Minn the magnificent chicken

Minn in her favourite place – my veg patch.

A couple of weeks ago my favourite chicken, Minn, came to a sticky end. I was inside when I heard a blood-curdling squawk and saw something flash past the window. I raced out to see a spaniel trotting down the field towards the shore, a bundle in its mouth and a trail of downy feathers in its wake. Ginger feathers. My heart sank. ‘Not Minn’, I heard myself say. ‘Not ginger Minn.’ I watched as a man, the owner, wrestled Minn from his dog’s mouth and quickly, professionally, twisted her neck. He trudged up the field towards me, the dog slinking behind. Clearly mortified, he apologised and – in a show of manly practicality – offered to pluck her. My bottom lip trembled. ‘No! I couldn’t eat her. She was a pet’, I cried, my voice breaking. The man looked uncomfortable.

Back at the cottage Marilyn was running in circles crowing wildly and Martha, the nervous one, was nowhere to be seen. I eventually found her shivering under a bush. Reunited, they soon got over their fright and the loss of Minn (it took all of about, oh, five minutes), I didn’t though. I really missed her.

Bereft seems a dramatic word to use – she is, or was, only a hen after all – but that’s how I felt. I missed her bounding out of the hen hut in the morning, first to the food, waiting patiently at the back door for a snack,  clucking contentedly as she nibbled on a strawberry or two. Yes, Minn had a healthy appetite. She was also the boldest of the bunch. The trusty trio went everywhere together, exploring further afield (they were spotted on the beach one day) with Minn out front like an intrepid tour guide. Nothing seemed to scare her. Mum reckons that’s why the dog got her instead of the other chickens – she stood up to (maybe even took on?) the attacking mutt. Martha and Marilyn stick closer to home these days.

Minn was a great layer. One speckled brown egg a day without fail. I like to think this is because she was a happy chicken. Although her life was short, it was a sweet. She ranged free, taking dust baths in the vegetable plot, scratching on the road, visiting my neighbours’ gardens for a change of scene. It allowed her to shine. I’m quite a carnivore, but I haven’t been able to eat meat since Minn died (apart from one chicken sandwich when I forgot). I think of her face, cocked sideways, intelligent little eyes looking up at me – a personality.

One of Minn's monster double-yolker eggs.

As well as uncovering my inner vegetarian, I’ve one other thing to thank Minn for – home-made lemon curd. I tried making it one day when I was over-run with eggs. It’s the most delicious thing in the world: creamy, silky, tart and probably not very good for cholesterol levels. So in memory of Minn the magnificent chicken, here’s the recipe.

It’s dead simple to make. You’ll need the zest and juice of four lemons, four large eggs, 350g caster sugar, 200g unsalted butter and I dessertspoon of cornflower. Whisk the eggs in a saucepan, then add the rest of the ingredients and place over a medium heat. You now need to whisk continuously until you feel the mixture thicken – it’ll take about eight minutes. Give it another minute, then remove from the heat and pour into your jars, cover and store in the fridge. It only keeps for two weeks, so you’ll need  to scoff it quickly (Minn would have).

The ghost village

Polphail village, where no-one's ever lived.

At the top of my lane there’s an abandoned village. It hasn’t been abandoned by its residents – no-one ever lived there – but by, well, I don’t know. Who has abandoned Polphail village? Someone must have, because it has sat, slowly decaying, for nearly 40 years now, unlived in and unloved, an ugly blot on a beautiful landscape.

It’s the strangest place. It was built in the early 1970s to house the 500 workers that were needed for the oil rig construction site just round the coast, where an enormous hole had been dug to create a dry dock. The plan was to build the rigs and then float them out of the loch and up the coast to the North Sea. But, despite the millions of pounds of Government money pumped into the project, the site never went into production. It seems that somebody discovered – a little late in the day – that Loch Fyne’s tides were too treacherous for floating oil rigs.

The village is home to a few scraggy sheep and a bat colony.

There was talk (perhaps even a promise) of the village being knocked down and the area returned to its original state. But it was sold into private hands, sold on again. Stories came and went about it being transformed into a hotel, into apartments. Whispers of change. But nothing changed. And then as the years went by, I stopped noticing it. Or maybe I just stopped looking. Until the other day, that is, when I walked past and something drew me in.

