Stories My Suitcase Could Tell

Every now and then something one reads hits a chord.  

People get sniffy about all sorts of things: the popularity of Cav and Pag or Mozart Forty or  Classic FM or Jack Vettriano.  Some I know add Facebook to that list.  I like Cav and Pag. I like Mozart's Fortieth.  I would doubtless listen to Classic FM occasionally if it were available in the Hebrides. I enjoyed some of the early Vettrainos long before he was as popular as he is today.  I enjoy Facebook as a way of keeping up with news and friends in different parts of the country and the world.

Today a neighbour shared a post on Facebook: a post from an Islander's blog.  That post hit a chord.

 It was from a blog by Katie MacLeod entitled "Stories My Suitcase Could Tell".  Katie writes:

"I’m Katie, the owner of this ‘suitcase’ full of travel stories.  I’m a twenty-something Scottish islander and International Relations graduate with a love of politics, reading, coffee, chocolate, writing, and of course, travelling.  When I’m not blogging or trying to see the world, you’ll find me busy with my day job as a local journalist, which I love – every day is different."

The post was entitled "On Leaving Home, and Loving the Hebrides" and describes the bond between Islanders and their Island.

I wasn’t brought up on the island and have only lived here for forty of my seventy years but I feel the feelings she described. I am the first generation of my family living here. The second generation was brought up here and is married into the island as well. I think my son would write as Katie has written. I hope that his children will feel as she does and write as she has.

A Concert and a Reminisce

Half a century ago Peter Roberts and I were members of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society and attended all the Tuesday Subscription Concerts, Saturday Concerts and most of the Industrial Concerts: having season tickets for the same seats year after year.  Then life got in the way of our shared times together.  I married and moved into darkest Cheshire and Peter went into the Church and became an Anglican priest eventually in South Africa where he died.

During that half century I never lost my love of the music which has been a constant companion through the Bad Days and the Good Days.  Yesterday, for the first time since I moved to Lewis, I went to an orchestral concert.  I went with Anna to The Glasgow City Halls (a wonderfully refurbished modern venue) to hear a concert by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra which was being broadcast on Radio 3.  There is something quite engrossing in watching a pianist (Javier Perianes in this concert) play a concerto one thinks one knows so well having played the CD scores of times over the years.  And there is something wonderful about not being able to do anything other than watch and listen and be swallowed up by the emotion of the music and the performance.

We are going to another concert at the City Halls on Monday evening. I'm quite excited.

[The images are downloaded from Google images.] 

Life, An Update

On Tuesday (is it really Thursday already?) we ('we' being Anna - a friend who had been staying - and I) drove down from Eagleton to Bishopbriggs.  We came via Skye and the Western Highlands and it was a beautiful drive.  Until, that is, night closed in as we left Fort William.  For me it was a foretaste of something I've not experienced since 2005: driving with temperatures around zero and the threat of ice on the roads.  The car is getting shod with winter tyres tomorrow.

It's great being down here are catching up with folk, shopping, going to a concert and the theatre and so on.  In theory I should have just as much time for Blogland but I've hardly read a blog this week.  I also miss the Big Skies which you just don't get in towns and cities. This is the sunrise a few days before I left: 

As we left the little township of Tarbert on Harris to cross to Skye I left a little bit (quite a lot actually) of 'me' there.

Boarding the ferry MV Hebridean Isles

Tarbert is on an isthmus between North and South Harris 

The barren landscape of Harris made even more rich and brown in the low sun of winter. 

The splendid bridge between the mainland of Harris and the small island of Scalpay

Dearest Caro, You Have a Lot To Answer For