JOURNAL
| Window into Scotland
Notes from the Isles Our friend on the Black Isle fills us in on her life in the Highlands and takes us down memory lane Words by KATE FRANCIS
THIS PAGE: Kate and Cronie, her faithful Border Terrier OPPOSITE: Kessock Bridge, Inverness
10 Scotland
B
urns Night has come and gone, and Mary and I have happy memories of the evening we spent with John and Maggie next door, with whom we have shared a bubble since the first lockdown. We had delicious Cockburn’s haggis – the best – and all the traditional accompaniments; John recited the address to the ‘Great chieftain o’ the pudding-race’ as Maggie placed the ‘groaning trencher’ before us. “O what a glorious sight, Warm-reekin, rich!” As we ate, I recounted the story I’ve told in this column before, of when we had a visit from my Australian cousin Angela and her husband Johnny, who’d come to stay with us and explore Scotland. We’d never met them before because my father’s youngest brother had emigrated to Australia after the war, where he settled down and married an Aussie lass. Because Douglas was too frail for us to take them sightseeing, we hired them a car and they toured the Highlands enthusiastically. I discovered it would be Johnny’s birthday the day before their departure and, knowing their delight in all things Scottish, I hatched a secret plot: we’d have a family gathering for a Burns Night Supper. I collected and hid all the required ingredients and planned the surprise. Very fortunately, at supper the night before, I happened to ask Angela casually if she’d ever eaten haggis. “Haggis?” she said, “do you know what it’s made of? I wouldn’t touch haggis if I was starving, and it was the only food available.”
Fortunately, there were plenty of partridges in the deep freeze and I had time to change the plan. The Black Isle is not an island, so, until we’re allowed to go back to our family base in the Outer Hebrides, Notes from The Isles is a misnomer, but I hope it won’t be long before this is rectified. Fingers are crossed for a gathering at Easter, in our genuine island home. Watch this space. However, until the late Queen Mother opened the Kessock Bridge in 1982, it was easy to think The Black Isle was indeed an island, with three firths surrounding the peninsula and only a narrow strip of land linking it to the mainland. To get to Inverness, it was far quicker to take the ferry across a few hundred yards of the Beauly Firth to South Kessock, than to drive for about an hour round the firth. Despite the fact that the historic ferry pier of South Kessock is now part of Inverness’s least salubrious district, it will always have a very special place in my heart. In the summer of 1958, when we were newly engaged, Douglas and I were queuing to take the ferry over to North Kessock to visit his parents so they could get to know me. It was a beautiful sunny day; we got out of the car and went to lean over the railings, gazing across the water towards the house in which I now live. Looking uncharacteristically shy, Douglas pulled a little box out of his pocket, opened it and extracted – to my complete surprise – the engagement ring a local jeweller had created from an old ring his mother had given him. He took my left hand, slipped the ring onto my finger and kissed it. I nearly cried with happiness. In my innocence I had forgotten that being engaged involved a ring and I had no idea that