Blue Beyond

Kemp's Ridley Turtle

We visited some friends at the end of last week. They are new arrivals on the island and their house overlooks a small beach. During one of their regular beach walks recently they found the body of young Kemp's Ridley Turtle after it had been driven ashore during one of the many storms we have had this winter.
 This is a rare turtle to UK waters and this one is only the 36th to be record in Britian.

The Kemp’s Ridley turtle is the world’s most endangered sea turtle, and
 with a worldwide female nesting population roughly estimated at just 1,000 individuals, its survival truly hangs in the balance. Their perilous situation
is attributed primarily to the over-harvesting of their eggs during the last century. And though their nesting grounds are protected and many commercial fishing fleets now use turtle excluder devices in their nets, these turtles have not been able to rebound.



They prefer shallow waters, where they dive to the bottom to feed on 
crabs, which are their favorite food, and other shellfish. They also eat jellyfish, and occasionally munch on seaweed and sargassum. They may live to be 50 years old.

 Highly migratory animals, they often travel hundreds of miles to reach their nesting beach, usually the same beach they hatched from.

 

Change Is Here To Stay

I’ve been reading Guy Claxton’s presentation about education given at the University of Winchester last year. It was on the theme of “Change Is Here To Stay”.  In his comments he describes one school’s response… "It’s our job not just to help children master literacy and numeracy but to prepare them for a very turbulent and complex world. We are failing if we don’t prepare them with the skills they need to cope with uncertainty; to cope with differing perspectives; to cope with working with different kinds of people; to ask good questions. Our children are at a very crucial age. We need to get those skills right into the DNA of the way our children think and learn – before it’s too late.”

I’m impressed by this philosophy. It seems that this does not just apply to children as they learn – but it’s for all of us throughout our lives.

Change is always hard to deal with. As the new year begins I’ve been thinking about the changes that have been happening globally, nationally and locally and I’m hoping that we can all find the skills to cope with uncertainly, different perspectives and different people – and that we ask good questions. 

 

Stormy Weather

We’ve had some mighty storms in the last two weeks. Winds of almost 100mph have been recorded - coming from all directions. These have been combined with snow, hail and sleet. This heady mixture has caused power cuts, ferry and plane cancellations and widespread concern about the length and severity of the rest of the winter.  As Billie Holiday sang:

Don’t know why, there's no sun up in the sky
Stormy weather
Keeps raining all the time
Life is bare, gloom and misery everywhere
Stormy weather
I walk around heavy-hearted and sad
Night comes around and I'm still feeling bad
Rain pourin' down, blinding every hope I had
Stormy weather

However, there is hope. The days between the storms are bright and clear and when the sun shines it brings a smile to every face.

A Fearless Free Spirit

Frank Curran, a dear friend, died last month after a short illness. We first met Frank, and his wife Rita, shortly after we moved to Tiree. They had been taking holidays on the island for over 40 years and were well known to residents and visitors.

Frank was often seen painting in the low flat landscape that he loved – creating vivid, spontaneous paintings with movement and life in each brush stroke. On one painting trip to Cornaig he had been touched by island hospitality - a small boy had brought him some home baking and a flask of tea on a tray from his mother.

Frank exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts and the Mall Galleries in London as well as staging several solo exhibitions at the Torrance Gallery in Edinburgh.

The words of this poem, by Sir Patrick Ford, were written for FCB Cadell – but they are also a fitting tribute to Frank.

"The bright light is quenched now, the wit and laughter
are silent: the fearless, free spirit at rest,
that flinched not from pain and that laughed at disaster:
What of gloom is and mourning, are ours that are left.

With line that was flawless and brilliance of colour
His art ran the gamut of beauty in things -
From mirth through to sadness, but never to dullness -
Then take heart and be fearless, remembering him.'

Closd Again

This summer seems to have passed with amazing speed. This year we opened the gallery on 6 April - it seems only yesterday - and on Friday we closed after a busy season. We've met some amazing people this summer - visitors with their own unique stories to tell - a small glimpse of inspirational lives. We always learn so much from those that come into the gallery and share their lives with us. It's also an opportunity to catch up with old friends who visit the island every year - to exchange family news and see children, and grand-children, growing and blossoming.

We'll be spending the next few months visiting family and friends, experimenting with work and sourcing supplies. It's a tough job but someone has to do it!!!

