Orkney holiday & St Magnus Way

Dark stillness. Clambering off the ferry along the jetty you can hear large waters slapping against the hull of the big ship.

Granny is waiting with eager open arms when we arrive after midnight. My dad came to pick us up in Donkey, the name he’s affectionately given to the coffee cream coloured car with a dented nose.

You awake and the scenery outside the window is bright blue glass, the sky is shale, and the light is golden champagne.

I had expected there to be lashing rain outside, but the barometer in the corridor is hoping for light winds as I tap it gently hopeful too, its hand ticking further away from thunder.

We walk the St Magnus Way from Evie to Birsay.

St Magnus Way route marker

I have the disposable camera that Noemi gave me to take photos of our trip to Orkney and snap one at the bay of Gurness. (The un-real tropical blue of the shallow waters cutting into the verdant green of the hillside won’t be captured on film.)

St Magnus was an Earl of Orkney in 1106. A pacifist in comparison to his contemporary warring Earls and Fiefs and because of this, his cousin Earl Haakon, ordered him to be killed on the island of Egilsay across the bay. Instead of being beheaded like a common thief the axe struck a blow in the middle of his head splitting it apart. 

Legend says that the ground where his blood was spilled turned into luscious green pasture. And Gurness means green headland in Old Norse. His hallowed body was carried along Orkney in a procession and the pilgrimage is said to follow this route.

There’s an ancient Orkney tradition where the body of a deceased person is not allowed to touch the ground, so there are many attested resting places (large stones) for St Magnus’ body dotted all over the island called Mansie Stones – however – none remain, and the evidence is patchy. 

The way I like all pilgrimages is to follow the scent of something sacred. You don’t want a historical route with coordinates and information centres. That would give the game away – why would you want to do something so ordinary and official? No, I’m chasing saints! Mixed in with folklore and miracles. 

At Grugar we disturbed a colony of seals basking in the sun, as we dropped down on to the flat rocks strewn with seaweed. I watched them scoot off inelegantly in their blubber suits making a splash. 

Grugar by the roost

Across a turbulent stretch of tidal waters called the “roost” there is the uninhabited island of Eynhallow, which in Old Norse means Holy Island. The ruins of a medieval stone church remain which people say was once a monastery.

Orcadians also say that the Finfolk used to live there. These nomadic sea-dwelling sorcerers who were prone to abducting mortal men and women to become their Finmen and Finwives. Two stories relating to the Finfolk of Eynhallow piqued my interest.

1. This small island was one of the invisible islands of Orkney where the Finfolk resided. The island was said to have been eventually consecrated and captured by a vengeful farmer named the Goodman of Thorodale, after his bonnie bride was stolen infront of his very eyes by a strong dark Finman rowing out on a boat. Thorodale had to go through a quest of labours to gain the sight to see the invisible island. After nine full moons of waiting and watching the sea, he saw it one morning and rowed determinedly to the mythical island carrying bags of salt with him, chucking it at the demonic sea creatures and mermaids who appeared to protect the island from him. They failed. He succeeded and Christianity prevailed banishing the Finfolk from their home forever.

2. In 1990 a boat with eighty-eight tourists embarked on the island to look at the ruins of the church. When it was time to return only eighty-six tourists got back on the boat. The police were called and there was an air-search, and the coastguards were notified. The two missing people were never found and the crew were blamed for miscounting. However, the crew were sure there were eighty-eight people who got on the boat and so, it was assumed they were Finfolk returning to their own holy island home. 

What makes you feel alive?

Dirty orange fug outside the train window with rain streaming down the pane. We made it on to the train! Running through a crowded Edinburgh Waverley, near-missing tourists laden down with shopping bags and wheelie suitcases. Aidan runs ahead pulling my dog at warp speed, her head hits the dangling lunch bag of a woman on her way to work. I shout “Sorry!” as I bounce past, my top-heavy rucksack titling me sideways. 

“You can appreciate the weather today – we have had some significant delays – this is a limited stop start service.”

The train is packed but the torrential downpour outside and the dampness inside combined with the air conditioning gives the interior a cool and still air. We are all sardines contained in a metal can shuttling towards the Scottish coast. 

