990511.1904 gugh

over the last week i have watched some television broadcasts , having
previously seen none since arriving in the islands . i have sampled a range of programmes : news and current affairs , historical documentary , serial drama , mainstream comedy , off-beat comedy , advertisments . my primary response is of nervousness and distaste . i do not much like the society these products represent .

i have never invested a great deal of my time in television viewing . probably it reached a peak of fifteen hours a week in 1996 and fell away almost to nothing after that . but i have never so specifically avoided it as i have these last months . nor have i observed it with such a sense of critical detachment as i have this last week .

it is sobering for me to reflect how unquestioningly i viewed it in the past . from my earliest childhood the television set was there , situated at the focal point of successive sitting rooms . rooms symbolising familial privacy , security from the outside world , safety . in these rooms one’s behaviour was unguarded , trusting . and there , alongside my father’s , mother’s and sister’s voices were the multitude of other voices . each in its way as familiar as those of , well , my family .

of course i did not blindly accept all that those voices said , any more than i did what my parents said ( i was an impossible child ) . but i never questioned the act itself , the ritual of fixating on a bulging rectangle of glass , listening to the thin sound , reconstructing people and a world in my imagination . nor did i question how this act might over time be changing me . i was an intelligent child and i did not question these things . at university i studied critical theory and mass culture yet still i did not question these things . it took my relocation to a tiny island and an instinctive decision to fast from this habit before the questions became apparent . the experience is of a spell broken . i shall not see things the same way again .

what we have in our homes , wrapped in the innocent mantle of furniture , is a story-teller . one with the ability to bring numberless characters and scenes to life . traditionally we react differently to someone telling us a story than we do to a neighbour telling us his barn is afire and our help is needed . but the mechanical story-teller has overcome this boundary . by telling the same stories to enough people , by establishing shared familiarity with a range of characters , something is constructed which is able to pass as reality . of course we the audience are firmly in control , able to switch on and off , change channel at will . but in this relationship i wonder where the power really lies .

it is interesting . although my ethnography is expressly focused on this little community , i find myself reflecting quite as much on the world i left .

: cH

990505.2341 the gugh

well here i am , my first night of proper solitude . rhondda left at quarter past two . the rising tide called back the last few trippers some three hours later . i watched , fascinated , as the strip of dry sand narrowed with each wave until finally the water was unbroken . the gugh had a human population of one .

it does feel odd . from where i am working i can see the sand bar , or the water which covers it , just by looking over my left shoulder . throughout the evening i found myself periodically staring out that way , seeing the puckered grey surface of the water where the tide flowed over the sand .

the party on sunday night to celebrate the conclusion of the gig championships was a marvellous affair , located on a farm in the middle of st mary’s . a stage had been built from scaffolding , polythene and wooden palettes . this stood at one end of field , its boundaries defined by bare grey trees which reached up and met thirty or forty feet above the ground . it was like the skeleton of some crazy gaudi folly . in the centre of this space an enormous bonfire had been laid . coloured lights were strung along the trees and across the front of the stage . elsewhere two barns housed a bar and a barbecue .

it had been a blazingly gorgeous day . but as the sun sank a fog descended and with it an expectant hush . i arrived early with < touching cloth > , the evening’s main band . after a rudimentary sound check we wandered up to the bar . then it seemed as if the place was suddenly thronged with people . most of the evening is a blur . i was up on stage for a few songs , playing my soprano sax with appropriate gusto , but i suspect it was generally inaudible . the fire was damn hot . i think i took some photos . everyone seemed to be having a good time . especially james watt , to whom i spoke for the first time having conversed formerly by email . somehow he managed to demolish ten feet of granite wall through the sheer force of his dancing . didn’t do his ankle any good though . i remember walking up to watermill along the moonlit road with gaz and button .

monday was a quiet day .

