Issue 9

Corrie & Sannox Village Committee would like to thank all those who helped raise this amazing amount of money, a full report will be in next months magazine.

McLellan Arts Festival

When planning for the current McLellan Arts Festival began last year, the outlook was grim. Funding sources had dried up, and it seemed that the Theatre and Arts Committee was on its own, trying to make what it could out of very little money, with fingers crossed for a good public response. In fact, the response turned out to be more than good – it has been fantastic. The showing of old Arran films on the Thursday night attracted more people than Corrie Hall has ever seen, and has resulted in more people coming forward with archive photographs and film. Hopefully, this is an event that can be repeated before long.

The week began on the previous Friday night with the ever-popular Arran and Beyond, featuring the well-known poet, Alexander Hutchison, who gave an entertaining performance that from time to time burst into song. Local poets also read their work, and the Wild Myrtles singing group gave a welcome return performance.

Due to Peter Alexander Wilson, who has a house in Corrie, we benefited again from the presence of twelve talented students from the Royal Northern College of Music, whose Opera Gala on the Friday night was a sell-out, with every seat in the Community Theatre taken. A big added attraction was the presence of the gleaming black grand piano, gifted so generously by Colin Guthrie and making its presence known for the first time. Daniel Browell and Jamie Thompson, the talented accompanists from the college, both played solos on the splendid new Kawai. John Wilson, the concert pianist who helped to select it, joined with Jamie in Rachmaninov’s glorious Barcarolle and Waltz duet, which showed off not only the skill of the performers but the piano’s beautiful clarity and resonance.

The students put on a magnificent evening of song, ranging in the first half from classic arias to Copland’s Little Horses and the well-known Vaughan Williams setting of The Vagabond. After the interval, they were back with a lighter collection of music. Amy Webber and the flamboyantly talented Hanna-Liisa Kirchin gave a suitably yowly rendering of Rossini’s Cats Duet. However, it would be invidious tosingle out any individual performer from this galaxy of talent. The quality of the voices, from clear sopranos to warm and melodious mezzos and from resounding tenors to rich baritones and basses, was exceptional, and the audience was with them every inch of the way, enjoying one delectable offering after another. A touching addition was a beautifully sung rendering of Drink To Me Only by the very young Oisean Gold, a little nervous but bravely professional and clear with every note. He had benefited from free teaching by Peter Alexander Wilson, to whom Arran’s music owes so much. Another welcome addition was Grieg’s lovely Solveig’s Song, dedicated to the wonderfully generous Colin Guthrie.

This unusual group (flute, piano and percussion) gave an amazing performance on September 17th to start the Arran Music Society’s new season of concerts. Like the Marx Brothers getting an impossible number of people out of a ship’s cramped cabin, they unloaded an extraordinary number of instruments from a modest-sized van, and set up an orchestral-sized array that made the normal drum-kit look minuscule.  Marimba, glockenspiel, xylophone, Chinese gong, kettle drums, tom-toms, bells, blocks – there seemed no end to it. And in the middle was Chris Brannick, who with Helen O’Connell on flute and Adrian Sutcliffe on piano,  gave a series of simply astonishing performances.

Kicking off with Handel’s Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, the group at once demonstrated an irreverent liveliness coupled with meticulous precision. Chris Brannick, in the middle of his array of instruments, leapt with balletic speed from one instrument to another, swiftly changing sticks and at one point managing a rapid touch on the tambourine with a beater snatched from his pocket. With the expressiveness of dance and the accuracy of fencing, his performance was so highly co-ordinated as to be something of a mathematical miracle. The range of sound produced ran from high, delicate sounds to sonorous drum-beats, but throughout, it had perfect control and balance. And that was just the percussion part.

Superb performances from Aidrian Sutcliffe on piano and Helen O’Connell on flute turned the percussion into a full orchestral sound. Aidrian’s skilled and sensitive playing supplied the entire harmonic background, and the rapport between him and the other two players had the exact timing of the truly expert chamber music player. In addition to this, he is a composer, and had made the arrangements used by Classic Rhythm. His treatment of Bernstein’s West Side Story was masterly, full of dramatic, highly emotional sound, and managing the transition between the famous tunes without ever letting one fall to nothing before introducing the next. The long piece had complete dramatic cohesion, and the emotional impact of the story shone through, wordlessly but with tremendous power.

Helen O’Connell is, quite simply, the best flautist I have ever heard. Her tone is pure and clear, never venturing into the heavily overblown range that can cause tonal roughness, and her technique is of course flawless – but over and beyond that, she plays with a dramatic intelligence that causes every phrase to speak to the audience. This is music with an emotional content that is never sentimental, but can never be ignored. Her playing has authority, not in any hectoring sense but because of its absolute integrity. She communicates meaning directly to the audience, and because of this, she leaves them with a sense of having shared in an experience that was both special and closely personal.

The trio were never lacking in the humour that springs up between players who are enjoying the close rapport that makes everything work, but at the same time, they produced moments of great beauty. Marimba and piano in Debussy’s Clair de Lune were strangely beautiful, as was Helen’s haunting introduction of the old song, Strawberry Fair, into a clever arrangement of four national folk tunes that wove together at the end in an intricate tapestry. Ravel’s Bolero, so often an endurance test for both players and audience, came newly to life with its varied colours and textures, and Rossini’s William Tell Overture was brilliant from the famous flute solo onwards, and had the audience cheering. Truly, a night to remember.

