The decade is four hours away from ending. It's been a strange final week. My Uncle Bill Harper from Wick died last week and the funeral was on Tuesday. His widow is Kathlyn More – my mother's younger sister. So many of the extended More family drove up in a scattered convoy through ice and snow to get there. It was a heck of a journey. I had to get towed out of our ice-bound house near the Tay by valiant farmer Ian Miller before the journey even began (above). Then it was a solid, slow drive up the A9 – learning quickly to keep some distance from the car in front to stop it skooshing dirt up onto the windscreen. Since the temperature went from minus 5 to minus 16 by Aviemore, water jets weren't working – so car windscreens were just a hazy, grimy fuzz. And there was nowhere to stop. Laybys were full of scrappy lumps of snow – turned to jaggy mini icebergettes in the sub zero temperatures. There must have been 30 miles of the A9 where there was absolutely no chance to stop at all. So I'll confess I did what I saw others do crawling along at 30mph – I leaned out the window and threw water sideways onto the windscreen from a bottle. The raced to switch the wipers on once before the water froze solid!
The A9 was weird – I was either stuck in a convoy behind someone doing 30mph, or completely alone on a road that appeared to be flanked by an endless line of silent watchful people, swathed in white. Yip, you do go a bit mad on a long, solo journey like that. But what beautiful views – especially above the Ord in the snowy moonlight. The funeral was a heartfelt, really personal service for Bill. I didn't know he came from a family of 19 and ran away to join the RAF at 16, only to join the Navy instead when the day's RAF quota was filled. He went on to serve on four Arctic convoys as well as the D-Day landings and the relief of Malta. So many mysteries in our lives. I knew Bill as the generous, widely-travelled uncle who brought me stamps from Japan, a toy koala bear from Oz, and a wooden turtle apparently carved by a descendant of Christian Fletcher on the Pitcairn Islands. We'll all miss him. Meanwhile the water pipes were freezing back at home in Fife, so many thanks to our neighbour Gordon for keeping a watchful eye on the slow thaw, while we wait it out down in Edinburgh.
It's the first time I've spent Hogmanay in a city for maybe 20 years. Wherever you are – have a good one! And let's somehow find the energy to fix the world in 2010.
lang may yir lum reek :)
Posted by: bru | January 01, 2010 at 05:28 AM