Soul Music

 It was an early start, to be in an unfamiliar city centre.  There was a degree of anxiety.  Into the Unknown.  A need to pay a call around four of the clock brought with it an end to any prospect of a return to the land of dreams.  Thus rising by 6.30, for a 7.30 departure, wasn't then a problem.  Vivid dreams and lack of sleep may not be unrelated to a course of Chinese herbs, but that is another tale altogether.  I started the day tired.

Anyway, Mrs Satnav Woman, got me there in good time.  It had been a glorious drive, in early sun on quiet roads.  Promising fewer miles and more importantly a saving of 11.7% in fuel costs, took me on roads less travelled, through towns and villages some of which were not complete strangers.  The Turra Coo failed to catch my eye.  Then on to little places that had been nought but names on road signs, soundbites on the wireless.  Whiterashes came and went.  Onwards to the city and an easy approach to find the University of Aberdeen.

Introductions, teas and coffees, before splitting into two groups.  Button Boxes, Room 047; Concertinas 045.  Half a dozen or so, plus tutor, in each room.

I had signed up to challenge myself with a day of music tuition.  For several reasons.  One of the retirement projects is to explore any deeply hidden musical ability - to try and produce a few notes in the right order for the first time since Three Blind Mice on the recorder well over five decades previously.  That may not be unrelated to being aware that all other members of the family had musical talents to showcase.  And I had none.

I had started dabbling a year or so earlier, a tinkle on the keyboard, a squeeze on the box.  The former fell by the wayside, mainly as Girl Child returned to take up residence in Spare Room 1, where the keyboard had been set up in privacy.

The melodeon was a challenge.  Boy Child had played it for half a dozen years or so, from late primary school after Luke Daniels came along for weekly sessions on the penny whistle for six weeks.  An invite to his folk academy was accepted, and a button box put in his hands.

That opened a whole new world.  It came to a premature end, perhaps temporarily, when an attempt to take his music to another level was thwarted (after carefully considering the prospect of life for a year or two absent from the terraces of Newlandsfield and trips to other grounds around the West of Scotland and beyond).  This was during covid, and the route to audition was only the submission of a recording, absent any real guidance and with no opportunity for any discussion that might have allowed a nervous young lad to establish any rapport.  There remained a lingering afterthought that perhaps the need to try and find a melodeon tutor may have been an issue.

Anyway, stuffing knocked out, he turned his back on the good times he had had with the box, at various folk festivals and performances with Luke, concentrating on his guitar and keyboard through to Advanced Higher Music.  The school, and his mates, remained unaware of his folk music activities.  Reasons.

His melodeon sat in the corner.  I picked it up, wondering.  Could I make a noise of any sort; would it perhaps re-energise the young prodigy, renew his interest in the Trad scene?  I'd be delighted if he took it up again, happy to change my own plans.

I'd kept in touch with Luke through the years.  We'd seen him play with his trio (with Matt Tighe and Luc McNally) in Broughty Ferry a few months earlier - a handy place for a family trip, collect boy child from his Dundee student flat, bribe him with dinner and a gig, before a weekend by Bow Fiddle's cliffs.

I had continued to dabble, progressed from Twinkle Twinkle, and London Bridge, eventually into a few tunes which Luke had used to start our 10 year old son on his journey.  I got my fingers round Logan Water; the Stitches in Your Britches progressed.

I found a few tunes I liked to hear, began, slowly, to learn them.  Reasonable progress.  The Keel Row, which I'd heard Tim Edey play beautifully on the guitar, and then on to The Waters of Kylesku and Calum's Road.  These were not tunes from Luke's folk academy, and I had to learn from scratch, no guidance on fingering on the buttons, work it out, think about the instrument.  So far, so not too bad.

I needed tuition, saw an event.  In Aberdeen, a reasonable trip from Portknockie.  And the tutor was my old chum Luke Daniels.  So I signed up.

A week ahead of the big day in came the homework; two tunes to work on.  Elliott's and Garster's Dream, with sheet music, button and fingering notes.  Elliott's was a tune I enjoyed listening to; memorable concerts with Rura, at St Luke's and elsewhere.  A grand tune.  Could I do it any sort of justice?

Many hours of practice, and I was reasonably content.  Even with Ganster's, completely new to me.  Then Luke started by drilling us with some additions, tweaks and twists, all the deedly-dee bits.  Rolls and triplets - I had at least heard the terms all those years ago - staccato rolls and half rolls.  And the option of using different fingers on different buttons to those that had become familiar, been instructed, through the week's practice sessions.  These were not changes I could settle in a few minutes.  Give me a month, maybe...