: cH

990501.2345 the gugh

a different room . unambiguously a study . twin-pedestal desk , floor-to-ceiling books , pictures of boats , quills , paint-brushes , a red and white striped model lighthouse , friendly clutter .

my boxes jiggled across behind johann’s tractor this morning , myself following close by bike . i was rather reminded of the music hall song which begins < my old man said follow the van > , though the absence of a cock linnet did spoil the effect . there was a real sense of passage as we crossed the sand bar , waves nibbling on either side , and achieved the islet from which i now write .

my goods deposited we returned to tamarisk farm and spent a pressed hour making the place ready for the arrival of the year’s first proper guests . it was heartbreaking to leave , but bearing in mind i was originally expecting to be there only until the end of february i must consider myself a lucky sod .

this weekend the islands are hosting the gig world championships . i may have explained before , but a gig is conventionally a wooden boat of around fifteen feet rowed by six men each of whom takes one oar . historically they have played an important role in the islands’ life , and still each island fields at least one boat and crew for weekly races during the summer . agnes’ representative is the shah , a splendid vessel built in the 1870s and painted bright blue .

in recent years the sport has been gaining popularity elsewhere , and the championships now attract more than sixty boats from britain , the netherlands , germany and the states . the opening event was on friday evening , with all the crews lining up off agnes and racing to st mary’s . the sea was smooth and a fog hung across the islands . it was beautiful and mysterious to see the flotilla of gigs and spectator boats weaving across the water in the flat light , shadowy islands discernable on all sides . the whole thing is delightfully unpretentious . everyone just gets on with what they’ve come here to do .

i watched a couple more races today , then came back across to gugh to start unpacking . the rising tide was almost across the bar by the time i realised i needed to stock up on groceries . i made the shop and got what i sought , but my feet got a wetting on the return as i leapt from stone to stone amidst the rising water . somehow this seemed an appropriate baptism .

: cH

990419.2317 tamarisk farm , st agnes

it is now ten weeks since i established myself in this house . in some sense i cannot credit the time has flown so fast . in another i feel i have been here forever , and ten weeks seems far too small a measure .

in any case , i must turn my thoughts to packing once more and prepare to move . although i have until the end of the month , i must venture to the capital ( by which i mean to say london , not hugh town . my perspective is not yet quite so local ) as i have school business next week . few days remain when that is accounted .

it seems my next move shall be to a still more remote situation , a prospect which thrills me . this island of st agnes , most remote of the scilly group , is partnered by an islet called gugh ( pronounced nowadays to rhyme with < few > , but in former centuries as < goo > ) to which it is connected at low tide by a bar of shifting sand . this land was uninhabited between the neolithic period and the 1920s , in which decade a mad scotch farmer leased it from the duchy and determined to bring it to productivity . he built a house and a barn , both with aerofoil-shaped roofs of reinforced concrete to deflect the prodigious winds . he kept cattle and pigs and fowl and planted shelter belts as a prelude to cropping . but the soil is poor and i think it was not a great success .

the barn is now converted as a house , inhabited by rhondda wraith and alan reekie . the old house itself is rarely habited . indeed alan is most of the time required at his boat yard in faversham , on the east coast of britain . so rhondda lives there for long stretches on here own and seems very happy , for twelve hours each day cut off from the rest of the world . she has invited me to stay there awhile , as she has engagements on the mainland and the cats and garden must be tended . the only possibility for greater remoteness than this lies five miles away , standing one hundred and eighty feet tall on the bishop rock , a light to mark the western extent of the archipelago . johann was telling me that a bbc reporter spent a month there in the late 1940s and had to be brought off in a straight-jacket having gone quite mad . in those days there was a crew of three to keep him company . now it is unmanned . but with a satellite phone , a laptop and several month’s supplies …

yesterday conditions were favourable to the year’s first expedition under sail . johann and i took out joffy’s customised silhouette for a sedate potter round smith sound in the light breeze . i loved every second of it but felt terribly rusty and clumsy . i cannot wait for the next chance .

from the water i spied a white undulating mass in the water against some rocks . by this morning it had been deposited by the high tides just outside tim and sue hicks’ campsite at troytown , the decomposing remains of a pilot whale . fifteen feet of greyish-white flesh with ribs sticking out and a few teeth still left in its mouth . tim stood over it looking rather wistful , steeling himself for the task of towing the stinking putrefying mass back out to sea and hoping it would wash up on someone else’s island .

today it is cold , wet and windy . the sea has got big again and i spent several delighted hours on the rocks with apocolyptic geysers and plumes of spray filling the air around me .

oh , and last night i put together an introductory site for the digital workshop . nothing much to it yet . http://www.scillonia.org.uk if you’d like to see a handful of photos from february and march .

