[15th August 2009]

We were all feeling despondent at the news of Wayne’s suicide.  Such a gentle man, the only hint of violence directed against himself at the end.  Gathered in the living room, Mattie attempted to relieve the tension by distracting us with anecdotes.  Amongst his numerous past jobs, he spent a long stint working at Victoria Wine at the bottom of the Old High Street (ignominiously ousted by a bakery chain, falling victim to changing fashions and competition from the sprawling perimeter hypermarkets, their accessibility unimpaired by double yellow lines), which had been a wine merchant’s premises for 250 years, its cellars like catacombs extending all the way to beneath the City Hall.  Blessed with a healthy natural curiosity, Mattie had taken full advantage of the opportunity to explore and had come across some ancient crumbling ledgers, which he correctly surmised nobody would miss and still owns today.

For the most part, the hours behind the counter were fairly monotonous, but he was once forced to call for emergency assistance.  Towards the close of an unremarkable day’s business, a stocky yet somewhat intimidating figure shuffled through the door, his expression both detached and oddly intense at the same time.  Ignoring the well-stocked shelves of reds and whites spanning the globe from the fragrant vineyards of Tuscany to the New World, his order was simple: Virginia Gold tobacco, filter papers and matches.

“That’ll be £5.95″.

“The name’s McLaughlin and the government’s paying,” came the matter of fact reply with a slight undertone of menace.

Slightly taken aback by this bold assertion, Mattie scrutinised the customer more closely.  Slightly too conspicuous to blend in with a crowd, he seemed an unlikely candidate to be on Her Majesty’s payroll as a secret agent.  Unless he was making a deliberately cryptic reference to social security benefits, indeed a government payment by proxy, his statement was difficult to fathom.

“Do you have any cash, sir?” Mattie politely enquired, keeping hold of the requested items.  Silence ensued.  Several minutes crept by, McLaughlin’s face failing to betray any agitation or inner turmoil at Mattie’s intransigence.  He turned and walked out without a word.

Approximately five minutes later, the bell tinkled again, announcing the arrival of a client.  Mattie looked up from his paper with a sense of foreboding.  For once, he would have preferred a lonely pensioner about to blow his cheque on a carrier bag full of oblivion, or a suspiciously callow specimen whom he would be obliged to challenge for identification only to be regaled with an unsolicited introduction to the most recent innovations in pejoratives.  Sure enough, the shadow over the classifieds was cast by his impecunious friend, undaunted by the rebuttal.

“The name’s McLaughlin and the government’s paying,” he repeated, when Mattie cited the same price as before.

“I’m sorry, mate, the government’s is not paying, now, please, do you have any money?”

Again, no response was forthcoming, not even the merest hint of displeasure or consternation.  Not wishing to risk any provocation, Mattie did not dare to avert his eyes as McLaughlin stood impassive before giving up and exiting the premises.

In the interval between visits, Mattie pondered his options, closing early an increasingly appealing scenario.  His thoughts were interrupted by the return of his persistent visitor.  This time, he did not bother retrieving the articles from the shelf.

“The name’s McLaughlin and the government’s paying”.

“Let me explain how it works,” Mattie replied, unsure of whether the concept of a commercial transaction was something McLaughlin had ever been exposed to.  “You tell me what it is that you want, I find it, I tell you how much it costs, you give me the money and I hand over the goods.  I supply you with your cigarettes in exchange for notes and coins.  Do you understand?”

“Are you refusing to serve me?” McLaughlin asked, his voice trembling.

“No, but you have to be able to pay me before I can give you what you are asking for”.

Outwardly unperturbed until that moment, McLaughlin’s eyeballs rather alarmingly started rolling in opposite directions.  Afraid that his patron might lash out in frustration and reluctant to put his own reaction times to the test, Mattie ducked beneath the counter and slammed the panic button.  The police arrived with exemplary promptness, McLaughlin having vacated the off-license.  As Mattie accounted for his actions to the WPC, describing his terror of imminent violence in spite of the lack of evidence of vandalism, theft or the most minor of scuffles, he noticed a familiar shape approaching the door.

“That’s him!” Mattie yelled and the WPC set off in hot pursuit, as McLaughlin made himself scarce at the sight of the uniform.

“Mr McLaughlin!  Mr McLaughlin, can I have a word with you, please?”