A copy of the notes and diagrams from the whiteboard will be a useful reference going forward, but on the day far too small and pale for my old eyes to pick out.  Just as well I'm an instinctive note-taker.

I persevered.  The class made noises, some of them tuneful.  The plan was that come the final session, late in the day, both box and concertina classes would come together, play together.  Perhaps play those tunes again in a session after the evening concert.

And that was when it all came tumbling down.  I managed a handful of notes.  Then lost it.  There was no way back in.  The band played on.  It wasn't that I didn't know the basic tunes, or that they were played too fast for this beginner's old fingers.  I realised I couldn't hear what I was playing, the instrument on my knee drowned out by the cacophony all around me.  Unnerved.

So used was I to sitting alone in a room, behind a closed door.  I guess playing in front of others may be akin to the first time of sending a piece of writing off to be read by others, or even pressing publish on a blogpost.  But those were considered articles of writing, edited and re-written, tuned and tweaked.  The music was live.  And it was scary.

Losing that connection between finger and button, and the note reaching the ear, threw me completely.  It is hard to explain.  Why not just play the notes I knew, with all the others?  But was I hitting the right note, at the right time?  I couldn't tell.  And once I stopped there was no path back in to the tune.  It was an unsettling experience.  Would I ever be able to play music with others?  Or was I destined to make my own mistakes behind closed doors?

Meanwhile our day ended in grand style.  The evening concert was richly entertaining, with Frances Wilkins and her concertina making music you might not have thought possible, a beautiful set; and then Luke bringing it to a close with some mesmerising box play, tunes of yesteryear on a one-row classic.  Then came the session.  Our two tunes opened, before Luke led the gathering with Irene Meldrum's Welcome to Bon Accord - an old favourite with which he and his young protege used to entertain crowds at festivals back in the day. That was my cue to take my leave, with a smile on my face.  Delicious memories to bring my adventure to a close, and to remind me of my own failings.  Home by midnight, exhausted, mentally and physically.

Perhaps Boy Child could yet reclaim his instrument, get back on his own musical carousel.  Now that would please me no end.  I could dabble with the keyboard, though the melodeon has been challenging fun.

Back in the practice room I realise that when I do hit the wrong note (far too often) I tend to stop, play the right one, then carry on with the tune.  Not something that will work playing with others.  That will have to change.  If I can get over not being able to hear my bum note in the first place.

I have a target in mind.  My Aberdeen adventure was a day with Button Boxes & Moothies, with The Elphinstone Institute.  There is a festival, every four years, and this wee fling was filling a gap, keeping the interest.  Perhaps by the time of the next festival, in 2029, I might be ready.  Then I think of how the birthday clock will have ticked over by then; these old fingers three years more decrepit.  Meanwhile Elliott's and Garster's continue to get some private airings.  I'll hang in there, at least until the youngster wants his box back.  Baring my soul in music does not come easy.

Meantime keep an ear out for young Owen O'Connor, he's a star in the making, having entranced us not just on the box (and an unfamiliar one at that for him), but also on piano and whistle.  He was even seen having a pluck at a mandolin.  One to watch.

Under Your Feet

Scratch the surface of the island today and you may find that much of yesteryear is barely hidden.  The rocks are ancient, as old as the planet itself.  Much have they witnessed.  Naturally the surrounding waters are central to island life.  Those waters reflect, they shimmer, and they shine.  The island is centred on a palette of blues and greens.

 

Where the waters are shallow, over sands and rolling on to white strands, the sea gives us blues that might suggest a mermaid’s tail, all dancing sequins, swirling into the green of the teal drake.  Those shallow waters take on the blue hue of the fennel flower; they may be a piercing turquoise one day and become a translucent, mercurial silver the next.

 

Iona’s waters mesmerise, enticing paddling feet and braver souls.  You may be joined in the water by an inquisitive seal, or a leap and a squeal, when the dolphins come to play.

 

On land the palette changes.  Rich and regal colours dominate.  And regal they should be, for these lands hold the bones of the ancient kings and lairds, of Scotland and its predecessors, at home and beyond.  That said the island has two very different personas.  To the visiting public it is a kaleidoscope of colourful cultivars. Fuchsias are rampant, festooned in figurines, tutu-clad ballet dancers in vermillion or carmine, peach blossom or the subtlest, the palest of blue lilacs, dusky pink.  Montbretia is omni-present, fiery reds and burnt umbers, like a puffin’s rosette.