: cH

990414.2237 old town , st mary’s

greetings from the the lock , stock and barrel , in whose restaurant i sit , writing by a candle , the only customer . eurotrash is projected on a big screen in the main bar . the handful of customers laughs dutifully at each saucy gag .

990415.1339 watermill , st mary’s

sitting outside gaz and button’s wooden cabin in the sun , surrounded by bluebells and snowdrops . i hear birdsong , the wind in the trees , the woody chatter of bamboo wind-chimes . this is the far northern end of st mary’s , an intimidating distance of two and a half miles from hugh town . this end of the island , in fact almost anywhere outside town , is referred to as < up country > , the term used to suggest somewhere vaguely but prohibitively distant .

.1533 hugh town , st mary’s

perched on a mooring weight on the quay , awaiting a boat back to agnes . the wind has dropped after several days of gales . my friends christian and james were down from london over the weekend and we had an entertaining trip over to st mary’s on monday . we squeezed onto the lyonesse lady , the sturdy steel vessel which conveys freight and supplies between the islands . the channel between agnes and st mary’s is deeper and more exposed than those between the other islands . so once we left the lee of the island we were exposed to the huge grey rollers sweeping in from the open ocean , each one high enough to obscure all sight of the surrounding land as we sank into its trough . the lady , surely handled , shook and leapt as she pushed onward , spray flying across the deck . the three of us spent most of the trip grinning like idiots as we braced ourselves against the bulkheads . james’ little waterproof camera finally came into its own .

everything seems rather quiet now after two successive weekends of visitors . first my parents and caroline over easter , then christian and james last weekend . these were all first time visitors to agnes , though my parents have been to the islands before . it’s been a delight to see everyone and show them round .

on sunday the first fully-fledged seaweed experiment was undertaken . we harvested a quantity of delicate green sheets of sea lettuce from cove vean , steamed it for several minutes and combined it with sea spinach , chopped flowers and stems of wild garlic , steamed alexander stems and walnuts . christian took over for the final stages and deftly produced a pasta sauce . the seaweed contributed a delicate tang which i find hard to relate to any other flavour . the whole ensemble was quite delicious , all the better for knowing that most of its components had been picked with our own hands just a few hours before .

this meal followed the previous day’s feast of two grey mullet caught by kitt legg , baked with lemon and olive oil , to my mind the finest fish taken from these waters .

990416.1524 tamarisk farm , st agnes

i’ve just help johann drag joffy’s heavily-customised silhouette from the life-boat shed ( where we dragged it with christian and james’ help at the weekend ) to the bottom of the quay , from which the rising tide will lift it over the next hour . the technology for accomplishing this is simple : a plank underneath the boat’s centre keel with a loop of rope at one end by which it can be dragged slowly by tractor , with hands supporting both sides to keep the bilge keels from scraping the ground .

today the water is totally still and flat . it’s almost as if the week’s storms never happened .

: cH

990401.1933 st mary’s

o golly , this is beautiful . i’m sitting on a crate down at the rechabite quay , looking across hugh town’s harbour with samson , bryher and tresco hazy on the horizon . the sun sets behind the garrison , sillhouetting the elizabethan star castle . the tide is high , the sea laps the granite quay . a couple of youths circle the grass to my left on their bikes . two people and a dog on the narrow crecent of sand . forty odd vessels slowly turn on their moorings .

these days have been rewarding . more threads woven into the fabric , some delightfully unexpected harmonies discovered .

several hours this afternoon were spent with julia mackenzie at her house on the strand , playing through various pieces on two pianos . my reading is not as sharp as it was , but i enjoyed it immensely . julia was for many years the islands’ music teacher . more recently she has been director of music at a series of prep schools around the country . now she is back to stay , and the islands are the beneficiaries of her energy and passion .

i first met julia through henry doughty , head of music at truro school when i was there , assistant organist at truro cathedral and my first organ teacher . it was henry who first introduced me to these islands . i discovered from julia that he and his wife francesca will be here next week . we plan a surprise for him . he has no idea i am here .

i should head for the main quay now , where the spirit is due at eight to collect johann from a council session . the sky is huge and striated in purple and orange . it must look magnificent from castella downs on agnes .

