Rum Diaries No.3

A normal day here is anything but normal

Today began as a typical day on my small island with breakfast for my guests. However, when my phone began sounding an alarm at 8am, I realised something was imminent. I could feel the tightness of irritation rising in my chest. When I looked at the screen and sure enough we had an online meeting scheduled with CalMac, our ferry provider, at 9am. We have them every month and almost every month, I seem to low key erase them from my mind . As I’m still a bit of a watered-down control freak, I was slightly perturbed when I realised the kitchen would not be spanky and clean before my meeting started. I now like a clean kitchen, my years of not washing up after a meal or leaving the kitchen tidy and smelling of patchouli (my incense of choice) at the end of an evening fade into the distant past along with staying in bed half the day and watching ‘Neighbours’.

It was potentially going to be quite a fractious meeting as it was but having my field of vision clouded by dirty pots would not help my focus - it messes with the sense of order and calm in my head ( that one statement probably says an awful lot about me). My role as secretary of the Small Isles Community Council means I am supposed to keep some kind of notes. Notes I don’t mind, minutes over the years I have grown to loathe, they are the thing I put off until the Last. Possible. Minute.

By 10.05 the meeting was complete, it hadn’t been fractious, though it was emotional, with one colleague very upset about the disrupted service our islands are receiving. Our resolution was to write an open letter to CalMac and Scottish Government - seizing the nettle I rattled out an opening paragraph, emailed it my fellow councillors to add to, and cracked on with finally tidying up the kitchen.

The rest of the day was quite ordinary in a Rum kind of way - fed the hens, cleaned the shepherds hut for new guests, didn’t go the pier when the ferry came in, for a change - no deliveries for me today - by which time it was 3 o’clock and time to eat. I took the chance of it not raining, which was risky on recent performance, and took my plate with book out to the garden. Rain, no, but midges, yes. I can cope with so many midges and this was within my tolerance.

Some serious rustling in the bushes got my attention though, I thought it was one of my cats, who since the sad demise of her brother, has been behaving understandably erratically.

But, it was not.

It was a very big stag, avec antlers no less - time has flown, it only seemed like last week that everyone was cast antler hunting. It must have been longer… but, fun fact, deer antlers are the fastest growing tissue of any mammal, they can go through as much growth in a week as human hair would in 6 months.

A stag without antlers is a much less impressive affair but this fellow with his grown back was substantial and had presence. This was not surprising after all the rain and heavy foliage growth we have had - the entire leafy village is one all you can eat buffet for these guys and It showed. The antlers had some of the soft velvet on, it was looking a bit scruffy with some of it hanging raggedly where he had been rubbing it off. It seems stags lose the velvet to harden up their antlers for the rut, but it’s a bit early for that, so maybe this guy a bit old? We saw each other at the same time and were equally startled, then both deciding there was no threat, he went on rummaging through the undergrowth and I munched my sandwich until he came out as bold as brass into the garden and commenced eating leaves off a fallen tree. He was about 20 feet away from me and the one time I don’t have my phone on me…

Not the stag I saw because I didn’t have my phone with me. this one I took a couple of years ago

I almost wish he had run away with fright – his assumption that I was no threat will make him an easy target come shooting season, which sadly starts tomorrow. Usually the stags get wind of this, in that sixth sense that animals have, and disappear out onto the hill, away from humans bearing rifles. I wish him godspeed.

I finished my sandwich and went about my business, he was nonplussed.

Always free to read, but If you’d like to come closer and read more intimate despatches from this life I have launched a paid tier which I’m calling ‘Closer to Shore’.