A sense of belonging

I have been on my own journey from the eternal blues skies and diurnally constant vineyards of southern France to a remote, wild island in the Hebrides. Here I record the beginnings, the first excited steps along the way, and the road blocks that almost upended the experience. What began as a joyride turned into a roller-coaster of emotional highs and lows, and finally thea road block of an uncertain future.

There never was a Plan B and even when we came within an inch of needing one, it didn't materialise. I am still here, on the island that has tested me to. my limits.

Preface.    November 2025

Part 1.        September 2021 - December 2023

Part 2.       July 2023 - Present

 November 2025

A view to die for

It's over a year since I read this diary and it comes as a shock because I hear in it our eagerness, excitement and optimism for the new life we dared to take on. When I write about our near homelessness and an itinerant life moving from cottage to cottage, about the caravan crises and the delays with planning,  I hear my sureness that we will manage and that things will work out. As I read, I hear an almost youthful hope which is ironic, given that we were already in our 70s when we upped stakes and set the compass to North.

It is more than two years since I wrote my last entry here in March 2023.  I've been reading through the blow-by-blow account of a move after twelve years in very sunny France to the very windy Hebrides, and I note how much detail there is about the place and our life because I'm eager to give the tale a tight weave.  However, with the sober wisdom of hindsight,  it turns out that conceiving ourselves as almost invincible was rather wide of the mark. There we were, late arrivals on a small Scottish island which most incomers leave after a year, or two at most, in retreat back to the mainland. 'They can't stick it,' says my son,  but whether 'it' is the appalling weather, the isolation, the incomer/islander status of the people, the 1950s way of life, or something else, I am not sure. Maybe he isn't either, but he has stuck it well for eight years and has laboured to build a fine crofting life for himself and his family. That's partly why we came. In France, during the Covid years, we were unable to see our sons or grandchildren, and we decided we would move close to one of their homes - Bristol  or the Hebrides. Given that we are a pair of hermits, it was a no-brainer and we chose a small island over the hectic pace of a city.  

Out of blue, and as if our plans were made public along the vibrating island grapevine, a croft in a remote corner of the island came up for sale, 'as rare as hen's eggs', our son said, 'and you need to bid tonight because it will surely go'.  From photographs, we judged it to be beautiful, wild and hemmed all along its edge by water. Many incomers de-croft their houses, and live in them almost as they would in anywhere else,  ignoring and even abandoning the land. That didn't appeal. If we did buy it, we would go the whole hog and be what the islanders call 'hobby crofters' with Hebridean sheep and whatever else came with the job. The croft that was up for sale was eight hectares with three peninsulas stretching out into the sea like fingers pointing at the Isle of Harris. Having pored over the map, we decided fairly quickly that we would build a timber-frame house, positioned half-way along the middle peninsula with water framing both sides and a view over the waves to Harris. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Reader, we bought it! Our bid was accepted overnight. During the months that followed, including the following January and February when we test-drove the winter months to see if we could survive them, and we did, I hear in this account no regrets and no hesitation. Afterwards, when we are itinerants moving eight times from one temporary accommodation to another, and then as caravan dwellers, the emotional volume remains turned up high, the tone bright as we settle and make our plans.  However, it was a big ask - to learn to live as crofters on an island where we knew almost no-one nor how to live here. And yet, in that first year and beyond, we embraced it. 

The last entry in this diary finds us finally living in our caravan. I have two rams on the wettest, boggiest field opposite, and some of my son's ewes have come to graze in another field. Does the crofting life feel real? Well, no. It's as if a large piece of painted scenery has been rolled onto the set for a film about two elderly people who live in a caravan and learn how to look after sheep. Reality, whatever that is, is something else entirely, and that eludes me. There's me living in the caravan and there's me watching me living in the caravan. The two remain separate.

I shall pick up the story at this point, before the rainbow is torn from the sky, before my big curly-horned ram dies standing upright in a ditch and my first new-born lamb drowns in another. I will tell you the story of how we lose our two rescue dogs, first one, then the other, after they chased sheep. Dogs and sheep do not mix. And I will write about coming to terms with a medical diagnosis which almost breaks my heart. 

The diary below is in two parts. The first is a tale of perpetual motion edged with anxiety, but before the sky falls in. The second picks up a story of accepting, adapting to and living a hard, challenging reality. The blithe observer of island life is replaced by the one who lives it, and who, on bad days, is ready to join those who flee because they can't stick it.

I want to tell the true story.  It is three and a half years since the ferry docked and, after twelve days of driving, I rolled off the ferry and pulled in to the side of the road, opened the car door, got out and ran towards one of my twin grand-daughters who was running just as hard towards me. What follows is not all blue, more fifty shade of grey, some black, and some sunbeams.

Wrtite here about the sub plot of heart aches and how they will break into the story

July 2018

Heartache 1: Beziers Airport

I need to pause the story here. Covid has brought a three-year isolation from family that has us whispering tentative plans to move back to the UK.  We have finished building - house, pool, ponds and terraces - and are contentedly treading water. We run in our well worn tracks, not knowing the meaning of the word bored. Both of us work at our desks, walk the dogs through miles of vineyards, watch the sky and sunsets from the lower terrace.  I mark the end of every day, as the sky darkens, with laps of the pool, accompanied by dragonflies. It is idyllic. On the surface.

But there is a darker seam in this story, one that tunnels its way quietly and passively underground for quite some time before it erupts into our lives. After the first panicky days, I manage to downplay the significance of that initial, dramatic showing and push it back into the box labelled Past.  This time - and there isn't even a whisper of a next time - its footprint is shallow enough for me to ignore, but it's still digging its harmful, underhand way into our futures.

It's 2018, before any talk of living on a Scottish island. At the time, what happens seems to be an out-of-the-blue health scare which lands Keith in a cardiac ward in a Bristol hospital

I married a tall, strapping bloke who can carry a twenty gallon container of water on one shoulder from a pier that's fifty metres away, back to the harbour wall where our boat is tied. Then, with nonchalant ease, he lands the container on the deck and upends it  into our tank. He can lift and carry tree trunks which he then chops into firewood. He has the kind of robust health that one tends to take for granted. Until something happens. A month before we leave France, he is still digging up all the ancient gnarled roots of heather that are a fire hazard in our neck of the woods, labouring, back bent, sweat-soaked, not just among the trees around our house but for half a mile onwards up the track, deep into the woods, and he will no doubt continue to the next village if I don't suggest maybe there are more urgent jobs than his solo clearance of the entire National Park. We are required by French law to clear the forest floor within a fifty metre radius of the house, but this grafting goes well beyond that call of duty. The thing is, with his Superman physical strength comes ferocious determination and concentration such that no job he starts goes unfinished. So where to end the pulling up of heather in forests that continue into the next Département? And beyond.

I've yet to hear him say no to a challenge, physical or mental, on the grounds that it is too difficult or too time-consuming. An absent-minded professor he may be, unable to remember people's names or where we keep the tea towels, but give him a job he wants to do and his mind is focussed and his energy boundless. When I was a rather small, slight teenager (yes, we have known each other that long), I was drawn to his unusual height, his strength and stamina, in awe to it from the earliest days, and in awe to it still. Of course none of us predicts a sudden health scare, but when it comes to diminish this powerful man and to bring a new, uncertain future, I am sorely shaken. As is he.

We need to go back four years and start when Keith begins his self-imposed, epic task of clearing all the heather roots with a spade in a single-handed attempt to stop the threat of fire spreading through the oak forest and down our track and into our home. It's a task he returns to every year because on our mountain, there is never an end to the heather. We are in pre-Covid day. Keith is in his content phase while I am beginning to feel restless and a bit like I'm just biding my time.

We are in Beziers airport on our way to visit our elder son Jo and family in Bristol. It's an easy hop of an hour's drive to the airport, a Ryanair flight and a taxi. Four hours door to door.

We are waiting for our flight to be called and have time for a celebratory beer, after all, it's not often that we tear ourselves away to see the grandchildren. K goes to the counter in the cafe and when he returns, he only just gets the two full glasses slammed on to the table before he sits down heavily and bends over, his head in his hands.

'What's wrong?' I ask.

No reply.

'Are you all right?' I ask. Obviously he's not all right;

When he lifts his head, his face is ashen, his expression weird and dazed.

'Headache,' he says. 'Sudden bad headache.'

I ask more daft questions which he doesn't answer, but after a while, when he is sitting upright on the chair, beads of sweat on his brow, his jaw tight with pain, I try again.

'What is it?"

'Don't know.'

'Where is the pain?'

He touches the top of his head and down his neck.

'What about your eyes?' I'm thinking it's a migraine, but his answer isn't right.

'Blurred.'