On Sunday, October 9th, the Corrie Film Club begins its new season with Joanna Hogg’s second film, Archipelago, a shrewd and excruciatingly funny essay about a stoic British holiday in awful weather on the Isle of Tresco. An ex-director of Casualty and EastEnders, episodes, Hogg has no regrets about leaving TV. ’You’d have episodes of things taken out of your hands and re-edited,’ she says.

Archipelago, made on a budget of less than £500,000, is firmly in Hogg’s hands, an unflinching look at the tensions and embarrassments that can happen when a reluctant family is called on to do the right thing, but gets it wrong. The plot is no more than an extended, compulsively watchable situation. Edward (Tom Hiddleston) is leaving to do voluntary work in Africa. His high-handed mother Patricia (Kate Fahy) hires a house on a remote Scilly island and summons the family to celebrate Edward’s departure and give him a good send-off – only it doesn’t quite work that way. Edward’s sister Cynthia (Lydia Leonard) seethes with a personal inner rage that threatens to boil over when Edward takes a shine to Rose, the local girl hired to do the cooking for the week. A painting teacher of near-Buddhist calm has been engaged as well, to provide occupation and a dash of culture, but his Zen-like contentment only serves to highlight the family’s emotional frailty. Worst of all, Edward’s father simply doesn’t turn up. His unexplained absence is an invisible elephant that everyone skirts round as one embarrassing moment piles on another. 

The critics loved Archipelago for its subtle insights and wry humour, and the reviews were rapturous. On the other hand, a lot of people posted Internet comments describing it as boring and tedious. Don’t let them put you off – they are probably the kind who watched the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean films without a shudder. (Oh, how catching genteel snobbery is!)

The showing starts at 8.00pm on Sunday 9th October. This is your opportunity to join the Corrie Film Club for a mere £15, which gives you a calendar showing the programme of films for the year and contributes to the fund that buys the DVDs.  Non-members are welcome to attend without charge, but contributions to Corrie Hall’s running expenses are appreciated.

Since Arran now has a beautiful new grand piano, the next concert will be at the Community Theatre in the Lamlash High School, on Wednesday the 22nd of October, instead of in Brodick Hall. It features the Heller Trio, playing The Gypsy Rondo by Haydn, Beethoven’s Opus 11 in Bb major and  the Opus 49 No 1 by Mendelssohn. Here’s your chance to hear music played on a real, top-quality grand piano – a first for Arran. The concert starts at 7.30pm.

The Corrie-based painter, Jan Inglis, is well known for her seascapes that show wind and water in every mood and every quirk of their changing light and colour, but the pictures she showed this month in Corrie Hall mark a step into some bold new thinking. All the arts depend for their real strength on the element of surprise that comes from working so hard that the subconscious becomes involved in it as well, producing unbidden scraps of dream and impulse that have a powerful effect. Having the courage to accept these unexpected elements and go with them marks the difference between the true professional and the amateur. If creative expression is a vital part of the artist’s life, it will not stay contentedly in a corner, to be taken out from time to time as a pleasant relaxation. It is a force to be accepted and reckoned with, no matter how inconvenient to its owner or how shocking to others.

Jan’s exhibition demonstrated exactly this act of faith, stepping into wider and more demanding territory as she used new techniques in a direct response to an essentially passionate view of life. The first hint of this came in her Swirling Sky (shown in photo), in which she had allowed ‘thrown’ paint to find its own detailed, infinitely fine ways to express the movement of cloud. Overall, the use of vigorous impasto and a close tonal range increasingly suggested movement and activity, as in her A Green Sea in Summer, but the most recent paintings brought this into stronger expression. A Light Shower (pictured) used broad sweeps of brushwork and a scumble of half-transparent white to suggest a steamed-up window and blustering rain from a sky that was about to lighten. The most fully developed of these new pictures, though, was After Rain. In a complete break from the artist’s usual technique, this used hard-edged indigo and white in a pattern evocative of sun-dazzle on dark water, broken by a scatter of residual drops, as transient as something seen in a half glance. To give lasting expression to a moment barely recognised is very central to the purpose of art, and Jan’s new paintings have real power.

Anne Bruce is well known on Arran, having been Principal Teacher of English then Assistant Head at Arran High School and with her husband having run the Corrie Hotel during the time when their children were growing up here. After five years on the mainland as Head Teacher at Rosehall High School in Coatbridge, she is now enjoying retirement in their Corrie house – and has begun a new career as a translator. Anne studied Norwegian and English at Glasgow University and has travelled extensively in Scandinavia, and she has now, she says, returned to her ‘first loves of language and literature’. Certainly, her familiarity with the Nordic culture gives her translations great confidence and a sense of easiness.

Anne’s first translation was a crime thriller called Dregs, the sixth in a popular Norwegian series by Jørn Lier Horst, but the first to appear in the English language. She has now followed that up with a thoughtful and deeply moving book called I Should Have Lifted You Carefully Over, by Wenke Mühleisen.

The story centres on the narrator’s both loved and exasperating mother as she goes through the dwindling final days of her life, cared for by the daughter who writes the narrative. It is a blisteringly honest account of the conflicting feelings that can co-exist even though the tasks of lifting and washing and feeding are being so willingly undertaken. No mother is ever simply maternal, regardless of how much effort she puts into ensuring that her children are brought up in security and happiness. She also has immense ability to cause hurt. Mühleisen is accurate about this potentially painful relationship, and about the fact that sooner or later, the balance will shift. As they become independent, the young become the holders of power, faintly despising elderly parents who don’t understand modern technology or use online banking. It is their turn to suppress impatience and to experience the frustration of looking after someone who shows little sign of appreciation. As Mühleisen says of her own mother, ‘She no longer had any power over us. Had played herself out completely on the sidelines with her perpetual nagging and fussing about who should repair what and who had behaved badly or ought to be helped.’ But the helpless love is still present, and the coming death of the mother is going to be hard for the survivor as well as for the one whose life ends.