 

The colour envelopes us; in the ancient stones of the nunnery, where delicate maidenhair ferns and the lavender shades of ivy leaved toadflax cling to life.  Greenery against the pinks and greys of the granite. Sheelagh watches over them, as always, ready with a bosey for the bereft.

 

Leaving aside the gardens in the village and along the two roads that ease our passage to far flung parts, we find wild flowers in wilder places.  We need to lift the corners of Iona’s veil, have a wee poke underneath, give her surface a scratch, and a little delve into her past, her hidden depths.

 

It is the hues of the heathers that carry the bulk, auricula and plum, blood red like the head of the goldfinch.  Off the beaten track we find the delicates, those little bright yellow tormentils, and the hardys clinging to the lichen crusted rocks.  Deep purple, the hard rock of devil’s bit scabious, on the windswept tops, sharing space between the boulders and the tufts with tiny magenta bell heather.

 

I am drawn regularly to the higher ground; and an overview of what lies below, in this Thin Place.  At first sight the land appears blanketed in greenery, a wilderness of emptiness shrugging aside the coloured cloak that grabs you by the roadside.  By the shore the scimitar-billed curlews rise together, closely followed by an overture of oystercatchers, all harlequin hues in their motley.

That veil becomes more like a thick and cosy warming shawl, a comfort blanket, a coat of many colours as some of the visitors to the sacred isle may see it.  Those ancient rocks prise their way through.  The land is overwhelmingly wild, beneath a coat of many greens.  Pistachio green and duck green, hints of the eider; that beauty spot the mallard drake wears so proudly.  It is rough and it is tough.  Boggy and squelching in places.  Those higher grounds have never been suited to scratching a living from the land.

 

Not now, not before.  And before is always with us here; in the legends of the monks, the Vikings too, and the ancients prior to them.  I look across the waste lands, from one high point to another, and I see no signs that man has ever tamed these lands.  Other than a mark on the map where the hermit hid in his hole.

 

Those high points, Dun I foremost even at a mere 101m, The Eminence in the south west of the island at 80m, and the Hill of the Lambs by Loch Staonaig a little lower, give the wider views, the bigger picture.  Landscape in all its glory.

 

Such is the light it is the islands off that pull the wider view into focus.  Far and wide there are silhouettes on the horizon.  Coll and Tiree, with its weather station, are the big ones.  More interesting comes with the smaller packages.  Much visited Staffa with its caves and its columns, a mere giant step to that causeway of Antrim in the distant south.  The lights of Skerryvore and Dubh Artach stand sentinel, safety on the waters thanks to the Stevenson family, and the shore base at Erraid from where towers were built on isolated rocks.

 

There is a sharper focus as your gaze, and your dreams, drift towards the islets; to Storm Island and Calf Island off the northern end, and at the south to Mouse Island, gems sparkling in sun-kissed waters, limned by those creamy sands, that teal drake again, his breast this time.

 

Lingering longer on Lunga, where the puffins dance, deep belly grumbles in their burrows, always entices.  Perhaps it’s just as well Iona is not suitable puffin nesting land; the infrastructure may not cope.  But Iona has the corncrake, the rasping ventriloquist, deep among the nettles and the golden ragwort.  How I long to return in spring, to stand field side, reciting Rob Macfarlane’s eulogy, (recent winner of the Wainwright Prize - The Book of Birds, a must read, read it aloud) hoping for a fleeting glimpse, to hark at the bark; the deep throat hidden in the greenery.

 

And I wonder as I wander, if the monks of old may have been guided here by the call of the corncrake, Columba’s coracle answering the crex-crex, crex-crex, crex-crex.  I can’t help feeling that this sound is as important as those colours of the seas and of the flowers.  Did the monks arrive in the spring perhaps?

 

The shawl that is spread warmly over the island today is no shroud.  It is woven from all that has preceded us here; from legends and colours and song.  And it is magical to occasionally lift the corner and sneak a peek into what lies under our feet, treading softly. 

 

On Reading Again

 I rarely pen book reviews these days.  However, I do contribute regularly to a couple of online resources, weekly posts where readers confirm the current read - typically Big Bearded Bookseller on a Monday morning over at Bluesky, and Bert's Books over the weekend on the same platform and also on the one formerly known as twitter.  These are places where readers give ideas to other readers.  And I always have a book or three on the go.  I still maintain a list of my favourite reads of the year.

