There's Naught so much the Spirit Calms as Rum

It was a surprise to discover, on becoming parents, that Mick and I were not in fact the type who simply strapped the baby on and continued traversing the Andes or exploring the Amazon by canoe. It’s true that our childless adventuring had been relatively modest, but like all un-self aware people we attributed that to external factors, ignoring the truth of the matter, which was that: a) we were too soft and b) we were too lazy. Once the kids arrived these flaws were compounded by exhaustion and impecuniousness. Yet for both of us, there remained an itch that couldn’t be scratched, a desire for something less ordinary.

Y2K: a new century and Castaway 2000 on the BBC. Along with half the nation we were gripped by Ben Fogle versus The Weather. What would it be like, everyone wondered, to leave one’s comfortable life behind to live on a Hebridean island?

One dreich Friday in the doldrums of the new year a friend pointed out an advert in the jobs page of the Herald. Scottish Natural Heritage wanted a reserve officer for the island of Rum; tied house part of the package, preferably someone with a family. My heart began to race, perhaps it could be us? Mick applied, was interviewed and got the job, with the proviso that we visited the island before he accepted. Accordingly, one weekend in late April we borrowed a car that was likely to get us from Stirling to Mallaig and took the Small Isles ferry over a gleaming sea to Rum.

The island was decked in its Sunday best. The Rum Cuillin stood proud in all their glory while far beneath squatted the red bulk of Kinloch Castle, its landscaped woodlands awash in a tide of bluebells and dappling the village in golden sunshine. We were nervous as we approached the pier in the little flit boat, but the natives turned out to be friendly and the weekend went by in a blur of meetings and introductions, until at last we sat alone on the castle verandah amongst the low shadows of the evening and decided, yes, it will be us.

How ridiculously naïve, you are thinking, and of course, you are right. But despite the paradisiacal act we knew that Rum was one of the wettest and most midge infested parts of Scotland, that it was often cut off in the winter and that at the time the community was experiencing some turmoil (in which the media, perhaps anticipating the frenzy over Love Island which came along a few years later, were delighting) and still we chose to take the plunge. If nothing else, we reasoned, it wouldn’t be ordinary.

D-day came in mid-August. In an agony of hope and sorrow we locked up our happy home and followed the removal van north to Mallaig. The loading of our worldly possessions onto the open boat provided great entertainment for the summer crowds on the pier but there were storm clouds gathering and we realized the seemingly bizarre advice to wrap everything in plastic was not, after all, so preposterous.

Much later, the floating jumble sale, complete with 10’ yucca tree and the family rabbit, bumped gently against the old stone slipway in Kinloch, to be met by a tractor, trailer and several boilersuited islanders, who conveyed everything to the recently vacated and far from clean house which was now to be ours. It took time to accomplish but eventually we were alone in our new abode, surrounded by boxes, bags and overexcited children, completely unaware that already we had made ourselves lastingly unpopular in our ignorance of the cardinal rule of island life; volunteers must each be presented with a slab of McEwen’s Export.

Despite this inauspicious start, we stayed on Rum for three years. At that time the population fluctuated between around twenty and thirty-five people, depending on the season, almost exclusively employees of SNH. There were no cars, one tiny shop (not open all hours), and no medical facilities whatsoever. What we did have, in abundance, was beauty, peace and all the wild venison we could freeze.

People always want to know what it’s like living on an island. On a day-to-day level it’s best described as quirky; for example, the island’s toasters short circuited the electricity supply every morning and groceries were ordered by phone from the Co-op in Mallaig, leading to some very interesting “substitutions”. Tesco dot com it wasn’t. The kids went to nursery and school, but there were only seven of them. They called their teacher by her first name and had sleepovers at her house. The community shop doubled as a social area so it was common for people to go out in the afternoon for a tin of beans and hours later be summoned home to an irate partner by phone call. There were regular weekend ceilidh dances, of varying degrees of wildness, and the ensuing mornings found the floor of the community hall littered with snoring bodies. It was both quotidian and surreal, sometimes all in one day. Every summer visitors came in their thousands, peered at us, and went gratefully back to civilization. Each winter the stalkers and ghillies would leave and the island would curl in on itself and sleep.

There are endless outlandish tales we can tell of our island experience, but actually the most precious memories are unremarkable. Walking home from the shop in the blue gloaming of a winter’s eve, snow coating Hallival like the cream on a Christmas pudding and the sound of the sea in the air. School plays, sports days and excited kids on fireworks night. The small, unexpected kindnesses that mould a disparate, and not always compatible group of people into some kind of community.

Twenty-three years ago we left home to seek adventure in the Hebrides, and in doing so learned to treasure the ordinary. Now, the kids are grown, and once more I’m starting to feel that itch…