5th January 2023

An intrusion

They keep a careful eye on us while we work in the rubble and trudge through the mud carrying armfuls of planks for the stove and lumps of concrete for ground fill. The boldest break ranks and peer around the gable end to check up, then report back to the others.

'Who are they?

Why are they wrecking this place which has crumbled quietly and without human help for three decades? Why are they trespassing on our territory?

Why are they making so much NOISE?

Perhaps if we stare at them very hard, the humans will go away and leave us in peace.'

18th December 2022
Demolitions R Us

It's been six months in temporary accommodation. The caravan waits at the roadside. Because:

- The croft is boggy. You can't just dump four tons of caravan on it.

- An industrial shed will to go alongside the caravan. More weight.

- JA is lined up to make hardcore for both in January. That means digging down a metre across the 20 metre by 20 metre site then filling it in with tons of concrete and rocks.

To help things along, and to save on the costs, we're sourcing the hard stuff. Across the road is A's ruin, his once-childhood home. Yes, we can have the concrete base, if we can get to it beneath the falling-in roof and piles of broken timber, the corrugated iron sheets and stones and hanging electrical wires.

Health and Safety laws would ban us from entering the site, let alone staggering about on sodden floors that give way, but we do it anyway. Reader, you may not see the difference between BEFORE and AFTER, but believe me, it is there. After a week of moving rubble with our hands, we can see the concrete floor.                                                                                           

And in one corner of this crumbling cottage is a collapsed bookshelf complete with mildewed books. On top, lies Collins English Dictionary, cover intact, immune to time's damage. I take this as a sign, an omen, to me as a wordmonger. What it says, I have no idea.

28 November 2022
On a calm day

Today is clear and breathless with glass-smooth reflections in the waters. The agitation of past weeks, triggered by disappointments and mishaps, fragments and dissolves.

The sheep and lambs are waiting, a cluster of black and brown fleeces, back-lit by a sun that slides down the sky early in the afternoon. Giacometti shadows stretch across the rough grass. The five Soay-Hebrides crosses stare at me with eyes circled with white eye-liner. Blackbird hustles forward. The twins, brought to their new home only days ago, hold back, not sure yet.

Behind the sheep, the light shifts to deeper blues and pinks, evening coming early. 

8 November 2022
A Caravan Crisis

Getting the caravan up here - my home for the next two years - has been a long, nerve-wracking saga. Transport Bloke has been, let's say, uncooperative. I might say obstructive. It's been three months of 'maybe next week, maybe the week after, the ferry has been cancelled, maybe October, maybe November, after that it will be next year'. I am a wreck.

Then on Monday he phones and says, 'I'm coming tomorrow.'

We have sunk sleepers and planks into the site on the croft where it will go. We had planned to make hardstanding ourselves, but other things got in the way. Yup, it's wet and boggy, but maybe it will take a four-ton caravan. I wait for its arrival with trembling anxiety.

And here it comes...a juggernaut with a caravan on top coming along the narrow track and over the cattle grids, like something in a bad road movie.

What happens next happens too quickly. Transport Bloke is saying the site is too muddy for his wheels, and I'm saying, Take it back to the viewpoint a mile down the road, and he's not listening, he's lowering the ramps, and he's rolling the caravan off to be parked on the tarmac right up against M's static caravan, and he's driving off. OMG.  

By now the neighbours are all out in the blocked road, saying:

'You can't put it there.'

'You don't have permission.'

'You can't just put your caravan on someone else's tarmac.'

I'm saying, 'I know! I know! I know!'

Heart in mouth, I message M who is on another island, to try to explain. The reply comes instantly, by phone and email, a torrent of anger and outrage, ending, Get it away by tonight. The assumptions of thoughtlessness and irresponsibility leave me in tears.

Neighbour A arrives, sees my distress, gets on his phone to a builder with a tractor who promises to move my caravan the next morning. The exchange is in Gallic so I have no idea what is said. If there are verbal raised eyebrows, I deserve it.

And so - big breath out - the next morning, the caravan is dragged down the track and tucked into a lay by, permission given by the fish farm folk who use that bit of land to dump stuff. They are kind. They give me an enormous salmon. I am too stressed to look inside my van. Later, when my nervous system has recovered. The builder with the tractor has agreed to make the hardstanding, and get the caravan on to the site, but not until the end of January.