And I now keep a brief note of every book I read.  I need to tell you a little of read number 129 of 2026.

Added to my list recently is the latest from Rory MacLean.  He has an extensive back catalogue, and most of these have a place on my shelves.  Having read his latest, Geography of Heaven, I am compelled to dip again into one of his earlier volumes, A Gift of Time.  Then I realised that the Rory section has already made the move the move north, safely settled amongst those volumes in the 'definitely keep' category, as against the 'try and dispose of', which remains in the southern abode as we move slowly and inexorably towards our retirement move.

That earlier volume of Rory's pulled together diaries which he and his wife Katrin, as well as his dying mother, had kept during her final months.  I was minded of a discussion I had with the author when I had mentioned that I felt that it was Katrin's diary entries which brought the dying to life.  It was a brave and emotional piece of work, pulled together years later; when he could finally face those diaries.

And so I was I was shocked to hear that his latest volume told of journeys in the aftermath of Katrin's untimely passing, succumbing to cancer at only 55 years young; after three decades of life and travels together.

Geography of Heaven tells of Rory's attempts to rationalise his grief, to find out where his beloved had gone.  It is quite a tale, of travels to far flung places, of emotional turmoil.  And discovery.

It was a book which had me contacting the author, a move that really goes against the grain, congratulating him on what I think could well be his finest work, a book he could not have written without all that went before in a life of writing of adventures in distant places, some wackier than others.  That said I was minded also of a marvellous few days we had spent in the same company some years ago.

Rory had jointly led a writing retreat at Ty Newydd in North Wales, Lloyd George's house, with the barrel-vaulted library where Jay Griffiths had dropped in to mesmerise us with a whispered reading, from her delicious Wild, echoing round that acoustic heaven.  Jan Morris had also popped by.  It was during that week, at one of our group sessions in the library, that emails dropped into my inbox confirming that an article on Iona I had finally pulled together, would be featured by both Scottish Book Trust and BBC Radio Scotland.  It was a special week, for so many reasons.

All those memories came surging back as Rory enchanted me once again.  His journey through grief is one that all of us may hope we never have to make, selfishly departing first rather than having to cope with what is left behind.  Or perhaps that's just me.

Pulling back the veil, gosh I'm back on Iona again; Thin Places, they are around us.  And Rory takes us to several of them.  First Nations, in his native Canada, and on to the Lakota reservation which I'd read of recently in finally discovering Black Elk Speaks; a nation in many a Glasgow heart with the Ghost Dance Shirt, eventually returned from Glasgow Museums.

The Abrahamic religions have their place in all of this, so he takes us to Jacob's Ladder, and to the Dome of the Rock.  I'll leave you to make the discoveries.  Open those pages, make the journey to Bhutan and Buddha on crumbling mountain cliff-edge roads.  Take a trip to ayahuasco-fuelled Peru.  ('Trip' doesn't do it justice - we are talking a series of day long rituals here).  Show me where Katrin is, Rory exhorts, to those who may know.  South Africa, there's an unexpected highlight.  Meditations and chants; believers and unbelievers.  It's the trip of a lifetime.  In the search for the dead.

And it is a beautiful read.  There may be tears.  And many a smile.

When up the road next week, I'll be shifting A Gift of Time to the northern bedside table.  And I'll probably delve into the world of Tahir Shah, who had a similar thirst for adventure and brought us many an enjoyable read.  I may be some time with Tahir.  Dinner with Rory and Tahir at the same table.  Now that would be quite a night.

Rhythms of Nature

 

 

The whirring of wings and slapping of feet draws the eye.  A mass rising from the water.  The fish-hawk makes his entrance.  Hungry, after a long flight across the desert, over the ocean.  He eyes the shifting, fast-flowing current below.  A flash of silver marks his prey.  Above the waters of the Spey the return of the osprey heralds the spring.

 

There is chittering and chattering in the air.  House martins and swallows return.  Mud nests appear, tiny dollops melded, mud moulded to clay.  Eyes and ears are alive to the sights and sounds of the skies, impatient for wind drift to bring the wing beat of the swift.

 

Once the mower is finally goaded into life, that steady cursed walk over every square yard of the policies, leaves detritus.  Mosses are there to be plucked away.  Nesting season, mating season, fledging season;  the lark ascending.

