celtic connections 2011

We limited our pilgrimage to three days this year, taking in Mavis Staples on Friday, Highland Sessions on Saturday and Sharon Shannon minus Imelda May and Shane MacGowan on Sunday.

We would have stayed longer but the house is calling and we have lost a lot of momentum. As I had to go to Helensburgh and Rothesay immediately after we came back to coach school debating teams for a renewables competition we have only spent one day in eight on the plot. Such are the demands of the day job. Even so we have now blocked ten corners out of 33 - and it is exacting work triangulating every 150º corner as we have only 10mm tolerance out of 25 metres for the kit.

Anyway, got to thinking about what makes us rich. It's easy at Celtic Connections to understand that the true wealth of the Scottish nation might owe more to Scottish arts and culture than to the Royal Bank of Scotland or the 'wee pretendy parliament' at Holyrood. (Quote courtesy of the Big Yin) It is an utterly fantastic festival of joyous music and song. It is a real celebration of Scottish culture and its links with the world. Musicians, poets and singers have much more to offer us than bean counters, investment bankers and politicians. So .... world turned upside down ! We'll substitute musical notes for pound notes and be governed by those who make us happy, make us think and give us the huge pleasures of music, dance, words and song. Let's have our Makar, Liz Lochhead as First Minister (she's a republican socialist by inclination btw) and Donald Shaw,the artistic director of Celtic Connections, with his fantastic juggling skills in organising this event as well as his self effacing musicianship really would do a great job of running the Scottish economy. (Donald Shaw played at Gigha Music festival last summer with Karen Matheson and James Grant in a singularly beautiful set). Instead of bankers bonuses we'll settle willingly for encores by Capercaillie, Blazing Fiddles, Jack Bruce, Aztec Camera, Paulo Nutini, even Nazareth.... Instead of the primary school points scoring of First Minister's Questions these and other public debates in the Scottish Parliament will be worthy of being downloadable, released on DVD and will sell in thousands.

There will be queues for the public gallery. At least there is a good acoustic in the very expensive debating chamber but we'll just have to rip oot the seats in the public gallery so we can dance.... Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham will be our envoys at the United Nations. Edwin Collins will uplift us and Paul Buchanan move us. Imagine a nation whose currency is culture - not necessarily high brow - but not poor ersatz fakes and forgeries like the pop products of manufactured 'talent' shows. Scotland has phenomenal musical and creative talent. RSAMD would be our wealth generator not Gogarburn. There will be statues of Stuart Adamson, Gerry Rafferty and John Martyn in George Square.

We saw another storming set from Blazing Fiddles on Saturday . Now I don't know why four or five fiddlers can really rock but they do. Our friend Fiona saw them when she was pregnant with Alex who kicked like hell all through the show. Alex is now 8 and learning the fiddle herself...

For any of you who love guitar and guitarists then Rick Holmstrom is your man - a perfect foil for Mavis Staples and one of the best players I have even seen.

The final weird thought I had was that I'd love to hear Paul Buchanan of the Blue Nile sing with Kathleen MacInnes. Two of the most moving voices singing together might just work, if the language issue can be resolved - but then Tommy Smith did play a sax solo on 'Mi te M'Uillin', Karen Matheson's lilting Gaelic song. The best Scots musicians really do know no boundaries.

i'm dreaming of a white christmas

Thursday night in the moonlight we zoom up to the top field just below the summit crag of Creag Bhan with Mark, Kirstin, Andy, Jane and the kids on the quads. It's at least 5 below and very crisp and clear. The moon is just waning so still pretty full and shining in across the Sound of Gigha, where the navigation buoys flicker red and green. The dozen fish farm cages half a mile offshore give off an eerie surreal glow from the 10Kw underwater light cluster below each cage - submarine fairy lights for silkies-and we can see the lights of Macrihanish twinkling almost 20 miles south. We race downhill through a spray of spindrift on sledges expertly improvised form lengths of curved fish farm pipe joined by 12mm ply boards. We sledge by the blue moonlight hitting 31 mph down the 300m run downhill into the fence along the bottom of the field. This is Gigha's longest clear slope. Then we get towed back up again, each sledge clipping on to a karabiner tow line off the back of the quad. After an hour or so we're all getting weary- even Amanda has almost had enough fun. Andy has put a video "Gigha's got Snow 2" on YouTube.