I must have been destined to be a shop keeper. One of my favourite games, as a small boy, was to use our piano as my own retail outlet and the piano stool as a counter. My meagre takings were kept in the tray under the stool lid. On the few occasions I needed to slip away on personal business, I displayed a small card on the stool which read "CLOSD". At least our current sign outside the gallery is spelt correctly!!!

Slipping Slowly Grey

At this time of year I'm reminded of the lyrics of an Amazing Blondel song on the 'England' album - "warm afterglow, how discreetly you flow casting twilight's halo, on the dimming day. Calm afterglow, bathe each hill and hedgerow in a scarlet shadow, slipping slowly grey."

Summer moves into winter in very subtle ways here on the island. Not for us the showy autumnal colours seen on the leaves before they fall to the ground. We're devoid of the opportunity to trail our feet through the rustling curling leaves on a woodland walk, or the chance to collect berries. 

Here there are minute changes to the colours of the grass and herbage and lengthening shadows sculpt the landscape and remind us that the year is turning. These small but siginificant changes are harbingers of shorter days and longer nights. The beaches take on a skeletal feel and the breakers become bigger and wilder. Another winter has arrived.

South Paw

On a recent trawl through the www I came across a site celebrating International Left-Hander’s Day. Apparently the 13 August is the official day for us lefties and the site encourages us to “celebrate our sinistrality” and urges us to increase public awareness of the advantages and disadvantages of being left-handed.

Co-incidentally I’ve been reading ‘Map Addict’ by Mike Parker who is also left-handed and writes “the most wildly diverse regional expressions seem to be for the concept of left-handedness, or keck handedness as we had it in Worcestershire. Just be grateful you’re not left-handed in the Pennines (dollock- or bollock-fisted), Durham (cuddy-wifted), Galloway (corrie-flug) or Angus (kippie-klookit).”

Other less than complementary names for lefties are Gollie-handed (Hull), Scrammy (Bristol) and Corky Dobber (Leicestershire).

My only comfort is that I share my left-handedness with some well known ‘achievers’ - Albert Einstein, Albrecht Durer, Barack Obama, Hans Holbein, Henri Toulouse Lautrec, Jimi Hendrix, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Douglas Adams, HG Wells, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, Pablo Picasso, Raphael, Rembrandt, Paul Simon, Steve McQueen, Charlie Chaplin, Henry Ford and Paul Klee.

Lost Leaders

Bert Jansch and Steve Jobs died today. From completely different fields of endeavour – they were both gifted, talented and innovative in their own way. Both have had an immense influence on my life – one as a guitarist who “changed the face of music” and the other as a designer who “changed the way people interact with technology”. Both were charismatic and both were devoted to covering new ground as they redefined the possibilities in their own areas of creativity. They were both unique.

Truthful and Moderate

We've just returned from a brief visit to the mainland. This wee break has provided an opportunity to think about blogging. Returning to posting after a break of eight months has been strange and the mainland visit was a good time to review what I should be sharing about myself, my observations, and life here on the island.

The drive to share anything and everything can be difficult to rersist - but after a little thought I’ve come up with some blogging guidelines for myself:

• be regular but only blog when you have something to say
• be brief and to the point
• say what you mean and mean what you say
• ensure you have control of the mouse at all times
• remember you write what you are - and not - you are what you write
• be truthful and moderate

Only time will tell if these guidelines are helpful.

Shed Your Obsessions

I’ve been looking at our old shed in a new light recently wondering how much it may be worth as a building of cultural significance to the Scottish nation. It isn’t a great piece of architecture, not posh or luxurious in any way, but it is the site of some of my best thinking and planning and a place of quiet solitude and contemplation.

Have I suddenly become shed obsessed you may ask – has the focus of my life been shifted to a small, inconsequential building in the garden?

Shed related issues have become fascinating following the appeal, last week, by the Roald Dahl Trust for £500,000 to remove, restore and exhibit the contents of the great man’s writing shed built rather flimsily in the 1950’s.

Sophie Dahl announced this important appeal last week. "When my grandfather died, he left in his wake, an aching gap, but also a palpable magic and limitless imagination, which is not exclusive to my family. It is now time for us to save the hut but, more importantly, to share it."

I’m hoping to launch my appeal in the near future – I’m determined that my shed should be preserved for posterity as an important site of special creative significance - not just for the family but for everyone.!!!