» Listings for 2016

1. CELTIC FRINGE - a Nordic Noir take on the Outer Hebrides

   Posted on 2:23pm Monday 22nd Aug 2016

    

    

   Celtic Fringe is set in a real place with a fictional name and fictitious characters. The photos capture views that the Clare family would see from their blackhouse windows every day.

    

   Celtic Fringe is a story about isolation. It’s about people who are isolated from each other by rage, pain, past events, and terrible secrets that can never be shared. The story revolves around the Clare family, new arrivals from the south of England, in a tiny rural community on the east coast of the Isle of Lewis.

   

   As well as the huge upheaval that comes with such a radical change in lifestyle and location, Sam and Lily Clare are at odds – while he has driven the move and is desperate for it to be a success, she is an unwilling, angry and resistant cohort. The day they arrive, a bog body is unearthed at the village peat cuts, an event that triggers the involvement of local archaeologists working to conserve the body, and the island detective, Duncan Macrae, who re-opens an old missing person case.

   

   While Lily struggles to come to terms with her new environment, she attracts the interest of the local tanner, Jared Bell, who is involved in the preservation of the bog body. Meanwhile, Macrae encounters resistance and mystery as he tries to solve the case of the missing person and get to the grisly secret that lies at its heart.

   

   Boggy, craggy, windswept, ring-fenced by the sea, its landscapes simultaneously magnificent and forbidding, the Outer Hebrides attracts a varied mix of people and motives. It’s a kind of Hole in the Wall for misfits looking for a place that might fit, a bolt-hole for outsiders who find the echo of an inability to compromise in the wild hills, remote communities and unforgiving climate. It’s a place where unthinkable acts might be committed, and kept secret.

   

   Woven into the plot of Celtic fringe is something of what it feels like to be a stranger in a strange place, surrounded by strangers, in an unfamiliar community with old traditions, customs and prejudices. Culture shock becomes a profound and defining experience for a family already in conflict over the move.

   

2. ON BEATING THE SYSTEM

   Posted on 2:20pm Friday 6th May 2016

   ON DECEIVING THE SYSTEM

   As a postscript to my last blog, I now have a new ignition barrel, two wrenched shoulders, sore wrists and tennis elbow. The physical trials began in the period between ordering the new part and waiting for it to arrive, during which time there were three occasions when it was necessary to engage in heavy-duty manipulation of the steering wheel for up to twenty minutes to make the key turn in the ignition.

   The new ignition barrel, complete with shiny new keys, has removed the exertion from starting the engine. It has also added a new dimension to the process. The engine won’t start unless a sensor recognises the key in the ignition. You would think that this would link up to the new part, but no. The sensor will only recognise the old key. So it now takes two keys to start my car - the old one held against the sensor wires, which my ingenious mechanics have repositioned underneath the ignition barrel, and the new one, which is allowed to fire the engine once the sensor has been fooled into accepting the old key.

   Apart from the fact that every time I get in my car, it looks as if I’m hot-wiring it, this is a blissful system compared to the strenuous upper body gymnastics that were necessary before. The upside to the pain was the number of incredibly helpful people who, on seeing me stranded at the petrol pump on all three occasions, pitched in with ideas, moral support and physical strength to help me get it going again.

   Thank you!