The book is written in short phrases, as if read later from brief notes jotted down at the time. Anne Bruce’s translation catches this perfectly. The mother’s life has been ‘…so trifling. Specific. The extent of the household budget. Making dinner. Shopping. Paying the electricity bill. And: Is he in a bad mood today?’ Yet there is admiration, too. ‘People who saw you felt at ease and smiled too. Talked and laughed … I was proud of you. I still am.’

For anyone who has ever felt guilty about not loving a difficult mother enough, this honest, direct and very beautiful book will come as a reassurance and comfort, although it pulls no punches. It speaks of an experience that cannot be avoided, and with no sentimentality at all, reveals underlying truth.

I Should Have Lifted You Carefully Over by Wenke Mühleisen, translated from the Norwegian by Anne Bruce. Sandstone Press paperback, £7.99, ISBN 978-1-905207-64-0. Available from the Book and Card shop in Brodick.

The next workshop held by Arran Visual Arts will be run by Rebecca Roberts in two workshops held on the weekend of October 15th and 16th at the Rangers’ Centre, Brodick Castle. She will be sharing her method of working, beginning with preliminary exercises and quick sketches then going on to the palette-knife techniques that can give such vibrant and energetic expression to both oil and acrylic paint. Rebecca will bring knives of various kinds that students can borrow or buy.

The weekend costs £70 for non-members of AVA, £50 for members. To book, send a cheque payable to Arran Visual Arts to Alison Barr, 6, Manse Crescent, Brodick, KA27 8AS. Membership of AVA is only £12 a year – clearly a bargain if you intend to do even a single one of their varied and inventive workshops.

Jim Henderson continues his series

In the 1800s, Arran changed from a feudal society to something much closer to the island we know now. Life in Scotland was shifting away from the old tribal system in which landowners valued their tenants as potential fighting men and took a proprietory view of the communities without interfering with their methods of working. The traditional clan structure was giving way to a national shared conviction among the chieftains that farming must become more profitable, and this had a knock-on effect for tenants. Landowners, newly able to access imported goods as exploration of other countries increased, started to point out the benefits of nitrogen and lime. Because of the open, free-range system of rearing cattle, many farmers had not thought of cattle waste as a valuable source of nitrogen for horticulture, but regulation was starting to set in. An Act of Parliament required tenants to keep herds and to fold their cattle every night. Sheep had to be marked, and no cattle or sheep were to be killed without calling together a jury of the three nearest neighbours. All weights and measures were to be taken to the castle, and compared with Ayr weights and measures.

In a ‘stick and carrot’ exercise, these restrictions were balanced by inducements. As early as 1776, rewards were offered to the tenants for specified requirements. The best ‘three-year-old humbled bull’ could win 5 guineas, a very considerable sum then. The best ‘two-year-old tup of Bakewell and Chaplin kind full blood’ might earn a bonus of 2 guineas, and the best ‘three-year-old entire horse, not above 15 hands high, 7 guineas.

Similar inducements were offered to farmers who followed detailed instructions. 6 guineas rewarded ‘the best field of turnips, not under 3 acres, sown broad-cast after a summer fallow by 3 ploughings and manured.’ Cabbages, too, had to be grown according to instructions, though these were intended as cattle feed.  The field must be  ‘well prepared, planted at 4 feet distance 'twixt rows.’ On two acres, it was calculated that about 20,000 plants would be three times horsehoed. In 9 weeks the plants should weigh 4Ibs each, and the yield would fatten 16 head of cattle. A tenant achieving this would receive 6 guineas.

Cereal crops attracted the same inducements. 2 guineas would reward a tenant with ‘the greatest quantity and best quality of wheat upon enclosed ground, and after a thorough summer fallow of 5 furrows, sufficiently manured, and no less than 2 acres.’ Hay and clover were not forgotten, either. ‘To the tenant who shall have the greatest quantity of clover and rye-grass hay from at least 2 acres, sown with barley or wheat, after summer fallow, of 5 furrows, and properly manured, and not less than 100 stones an acre, and upon enclosed ground – 2 guineas. The Duke also obtained the services of an experienced fisherman, one Andrew Wilson, to teach the art of line fishing to any of the islanders who applied to him. Arran was starting to become richly productive.

Familiar Arran names were found amongst the prize-winners in the two years following; Angus MacKillop, Alexander Thomson, Patrick Crawford, Robert Shaw, John Currie and Alexander MacKinnon.

In the early 1800s, nitrogen fertiliser started to be imported from Chile in the form of guano. Lime was brought to the island by the Clyde ‘puffers’, which often beached on sandy areas close to the farming community who loaded the cargo on to carts at low tide. Sulphate of ammonia and super phosphate was manufactured, which increased productivity and met the demand for root crops and vegetables that had arisen when bread became so expensive. Reaping and threshing machines became a new sight on Arran and the introduction of metal ploughs and drills improved the farm output.

Part of this was due to a man called Robert Bauchop who surveyed on Arran for five years, pushing the new plans even further, and bringing about modern improvements such as the building of new roads. In 1817 roads were built connecting Brodick and Shiskine (The String), from Brodick to Sannox, and from Lamlash to the South End (the Ross Road).

