The Fox And The Car In The Night..........

Hullo ma wee blog,

I never saw the fox until it was too late. I barely just had time to register its shadowy profile and the bushy tail flowing straight out behind in the headlights before impact. Although I hit the brakes hard I knew as I saw it that there was no way I could avoid hitting it. I hit it full on and, being on motorway at the time, was doing about 75 miles an hour. It never stood a chance and probably died instantly. If by some chance it survived it was finished off by the car following close behind on that busy Saturday night, but I'm pretty sure I killed it outright.

I've never hit an animal like that before. In thirty odd years of driving I could count how many small things I have hit on the fingers of one hand. It's always been a phobia of animal loving me, perhaps from childhood memories of a rare pheasant or even once a hare that dad killed while driving. Dad would always stop and check if the animal was injured and I remember once seeing him dispatch an injured something in the red glow of the rear lights. He always used the lead loaded cosh, prophetically called a 'priest' which he used when fishing, to kill any injured animal. I can remember his sigh, the clunk of the car boot being opened, a quick fumble for 'the priest' in his fishing bag and the sound of  him walking away to return a few moment later and put  it away again. He would close the car boot with a slow but gentle pressure that would press down the whole of the back of the car. {I remember being inordinately impressed with the strength of that gesture and tried to recreate it unsuccessfully many times until I was much older.}

 Whenever he hit a game animal it would always be put into the boot and taken home, not to a squeamish Mum, but to Gran Robertson, where it would go into the pot. It was this trait of his own childhood country upbringing that first showed me a newly dead animal in close up, laid out on the jade-green topped table of Grannies kitchen. I remember that first time, seeing in the bright kitchen light, being tearfully sad yet curious about the beautiful pheasant with its shining eyes, incredibly coloured feathers and blood-dripped yellow beak. Its black eyes seemed calm and yet sad at the same time, like it had been somehow cheated out of its life I suppose. I remember too being confused about how matter of fact, pleased even, Dad and Gran were about the destruction of this amazing creature and on asking being told that they were going to eat it. Although I don't remember my reaction, I imagine it would have been one of horror and I probably cried a lot more. I know Mum always found incidents like that disturbing and couldn't bring herself to look at the creature and would never take part in any meal that resulted. I was firmly on her side on that score although I would be equally curious about anything brought home in the future - and a good deal less tearful.

As I hit the poor fox that wet Saturday night a week ago, muddy water splashed up onto the windscreen and I realised that this must have come from its coat. Dad always told me not to brake if I was going to hit an animal. "Better to make sure if you can.", but I was never able to do that and anyway due to quick reactions and decent brakes I've missed a good few birds and rabbits over the years.  Even though I had started braking that night the impact was startling, something I'd never considered before, and I instinctively looked in the rear view mirror to see the body of the poor creature hit again by the car behind and thrown towards the roads central reservation. As the road was very busy I didn't stop but continued on, a pang of guilt deep in the pit of my stomach, guilt for the death of a beautiful animal and guilt for breaking Dads unshakable rule; if you hit something, make sure it's dead. Don't leave an animal that might be suffering. I told myself and my shocked lovely G that I had killed it instantly, it was too dangerous to stop and finally that if I hadn't killed it outright then the car behind certainly had, but part of me didn't want to be confronted by the result of my actions or the dead eye of that beautiful fox.

The car seemed to be handling properly although I watched it carefully the rest of that silent accusatory journey home and it wasn't until we got to the roundabout at the edge of the village that I heard a small scraping noise which told me that part of the plastic of the front bumper was hanging low. As it was late I parked up at the entrance of the drive and we walked up to the house and bed. The next morning I went to check on the car and found that the accident had caused quite a bit of damage to the front bumper, springing it out of its fixings and bursting it in two places, one of which was hanging low and caused the noise of the previous evening. So the car is off the road while I wait on my insurance company coming to fix it.

