We’re in the old stone Tullavore meeting hall at the Gaelic College, Sabhar Mor Ostaig in Armadale on the Isle of Skye. It’s what they call ‘the old campus’. A hard, loud room, filled with round refectory tables and plastic chairs. There’s a hatch bar at the back and a stage upfront for the music being played day and night. Wee Frees may prefer Lewis.
During daytime, the silver glitter of The Minch, the green bracken, midgie covered undulations behind and the white highrises of the modern college buildings in front frame the disappearing black jags of the Cuillin mountains. All is split by a pot-holed road to Blackford, where we buy wine at the Co, these days without student discount. Everything shines with moisture and promise. But night is even more magical as we crunch up on the chuckies to this old hall, owls hooting, us hooting at our own jokes, moonlight beaming down. ‘Don’t doddle, Broonie’ my pal Kirstie shouts as I gimp to the door. Fairy lights in the yard and an outside cludgie. Fabulous.
We stay in the old dorms, near the bar, so I don’t have to walk back to campus in the early hours. There’s a feeling of summer holidays in our group, all musicians, mostly with kids grown, indulging the fantasy of ‘all traditional music all the time’, enjoying community and the craic, staying up late and drinking too much whisky. Our pal, Heather, a Hiighlandwoman whose fluent gaelic was learned at the college, runs these short courses. I have barely a word of Gaelic but did a degree course out of this uni in Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides, so there’s a feeling of home. My pal, the Gaelic singer, Christine Primrose talks about the old days of the college, of Gaels and ‘learners’, people like Heather who blow in to learn Gaelic. That special island feeling. I go to her classes out of loyalty, but am mouth singing the Gaelic word sounds, uncomprehending ‘ Hey ma yum yum, ho ma yum yum’. Christine shakes her head sadly.
Now here, with pals from all over the world, we do short music courses led by the luminaries of Scottish traditional music. Happy weeks in Easter and the summer, connecting to a simple life of music, pals and carousing.
I had to take off last year, recovering from surgery and cancer treatment, I couldn’t travel, or really walk that well. I got a refund on my booking and felt bereft, smiling afterwards to hear the tales of ‘up all night’, playing tunes of beauty.
This year, more used to it, I booked up and relished having something to look forward to.The ritual journey from Monifieth was unusually in perfect weather. Up the A9, across Spean Bridge, through the Great Glen, all mountains visible, shining in crystalline perfection. Scotland will kill you with its beauty. ‘Specially when you don’t live here all the time.
The course requires a lot of sitting for hours on uncomfortable plastic chairs learning music by ear. My leg doesn’t like it. As the week goes on, I have to miss more and more because it’s swelling up and getting sorer. I have potions, unguents, supplements, remedies, heatpaks. I have pain killers, scary ones I like to avoid. Four days in, I’ve taken everything and my leg is so sore that I can barely walk. Overreaching, thought I could, but… Again, I’m in my bed while everybody is in the Tullavore.
I go to a healer who has asked what this period of pain and infirmity is teaching me. Still thinking about that. ‘To spend my life lying down with my leg up?’ I say.
So, having taken everything and done everything I find my leg still hot, painful and swollen. The bar doesn’t do ice. I think of my grannie and her sore legs. History repeating. There’s nothing left, I just have to endure like she did. I do my breathing, I cry a bit. There’s no bath, just a tiny inaccessible shower cubicle.
On the other bed, they’ve left me their hilariously tiny towels, a Scottish holiday tradition. Useless for actual bathing. I hobble over, grab them, put them in the sink, also 8 inches across, built for mice, and run the water till it’s really cold. Wrung out and wrapped around my leg,something good happens. I can feel flutters of lymph moving. The pain is subsiding.The cooler it gets, the less my leg is sore.
Next night, the fabulous trad supergroup Session A9, our teachers for the week, are the ceilidh band at Tullavore. It’s a treat. Everybody is up dancing, most of us play for ceilidhs but this is like having the Beatles play your Bar Mitzvah. Yesterday I thought ‘I can’t, I won’t, I never will again’. But tonight my friend Kirstie, leans across the table and says, ‘Come and dance the St Bernard’s Waltz with me, it’s really gentle.’
We get up and enter the birling crowd. The band’s waltz expands, opening out into parts and percussion. I find the side steps hard, but I’m doing it, I’m birling and laughing and moving in time. My pal Trish tries to nip my bum each time we turn. I scream and laugh and defend my nethers by moving faster away from her. I think about the year behind and the year ahead.
I’ve brought a cald cloot in a ziploc bag. It’s at the table.
I think it’s going to be ok. I’m dancing.