Bauchop had drawn up these plans in response to the new land divisions in 1814. Farming and improvements had become the fashion among country gentleman, newly seen as lucrative, and Arran was no exception. With the abolition of the runrig system, the management of Arran’s agriculture became squarely the landowner’s business, so access to the various parts of the island was much more necessary. One of the first improvements was the road built between Brodick and Gorton Alister, Lamlash, the cost shared between the Government and the landowner. This made transport much easier and increased the use of wheeled vehicles as opposed to heavy wooden sledges. Progress indeed.

Judith Baines sends us another intriguing way to keep children happily occupied with simple materials

Another simple but rewarding technique for children is winding threads round pieces of card.  I know this sounds strange but it can cause children to look closely and gives them experience of a wide variety of threads – any type of string, ribbon, wools or sewing cottons can be used. 

Take a strip of card and run double-sided sellotape down from top to bottom.  Then help the child to select an idea as a starting point.  It might be a shell or a photo of a favourite rural landscape.  Select the appropriate threads and wind them carefully round the card.  The tape will hold each wind in place.  The photographs show interpretations by three five-year-olds of a stuffed fox they had in school. They all noticed the black tips to its ears! Also shown is an older child`s picture of the Yorkshire Moors  and my own depiction of the Humber Bridge using two strips of card.  As you see, there are endless possibilities for card making. 

A strip of double-sided tape down a tube will enable a three-D tower to be made.  A group of children made a row of these in the colours of the rainbow, graduating their threads from dark to light.

Our local MP, Katy Clark, has been successful in her campaign to get Arran included in the scheme to secure a discount on road fuel tax duty. For some reason, we were excluded from the original scheme that allowed a reduction of 5p per litre on petrol and diesel for rural British islands, but this has now been righted. But as Katy points out, ‘The price of fuel on Arran is of course far more than 5p per litre more expensive [than on the mainland] and more needs to be done.’

Island retailers claim that road fuel is barely worth selling, and makes no profit except for suppliers who deal in large bulk, which is not possible on Arran. The prices therefore have to be high – but the motorist responds by buying fuel on the mainland whenever possible, in a Catch-22 that seems to have no solution.

As anyone prone to seasickness will confirm, the ocean moves up and down all the time, often very vigorously. All natural movement of this kind, whether wind, tide or waves, consists of energy. Left to itself, this energy blows off its excesses as storms and floods, but just a small fraction of it can have huge potential for our own purposes.

Wave power has a surprisingly long history. As early as 1910 a man called Bochaux-Praceique built a device to light and power his house near Bordeaux in France. In the crisis of the 1970s, which now seems rather minor, there was a fresh flurry of interest in harnessing natural energy, then we got used to paying more for oil and it all died down again. Now, with oil not merely expensive but beginning to run out, the Scottish Government is very sensibly planning ahead and working towards a lasting, permanent supply of natural, non-polluting power. Last month we featured the tidal power installation being built between Islay and Jura, where the fast current running between the two islands is ideal, but there is also a wave power station on Islay.

The idea is simple. A fixed installation has an air space inside it that is compressed when a wave surges in and released when the wave goes out again. The power of this compression and decompression drives a turbine, generating electricity. The LIMPET (Land Installed Marine Power Energy Transformer), developed by a company called Wavegen, was installed, also on Islay, in  2001, and has been running ever since, a the world's first commercial scale wave-energy device. The manufacturers are now developing a larger system in the Faroe Islands.

Waves running up the beach create pressure inside an oscillating water column, and this in turn creates pneumatic power driving twin 250 kW generators.

The photo shows the LIMPET Islay tidal power installation. Nobody could complain that it is ruining the landscape, as it is invisible from the land. There is no reason why such turbines could not be incorporated into sea walls in many coastal districts, combining sea defences with energy generation. Theoretically, there is no need for anything else, for the World Energy Council says the world’s oceans can deliver twice the amount of electricity that is globally produced at the moment. Scotland has particularly high potential, since so much of its western coastline is exposed to the Atlantic Ocean.
The LIMPET is not the only approach to harnessing wave energy. Imagine threading a piece of string through four plastic bottles, end to end, then chucking them in the water. This line of bottles would float on the waves and snake up and down, meaning there is movement between one bottle and the next. This simple idea underlies the Pelamis, pioneered by an Edinburgh-based company. On a far bigger scale than plastic bottles, it consists of linked floating tubes 150 metres long and 3.5 metres in diameter. The joints between them are in constant movement, so they can power a system based on fluctuating pressure than generates electricity. On 22 February 2007 the Scottish Executive funded what will be the world's largest wave farm, the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) based in Orkney. It will have a capacity of 3 MW.

It’s 400 years since beavers were part of the Scottish scene. Most of them were killed for their thick, strong fur and they became extinct. But in May 2009, a five-year scientific trial run by the Scottish Wildlife Trust and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland brought these intriguing animals back to Knapdale forest near Lochgilphead. Introducing a new species has to be tried out very carefully in case it proves disastrous in any way, but so far, the Knapdale beavers seem to be doing well and causing no bother.

A report produced by the Argyll Fisheries Trust shows that beavers are having little observable effect on freshwater fish in streams in the trial area. This is because the beavers seem more interested in the lochs, though that may change as their numbers increase. The James Hutton Institute has been monitoring woodland around the edges of the lochs where the beavers live, and reports that 18 months after the beavers were released, about 10% of trees in the survey area were showing signs of beaver activity. Most of this number had been felled, though many trees also showing signs of gnawing. Beavers feed on bark, twigs and leaves, and they also use felled trees and branches for building their lodges and dams, where they store logs and branches underwater for food in the winter. Nearly all the trees affected (72%) were within 10 metres of lochs and streams, and the majority were within 350 metres of beaver lodges.