'Do you want some paracetamol?' Woefully inadequate but it's all I have to offer and Keith takes pain-killers only if a limb is hanging off after a chainsaw accident. But he nods. I get a glass of water and we stay a while longer, Keith silent, me watching him, until the flight is called. 'That's our flight,' I say. He's not heard the call nor does he show any sign of hearing it. He seems out of it. 'I don't think you should fly,' I say. 'I think we should stay here and let someone look at you. Or I'll drive us home. I really don't think you should fly.' Worry makes me repeat myself.

'Just a headache,' he says, when clearly it isn't, and in his usual no-nonsense style, he's getting up, holding on to the back of the metal chair, swaying as he shrugs on his backpack, and we make our wobbly, white-faced way through customs and baggage checks. I am watching him like a hawk.

On the plane, there's a spare seat in our row so he can put his feet up and lean his head against the window. I cover him with his anorak. Maybe he dozes. Two hours later, after landing in Bristol, somehow we get ourselves off the plane, through the airport, into a taxi and on our way to our son's house. Keith says very little except that the headache hasn't abated. On the doorstep, I explain to our son why we are arriving in this dismal state and he immediately phones a friend who's a doctor. Keith sits on the sofa and leans his head back. I know something is very wrong because he makes no effort to greet the children and looks like he is only just coping with the pain.

'He needs to be seen, ' Jo says, after the call.

Of course we both suspect the same thing, but if we don't say it, it might not be true. That evening, a locum checks him out, calls an ambulance and admits him to hospital. Jo and I follow in his car. The ward is a noisy, frantic place full of very sick people but everyone says he is in good hands, and they don't hang about. When a nurse comes to wheel him away for xrays and scans, I'm told to go home because they will be running tests late into the night, and he might have to go to theatre.

The next day I phone and phone, but it's hard to track down anyone who can answer my questions. By late afternoon I am told that Keith has had a TIA, a disruption of the blood supply to the brain, which of course is what we had suspected using our amateur guesswork. What the prognosis is they can't say yet because brain bleeds are fickle and there are too many shades of serious. The following day they decide to do an ablation to try to restore a more regular heart rhythm and he is taken to theatre. The rest of us kill time, a tense, unhappy crew. Instead of riotous play time with the grandchildren and big meals round the big table, one of us is in a cardiac ward and the other gets the bus to and from the hospital, sits by a bed, often empty, while more tests are done. All of us are on edge.

Six days later, Keith comes home with a big bag of medication. His skin is grey and lined and he looks eighty not seventy - an old man. Orders from the hospital are that he must rest and for once he's too unwell to object so the remaining days pass in short trips to the play park with the children followed by Keith asleep for hours. He sleeps a lot. I'm aware that Jo is watching him and listening to him, just as I am, and that he and I are both doing breath-held assessments of his words and deeds. Not out loud, we ask the same question. Has Keith's brilliant brain been damaged? The hospital doctors tell us to conclude nothing during these first weeks because after a TIA, healing takes time. They tell us TIAs are freaky and unpredictable. They can occur once and never again, or there can be more. When we ask for statistics, they tell us that the odds are not very good. A TIA often heralds a serious stroke. Yes, they say, a subsequent TIA can be fatal, but that's not the way to think.

*. *. *

Ten days later, back in France, I monitor Keith's slow recovery. His physical strength returns first and our two dogs breath a sigh of relief when their master returns to walk duties, first thing, last thing, and a for an hour in the afternoons. What would stop Keith from walking the dogs? As he emerges from the trauma, I note he is more forgetful, and that he has a shorter fuse. The trouble is he has always been an absent-minded professor, like his father whose slide into dementia was hard to pinpoint because he was always on a different planet. Once, arriving home from work, he greeted Keith's best friend as his son. He routinely forgot names and called his grandchildren The Boy and The Girl. But I don't remember irritability. His gentle, smiling attempts to cover up his mistakes were very different from Keith's flaring temper. It's as if he carries a placard saying, 'Don't bother me with it!'.

Our English GP keeps an eye on him, as does a French heart consultant and as a year, and then two years pass, the Bristol Airport episode becomes more of a faded snapshot. However, the red alarm button stays in my pocket and isn't thrown away. By the time we are making plans to move to the island, Keith is less of a powder keg and more like the man I remember.

The aftershocks of this first eruption continue in fits and starts, in scares and recoveries, in periods of high anxiety followed by a slow wind-down.  until it's March 2023 when we are in the caravan and he is out in all weathers digging mile-long trenches to carry water pipes and electricity cables for the house that will be built, sometimes with a spade, sometimes on the old digger that he couldn't bear to leave behind in France and had transported all the way to the island. There are changes, but not ones that alarm me. He can no longer rely on a bottomless pit of energy and at the end of a day's hard labour, he is tired. Sometimes I find him asleep on the sofa.

If we had moved to a suburban bungalow with a small garden and online shopping and a bus stop, maybe we would have absorbed the aftershocks more easily but, Reader, we have come here to be crofters, to care for animals, and to be somewhat self-sufficient. In gales and torrential rain, ditches must be dug and the sheep need feeding. Keith gladly labours on, and we put away the photo of a flight that finished with him in hospital.

February 2022

Dogs on a sheep-covered island

The best beach in the world is a half-hour drive away, a long, curved bay of white powder sand backed by high perpendicular dunes. The colours of sea change with the weather and the light from a Caribbean turquoise to many shades of grey to a wonderful sparkling monochrome of silver and black. 

Before I continue, I need to tell you, dear Reader, that this is a sheep-covered island and there are notices pinned up on fences and gates warning dog owners about dogs worrying livestock. We pass by, not paying much attention.  In France, our dogs are never on leads, and stay (roughly) within earshot as they race through the vineyards. We have an agreement with them that we all end up back at the car after we have (separately) completed the familiar circuit. Since we came here, we have been taking the dogs to the mile-long beach and we let them run themselves ragged along the sand. You can probably guess what's coming.

It's half-way through our investigative stay, the weather is relatively fair for once and we're on the beach, as usual, with the dogs. It's 4 pm, the sun is low, and our shadows are Giacometti stick figures stretched long across the sand. What triggers a change in the dogs' behaviour we will never know, but instead of running along the beach, in and out of the sea, they belt straight up the vertical sand dunes and vanish over the top. We call. We call some more. We labour up the sand dunes, thigh deep in powder, and from their crests we survey the fields of cows and sheep, but we can't see the dogs. For half an hour, as darkness creeps in, we shout the dogs' names and then we wend our way back to the car, worried sick. There, we still shout as the last of the day turns into a moonless night, but it's a while before two bedraggled, panting creatures sidle up to us and collapse on the grass next to the car. It's too soon to feel relief because we don't know where they have been or what they have done. Tense and anxious, we pile in and start the engine, the dogs on the back seat with their tongues hanging out. Keith turns the car away from the dunes and on to the little sandy track.

Two bright lights start moving very slowly towards us from further down the track.

'What's that?' I ask.

'Looks like a car,' Keith says.

The lights keep coming until they morph into a large black jeep that stops bumper to our bumper and blocks our way. From the front seats, two men get out, walk towards us and stop on either side of our car. Keith winds down his window. Without asking, one man bends to looks at the occupants of the back seat.

'Those your dogs?' he says. He's big, burly, and his face is set in stony anger.

'Yes. They ran away.' I jump in before Keith has a chance to speak and start on the story of how we've been coming here and they've never run away before, but the man cuts me off.

'Your dogs have killed a sheep and mauled another.'

I gasp. It's the news every dog owner dreads. Especially here. Especially in a place where people make a living from sheep and cattle. Especially where crofting is a way of life.

'Can't you read?' he shouts in my face. 'Didn't you see the notices? There's livestock here. There's a hundred and fifty pregnant sheep in that field. One is dead, one is badly injured and I don't know yet how many more have been attacked.'

What to say? Nothing is adequate. I apologise and try to tell this angry crofter that our dogs have never attacked sheep before, never attacked anything before, but really there is no point because the damage is done and no explanation will help us, or the sheep, or our dogs. The other man is leaning in now, asking our names, where we're from, where we're staying, how long we've been here. Having established that we have relatives on the island, the blistering fury is cranked down a notch. Only a notch. At least we aren't tourists,. At least we don't argue back or say, 'It's only a sheep,' as, we later learn, some dog owners do in the same situation.

'Get out,' the first crofter says to me, opening my door. 'Come and see what your dogs have done.'

I go because I have to, and of course I cry at the heartbreaking sight of a pregnant sheep with terrible injuries, huddled in a ditch.

'Will she be all right?' I ask stupidly.

'I've called the vet. She will have to be put down.'

'I'm so sorry,' I say. And I am. I'm appalled.

'And I've phoned the police.'

I'll spare you the rest of this part of the sorry tale because the crofter rightly continues to blast us with his anger and disgust and it ends with us driving back to the rented cottage, shame-faced, silent and shocked to wait for the police and to wait to hear from the crofter if there are more hurt or dead sheep. With the wisdom of hindsight, yes, we should have kept the dogs on leads, but we didn't. Instead we trusted them without any evidence on which to base that trust. So it's our fault, not theirs.

