Bryan Islip

Why?

2012-02-22T08:58:00.000Z

Questions:

What level of interest and what level of mental pain have I, if I see on TV that a mudslide in Chile has killed 17?
What level of interest and what level of mental pain have I if it happens half a mile from where I live?
What level of interest and what level of mental pain have I if one of the dead is my son/daughter/wife/mother?

Would I be happier if the only news reaching me was that with a direct meaning to and bearing on my own life and my own self-chosen interests; if all else going on in the world did not reach me? Am I only interested in the latter for the assuagement of my personal curiosity? And, by the by, the enrichment of the Rupert Murdochs and the employment of the massed battalions of the BBC, advertising industries etc?

Funny, the things you think of and the questions you ask yourself when you're writing a novel like The Book. Not so funny when you realise that these questions are the ones that, from the day we are born, we have been taught NOT to ask

'Ours not to reason why ...'

Difference is all, difference in all

2012-02-20T09:26:00.000Z

We’re now some 8,000 words into my novel in progress, provisionally entitled The Book.

I’m writing the story through the mind and all the senses of Marie Mortlock, wife of redundant, accident prone Ben and mother of gifted, disabled Jamie. Oh, and daughter Zara who is away at University. She will not loom large until in the later chapters.

But the boy Jamie is about to come into full focus. It’s not easy to endow him - believably - with all the characteristics I have in mind. Much more research to do. But I enjoy the creation of characters as much as anything else in the writing of fiction.

It’s just brilliant when the characters stop being characters and start being living, breathing, warts and all people. Just like you and me?

No. We’re all different, just as no two human fingerprints are the same, just as no two snowflakes are the same, just as no two bodies of the billion trillion in our universe are the same. That’s the way we and all things were created. That's the wonder of it.

An otter pottering

2012-02-17T11:07:00.000Z

Yesterday we watched an otter pottering about not three metres from where we sat eating our picnic lunch. Regular readers will know we often sit on the broken concrete remnants of the WW2 observation post up near what is today the NATO pier on Loch Ewe.

Up until then the day had not been perfect. You know how it is when a string of little things go awry and nothing you do turns out to be as straighforward as you had every right to expect. Anyway as we sat mostly in silence amongst the boulders and concrete Dee nudged me and I looked up and there she was. A real white chinned beauty, supposedly a female to judge by her size in comparison to other otters we have observed close up.

She was in no hurry. All the beach stones on her route received special attention. Her fur glistened brown umber in the winter sunshine, a perfect match with the half tide seaweed littered shore. We watched her as she went away from us towards Aultbea. Perambulating is the best word for it. Sometimes rolling on to her back. Gradually disappearing with distance until she was there no more. We guessed she had returned to the loch to search for crabs and little fishes.

And suddenly our day was perfect.

The Nuclear Genie and Omar Khyamm

2012-02-17T09:48:00.000Z

Nothing and nobody is able to put the nuclear genie back into its bottle.

Nuclear fission is a fact, and whether you worry about who has 'the bomb' and what they might be planning to do with it or about the disposal of waste fuels from nuclear power stations, it is here to stay. Just one more force of nature in the hands of imperfect Man; the loaded gun in the playful hands of an idiot child.

So today go on and sign your nuclear power development deal with France, Mr Cameron. It might heal your fractured relationship with M Sarkozy and preserve your cosy relationship with the UK banking fraternity even if it does condemn your grandchildren to untold, unknowable misery.

The question of future power sourcing should start not with the satisfying of escalating demand but with the controlled descalation of demand. That, Mr Cameron, is called change by leadership vision and persuasion.

Fly over the UK, especially the south of it at night. What in hell are we doing with all those street lights? Have a glance at those infr-red pics of mother earth from space. Do we really want and need all of that massive efflux if heat from our over-warmed cities and buildings generally? Of course we do not.

Almost exactly one thousand years ago a Persian by the name of Omar Khayamwrote ...

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit,
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

But helpless pieces in the game He plays,
Upon this chequer-board of Nights and Days,
He hither and thither moves, and checks ... and slays,
Then one by one, back in the Closet lays.

And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted - "Open then the Door!
You know how little time we have to stay,
And once departed, may return no more."

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread --and Thou,
Beside me singing in the Wilderness,
And oh, Wilderness is Paradise enow.

If chance supplied a loaf of white bread,
Two casks of wine and a leg of mutton,
In the corner of a garden with a tulip-cheeked girl,
There'd be enjoyment no Sultan could outdo.

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out of the same Door as in I went.

With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand labour'd it to grow:
And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd -
"I came like Water, and like Wind I go."

Into this Universe, and why not knowing,
Nor whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing:
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not whither, willy-nilly blowing.

And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop't we live and die,
Lift not thy hands to It for help - for It
Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.

Sometimes I have to wonder quite what our species has actually achieved during these past thousand years. Shakespeare and his contempories believed fervently that Man had reached his apogee fifteen hundred years before, and was already into his inevitable decline and fall. I do hope not, but is there anyone today capable of creating something with as much force and prescience as those words of Mr Khayyam?

