THE DEED IS DONE!

I voted last week in peace and quiet. My sealed envelopes were handed over to the postmaster in his little dark corner of a post office, which doubles up as a village police station. The premises also provide second hand book sales, local information and village news, (Gossip). 

Unless he is in animated conversation with someone, in which case, you will be served without his searching pleasantries, you are unlikely to get away from the postmaster without some convivial information-gathering banter. His local knowledge must be invaluable, although, I think his descriptive powers would hampered by his dimly lit service area. 

I could so easily have been disarmingly entrapped into telling all. However, knowing how he operates, I determined that any conversation with the postmaster would, insofar as it could, be about anything but me. It's a long time since I visited, and the man did not show any recognition. While he managed to extract from me that I had an uncomfortable eye, excusing my not seeing the collection times, it was as far as he got. The postmaster gave me a quizzical look while scrutinising the postal vote correspondence. My head voice questioned whether he would dare to ask me anything about it. I am sure he would have loved to, it was soon clear however, that even he knew where the boundaries were drawn.

There is something intrinsically pleasing and comfortable about having already voted. I can rise above all the Alternative Vote  referendum information and disinformation, the political squabbles, the media, the hooha and hype....I'm out of it. The deed is done!

HOW SOME PEOPLE LIVED

What really struck me, was the changing light, the swift cloud movements, their formations in just two hours and the effects all these natural changes had on the scenes I had photographed. When I looked at the picture shots I had taken, it was hard to believe I had been in one place, or I had taken all the pictures in that time frame.

Admittedly, I had accidentally timed the visit to occur in a window of opportunity as the weather was highly unpredictable, being that there was a tail end of a hurricane blowing around us. Scotland has some splendid coastal area, many of them highly exposed to the elements as this one was.



The visitor information boards all warned of 'DANGER' particularly with the winds, the exposure to the cliffs, the rocks and the cold North Atlantic sea below. These were the same dangers the villagers who were here, faced on a daily basis. So dangerous was this location that livestock, chickens and children had to be tethered for their own safety. Imagine that!

The people had all gone, many had emigrated to New Zealand. A community of people had been 'cleared' from fertile inland homesteads to this dangerous, stony coastal space where they carved out some kind life for about 80 years, by various and ingenious means. By the early 19th century, all, bar three people, had moved on. The clues to how they survived were mostly hidden under the bracken, thistle and heather growth. All that clearly remained for us to see, in the early years of the twenty-first century, was a monument, constructed in 1911 by order of a great grandson of one of the families, who himself was a New Zealander. It reminded us that it was not just the shadows of people and children whose dangerous pathways we were treading, these people had identities. The monument ensured that their names would be remembered, though the visible evidence of their lives, their stone cottages, which were in ruins, would probably disappear eventually, these hardy people's legacy would not.



Amongst all the thoughts of times long gone, my camera clicked, recording the memories of the current day.