The trees gnawed or felled were often little more than saplings measuring 5cm in diameter, but some were much bigger. A few measured as much as 30cm, meaning they were quite mature trees, but strangely, most of the trees felled by beaver gnawing have not died. The following spring, they budded up again from the stump – which of course is in the beavers’ own interest. They have a strong preference for willow and will travel quite a distance from the water's edge to find it. They like rowan as well, but they avoid alder. Birch is the species they most often used, since this is the most commonly found tree in the survey area.

The beavers have built a dam at Dubh Loch that has caused quite a flood. Willow and alder may survive, but the long-term effect may mean the area turns into ‘very wet willow woodland or even wetland.’ Martin Gaywood, who leads the scientific monitoring of the trial for SNH said: ‘Beavers have complex effects on other wildlife, and measuring these changes is essential. This trial will give the Scottish Government the information it needs to decide whether beavers should be reintroduced on a wide-scale in Scotland.’

Maybe we will see beavers on Arran one of these days. Who knows?

The summer flowers are nearly over; but don't rush to cut down their skeletons; enjoy the subtleties of their weird and beautiful seed heads first. The hairy shock heads of Clematis Tangutica remind me of Barbie dolls. What weird little minaret rattles the poppies form, peppering out a thousand seeds.

Look at those iris pods perfectly packed; and the velvet bobbles of Heleniums. Dierama, once an airy "angel's fishing rod" of flowers, sags under the catch. Plumey heads of Cortaderia, six feet high, wriggle and dip drunkenly under the massed weight of scores of sparrows and small birds feasting on their seeds. The empty husks lie in drifts on my kitchen windowsills or get tangled in the spider webs.

That's another good reason to leave dry seed heads on, for the pleasure of watching greedy birds prise out the treats. Teazels, Fennel and Dierama attract the goldfinches and wrens fossick in the clematis fluff. The sparrows went mad earlier when the Phormiums were in flower, dipping for nectar until their faces are stained yellow and red with pollen; but I don't know if any bird eats the flat seeds that scatter when those twisted triffid pods flay open.

The yellow Tree Paeony's rude bulgy pods have burst under the strain of their glossy fat black seeds ... almost guaranteed to germinate. The Crocosmia stems hold rows of buttons and the Primula shuttle cocks are handsome enough to pick. And best of all, whatever seeds the birds don't take will fall back to earth, to surprise me next year.

On Monday Sept 19 Neil Sutherland, an award winning architect from Inverness, gave an informative and inspiring talk on rural house design, the speciality of his company. In his presentation he showed several examples of houses he had designed and built mainly of wood, a material, abundant in rural Scotland, in the use of which Neil is expert.

Of particular interest was the speaker’s philosophy of house building, that houses should be a pleasure to live in, capable of adaptation and extension, be constructed of locally sourced materials, be frugal in the consumption of power and appropriately sited within their surroundings. He stressed the life-enhancing effect of good quality materials and their ultimate economy. He saw volume builders as disregarding these while they enjoy ready planning approval for the mundane and mediocre in contrast to the difficulties faced by innovative and principled designs.

The speaker cited Scotland as having the lowest percentage of self-build in Europe as a result of planning rules not designed to facilitate this, the high cost of land and the pernicious practice of land-banking.

In helping the audience to come to terms with the ‘shock of the new’ in house design, he pointed out that the style commonly described as ‘the vernacular’ is inherited from new towns initiated by aristocratic estate owners in the eighteenth century. Mr Sutherland’s implication was that these need not represent an inviolable standard by which new designs should be judged.

The presentation was followed by questions and expressions of approval and thanks for what had been fascinating and educative talk.

See Neil Sutherland's website at http://www.neilsutherlandarchitects.com/

Miss Grizel R Hume, who died on 15 December 2008, left £175,000 to help provide and equip two additional single rooms at the Arran War Memorial Hospital for use in palliative care for patients who are approaching the end of their lives. This generous bequest adds to the sum of £27,000 raised by the Arran Hospice Charity, begun by John McFaull after his wife, Judy, died of cancer. A letter from John follows below.

Miss Hume's cousin, Miss Catherine Maclean, said: ‘Grizel would have been delighted that her funds are being put to such good use to assist the islanders.’ The Directors of the Arran Hospice Charity expressed their gratitude to the local NHS for working with them, and said, ‘Although we have donated virtually all of our funds to the development we intend continuing to raise funds for specific additional specialist equipment.’
 
The Arran War Memorial Hospital endowment fund has paid for the balance of the work, which has involved alterations to surrounding rooms and facilities to accommodate the single room changes.
Jean Hendry, NHS Ayrshire & Arran Health Care Manager, spoke of how members of the public had regularly highlighted the need for additional single room accommodation at the hospital. She said, ‘We are absolutely delighted that the generous donations we have received have allowed us to respond to this need.’
 
The two new single rooms will be achieved by dividing a large, four-bedded room into two specialist units. A tender for the construction will be issued at the end of September and the contractor is expected to start on site mid-November 2011, with work due to be completed by the end of March 2012.

I would like to thank Alan Stout and Jean Hendry of the NHS for their hard work in supporting the concept of palliative care within AWM Hospital, from the initial meeting in February 2008, days after Judy's death, and through all the 'behind the scenes' negotiations.

