» Listings for 2017

1. WALKING ON THE WILD SIDE

   Posted on 12:00pm Monday 5th Jun 2017

    

   I live in the Outer Hebrides, where buying a pair of walking boots is a serious business. For starters, I live in a house at the top of a wrecked stone path, my dog loves nothing better than a roustabout on the moors, so walking, whether on or off piste, usually involves rough terrain. If these boots are going to be made for walking in the Hebrides, they have to meet certain criteria to deal with the challenges of the landscapes. So I don’t want anything nancy; I want good strong soles, thick leather, ankle support, waterproofing and grip.

   

   I went first to that bastion of extreme weather clothing and footwear, the Fisherman’s Co-Op, and was immediately attracted to a pair of working, rather than walking boots that ticked all the boxes.  A couple of tiny little labels tied to one of the laces supplied all the product information available, but it was more than enough. Aimed at builders, oil-riggers and other hard outdoor labourers, the key attributes were ground down to a terse grouping of bullet-points.

   

   These boots were waterproof and wouldn’t let water in unless the wearer waded to a depth exceeding five inches. They were slip resistant – good – and oil-resistant – I didn’t quite understand the value of that, but guessed the target market would. They could withstand electric shock up to 450 volts. They wouldn’t melt in temperatures up to 350 degrees, or some such fantastic figure.  They had thick, hard soles, deep treads and a steel plate lining the sole for protection against chainsaws.

   

   When I walked out in them, I felt like Superwoman. If, in the course of walking the dog, I encountered a blazing car leaking oil into my path and melting the tarmac, razor wire strewn across the road, a live electric cable dancing across the moorland, a mad Texan wielding a chainsaw, and the waters of a burst dam flooding towards me, I would not be burned, fried, cut, boiled or drowned, I would not slip or fall over, my feet would be supported - at room temperature - through every challenge, and my boots would lead me unscathed through every catastrophe.

   

   Disappointingly - or thankfully, depending on your perspective on dangerous encounters - the worst obstacles I dealt with in the four years I wore the boots, were a few puddles, rarely deeper than five inches, and some rough rocky paths, which failed to even scratch the indomitable footwear.

   

   Eventually, I gave them, still practically unscathed, to a woman who worked on vernacular building sites, and had more chances of needing the extravagant protective measures the boots afforded. But I always remember them for that first walk and the powerful promises they offered but never needed to deliver.

   

2. ON LOST AND FOUND

   Posted on 12:00pm Sunday 26th Mar 2017

   I like happy discoveries that end well – like discovering the Outer Hebrides and moving there, and realising that at last, you have landed in exactly the right place at the right time.

   

   This is a smaller story. Two or three years ago, one of our craft market friends, who does a lot of beach-combing and rock-collecting, found a curious piece of metal on the rocks that looked as if it might be part of a buckle or clasp. He strung it on a leather thong and brought it to market. We weren’t sure what kind of metal it was and a faint glister clung to it, of what looked like gilt, long since worn away. Even though I’m not exactly short of things to wear around my neck, it was just one of those things - I had a feeling for it.

   

   I wore it a lot, especially at home, and got very attached to it. I wondered how old it was, what it had been before it was sheared in half, who owned it, how it had come to be washed up on a beach. When I was writing, I’d often find myself holding it to help me think. On a dog walk a month ago, a regular local route, the sun was warm and I pulled off the buff around my neck.  I didn’t realise until I got home that I had also pulled off the pendant.

   Over the next couple of weeks, every time we went back, I walked with my eyes glued to the road, to the verges, without success; it’s a mass of tall, tangled wild grasses, deep roadside rifts, often filled with water, and ditches. Even though it was pretty hopeless, I always had this nagging feeling, especially near one of the houses scattered along the road, that it was still there, and I just couldn’t see it.

   

   I missed it to the point where I asked a friend who lived in one of the houses, and often walked the same route, if he could keep a look-out for it.

   Eventually, I decided I had to let it go; it had gone back into time, and someone might find it again in a hundred years, the way our craft market friend had when he was walking the beach. I quite liked that thought.

   

   The other day we were on the same walk and our friend flagged us down as we were driving away; he put in my hand the missing pendant. I was enormously impressed, not to mention thoroughly delighted with the discovery. And he had found it near the house where I always had the strongest sense that I was missing the obvious, and always looked the most closely. It was squashed into the mud at the side of the road, as if it had been run over, and it had survived without a mark.

   

   The pendant now has another story to its name, of being lost and restored. Another case, perhaps, of being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.