A message for David Cameron.

2012-02-16T12:45:00.000Z

A message for yet another London P.M. with a Scottish ancestry ... I am English by birth and Scottish by adoption so I can see the picture better than most.

An independent Scotland would re-industrialise itself. Make no mistake, the future world-wide is in local production. The days when we all send and bring the goods we need to and from far and wide are over. Scotland and its people have the energy, (both physical and cultural), the creativity and the opportunity to re-industrialise. Size of population means nothing or, if overlarge, even worse than nothing. It's brains, imagination, courage and character that will count in future. Not the smoke and mirrors of your precious self-seeking so-called financiers.

World standing? Scotland even today has a higher 'respect and popularity' rating world-wide than an England riven by years of City corruption, (yes that does include London based RBS and HBOS), spurious multi-culturalism, systemic wear and tear and a hugely destructive bias towards the south and London over everywhere else.

The defence argument is plain nonsense, David. Strong, moral societies should not fear the enemy within, they absorb and convert them, so do not need secret services expensively leaching away everyone's right to privacy. And such sociteies will never need to attempt to subjugate foreign peoples, to try to change the ways in which other people choose to live.

Above all, Scotland, David cameron, is historically A NATION, with characteristics and a worth all of its own and different to those of its neighbour. True? Ask the Irish. Read some Robert Burns. And do remember, Scotland was only unionised by England through the back door in the first place.

A novel called The Book goes well

2012-02-15T09:50:00.000Z

I'm thinking The Book goes well. I'm in sight of the end of chapter two now, ready for on line 'publication' on 29th February to FOC subscribers through www.bryanislipauthor.com .

For me, writing is very much like painting pictures. However many times you re-visit the work you can always see ways to improve it. The editing and general titivation, right back to line one page one, goes un without end until one day you just say for better or worse that's enough. Of course by then you could have spoiled the thing by over-writing or over-painting as the case may be. Hope not. I have high hopes for The Book (provisional title)

It's early days yet, but my central viewpoint character Mrs Marie Mortlock is all the time emerging larger and more solid from the shadows of my imagination. I would never take the reader through that dreadful writerly thing of describing the lady's physical appearance in one paragraph, preferring instead to let the reader form his/her own mind picture from the clues emerging naturally, over time, through her behaviour and the story.

Nevertheless I can here tell those who are interested that in my mind the lady is in her late thirties, quite but not overly pretty, petite figure, dark hair and blue eyes. She's assertive, clever and resourceful. She's the wife of a strong, good looking husband called Ben who likes being led from behind (by her) and is the mother of Zara, now away at university, and the 13 year old, gifted, disabled Jamie. I'm thinking that her relationship with Jamie and his with the world at large will become one of the the main focuses (focii?) of my novel. Of course there is and will be a full cast of other characters in The Book as the family Mortlock settles into an anything but ordinary life in the Highlands.

A Land Unspoiled

Our day slows down as last light paints the sky

and you can feel the movement of the globe,

hear gentle surf, the wheeling seagull's cry,

watch land and sea in pastel colours robe

this Wester-Ross where calming nature seems

a place of magic that itself redeems,

inspires an artist and a poet's dreams.

You think perhaps Blake's feet in ancient times

would want to tread a land unspoiled as this.

There's little discord here where most things rhyme,

and all is sensate to an evening's kiss,

when no-one's going far and peace is sought

and found; for what this is cannot be bought,

and things material count for little, less or nought.

Bryan Islip

Hope and no hope

2012-02-14T09:45:00.000Z

How good to see those pearl-white drops of snow emerging from your garden's drab
How good to feel upon your face, however weak, late winter's sun:
You hear the upsurge melody of birds and thus oncoming Spring your spirits grab
But look, how still today she lies, Loch Ewe, Earth's ocean's ravaged womb.

My verse this morning comes directly from watching a TV program last night. The good people of Barra in the Outer Hebrides seemed to be united under the shamefuly short-sighted banner of their church leaders against the concept of making 'their' stretch of the sea into a protected Marine Park. Scottish Natural Heritage tried their best to convince their audience of the long term advangages - even necessities - of the plan but it was evident that nobody was listening.

Having watched the West Coast lochs being turned, over the thirty years past, from fish nursery abundance into fish-less marine deserts I could only marvel at the sheer stupidity, the mammonical, 'money uber alles' of it all. Even there in Barra, I thought? There in surely one of the most beautiful, unspoiled places on the face of mother Earth.

Read Charles Clover's The End Of The Line if you have any interest in the world in which your grandchildren are going to live. No, it won't be like 'our' world, for we have ravaged it so comprehensively in the name of - just what? Our own creature comfort?