I would also like to express my gratitude for the support of friends of Judy who formed the "hospice fund-raising committee". Special thanks must go to Janet Redfearn, who has diligently carried out the duties of treasurer, and to Stuart Gough, who donated his services as accountant for the audit of accounts. The generosity of the people of Arran has also been tremendous. Thanks are due to the schools who fund raised, to the local press who gave publicity to the cause, to Dr Colin Guthrie who gave a sizeable donation in remembrance of his wife, and to the bereaved families who have given donations. All these have helped Judy realise Judy's dream of wanting to bring hospice facilities to the people of Arran, so that the final days or weeks of those who found themselves in the same situation as herself could be eased here on the island. The process has been long and hard, as the project has had to be put to consultation and presented to sub-committees within the NHS. It was given full approval in December 2010, at which point I was able to step back from the committee and fully move forward with my life, with the support of my new wife, Jenny, knowing that the hospice room would finally go ahead. This ambition had for a long time been my sole remit.

To this end I trust that the two new hospice rooms will fulfil all the needs of those who need them - and be of long-lasting help to palliative care within the community of Arran.

Thank you,
John McFaull
Founder of "Arran hospice room"

Normally, our beloved C-op does very well, but towards the end of September, both the Lamlash and Brodick stores were full of disconsolate would-be customers. Why were so many shelves empty? Why was there no plain yoghurt, no meat, no organic milk? Liz at the Lamlash Co said the lorry hadn’t come. They were having problems in Manchester, it seems. Trooble at t’depot, or something.  The staff at the Lamlash store were equally distraught. ‘There’s nothing we can do about it,’ they said, which was obviously true.

Fortunately, our splendid local shops supply almost everything we need – but it is a shame that the Co, which we appreciate for its ethical stance and its willingness to supply small, isolated communities, gets these logistical problems. That’s the trouble, we suppose, with large, central distribution. When it works, fine. When it doesn’t, we’re on our own. Keep growing the spuds, people, and never be surprised when Big Brother has a bad hair day.

Our neighbouring council, Argyll and Bute, is good at consultation. Their press agents put out news releases all the time, and even though most of them are not relevant to us on Arran, it’s good to know what is being thought about and discussed. A&B are, for instance, running a consultation on the annual budget that people can contribute to from Monday 10 October to Friday 25 November. They say, ‘We want to hear about the council services that are important to you.’

see http://www.argyll-bute.gov.uk/have-your-say

Last year’s consultation was evidently acted on. ‘You told us that you wanted more money spent on roads, education and social care, which we did. In roads we agreed to invest £15m over the next three years, and we protected education and adult care with the lowest reductions in budget of 5.5% and 5.9% over three years. We also agreed to protect front line services by reducing budgets for non essential functions such as travel, subsistence, venue hire and advertising and by increasing fees and charges.’

Such a degree of democracy (and use of plain English rather than official-speak) is not difficult to do. People living in Argyll and Bute can enter their opinions on the council’s website or by attending ‘one of our community planning events’ – there are evidently several. Failing that, response postcards are available all over the place and can be dropped in the suggestion box.

Where on Arran is there a suggestion box? North Ayrshire Council tries hard to seem democratic, but in fact its style of government is instinctively centralist. The best they can come up with is a web page where we can report a problem (see http://www.north-ayrshire.gov.uk/UsefulLinks/OnlineServices.aspx) but it's hardly a consultation. A bit of relaxation is called for in the concrete palaces of Irvine. Come on - muck in.

Alison Prince

This year, National Poetry Day falls on the Thursday 6th October and an event is being organised to give local or visiting poets a chance to hear good poetry and to read their own work. This year’s Poetry Day theme is Games. However, those invited to read need not feel at all hide-bound by the theme and poems about anything and everything are welcomed.

Local artist, Tim Pomeroy, himself no stranger to rhyme and a self-confessed poetry-lover, is organising the event at The Douglas Hotel piano room, Brodick from 7.30pm on the 6th.

There will be two halves to the event and  musical interludes to vary the flavour of the evening.
The ‘open mike/open floor’  sections of the event, where guests can take the floor and read their own poems, need to be organised and incorporated into the whole and Tim is calling for anyone who would like to read their own poems, to contact him so that their contribution can be neatly fitted into the overall scheme of things. Phone on 600287 or email pomeroyarts@supanet.com  As many who want read will be fitted in. If people want to come along just to listen then that is  absolutely fine. The event is free and individual poems, books, will be available on the night. As well as thought-provoking reading and possibly post-poetry craic.

Arran is already known as a hotbed of creativity. This National Poetry Day will hopefully be yet another manifestation of this. Please arrive ten minutes early for a prompt start at 7.30pm . For more information call Tim on 600287

Retreat.
I’m walking alone at sunset close to my house, binoculars hanging heavy on my neck. The track behind the beach is pitted with the frost encrusted prints of animals and people. Paws, hooves and boots have been strutting back and forth along the lonely shore. I’m looking for evidence of otters, and pause to hunt among the rocks next to a drainage culvert. I find what I’m after, pungent spraint daubed on to a smooth lump of granite. There is evidence of several visits to this messaging post, and I follow the ditch upstream to a thicket of brambles. I look for prints in the muddy bank but find nothing. If an otter came this way, it did not exit the burn at this point, but must have continued to the farmland beyond. I don’t follow. An otter’s holt is a sacred space, protected through secrecy and by law.

Winter is a great time for watching otters on Arran, as the short days bring their most active hours within reach of a normal human day. There are fewer dogs and people about too. The otter I am tracking today is a female with a young cub in tow. She is naturally shy, but I have seen them in the water from Clauchlands to Corriegills. The cub is only a few months old but already an efficient hunter of crabs and shrimps. I don’t spot them often, but the traces of their presence are left in piles of fishy spraint along the back of the beach above the high tide mark.

