Back to the stone age?

Photo: Campbell Bryson

I'm indebted to (brave/foolhardy/dedicated) local photographer Campbell Bryson for the photo that  I'm too much of a wimp to go out and take for myself - this huge tree, blocking Argyll Street in Dunoon, is very close to home, but as I write the rain is once more battering down and I'm here instead of out there and .... and ....

And this morning brought home to me yet again how precarious our comfortable life is. We woke in the dark, some time before 7am, to hear an ominous crashing above our heads - and then there was a flash outside and the whole of Dunoon went dark. The torches were downstairs, and I found myself feeling my way to the kitchen to find one - walked into the long-case clock on the way - before trying, unsuccessfully, to sleep again. Daylight revealed our neighbour walking across the road carrying a long piece of ridging from - his roof? our roof? Could have been either, for his house and ours and the one at the other side of our block are all missing yards of the stuff, with the remaining bits sticking up at crazy angles. And now, as I said, the rain is back ... Let us not think on't.

The lack of power was interesting. We have a couple of gas fires, so the demise of the central heating pump wasn't quite the catastrophe it might have been, but there was no hot water and I had to boil water for tea on a little camping stove. We'd thrown out our stove-top kettle too, so it was in a pot ... And then there was the matter of the toast. I made toast. Barbecue tongs and the gas flame after the water boiled. Quite quick - but different texture and a tendency to go on fire. Better than the raw bread, however.

All this took so much time - and even with the decision not to wash up until we had hot water, the business of dealing with the wee stove, finding a suitable pot, refilling same, finding more candles ... it was almost time to think of doing it over again (for coffee) when the power came on. But not once had I thought of how I was missing my computer, nor wondered what I would do with the day - and I realised that the ordinary business of living could fill your entire waking life with activity if you had to boil every drop of water for drinking, washing, bathing, if you had to light your way with a candle or replenish an oil lamp.

As it is, I bet we have water coming into our roof-space right now, soaking wood and dripping dismally. I'm not going to think about it any more. I've just heard that the place we rehearse with 8+1 has lost part of its roof altogether. Maybe we could worry about that instead ...

Ancient Mariners

Turning tail
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Every now and again it becomes necessary to do something which doesn't involve church, gas men or loose floorboards. Something which removes you from the end of the phone and the ping of the computer. Yesterday was such a day. I'd planned it two weeks ago when I saw the ad: PS Waverley would be sailing on this one Tuesday from Tighnabruaich - about 45 minutes' drive from home - to Lochranza. At the time the sun was shining, and Lochranza beckoned. Is it not, after all, on my most favourite of islands? We would do this thing.

Yesterday the sun was deeply invisible, as was most of the view, swathed in layers of mist and sweeping rain. But I was firm in my resolve - and the forecast promised a drier spell in the afternoon. So, having bade farewell to the joiner (needed in the aftermath of The Gas), we sped off along the sick-making single-track road to Tighnabruaich, making the pier with time to spare. Waverley was slightly late, but not unreasonably so, and the usual trail of eccentrics and English visitors (42 all told, I overheard) trooped out the slimy pier and onto the deck.

There are in fact several joys to be found on Waverley for people like us. Our friend Alastair was on board - I'd have been surprised if he hadn't, as I've rarely gone aboard without meeting him. We enjoyed decent sandwiches and Earl Grey tea with the sea scooshing just below the window and sometimes through the cracks at the sides of it (it was an emergency exit. Heaven help us). Later we had a whisky in the bar and became quite jolly. But there was one big disappointment: we turned tail halfway across to Arran and headed back for the shelter of the Kyles of Bute. It was pretty bouncy, in an exhilarating sort of way, but apparently Lochranza pier would have been just too dodgy. People might have slipped and hurt themselves, or vanished overboard, or merely puked and panicked. We were not amused.

The picture shows the moment when we turned. The wind was quite strong, as you can see from the ensign, and a visit to the loo - situated just in front of (or behind? which way was I facing?) the paddle-box - an interesting experience as the water thudded and crashed just underneath one's bottom. The passage outside the loo, just where you go down to look at the engines, was intermittently deluged with sea coming in at an unusual place. There was a great sense of battling with the elements, but none of the apprehension associated, somehow, with being on a car ferry in such weather. It wasn't even as sick-making as a Channel ferry - because, presumably, I was on deck in the wind.

By the time we got home we were strangely tired and more than somewhat damp. But it sure made a change from the Gas.