So the pretty, white frost melted into welly-sucking mud and the sheep regained their sodden bedraggledness. The weather had remembered that here at the seaside it’s supposed to be damp and dreich. Only the cows were relieved to see the thaw; like weary celebrities they were sick of being constantly papped in their sugar-dusted, sun-dappled furs.
The croft had warmed by a few murky degrees, but down at the beach the swirling Sound of Jura had missed the memo. And it’s here at the kelpy edge of the machair that the temperature matters most. Well, it does to me. I’ve made many a New Year’s resolution over the years usually eschewing the good stuff like carbs and booze, but, with home-school and lockdown and deadlines looming, Dry January’s arse was oot the windae.
So every morning in 2021 I’ve been there with the seals, discussing the warming effects of blubber, as I join the selkie folk and swim in this little strip of the North Atlantic. It’s neither pretty nor clever. The elastic on my swimsuit gave up the ghost a decade ago and I’m pretty sure the label says Mothercare Maternity, so for the sake of our poor neighbours I don’t hang about. With none of the athleticism of my whiskered companions, I breast-stroke around the jetty like a walrus looking for land. The great-dane stands guard, barking her concern and flipping her head around – either looking for help or checking there’s no witnesses to my mortifying antics.
It’s always a brisk towel-wrapped stride back up to the house, but this weekend I had an extra impulse to avoid hyperthermia. Winter had decided to have another wee go at Argyll and suddenly my towel was heavy with snow. Sprinting through muddy snow in flip-flops I made it up the drive only to be met by the kids, all wielding tennis racquets as per an arrangement made the previous weekend. I assumed they would follow their shivering mother back inside, but no, a plan for fun in lockdown is written in stone even if that stone’s buried in snow.
We’re blessed to have the village tennis court within a short-cycle (please don’t tell Ms Sturgeon we took the car), so, after a very quick costume-change there we were, yet again amusing the villagers with our strange incomer ways. I was just happy to have an excuse for my lack of proficiency – it was the sodden balls and slippery surface that impeded my game rather than innate cack-handedness.
Throughout our match the sky darkened and the snow thickened until we looked like escapees from a Yeti farm and decided that the craziness was veering towards humiliation. No sooner had we made it home along the snow-bound single-track than the kids reverted to their five-year-old selves and swapped racquets for dayglo foam surfboards. Oblivious to the field’s resident heifers and their sizeable poo-piles, the kids skited headfirst down the slushy ridge again and again like a Hawaiian luge team in training.
With the end of our fun lockdown weekend came another manky thaw, and now the husband’s out on the ridge having just as much fun. He’s on the same ridge but he’s equipped not with luminous surfboards, but with shovel and wheelbarrow. The luge-track loses its smelly obstacle course, but the compost heap is coming on nicely.
The Softer Crofter 