Sunbathing.
Not all otters insist on secrecy.  In Kildonan, a pair of cubs curl up in full view of villagers on a flat rock marooned by the rising tide. It is early spring now, and the sun is warming the volcanic dykes that jut out to sea. This rock is a favourite sleeping place and the young otters, disguised as piles of brown seaweed, doze in peace while their mother forages amongst the surf. Their tidal alarm clock is set- the rising waves lap around them until they wake to foamy splashes. Mother appears, and the family begins a daily ritual of play that must end every siesta. I call this time “Otter O’clock”. I have no idea why this family is so predictable, or why they are less secretive than other otters, but they regularly delight visitors and locals with their bold play in broad daylight.

Feeding Time.
As the Kildonan cubs develop, their presence begins to dominate the coast around the village. Locals tell me they have never seen more otter activity in the area than now. The hungry family spends hours in the water, fishing almost constantly for crabs, blennies and other small morsels. They patrol every sheltered bay methodically, diving again and again with relentless appetite. Lying on their backs in the water, each catch is quickly crunched up before they porpoise down to the sea bed for the next course.

Otters have a rapid metabolism, perhaps to keep warm in cold water.  Like teenagers, they live fast, going through episodes of intense activity, interspersed with vital periods of rest. They must eat well, and prefer small and easily caught meals, tending not to waste energy chasing the bigger prey. Their strong jaws and heavy molars are powerful tools for crushing the hard shells of crustaceans.  Their spraint is packed with the tiny bones of fishes and broken shells of crabs and shrimps. The Kildonan family hunt for several hours a day.

End of an era.
It is midsummer, and all good things must come to an end. The Kildonan cubs are now indistinguishable from their mother. I calculate that they are well over a year old. Recently while the family has been at play I have noticed a fourth otter, loitering a few hundred metres away. Days pass and the intruder is still there, a curious presence in the background. It is a powerful male, and his increasing interest in the family shows that there is a change in the air.  Reluctantly I go away for a week, and when I return the favourite rock is deserted.

Now there is a different regime in the village.  A solitary otter fishes the sheltered bays, but it is not always alone. When the large male appears, the two embrace playfully. There is a tumble of shiny brown bodies in the water and a boisterous game of chase begins amongst the rocks and pools. Then, they fish alongside each other for an hour or so, before smaller of the two slips away.

I do not know what has happened to the Kildonan family.  Did the mother drive the cubs away? Did she leave and am I watching one of the cubs playing with the male? Otters are hard to tell apart unless heavily scarred, or as in the case of the male, distinctive by their size. He has a powerful bullish head and neck, his back humped and broad. I wonder if the smaller otter is a female in season.  Only time will tell.

Fight.
Male otters live a rough life often shortened by violence. Upon leaving the safety of their family they travel long distances, sometimes for years, searching for their own territory. Many die before they find it: in road traffic accidents, in fights with dogs, or at the hands of other male otters. A male may inhabit the territories of several females, the limiting factor on territory size being what he can defend.

Late this summer I witnessed a fight. The violence was undeniable. Canines flashed in the sunlight, and the two screamed their aggression as they tore at each others throats. Even as the loser turned and fled, he was pursued relentlessly through the water at an incredible speed. I wondered if he would get away, and what would happen if he didn’t.  Two years ago a woman from Kildonan found a young male otter with terrible wounds. He was handed to Hessilhead Wildlife Rescue Centre, but did not survive his injuries.

New life.
Autumn has closed in around us and the brutal weather has made finding otters hard, but I’m seeing evidence that the circle of life continues. Otter cubs are born throughout the year. The gestation period for otters is short- cubs are born helpless and blind, and are tucked up securely in the den for months. They are too weak at first to play in the currents, and even when they are six months old they will avoid rough weather.  A female with a wild rocky territory in the Southend has a growing cub. They have been very shy through the summer, but as the tourists depart they are becoming easier to find. The cub is increasingly brave in the surf, strong enough now to hunt amongst the rougher breaks. These two still have several months together and I’m looking forward to watching them.

Meanwhile the solitary otter at Kildonan no longer receives the attentions of the male. Fishing expeditions are hurried and businesslike. It works only the best bays and ignores the less fruitful locations. I fantasize that somewhere in the tangle of wooded cliffs there is a waiting family, squeaking and blind, dependent on mothers milk.

Otter Facts:

• All wild otters in Britain are the species Lutra lutra, although they inhabit diverse habitats, from the coast to lochs and inland river systems.
• Otter numbers declined drastically during the 20th century due to pollution and persecution. Numbers are now on the increase thanks to legal protection and cleaner coasts and waterways.
• The greatest threat that otters face in the 21st century is still pollution.  Roads also claim a number of casualties each year, including on Arran.
• Otters are protected by law.  It is illegal to disturb or harass an otter or damage its holt. For more information see the SNH Website: http://www.snh.org.uk/publications/on-line/wildlife/otters/law.asp
• Arran is one of the best places in the country to watch otters, as it is thought that every stretch of coastline has a resident otter. You will need a good pair of binoculars and patience. Dawn/sunset or a rising tide are the best times of day to see them.

Tim Pomeroy

Friday saw the Gala concert in the High School at times rock the fittings as the sweet and powerful voices of our talented visitors and festival supporters floated through and caressed the auditorium. All the singers had prodigious talent and, as in life, what distinguished them one from another, was their different characters. And character extended beyond the voice and into the quality of the accompanists which was striking. The sensitivity of the new baby grand piano was matched only by the lightness of touch and note-holding daring of the pianists. The piano itself was no small star in the proceedings and it is a great thing that Dr Colin Guthrie’s donation has  helped purchase it. The real gift, and the one that moves the heart, is that he has given the gift of music to generations of children yet to be born. We who recognise this salute him.