Those Islanders must know that a thriving undersea will bring in greater prosperity to all via eco-tourism and massively improved fish catches along the fringes of the Marine Park / undisturbed fish breeding grounds. I will never believe that Mankind is incapable of finding ways to live without wrecking everything and every living thing in sight. One of my early poems included the lines: This land is surely no more yours / Than once it was the dinosaur's. (We are all simply inhabitants and caretakers of the land on which we happen to live. Nothing more. The good Father on Barra should know who it is who 'owns' everything. And that it isn't us.)

Catch up: Novel for 2012, calendar for 2013

2012-02-13T09:42:00.000Z

No blogs = out of action: part me, with a viral attack conquered only with the help of Dr Penicillin; part my machine, also suffering a viral attack, curable this time only by Dr West of Achnasheen.

Anyway, have been struggling with chapter two of my novel in embryo 'The Book'. Chapter One left Marie Mortlock sitting in the heather high (and lost) on Beinn Toborach, paralysed with fear, her husband Ben having fallen over a cliff edge and lying immobile. The other main player, their disabled 13 years old son Jamie Mortlock, hasn't even entered the novel up to now. He's still down in Birmingham. But what about the long abandoned whisky still they'd stumbled across? What about the lovely old usica beatha, and what about the mysterious book therein? Anyway chapter two will provide more questions and some answers when it goes out to subscribers via www.bryanislipauthor.com on 29th February.

The other major undertaking right now concerns our 2013 calendar, this time a combined operation incorporating my landscape paintings with Eoghain Maclean's acclaimed Highlands wildlife photos, plus narratives to tell you all the how, where and why. Below see a poor phot of the cover .... £8.50 - whilst stocks last!! Special note: it says on this cover, 'CREATED, PRINTED AND PRODUCED ENTIRELY IN SCOTLAND'. Why should it say that? Because almost all calendars calendars sold in the UK are printed and produced in China or India, which leaves a very, very ungreen footprint and a hole in our economy, does it not, "NATIONAL TRUST FOR SCOTLAND"?

Thoughts on Robert Burns

2012-01-27T10:09:00.000Z

Now Burns night has been and gone I thought I'd share with you a poem I wrote in December in honour of the Scottish bard who spokeand wrote and sang for all the world...

So simply precious, that

Kilmarnock treasury

OF POEMS

Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect

Thoughts of Robert Burns

January seventeen fifty nine,

cold winter’s day, old Alloway:

to Scottish farming stock

was born a boy, and what a boy

was this, this Robert, Rabbie

Burns or Burnes (with or without the ‘e’)

who grew into a shining star

ascending to arc the firmament,

changed words to arrows, plain,

or in the Scotsman’s dialect

that, flashing out to everyone,

pierced, lifting up their hearts

with things as small as harvest mice

or wise and wonderful, the parts

beyond imagining or any price.

To him a man was just a man

for all that and for all that

from wheresoe’re on earth he springs

so long as straight, within his time

he honesty and humour brings.

If music be the food of poets’ love

from deep inside his ancient

Scottish roots Rab culled the songs

that have become immortal, and,

when any exile for his homeland longs

foursquare with that man Rabbie stands.

Like every caring working man

Burns strove to feed his family

by dint and stint of plough and pen,

and later roved the lowland roads

on business for His Majesty.

Yet all his life the songsmith poet

also knew the need to feed

his views egalitarian and his muse

and found his provender for this

in places often frowned on by

his peers and his superiors,

like rough and bawdy fairs, alehouses

and in the arms, the eyes, the lips

of bonnie Scotland’s womankind:

but look, he only reached out there

believing true he was in love,

(as well as by her truly loved),

and with her all the pleasures proved, compared his heart with that

undying rose; that red, red rose

that’s newly sprung in June, that

melody that’s never out of tune

Ploughman poet Robert Burns,

like some volcanic rock afire,

that’s hurled up high, so high above

mere commonplace mundanity

of heat suffice to set alight

the sullen earth, the endless sky,

oh yes, too bright for many folk

of its own time to look at, see,

shedding as it goes in some great

wild parabola, poetic sparks

and soon this melting rock

slowed, fell away and cooled, and,

sighing, met with careless death

as all things must,

so Rabbie all too soon

expelled his final breath.

Burns is never lost to memory:

this man of rock, this poet shall

within my time abide with me;

tell in ways and words ethereal that

to live is more than just to be.

Bryan Islip

for the Wester-Ross Burns Club meeting

20 December 2011

e-reading: ready steady go!

2012-01-17T17:02:00.000Z

For some while I've been wondering about e-books: should I go to the time and trouble of learning how to upload my novels so that they can be read electronically? The other day I read an article in The Guardian about a young lady in the USA who had written five books without being able to interest either any publisher or any agent. So she he put one of them on Amazon's market leading Kindle. Up to date she has made herself a cool two and a half million dollars and now has juicy contracts for the paperback versions with two of the publishers who had so often turned her down..

