Don't Panic

One evening during our stay at Iona Abbey there was a Guest Show, a talent show of sorts. Iona Community resident staff, visitors to the Iona Abbey (such as Jane and I), and visitors to the MacLeod Center (an Iona Community facility geared towards people accompanied by children and others wishing a more modern accommodation) participated. The show started with performances by children. One five-year old English lad played masterfully on the piano [made me jealous]. Afterwards he told a five-year old’s joke about three pigs that went in to a restaurant; two of them ordered wonderful [non-pork] dishes for each course whilst the third kept ordering only water. After the meal when asked by the waiter why he had only ordered water at such a fine restaurant, the third pig replied, “Because one of the pigs has to go wee, wee, wee all the way home.” An English family trio (mother and her daughter and son) played a violin trio.

An English couple [well at least they acted like they were a couple] from Sheffield, UK did a duet that if they had been American would be called 20^th century burlesque. You may have seen English films (usually in black and white, they’re that old) from the 1930’s & 1940’s of broadly performed British stage acts. “Sarah” was dressed in an apron and a plaid head scarf. “Harry” had on his farmer’s cap, work clothes, and his arms and shirt pockets full of vegetables. They sang wistfully and longingly to each other, “Oh Sarah, when I pat the bum of my cow, how reminded I am of you!”

Four other Sheffield English persons (two male, two female) performed “The Dangerous Song”. It also appeared to be a classic English stage revue number. The four singers stood in a line across the stage, fairly close together, alternating male and female. The first singer, a man, sang about being a policeman, and how he luved being a policeman, ahnd, as he sang, well, he would gesticulate at certain words with a thrusting out of his arms, both arms, both left and right, and then bringing them back to his sides. When he was done his verse he stood silent as the woman next to him sang her verse about how much she luved being a conductor on a train. She punctuated her words with gestures as well, but her movements were more up and down, standing tall and squatting. When she completed her verse, she and the “policeman” sang their verses in unison, and every time the policeman thrust out his arms the “conductor” would quickly squat and barely avoid being whacked by the policeman’s hand. This cycle of different characters, verses, and movements progressed across the four singers until in the finale we saw two singers thrusting out their arms just as the other two singers squatted and avoided getting hit. It was marvelous fun to watch and hear.

Another singing act involved a middle-aged male explaining to the audience that his grandmother had claimed Scottish heritage and that she had taught him a song that she had learned from her Scottish Glaswegian grandfather. He sang earnestly, seriously, “Well the streets of our toon are all covered aroon with stuff that was beautiful golden and broon.” Afterwards some folk were commenting on how they felt they were getting the genuine Scottish cultural article, a Scottish lament of some sort. The singer went on, “It was left there of course by a big Clydesdale horse, and its name was manura, manura manyah. Wih manura manyah, wih manural manyah, wih manura, manura, manura manyah.” He then indicated to the audience who were slowly getting suspicious that something was afoot, that, “Aye, it’s a sweet chorus, so sing it wih me!” which they all proceeded to do [well, actually, not all. Most of the Dutch contingent at the Abbey (17 of them) were able to speak English fairly well. However, they had been learning it from British television shows, and the term “manura” hadn’t shown up in any of the programmes they’d viewed. One of them, however, had been watching gardening programmes, and she knew right well what the term was and realized what was going on. So she quickly translated and shared with her Dutch colleagues what it meant]. The audience sang the chorus several times, each time with real *feeling*. [Full disclosure: your author was the one who sang this song]

This morning Jane’s houseboy/tour guide had a major hiccup. In laying out seventeen reservations over a five-week holiday, there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with various B&B’s and hotels. Somewhere along the way the houseboy wrote down “July 18 – Glenview, Skye”. But when same houseboy, shortly before departing on this trip, searched for telephone number for this ”Glenview”, he did not realize that there are two Glenview lodgings on Skye, and he managed to locate the wrong one. Imagine his surprise/consternation when he telephoned the Glenview to confirm the reservation and to check what time dinner was, only to hear the proprietor of that Glenview that he did not have a reservation for White-Hassler for that evening? Ah, but there was backup. Check the email trail online and see what the number was that should be called. This activity escalated the anxiety, for the messages for the pertinent time period had somehow disappeared. Ever remembering the admonition from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”: Don’t Panic, the houseboy set aside the question to allow time for subconscious memory work to happen.

