Grace

                 

This week, Dunoon lost a warrior. Grace Page - or Dr Grace Dunlop, to give her her maiden name - died peacefully in the local hospital after a fall in her house. She was a week short of her 91st birthday. She had lived in Hunter's Quay as a child, an evacuee during the war, and as a frequent visitor during the years she lived in London with her husband Charles. But latterly, as travel became difficult, it was in the house in Hunter's Quay, with its view over her beloved Firth of Clyde, that she chose to live permanently, and, fiercely independent to the last, lived there until a few days before her death.

She became a part of my life, of our lives, through Holy Trinity Episcopal Church. That is where I first became aware of her as the most marvellous reader of lessons at the big brass eagle lectern. It was far too big for Grace's diminutive form to look over the top, so she would peep round the side of it as she read with enormous vigour, giving every character a different voice or adopting the persona of a prophet or St Paul as the reading demanded. It was obvious that she was completely unintimidated by an audience, this former University don, and had a firm grasp of the subject matter in hand.

For years she organised the Christian Aid collection for our congregation, challenging us to take whole areas as she did when she was well past the age when putting your feet up might be an acceptable option. When I took over her round with a friend, we were asked at every door what had happened to "the usual lady" - this in an area of hills and driveways, strenuous to visit. She cycled everywhere - though I do recall her driving and having an altercation with a fence beside a parking bay - and would appear at the top of Holy Trinity's hill with bike and wooly hat in all kinds of weather. In fact many of us will always think of her clad in the kilt, the wooly hat and her cagoule - prepared for Argyll weather at all times.

However it was through the music of the church that we really got to know Grace. Right up until the time when the church closed for the Covid_19 pandemic, she could be heard vigorously singing the hymns, especially the traditional ones, dropping - still perfectly in tune - to the tenor register when the melody went too high. Sometimes when she was very old she would confide to me "I really only come for the music, you know", and it was clear that the organist was the important one of the two of us. In the early years of this millennium, she paid for a new electronic organ, the old one (also electric) having gone up in smoke during a service one Sunday. Only last year, when this organ in its turn was showing its age (computers really don't last for ever, especially not in damp churches), she gave a generous sum towards replacing it. By now her memory was failing, and she would ask anxiously if she had indeed given the money, and if it was safe. We were glad she was able to be there to hear the new instrument and know that she was part of its story.

It is always sad to see someone of formidable intellect suffer the ravages of old age, and Grace knew what was happening to her. If anyone raged against the dying of the light, it was Grace. She became furious with herself, and those of us who had known her well knew the struggle this fury represented. She had never suffered fools gladly, and with the loss of memory came a loss of inhibition in letting us all know what she thought. But on the better days, she would tell us of her childhood, of her research work, of her days sailing on the Firth of Clyde, around Arran, all the wonderful places to which she was so attached.

In recent years, Grace longed for death, and her prayers for this mercy were audible. Now she is gone, and we have lost a formidable presence. Her legacy lives on, it is hoped, in the continuing presence of the PS Waverley on the Clyde, and, most poignantly, in the music of the church to which she had become so attached.  May flights of angels sing her to her rest, and may she rise in glory.

Dreich weather and a sonnet: Argyll Weather

I haven't written a sonnet for 37 years. At that time, I thought I might be halfway through my allotted life span and wrote my first attempt at a sonnet about being at "life's watershed". You can hear the iambic feet, can't you? This afternoon, it being utterly miserable outside, and dark by 3.30pm, I thought I'd make my Christmas puddings and then - maybe - write some cards. Then I got a message from a good friend that he'd been shown a poem of mine on a window of St Andrew's bus station. In St Andrews. There was a photo - it's there, right enough, in black letters on the glass. Extraordinary.

In the comment thread that followed, others joined in. One of them threw down a challenge. "Write a sonnet about Argyll weather. Walking in the rain". This wasn't an entirely random challenge - I'd pointed out that I didn't participate as much as I might in the poetry scene because I was always walking about in the rain in Argyll.

Reader, I tried. Once the puddings were burbling and the (extensive) washing up done, I sat down with my preferred poetry-writing tools (the back of an envelope and a biro) and a copy of Edwin Morgan's Glasgow Sonnets for inspiration.

This is the result. I've dedicated it to my friend Jim Gordon, whose fault it was.

Argyll Weather

A Sonnet for Jim

The rain drifts in grey curtains from the hills
and turns the loch’s black surface into lace
before a random wind takes up the chase
that now obliterates the day it kills.
The burn beside me gurgles as it fills
and overflows. There’s water on my face,
the path I followed gone without a trace,
enthusiasm drowned in sudden chills.

But as I turn to make my sodden way
to shelter, warmth …dry feet … a sudden gleam
appears. It’s like another day.
The wet rock all around me starts to steam
and birdsong cuts the air as if to say
This is Argyll. Things are not what they seem.

C.M.M. 12/17

Stormy anticipation

It's more or less dark now, this Christmas Eve, and I can no longer see the waves crashing over the pavement of the East Bay in Dunoon. I can, however, see the lights of our lifeline Western Ferries as a ship makes the crossing to The Other Side (we always think of it with capitals; somehow it seems to emphasise otherness...) after being off for several hours over high tide, and I can tell even without looking that the winds have eased off a bit.