If it were only us in this situation, we would somehow get through it, but our son must be told and his perfectly justified anger and upset will be worse than that of the crofters. For five years, while he has tried to establish himself here as a serious crofter, he has not put a foot wrong because he knows he is being watched and judged by those who were born and bred to the job. As a half-incomer, they are waiting to see if he stumbles. Or gives up. Many do, and depart with their tails between their legs. The islanders aren't quick to accept incomers, let alone befriend them, because more often than not, they don't stay. But my son is determined and has worked on his own, right through every year to fence his land, acres and acres of land, to keep out the deer, and has planted three thousand saplings to create a woodland windbreak. He has bought and bred Hebridean sheep, keeps geese, ducks and chickens, and sells their eggs in a box at his gate, as others do. He has spent five years treading on egg shells in every possible meaning of the phrase so that no-one can level criticism at him, and now here come his parents and within a few weeks their dogs have killed sheep. We really couldn't have done much worse. When we tell him, he is exasperated, sickened and furious. He describes our behaviour as thoughtless and irresponsible, and seriously damaging to him as an incomer-crofter. Over the phone, we go through what will happen with the police and the court, how much we must pay to compensate the crofter, and what we must do to cooperate and to show our genuine remorse. He is ashamed of us, and that's hard to bear.

He sighs. 'You need to think very hard about bringing those dogs back when you come. The locals may forgive you once because they are good people, but if it were to happen again, it will be a very different story. So it can't happen again. News travels very fast so the whole island will know by now and they'll be watching you.'

'We didn't know they couldn't be trusted. They've never done anything like this before.'

'They've never been on an island covered in sheep before! You took a stupid risk. Those dogs should always be on the lead. What on earth were you thinking? They don't obey commands and they don't come when called.' My son has an obedient collie that he trained from a puppy and she goes everywhere with him off the lead. He has a rather dim view of our rescue dogs, or rather our failure to make them obedient. 'Mum, I mean it. You can't do something like this again. You can't come up here with dogs that attack sheep.'

'I know,' I say again. I do understand the enormity of the situation. I do understand his shame in being related to people like us.

When he hangs up, I cry because I am sorry to bring this down on his head when he has worked tirelessly to do everything by the book to be accepted.

At six o'clock the phone rings. It's the crofter sounding less furious, but stern and business like. 'There are no more injured sheep that I can see,' he tells me. 'And another crofter saw one of your dogs with the sheep. Did they both have blood on their faces?'

'I didn't see blood on either of their faces.' It was too dark, and I wasn't looking.

'Well, the smaller dog was involved. I don't know about the big dog.'

'We'll pay compensation of course.'

'I'll let you know.'

We are too shocked at this point to take much notice of his account of maybe only one dog being involved in the death of the sheep, but a year later, it will prove of vital importance and will help decide the fate of each of the dogs. Because, inevitably, there will be another incident.

Ten minutes later the police are on our doorstep, a kindly pair who preface their visit with, 'Don't worry, we're not going to take your dogs away.' From this, we guess that they have made visits like this before. Marlow gets it absolutely right and snuggles up to the male officer who spends the whole visit stroking his head. We are cautioned and told that we will be charged with a criminal offence and will have to appear in the Sheriff Court. Things move slowly on the island and it could be nine months or a year before our case is heard. We are advised to find a good criminal lawyer because a new law, brought in literally weeks previously after too many attacks on livestock - terrible timing on our part here - ,has raised the stakes to punishments meted out on dog owners that include prison, a fine of up to £40,000, a ban on ever owning a dog again and a ban on living on agricultural land. It will depend on whether the sheriff wants to make an example of us. If he does, our planned life on the croft will be down the drain.

The following week we're invited to the crofter's house to pay our dues. By now our loose connections to the island have been worked out and we're welcomed cordially by him, his wife and family. Over a lot of red wine and drams, we hand over £1000 and the best bottle of whisky we could find in the Co-op, compensation for two dead sheep. The family is kind, but we're not allowed to go without a warning shot from the crofter.

'Those are gun dogs, the wrong dogs for here. When you come back, if you come back, you need to think very hard about bringing them with you. I would suggest you get a Lab.'

We know, we know. His words, echoing those of our son, hang over our heads like a dark cloud and follow us back to France. Briefly, we try and fail to re-home the pair of them. But who will take two dogs, one aged eight? We visit dog rescue centres - brutal places much worse than those I've visited in the UK where dogs are confined to small bare cages with concrete floors and are never walked.  Because the dogs are deprived of exercise and love and a normal life, they grow feral, and the success rate for rehoming is low. Long before you go inside, you can hear the desperate barking. The French don't love dogs the way the Brits do.

What follows is a frenetic month of selling and packing up the house, and when we set off for France in our two cars, somehow Marlow and Willow are still with us, on the back seat of my Zoe, coming with us to the island covered in sheep.

February 2022

Heartache 2: We try out North uist

The mood for what remains of our island-on-trial period is sombre. The worry cloud accompanies us on walks, dogs always on leads, pulling like trains because its not what they are used to. The few folk we meet and chat to say nothing unless we raise the subject first - Island etiquette, perhaps - but they know. The police return to take full statements, to caution us, and to tell us again that it will take a year for our case to be heard, so the cloud is stationary for the foreseeable future. Our son is barely speaking to us.

While I think quickly and act quickly, Keith store things up and turns them over in his own time. Because he adores our dogs and finds comfort in their simple needs and emotions, he feels this situation keenly. We do talk, but we go round and round the same circles. Hire a dog therapist when we get home? But how do you train dogs not to attack sheep when there are no sheep in the French village where we live? Find new homes? Because they are inseparable, we'd want them to be together, but who would want two rescue dogs? With a heavy heart, I plan to place ads on Facebook and contact local dog and cat organisations, but I'm not hopeful. The other option hardly bears thinking about - to leave them in a cage in a French dog rescue centre.

Willow, a whippet-cross, was a pathetic puppy who had been abused and starved by her owner. When we adopted her, she was three months old, skinny as sticks, very fast, and chewed her way through duvets, duvet covers, cushions, shoes and widgets as she expressed her deep insecurity. That dog cost us a fortune, but it wasn't her fault that she was a bundle of nerves. Great big grey-haired Marlow lived a roaming life in a small village in the Pyrenean mountains. Everyone knew him. His did his daily rounds of the village and was fed by the chef at the local restaurant. His was a fine life, but his master died. A neighbour took him in, and a doggy friend of mine told us about him. We drove for four hours, let Willow out of the car, and within two minutes the two of them were playing chase round and round the garden, the best of friends. Then we were driving back with two dogs not one. Marlow is the gentlest soul, but had never worn a collar and never been on a lead. At the age of eight, he had a lot to learn.

Now, in the Uist rental with the views, we worry about the dogs and their uncertain future and the stress takes its toll. Keith looks grey and haggard. Both of us have gremlins on our shoulders that chatter about huge fines and our son's reputation and the wrath of crofters and what on earth to do about it all. And it's the worst winter ever, according to the locals, so the first dog walk at 7 am needs courage and many layers of heavy-weather clothing. Keith does it without fail, without complaint. Up he gets, pulls on clothes and boots, and out he goes, dogs on leads of course, in the rain and hail, leaning into the gales, down the track.

It's a week after the dog-sheep run-in and I'm making coffee and wondering why Keith isn't back for breakfast yet. Ever since his first stroke, I am more vigilant, more watchful. I go into the bedroom with the front-facing window. My hand flies up to my mouth. Oh no. He is sitting at the roadside, head down, the dogs still miraculously on their leads. Out I go after ramming my feet into my wellies, running, heart pounding.

Keith lifts his head. 'Slipped on black ice,' he says.

There's no trace of ice. I take the dogs. 'Can you get up?'

'Yes,' he says, but doesn't.

It takes a while for him to assemble his long arms and legs and slowly, like unfolding a tripod, he is able to get to his feet, and with me holding his arm, we stagger in slow motion through the rain, dogs in tow, back to the cottage. I extract him from his heavy weather gear and get him on to the bed.

'Was it like last time?' I ask, as he lies with his eyes closed.

'No, no. Black ice.'

I know that isn't true. I phone the GP and he asks if I can drive Keith in. Now.

There's a medical student in the room and Dr W asks if we mind him being present. They listen as Keith tells them it's nothing, that he slipped on black ice, and Dr W exchanges a look with me that is full of unsaid words that tell me he's not accepting the black ice story either. We both know that Keith is in denial, unable to countenance the possibility of this being a repeat incident. That's just too scary. The student begins a long check list of short physical tests. It's quite obvious that he's running through his repertoire of signs of a stroke. It's slow and detailed. They confer. Dr W does a few checks himself, looks in K's eyes, tests his reflexes. They confer again. By now, Keith is more himself and seems to be following the proceedings.