Well, case closed! I've just finished doing the learning bit. I'm informed I have successfully put my first novel, More Deaths Than One, ISBN 978-0-9555193-2-1 on Kindle. It should be in the Kindle Store soon so if you yourself have a Kindle you can buy it for (if I remember correctly) £2.50 or $3.99. Don't quote me on that but I should know, having set the pricing myself!. Must check. I'm tied to Amazon on this e-book thing for 90 days but after that, Sony and every other e-reader comes next. And all my other paperback books will have their much less expensive electronic twins on offer.

I've often compared a self-publisher selling his or her novels to a person trying to swim up a waterfall. Perhaps, if the novel and the word of mouth is as effective as I reckon it might be, this e-diversion might become my much needed / deserved 500 h.p. outboard.

A Nation Once Again

2012-01-11T10:08:00.001Z

As an adopted Scot I applaud Mr Salmond. He seems, to me, to be by quite some way the most astute political thinker in what is now The United Kingdom. His second in command is not far behind. I shall most certainly vote for full independance. At least the forward plan for separation from Westminster will be public and straightfoward, unlike the Act of Union (1710) in the first place, which was agreed on behalf of all Scotland by stealth and by a few with strictly commercial interests.

No, Mr Cameron, the issue of Scotland's independence will not be decided by 'years of wrangling in the Courts' (By the way, whose Courts had you in mind? Scottish? EEC? Not English, surely). It will be decided by the Scottish people under International Law. And no, Mr Cameron, the people of this proud race will not decide the issue on the basis of the pluses and minuses of next year's faltering economics. It will be decided on the basis of A Nation Once Again. You have a Scottish name. Attend any Burns Supper in a few days time and you will begin to understand that. Surely you in England have enough on your plate trying to reform your crippled parliamentary system without obstructing other folk' efforts.

I do most fervently hope that, when the break comes Scotland will retain the monarchy. Whether or no, it will not affect my vote.

Water water everywhere

2012-01-10T09:39:00.001Z

When working the dusty city streets and the sunbaked wastelands of the middle east I used to yearn for a break in the blue skies, in fact for clouds. Any colour clouds but preferably dark ones that would off-load their watery, life-giving burden on to all of us and the dingy desert lands of Arabia. That very, very seldom happened but when it did the effect was, to me, truly astonishing. What had been yellow-brown one day blushed light green the next, bloomed dark green, pocked with startlingly bright desert flowers the next. Everything and everyone seemed happier.

Oh, and by the way, a litre of water cost you more than the same volume of petrol, more than the same volume of Pepsi-Cola. People talked darkly of the next world war being not over territory or foodstuffs but over that precious water resource. It was well known that the Saudis in particular, with their rocketting population and fast burgeoning industrial infrastructure, (a sheikh once informed me that the Saudis loved Margaret Thatcher. 'Oh yes, why's that', asked I. 'Because every time she shuts one of your factories we open one,' said he) were rapidly exhausting the aquafers deep underground from which that life giving liquid was mostly obtained. Desalination? Have you ever tasted desalinated water? I would not recommend it. Not even to shave with.

Here in the north west Highlands of Scotland it has rained virtually every day for more than a month, and when I say rained I mean really rained, deluged would be a better word for it. Usually in January we have temperatures around the zero mark, often lots of snow with light or no winds. This year, temperatures mostly up above seven, gale after gale after storm after hurricane and water, water everywhere.

Should Scotland become a nation once again - and whyever not? - one of its great hidden assets will be water. I've read that fresh water rises above saltwater so I can see the Highland rivers tumbling out, not into the sea but into great barrage balloons, ready to be sealed and towed down south for sale at a premium to hordes of thirsty Englanders and other of those parched Europeans.

Oh yes by the way we have two professional lansdscape photographers with us for the B&B this week. Hardy? I should say so. 'Can you photograph rain', I asked. 'Or even in rain?' 'Not really, not easily' came the response, 'We're awaiting the break ...' Watch this space ... unless, of course we are all overcome by floods 'of biblical proportions'. Build an ark? Too late now.

Bad British Good Danish

2012-01-09T17:24:00.000Z

Can anybody tell me what the hell has happened to British TV Drama? I'm not talking soap opera here, (probably as good as anything if you like that stuff), just plain old drama. You know, that which can transport you into a different world and leave you feeling you gained something in return for your time and attention and for the actual experience.

Recently we watched Danish TV's Thrillers series The Killing (One and Two) and now we are well into their 'Borgen' political drama. Just brilliant, all three, subtitles or no. By comparison things like Wire in the Blood, Great Expectations, Downton Abbey etc etc seem trivial and contrived beyond reason. What's wrong, BBC and ITV, with telling a tale worth telling without trick camerawork, silly time shifts and changes to beautiful old tales, laughably inaccurate language and people attitudes for the perod of the work?

It's the writing that's all wrong, and often the direction. Even the sound is below par by comparison with similar stuff from the US and, as I say, little Denmark. Look and learn, Britain. No wonder your audiences are melting away line the snows in April.