It’s much bigger than I’d remembered, but instantly familiar. We used to play here as kids, running down the corridors, our shouts echoing around the cold, concrete spaces. It was brand new back then, half-fitted out with light bulbs and towel rails and wardrobes. I didn’t have the words to describe it at that age. My older self would say functional, Soviet, stark.

It's a dank, desolate place.

It’s desolate now. The grey walls are stained and streaked with the years. The windows are long gone, apart from a few shards of glass that cling like rotting teeth to the frames. I peer inside. A wardrobe door swings half open, a ladder leans against the wall, an old sofa, floral pink, lies on its side and wires hang from the roof. Bright green moss, as thick and plump as a carpet, covers the floor. Further round there’s a kiosk, its shutters down, where cigarettes were never sold, giant washing machines and a canteen, the floor slimy with stinking mud. It’s quiet as I stand here, but it’s not peaceful. It’s sad and lonely and strange. Emptiness clings to the crumbling walls and hangs in the fetid air. It feels as seedy as the old caravans that have been left to waste away, mouldy curtains drawn shut, in the scrub at the back.

Agents of Change did some great graffiti.

And then there’s the graffiti. In 2009, the owner of the site announced that within a year demolition would clear the site and 270 new homes would be built. Six street artists known as Agents of Change got permission to decorate Polphail’s battered walls prior to the demolition. Of course the demolition didn’t happen. Polphail’s still standing and now wears graffiti like a grey-suited man wears novelty socks. Not to say the graffiti isn’t good – it is. It’s brilliant and witty and clever and some of it’s very beautiful. But it was meant to be one last artistic hurrah before the whole place got knocked down. Now the fading art adds to the sense of dislocation, of something imposed on a place, not from it.

The Salen before it was dug out to create a dry dock that was never used.

And what of the hole? It housed a fish farm for a while. Then a few years ago it became a spanking new marina. It’s really quite nice – all modern design, clean lines and bobbing boats. It’s a shame, though, that I never got to see the Salen – the sweep of sandy bay that was dug up and wiped out to make way for the hole. I was born too late. My gran used to say how she’d loved wading here at high tide, when the warm water would wash in over the soft grass. I suppose at some point, as the generations pass, the Salen and its stories will be gone from memories and maps. And who will know, when there’s no-one to remember, what this landscape once was; that it had ever changed.

In a pickle

A taste of autumn.

My neighbour went on a week’s barge holiday and came back with bags of bounty – apples and pears (scrumped, I believe, from the gardens backing onto the canal), sloes and Spanish chestnuts. So this week I’ve been pickling and preserving and generally feeling deeply satisfied whenever I open my larder door and see the rows of pots and jars and bottles blinking back at me from the gloom.

The mustard-yellow piccalilli doesn’t look that appetising, but Delia assures me it goes very well with cold meats. The sloe gin (patience, patience) looks rich and syrupy, the berries piled at the bottom of the bottle like dewy marbles. But it’s the apple and pear chutney that I’m most pleased with. Spicy, sweet and gingery, it will be the perfect partner for a hunk of cheese.

Roast them, make them into chestnut liqueur or save them for stuffing?

And up at the back of the cupboard, gathering a cobweb or two, are four bottles of elderflower champagne that I made back in June when the flowers were frothy and warm with sunshine. I’d completely forgotten about them.

That’s what I love about preserving – the alchemy of capturing a certain time, a certain place. When we crack open the elderflower champagne at Christmas, we’ll get a mouthful of summer, as fragrant and soft as a warm breeze. It will be a reminder of what’s ahead. In mid winter, the crunch of the apple in the chutney will trigger memories of a mellow autumn, ripe and delicious. And the sloe gin, well it’s just the nectar of the gods as far as I’m concerned.

There’s a thrifyness that I like too; the using up of seasonal abundance. And it makes me think of a contented kitchen. The sweet sharp smell of the bubbling fruit and sugar fills the house and makes it a home. It has the added bonus of makes Christmas presents very easy and cheap. Yes, this year you might just be getting a jar of piccalilli.

Here’s the pear and apple chutney recipe:
• 1 kg Bramley apples, peeled, cored and chopped
• 400g pears, peeled, cored and chopped
• 200g onions, chopped
• 500g sultanas
• 4 garlic cloves, chopped
• Thumb of fresh ginger peeled and chopped (I threw in a few teaspoons of dried ginger too)
• 1 red chilli, deseeded and chopped
• 1 lemon, chopped (skin and all)
• 15g mustard seeds
• 600ml malt vinegar
• 450g brown sugar
• 2 tsp salt

Put everything in a big pan and bring it to boiling point, stirring constantly. Then simmer it for about an hour, stirring a bit. Pot it all up and label. I sterilise my pots by washing them in hot soapy water and then putting them in a medium oven for ten minutes just before using them. I then tend to burn my fingers at least once as I juggle hot jars and boiling chutney.