'OK, I think this is probably another TIA, but a very mild one. I can't find any signs except a slight lack of movement in one eye.' Dr W tells us. He turns to Keith. 'I'd like you checked out at Stornaway Hospital. I can arrange that. Can someone take you? You'll need to get the ferry and then it's an hour's drive to the hospital. You should be able to come home the same day.'

'We can arrange that,' I say, thinking I'll ask our son who knows the routine.

'Right, I'll get that organised and phone you.' He turns again to Keith. 'I'd rather be safe than sorry. You'll have an ECG and we can take it from there. OK?'

Keith nods. 'Thank you. I don't think it's the same as last time.'

'It may not be, or it could be a lesser version of the same thing. Either way, we need to know how to treat you.'

'What are the options?' I ask.

'Probably statins and keeping an eye on him.'

'What are the chances of it happening again?' I have to ask.

'We don't know. After one diagnosed TIA and now this, there is a greater chance of more. I'm sorry I can't be more optimistic.'

We are subdued, driving back to the cottage. Keith is still resisting the GP's explanation and sticking to his own story. This second stroke, however mild and minor, if indeed that's what it is, has put our relationship on a different footing with Keith on a red alert list and me appointed the watchful observer. I can't say this to him.

That evening, the GP phones to tell us Keith has an appointment at the hospital the following day. They don't hang about here. I phone our son who offers to take him, and I'm mighty relieved.

By the end of the week, we are back in Dr W's room, hearing that the results from the ECG are normal. No obvious signs of a TIA. However, the doctor's tone is serious and cautious, and I wonder if he thinks the hospital has missed something. From now on, Keith needs to take statins and will be monitored. Then we have the conversation about stress.

'I know this isn't easy, but you need to try to avoid stress. You're not still working, are you?'

'An academic never retires,' K says. 'I'm not running a department any more but I am writing a research paper. I don't find it stressful…let's say it's challenging.'

I try to catch Dr W's eye and convey in a single meaningful glance that my husband gets very stressed and rants and raves and fumes when the software plays up or when a table has a rogue number that ruins his theory. Logic seems to be a particularly troubling subject and you would be forgiven for thinking that some days he was being tortured. And then there is the ongoing saga of the dogs. I tell Dr W briefly, and he offers his sympathy.

'Off you go,' he says, 'and just take it easy. Phone me if you have any concerns.'

And so we are released back into our final two weeks on the island, only now we have an elephant in the living room that we have to skirt round and sometimes bump into. In the evenings we talk, but there's little left to say. It's a waiting game, for Keith and for the dogs.Your Title

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Early August 2022
House No 3 and one sad dog in a byre

I don't have much to say about this place. The byre is on the other side of the island. The landscape is quite different, flat grassy machair stretching for miles without the watery jigsaw of the east coast. The byre is splendidly upmarket, an open-plan space with a bedroom and wet room with heated floor. We don't settle. We are jumpy and snap at each other, both in the same space. Marlow behaves oddly, tries to hump K a lot, is clearly disturbed. After many aborted attempts across bogs to reach the sand dunes that rise in the distance, we finally get to one perfect horse-shoe beach of white sand and long, lapping waves. We sit in a row for a long time and stare out at a sun-lit sea. 

Another day, another bay. But on this second beach an enormous dead whale lies rotting, its big bones blown all over the sand, the stench disgusting. It worries me that I find a dead whale on a small Scottish island when I'm writing a novel about a beached whale on a small Scottish island. It's here if you want to read it: https://www.linen-press.com/shop/the-water-all-around-us/

Mostly we are preoccupied with having only one sad dog. We are all subdued.

Late August 2022

House No 4 or 1

We are back where we started, in the in-laws' house, but with only one dog. It's free for a fortnight and we retreat here with gratitude, glad of the familiarity of the rooms and drawers and cupboards and their contents, and its closeness to the beach.

How will Marlow react to coming back here on his own? Will he search for Willow? Will he miss her more here where she may have left a trace?

The days tick away. We go to and from the shed on our croft where we unloaded all the stuff from the trailer. Stuff goes into that shed, and stuff comes out, depending on what's missing in each rented home. On one such visit, our neighbour, A, asks us if we'd be interested in a long-term rental just a mile away? Would we be interested? Of course we would. Over the next days, he does some discreet brokering, the outcome of which is an email offering us a cottage not for a fortnight but for months. The owner doesn't come here any more and the cottage has been empty for years. We meet her son, an architect up briefly from Edinburgh who will modernise the place for his family next year, but we can have it as it is, if we want. We want! When can we move in? In two weeks, he replies. When I've got a contract and bought a new fridge and a new hoover.

The status of our neighbour, A, rises to that of hero.

14 September 2022
Eccles and Tripod 

Today my son brings two black rams in a van from his croft to ours. Back home, grass is not plentiful enough, but they can eat their fill on our virgin twenty acres. As they leap out of the van and run through the open gate, I wonder how they feel, taken from a smallish enclosed field in the company of five lambs to a big empty croft. Empty, that is, apart from Blackbird.

Blackbird is a wedder (a neutered ram), one of four belonging to M. When the croft changed hands from her to us, she took the four wedders to her cousin's croft on the other side of the road. But in the early hours, M was woken by plaintive bleating, and there was Blackbird, outside her caravan window, singing in the dead of night to be allowed back to the place he calls home. Now he's always there, far away on the headland. Will they be friends, Blackbird, Tripod and Eccles?

25th December 2022
Rams with attitude

The two rams are always together, waiting for me at the highest point of the croft above the road, a personal welcome committee. They set up a chorus of baaing. Hello, Eccles and Tripod, I shout. Yes, I'm coming with your biscuits. When I've fed the ewes and lambs. And Blackbird. Just hang on. I'll be back.

By the time I have fed the others, they've walked from their vantage point to the exact spot where I pour their biscuits into a yellow washing up bowl.  I know, but I still haven't tracked down a trough. I climb over the gate into the field, and there they are, big eyes staring up at me, jostling for prime position. As I pour the biscuits they head-butt each other out of the way, Tripod's four horns are sharper and nastier, so Eccles bows out and moves. For him, I pour a separate pile of biscuits straight onto the grass. Look, I say, two equal portions, but still they fight and barge each other, heads down, horns locked.  I watch, amused, and know not to put my hands and arms in amongst those clashing horns. I've heard they can break a man's leg.

12th January 2023

The JCB

My heart leaps with joy when I see it - a yellow JCB parked on the croft like a large, ungainly bird. It was promised two weeks ago, a week ago, or maybe this week, but I don't believe promises any more. Yet here it is. Today it is idle, perhaps admiring the view, or just waiting, like I have waited seven months for work to begin on this piece of wet land that will be my temporary home. I call a welcome to the metallic bird, and skip home like a child who's been given the best ever Christmas present.

13th January 2023

Work begins

Not just a yellow JCB today, but JA who drives it, and two lads with shovels. They are making a bell mouth, an entrance into what will be our caravan site. They are knee deep in mud, in bog, in last year's crushed flag iris. Do they wonder why I am staring at them with a crazy grin on my face?  

Later, a ton of smashed black rocks come on a lorry and are tipped into the bog. These are for the foundation layer, coarse and heavy and space-filling, and it's for this layer that we've been smashing up the ruin, watched by the white sheep. Concrete, roof tiles and rubble will follow - if we can move it across the road. Watch this big space. 

1st February 2023

Waiting, waiting, waiting...

We wait. The land is a bog. A caravan on here would keel over and sink to its knees. We wait for earthworks to begin. We wait. We wait. Rocks by the ton arrive, are dumped in the bog and disappear. There are delays. We wait. Finally the site is finished, but the caravan can't be moved in the endless gales. We wait some more.

And then we have one magic windless day and the caravan is dragged to the site. The relief is huge and palpable after spending seven months in almost as many rented cottages. There's no water or electricity but who cares? The view is magnificent and the rooms, in a line like those on a barge, are bright. I play house, unpack some of my things, tack a rug to a wall. How quickly it feels like home. 

15th March 2023

But not in the caravan. How we take it for granted - the lovely clear liquid that comes out of the taps and pours with gorgeous steam and heat from the shower head and flushes the toilet. We have none of that.

We fill gallon jars with tap water from the empty cottage we last rented. Ssh, don't tell on us.  We still have a key. Without access to a tap, I honestly don't know what we would do.

We do have calor gas, thank the lord, so I boil pans of water - water to wash up, water to boil vegetables. At the end of the day I take a pan of hot water into the shower, slosh half of it over my body, soap myself quickly and rinse myself with what's left. Not very efficient. Many women would balk at this palaver, but I have crossed the Atlantic in a sailing boat with water rationed to one cup a day. I have previous.