My son has warned me in no uncertain terms to tread carefully, to walk on eggshells until I am tolerated, perhaps even accepted, maybe in four or five years. I do not belong here. Incomers come and quickly go, unable to take it, whatever 'it' might be. In a few months I have erred badly. Twice. First Willow. Now the caravan.

In another life, I had fondly imagined I would drive to this island to wait just a few weeks before settling, quietly and anonymously,  leaving barely a footfall, in my caravan home on the croft. We arrived in June. It's now November. My caravan is here but not in the right place.  We need tarmac. We need electricity and water connections. 

I wait. And wait.

29 October 2022
A necessary shearing

I told you about Blackbird, the wedder who refused to leave the croft when it was sold to us. He had the whole place to himself until Eccles, Tripod and the lambs came, but he settled in with the group. But my goodness, he is in a bad way with a fleece that hasn't been touched for four years. My son decides to make him comfortable and remove the heavy mess that he carries on his back. It takes six of us to catch him, and first he runs us all the way to the end of the headland. Holding him by his horns, we half-walk, half-drag him back and put him in the van. Poor fella!

10 October 2022
Lambs to feed

I am now in charge of a small flock. Ten sheep, most of them this year's lambs, have joined Eccles and Tripod, though in a different field. We must keep the boys and girls apart.  My job is to feed them biscuits every day and get them used to me appearing and making strange noises. I don't know how to call sheep so any locals overhearing - and luckily very few pass this way - may be laughing. And as yet I haven't sourced a trough - you'd think somewhere would sell troughs on a sheep-covered island -  so I'm making do with my plastic boxes. Sorry, sheep! I know this is not kosher. My son disapproves of his sheep trying to fit their horns into my makeshift containers to reach their biscuits. It's an amateur effort, I am an amateur crofter, but I will improve. Promise.

9 September 2022
Cottage by the croft

Settling here, knowing I will be here next week, and the week after, is a relief after living out of suitcases for more than two months. K has given up on kitchen cupboards and asks me: Where are the raisins? Where can I find a carving knife? These cupboards were bursting with crockery services and gravy boats and sugar bowls and everyone's antiseptic wipes, but I compressed others' belongings to make room for mine, hiding mugs, glasses, plates, bowls and a heavy bag of assorted cutlery in the hall cupboard. I bring the three plants from the shed. I had to leave behind my five beloved citrus trees and thirty-year-old Aloe Vera. I find candles. I take down a shiny shiny picture above the pretend plastic log fire in the lounge and hang a framed poster. I fetch my very soft pillow and my blanket. It's not home, but it's a little bit like home.

I set up my writing desk near the window where I can be mesmerised and distracted by the view - a complex pattern of water and land masses against the curves of the mountains on Lewis and Harris. The light changes all the time.  At night the lights on Harris twinkle. 

The spinning plates still whirl and I still run along the line to stop them falling, but we hear that we have planning permission for the caravan to go on the croft. It has taken ten weeks after we handed the job to professionals, after eleven weeks of our Blue Peter applications, all of which were rejected. Work can begin. When the caravan is coming, I don't know because Transport Bloke is extremely shy about communicating. Maybe next week. Or the week after. But where will it go? We thought we had a solution when we were offered the forecourt of a disused school, but we would have to remove the gate to get it in, and the gate is set in concrete. The caravan remains a worry, as do the connections to water and electricity. We do a lot of worrying.

Mid July 2022
Four Houses in Two Months: House No 2 and Willow's Ending

Time is running out in the in-laws' house. This is mid July and you can't find rented accommodation for love or money. Cottages, barns and pods are all occupied. The tourist season is in full bloom and every AirB&B is booked months or a year in advance for big money. I email places that show odd days free, and finally find a cancellation, a cottage where there's a small shop, a petrol pump (single), the GP surgery, a hotel and a tiny rough-grassed football field. After our granddaughters come for a sleepover, and we play football and go to the shop, they tell their parents, 'It's fun in living in a town.' The cottage has a big bright kitchen and lots of sheep and lambs immediately outside the garden fence. The closeness of the lambs will be Willow's undoing.

A week into the stay, we lock the dogs in the cottage and set off to meet the otter expert in person for an informed traipse over the croft as she enthusiastically points out established otter runs. These we must not disturb with our building works. We don't get planning permission for a house unless we can protect the otters.