Yesterday - Christmas Eve - showed signs of a slow thaw then it was freezing hard when we left the Hotel to come home just after midnight Then it rained overnight and stripped away the white crystalline world we had just got used to after ten days. Outside skeins of geese are honking across the sky. But it's a GREEN Christmas. The rest of Scotland is still white but we are just waiting to see what vagaries of weather are brought by the kink in the jetstream.

No animals were harmed in the making of this card.

in a big country

The magic rabbits of Ardailly have been thumpering around our foundations in the snow.

Coming back to Kinnererach from the plot at Ardailly the sun just streamed down on the Gigha Stone with snow showers behind in West Loch Tarbert and there was a cutter rigged ketch beating up the Sound of Jura close hauled

wonderland

It's nine years ago this last week that Stuart Adamson killed himself. Along with the equally charismatic Bob Marley, Steve Marriot and David Crosby - he was one of the most amazing musicians I have ever seen. (Jayne's vote goes to Dr. John). Wonderland was a Big Country tune and here are pics we took yesterday of snowy Gigha. We took Izzie down to the plot to see how it looked with the snowy piles of aggregate then walked the croft and down to the Mill. Even our 4WD Landrover Series 3 struggled in the icy conditions - we just don't get our one single track road salted.

The muckle shed shows where our house will be beneath Creag Bhan.

Sea level must have been 3m higher maybe more when the Iron age fort of Dun an Trinnse was occupied but the climate was supposedly a wee bit warmer from the archaeological digs on St Kilda

snow angle

We are unable to start blockwork or even finish the last half day's concreting the sunspace footings as the temperature has hardly been above zero for the last month. When it has it has been chucking it down. Today there is about 3-4 inches of snow down and the Gigha kids Christmas event has been postponed.

We met Andy this afternoon running Maia (the family pet husky) behind his quad. Maia loves this weather ! Andy reckoned he had never seen as much snow as this in the ten years plus he has been here.

Izzie loves racing full tilt round the fields by KInnererach. It's a puppy thing.

any colour you like

The Isle of Gigha Heritage Trust which owns most of this island had a members' meeting last night where there were 50 or so of us - half the membership and a massive turnout - in the Village Hall with a consultant from HIE trying to reinvigorate the Trust and reconnect the management, both Board and paid staff, with the members. This was going to be real 'bottom up'.

This is because the Trust appears to have become progressively detached from the members and is now widely seen as following the Orwellian maxim:

"All islanders are equal but some are more equal than others".

Problems are perceived favouritism, cliques, poor communication, a culture of secrecy, lack of direction, poor management decisions, hostility, top down approach, failure to consult. In short - a community divided. The initial euphoria of self determination following the buyout has long gone and there is severe volunteer fatigue as it is the same 20-30 folk who tend to commit their time to running the show. At the start there were elections for Directors, but now there are too few folk coming forward every year so if you put your name forward then basically - you're on. And it is hard work, often thankless.

There are financial stringencies and revenue problems too in the current climate.

The Trust was originally established by HIE as what it optimistically describes as Social Enterprise. This means a Board of Directors has regular meetings and makes all the executive decisions with wider policy to be approved by the members at Members Meetings. It is basically a plc type structure with members taking the role of shareholders. The Board is advised by HIE who have a veto over many major decisions. The Trust company is limited by guarantee. Though what it guarantees and what it limits is unclear.

We were told that the Trust had been very successful in improving the island's housing, building the community wind turbines, reinvigorating the wonderful Achamore Gardens etc.,

We were told by the consultant that every Scottish rural community which aspires to community ownership wants the Gigha model. Dizzy with success ? (© JS)

All these are true and huge achievements for a small island, though the housing improvement programme leaves many folk very uneasy as every day 20 or so builders come over from the mainland which is where the money flows from our programme of housing rehabilitation. There is also some confusion as to whether the programme was ever tendered for and meets meaningful value for money criteria. Those building contracts are worth a lot of money.