The real water supply is half a mile away, further down the road. Water will have to be brought to the caravan in a very long pipe in a very long ditch that will cross the croft, up hill and down, over hummocks, through ditches, past the sheep, across the black muddy bog. So that's what we do. We dig, mostly with shovels and spades because it's too precarious for the digger.

And after a week of heavy graft, a blue pipe snakes across our land, and our shoulders are sore. As soon as it has reached the caravan, we summon George the Water who makes the final connection.

It's still a surprise that water comes out of taps so I can wash up and clean my teeth. A rush of hot water from the shower is the height of indulgence and luxury. I have adapted to no water and it's taking a while to adapt back. Water is a wondrous thing.

March 2023

The caravan.

Skip a few months, and we have water and electricity. This cosy space reminds me of a boat, of boats we have lived and travelled on. It rocks when the wind roars. The kitchen is like those I've cooked in while afloat, a U-shaped galley wrapped around me so that I can reach every cupboard, drawer and surface without moving my feet. Our bedroom is like those in the sterns of galleons with the bed tucked at the back, between side and overhead wooden cupboards.  

We have come a long way from the first days here when we slept in our clothes and hats and gloves and could see our cold breath when we ate breakfasts of eggy bread and maple syrup with all four gas rings burning to try to keep warm. I bought a ridiculous furry onesie with a hood and lived in it for weeks. Keith never removed his beanie. But the days lengthened, the sun shone sometimes and the caravan thawed to a comfortable temperature. Marlow chose his sofa, and we finally relaxed enough to plan our life on this croft on this island where we'd come to live.

In fields opposite the caravan are Eccles and Tripod, sturdy rams, and my five ewes. I know nothing about sheep, an ignorance which will cost the lives of several, and their lambs, but for now I am blithely unaware that the grazing is inadequate and the deep ditches across the fields are deadly.

In March I planted tulips, pale pink Angelique and red peony ones, tucking the pots against the sunny side of the van. They burst into flower and somehow hung on to their petals for weeks despite the onslaught of gales. I planted sweet peas in troughs, and they too thrived so that I could pick joyful handfuls of flowers to take inside. On good days, we reckoned that we had chosen wisely, against the odds, and that things could only get better.

We were wrong, but I mustn't preempt. This story hasn't yet reached the part where I switch genres and file it under Tragedy.

April 2023

Heartache 3

Keith is out in all weathers digging mile-long trenches to carry water pipes and electricity cables for the house that will be built, sometimes with a spade, sometimes on his old digger that he couldn't bear to leave in France and had transported all the way to the island.  I notice that he can no longer rely on a bottomless pit of energy, but we are both heading through our 70s and can't pretend otherwise.  

If we had moved to a suburban bungalow with a small garden and online shopping and a bus stop, maybe we would have absorbed the aftershocks of that first TIA more easily but we came here to be crofters, to care for animals, and to be somewhat self-sufficient. In gales, hail and torrential rain, ditches must be dug and the sheep need feeding. Keith gladly labours on, and we put away the old photo of a flight that finished with him in hospital.

But he has been feeling a bit off colour. Several times, I come home to find him lying on his bed instead of digging ditches.

'I don't feel quite right,' he says, before I ask the question.

'How not right?'

'Flat. My heart is not quite right.'

Enough said. He needs to see Dr W. And to my surprise, he agrees.

When he returns from the surgery, he's covered in sticky tabs and wires with has a little monitor around his neck.

'Dr W says he can maybe hear a slight irregularity. I have to wear this for three days and they'll know if there's anything to worry about.'

'Who's listening in?'

'A doctor in Stornaway gets the read-outs.'

'And then what?'

'I take this gubbins back to the surgery on Monday and if there's anything to worry about, I'll hear.'

On Monday, Keith takes the monitor back, and we carry on. When four days have come and gone and we hear nothing, we assume he's in the clear. The gremlin who has reappeared to sit on both our shoulders mutters about previous incidents, but we tell it to shut up. 

Until midnight on Thursday, both of us asleep in bed, when there is a knock on the caravan door and Marlow is barking loudly. When I peer out, there's a police van outside, one officer at our door, another emerging from the vehicle.

'Oh heavens, now what?' I say as I drag on joggers and a jumper.

I open the door to two police officers in full regalia with bells and whistles. They don't hang about.

'Sorry to disturb you at this hour,' one says, before turning to Keith. 'We need to take you to the hospital.'

What? We exchange baffled looks.

'Why?' Keith asks.

'You've been wearing a heart monitor,' the policewoman continues 'and they've picked up something that requires immediate attention.'

'Who's picked it up?' I ask.

'The doctor who monitors the read-outs that come in.'

'But why now in the middle of the night?' I ask.

'I don't know. Maybe he's only just read the print-outs.'

Keith is looking stunned. As I am. 'When do I need to go?' he asks.

'Now.'

'So I need to drive him to the hospital now?' I ask.

'No. We're here to take him.'

The pair of us are so shocked at being woken at midnight and told this news, that we just stand there like idiots and stare into space. Marlow is at Keith's side, equally bemused by this nighttime visitation.

'Can you pack a bag?' the woman prompts.

'Yes, yes,' I say, and go off to find a holdall, and stand over Keith, prompting him to put in a change of clothes and his laptop and whatever. Neither of us is thinking straight. Keith has gone silent so it's me who asks the daft question.

'What will happen once he gets to the hospital?  Can I come and see him tomorrow?'

'He may be taken to Stornaway or he may be air-lifted to Glasgow.'

WHAT!

'What have they found?' Keith finds his voice.

'Ventricular tachycardia.'

The policeman has to repeat it twice more. Long words that have no meaning.

'So that's serious?' Keith asks, of course knowing the answer because policemen don't come for you in the middle of the night unless it's serious.

'Can be.' Abbreviated and evasive. 'If you're ready, we need to get on our way.'

Enough standing around and asking questions. The policewoman pats my arm.

'Try not to worry. He's in good hands.' It's a cliché, but what else can she say?

Before I have time to check what Keith has in his bag because he is the worst packer in the world, the uniforms are leading him away, opening the door to the caravan, and they're driving away down the track.

I reach for the laptop and google those two long words. 'Ventricular tachycardia episodes may be brief and last only a couple of seconds without causing harm. But episodes lasting more than a few seconds can be life-threatening. Sometimes ventricular tachycardia can cause the heart to stop in sudden cardiac arrest.' I take several deep breaths and sit down on the sofa. This is bad.

I stroke Marlow and tell him the night visit and Keith's departure is all very irregular and worrying. He gives one big sympathetic sigh and lies on my feet. We stay there a long time. I compose what I hope are calm emails to my son and sister because I can't deal with this alone. Of course they won't get them until morning but sending them helps. Eventually I go back to bed, Marlow curled up beside me, but don't get much sleep.

I wake to silence. There's no Keith coming back from an early walk with his dog. No clatter of coffee-making. I'm feeling shaky and phone my sister, the person I always turn to when dreadful things happen. She's shocked too, but also sensible, and says we don't know yet how bad it all is. The need to tell others is overwhelming so I fire off emails to my close friends and of course they send back their sympathy and support. Then I talk to my son who is as worried as I am. I promise to update him as soon as I hear. What's left unsaid, because neither of us wants to clothe it in words, is the possibility that Keith's health problems will put paid to the whole crazy crofting plan we have worked so hard to see through this far. It's been more than a year since we left France, and we've been challenged at every turn, yet here we are, in the caravan, with sheep in the field outside, and we dare to imagine the house that will be built, the house we will live in next year. But island life requires a certain level of fitness and stamina, and we both know that alone I couldn't manage. People here are self-sufficient and strong. It would be too cruel if we have to give up now.

That afternoon, I get the longed-for email from Keith. He sounds almost jolly after being air-lifted to a hospital in Glasgow. 'Quickest trip from here to there ever,' he writes. For five days, he is monitored and scanned, and then I get the blessed news on a phone borrowed from a nurse because Keith refuses to have a mobile. He tells me that the docs think the diagnosis is in doubt, that the irregular heartbeat may be something different, and that he's coming home the next day.

'How are you getting back?' I ask.

'Same way I got here. By plane. Without a ticket,' he says gleefully. 'Can you meet me at the airport?'

I can and I do. Marlow in tow.

Another drama but so far not a tragic ending. Dr W prescribes stronger medication and I watch as Keith slowly returns to being physically active, happy to be back on his digger, or with a spade hacking peat out of ditches. Maybe it was a false alarm. Time will tell, and you can't live each day wondering if a possible calamity lies just ahead. So we carry on. We are not out of the woods, but we can see the clearing beyond the trees. I try not to watch his every move.

15 July 2023

Losing Eccles

Keith is away at a conference so I'm in charge of the flock alone for a few days. I relish the prospect of solitude and silence.