My solo microadventure

About a month ago, Howies and adventurer Al Humphries set the microadventure challenge – to spend 24 hours (ish) close to home in the wild. Here’s my story.

My microadventure came upon me suddenly. I was sitting with a cup of tea checking the five-day forecast and there, sandwiched by rain and heavy rain, was a full sun and a clear night – the first in weeks. Tomorrow was my window of opportunity. I checked my diary. I could squeeze it in between my hair cut (appointment at 2 pm) and babysitting for a friend (11 am the next day).

Ready to spend the night in the wild - just me and my new Hunka bivvy bag.

I had a basic plan – to sleep on a beach under the stars. For me, this adventure was about self reliance. I wanted to spend a night on my own in the wild, an idea that made me, well, slightly nervous.

Autumn was ripe in the air as I set off round the coast. The oak wood glowed soft and mellow, the evening sun picking out the flies and threads of cobweb. After a while the trees give way to heathland. I tramped on, heather scratching my legs and bog sucking at my boots, until I reached the shore.

The tide was out and the sun low. I jumped from rock to rock, my shadow one step ahead of me, leaving behind the places I know. I wanted to put a good distance between my normal life and this night, to get far away from roads and houses and people and familiarity. I wanted to feel the unease of a strange place.

The fire catches and flames lick the boulder.

Dusk was beginning to fall when I found the perfect spot to spend the night – a small cove of sea-smoothed pebbles surrounded by boulders. I dumped my bag and went in search of driftwood. There was plenty in the tangle of seaweed that marked the tideline.

I lit a fire. It was slow to catch, and the damp wood hissed and whispered. A sudden wind made its heart roar. Wine rattled into my tin mug. It tasted as ripe as the blackberries I’d picked earlier in the day. I’d been looking forward to this moment – the warmth of the fire, woodsmoke curling around me, and the gloaming, that half light of dusk that softens and sharpens. A boat sat on the horizon, glinting as the last of the sun caught its sails.

The landscape was sinking into sleep. I was ready to join it. I stuffed my sleeping bag into my bivvy bag and climbed in. Was this really enough to protect me? I lay back and saw the first star prick the sky. I thought about the darkness that was falling around me, wrapping the trees, blanketing the paths. It made me feel tiny and exposed; a lone speck in a bag on a distant beach. There was no going back now. The night lay between me and my home, wild, solid and impenetrable.

A breeze, a cool breath, crossed my face. It smelled of seaweed. I wriggled deeper into my cocoon and stared up at the shivering stars, eyes wide. The plough rested on top of the hill and the moon began its steady rise from the east. A shooting star traced the sky and I wished for sleep to come.

Finally dawn arrives.

It never did.  Noises filled the darkness: hooting from the wood, scuffles from the undergrowth, grunts from the sea. I thought I heard the crunch of pebbles underfoot and voices on the wind. An engine rumbled. I sat up and saw the lights of a fishing boat flicker far out in the loch. The laughter of its crew carried clear across the still water. I checked my phone – 2am. The moon was high in the sky. The lichen shone ghostly white in its beams.

About 6am the sky began to lighten. At last. I shook off my sleeping bag and stretched my aching muscles. I made a strong coffee, and watched the sun rise and the world return to normal. The sea was calm. Birds chattered and gulls screeched – comforting daytime sounds, welcomed by my rattled brain.

I had an early morning swim with this handsome fellow.

It was time for a swim. I picked my way over the rocks to a small crescent of sand, peeled off my layers and shivering as the morning met my skin. I waded out into the loch. A brown crab – big enough for the pot – stood frozen on the sandy bottom, his claws raised and ready like an angry boxer. I moved away and plunged under, the shock of the cold clearing my head and washing away the fears of the night. I emerged, tingling, the strangeness of the night gone, my mind and body back in place.

As I started to make my way home, I heard a splash in the water in front of me. A head appeared, then a slippery back and a pointy tail: an otter fishing. I crouched and watched it swim ashore. It looked at me with its whiskered face, held my gaze and then slipped back into its watery world.

