COMMUNITY
MULLMAN’S MERRY CHRISTMAS Our older children, Oliver, 14, and Hazel, nine, expressed an interest in buying presents for friends and family for Christmas. So, in true Brooks family tradition, we took them to earn some cash picking winkles. I grew up doing the same and saved up money to buy my own pool table when I was 10. Picking winkles is not for everyone, especially if the weather is blowing a gale and hail stoning but, luckily, the children had a nice spell of weather over the weekend and we had an enjoyable family time scrabbling around on the shore. We came to an agreement with our youngest daughter Blue that she could get an item of her choice at the shop in Salen if she looked after little Oak for us. Oak didn’t really need a lot of looking after though, as he was knee deep in rock pools pointing out all the sea life. The picking was regularly interrupted with squeaks of excitement every time they found something hiding among the seaweed. The flapping butterfish were most common, but there were lots of other small fish that live among the rocks on the shore and are stranded when the tide goes out; fish
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Thank you to everyone that Mull otters love to feed involved for making it a on. school our children look These included young forward to going to - most sea scorpions, five bearded mornings. rockling, gobies, pipefish, We are in full winter little flatfish and 15 spine now, but already nature is sticklebacks. showing signs of the spring We also found squat lobsters, something I do not to come. Our sea eagle pair are hard remember seeing before on at work building a new nest my winkling excursions. for the 2022 season already. We all had to be careful One might for the often not expect half buried So, in true common small spiny sea Brooks family dolphins to urchins. hang around They are tradition, we over the winter, beautiful, but took them to but we have get a spine earn some seen small under your nail cash picking groups of them and you know winkles. from our home about it for at Ulva Ferry. days. We are so lucky I found a to have been granted this delicate saddle oyster home. It’s a dream come wrapped around a small true to be able to sit at my stone and a large common whelk attaching its bundle of window and watch all the wildlife. bubble eggs that you often And the rays of light! find washed up on the shore The lovely late Eleanor to a rock. Our two girls have one day Cameron from Bunessan at week at Ulva Ferry Primary used to pick me up to take me to school. School doing shore school. Thanks to her, those All 15 pupils in the school go out with their teachers - yes, rays of light coming down they even have two teachers through the clouds will always be known to me as now at that school, for the first time in a long time - and ‘God Speaks’ and it seems learn all they can about what appropriate. It’s a regular reminder they find. They are loving that school. here on Mull that we are so
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| WINTER 2021/22
Mull & Iona Life issue 44.indd 14
19/01/2022 17:48:48