 I have been fascinated for several hours now by this interactive map , of which this is a screen grab - taken just now, as the storm moves off to the north east. At the height of our cut-offness, we were, it appeared, living in the windiest part of the globe and I felt small and vulnerable stuck up here in my study looking out over the turbulent sea.

But now I can start to feel the excitement of Christmas Eve building in me as I contemplate the shock of leaving a warm house to head further up the hill to church, the thrill of the dark church and the candles, and the privilege of singing with our quartet that will open the Midnight Mass. For the past 39 years this has been my Christmas - the tension and the joy in the darkness - and only when it is over can I relax.

Kids, get that champagne on ice!

Of minnows, flounders and me

I've decided I'm a simple soul, really. The picture above - and that's my footprint on the right - represents a perfect end to a perfect week and we've hardly spent a penny on all this perfection. I climbed a hill (Beinn Donich) on Monday, walked the Crinan Canal on Wednesday, and finished off with what must be the seal-setter on the proper Scottish holiday experience: I swam in the sea and it was warm. There were shoals of minnows, tiny flounders, and the odd crab. Oh, and some of these wee clear jellyfish with the purple bits that we used to throw at each other. It's an odd sensation to hit one when you're swimming. I wished my grandchildren could have been there, because they would have loved it, but I had fun doing my own thing.

When I say we didn't spend much, I'm glossing over two sizeable drives, one to Lochgilphead and one to the beach which is the gem of Argyll's Hidden Shore (yes, it's a tourist description) - but we began and ended each day in our own house and bought no tickets and only modest food. But this afternoon I was ecstatic, to get a swim at the time of year when the childhood holidays demanded and with Arran, my favourite place in the world, on the horizon. Better still, we had to walk a mile to reach the beach - just as I did in my car-less childhood.

Is it what you do in childhood that in the end demands you return to these experiences? When I was a small child we spent 8 weeks in Arran every summer, in the same cottage, doing the same things. On days such as today, we went to the beach and went into the sea. Other days we climbed hills or walked the glens. We came home in the evening to boiled eggs, floury muffins with strawberry jam - this last memory is so powerful that today I found myself thinking of a boiled egg despite having had one for lunch. We would never eat what I've just cooked and eaten (baked salmon of some splendour, strawberries ditto, a nice crisp white wine), though I suspect I'd miss the step up in culinary standards these days.

But I rabbit on, and I'm tired and sun-sated. I've showered away the salt (it doesn't half prickle under your shirt, especially on a bit of sunburn) and shaken the sand out of my sandals. I feel as if I might still be ten years old. I believe the weather is going to be different tomorrow, and I shall be off to Rothesay for work, not pleasure. But I don't care.

Tonight is good, and I know it. Hurrah.

A country funeral

Musta been funny anyway!
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Yesterday, unbelievably when I look at this jolly photo from last June, we attended the funeral of Canon Roy Flatt, on the right of the pic. I've never been to a church service where more than half the congregation were outside the church: such was the crowd that turned up at Christ Church, Lochgilphead, that we stood in the grounds - some under awnings that (unnecessarily, as it turned out) sheltered the speakers that relayed the proceedings, some in the sun under the trees.

Roy had made up the order of service himself, and there was much poetry and good moments of silence in which we could hear the rooks in the tall trees of the churchyard. It felt very calm, and very natural. The coffin was carried past us at the end, to the strange combination of Nunc Dimittis and When the Saints go Marching in, and the burial took place opposite the church porch. Our feet sank in the moss, we moved from the chilly shade into the warm sun, and it was over.

This was the best kind of funeral: a day was full of calm and affirmation and warmth of greeting and friendship. The drive home was glorious, and the world felt peaceful.

RIP, Roy.

Morning

This didn't begin life in poetic form, but morphed somehow in the telling. Anyway, it was yesterday, and it was perfect.

Walking on the Toward shore
the sea flat, a sheet of glass with
liquid, slightly moving edges,
the light blinding from its morning place
the hills splendidly white and pure
I found my being gripped with joy
so fierce that walking seemed too much
and stopped. And then I heard the quiet
crooning from the glistening rocks
where the conversationalists were quite
hidden till one stretched and looked
so like the duck it really was
that laughter bubbled in my throat.
And then I saw the crowds of them
all sitting in the morning sun
and burbling gently, as ducks do
until they flew towards the light
and skiffed like stones and circled round -
and all I knew was beauty. Mine. My land
and yet not mine as I pass through -
this need to possess the things we love
not new, but part of life itself,
this love of place, of light, of air,
of tiny waves against the shore.
This ache that takes the place of prayer.

©C.M.M. 03/10

Which car?

Buying a new car in Argyll is unlike any other retail experience. Right now we're sitting on a bench on the shore of Loch Fyne waiting for Peter - who has sold us 7 cars to date - to come back from lunch. As ever, he doesn't want to sell up anything too fast or too expensive, but we've spotted a new model and fancy it rotten. For one thing, it looks just the job for our lane, which is the nearest thing to Passchendaele (spelling?) you'll find outside a war zone. Watch this space - Jeremy C will be back!