We packed up the car that we had parked the night before along the Plockton waterfront. Plockton was the location the BBC used to film a television series called “Hamish Macbeth”, the protagonist being a small village police officer tackling small village offenses. Although I was sure we would someone draw upon the sleuthing spirit of Hamish to solve our mystery of where we had a pre-paid reservation, I had, perhaps a bit more angst at play than I realized. We got in the car and I started to back out of our parking place [note: ALL of Great Britain was built by and for Lilliputians. EVERYTHING is small, narrow, low. Well, actually not everything. They have tractor trailers that tower several feet higher than those on the U. S. Interstates, but everything else seems, um, snugger], carefully I thought, when I heard and felt a smack of the back of our vehicle against something solid. After uttering an appropriate oath and turning off the ignition, I got out of the car to see that I had hit the rear of a [small] car behind us that I hadn’t seen. Whilst ringing up in my mind’s eye how much expense I had just incurred, I walked back to survey the damage. An elderly Plockton resident, a kind-faced woman, peered at the bumper of the other car and said, “Oh, there’s no damage there. Why you hardly grazed it.” It was her vehicle. I asked if there was anything I could do for her. She said, “Oh, no. It’s fine. Why I did just the same to Hector Sample’s car up the road just last week. It’s easy to do around here.” I thanked her, surveyed a wee bit of scratch on our bumper and assumed that Hertz would find some way to extract their pound of flesh, and realizing that our car was blocking others, got in and prepared to drive away. But before I could the woman whose car I’d just bumped came up to my window and said, “Ah, now be sure to have a wonderful time on the rest of your holiday!”

We left Plockton and drove to Broadfort on Skye, where there was a tourism office that, in the event, was of no assistance whatsoever, as they only carried the listings of lodgings that were registered with the Tourism Bureau. However, we were able to do our laundry there, and the folks at the tourism office had told us there was a much larger tourism information office in Portree, which was on our route, up the road. I spent time staring at maps and decided that I had either made a reservation in Digg, Staffin, or Dunvegan (the last a bit of a stretch, as it was on the west side of the island, and way too near the Stein Inn where we will be staying tomorrow). I threw myself at the mercy of this kind tourism office clerk in Portree. We identified a telephone number of a Glenview in Staffin, which number she kindly called and confirmed that the Glenview in Staffin was indeed the place where I had made a reservation for lodging and dinner [and pre-paid the full fare]. Sigh. Relief. Exhale. So we took a rather dawdling drive from Portree to Staffin (stopped to take pictures at Kilt Rock). The lodgings here are fine and the meal we just ate was superb. The Skye hills are named the Cuillin’s, and there is a Skye brewery that brews Cuillin Red, Cuillin Black, and Hebrides Gold ales. Purely in the interest of scientific research I sampled each [samples come in 500 ml bottles] to see what the variations were and if the brewery was any good. The Hebrides Gold was, um, excellent. So was the Cuillin Red. And so, indeed, was the Cuillin Black. As you know, the scientific method is based upon repeatability. However, your intrepid researcher/reporter decided that discretion being the better part of valour, he would leave that further process of validation for another day.

During dinner Jane and I were treated to overhear the conversation going on at adjacent tables. There were two older [yes, older even than Jane and I!] couples. One was certainly English and the other possibly Scot. The Scot apparently was investing in a malt whiskey distillery that would be run entirely by Gaels. The Englishman was “critiquing” the business model of the Scot. The Scot was asserting that the Gaels had taught the English their language. The Englishman asserted back that the Welsh had taught everybody everything. The Englishman asserted that “by laws” malt whisky had to be aged ten years. The Scot said that there were no such laws – you merely had to indicate on your bottles what the aging of the contents was, and he would be able to start selling his product in three and five years. “Well,” said the Englishman, “if you’re going to lower your standards. . .” It was delightful eaves dropping on this acerbic exchange, carried out with the utmost English civility and propriety.

Today was a good transition day for Jane and me. After living in community for a week, doing chores, worshipping, and engaging in activities and conversations with new folk on a full-time basis, we needed to adapt to a different routine. The weather was overcast and dour. It was the first time since coming to Scotland that we had serious rain, and we felt like we had finally found the *real* Scotland.In the Scotsman newspaper today the headline was about how God’s providence had interceded in the Hebridean Isle of Lewis. Lewis has long adhered to strict observance of the Sabbath: there is no work done on the Sabbath. Aye, and so it would continue to be except for the devil’s hand-servant, The Caledonian-MacBrayne Ferry company. Apparently this apostate company has decided to provide ferry service from Lewis on Sundays. The headline story chronicled how the ferry intended to intrude into this Lewis’ tradition is named “The Isle of Lewis”, and, wouldn’t you know, said ferry developed an exhaust problem and must be taken out of service for 48 hours, thus disrupting the first of this new ferry runs. Said a stolid Lewis person of faith, “God’s providence has spoken. And the God who can impair a ferry can sink one as well!” Jane and I are glad that we came to Skye via a bridge and must defer a visit to Lewis until some future trip.