See that wee dot in the water at the back? That's an otter. Honest.

I slipped back into my world too. With each familiar task back home, making a phone call, boiling the kettle, having a shower, my night on the beach retreated, became more unreal. But a bit of it remains lodged inside me, dark, wild and fiery – a reminder of something bigger, more enduring. I was part of that night and now that night is part of me.

Mellow fruitlessness

I woke up to autumn the other day. I could smell it, sharp and cold up my nose, and the colours in the landscape had shifted – just slightly – to a riper, richer tone. Summer had slipped away and it made me smile. The time had come to stack the woodpile and stock the larder, to forage, pickle and preserve before the harvest ends and winter sets in.

Bramble whisky, bramble jelly, bramble wine, bramble vinegar, bramble and apple crumble...

I set off up the lane with my basket in search of crab apples, rowans, brambles and any other hedgerow edibles I could spot. It was still early and silver balls of dew clung to the grasses and picked out the cobwebs that slung, sparkling, from thistle to thistle. Nobody else was up, and the boats slept in the marina as I passed. I had the morning to myself. Sunshine flickered through gaps in the dense pine forest as I followed the track up to Ascog. After a while, the trees gave way to open moorland, bruised purple with patches of new heather.

Loch Ascog is small, brown and trouty, and has a ruined castle perched on its bank. The loch isn’t set in the prettiest spot – the loggers have left the land barren and marked it with wide tracks for their machinery – but the castle, the old seat of the Lamont clan, is a beauty. It grows out of the ground like a crag, its remaining walls held upright, it would seem, by swathes of ivy. I sat feeling the history around me. A fish rose with a plop, rippling the surface. Two eiders flew low across the water, their reflections beating in time. And then I spotted it – a crab apple tree huddled in the shelter of the ruin’s walls. Its branches were thick with small, hard apples. I picked those that had a rosy blush and set off home, grabbing a bag full of berry-red rowans on my way – all the ingredients for a crab apple and rowan jelly.

To make the jelly you’ll need:
•    1kg rowan berries (stalks removed)
•    1kg crab apples (chopped roughly, including the cores)
•    1.5kg sugar

We had a eerily low spring tide. Perfect for sunset foraging.

I put the fruit in a big pan and added about 600ml of water, simmered it all until the fruit was soft (mashing it with a spoon helps), put it in a jelly bag and left it to drip. You then add 750g sugar for every litre of juice you have, boil this mixture until it reaches setting point and pour it into jars. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to that stage – I had an accident involving a doormat at the juice-dripping stage. Such fruitlessness! Still, it’s a good excuse for another nose around the castle. Fingers crossed the apples manage to cling on in these gales – it’s blowing a hoolie out there. Just the weather to crack open my bramble whisky…

‘These autumn days will shorten and grow cold. The leaves will shake loose from the trees and fall. Christmas will come, and the snows of winter. You will live to enjoy the beauty of the frozen world. Winter will pass, the days will lengthen, the ice will melt in the pasture pond. The song sparrow will return and sing, the frogs will awake, the warm wind will blow again. All these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy, Wilbur—this lovely world, these precious days…’ Charlotte’s Web by E B White.

Me and the moon

Okay, okay! So this picture isn't actually my own work and I need to credit www.photos8.com for it. I was too busy moon gazing to take photos and now the clouds are back.

In well-lit Bristol I saw very little of the moon. I would glimpse it occasionally, on a walk home from the pub or a late night at the office, suspended in a space between buildings or resting on a rooftop. It was always unexpected; always a reminder. I’d stare, and a bit of me would ache to see it shine over a wide, wild landscape, to watch it sail across a vast night sky.

I thought I might see more of the moon here, but the summer evenings are light and long in the north and I’m not, by any stretch of the imagination, a night owl. Now, with autumn just around the corner, the days are beginning to shorten. A week or so ago, as I went out to put the hens away, I saw a patch of white, like a spotlight, on the water at the far end of the loch. It took me a few moments to work out that it was moonlight beaming down through a gap in a bank of clouds. It was a short-lived spectacle – the clouds closed in and the loch sank back into darkness – but a timely prompt.

