Flannan Isle Sounds Nice

We watched the geese return today; the summer is ending.

In the hen run our first four chicks have hatched; we have grown more of our food this year and at last we have a water supply.

Yesterday, I reaped one of the benefits of being ambidexterous - I hit both my thumbs with a hammer - but the geese don't care.

"Excuse me, Goose, but why have you come to Coll?"

"Coll?!! Hell's beaks! Uncle Arthur got stuck here last year - said it was perfectly ghastly - all low flying jets and little boys with air guns; maybe it's not too late to get away though."

Gloomily, we survey the tortured remains of a curlew; the cat looks pleased, musing over the slow death of Pretty Things. But the rats have gone; part of the primitive contract we have made. Still the curlews come.

"Pardon me for mentioning it, Curlew, but why didn't you go where there are no cats?"

"All part of the rich pattern, Man; (does he imagine we get issued with some sort of predator map?!) the Goose warned me about you and your questions!"

Curlews can be awfully flip at times. Here, Puss-Puss!

We build and plan and grow; our children probably dream of sweets and pop idols and glittering shop windows and we practice optimism. Sometimes, in our own subtle moods, we may conjure some purpose and complex of reasons for what we do and where we do it. But, if so, we keep it to ourselves.

Perhaps it was blind chance that brought us to Coll or because the population is low or the rocks are several million years old. Perhaps we just like meadow flowers, corncrakes and individualists. Perhaps it was simply because there ought to be a good joke somewhere about not taking Newcastles to Coll.

In any case, we doubt that it's the end of the road. Flannan Isle sounds nice.

Elda and Martin Lunghi