loch Goil, Argyll. It was literally at the end of the road, and nothing much happened in those parts – just the way we liked it.
After the high drama of rescuing an injured peregrine falcon from inside the castle, and in an attempt to escape the midges, my 16 year-old brother (I was eight) offered to take me out in the boat. It leaked a bit, so I was bailing-out with a can, and he was rowing. There was neither life-jacket nor life preserver in sight.
We’d just got out to the middle of the loch which was mill-pond still.
‘Anthony?’
‘What?’, rather impatiently.
‘There’s a big black thing has just come up out of the water over there, behind you. I think it’s a big shark or a whale or something.’
As my brother turned round, the black thing had sunk under the water again.
‘Don’t be so stupid. There’s nothing there and there aren’t any sharks or whales in Loch Goil anyway.’
‘Anthony?’
‘What?’, more impatiently.
‘It’s ba-ack.’
We watched in total astonishment as a massive basking shark circled our tiny vessel, getting ever closer. The fin was about as tall as I was and its huge white maw, open wide and filtering, looked big enough to swallow our boat. It came close enough to touch. Suddenly, I heard an impassioned ‘oh, s***’, and my brother rowed us to shore like he had never rowed before. Thus began my life-long fascination for sharks, of all types. Memorable indeed.
Judith Jaafar
Barney MacFarlane
Click here for more Postcards from Scotland
website design by Big Blue Dogwebsite development by NSD Web