Three patrol cars and a “meat wagon” pulled up on the pavement at the end of the pedestrian zone to block his escape, the burly duty sergeant lunging for him.  In the end, it took six officers to restrain the recalcitrant captive.  The local force had been on high alert, as McLaughlin had absconded from a secure ward at Murray Royal psychiatric hospital the previous day and they had been expecting trouble.

[13th August 2009]

At the cottage, the approach of the weekend is betrayed by two tell-tale signs: the level of the loch and the sprouting of tents on the opposite shore like noxious fungi.  The former attributable to anticipated peaks in electricity consumption, as the water drives the turbines in the power station and is artificially regulated, the latter leading to every available lay-by becoming clogged with campers in spite of the best efforts of local farmers to sabotage their sleepovers (one gouged huge holes out of the embankment with a digger to render the ground too uneven).  In spite of their occasionally ferocious exteriors (leather jackets, jagged, blood red Mohican haircuts, steel toe-capped bovver boots) defiantly displaying their rejection of the values of the mainstream, Rory, Mattie and Spike have always taken great pride in being responsible campers and concealing every trace of their presence upon departure.  Over the years they have cleared out practically every stick of dead wood on the Foss side to fuel their massive bonfires, sneering at the amateurism and dim-wittedness of townies let loose from their concrete confines.  Whose guttering flames were fed by green wood.  Where Rory and the lads had carefully removed the fallen branches grass and bluebells thrived, compensating in some measure for the indifference of the Forestry Commission in maintaining the native woodland.  Rory recounted one occasion when Spike began shaking a rotten-looking birch to test its suitability for combustion and the crown came plunging down, landing neatly between his feet.  A sobering reminder of our tenuous hold on life.

On another evening whilst searching for a suitable spot, an elderly farmer had warned them: “Ye cannie go campin’ here, boys”.  They protested that they would clear up after themselves and he relented (perhaps in the frailty of his advanced years he did not fancy his chances against a clutch of bikers).  They dutifully buried the ashes and removed all the litter so that no visible evidence of their brief sojourn remained.  The following year, the scenario was repeated, but when they maintained their innocence, recognition smoothed away the farmer’s frown and he told them they were welcome.

The owl’s eerie hoot travelled over the surface of the water, although we could not be sure about the intelligibility of our greetings (the unrepentant impudence of intruders upon our idyll had to be responded to in kind, mostly we contented ourselves with signalling with the large torch and, without fail, I would curse my ineptitude at forgetting to look up “Fuck Off!” in Morse code, our isolation meaning that the nearest Internet café was a 12-mile drive away, my memory always jogged at the most inopportune of moments), tradition stipulating one of a limited range of variants, usually along the lines of “Weegie bastards!” or “Fuck off and die!” yelled in unison.  Not that we really bear any deeply ingrained grudge against the inhabitants of our largest city, some of my best friends come from Glasgow.  The inevitable pang of guilt that accompanies such recklessly juvenile behaviour (in my case at least) assuaged by the fact that the replies bawled in unison are normally so garbled that the likelihood of them deciphering our abuse is negligible.  They probably return to the high rises and permanent dampness with fond recollections of the friendliness of the locals.

Having dropped Lorna off at the train station, the Hungarian nipped into the chippie (its name containing an excruciating pun, The Plaice to Be) for G’s staple, pizza and chips.  Demonstrating a perfect command of the vernacular, he placed his order: “I would like a pizza supper please”.  In a spirit of courteous concern, the man behind the counter warned: “We deep fry our pizzas here”.  “It is for my son, who is Scottish,” the Hungarian replied undaunted, yet still slightly miffed that the subtle linguistic clue of his impeccable deployment of the correct terminology, “supper”, having been overlooked.  Indeed, as a non-native speaker, he had shown greater competence than the customers from South of the Border, who had ineptly asked for “fish and chips”.

