Skellig Michael

g i l l e Sk

My week: Bob Harris

l e ha

c Mi

So accurate calculation is important: fresh supplies and drinking water are brought out by supply boat, scheduled for Mondays and Fridays.

On an island with no running water or electricity, the simple pleasures matter: so I save my batteries for Tim Thurston on Sundays

Deserted island On Fridays we change over. Many years ago, I bullied the others into believing that the arrival of fresh doughnuts

I am a rock For five months of every year, I live on the island of Skellig Michael, 13km off the Kerry coast. I’ve been the head guide here for 23 years. I have five colleagues, and there are usually three of us here.

should be part of this ritual. Once, I was given fresh doughnuts and a copy of Psychology Today. I still don’t know if I was meant to see significance in this peculiar combination. The newspaper also comes on Fridays. For some reason, we survey with particular interest the weather chart and holiday ads.

The island is a Unesco World Heritage Site. High on its eastern peak, some 600ft above the sea, is a set of stone terraces where monks lived in the 7th century.

Apart from ourselves, it’s home now only to tens of thousands of nesting seabirds.

If the sea becomes too rough, no landing is possible.

If the wind rises too high, no helicopter will come near the peaks. Everyone has to adopt an island personality to deal with each other’s quirks of character. People who stay generally love it here; it satisfies some

There is no normal week on Skellig, but there is a

requirement of their lives.

certain rhythm to the days, one that changes through the seasons. At times, the island is cut off. Over the past 10 days, three separate centres of low pressure have developed out in the Atlantic, lashing the island with gales.

When people arrive on Fridays, their bright mainland clothes dazzle. This doesn’t last long. Sea-area forecasts from Valentia Radio soon punctuate the day.

There is no running water or electricity on the island, and other details take on an essential and permanent value: fresh milk for tea, for example.

14

Images: Skellig Michael oratory and aerial views.

The hermitage

Plainchant would probably be more appropriate. No-

I live in a small hut with a big window looking over the ocean. The gas

one knows what the chants of the monks sounded

cooker warms the place quickly in the morning, as do the gas lamps at

like in the 7th century, but something of them lingers.

night. I save my radio batteries to listen to Ireland’s soccer matches, but

High above me, a small dry-stone terrace juts out over

mostly for Sunday mornings and Tim Thurston’s Gloria. Last Sunday the

the sea on which men lived a life of prayer, adopting

gannets passing outside danced through the intricacies of a chorale by

an attitude that entered into their building. The daily

Bach, fighting the updraughts of strong winds attacking the rock. After days

rhythms they worked can still be understood in the

of isolation, the effect of this music, piped out of a little box and through

little maze of the white and grey monastery lifted up

earphones, is powerful.

to the sky overhead.

These monks moved to the rhythm of the ocean, of the oncoming weather, of the bird flight that surrounded them. They heard the sea pound the rock underfoot, as I do today. The rainwater shivered upon the edges of each stone of the cells as it does now, falling in the sequences of an elaborate water clock. A mile to the east, gannets explore the cliffs of our sister rock, the Little Skellig. There are some 50,000 of them, and they swing out continually in departure and return, following a pendulum that marks a fundamental key of time here. People sense this, one way or another, upon arrival on the island.

Surprise visitor This week we enter the dark time on the Skelligs. The colourful birds — puffins, razorbills, guillemots and kittiwakes — are gone. The sun has moved past the equinox, past the feast of St Michael, past the pilgrims’ visit to the rock. Day visitors still come in October, but this week our only pilgrims have fallen from the skies: ten snow buntings suddenly appeared, their bright forms darting ahead of me as I walked down to the landing.

Then today, I noticed the red glow of a robin — ghostly in the rain, and only the second I’ve encountered here in 23 years — outside the window on the lighthouse road wall.

Bob Harris is a caretaker and guide on Skellig Michael • This piece first appeared in The Sunday Times in October 2010 • Images courtesy of Con Brogan, DoECLG.

Obair - December 2010

15