The windows are steamed up. Outside is an impenetrable mist that tints the whole day lilac. 

Like falling through a static splash of a log flume.

Speaking to a friend who had impulsively bought international flight tickets for a crush, I asked him, “Why would you do that?” The answer was forthcoming. 

“Because it makes me feel like I’m doing something. Like I’m alive.” I nod comprehending this feeling but not having ever impulsively bought flight tickets for love. 

Making it onto a train just in time – 

Leaving the city behind. 

Blowing out all my grimy city snot on to tissues; scoffing the store bought sandwich; running my hand through my hair and scraping dandruff off my scalp;

Gets me closer to feeling free

The old man in the second-hand bookshop

The man in the bookshop waits for me. I assume he does, a little bit in his heart every day.

When you come up from London to Edinburgh you notice how nice life could be. When it’s sunny it’s even more striking. Better dogs, more frequent snatches of conversation and shared nods and alrights. And here in Edinburgh you get called ‘pal’ in tempered tones of aggression always, and it feels nice. Manageable. Friendly without overdoing it. Not wanky.

I passed Greyfriar’s Bobby with his metallic snub nose, all naked and shiny from being over-rubbed. I got crisps with my sandwich instead of salad, because eating out means not having to be healthy and enjoying life. I pass a charity shop every five hundred meters filled with cardigans and desks (and one cat in the window) and it makes me happy. Edinburgh has to be one of the most pleasant cities to live in. But likely if I said that to someone in passing they’d condescend the comment like a Londoner with ‘If you can afford it’ but then again maybe they’re all just capitalising and hitching up the prices threefold whilst the Festival’s on. I would. Because the southerners coming up here with their selfie-sticks and lack of self-awareness think coffee is worth £4.50 so serve it to them for that.

There is one second-hand bookshop with its shelves immaculately ordered in to categories: modern drama, crime, classical drama, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, American literature, history, ancient history and gardening. Everything really. I asked the white-haired man in the light-blue short-sleeved shirt, ‘Do you have any books by Jonathan Coe?’ because I had finished one of his stranger novels on the train ride up and I was totally intrigued.

The bookshop owner had in fact approached me whilst I was in the fiction section looking up authors’ surnames, I was in section C already and he had just caught me in the nick of time to lend me a helping hand right when I needed it. Good intervention. He seemed glad I knew what I was looking for; so he could actually be helpful I predict because you must get nonsensical requests working in a book store, as we all remember from Notting Hill and Dylan Moran’s acting part.

‘You're in the right place,’ he said with a smile that said I’m proud of you for knowing your alphabet and index systems ‘let me have a look for you.’ He bends down and searches the spines with his index finger.

‘Anything will do’ I say trying to be helpful, but of course I do want that specific author so not anything.

‘Nothing on the shelf.’ He says with not a slump in mood but a wistfulness.

‘Sorry. Coe comes in a lot but we don’t seem to have him in stock.’ He seems amused by it, like he should know where the author was hiding in the book store but has lost all recollection of where he saw him last.

‘That’s absolutely fine.’ I say.

I’m more pleased to have met the old man than to have found this book. I won’t tell him that because that’s too much feeling from a customer I presume. It’s sunny outside and I will keep welling up with feeling whilst my romance with this city lasts (two more days at the most).

The next day and the next day, and the next few days after that, I pass his second-hand bookshop and I see it every time but daren’t go in.

Not out of fear or awkwardness as such, I am not sure why, maybe because I like the illusion of the story I am playing in my head every time I walk past and see in the shop window display not one but two Jonathan Coe books staring at me from behind the glass. I don’t even pause infront of the window incase he sees me and waves at me to come in, or points at the two books with his friendly face and warm heart.

I should just go in.

It would probably make his day.

But what if I did.

And he didn’t remember who I was.

What if he went to all that trouble.

To find those books and put them out.

But what if they’d been out in the window all along.

And he had forgot.

What if they are meaningless.

And the books don’t mean a thing.

That's why I’ll leave it.

Yes much nicer to leave it.

Because I like the story better.

Than ever finding out the truth.