I've thought a lot about that fox in the last week. I have given myself a long silent version of the talking to my Dad would have given me for not stopping regardless of how bad the weather or busy the road, at least to try and confirm that the animal was dead. I've also given myself the talk where he would be much more supportive and conciliatory, where he said that the deed is done and that it was time to move on.  I've thought too about that pheasant on Grannies green table-top and the image of lingering regret the memory brings to me all these years later.

Guess I've not changed much.

see you later.

A bad Case Of The Bends

Hullo ma wee blog,

We took breakfast on the balcony of the apartment in Jausiers every day. For the first few days of our holiday here in the Alps of Haute-Provence we used the local cheese and bread we had bought in  a small deli and artisan bakers in  nearby Barcelonnette on that first evenings walk through the streets of the small town. We'd also supplemented it on the second day with some jam bought in the local supermarket. It felt strange to be sitting on a balcony in the middle of September and feeling the first warm rays of the sun hit the bottom of the valley, feeling it warm enough to sit in comfort to eat outside. We'd left rainy Edinburgh in 13C and arrived in Marseilles in 29C. It felt good to be back in France. We feel somehow at home here, there's just something which gives us a sense of peace and makes us promise to come back again and again.

Every day we would decide where we were going to head to and set off in our hire car. No motorways for us on holiday, not that a promise like that was hard to keep with the village in such a remote valley and at such a height. The sign in the photo at the head of the post was 50 yards from the exit from the apartment onto the road. The high pass that is the Col de la Bonette was the first one that we tackled, heading off after breakfast that first day. The illuminated sign above is only one of many signs in that first few kilometres that tells any driver passing that this road, which is only open for a couple of months a year, isn't to be taken lightly. But, I like to think I'm an experienced driver - and a reasonably careful one too - and as I've driven on mountain roads many times I felt confident that I would be able to handle anything we would meet. After all, didn't I get through that tiny road that G took me up a few years ago? The proximity sensors on front and  both sides were all going off at the same time trying to get through one tight pinch point that day and, although I was smiling through gritted teeth at her beside me, we made it and laughed a bit more genuinely in the Bar a Vin in Carcassonne that night after a couple of glasses of local wine.

So, we felt ready for anything as we set off past the warning signs and the last few houses of the village with the road already beginning to rise at a pretty steep angle. I was glad that we'd gone for a more powerful car than we normally do in expectation of just such terrain as we were now driving on, glad too that the long drive from the airport had given me a chance to get properly accustomed to the Renault, especially on the narrower and twistier roads coming into the Ubaye valley. As the road began to rise up the hillside out of Jausier it began to twist too, firstly in nice looping turns that gave a clear view of how high we were getting, lovely views coming with every turn. Interesting houses in the alpine chalet style became the norm  as we got further away from the village, some with hand written signs indicating 'vente du lait' or 'vente du miele' as they offered the produce of the farms for sale. The road surface was fantastic, looking like it had been newly laid just for us and I was both impressed and feeling more confident about the journey ahead. We chatted easily as you do when seeing new things together for the first time, each of us pointing out to the other things of interest we had spotted along the road.

The landscape soon began to change from small fields to small pastures and woodland and the ever sharpening and more frequent bends showed we were climbing steadily. The early part of the road acclimatised you to the style of driving quite quickly and you soon forgot just how steep the road was as you concentrated on gear changing and keeping the engine revs up, correct acceleration out of the bends to stop the car hesitating. It was some time before I realised corners now were almost all hairpin and every straight was a slow steep climb to the next. The last village we had passed was a dilapidated looking affair with large houses roofed in rusty corrugated iron. I was a bit shocked to notice the tidy blue signs that showed that this was a bus route and offered up a silent 'please no' kind of prayer. Now there were no animals, no farms, the road surface too had become much worse and there were regular potholes that had to be negotiated. The road had narrowed significantly too and the side sometimes sheared or crumbled away into a valley below, the trees looking like they had been planted in a schoolboys model train landscape, the other other side of the road was so steep that it was to all intents a wall of grass or increasingly,  just bare rock. Conversation had dwindled and now for some time had stopped completely as we mutually held an unspoken need for me to pay attention just to the road. I sometimes would give an annoyed tug at the seat-belt which had begun to tighten, uncomfortable and restricting on me as we swung round the bends.