An Embrionic Novel

2012-01-09T09:56:00.000Z

I've just finished the first chapter of a third novel. My novels are always centred around a single, macro theme. No particular reason or logic for this. Some if the most powerful novels have been beautifully written with the opposite - micro - themes. All of Jane Austen's, all of James Joyce's, most of Ernest Hemingway's for instance. I'm simply following my personal instinct, which is to try to make a difference in the way my reader thinks. And I'm trying to do that using this language with which we have been blessed to its fullest and most satisfyingly musical advantage.

Yesterday I partnered Mike Webber on his Two Lochs Radio ( www.2lr.com ) program, Sunday Brunch. He asked the listeners to call in with their nominated 'best books', then out of the blue asked me to define the criteria for anybody's 'best book'. A pretty fast ball that, although one I have had plenty of mental practice with. 'Your best book is the one that changed the way you think about your life, perhaps even the way you live', was my answer. Mike accepted that but went on to exclude from listeners' thinking those books that set out with the sole purpose of changing lives; books such as, pre-eminently, The Holy Bible.

The theme for this third novel emerged from the final two short stories of my twelve 'stories of the month, 2011' (now published in paperback as 'Twelve of Diamonds' ISBN 978-0-9555193-4-5 ). These stories were all sent out to subscribers free of charge on the first day of each month last year via my website www.bryanislipauthor.com . I'm now thinking of sending out, similarly free of charge this new novel, brought up to date on the last day of each month in 2012. Why? Two reasons: (1) It will keep my nose to a very difficult, perhaps even an impossible grindstone, (2) perhaps my readers will feed in critiques and suggestions that help me and my new book along the road.

So far as I know this has not been done in any serious way. Would you be interested? Let me know? e-m bryan@bryanislip.com or comment here. I'll also send this message to last year's list of subscribers, so please forgive me if you receive it twice.

The theme (not the title) for this embryo of a novel is The Second Coming.

Exciting times

2012-01-03T15:48:00.000Z

Well, here we go again: 'Happy New Year' we all bid each other, and quite right too. But we all know 2012 will not be an easy year. Those of us with half an ear to the ground will understand that we need to get used to the idea of the life style changes now necessary if we are to preserve or to re-discover the substance - the best - of our traditional way of life.

Personally I'm looking for someone amongst our number (apart from old Vince Cable) to stand up, tell us all the unvarnished truth and get on with the task of taking apart and re-assembling that which we have all colluded so recklessly in putting together over the post WW2 years. It is endangering our nation's physical and mental health and by the way, with it, the wellbeing of 'our' planet. No, Mr Cameron, this is not just a matter of 'reducing the deficit (so why are you borrowing from the banks another £150 billion or so in this second year of your term?) it is a question of eliminating the national debt itself and eschewing ALL future borrowings.

In order to make any kind of headway with this, Mr Cameron, you need to make massive savings in the bloated NHS, and the equally bloated 'educational system' and the equally bloated Defence industry - you've already made a good start on the bloated Civil Service. With the money saved you need to build factories that make things (instead of leaching out your trreasury on the importation of them), factories that employ people who will pay taxes. It matters not one jot who owns these factories so long as they are run with maximum efficiency. It doesn't even matter if you sell the product abroad so long as it is needed and affordable at home. You must cut out the squanderous importation of those very same goods that so often were invented right here in these intellectually capable islands.

Yes, your friends in The City will squeal and run. For God's sake let them! They have forgotten their true role in society at large and now apparently exist only to nurture the spend and lend disease that you are - or should be - now trying to cure. There really is nothing complex about looking after other folks' money.

And if you can't do any of this, fuse GB into the Euro. Because Angela Merkel can! And for that, you and all of us should all get down on our knees and apologise to the millions of young Brits who lost their lives or their health in two world wars in order to protect that which we spoiled children have so prodigally thrown away.

A Time For Change

2012-01-01T13:26:00.000Z

With our granddaughter Ella and her friend Lior here on a rare visit we saw out our Hogmanay in the Ocean View Hotel just up the road. Our visitors had flown up to Inverness, where they hired a car and did the eighty miles across the hills for the very first time in the pitch black. A new experience for Londoners, not seeing many if any cars and just a handful of houses on their way.

The ceilidh was brilliant. We've never seen such a gathering of partygoers up here. Most of them we knew by sight if not always by name. Music live and good and loud, even louder craic, queuing three deep at the bar, piles of 'stovies' on offer - if you're a Highlander you know the formula.

Although there doesn't seem a great deal of logic in celebrating January the first (every day being the start of another year if you think about it) I reckon it's just as well we do find grounds for celebration. Counteracts all the trials and tribulations, the slings and the arrows of everyday life for everyman / woman.

A time for new resolutions and, this particular year above all years, a time for lifestyle change - or at least the recognition of the need for lifestyle change. Hard to admit that the past x decades have seen us all rushing Gaderine swine-like towards what is now very evidently a dangerously high cliff edge - but very, very necessary to understand it.

We in the UK should not have to hear this kind of undiluted truth only from the likes of Angela Merkel. We after all elect our governments in the expectation that it will be they who are capable of seeing the big picture, and understanding it, and conveying it faithfully to us - as opposed to feeding us with their feel-good placebos, their suicidal 'quantitative easing' etc etc.