We are gone less than an hour, but when we get back, there are cars parked outside the cottage, a police car, a vet's van, people milling around. As we arrive, my son pulls up in his van, his face like thunder. The grape vine here is very fast. And no-one needs to tell me. Willow. The crofters are brutal with us, as they have a right to be. K grabs Willow who is indeed inside the field of sheep. I had left the bedroom window open a crack. She pushed it wide open and jumped out. A policewoman and crofter go off to bring back a lamb whose neck flesh hangs in red rags, the wounds deep and bloody but, the vet says, not life-threatening. K holds her horns. The vet injects pain killers, then stitches and stitches, placing folds of flesh back in place. I watch. The crofters watch. No-one speaks to me until the crofter whose cottage we are renting says, 'Get out of the house.' 'Now?' I ask. 'Now.' But we have nowhere to go. The vet continues stitching. Another crofter tells me the owners are away on holiday and Willow has attacked their pet lamb. 'Willow will be put down,' I tell the angry men. 'Of course,' they reply. Late in the afternoon, the crofters find a second wounded animal, a sheep whose neck wounds also need to be stitched. Four hours later, the vet leaves. The two hurt sheep are put in a shed to rest and heal.

By evening, things are calmer, but desperately sad. The cottage owner drives past us as we walk the dogs in a silent procession down one of the quiet lanes. Like most people on this island, he is quietly spoken. 'You don't have to leave the cottage,' he says. 'It's been a very bad day.'

We are interviewed by the local policewoman who is kind and firm. We will be charged with a criminal offence, will appear in court and will need a solicitor. She advises us to have Willow put down before we are ordered to do so.

It's Friday. The day after the drama. Willow has no idea why she is going to the vet. A rescue dog who loves everyone, and is irrepressible, she bounces into the surgery and lets us lift her on to the table. It takes seconds for her to die. She knows nothing.

With her body in the boot, we drive to our croft. We are clumsy as we drag her out. Our neighbour-to-be, A, appears and I sob out the story. Bless that man, he fetches a blanket, wraps her in it, and helps us carry her to a corner of the croft where there's a rock that looks like a headstone. We dig a grave and bury her. I will plant a willow.

How will Marlow manage? The two are inseparable.

Early July 2022
Four Houses in Two Months: House No 1

We arrive in Uist on 6th July, ragged and exhausted from the madness of the 12 day drive. The caravan is somewhere in the south of England, on hold until we get permission to put it on the croft. We can't prepare the site without planning permission - no draining or digging allowed. Catch 22.

My daughter-in-law's family comes from Uist. She went to school here. When she and our son moved up eight years ago, those roots smoothed the transition. Our son is half-incomer which is better than incomer. A decade ago, Grandmother P, who lives in Inverness now, built a modern house here for her five children and their children and the cousins to use as a holiday home. With some generous juggling of relatives' dates, it is ours for a fortnight. We are grateful we can park ourselves here while we work out what to do next. Our optimism and energy are somewhat diminished and our plans spin like a row of plates on sticks. I run up and down the line, giving each a quick twirl.

The house is a walk away from a beach so perfect it dissolves worries when you walk alone along its length under a huge sky. This place can be the palest of monochromes. It can be cobalt blue and turquoise. It can be black and silver. This beach is my refuge. It is my sanctuary. This is where I go to calm troubled voices about the future imperfect. 

July 2022
The Game of Bornes

Are we there yet?

We decide to take both cars, the diesel to drag the trailer of left-over belongings, and later for working on the croft, and the electric Zoe because she is kind to the planet. The dogs, Marlow and Willow, will come with me in the Zoe. For days we pore over Michelin route maps and charge.com, planning the six-day drive with military precision. We write lists and more lists. Lists of jobs, lists of packing for removals and the trailer, lists of everything.

We list charge points, and more charge points, one every twenty-five miles from Montpellier to Skye. The worst case scenario is the Zoe running dry; you can't carry electricity in a gallon can. We think we are prepared: each day will unfold with calm efficiency - two hours' driving, three hours' charging, two hours' driving, a hotel and an overnight charge. So why did no-one tell us there is no bloody infrastructure in France nor in the UK, and that most bornes listed on websites are fiction? By Day 2 all plans are out of the car window and we're already so delayed we stand no chance of making the Chunnel. No, you can't have a refund. And the ferry? Right now we don't know if we will ever reach Folkestone, never mind Scotland.

March 2022
Red Tape and Blue Peter diagrams

We carry on packing, and packing. The temperature climbs to 40c and we carry on packing. I have too many books, far too many books. Can you have too many books? With reluctance and some heartache, I weed out the oldest and dirtiest, the ones with falling-apart covers, and fill twenty-five big carrier bags for Emmaus. The Oxford Dictionary is very heavy. Goodbye, books.

