Ancient harbour rings, clattering trawlers, & ropes & marker bouys & mistral gannets, nets & weeds & clouds & things that move in rings, like light...I'll be down there...resting days before the next climb, visualizing the redpoint sequence, rigging the prawner with Fraser, gaff-cutter-rigged that one is...gaff-cutter-rigged; & I've got one eye on the Cuillin - one hand on the winch. Hot village coffee in chipped enamel mugs, sore on healing gabbro scars, a grinding knee, kids turning shells & shrieks on the mud slithering tide, shadowed by dripping joists. Packing trays, hose pipes & boning knives. Extended sessions of street blether, leaves drafted along guttered yellow lines, free mackerel, lost change in drains & the pie shop ovens on the breeze. There is a feeling of snow in the air...a cows knee from old Doni Matheson for they dug & using his cleaver as an expression of full-stop, he extends to me in Gaelic, the whole historical village heyday, & his youth in hard shoes, & I'm hurried along inside great vivacious swirls of laughing ghosts...of herring port clammer, salmon fishery finery & bustle, swept into my grandfathers days, when women had beards & men kept worms on Iniseer...sump oil for the soul boy. Sump oil for the soul.
We were taunting Kenny from the wheelhouse like. You've a long shadow boy, for such a short fella..are ye sure you're no wearing they wrong one today Ken? He stalled as if he had been driving an invisible wagon & looked back at us on the deck, examining his shadow as he spoke. Wha's wrang wi ma shadow lads? Well it's no that it's no wrang, it's just 18ft tall, mighty black n' sleek, & athletic looking aye...more an African warrior type o' chappie than a Sgitheanach. Aaaaye...well, it's they Jag-u-Are of shadows, all fast & so good lookin', I can chase masel faster than yooz can carry me there boy. His retort sounded almost triumphant. Well that's the problem there Ken, if ye get stapped by they police wi that shadow on ye they'll ken it's no yer own. He looked up & down his shadow again, right hand thoughtfully on his chin, left hand trying to go to the bar on it's own...Are the mainland police on they island?!? Aye...well...a cannea find they buttons & I'm no taking it aff in public...He paused motionless & silent on the harbour for a bit. Can ye tell easy it's no my own shadow Tata, does it show obvious like? Aye Ken, ye normal shadow is more shorter than this one, pale blue & they shape of a Woodbine...
With the Hut of Shadows beyond the hunter mast - you roll with an eye on the cave & the straits & if you're balanced & fast on your feet, you can run a jump reverse somersault clean off the highest yard-arm into the winter sea, clear over double-rafted trawlers below. It's an HSD - Health & Safety Dismount aye....well ok it's no a HSD but it's hell-of-a quicker, just don't take thee paint pot & spanners as well, cuase they clatter a bit on touchdown.
It went on for a while, & the winter light does great things for small men on the drink, & tall Struan girls on the shop alike. That's the harbour aye, & every year I'll attempt the winter wall sideways in one go for them, & every year they'll take bets & every year I'll end up cold & wet & they'll end up wealthy & laughing, but that's what goes on, inside the outside, where the huddle huddles, beyond the small world of big grades. I can't always be over at the Raasay climbing barn, training F9a crux circuits, moulding new replica holds while rain taps corrugate roof paradiddle to Raidió na Gaeltachta, & when I can't; I always seem to get the tallest masts to solo. Up there, you can feel the hips of the vessel, it's centre of movement & they always hand me that one, becuase it's grained into my character, to tilt when I should yield...bring a new storm. I took a wander after, with the wee digi thing, to find traces of those silent essential elements, stampeded over by the blind & bickering, the go fasters, the V & E & Font grade police, the bottomless wailers who use drilled gabbro holes for silver teeth, as trumpets to better elevate their own sound...& thus we are here at this evenings blog, a few photographs wealthier. The dog asleep, chin on my autumnal woolly feet, full bellied, safe on the slow tide & for the briefest moment, nobody dies alone, nothing is broken or put out at sea.
The 2007 Coire boulder & sport projects, the brazen Orkney lines with MacGill-Fhinnein, & with Evolv's help onside, won't so much be climbing, as organized bare knuckle fighting. So much like any year then, but with a label stuck on ma arse, which does nothing important.
Is math an sgàthan sùil caraide
