Family Life

Present Day.

"Uhhhh" I groaned, shaking my head, making my red hair fall loose about my face in waves.

The cause of my annoyance - Bloody caravan driving tourists!

I love coming back  to my island home to see Mum, Dad and Sorley. But these bloody caravan driving tourists, who are driving along our highland single track roads, and cant reverse really do my head in!

"Come on!" I shout. It's only their fourth attempt to reverse into the passing place which would normally allow me to drive by. 

It baffles me that I have to sit an expensive test to pull a trailer behind my truck. Yet Mr grandfather rights on his license here, can rock up here to see what ok, is pretty much the most epic scenery in the world (if I do say so myself), in his overpriced Chelsea tractor. While towing a caravan the size of a small house. Which I might add he has jack knifed five times now trying to reverse! I mean come on!

The roads here are one car wide and are dotted with small layby looking inlets to allow approaching vehicles to pass safely.  Well at least that is the aim of the game, if you can bloody get your car into it you complete TWONK!

How is he finding this so difficult?! If I were in a rush or in a medical emergency, who knows what what would happen. At least the fire brigade would be allowed to ram him off the road. 

And, now make that eight times he has failed to correctly drive his vehicle! Oh Screw it. I move the gear stick into reverse and quickly nip the truck back the 300 yards, (round the bloody blind bend with the 30 foot sheer cliff drop on my right, I might add) to the previous passing place, before I completely loose my temper.

I see the sheepish look on the driver's face as he pulls up along side me, opening his window. 

Oh great what does he feel the need to say to me I wonder.

I open my window keeping the expression on my face completely blank.

"Goodness, " he starts, "What are these roads like? The conditions are treacherous"

My temper is rising, nope thats a lie, it has definitely already risen. I'm actually going to snap at this man now....

"No, shit Sherlock. But it's not the roads that make it treacherous, its morons like yourself who come up them in a vehicle get up you cannot safely navigate. I mean come on! Eight times you jack knifed there. Thank fuck I wasn't in a rush. Or in an emergency. Imagine if I were a fire fighter on my way to the station for a fire shout with that carry on! You could have cost some their lives! How about next time you do some research into the area and learn about the community that lives here before you just rock up, and cock up everyone else's lives! You great twonking jabberwocky!" I shout at him, finishing by muttering "Bloody tourists" then put my window up as I start to drive off. 

I'm still taking deep breaths to calm myself back down, when I drive my truck around the corner that reveals the most glorious view. It always takes my breath away. Creag Storrh. The Munro lies on the North Coast of Torrinish an island West of Skye in Scotland. 

Home. 

At it's foot nestled in between  a forestry plantation and Loch Storrh is the Creag Storrh estate. Where I was born and raised. As my Mum likes to laugh about how I surprised everyone one by arriving a week early, on the living room floor,  and it took the ambulance so long to arrive my Dad threatened to call the local vet and or shepherd to help. 

My Dad is the head game keeper on the estate. While my Mum runs a local cafe. If my brother and I could wrangle it we would always be out on the hill, with Dad, seldom helping Mum in her Tea room as we grew up.

Of course during tourist season when Mum was really busy  we didn't really have a choice, and in truth Sorley, my brother and I would never have seen her struggle. But God, how we longed for the fresh air and the open space of the estate work with Dad.

Whether we were setting snare lines together, spying for vermin, checking for poachers or just general estate work, this was freedom. This was life, and I for one just could not wait to arrive home to Mum's home cooking and spend my day tomorrow with Dad and dad-chat about how the vet practice I was part of on the mainland now was going, and Sorley's new recipe ideas in the cafe while out on the hill in the best place in the world. 

Mum and Dad always wanted to know what we were doing, how we were, I suppose that's just what parents are like, they refused to let either of us get into game keeping, said it was a dying job. Deer numbers across the country are being decimated in different areas by the greed of those who value money more than life, and they didn't believe it would be a viable long term career for either of us. So, Sorley who loved to cook became a chef and joined Mum in the cafe, and now they are one of the big draws to the island for tourists, like the ones I was yelling at earlier so it's not all rosie.

But home, I am almost home, and every time I round this corner and am granted with the view where I grew up, where my heart is glad and I can breath I just feel at one with everything. This is definitely without a doubt my happy place. My home. My Sanctuary. Even, if I only get 2 days here before Sorley and i leave for our Greek adventure as he calls it. I call it an enforced holiday where I will look for some nature spots or lie by a pool, soaking in the sun on my pale skin, which will inevitably blind the poor waiter stuck seeing my whiter than white legs as they bringing me my next cocktail for the two weeks. Because of course as a red headed Scot I simply do not tan, (unlike my blond haired blue eyed sun god of a brother). But to be fair, it will be lovely and I am looking forward to it. Even it's like a cruel tease to only get to be home for two days.

I turn the truck onto the track to the estate,  and I pass by the big lodge, with its granite block work and spires. It really is like a mini castle without the gargoyles.

 Well if you dont count the house keeper,  Mrs Horstburn. Oh, she would scare the bejesus out of anybody, an actual gargoyle included. Sorley and I used to believe she was a monstrous witch sent to trap children who were naughty. To be fair though, I think that's a rumour Dad started when we were misbehaving one day at about five years old, probably over which one of us could hide in a bucket on the grass next, or something trivial like that.