 For some time the only thing that we met on the road was the occasional motorbike, their German, Swiss, French or Italian riders obviously revelling in the hairpins and the lack of traffic even on a clear sunny day at this time of year. It was difficult too to keep an adequate eye on anything coming up behind, so much concentration now going on the car and road ahead and the view behind limited by the distances between bends. More than once I was caught by a motorbike suddenly appearing close behind with its headlights full on, rider waiting patiently for me to get round the bend so they could scream past in exaltation for a road made for powerful bikes. I looked at the dashboard and realised that we had been climbing for the best part of an hour, were doing only 40km an hour on a good straight and that I'd long ago lost count of the number of hairpins we had gone through. "Thank God for power steering" came to mind more than once. I could add thank God for a decent second gear too as it seemed like that was all I was now using.

Throughout the journey I'd been thoroughly enjoying the drive. It was great fun and the car handled really well even if I was questioning if we'd gone for a big enough engine. Or maybe we should have gone for a four by four? Although the road had got really quite narrow it was quiet and the couple of cars we had met had been nice small ones which we managed to get past quite easily. In fact my confidence was up and the last one I hadn't even slowed down for. At one point as we came round a corner I looked up and saw with horror that there was a huge camper van coming down the hill towards us but at that moment it was still a few bends and some distance above us. I felt pretty confident that the driver would have time to see me coming up the hill and would find a nice wide spot on the road, at a bend maybe where the road was considerably wider, and he would wait for me to come sailing past with an insouciant wave to a fellow traveller. After all, the highway code says that you should always give way to vehicles coming up a hill if there are any obstacles or difficulties. Surely the same common sense rule applies on the continent doesn't it?  I couldn't see him any more due to the twisting road so it looked as if he must have stopped. "Good stuff mate! Well done!" and "Jings am I glad about that!" were all things that went through my mind as I came round a bend to meet him head on and - of course - at one of the narrower bits of the road. Some nice kind French road worker had also chosen that exact spot to start and not complete some road repairs, having cut a nice chunk out of the road width and left it marked with a nice big sign of an exclamation mark and a 'Chausee Deformee' written boldly on a yellow metal sign that looked like it had been left in the middle of the road.

I said "Aw Bugger!!!" and put the brakes on.

We both sat and looked at each other. Him in his huge bloody four apartment on wheels and me in my wee Renault. It was obvious that he wasn't going anywhere other than forward and so I looked at the view in my rear view mirror. It looked horrible. I turned in my seat to get a better look back through the rear window. Hmm, not much better actually. It looked tiny and a bit of a chicane with a solid rock face on one side and a crumbly edge, no barrier and complete absence of anything solid at all on the other. I stuck the car in reverse and indicated that he should wait and give me a bit of space and began to edge back down the hill through the chicane towards the last hairpin which was about 50 or 60 yards away. About half way I saw another car come round the bend behind me, see the predicament, and pull into the wide bit of road that I had been heading for.

Aw Jings!!

I kept on heading back towards the latest arrival thinking he would realise that I had to get there and move back a smidgin so I could get in too, but as I got closer I could see that he was firmly staying put and was engrossed in watching progress ahead.  I wracked my brain for the French for "move over the bed a bit old chap" but failed miserably. It was at this point that I realised the camper van hadn't waited where he was but was about 10ft from my front bumper. I was in fine position to get a nice view of his DE plate. Bloody typical! Just as I was feeling a tad under pressure I realised that the road had opened up a bit and by squeezing tightly into the rock face there would just about be enough space for him to get past me, so that's what I did and pulled on the handbrake with an audible sigh of relief. The camper van driver stopped and looked at me like I had two heads, making a gesture with his hand that maybe I should just go on backwards but to be honest I'd had enough. I gave what I hoped was a Gallic shrug of indifference and indicated with my two hands to the huge space he could get past me with. He looked at me again and I again shrugged and folded my arms with a pantomime exhalation and glare at the space. As he edged past me - on the sheer drop side - he managed by about the thickness of a good coat of paint but I didn't feel too guilty. He was a bit grey though.