In the introduction there was also a rather strange comment the gist of which was that if we did not like the way the Trust was running the place then perhaps we should move elsewhere. This slip really does reflect the divisions here.

Clearly HIE are very worried that their flagship Trust is flagging. It was the Eigg and Gigha buyouts that led to the 2003 Land Reform Act provisions. In our blood, these represent post devolution Scottish communitarianism and really are part of our national psyche and culture. On Gigha, there are major revenue problems with a small rental base, though good profits from the turbines, a break even from the Hotel and capital receipts from plot sales being the main cash flow.

We brainstormed in small groups towards a new Vision and new Aims for the Trust. The consultant was intending to take these away and structure them into a report for the Board who would then prioritise/decide and report back to the membership. There was remarkable unanimity in what we want - much motherhood and apple pie and this mostly because the issues really are that obvious. We do actually all want a strong cohesive vibrant community which is economically successful - though we did have the usual self interest of certain groups creeping in.

Hang on a minute - was the way we were being worked just as disengaged as usual ? Just a lip service consultation and then back to normal. HIE have been advising the Board for years that they made decisions (just like a plc Board) and the Members had relatively low status (just like minor shareholders). (I had been present at some of these pep talks by HIE advisers. They really were that dismissive of the members. Hardly empowering.)

And then - a challenge from the audience - why did we not decide the prioritisation of our own ideas collectively ? Islanders wanted to be active not passive. (The initial challenge came from an islander who is not a Trust member - but that is another story)

I suggested that the HIE Social Enterprise model was not a Community Development model which was what folk seemed to be wanting. This was not well received - the reply that everyone wants the Gigha model was a definite brush off. Now community development is not an HIE strong suit. Capacity building improves self confidence as well as local expertise, skills. There are enough talented people here to fill most gaps and provide a strong local economy instead of of being dependent on imports for everything - especially the high income stuff. We just need to be trained and build up our own skills and talents. Now training local people instead of importing expertise is real community development but capacity building is not actually an explicit IGHT objective. The Trust Manager has the job title Business Manager. The word Community is not immediately apparent.

The current exercise is a case in point - why do we do always seem to get HIE consultants parachuted in to find out what we want to do instead of being skilled to undertake this process of review ourselves? I can think of at least a dozen people on Gigha who really would be very good at this. We have become dependent on the HIE professional. They do business development and lots of it but appear to have real problems with building and growing communities where the bottom line is less clearly defined - though obviously recognising that all is not well on Gigha and if we go totally dysfunctional than a major piece of socio-economic engineering will blow back on them - as they set it up. Political embarrassment in no trumps.

The great hope for the future of this lovely place where we are all sharing our lives (okay there are a few SOGs too) is that there are so many talented people with such good ideas and such hope for our community. What was clear was that people really do want to be involved and not just as rubber stamps. OMG - too much democracy...where will it lead. Watch this space.

dear green place

Gigha is green. Or at least it was on Tuesday when we came back from the family pre-Christmas in Chester with the Miller tribe. It had been a lovely weekend and we headed back to Glasgow on Monday morning. It took the usual 3 and a half hours. No problems with the M74 as we had feared, given the blizzards only 20 miles further east. Glasgow was white and ice-bound as was most of the drive north of Lancaster - though Chester had been Baltic it was clear of the white stuff. We did all our shopping at important locations like Tool Station and retired to our hotel only venturing out for a fantastic Indian meal at the Banana Leaf. Very highly recommended especially the Dosas - tiny sit in though and formica topped/ceramic tiled in the early Bradford style of curry house decor.