I drive past the Larder and the sheds next, where the deer and animals are hung and the estate vehicles are stored. I then follow the track for half a mile along the loch front and pull over infront of a renovated crofters house

Once upon a time it would have been a two rooms upstairs and two downstairs type of cottage,  but over the 150 so years of its existence it has been updated and renovated so many times that the only thing now remaining from 150 so years ago will be the date above the door.

1868

Currently the cottage has 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms plus the ensuite in the master bedroom.  The kitchen is heated by the Aga range cooker, and opens into the conservatory which looks over the loch. 

That is exactly where I am headed because as I pass Mum's garden with rose bushes and Lavender abound, I know what's waiting for me inside as always without fail. Mum's home made roast pork dinner with home grown and made apple sauce and Yorkshire puddings.  Oh I can taste it already. Please let Sorley be here already because I can smell dinner and if I have to wait for his arrival even Dad's hugs will not stop the sulk I might end up throwing.

The smell gets stronger as I close the door behind me, and I am met with the welcoming and slobbery embrace of three English Springer Spaniels. Tip, Bonnie and Bessie are Dad's three gun dogs, who were supposed to be kennel dogs....but Mum had other ideas. Which results in three very bouncy happy dogs, giving everyone a very damp doggy hello as they arrive. 

"Hello, my babies, hello. Yes I see you, oh and you too Bessie. Oh Tip yes i know you are all beautiful. Such clever puppies, yes" I laugh while baby talking them. Why I always end up baby talking them I have no idea. Thank God I dont do this at work with the other animals the other vets would never let me live it down.

I manage to rectangle and detach myself from the 12 legs pawing at me and hang up my jacket and shuffle out of my shoes, which true to form Bonnie and Tip liberate from the front porch and take for a wander around the house... Well they will just be delightfully damp when I put them on to go get my bag from the truck later.

As I follow my nose through the house to the kitchen, which opens up into the conservatory overlooking the loch, where we wat our meals. I am delighted to say that Sorley is sitting at the table waiting for my arrival and I can eat as soon as I have washed my hands.

"Well Dee, you are finally here" Sorely jokes "we can eat dinner tonight afterall, I was starting to think we would be eating it for breakfast instead ".

"Oh, hush you."laughed Mum "At least let's get sat at the table before you start your pretend bickering, or I might just tell her you tried to alter my apple sauce recipe tonight behind my back".

"No Sorley! You so are not a good enough cook to be altering Mum's cooking.  And what sacrilegious  talk is this about altering her sacred apple sauce. What. Did. You. Do?" I mock reply with my hand over my heart. 

"Oh come on, it was only a little cinnamon, it would have been amazing" pouts Sorley.

"Now boy, you know you cannot mess with perfection," interjected Dad, while wrapping me in a giant bear hug and whispering "although some of her meals since you both moved out have been questionable to say the least"he jokes loud enough for us all to hear.

"Malcolm Mcleish!" Mum rises to the bait immediately as Sorley and I shake our heads laughing. "That is rich coming from the man who burnt the frozen peas last week" she huffs.

"Okay, okay," I interrupt "Dad, please save your winding up till later,  it's been three weeks since I tasted Mum's cooking and I skipped lunch for this. I am starving!" I beg, looking up at him with my almond shaped green eyes, know he cant resist his little girls request for food, even if I am twenty-six years old now.

"Dee, stop winding Dad round tour finger and sit down so we can eat." Laughs Sorley, snapping Dad out of it.

"The lads right you, get your backside over to the table if your so hungry " grumbles Dad after being caught doting on his fully grown daughter

I laugh with Mum and Sorley as we all head over to tuck in to dinner. We sit down and begin eating chatting idly about what we have all been doing. By the time Dinner is finished I swear I'm going to need someone to roll me out to my truck to gather my bags. I. Am. Stuffed. I may even have to pop a button here wowzers! Now that was a fantastic meal. 

"Sorley,  I think we made a grave miscalculation" I say after we start clearing the plates for Mum.

"What do you mean?" He asks

" Well, we should have come to stay after the Greece trip,  not before." I say,  "because there is no way after two days worth of Mum's cooking we will be fit to be seen by the pool in a bathing suit!" 

At this Dad snorts in horror, it suddenly dawning on him, how much skin is on show on one of these holidays. He starts to stutter and before he can utter an objection Mum chimes in "Be quiet Malcolm,  she is twenty six years of age and can enjoy wearing a bikini on holiday if she wants"

"But, but." Dad struggles to latch on to a favourable argument as we all laugh at his horror as he begins to shake his head muttering about his "little girl" "knee bouncing" and the word "no" repeatedly. 

After everything is cleared up and Dad has recovered from the trauma of his "little girl" grown up in a bikini on holiday, I walk out to the truck to grab my bag and head back inside and upstairs for a shower. 

I head to my room and deposit my bag on the bed while heading off to look out the window at the loch and the mountain that will always be home. I sentimentally watch the sun set for ten minutes before jumping into the shower.

 God, it is so good to be home.