The Lady In Bay 1

 

Something weird has been happening in Scotland this week.

The sun has been shining and the situation is’ taps aff’. Tops off I.e. warm enough to remove your shirt.

It didn’t stop raining at all during August and next week, it’s back to normal with warnings of 100 kph winds and torrential rain with risk of flooding, thunder, lightning, pestilence. Fleetwood Mac reforming and lots of other things that shouldn’t happen these days.

                                       

I have a deadline for the first of October, and both work and book worlds have been very busy so we took advantage of the fact that the business is not mine anymore and we can get away at any time. We took five days up at Tyndrum where there is nothing to distract me apart from walking the Limpy dog and being amused by the red squirrels.

                                      

And, added bonus, it’s quite hard to get on the internet here.  

On day two, it was a record hot day for Crianlarich for September.  The campsite is long, with a single row of 8 bays on either side. It was an old railway siding so the lay out makes sense. At the front door is a trekkers hostel. On one side there are trekkers huts and lodges. On the other just serviced bays for motorhomes and caravans.

Bay one is opposite the toilets. Everything that happens, happens in the vicinity of bay one.

The owner knows us by now and they like dogs, so Mathilda always gets bay 3 which has a lot of grass with a nice height of hedge so that the small red one is not over bothered by other canines or campers frying their dinners over an open flame. She does like to pull her cheeks in and look starved so that she gets tit bits and treats, she is a wee scavenger. Mathilda, Cockroaches and teddy bears are three things that could survive a nuclear winter.

We tend to be the only people who stay here. Most people stop overnight on their way to the Western Isles turn left, or the Great Glen and Skye, turn right. 

                                            

This week there has been another van who has stayed for the week- the lady in bay one.

She is not young. She’s recovering from having a knee operation. She’s off her work but the doctor said she could go away in her wee campervan as long as she didn’t overdo it.  She’s parked opposite the toilets and next to the grass used by the small tents of the walkers.

She lies late in the morning and goes for a short walk, then places her deckchair facing the sun – and moves it every hour or so. She dressed in in long shorts and a loose t shirt, and she sits on her chair with a wee table beside her, she has a glass of wine and a pile of books. The level of wine in the glass starts very high and drops, as does the book pile.

                                     

Everybody who goes past talks to her.  Mostly asking for the codes for the toilets, where the cold-water tap is.  She says she stays here often, and the recent knee operation had forced her to stay rather than move on. And she’s loving it. She has learned the joy of staying in one place and soaking in the view.  Rather than getting up earlier and having the bay vacated by 11am to move to the next site by 3, here she sits and lets life come to her. She reads, drinks wine and watches, and these last few days, she’s following the sunshine as it moves around her van.

 Tonight, she dressed in her pjs with a large fluffy hoodie on when the sun closed down for the day at about 6 pm. She was outside eating, with her hood up, and I asked her what was for her tea tonight- she said mashed tattie and haggis. And it always tastes better in the fresh air,

On Monday she was reading an autobiography a gardener she likes, - she loves her garden, but it has been a wash out this year. Yesterday it was a thick bodice ripper, today it was a gangland thriller with the typical front cover of a young lady in a red coat and redder lip stick.

                               

Some Dutch bikers were talking to her for half an hour earlier. Now she’s talking to the owner of a Rhodesian ridgeback. One American lady yesterday was waving a map around at her to discuss where was the best place to walk next.  There were lots of pointing north.

The site owner gets updates on who dropped what where and who was responsible for the laughter at 10.05 last night- no noise after 10 pm, and certainly no laughing – we are still very presbyterian.

                                       

It’s getting dark now and she’s still sitting out, in her chair, with a blanket wrapped round her, she has as night light and a citronella candle on her wee table to keep the midgies* away.

I think I am going to use her as a role model with the small adjustment of a limpy dog at my feet. 

                                      

*The true spelling of Midge, it’s pronounced Midg gy. As in Squidgy.

Now you know.