I downloaded the lunar calendar and checked the full-moon nights. But knowing the moon’s timetable doesn’t mean it will reveal itself. That’s the call of the clouds. For three nights in a row I stared out at a blank sky, my moonlight plans scuppered. On the fourth evening a sliver of silver slipped through the curtains. Dragging myself away from the sleepy warmth of the fire, I stepped outside. In the west, the last of the sunset was sliding behind the hills in a fiery smear; in the east, the moon, like a newly minted coin, rose to join the first stars. It was just a shaving off full. I walked down the lane, disorientated by the landscape in this strange, cold light. The trees retreated into the dark, the white-washed cottage glowed, ghostly, and the lane ahead could have been a deep, still river. A ragged bat swished by. Across the loch the lights of Tarbert flickered – the only colour in this black and white scene.

And this has nothing to do with the moon, but I've included it to add a touch of colour. It's my foraged/home-grown salad just minutes before one of the hens decided to sit in it.

I leant on a gate and looked up at the moon for a long while. It held my gaze, cold and steady. The sky was now full of stars, a vast, twinkling dome. I felt infinite space as I took it all in. Like mountains, the night sky gives me a good dose of perspective, a sense of being part of something bigger, more enduring. This is the same moon, I thought, that shone on my ancestors, its cycle shaping their daily lives – from gathering harvests to stealing cattle (across the Highlands the full moon came to be known as ‘MacFarlane’s Lantern’ because of the clan’s moonlit raids). Did they look up at the moon and feel the same shiver of wonder as me? Or is my shiver a response to something rare and longed for? Or perhaps I’m shivering because it’s cold and I’ve been staring at the moon a little too long, an activity which has been known to send people as loopy as dogs on a windy day. Back inside I caught myself in the mirror. My eyes shone and my pupils were as deep and dark as the night.

If you like a bit of moonlit wondering and wandering, then take a look at James Attlee’s book Nocturne: a Journey in Search of Moonlight. It’s a tale about the moon and its meanings, as well as a convincing appeal to turn off the lights and reclaim our stolen night.

Paps and posties

The rugged coastline of Knapdale with views of Islay and Jura.

On Monday morning I woke up to a fresh blue sky – the perfect day for a two-wheeled trip someplace new. And where better than Kintyre, the mysterious mass of land across the loch. I caught the ferry from Portavadie to Tarbert, stocked up on snacks from the co-op, and set off along the single-track road that winds its way along the western coast of Knapdale. After climbing up through shady woodland, I emerged into dazzling sunshine. The road stretched ahead of me, shimmering in the heat. Beyond the rolling, rough farmland and dark patches of pine forest, there was a splash of blue loch. White butterflies passed like pieces of tissue paper caught on the breeze. Foamy meadowsweet, thistles and harebells filled the verges, and honeysuckle draped in the trees. I raced on, listening to the bleat of sheep and wondering if my rattling bike chain was anything to worry about.

Looking back to the beach at Loch Stornaway. No sign of a bull...

Further on a streak of yellow caught my eye and I pulled up by a gate. There, beyond a grassy field dotted with clover and freshly shorn sheep, was a wide, empty beach. It would have been a perfect place to stop for lunch and a dip, but for the sign on the gate that said: ‘BULL ON SHORE’. I dithered, and like a big chicken decided not to take the chance and pedalled on. As I rounded the next headland, Jura and Islay came into view. They seemed to float, other worldly, in a sea of misty blue. It was as if I were looking down on a mountain range, the islands the peaks poking up through the clouds. A beetle landed on my hand, turned a few circles like a dodgem and then flew on its way. I too went on my way, hurtling along the road next to the sea with the smell of salty, sun-dried seaweed ripe in the air.

The view of Jura just minutes before my bike broke.

I was thinking how perfect this all was and how I might describe the paps of Jura that rose, in a matronly manner, before me, when I heard a loud crack and my bike careered off into the verge. The derailleur had snapped off. The bike couldn’t be cycled or, indeed, pushed, and I was in the middle of nowhere in the midday sun. I sighed, fiddled half-heartedly with the chain and then resigned myself to hitching a lift on this, the quietest of roads. In a stroke of luck, a postvan rounded the bend. I flagged it down and begged a lift back to Tarbert. ‘Nae bother’, said the postie and threw my bike in the back of the van. As we motored back, stopping to collect the post and chat to passing farmers, he told me his story. At school his English teacher, a young Ian Crichton Smith, had spotted his talent for writing, but he was too young, too restless, to follow it through. Later in life, after years spent in the hills along the west coast working as a forester, he began to write. He was inspired by the landscape, its wildness and his place in it. ‘It seeps into you.’ ‘Aye’, he replied. ‘That it does.’