Tuesday morning was very icy. We had a text message from MIcky that the Rest and Be Thankful had been blocked the previous day and Tracy Burler had been stranded. However we had the speediest run ever back from Dumbarton with almost no traffic on the road and only one patch of black ice on the way up RaBT. Ben Lomond and the Cobbler were incredibly foreshortened by the snow and dominated the fantastic landscape. Snow really does transform. Even the Balloch roundabout was pretty.

By the time we got to Tarbert we were back to green with just a dusting and Gigha was clear. Tuesday evening everything changed with heavy snow spreading westwards and we would have been stranded at Gretna some 200 miles down the line. The ground here is frozen solid so no concreting or blockwork this week. Some shed work on Wednesday but it was very, very cold up that ladder.

our first tree

Micky and Tracy have a fantastically varied patch of garden and have given us a tree which has just grown too big for its position. We picked a lovely new site for it just below the wee shed. Micky insisted on planting it too. It is about ten feet high or 3m if you wish. It's an ornamental looking a bit like an ash tree - a Japanese Wingnut. We would very much like to plant a small group of the rarest of UK natives too - the Arran Whitebeam. If anyone has a few seedlings please let us know. They're pretty difficult to come by.

Sea Area Malin

If you want to know what is happening on our wee island then you'll need to check out the various marine weather forecasts. The best is XC Weather followed by the Inshore forecast for sea area Malin.

We can actually see Malin Head on a good day. It must be almost 70 miles away to the SW but is at the furthest horizon of one of the best seascapes in the UK. This sweeps across the whole of the north coast of Ireland from Donegal to the Antrim Glens to Rathlin Island with Robert the Bruce's spidery cave, and then Fair Head and the North Channel down to Belfast. The Mull of Kintyre is an abrupt end to Scotland and at 450m high, pretty dramatic with the lighthouse quite low down on the point. The vast sweep of Macrihanish beach - ten or more miles of rolling swell and breaking surf, so often with a swathe of sea mist and spindrift completes our southern vista. McCartney loved it - it was his long and winding road. Jayne and I were brought up in Britain's only coastal National Park in Pembrokeshire but our seascapes in Kintyre easily match our wild Atlantic Welsh cliffs. In the great scheme of things there are plans for a massive 100+ turbine wind farm just 2km off Macrihanish beach. Turbines half the height of the Mull ! We already have several well sited and unobtrusive wind farms along the forested spine of Kintyre with space for many more but politics says we have to go offshore - well it is actually inshore and will destroy one of the best surfing beaches in the UK, ruin one of the finest seascapes with its breathtaking spread, and also place an additional hazard for those trying to navigate round the Mull, which is already hazardous enough anyway. Marine turbines are very, very expensive, much more so than land based wind farms and require massive capital grants and operational subsidies to make them viable. Onshore wind is pretty competitive by comparison. Offshore windfarms are supposed to be 25-35km offshore or at the very least far enough away to minimise the damage to precious landscapes. Well, the Macrihanish wind farm proposals are the right idea but in totally the wrong place - and I am in favour of wind energy in principle.

Now we have had so much disruption to our build from the various storms and gales that have battered us that we have made virtually no progress in the last three weeks. There have been heavy time demands from various day jobs too. We hope to get on with our mains electric connection to the workshop, starting the blockwork and improving site drainage very soon. But only if the weather allows us.

There was a very large submarine in the Sound of Jura this afternoon heading south and hopefully not looking for a reef or sandbar upon which to strand itself.

isn't technology wonderful

Wet as predicted so catching up on paperwork as well as the day job. The substructure plans do not include enough dimensions for setting out the footings so we have been working out our key triangulation points by trigonometry and this morning I rechecked out the set out positions for the corners of the sunspace foundations by the use of the tangent tables, paper and pencil. My old mathematical tables - logs, sines, cosines and tangents amongst others have been used by both myself and my father when he was at school and at Uni and are Four Figure Mathematical Tables by Cargill G Knott D.Sc F.R.S.E. and dated 1905. That Maths A-level did come in useful after all....though the basic trig. was all done years before.

Obviously we all use the 345 triangle for 90 degree corners but for a dodecahedron sines and tangents are essential back up.