 

It is kissing season too.  For the whins are in bloom, though you can usually find a patch of yellow, a whiff of coconut, year round.  If an excuse be needed.  The clifftop paths glory in their golden coat.  More cheese, demands the yellowhammer; the linnet adding the chorus.  The hawthorn has its own special after-the-rain notes.  And spring rises.

 

Beech hedges shed their bronze mantle, unfurling a lush green coat.  Colour rises on the field maple.  Spring also brings the surge of those introduced species that we now witness rising and thriving, leaving a decimation in a winter scourge of erosion.  Pink-lanterned Indian balsam marks the path of the water courses.  American skunk cabbage might bring gasps from the unwary.  Over a few weeks that spotted yellow canvas becomes a mass of greenery, swamp lanterns spreading, ripe and fetid.

 

On Loch na Bo a pair of mute swans build a nest, unconcerned by any activity on the nearby footpath.  Soon it will be partly concealed by the reeds, well before the eggs are due to hatch.  The pen settles in, her cob never far, paddling the waters.  Their reed nest is as far as it can be from the corner of the loch infested by skunk cabbage.

 

The cob arrives for some preening, some nest tidying.  Serpentine necks dance like flames.  A bit of neck-grabbing; reeds added here and there.  The cob paddles through the reeds, paternity practice with the mallard family, as he guides them to open waters, chivvying stragglers to keep the brood of ten together in mama’s wake.

 

Returning the following day I found the cob attentive.  He remained nest-side throughout the hour or two of my visit.  With no evidence of shells cracking, I will miss the moment.  Nonetheless cygnets on the loch will be a joy soon.  At the far end of the loch a third swan took to the open water.  There may be a second nest site, but such is the skunk cabbage coverage that it will remain concealed.

 

The turn of the seasons sees our visitors depart once more.  Puffins and gannets head to the colder oceans, as others, including our osprey, follow the sun to the south, long and arduous flights for newly fledged feathers.  Their absence is as notable as their arrival.

 

As our spring visitors return south, so our winter visitors arrive from the north.  On the Spey whooper swans gather, feeding on the stubble fields, the slapping of wings bringing the flock gently to a rest in the shallows.  Behind the shingle, on the shifting estuary, bugles sound as they mingle.

 

Spynie loch has a mass gathering.  Skeins of pink-footed and greylag geese gather to gaggle on the waters.  Yellow-billed whoopers come in from the cold, compete in formation landing and take-offs.  Resident mutes tell tales to the survivors of the year’s broods.  That rhythmic beating of wings, as big black-webbed feet run the surface to gain height, necks stretching,  gliding gracefully, planing to a controlled splashdown on return.  The brass section honks and bugles.  The conductor calls the wind section to attention.

 

A susurration of murmuration mesmerises as the season draws the starlings together.  They arrive in broods, from all directions.  Until.  Whirring wings, dancing in formation, they put on a daily show, into the gloaming. Ignored by the swans and the geese, enchanting the watchers in the hides.  Until, as one, they drop to the reed beds.  And night settles.

 

On the loch the orchestra breathes again.  Above, the skies throng with life.  Squadrons of geese honking as they fly past.  Leaders and wingmen, formations holding.  Stonking silhouettes as night descends.

 

They arrive on the water, excited, in groups, honking after long migrations.  Unprompted, phalanxes of geese take to the skies.  A family flypast, touch down again.  The youngsters are learning.

 

It is the migrations that mark the changing of the seasons.  Inbound and outbound.  The first cuckoo may be heard over the first weekend in May if we are blessed with a calm day, when eyes are on the skies for that first swallow.  On the sacred isle the crex-crex, crex-crex soundtracks have us scouring the buttercups and docks.  Hiding; he mocks.

 

The flora joins the fun, from those early snowdrops bursting through the frost, until bluebells carpet the woods and wild garlic brings fragrance to the banks of the burn.  Cultivated lands glow with oilseed rape, bright yellow, dazzling in the sun.  The golden uncultivated whins and gorse paint a natural picture, playing host to songbirds around the coast.  Then those invasives start their rampant run.

 

Enjoying the glory of autumn colours, the hillsides are coated in ochres and umbers before dropping their cloaks.  It all slows as winter begins to bite, less blanketed with snow now, more battered with wind and rain.  Floodwaters rise.

 

And we long for the return of spring, for the osprey with eyes on his prey in the Spey; or in autumn the swoop of the whoopers, landing in troops on those same waters.  Cycles and seasons; changing seasons.