  

 

(Hangover Poems)

HANGOVER QUILLS

I am very hungover today

And I will work on poetry

I read your poems Pooja Nansi

And they reminded me of

A time when I wore a broken

Healing wretched heart

Like a pin on my lapel

Men I couldn’t really tell

Apart fell in to my lap

Like drink spills, I

Didn’t really miss them

When they’d gone

*

I woke up with no recollection of how and why

Top half still on (bra and all)

Bottom half relegated to the floor

Lamps still on and bright white light

Flooding in from the window and at first

You’re numb from the truth which is

Oh no. It’s daylight and last night I drank too much.

Then it’s the dread of what happens next

If I move? And then it’s some odd recurring thought patterns

That flit in and out of dreams or delusions or both;

I am at a training camp where you must raise your hand

And share with the faceless class an occasion of

Heartbreak and humiliation

No body makes to move so I raise my hand and yell

Quite loudly – a time I waited for someone who never came

I get some nods of approval

I wake and I crawl to fill my glass with water and

Sup and wait and set my alarm to be back again

At that camp but it’s an assault course this time

In the dimmed dark, it’s wet like Scotland outside

Inside my friends are climbing walls and it feels

Ominous. The one I love has an accident, grisly

Head splits open and comes to sit by me

And I look at his smashed skull with brain bits but his face

Still looks fine to me and I need to wake up before

I am sick with horror and dread and fear of it all

It’s a dream you sick sad fuck

*

I will sleep on my desk

As the ticker tape rolls

As the typewriter clicks

And flags wave for goals

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Shove the bacon buttie in my face and absorb it instantly.

Things I will not miss about the Fringe are: the wet drips which fall from the grim underside of that bridge in Cowgate, the stairs (that are everywhere), and flyers.

Hungover days and the restless nights that come with drinking too much, and then the Scottish fried goods and the endless walking over from New to Old parts of town. It never stopped not even in the downpours or in the early morning, stuff just kept going on.

Lurching down steep steps, which I’d only just clambered up half an hour ago to collect some pants I’d left in the print storage room (spare pants - because I’m always prepared - or because I forgot that I’d left my pants in a back room of a venue and thought before catching the train “outta here” that I should probably collect them).

Sweating. Ski jacket. Prepared for all-weather but not for all this weather meaning the sunshine we’ve been getting. In Scotland? I know right.

But the upside of all this traipsing by a banister is, or, were the shows. I managed to see a heck of a lot of good shows. So here’s some I remember the most jotted down for you:

Le Gateau Chcocolat who is a big black beautiful opera singer told an achingly honest tale of a young man who grapples with depression, being gay and being black. The lighting design was the lighting design to beat all others. His voice is ridiculously amazing.

The show which dedicated it’s heart and soul to the artist and wife of Beatle, Yoko Ono, titled appropriately Oh No! by Jamie Wood was brimming with creative nurture. The most enticing bit was when Jamie curated some Bagism on stage and invited a member of the audience to get in a bag with him and get completely naked. The minutes of silence that ensued after this innocent plea was met with awkwardness until a fly lad of 23 got up, crossed the stage and entered the bag/blanket with him; they both followed to get completely butt-naked beneath the sheet and then continued to talk about whether said young lad had ever fallen in love before, and what it means to love a person. Performance art + comedy = happy fun.

LetLuce in Sea Men (A Naval Tale) was a hilarious and sometimes trippy ride in to the world of two clown-character comics who’s unfurling narrative about a fish who wants to go clubbing on River Island and a pirate captain who wants to drink the Potion of the Ocean (said in an elongated Brummie accent) was just the bomb. The nuts. Mighty Boosh would have taken their hats off to the pair.

The stand-up that I enjoyed the most was Liam Williams with his second stand-up hour: Bonfire Night. A pretty neat and of course, damnably clever hour to follow up his last show (Capitalism). Lots of self-hating and millennial naval-gazing, you just have to laugh or else you’d cry.


They’re my picks and in hindsight, I did have a good time and managed to tone my arse from all the stairs and got a surprising tan out of the outdoor flyering ordeal so, all’s well that ends well.