Problem: too many of we, too greedy folk for these poor old islands and our poor old social systems to bear. It's time we faced it, as our forebears always have in the past. Nothing to fear except fear itself.

The 2011 stories

2011-12-29T09:36:00.000Z

Although they're all now published in the paperback 'Twelve of Diamonds' (ISBN 978-0-9555193-4-5) I'll be happy to e-mail you any (one) of the following stories. Just e-mail me the title (pico555@btopenworld.com) - I'll e-mail you the story - no charge and no follow up

One Cold, Cold Day: Pity the poor postman. His wife has gone; where to, who knows? It’s Valentine’s Day. Duty done he makes for the pub … just a few beers.

A Life With Dogs: 57 years old widow Lucy Fotheringay, alone and suffering the debilitating effects of Parkinsons has decided: better sooner than later. Best now.

There Was A Soldier: There’s a lot more come back from Afghanistan crippled than in coffins. But for ex-sergeant Macrae there are no tears, no regrets, no recriminations.

Smile Samantha Smile: Behind the smiling exterior of this attractive lady weather forecaster there are some real concerns Her friend’s advice - go out with a bang …

Thirteen: It is the schoolboy’s thirteenth birthday and he’s making a series of discoveries about the world and about his place in it. But there are more questions than answers.

Goodbye and Good Luck: Wealthy entrepreneur Sir James Patrick Jamieson has asked me, as his family’s lawyer, to assemble his legatees for a reading of the Will.

Lion Hearts: After a bad episode in the ring ex-boxer Josie James is on the road with a dog called Rich. He has no idea what he wants other than that he won’t fight again

A Very Hot Property: They’ve ridden the property train all the way to Brittany but life there hasn’t turned out as planned. And the return engine seems to have stalled.

All the Colours and the Black: Rudi Bowe, down and out artist has conceived a plan to lift himself out of the gutter - with the involuntary help of an ex-girlfriend.

A True and Gentle Man: The older you get the more you should know and there are always the memories. Happy ones like Margie; bad ones like Wormwood Scrubs.

Lost and Found: Jack has been a good provider for his wife Marie, his daughter and his disabled son. But now he’s been made redundant and their future looks bleak.

The Book: Marie and Jack Mortlock have become lost whilst walking the Scottish hills. Their overnight shelter is a cave; in it, a long lost whisky still and that book.

HAPPY READING: HAPPY NEW YEAR

Bryan

Robert Burns

2011-12-21T09:53:00.003Z

Last evening at Kirkhill House we hosted a gathering of the Wester-Ross Burns Club. Lots of goodies to eat and drink and lots of that good old craic - erudite and not so erudite! Our estimable Chair arrived wearing Father Christmas hat and yuletide tie complete with flashing lights, which gives you an idea ...

To mark the occasion I had composed a verse 'Thoughts of Robert Burns'. Here it is ...

So simply precious, that

Kilmarnock treasury

OF POEMS

Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect

Thoughts of Robert Burns

January seventeen fifty nine,

cold winter’s day, old Alloway:

to Scottish farming stock

was born a boy, and what a boy

was this, this Robert, Rabbie

Burns or Burnes (with or without the ‘e’)

who grew into a shining star

ascending to arc the firmament,

changed words to arrows, plain,

or in the Scotsman’s dialect

that, flashing out to everyone,

pierced, lifting up their hearts

with things as small as harvest mice

or wise and wonderful, the parts

beyond imagining or any price.

To him a man was just a man

for all that and for all that

from wheresoe’re on earth he springs

so long as straight, within his time

he honesty and humour brings.

If music be the food of poets’ love

from deep inside his ancient

Scottish roots Rab culled the songs

that have become immortal, and,

when any exile for his homeland longs

foursquare with that man Rabbie stands.

Like every caring working man

Burns strove to feed his family

by dint and stint of plough and pen,

and later roved the lowland roads

on business for His Majesty.

Yet all his life the songsmith poet

also knew the need to feed

his views egalitarian and his muse

and found his provender for this

in places often frowned on by

his peers and his superiors,

like rough and bawdy fairs, alehouses

and in the arms, the eyes, the lips

of bonnie Scotland’s womankind:

but look, he only reached out there

believing true he was in love,

(as well as by her truly loved),

and with her all the pleasures proved-

compared his heart with that

undying rose; that red, red rose

that’s newly sprung in June, that

melody that’s never out of tune

Ploughman poet Robert Burns,

like some volcanic rock afire,

that’s hurled up high, so high above

mere commonplace mundanity

of heat suffice to set alight

the sullen earth, the endless sky,

oh yes, too bright for many folk

of its own time to look at, see,

shedding as it goes in some great

wild parabola, poetic sparks

and soon this melting rock

slowed, fell away and cooled, and,

sighing, met with careless death

as all things must,

so Rabbie all too soon

expelled his final breath.

