Christmas……’Gifts’…..There’s Also Something About Travis….
by Bernie Bell - 09:18 on 25 December 2024
Christmas……
Is a time when the post can bring a right mish-mash of missives.
I wrote this a few years ago …
Why Do People Leave It ‘Til Christmas?
Why do people leave it ‘til Christmas
To send you their bad news?
Why not tell you when it happens
Instead of a note in their card?
It may be that the news is hard to tell
But they are sending one thing
You’re receiving more – all together
And at Christmas, too.
Why do they do that?
BB Dec. 2019
Equally – we receive some great pics and videos via email, and cards with letters full of good news and thoughts. We received one such letter from friend Howie (Firth) in which he writes a wonderful description of Eric Linklater’s story ‘The Dancers’.
I don't think he'll mind if I quote from his letter….
“The Orkney writer Eric Linklater died fifty years ago, and this year was an ideal opportunity to look back at his life and work. He could write about scenes by Orkney firesides or in wartime Italy or Korea, and some of his stories are so magical that you can read them again and again with delight. In ‘The Dancers’ (1935) a family go to the uninhabited island of Eynhallow for midsummer’s night, taking a wind-up gramophone and records for dancing. They are unsure at first about what patterns to dance to but then they find their steps being guided by little people coming out of nowhere to join them, and then they are into the sheer enjoyment of the dance with much laughter.
‘So they danced while the sky became lighter and turned from grey to a shining colour like mackerel; and then little clouds like roses were thrown over the silver, and at last the sun himself, daffodil gold, all bright and new, shot up and sent the colours packing.’
Not surprisingly, they simply stay, for dancing every day and stories that their new friends have heard from th seals and seabirds, and much hospitality - ‘with stone cups full of yellow liquor that smelt like honey and the first wind after frost’ – and with just the need for an occasional brief and discreet trip south to Aberdeen to stock up with more gramophone needles.”
This reminded me of our trip to Eynhallow years ago…
https://theorkneynews.scot/2018/11/26/bernie-bell-orkney-walks-with-stories-eynhallow-to-canada-2/
The story is about mid-summer, and here we are in mid-winter – the counter-balance – but I’m sure that Eynhallow is as full of magic at mid-winter, as at mid-summer.
‘Gifts’…..
This morning, we were talking about those weird ‘gifts sets’ that used to appear in the shops before Christmas – a pack of 6 bath cubes which smelt vicious - that sorta thing. Mike was remembering that a good present for his Dad was a penknife with an attachment for tamping down his pipe. He lost or broke them so regularly that one as a gift was always welcome. Not pipe cleaners though, as he collected feathers for cleaning his pipe – isn’t that a fine old way of doing so. Who does that now? Who smokes a pipe? Apart from maybe a few witches.
Waes hael!
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There’s Also Something About Travis….
He, too….finds things……
https://www.nessofbrodgar.co.uk/2024s-top-cylinder/
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