We capitulate, otherwise we will be homeless. The person in our house-building company agrees to put in our application for the caravan. On proper paper. Drawn to the correct scale. With background Ordnance Survey maps. It was 6-8 weeks for an application to be vetted when we started in April so loads of time, we thought. It's still 6-8 weeks, and we are at the back of the queue.

I'm worrying about where we'll live when we get to Uist. It was naive of me to think a caravan would be delivered and a few days later, we'd move in. There I was dreaming about bedding and posters to cheer the drab buff interior when I should have been thinking about the labour involved in digging ditches to satisfy the planning department and to stop the caravan sinking. The land is a bog. You are required by law to have suitable hardstanding, a track, a bell mouth and a gate. You need a connection to electricity, which can take at least six months, and a connection to water. K tells me he knew all this, why didn't I? M tells me that she and her partner lived in their static caravan for a year without electricity. They read by candlelight.

It is nearly time to go and we don't have permission to live in a caravan. We don't have anywhere to live.

January and February 2022

A first Uist winter

We decide to be sensible and experience a winter before we finally commit to the island because the locals tell us that people like us fall in love with a romantic notion of life here, but few incomers actually stick it out. Many retreat after a year, two at most, tail between their legs. What the islanders mean is...the weather. The temperature rarely fluctuates, winter or summer, between 6c and 16c and the gales are prolonged and harsh. So as a test, we rent a comfortable house, not far from the croft, for January and February. Our son and the locals keep an eye on us as we trudge out with the dogs twice a day in horizontal rain, and hail the size of golf balls, and wind so strong it's hard to stay upright. They tell us it's a very bad winter, the worst ever, but our son says they always say that. I wear a dreadful purple waterproof garment and purple wellies. My grand-daughters tell me to get a green hat with a stalk so that the likeness to an aubergine will be complete. Out we go, K and I, barely able to see ahead as glasses are instantly fogged with rain, hauled along the road by dogs not used to being on leads, and the locals keep asking us if we're coming back. Yes, we say. They raise an eyebrow.

From the picture windows of the rented house we watch stags and hinds leap the fence and graze in the garden. The locals hate them for the destruction they do, but secretly we think they are rather fine. We see an eagle and owls and sweet sheep with curly horns and smudged faces. We burn peat in the open fireplace and watch Beethoven films (the dog not the composer) with our grand-daughters.

The croft is muted and magnificent in its winter colours of rust, green and grey. Islands emerge from the mist and rain, and vanish again, lost Japanese paintings. We trudge back and forth over the three promontories, trying to decide where the house will be built. There is a house already on the croft, close to the road, de-crofted now and occupied sometimes by Edinburgh people. We don't want to hem them in, and we want our own distance and privacy. And views out to Lewis and Harris. If you look at the middle photo above, that's the spot we choose.

Are you coming back then? the locals ask at the end of February...

We are, we reply.

September 2021

We buy a croft in the Hebrides

We need to go backwards before we go forwards.

Post Covid, we make the two-day, two-plane journey to North Uist to find our twin grand-daughters three years older and rather like strangers. This won't do, I say. Son, N, is building an enormous poly tunnel next to his house on his croft and talking about peas and espalier apricots and David Austin roses. It feels right to be there. I can't pinpoint the moment when a vague idea to move becomes a definite plan to move, but it does.

Back in France, all of a sudden, N reports a twenty acre croft for sale in a remote corner of the island. I'd move in a heartbeat, he says. Rare as hen's teeth. You don't buy a croft; you buy the tenancy for a sum that wouldn't buy a garage in Edinburgh. Even if we decide not to move, we will not be bankrupt and our son will own a second tenancy, and can make decisions later. We put in a bid and the next day the croft is ours.

The tenant, M, a Gallic speaker, was born here and lives in a static caravan tucked into a corner of the croft. With reluctance, she decided to let the croft go, but she will build a de-crofted house on the hill, looking out over the peninsulas and water. You can do that - with planning permission - cast an imaginary line around a small plot, de-croft it, and let go of all responsibility for the land.

Two days later, the deal is done. We own a croft and will have sheep, maybe cows, maybe ponies. Maybe we'll plant thousands of trees as our son has done on his croft. Is this madness or a dream come true? Only time, island time, will tell.

We will live in a static caravan and have a timber-frame house built. It will take time, island time, which runs much slower than anywhere else. In our 70s, we will be crofters.