Memories

I was sitting up in bed this morning looking out at the view across the Moray Firth when a sudden burst of sunshine illuminated this painting hanging on the wall of the bedroom. It shows another view, this one from the upstairs balcony of the last house we had in Mombasa where, each morning, just before six, Saidi would bring up a tray of tea and the family would gather on the upstairs veranda to enjoy a cup and watch the sun rise across the Indian Ocean.

On the east coast of Africa, this is the most peaceful and gentle time of the day. The air is still and cool. The birds have just woken and are singing the celebration of another dawn - look carefully and find a bright yellow weaver bird in the foreground, enjoying his morning bath. There is little traffic along the coast road that follows the palms along the side of and then across the golf course. It is so quiet that the pervading sound is the distant, throbbing roar of the ocean swell breaking on the Andromache reef on the far side of the deep blue channel that leads into Kilindini harbour.

There is so much in this painting to remember. The ivory-white flowers of the frangipani trees to the left of the painting: Saidi will shortly pick one of these delicate flowers and we'll find it floating in a bowl of water when we go down for breakfast. The dark shape of the buoy marking the point of the Andromache reef and, to its left, what looks like an elephant standing on the reef that fringes the coast, the remains of a ship which went head-on ashore many years ago. The lantana hedge round the garden, which sometimes concealed a snake.

So, so long ago and, although much has changed - the lovely old house was demolished not long after we left - much is still as it was. The golf course is still there, as are the reefs; the breeze still blows in from the sea, warming as the day unfolds; the coast road still follows the palms across the golf course; and the roar of the breakers destroying themselves on the reef is never-ending.

Swallows & Martins' Farewell

As I walked up the track between the two rabbit fields this morning dark clouds were gathering, ending one of the 'sunny intervals' promised by the forecast this morning and replacing it with heavy - and somewhat welcome - rain.

The rain didn't bother the twenty or so swallows and a few house martins dipping and diving across the fields and then coming to rest for a few moments on the galvanised iron barred gates and....

....the tops of the fence posts. I'll remember them here as we plunge into our northern winter. I'll remember their high-pitched screams of excitement; the way they watched me, leaving it daringly late in my approach before they screamed again and took to the skies. I'ii remember how I worried, this autumn, that there have been so few insects - the hover flies seem almost to have disappeared - so few that I worried again about whether these kings of the sky have stocked up with enough food to see them across the Mediterranean and across the Sahara to their second summer of the year, in southern Africa.

I'm sure they were saying goodbye, or adieu, or au revoir. I'm sure they were wishing those of us who are staying behind well through the long winter ahead; as I wish them well in their thousands of miles of the sort of journeying which, in times gone by, we used to so enjoy.

Robbut News

Robbut is still resident in our garden - usually seen cropping the grass along the paths strimmed specially for him though he prefers it if....

....some of the bird grain is available. If it isn't, he indicates his disgust by....

....sitting on the feeder.

He's now familiar enough with us that he'll come within five metres when we're sitting quietly in the garden.

An indication of how 'at home' Robbut feels is this - a neat pile of his droppings which indicate that, like all self-respecting rabbits, he has his own latrine.

Red Deer Stag

Throughout our years of wandering the wilderness of West Ardnamurchan we had many encounters with red deer stags, some of them very close and some un-nerving, for these magnificent animals are both big and very wild.

When we first came to live in Golspie it was still possible to see herds of red deer on the ridge above the track which leads to Loch Lunndhaid, and very occasionally some of these came down onto the track itself, but this area has now been fenced off, the deer culled, and trees planted.

Imagine my surprise, as I walked up the track towards Loch Lunndhaid yesterday evening, when a fully grown red deer stag ran down the road from the right, crossed in front of me, and leaped into the undergrowth to the left.

It all happened so quickly that there was no chance of a photo, but I was left standing, filled with feelings of shock and wonder and, yes, controlled fear, emotions that I haven't felt in a long time - that something so big, so wild and so majestic had been so close.

Much as I would love it to happen, this isn't the sort of event that is likely to repeat itself here in Golspie, though I am quite sure that anyone who wants such a thrill can still find it by wandering the hills of Ardnamurchan.

Swallows and Martins

When I walked up the hill past the upper rabbit field yesterday evening there was just one swallow quartering the ground but this had risen to....

....six when I passed this morning. They seemed to enjoy zooming around the small flock of hoodies but concentrated their feeding efforts on the cows, which were visibly being pestered by insects.

They were feeding but they were also gathering ready for the long journey south. In the absence of the telegraph wires which used to be favoured places most were....

....gathering along the rooftops - this looks like a young swallow - but.in some places there were twenty or more around....

....a gable end which had been used as a nest site by the house martins. But look closely, for there are both swallows and martins in this picture, and I have often wondered whether, when they set off for Africa, the two species travel together.

More Signs of Autumn

On leaving the house for our usual morning walk we noticed immediately that the foliage of the deciduous trees along our road was already showing shades of brown, and that....

....the blackberry bushes underneath them were heavy with fruit. It seems early for these signs of autumn but there is plenty of supporting evidence, with....

....the St John's wort along the edges of the forest paths also in fruit and showing some glorious leaf colours and....

....rather more fungi than we've seen in many weeks. I always hesitate to identify fungi but, while this may be a bonnet....

....this may be a scrambled egg slime mould.

Never mind. At least these early signs of autumn are an excuse to enjoy a winter drink, real Bovril made from real beef served in my Bovril-only mug which celebrates that iconic geological feature of Lochaber, the parallel roads of Glen Roy.

The Expert

When I was a secondary schoolmaster I always considered myself a generalist rather than a subject 'expert', so I was particularly useful to the unfortunate colleague who had to construct the annual school timetable, when he/she found they needed someone to teach a class of, say, history, but didn't have a history specialist to take it. So, over my thirty years in the profession, I took classes of geography, geology, history, English, religious education, personal and social education, information technology, French, maths, general science, and, just the once, thank goodness, girls' netball. Of these I was qualified in only one: geology.

I enjoyed learning in new subject areas, and felt that it was not altogether a bad thing that I approached a subject from the same ignorant view as most of my pupils.

Despite this, I have always had a niggling desire to have been THE world expert on something. I might have become just that when, on leaving university in 1967, I was offered an MSc, the area of research being the Namurian goniatites of the Derbyshire/Staffordshire Peak District, goniatites being a slightly obscure, ancient and long-extinct relative of the ammonites.

Had I been able to take history at university - I wasn't, because I didn't even have an 'O'-level in the subject - my research would have been into the development and spread of the lateen sail, seen here on an ngalawa off the Tanzanian coast. I suppose the reason for this interest lay in the fact that I had seen lateen sails through my early life in Tanganyika and Kenya, and because....

....a lateen sail, seen here on an Omani dhow, has always seemed to me to be exceptionally beautiful.

I would also have loved to have been an expert on the semi-precious gemstone tourmaline. Its elongate, elegant natural crystals are so much more special than most other semi-precious stones because they come in such a variety of colours: colourless or in umpteen shades of pink, red, blue, green, yellow and black. My favourite variety is indicolite, which runs through rich blues and greens. More, and very unusually, the colour of tourmaline crystals can vary both along the length of the crystal and in zones from a central axis.

I suppose that, if I had organised myself for my retirement, I could have become the world expert on something but I allowed that opportunity to slip by. In any case, by the time I had spent years becoming that expert it would probably have been too late - I would have been forgetting all the precious facts so fast I would soon have ceased to be the world expert.

Photos of goniatite and tourmalines courtesy Wikipedia.