Near the caravan, on the other side of the fence, is a flat grassy patch where my rams, Tripod and Eccles, hunker down in the heather each evening so that only their trademark horns are visible above the purple and green. Behind them, the ground rises steeply and shelters them from the east wind. I shout a greeting and they call back before they stand, shake themselves awake and wander off for another day's grazing. It's a boggy swamp of a place which has defied drainage, despite the digging of ditches by us and those before us. The land sits in water. You can plunge in up to your thighs if you don't watch where you are going. I know.

Late in the day, they pause and rest on the top of the hummock, and watch the world go by, their distinctive heads silhouetted against the evening light. Tripod has four splayed unicorn spikes. Eccles' horns are thick, curled shells hugging the sides of his fine head, reminding me of Leah in Star Wars.

I count the sheep before my day begins. The rams are easy to spot near my windows. The flock of nine ewes and lambs, Hebridean and Soays, can be anywhere on the two acres of fenced land that dips down to several small, rocky beaches. It's soothing to watch them together, heads down, in the same place for hours, or moving slowly in search of choice grass. Sometimes there's an urgency, as if at a starter gun has been fired, prompting them to bolt to some undisclosed finishing line, nine moving as one. What makes them decide to move on? Which one gives the signal? How is that decision conveyed? And why do they always obey?

Today the flock of nine are black dots on the farthest headland, but the rams are not on their slope. This is odd. I go up the hummock, and I see Tripod by himself way over on the other side of the field. No Eccles. Where is Eccles? The rams have lived here for six months and never have I seen one without the other. They are half-brothers and inseparable. Their lives are lived as a pair. I go back in, pull on my wellies and wooly hat, and set off down the road that borders the field. Where is Eccles? I climb over the corner gate and move across the bog, checking the ditches because accidents can happen, but surely not to Eccles who is a great big chap and familiar with this terrain. After several futile circuits, I'm thinking that probably Eccles has escaped. But how? I make another circuit of the field on the inside, checking the fence, looking for gaps and holes, but it is intact. Worried now, I return to the caravan.

Our lovely Postie, who is also a crofter, arrives in her red van and reads my worried face.

'I've lost a ram,' I blurt out.

'Oh no. A dead ram?' she says, and she knows about dead sheep having tended her flock of a hundred from childhood.

'No, no,' I reply. 'He's missing. I can't find him.'

'Oh! How can he be missing? We can see the whole field from here. You've searched the ditches…'

'Yes, of course.' I say, too quickly.

'He's maybe jumped the fence,' she says, hand on my arm, knowing my concern.

'But why?'

'Smelled something. A ewe on heat. Don't worry, he'll come back. It happens.'

'How long can a ram stay away?' I ask.

'Oh, a week. More. They can wander for miles. I'll keep my eye out.'

And I know she will, this good-hearted woman who must have to listen to many tales of woe as she hands out comfort and advice along with our letters and parcels.

I am restless and agitated, and stomp back over the field, calling to Tripod, asking him where Eccles is. That ram hasn't moved from the same spot all day. I go inside for the third of fourth time - I've lost count - and fill a plastic tub with sheep nuts to rattle. I'm tired and worried and sweaty from dashing about and I'm aware that I must look like a mad woman. I shake the sheep nuts and call Eccles. Pointless, all of it. Eccles isn't there. I note that that my kind neighbour is not at home. Good, he isn't witnessing this ridiculous display.

Eventually I decide to call it a day because Eccles has somehow escaped and will come home. And with that thought, I'm out of my chair, pulling on my wellies, and getting into the car to drive up and down all the tracks and lanes in a futile search of the roadside and neighbouring crofts and hedges. When I get back, I am done in, give up, and go to bed. Sleep is elusive, and no, I'm not going to count sheep.

It's morning again and the reel is on replay. I spot the nine who are contentedly unaware of the unfolding drama, but the hummock is still vacant. Tripod is standing in exactly the same damn spot, motionless, his head up. And then it dawns on me and I curse my stupidity. Why didn't I understand yesterday? Tripod is rooted to the spot, night and day, for a reason and the reason is a need to tell me something. I'm out of the door and across the croft in a flash.

'Tripod! Tripod!' I call. No reply. Usually he calls back.

He's standing on a ridge that traverses the field, where the ground is drier. It's only when I get near him that I see that there's a deep dark ditch to one side, easily missed, though I'm sure I checked all the ditches when I rampaged over the place yesterday. I'm at Tripod's side when I look down into the black water. I see the magnificent horns first, ribbed and curled. Then his head facing forwards as if he's looking at something. He's upright, wedged tight in the ditch, weed and grass floating in strands over his sturdy black body. And of course he is dead.

'Eccles!' I say. 'Oh Eccles!' I'm in tears, crouched down, touching his curly wool and hating seeing him like this, pitiful and ignominious, held in a ditch. He must have fallen in and been unable to climb out. How could this happen to a fine, healthy ram who knows every bit of his territory?

My son is overwhelmed by his twice-daily boat trips as well as looking after his own croft and his own animals, and it's late when he pulls up outside the caravan. I've had all day for guilt and self recriminations. Why didn't I find Eccles sooner? If I'd gone to where Tripod stood guard the first day, I might have found Eccles alive and saved him. It was stupid not to start my search at that spot.

'Accidents are the worst,' my son says, setting off a pace I can barely match. And once at the ditch, 'We need to get him out before the water is contaminated.'

'Is he dead?' I ask, just in case…

'Oh he's definitely dead,' he replies. 'Stupid!' He does not say out loud.

Back we go to where Keith has left the digger half a mile down the road. My son jumps on and sets off at a cracking pace over the croft, a perilous route on uneven, boggy land, up and down some steep slopes with me running behind. Why? I don't know, maybe in case the digger keels sideways and I need to pull my son out from under its carcass. Maybe just to do something. But he makes it across and heads for the gate to the field that contains one live and one dead ram, but inside it's too boggy, too soft. The digger slides forwards on land that rolls like the sea under the weight  of the machine. There's no carrying on.

'Can't be done,' my son says, leaping off. 'We'll have to get Eccles out without the digger and bury him near here.' He manoevres the digger away from the swamp, only just freeing it from the mud, and drives it back to hard ground. That was too close to being a story about a digger and a ram sunk in a bog.

His pace doesn't slow as he strides over to where Tripod still stands stock still, me running a few paces behind. Bending, he seizes Eccles' horns. The body is immensely heavy with water but he drags the big ram out of the ditch and lies him down. Splayed on the grass, he is a pitiful sight, the thick black wool streaked with a pale tidemark, the thin legs stretched out useless behind, his eyes open. I look at Eccles through veils of tears.

A water-logged ram is awkwardly heavy to haul and soon my son too is done in. When he stops for a breather, I take one horn. And so we continue, mother and son, a horn each, dragging the ram that was Eccles, and I'm worrying that the horns will come off, and then what?

'Get Tripod into the next field away from the ditches,' he tells me, once we have Eccles deposited near the gate. 'I'll bury Eccles here.'

My son leaves soon after, exhausted and probably angry that I have brought him over after a day of boat trips to sort out a minor tragedy on a croft that should be our responsibility. The timing is terrible with Keith away for only the second time since we came here a year ago.

Alone in the caravan, shaking from the physical effort of the last hour, I watch Tripod all by himself in his new field, near the gate, as if asking to be let back in to be near his brother. Does he know Eccles is dead? What does he feel, the ram who is left behind? This is my first animal death on the croft and I take it badly because my resilience is low after a year of crises. I cry a lot that evening, and crying is not my usual thing. I cry for Eccles, the ram I have fed and talked to, and admired every day high on the hummock, his dignified horned head outlined against the sky. Never again will he and Tripod come at a trot, calling loudly, when they see me rattling their sheep nuts. Never again will they playfully clash horns to be the first to eat. I cry for not reading Tripod's signals sooner, not going over to him when he was telling me, 'Eccles is here.' Could I have saved Eccles?

I cry for the whole damn difficult year of dogs and sheep and Willow gone, and Keith's worrying health, and too many moves from one temporary cottage to another, and the whispers that reach me from the locals and islanders who watch and judge. Are we welcome, or are we are a pair of nuisance incomers pretending to live on their island as crofters. I don't blame them for being cynical, for laughing at us. Many come and go, after finding that life is too harsh. We have to prove ourselves, and acceptance is light years away.

Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep

16th July 2023

Losing Eccles leaves me laden with guilt, and grief.  Last night, Tripod didn't come to hunker down in his night-time place but stood vigil next to the gate. I read his stillness as puzzlement and grief. Do sheep grieve? I take him biscuits but he doesn't want to eat. Taking refuge in trivial domestic tasks, I sigh my way through the morning until it's time for the hour's drive to Benbecula to do the weekly supermarket shop and to collect Keith from the airport. Thank goodness his talk in London went well after a three year absence from the academic conference circuit. Brief news of Eccles I sent by email, not wanting to distract him with domestic upset. His plane is an hour late so I walk Marlow up and down the strip of road by the tiny airport, up and down, up and down, as time stalls.