When we arrived back, G informed us that Rory and Mattie had retrieved their rods from the old bench and headed off for the Point.  As soon as he had finished eating, I laced up my hiking boots and we traversed the fields to join them.  The Point marked the end of the property belonging to the croft and, as such, the end of our temporary domain.  During childhood holidays, we never dared to venture beyond the boundary fence for fear of slavering hounds bounding towards trespassers to tear them limb from limb or, far worse, a telling off from our parents and possible deprivation of a sweetie ration.  In those days, we were able to clamber over the boulders along the shoreline without having to put on our wellies.  It would always take a while, as there were too many gleaming pebbles, skimmers and shards of broken porcelain (which I always referred to as “pottery”) to add to my collection, disgorged from the peaty depths, perhaps from one of the submerged dwellings of lore.  The ghostly remnants of a warm hearth and comforting cuppa.  The Point possessed one great advantage over the portion of shore nearer the cottage: a sandy beach that jutted out a long way into the loch, ideal for spreading our blankets and splashing around.  Nowadays, however, the boughs of trees conspired with the demand for green electricity to block the easy path and we had to squeeze through wire fences and hack down ferns whose fronds gave shelter to unpleasant parasites (such as the souvenir I had unwittingly brought back from our abortive ascent of Farragon).  Its relative inaccessibility had made the Point attractive to the flock of Greylag geese that had colonised it as their roost.

Once again, we discovered the unmoored white rowing boat, which would have been ideal to borrow for an hour or two, had temptation not been averted by the lack of rollocks, bung and oars.  Mattie and Rory had set up their rods in a sheltered niche just short of the Point, perpetuating their good natured rivalry over who could catch the most, the biggest and who would be the first to land a trout.  I enquired as to why they had not chosen our usual spot and they replied that the burn had been transformed into a raging torrent, flooding the entire beach.  They had lit a bonfire, kindled by the day’s edition of The Times, once Mattie’s favourite paper, in his assessment now debased into an only marginally more highbrow version of The Sun.  It physically pained him to notice one typo after another, the superfluous inverted commas, apostrophes where they didn’t belong and the incorrect use of prepositions (starting on p2 already!) left him in a state of gloom about the decline in standards so profound that he preferred to incinerate the broadsheet rather than inflict its ungrammatical articles upon his eyes.

A small fish was impaled on a stick by the gills, giving rise to their new name for the cove: “Mattie’s Perch”.   The campers opposite started making an unseemly din, prompting Mattie to yell his well-worn salutation.  Rory became paranoid that they might be spying on us with binoculars, as we had not been indulging in any behaviour that might have provoked their whooping.  By way of retaliation, Rory and G simulated masturbation (”I can’t believe you did that in front of your Mum!” Mattie exclaimed in shock) with unfeasibly large invisible tokens of manhood.  Then, in a spontaneous show of disapproval at being observed like some exotic species of lowlife (although, to be fair, by that stage we might easily have been mistaken for such), we performed a tribal jig, the principle novel feature of which involved much animated gesturing with raised middle digits.  Rory swore that he heard our foes’ indignant shouts of: “They’re doing V-signs!” (which does not really say much about the quality of their optical instruments…)  “There’s only one thing for it!” he cried and he and Mattie turned their backs to the enemy, dropped their trousers and wiggled their bare backsides in a double moonbeam.  About thirty seconds later, the valley rumbled with the roar of a pair of Eurofighter Typhoons on low-level manoeuvres, close enough for us to see the pilot of the near aircraft clearly.  Rory quipped: “That’s the RAF for you, one glimpse of the buttocks and it’s ‘Tally-ho, chaps!’”  Mattie voiced regret that he hadn’t mooned the occupants of the cockpits.  We laughed that they might have sought revenge by targeting a tender part of his anatomy (a narrow escape from “a Cruise up the crack”).

Our merriment was interrupted by a tug at Mattie’s line (to Rory’s great initial chagrin, as he was trailing badly in the contest).  However, we again dissolved into fits of laughter when the fish emerged: it was barely bigger than the bait.  We immediately dubbed it “Mattie’s Tiddler”, or “The One That Didn’t get Away”.

As clouds of midgies descended with the definitive retreat of daylight, we decided not to let the irritating little bloodsuckers feast and returned to the comforts of civilisation.

Dodging the thistles and deposits left by the grazing sheep, Rory remarked that when he and Mattie had walked through the golden grass of the meadows earlier with nothing but their fishing gear and the prospect of a cigarette and a conversation it was the nearest thing to heaven he could imagine.

Barring a fat trout sizzling over an open fire and a couple of million pounds accumulating interest in the bank.

Mattie’s Perch

Mattie shows off his tiddler

The One That Didn’t Get Away…

On the slopes of Creag an Lochain (at conk-out point) we came across this attractive amphibian

We spotted this slightly less colourful cousin by the path leading across Rannoch Moor to Glencoe

But in terms of sheer immensity, what could beat the Rannoch Frog Stone?