Burns is never lost to memory:

this man of rock, this poet shall

within my time abide with me;

tell in ways and words ethereal that

to live is more than just to be.

Bryan Islip

for the Wester-Ross Burns Club meeting

20 December 2011

Echoes of War

2011-12-11T11:59:00.002Z

Yesterday we spent one of the most memorable few hours of our Wester-Ross year in the magnificent Pool House Hotel. (Poolewe village) This hotel had been the WW2 HQ for the ships that sailed in convoy from here to Murmansk and Archangel with vital supplies for the Soviet Union, our wartime allies.

Of course many u-boats and other enemy ships were lying in wait on and under the cruel sea. When a ship went down no other ships of the convoy, not their Royal Navy escorts, could afford to stop in an attempt to save the survivors. To do so would be to make themselves in turn easier targets. In any case, if you are immersed in waters of those temperatures death follows within minutes.

For years after the war the heroism, fortitude and seamanship of the sailors manning these ships went largely unrecognised here in the UK. Although the Soviets were keen enough to award medals, for some obscure facet of diplomatic skulguggery (known not by me though presumably by Whitehall), we were not.

Our tour of the hotel (superb value all by itself) and the expert narration of our guides painted such a vivid picture. It was a fitting preface to the special museum now in its planning stage. Like all of us, I hope this enterprise will come swiftly to a concrete conclusion. Right now I say full marks to the organisers of yesterday's event, from the ATC cadets to the hotel owners and staff, through to Francis Russell and his team of convoy experts.

Back in 2002, when we first saw the overgrown pillboxes etc at the Cove end of Loch Ewe, I wrote this poem...

Echoes of War

Where Loch Ewe opens up herself to Mother Sea,

at Cove, still stand these crumbling concrete testaments

to world war two and all those brave-heart men

who dared the elements to face their enemy

In groups of fragile ships they left these shores,

last sight, this wounded rock of Wester Ross;

behind, the crying of the gulls as they

sailed north to Russia and the Arctic wars

Although this place of peace now holds scant trace

of what had come to pass those years before

and rust away as may the swords

we shall recall the poet’s words:

We shall remember them

long after all the blood and all the bedlam;

long after time has healed the wounded rock.

and all war's echoes fade away.

Who?

2011-12-08T11:20:00.001Z

Dee and I rifled through a box of old photos, stopping often to stare as lives unfolded backwards. Finally we came to this one, dated 1953. I remembered my old camera and the rolls of black and white film. I remember this particular shot because it was an accidental double exposure, some kind of gasworks, somewhere, in the background. I remember the suit - from Alexander's, bespoke tailor, York. Made a nice change feom my everyday dress at the time - RAF uniform - National Service! All of my age will remember that. I remember the dark glasses and the James Dean pose. I remember the miniature golf course in Ayr where this photograph was taken. I remember the young lady who took it: Joan Wood, my wife / mother of my four children to be.

I remember being young and I recall the vague supposions of youth; all the vanities, fears and hopes. You know, about what was to come. Mostly that did not come though other, different things came, and in the main just as good.

I look at this photograph and, strangely,do not remember me.

How can that be? Different person, same mind? Whatever, I am content.

Seven billion today

2011-10-26T16:10:00.000+01:00

The Guardian newspaper today noted that, according to the United Nations, the seven billionth inhabitant will arrive to grace this Planet Earth. They asked readers to write a letter to this newborn. Hundreds responded. This was my response...

Dear seven billionth inhabitant of planet earth
Yes, child, you are 'dear' if only to your parents, grandparents and perhaps but not necessarily the siblings who naturally look forward with such eagerness to the material legacies they must now share with this new arrival (you).
Neither, I am sorry to tell you, are you in any way dear to the other 6,999,999, 999 or so earthlings who will contest your right, by war or empoverishment or uncaring neglect, to a share of this planet's resources; because of course your birth will deplete their own share of those.
Neither are you dear to the billions of species other than Mankind who inhabit the Earth, knowing they are looked upon only as food or as amusement or as just plain nasty and to be eradicated by the dominant species of which you are now one.
But wait!
Perhaps there is, after all, a saving grace. Perhaps it is you that is the saving grace. Perhaps you will become the one who will be able to reach into the human soul and to emerge from the darkness, with all of your fellow Man behind, into those green and sunlit pastures of which our prophets have down the ages spoken.
I hope so, for such a hope however remote is the only justification for your birth.

Money

2011-10-06T11:10:00.002+01:00

So the powers that be are preparing to print a load more of that ephemeral stuff we call 'money' in order to stuff the banks with cash sufficient to prevent their bankruptcy. Theres is crime going on here on a truly colossal scale. Crime without punishment. Consider this ...

What is money if it is not a token reward from the receiver/s to the doer for work done in its favour, whether physical, service or intellectual? The Treasury 'creatlng money' is a very serious fraud against the society (all of us) that empowers it as guardian of basic work and reward integrity. And that applies whether the direct recipients of such 'home-made funds' are privately owned banks or governments or businesses or simply me and you.