In the car, he tells me about his conference and I tell him the story of Eccles, broken by heavy silences and more tears. Thinking rationally, maybe there was nothing I could have done, but with the fickle wisdom of hindsight, I replay that first day of Eccles' absence and Tripod standing in the same spot, and in this revised version I go over to him straightaway and find Eccles stuck in the ditch, still alive.

We are half-way through dinner when the unmistakeable roar of a quad slows to a putter outside the caravan, and there is Kenny from the next hamlet.

'Your sheep are over there,' he says, pointing vaguely towards the horizon where his own croft house is just visible. What with his soft accent and his story-telling punctuated by his characteristic cackles of laughter, it takes a while to make sense of what he's saying. And anyway, I'm still preoccupied by rams, and my mind isn't making the transition to the ewes. I catch enough single words to work out that my flock of nine have done a bunk. They must have got out of their field where JA is making the track to the house-to-be and has left some gaps. Currently my sheep are on common grazing a mile away where the land curves round towards more peninsulas that end in rocky beaches.

'Oh no!' I say, several times, pointlessly. 'What shall we do?'

'Catch them!' More cackling laughter.

'Um…can it wait until morning?' I ask with an eye on our half-finished dinner, chilli con carne made specially for Keith's return.

'I would nae if it were me,' he says.

So that's that. For heavens's sake, what alignment of the stars has caused the death of my ram to be followed, the next day, by the escape of the entire flock of ewes? I don't know if all nine have gone, but of course they have, I tell myself, because they always travel in convoy.

And now it's us in convoy behind Kenny on his quad, down the single track road, past the Fish Farm, and there in the road are my neighbouring crofters in shorts and t-shirts and wellies because it's a mild evening and this, for them, is the height of summer with a balmy temperature of 16c. Almost a heatwave. We form a gaggle in the road, and there's banter I can't follow, me being deaf, and them having soft but strong accents, and sometimes switching mid-sentence to Gaelic.

I meet Kenny's wife, Kate. 'Thank you for coming out,' I say, somewhat shame-faced. 'What have I dragged you away from?'

'Eastenders,' she replies. 'But I can catch up on BBC iPlayer.'

'Has this ever happened to you?' I ask Kenny, because I desperately need some reassurance. I am feeling quite the idiot with all these crofter-neighbours out in the road at seven o'clock because my sheep have run away.

'Aye! Of course,' he says, with more laughter.

A sturdy guy in shorts and wellies comes up to us. I don't know him. How can I live in this little hamlet of a place and find a neighbour I've never met?

'We've not met,' I say.

He holds out a hand. 'John, from that croft up there.' He points backwards, to a croft house fairly well hidden from the road, and I note that his voice is less accented and dare I say it…more educated?

'I'm Lynn. Novice crofter. From the caravan.'

He nods, because of course he knows. 'And are you enjoying it here?' He asks. 'I mean apart from the crises,' because of course he knows about the crises because nothing slips past unheard on on the active grapevine.

'Yes,' I reply. 'I am.' And despite everything, I think it's the truth.

'Steep learning curve,' he says, and smiles.

'Do you live by yourself?' I ask and then wonder if that's too forward of me.

'No, with my parents. You may have met my dad, Donald John?'

Why are all the men on this island called Something -John or John-Something. It's confusing for us incomers. 'I think I know him,' I tell John. 'I sometimes meet him driving around in his car. He lowers his window and says, usually, 'I'm looking for my sheep.'

There's a howl of laughter from Kenny. 'Aye, that's about it! That's a nice way of putting it.'

For a while longer, we pass the time of day in hear-say and gossip. They are talking about the witch hunt that has ended in the naming of Hugh Edwards, and condemning the right-wing press, not that they call it that, when from the very end of the track comes another quad, and on it is someone I do know. Here is John Norman whose Chevvies used to graze throughout the winter and spring on the other side of the road from the caravan and who would appear on his quad, come rain, come gale, come snow, at 4.45 pm to feed them. We would sometimes be working in the ruin in the field, knocking down walls and piling up stones for ground fill for a future shed, and we would exchange a few words. He's seventy, born and bred in the cottage he still lives in, a small, wiry guy, who is, I've heard, hugely respected because there's nothing John-Norman doesn't know about rearing sheep. Back in the day, he told me, he had a hundred and knew every single one of them.

Now that we're all gathered, there's more gossip about new buildings and incomers which I can't decipher, until Kenny points to my huddle of sheep on one of the far headlands and suggests we make a start at catching them or we'll be here all bloody night.

And so begins a rather strange dance of humans running about on undulating, rough grassland that ends in a series of headlands down at the sea. We wave our arms and jackets and chase skittish sheep as the sun slides down the sky. There's a lot of running - my goodness these guys are fit - until John-Norman comes up to me, puts a hand on my arm, points at Keith, and says, 'He shouldn't be walking about like this. Send him home.' Because of course he knows about Keith's heart problems and the recent plane-bound trip to a Glasgow hospital. I miss-hear and think he's saying I shouldn't be running about at my age and I laugh.

'I'm not joking,' he says, quick as a flash, his face severe. 'He should be at home.'

Damn my poor hearing. 'I'm sorry,' I say, 'I didn't hear you. I thought you meant me.'

'Get him home,' John-Norman repeats, louder, and he's not kidding and I get the clear message that you don't mess with John Norman. I'm also moved by his compassion because he cares enough to ensure that my husband is not out here when he isn't fit. When I report this exchange to Keith, to my astonishment he goes meekly back to the car and drives away.

An hour and a half has passed with the sheep running circles round us, racing full pelt first one way, then the other, then out towards the end of the headland. Somewhat red-faced and puffed, we re-group in the road where there's a big gap in the fence. The sheep stand and watch us.

'This isn't working,'Kenny says, and turns to me. 'You go out to them and rattle the box of nuts and try to lead them to this gap,' he says. 'We'll spread out behind you. Stop them bolting.'

'OK,' I agree, for who am I to argue?

We take a few more minutes to catch our breath. The others watch a jet trailing across the sky and take turns to guess where it's heading. These folk know one another so very well. I set off through the gap in the fence, calling and rattling my plastic box. And this time, my sheep do what they are supposed to do and follow me. Hesitantly. With little skips and side-steps. Ready to bolt should the desire take them. I walk very very slowly, holding my breath. Beyond the wide gap in the fence, the others have fanned out and only Kenny is out in the road waiting on his quad, ready to block them should they decide to turn left instead of right in the direction of home. And they're through! All nine of them. All walking behind me down the road. 

We have gone all of ten metres when, for reasons unknown, Kenny turns on his engine and revs his quad and the sheep turn tail and run like the wind back through the gap and away to the end of the headland.

'What!!' I say to Kenny.

'Sorry! Sorry!' he says. 'My fault. I wasnae thinking.'

'Why did you put your engine on?'

'I dinnae know.'

I go over to him, and fist-bump his arm. We got so close, so very close. The others have wandered back and are clustered round, sweating, tired, wondering why Kenny did something really stupid. They shake their heads at him, good-humoured though not entirely amused, and he grovels. And swears.

It's 8.30 pm and we've been jogging around the grasslands with our arms out like windmills for two hours, and have just blown our one chance of getting the sheep home tonight. I feel bad that these good people are still out here and not at home taking it easy before the next day's work. Perhaps that's what John-Norman thinks too. Enough of this nonsense.

'I'll get my dog,' he says, 'and I'll round them up into the pen on my croft.' He turns to me. 'My dog won't harm them. Is that OK with you?'

'Yes, of course. I trust you and your dog,' I say, which is true, and anyway what else is left to do? 'Thank you.'

He's back on his quad and heading to his cottage on the tip of the land. By his gate, there are an assortment of interlocked pens where he treats and shears his own sheep, and I bet they don't run away. Kenny is there helping to re-arrange the hurdles so that there's an opening for sheep to be herded in. And then he and Kate, John and I stand back, a bit puffed, while John-Norman does a Superman act which involves collecting his blue-eyed collie, standing up on his quad, and roaring away onto the headland where my sheep are clustered.

We who stay behind can only stand and stare. There are glimpses of fleeing sheep, glimpses of John-Norman standing up in the saddle going at a break-neck pace over unforgiving terrain, glimpses of a collie now lying flat behind the sheep, now creeping around to one side, responding to the calls and whistles of his master. After several circuits of the headland, man, dog and sheep are edging towards the croft.

Kate nudges me and whispers, 'Look through there.Through a gap in the hedges by John Norman's gate appear ears, a horn, and a sheep's face, one I recognise, and behind it a straggle of others, jittery and jumpy and looking for an exit, but John-Norman has them rounded up and heading for his pen, and soon he has seven of the nine shut in, two having done a runner at the last minute.