In the first half, this reviewer is happy to pick Aimee Toshney’s  Song to the Moon by Dvorak as  particularly moving. The music, obviously but the singer’s extra mile, definitely.  Rhys Jenkins as Don Giovanni was especially colourful as the Don in the first half and showed great stage presence in the second, rocking those aforementioned fittings with the Road to Manadalay.  Ben McKee’s version of Vaughan Williams Vagabond was heart-warming and Gwenellian Elias delivered a breath-taking rendition of Aaron Copland’s Little Horses. Young islander Oisean Gold, under the gentle direction of Peter Wilson, gave a sweet rendition of Drink to me Only. In the second half, Amy Webber and Hanna-Liisa Kirchin performed the ever-popular Rossini  Cat Duet complete with hissings and scratchings. Aimee Toshney raised a tear with If I Loved You from Rogers and Hammerstein ‘s Carousel and Hanna-Liisa Kirchin was a perfectly reluctant model singing from Sondheim’s Sunday in the park with George.

On Saturday, Lamlash Church was the perfect setting for Mozart’s Requiem. The able bodies of the Lochranza choir augmented the voices for this tour de force of the choral canon. The evening was again divided in two halves the Requiem taking all the second half. The preamble to the main event was itself no light weight sketch with, among others, Mozart’s Ave Verum, Handel’s ’Let the bright Seraphim’ and a virtuoso Bach organ solo. Arran’s own man of brass, Dave Payne, contributed very sweet soprano trumpet that was a beautiful compliment to the organ and chorus - completely at home in the vaulted ceiling of the church. But it was the massed voices of the Lochranza choir and visiting soloists that brought this year’s Mclellan Festival to its final crescendo. If a composer lives every time his or her music is played, then that night, despite requiem-status ,  Mozart was alive and visiting Lamlash. Northern College of Music.. to quote a weel-kent musical ..’fare thee well but be back soon.

To find out more about the Royal Northern Colledge of Music see http://www.rncm.ac.uk/

 No Take Zones (NTZs), Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) are often confused and need a bit of explaining. MPAs, NTZs and SACs are spatial management tools in that they define areas of the sea where special management measures are in place. However an MPA or SAC is not necessarily an area of no take to all fisheries (as is the case in the Lamlash Bay No Take Zone). Instead they normally set out a series of measures designed to sustainably manage the waters and seabed within it to conserve special features such as eel grass and reefs or help restore heavily impacted fisheries such as in the Firth of Clyde . These measures may include a restriction on certain types of environmentally damaging fishing practices such as scallop dredging and bottom trawling for Nephrops prawns but allow more sustainable fishing practices such as creeling and line fishing. The return or conservation of fish stocks either as an end in itself or to restore viable commercial fisheries is normally an objective of an MPA.

COAST’s proposal for an MPA around the southern part of Arran from Corriegills Point to Drumadoon point is for an MPA of this type (as was the original proposed MPA in Lamlash Bay). A no take zone (usually a smaller area) may be included within an MPA to assist in the regeneration of the whole area through the dispersal of larvae and the provision of undisturbed nursery grounds for juvenile fish. The aim of the Lamlash NTZ and proposed MPA for the south of Arran is to protect vulnerable and significant habitats around our shores allowing the seabed to recover from dredging. It is hoped that biodiversity will increase and fish nursery areas will recover attracting other marine life such as whales. In the long term this should have significant benefits for commercial and leisure fishermen in the Clyde and also benefit sea birds and wildlife tourism operators.

To raise money for Corrie & Sannox Village hall energy efficiency upgrade, there will be another showing of the films of Arran from the 1930-70 on the 26th October at 8pm .

Dave Payn

Oban RNLI lifeboat station had a busy month last month September.

On September 4 The towns lifeboat Mora Edith MacDonald, was called out at about 1-45am to assist in the recovery of a young man spotted by police in the sea  just off Railway Pier. When the lifeboat arrived on the scene at 1.48am the police had recovered the 18-year-old on the deck of a fishing boat from where the lifeboat took him to a waiting ambulance at the lifeboat station and on to Oban hospital.

On September 7 the Oban lifeboat were launched at 11-10am to go to the aid of canoeists who had capsized about a mile south of Easdale Island. A number of other boats also responded to the coastguard's call for assistance and Oban lifeboat and the coastguard rescue helicopter arrived on scene shortly afterwards. Two people made it ashore . The coastguard helicopter had a paramedic on board and it was decided to transfer one of the people to hospital as they were suffering from the cold.

The next day the Oban lifeboat launched after receiving information from coastguard's that an electronic man over board alarm had been activated by the fishing vessel Marelenn. The Life launched at 05-45am. The Lifeboat was informed that all was well and it was a alarm malfunction.

On the 15 September following a 99 call to Clyde Coastguard's the Oban lifeboat was launched  to recover an injured walker from the bothy at Inniemore Bay on the Morvern  peninsula. The lifeboat launched at 1228pm and arrived on scene a sort time later . Two lifeboat crewmen were put ashore in their small craft. The 27 year old male casualty who had suffered a damaged ankle the night before was sheltering in the bothy. He was assisted to the small boat and taken to the all-weather lifeboat. The lifeboat arrived back at Oban at 1420pm and the injured walker was transferred to an ambulance and taken to Lorn and Isle District General Hospital.

For the Arran & Clyde lifeboat call outs see http://www.rnli.org.uk/rnli_near_you/scotland/stations/ArranLamlashStrathclyde/

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