Unfortunately the Treasury, emasculated by recent governments, has long since lost its power to resist the activities of those who cared little or nothing for work and reward and who were allowed to rifle the nation's coffers with impunity. The invaders' impunity that is, not ours, for we who have not been inside the City of London are being punished severely for crimes not of our own doing.

We can look to our so-called democratic government (by the people for the people what bxxxxxx!) for no sympathy. Other. that is, than the hypocrytical though no doubt well-meant spountings of politicians as, thrashing around for something - anything - to do to stop the impending self-made hurricane, they prepare to send more of this electronically ephemeral thing called money out of Threadneedle Street and into the maw of The City.

The best export our nation could achieve would be that of the City of London, leaving the rest of us to get on with life as did our forbears - the ones who created the system which they have so cruelly disfigured. Where to? Anywhere but here, I don't care. Then for richer or poorer, better or worse, we can reinstitute work, risk and reward depending on the quality of what we each one offers to the whole. Britain awake!

All change.

2011-09-19T16:32:00.000+01:00

For seven years we have set out our Pictures and Poems stall at the Poolewe Tuesday market (April-October). Dee used to 'man' it but since she took up her Bed and Breakfast mini-business a year ago the manning has fallen to me. A month ago I decided not to carry on. Too many other and more profitable ways to spend my money-making time these days, especially as most of our B&B guests elect to buy some of my stuff. And especially as Dee can handle two rooms B&B if I'm around but only the one if I'm away at the market.

But I still wake up on a Tuesday looking at the weather (a definite factor in market footfall and sales per head.) And I definitely do miss the craic and all the blether with fellow marketeers and customers alike.

But it's really surprising how much extra one can achieve by releasing for alternative use what seems like a comparatively minor chunk of one's weekly hours. In the past month I've written considerably more fiction and have finished a series of six oil paintings. This latter is a major departure for me from my traditional pastel landscapes but I'm enjoying it very much. Also, in conjunction with a friend, have now got our exciting Project X underway.(Watch this space!)

As I said in my Gairloch & District Times advert, "Rumours of my early retirement have been greatly exaggerated". Wonder where that one came from?.

Besides, we have a lot more oppostunity to smell the flowers, walk the hill.

Painting in oils

2011-09-12T17:07:00.001+01:00

When I was twenty four and the father of two I had an urge to try my hand at painting a picture. Before leaving school at the age of fourteen years and nine months I had gained what was called a School Certificate 'Distinction' in Art (and 'Honours' in six other subjects, none of them being Home Economics or Media Studies!) but had no further instruction nor any creative experience (apart from the creating of my lovely children, that is.)

I bought myself a students mini half set of oil paints plus a number of small Daler Boards and when the family had retired for the night I got to work. For the best part of a year I copied the Old Masters and the Impressionists before graduating to my own compositions. The painting below was amongst these very first efforts. I believe it to be a copy - obviously very much in miniature - of Carravagio's The Fall of Rome. However fifty one years is a long time to remember anything so I could be wrong.

For the past fifty years this picture has lain, forgotten, in one dark and dusty attic after another before coming to light during our move to Kirkhill House. Because we thought it 'suited' this old manse house we had it nicely framed by Lynne Bennet-Mackenzie and, when I look at it hanging over our fireplace I remember those long past times when all the world was young - and the times long past those when the Master painted the original - and the times long past those when mighty Rome fell into its final decay.

Perhaps there's a lesson for us here, today?

I've 'painted' many pictures in pastels over the past ten years or so. Now I'm trying my hand at oils once more. Watch this space.

Mushrooms

2011-08-31T16:23:00.000+01:00

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness'. (Keats)

Last week we had a family of French people staying with us. Turned out they were keen (and expert) mushroom hunters. They could hardly believe the specimen bolitus they had spotted all along the Highland roadsides, and with nobody gathering them. Where they live, they said, folk would be up at four a.m. and fighting with each other to secure such a gourmand's delight.

So today, in the rare absence of B&B guests, we took time out to revive our old interest in the hunt for oyster mushrooms, hedgeogs (mushrooms that is!), the glorious butter coloured, inverted umberella shaped chanterelle and the king and queen of all edible fungi - the one we call the penny bun, the French call the cep and the Italians the porcini. Latin name bolitus eduli.

We spent a couple of hours in the woods, trawling through the secret and difficult to get to places we knew of old could offer up their produce. What joy to find specimens such as we have found and picked. Things of beauty and of greatest good taste.

Of course we know how capricious can be the mighty cep; up in profusion under a group of certain trees one year and nothing the next or the next and ... x years later up again. No-one knows why, and nobody has succeeded in cultivating them thus far. Very mysterious johnnies, these nouth-watering monsters. However our French lady guest told us something we had not heard before. The cep only comes up, she said, when the moon is waxing and only in certain (unspecified) perfect conditions of weather.

Whatever - wild mushroom ragoute, here we come!.