'That man!' says Kenny.

Gathered round the pen, we check that the sheep are OK and congratulate 'that man'.

'Bad sheep,' I say, bending over the hurdles.

'Bad management,' John-Norman replies, quick as a flash, his eyes stern.

'They escaped where the foundations are being made,' I say by way of a feeble excuse.

John-Norman is having none of it. 'Boundaries,' he replies, fixing me with a steel-eyed stare that says there are no excuses.

It's 10 pm and the sky is streaked with sherbet pink when we arrive back at the caravan. John-Norman backs his trailer up against the gate to my field, opens the tailgate and shoos the sheep out, except they won't budge, probably traumatised by the three-hour chase. In he goes with the hysterical sheep, bent double, grabs Finzi by the horns and drags him into the field.

. 'Git!!' he shouts. The others follow.

We shut the gate, he turns his quad and trailer and roars off home.

I am humbled by the kindness and expertise of my neighbour-crofters, folk who have lived here for decades and generations, and who know everything there is to know about the land and the animals. Out they traipsed on a soft, sunny evening to spend three hours running around and chasing a flock of sheep belonging to this novice crofter when they should have been unwinding after a day's work. And these people do work - early to late, six days a week. They'd probably work on the Sabbath if it wasn't frowned on. I'm very aware that I must not put them to this trouble again. Yup - a steep learning curve rises ahead of me, and unlike Norman-John who started crofting as soon as he could walk, I don't have decades left to climb it.

The track to the house

20th July 2023

From the caravan windows, I watch, while reminding myself to keep breathing, because it looks like something is stirring on the site where our house will be built. Having lived all over the island in temporary cottages for seven months, and now for another five in the caravan, the reality of the house build has faded to a far distant horizon.  Right now, progress seems highly unlikely..

But look, an enormous digger has appeared overnight and sits astride the peninsula. Next to it are huge, pale sacks of stones and gravel - the same as those John Allan used to make the caravan foundations and, if I'm not mistaken, there's John Allan himself in his high-vis jacket. My heart is revving in overdrive.

I'm shoving feet into wellies and have one arm in the sleeve of my anorak, and Marlow and I are off at speed down the road to find out if what I think is happening is really happening. Remember, this all began back in France, almost two years and what seems like a lifetime ago, when our bid on this croft was accepted and we signed up for a new timber-frame house. I have taken my eye off that particular ball because I've been doing a regular circuit round a playing field concealing hidden mines which go off bang and divert you from anything as ordinary as planning a life in a new house.  

John Allan is a man of finely-tuned emotional intelligence and he reads me well. Previous conversations tell me that he understands how hard has been our time here. 'Hello,' he says, as I run up to him like child towards presents on a Christmas morning. 'How are you?'

'I'm very well now that you're here. Are you doing what I think you are doing?'

He smiles. 'I know it's been a long time, but here we are, and we're starting on the track.' He pats me on the shoulder and my face lights up.

'So what happens now? How long will it take to make the track?'

'We'll work our way in from the road. Dig out the peat, pile it up, fill in with rocks and stones. Same as before.'

Only this is on a different scale. The footprint of the house is sprayed in blue paint on the grass, further towards the sea than I remember from the plans, and all the better for it. 'How long will it take?' I ask again, like a child on a long car journey

'It depends how hard it is to break up the rock bed. Maybe three or four weeks.'

'That's wonderful,' I say, and it is.

'You've waited a long time, and it's good to see you looking less stressed. You two have been so stressed.'

'Well, you rescued me during the last crisis when our caravan was dumped on M's concrete. You're the hero who came galloping here on his white horse. Well, green tractor. That was stressful.'

He smiles. I can't imagine anything ruffling this man's equilibrium. 'No more crises?'

'Well, we had a bit of drama the other night. My sheep went missing.'

'I know.' Of course he knows. Everyone around here knows everything. 'I confess it was perhaps my fault because we came over to check out the work to be done, and had to open up the fence there ready to get the equipment in, and we didn't close it off adequately. Sheep can get through very small gaps if the grass on the other side looks greener. I'm sorry.'

'So that's how they got out. I should have seen and closed off the gap,' I say, though I didn't know he had been back.

'Let's say we didn't communicate very well. Anyway, the sheep are back?' He knows they are back.

'Well, after three hours of running around waving our arms, JN got seven of the nine back.'

'So I heard.'

'He was amazing. He tore around on his quad and rounded them up after we'd all failed. The rest of us weren't very useful.'

'Theres nothing JN can't do.'

'I want to thank him, but I've no idea how.'

'Well, you could bake him some scones,' John Allan says.

'Scones?' It seems an unlikely answer.

'Aye, back in the day when his mother and sisters were living in the cottage, they'd be baking bread and scones on a Sunday afternoon.'

'I've never made scones,' I admit.

He laughs. 'Give it a try.'

'OK. I will. Thank you. I wouldn't have thought of that.'

'Well, I'd better crack on,' he says. 'Archie will be back with the tractor and more infill.'

'And I'll go and make some scones,' I reply.

I've stumbled on a significant gap in my island knowledge having not fathomed yet that here people eat scones. There I was thinking cream teas belonged down in Devon, when scones are the staple, made and eaten as we townies eat crusty bread.

A lot of white stuff goes into scones, I discover, after looking up recipes on the internet - white flour, white sugar, six teaspoons of baking powder. Six, really? This is not my cooking comfort zone, but I press the butter into the white ingredients until it all sticks together, roll out the dough with a bottle (no rolling pin) and cut our scone shapes with a tumbler (no cutters). Now will my non-adjustable oven bake scones? The beast has a mind of its own such that turning the dial has no effect on the temperature. Baked potatoes it does good and crisp. Cakes it burns black. Baked veggies take two hours to soften slightly. But the oven bakes the six scones and out they come, a bit golden even. I let them cool and parcel them up with tiny pots of honey and jam to take to J N tomorrow. 

Mission accomplished

Interlude

January 2026

The last entry in this diary is the one above written in July 2023 with us settled in our caravan. my life has finally settled into a gentle, if ignorant and novel round of tending the flock of ewes, now accompanied by their first lambs. Our first lambs.

Our timber-frame house is still a year away,  but the track is finished, and I am need to pull my wandering attention back towards the build. Suddenly I am deluged with email requests from the building company's sales department asking me to choose everything - absolutely everything - that goes into a finished house. I've only ever done this piecemeal.  In France, once we'd finished the floor and walls of one shower-room, we'd set off for the malls to choose a shower screen or a basin and taps, and if I couldn't find what I wanted, it could wait for another trip to another mall.

Doing it all at once, and from glossy online brochures, proves challenging, and comes with a disconnect from reality.  I'm furnishing a theoretical house interior which I can't walk into; I can't go into the rooms and imagine the wooden floors and tiled shower-rooms. I can't work out, as I must, where all the plugs and light switches will go. On my list, I reach taps, and a shutter comes down.  I cannot choose from forty-five mixer taps in black, white, gold or silver. All further decisions have to wait for another day, and a clearer mind.

The reason this account of our journey stopped in July 2023, a year before we move into our house, is that our blithe optimism was cut short by a series of cruel events, not all related, but which came unexpectedly, one after another, and which shook me to the core. They made me question the wisdom of our coming here, and of our staying. Was the island telling us to go away? Up to that point, my discontent about delays and my longing for a settled home were trivial and, compared to what was to come, of little real significance.  And yet here I am, having weathered another two years and I'm disturbed by the incompleteness of the story. I want to fill in the gaps - the good, the bad and the ugly.  So I'm diving back in to record and reflect on events that have shaped the rest of our time here. How long I'll last under the troubled water I do not know, but, born swimmer that I am, I am good at holding my breath. 

Looking back, I rather cringe at myself in my pink-tinged spectacles embracing the elemental beauty of the watery island and rejoicing in the stroke of luck - son married to island girl - that brought us here.  Down-sizing, and moving to be near family when you are in your 70s is one thing, but uprooting to a small, gale-blown place on which people are either islanders or incomers, is another. As you read on, you will hear my naive enthusiasm trailing off along with the spirit of adventure that characterised our mood in the the early, heady months and years. Before fate's wrecking ball threw us some hard knocks.  From here on in - at least this is what I tell myself  - I am writing to bring myself up to date with our reality and to tell the truth about trying to adapt to it. I do not hide my troubled spirit. The other reading is that this is just an exercise in self-indulgence; it's therapy disguised as story-telling. There is a third possibility - we writers don't understand ourselves or our world until we write the story.  It has taken more than two years for me to be able to look, long and hard, and with honesty, at what I shied away from because it was too upsetting. Only in writing about the past can I colour it with truth and integrity.

Either way, at this stage of the telling, a question mark hangs over me: can we continue here with a life that is altered, uncertain and fragile?