An Island Life
Guest Blog by Richard Clubley
Welcome back to our Book Week Scotland guest blog series! Today, we’re delighted to introduce Richard Clubley, the author of The Sea All Around.
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My first island was a concrete structure (of 0.001 ha) in the North Bay Lido, Scarborough, during the late 1950s. I couldn’t swim but desired to set foot on the island and explore it. My rubber ring floated me there but, when the time came to leave, I dared not lower myself into the water where I would be out of my depth. My mum, watching from the side, called the lifeguard. The desire to reach islands, and the frisson of excitement that goes with it, has never left me.
My most recent book – The Sea All Around – will be out before Christmas. I can’t believe this will be my fourth book. With the finishing of each one, I thought it would be the last – then the bug bit and off I went again. It has just bitten, but the question is: what to write? Scottish islands have been the subject of all my books. The trouble is, I’ve written about so many. There are none with scheduled ferries still un-walked upon, easy-to-visit and, therefore, relatively cheap. Many uninhabited islands of Scotland have also been ticked.
On the back of an envelope I sought to draw up a list of those islands I would visit if money was no object. I’ll charter a boat, I thought, and plot a passage around all the ones I have dreamed of since I started.
I think we (I would take a few islophile buddies with me) would need to embark in Stornoway, Outer Hebrides. Our first land fall would be Flannan, to ponder the fate of three light keepers who disappeared in mysterious circumstances at Christmas 1900. It is thought they were washed off the landing stage during a storm. Onwards to St Kilda. I have been before, in my younger days, when I spent much time hiking up cliffs. This time I want to sit and think about the life once lived, stroll along Village Street, look into the school and church, post office and feather store. I will make notes of my feelings. I’ll be sure to ask our skipper to take us around Soay and the stacks for the snow-clouds of gannets. I want to marvel at how Neolithic sheep thrive, still, in a feral state on Boreary.
We’ll then head north to Sula Sgeir and wander through the guga hunting camp, in the close season, to wonder at the determination of men from Ness, on Lewis, to go there every spring, to harvest 2,000 gannet chicks - gugas (under special license) to feed the particular (peculiar?) taste of their friends and families back on Lewis. Some say it has the taste and texture of a
diesel-soaked rag. The women of Ness will not go near the rank men for at least a week upon their return.
North Rona will be the jewel of the trip. 50 miles north of Stornoway and Faroe’s nearest neighbour. The most remote of the British Isles ever with a permanent settlement. The eighth century St Ronan chapel and hovel survive after a fashion. We shall be still, ponder, contemplate and commune. It will be the ultimate island.
To wind down, we’ll stop at the Shiant Islands on the way home. We might light a wee fire in Compton Mackenzie’s old bothy, have a dram and marvel at everything we have seen. There’s a book in it I’m sure.
Then again, if funds do not allow, I might be satisfied with a trip along my home turf – the Yorkshire coast. There is history and childhood memory aplenty. The North Bay Lido has, long ago, been filled in but the Scalby Mills Railway still runs (since 1931). There’s coastal erosion, lifeboat heroism, seabirds and Dracula to write about. Give me a couple of years.