I bet he'll stop at the first opportunity the next time it happens.

Or get a smaller camper van...............

see you later.

Listening to Sting, 'Fields of Gold'

Go West Young Man

Strathaven Castle

Hullo ma wee blog,

A grey road on a grey day.

Odd how things look sometimes. I started the trip back home to the west coast in the kind of light rain that we Scots would call a smirr, the kind of rain that barely registers on your face, but makes clothes sparkle as if decorated with a million small diamonds and can chill you and ultimately soak you through completely. The car windscreen fogged over as the rain particles - too small to be called drops - slowly joined to hide my view of the road ahead as I settled down for the two hour drive back to Ayrshire and  Dad's - now my and my brothers - house. I switched on the wipers to an intermittent sweep across my vision and recalled how Gordon had phoned the week before saying the gas people needed in to service the boiler ready for winter and he would be away on business so, even though it would be a long drive, could I cover it rather than rearrange to a later date. I'd not been back in several months and as Gordon has taken on the burden of maintenance, gardening and the like as he lives fairly close by, I thought it was about time I showed willing and did my bit too. As we spoke that night he'd mentioned  the for sale sign had come down but he hadn't had the tools with him on his last visit so could I bring some bits and pieces down to make a repair. My toolbox and drill rattled softly from the car boot to let me know that they were on board while an extension cable was tucked behind the passenger seat  next to my laptop and some things I thought I might need if I was to spend the day at the house - tea and coffee, a sandwich, some fruit, some toilet roll, cloths and a few other bits and pieces of the basic things you always find awkwardly missing when doing something like this.

I'd left home with my Lovely G beside me to drop her off at Edinburgh airport for a quick trip to visit her Aunt in Switzerland. It's her aunt's 75th birthday today and they're very close. Once she had been seen off, I was able to get back on to the motorway and turn the car and my thoughts to the trip to the west coast. These days I tend not to drive too much on motorway if I can avoid it, a result of spending what seemed like half my working life on them in the past. I decided though that this time I'd go part of the way on motorway before turning off onto some more interesting scenery so I was at the house in good time. {The last time I did anything like this the gas man had arrived at the house early and left about 5 minutes before I got there. Luckily he'd left a note to say he'd been and I'd managed to contact his office quickly enough to get him to come back as he was still nearby.}

I turned off the motorway just as I reached  the outskirts of Glasgow and took the old road to follow the river Irvine valley west to the coast and home. The radio was playing classical music, a Chopin piece, by the time I reached Strathaven and passed beneath the ruins of the old castle which dates back to Robert the Bruce. At the other side of the village I was faced with the fork in the road and a choice of staying with the valley road on through Galston, Newmills and Darvel or taking a left onto the minor  road across the wild moor to Muirkirk, past the Juvenile Remand Center at Dungavel and the distant view of Loudon hill, another place where Bruce fought the English and won so long ago. The day had begun to lighten, the strip of road now steel grey in front of me as I headed for the moor and I remembered a song a friends mother used to sing at Ne'erday called ' Forty shades of Green' as I passed through a landscape that seemed determined to emulate those words. Everything from the palest lime to the darkest shade of forest green was in the trees and the roadside, mixed through with yellow, gold, russet and browns of every shade and texture as I passed out of the woodland and onto the moor itself. The pastel shades of the landscape softened further by greyness above and the classical music coming from the radio seemed to echo the views that were all around. The road swept down a gently sloped valley and across the river over a small metal bridge and on past a field of sheep with chocolate brown coats and startling white faces lying disconsolately among rough grasses and a small stand of trees next to the bones of a tumbled down shed. It's sole remaining green wall blended perfectly with the shadow of the trees and the countryside around it.

