"I don't remember the picture being taken. Somewhere in Scotland, sometime in the 1980s. It has that hazy quality you get with old colour prints: warm but also somehow melancholy. I'm wearing blue jeans, white trainers, an army surplus jumper and am perched on a standing stone. My mum gave me the photo when I turned 50. She found it up in the loft."
"Islay is the southernmost point of the Inner Hebrides, lying on the same latitude as Glasgow. That makes it sound an easy hop from the city, but the watery fractures of Scotland's west coast require a long drive north and then south along the shores of sea lochs, before a two-hour crossing from the port of Kennacraig. Islay is the eighth largest of the British Isles (bigger than the Isle of Man and Isle of Wight) and yet not, I think, well known."
"A saltire (Scottish flag) flapped on the prow as the CalMac ferry eased up the Sound of Islay. The cloud-shrouded mountains of nearby island Jura were a dark presence to starboard. Islay, to port, appeared far more friendly, with its purple heather and bright strand. But appearances can deceive. A cormorant the devil's bird flew in front of the ship in the direction of Islay, not Jura, and I wasn't at all surprised."
A childhood photograph with a hazy, melancholy quality shows a young figure in blue jeans and white trainers perched on a standing stone. The photograph was discovered in a loft and given on a fiftieth birthday, but its location was unlabelled. A fleeting memory and the landscape's light suggested Islay, prompting a search to find the exact spot. Islay lies in the Inner Hebrides, reached after long coastal driving and a two-hour ferry from Kennacraig. The island is large but obscure, associated with whisky villages and framed by Jura's dark mountains and heathered shores.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]