990402.2010 tamarisk farm

whew ! just back from an exhilarating cycle round wingletang downs , bumping and sliding over the granite , sand and bramble . this was the test run for johann’s newly souped-up machine . when i first arrived i was happy to discover an ancient mountain bike in the shed . but my first enthusiastic sortie down to the post office ended smartly with the ping of the rear deraileur falling to bits . johann and i took a few inches out of the chain , reducing the number of gears from eighteen to , er , one .

undaunted i ordered a new part from a cycle shop in penzance . it arrived just as i was leaving for st mary’s on tuesday . i spent several hours this afternoon with a socket set , some wd40 and the ingenious little omni-tool adam gave me last year . the gears are working , the tyres are taut ( though profoundly wrecked ) , the brakes just about work , the saddle sits three inches above the instantly-crippling position in which it was rusted solid . in short the thing works . there remains a lingering sense that the hopelessly corroded and worn-out beast is liable to collapse at any moment , but until then it’ll be a lot of fun .

whilst i was on st mary’s nick kindly trusted me with his gorgeous aluminium creature . i couldn’t find the lights , so i was blessed with the experience of speeding along the deserted lanes by moonlinght from gaz’s cabin at watermill . an experiene further heightened by the fact that i was just a little the worse for wear . quite a contrast to my late-night journeys across london , with their mournful street-lamps and poisoned air .

tomorrow my parents and caroline arrive for easter . i pray they see some of the divine weather of these last few days , but fog is forecast .

: cH

990330.1555 kingfisher of st mary’s

just leaving the jetty on agnes on the flood tide , out into the grey lumpy roadstead . i’m off to st mary’s for a couple of days .  tellingly , this is a tripper boat . laid up through the winter and only brought into service during the tourist season . the escalation of visitors over the last week has been quite noticable . mainly people staying on st mary’s and visiting agnes for the day . on such a small island the influx of just ten or twenty people makes a surprisingly large impact . no longer are one’s walks likely to be solitary . on this boat there are nine other passengers , none of them islanders . two bird-watchers with their mighty binoculars . a couple of elderly ladies traveling together , muffled up to the chin against the wind . a middle-aged couple cooing rather sweetly over one another . a dour-countenenced couple and their young , well-behaved , daughter . easter is one of the busiest times of the year , after which there’ll be a hiaitus until june .

a remarkable success last night on the web . as long-term readers will know i’m curious to perform culinary experiments with seaweed . last night i fed the cue < edible seaweed > into alta vista and top of its list of returns was a site devoted to cooking and eating seaweed . i’ll send out the details when i get back to agnes . so , those of you who are planning to visit me : be warned . there are liable to be some strange delicacies in store for you .

: cH

990326.2345 tamarisk farm

here i am again , lying in bed with my psion glowing up at me from the pillow . it seems a long time since i last wrote under these circumstances . my initial frenzy of writing has calmed down a bit , much as predicted . for the first month every step brought its rush of intense new experience . now i am becoming more deeply engaged with my environment and my work . there are still frequent moments of joy and absorption , but i no longer feel the same need to rush to my keyboard and detail each one .

i am conscious that my record has to date been exclusively positive , something i think worthy of comment . the basic truth is that i am loving what i am doing , but it is also true that i tend to look at my circumstances in a positive light . furthermore , when one takes such a leap as i have , departing from normal expectations , there is a pressure to prove oneself not to have done a foolish thing .

none of this would matter , but i have claimed this string of despatches as a part of my work . a record of what it was like for me to spend a year on an island . thus i should apply the same standards as i do to other elements of my documentation .

so i shall take this opportunity to record that i did feel a bit lonely earlier this evening . not for more than half an hour , and not with any great drama , but i had a wistful sense that i would like to be in a relaxed environment with some friends . the context of this is that i spent most of the period between four and eleven cataloguing and scanning slides . i took a short break to eat , but probably not more than twenty minutes . i am very content doing this work ( though the oft-crashing scanning software continues to irk me ) , but it would be even better if leavened with company .

there we are , i don’t wish to dwell on it . indeed it is worth mentioning that i sometimes experienced far more intense isolation in london , a city where one is ever conscious of things going on to which one is not party . and i would say i was a pretty social creature , latterly at least .  it’s been another sunny spring day here . i find it increasingly hard to make myself sit inside in front of a computer during daylight hours .

: cH