The Muirkirk Miner

After a short drive the moor began to change into grassy fields and the first white painted farm crofts came into view before I arrived in Muirkirk. I passed the sculpture of a miner made from a single piece of local coal, marking the long history of mining in the area I come from. Driving along the long road that contains most of the village I passed a pair of old men walking their dogs. Bowed legs and swaying gaits marked them as old miners as much as their flat 'bunnet' caps and the whippets by their side. The dark clothes they wore looked stained in the coal they'd no doubt mined for the best part of their lives. Unlike any others out that day they seemed impervious to the cold and grey, almost as if they were still grateful to be out in the damp but fresh air rather than anywhere else, especially down a 'pit' as they're called here.  Looking past a few houses I could see an occasional pigeon loft that also marked a favourite hobby of miners in my youth. Just as I wondered if they were still in use a flock swooped past on grey wings and I remembered from childhood the sound of the birds as they exploded from baskets stacked on special lorries at the start of a race involving what seemed like a thousand or more birds, solemn and intent rows of black garbed and bunneted old men anxious to witness the release.

The road out of Muirkirk rose gently towards Cumnock and home and I passed a farm where a field of cattle contained four or five Belted Galloway cattle or 'kye' as they are known locally. I love these beautiful beasts with their cartoon tidy hides. They remind me of a cuddly toy I had been given as a very small child which was very precious for a couple of years until cast aside in the way of a wee boy who has new things to excite him.  The image made me smile and I looked forward to getting back to Dad's  house. I pressed on through Cumnock and moved into proper Ayrshire farmland stuffed with cattle well fed on lush grass and bulging with udders full of sweet milk, through Ochiltree, passed the spot where George Douglas Brown's imaginary 'House with the Green Shutters' would have stood and on to the village and home.

A short 10 minutes across rolling grassland dotted with kye and sheep took me past the farm field where I had my first pay for a days work. I earned a pound for thinning turnips by hand, working from 7.30 in the morning until 6.00 in the evening with a lunch of sandwiches and tea from a flask I'd taken with me. I don't remember any other breaks from that hunched over day years ago but I remember how glad I was for Mum to run me a hot bath to soak my aching back in and forbid me to go back the following day to work for slave wages. I passed the tiny cottage Mum's family had rented at Coalhall, the junction of mine railway and main lines and the tiny hamlet who's sole purpose had named it so simply and descriptively. I remembered that my Grandpa Hughes, who died before I was born, used the line passing the back of the house to walk to and from his work as electrical engineer at small pits 4 or 5 miles back in the hills and that the use of those small gauge steam engines resulted in the lines being called 'He' and 'She' lines in recognition of the difference in scale. The line that ran off to a pit-head near Coylton was called 'The Nanny Line' as it used the same small gauge.  The pub at the junction stood empty now, it's dog walking miner clientele long gone, but new houses built in the woods where I would come to play sometimes have brought new life to replace the old.  From here it's a long straight mile to the village and home.

I used to cycle the road often in my explorations and searches for mischief to get up to. Sometimes I'd ride alongside grim faced wives heading determinedly for the pub to rescue what money they could from the pockets of a husband who'd failed to get off the pit bus on payday and sometimes I'd ride along beside drouthy miners who's dog walking would never get passed that inviting doorway. Occasionally I'd get a couple of bob to take a dog with me through the woods for an hour or two or to help a wobbly miner on his way back home with a shoulder and someone to talk to. Occasionally I'd steer well clear of men known to be violent.

By the time these thoughts had crossed my mind I was turning into the village, instinctively turning up the hill and the longer route that would take me past Granny Robertson's old house opposite the Kirk and the couple of hundred yards on to my destination and the back metal gate to the house.

There was no way the gas man would be ahead of me this time.

See you later.