Wash Her Mouth Out With Soap

(I must apologise for the language one of the women uses in the Port Brokeferry piece below. I most certainly do not approve. It was not my idea that she should say that - that can happen in fiction sometimes. Please don't judge me by what Evelyn says.)

ALL MEN ARE CUNTS

Christine was like a bear with a sore head. Even when she answered the phone the words she said came out harder than they were meant to. And she was not warm to the ladies that appeared in the shop ten minutes before their appointments, not her usual breezy self at all.

Evelyn thought it had something to do with her not having been in the shop the day before. She understood that Christine had picked up her customers and had put in a full shift. Evelyn took the blame and told Morag she was sorry.

Morag looked at Evelyn funny, like she had not understood.

It was mid-morning when Morag offered to get Christine a cup of tea. The first rush of clients had given way to a moment’s quiet. The appointment book said there’d be another rush about eleven and then they were busy again in the afternoon.

‘Or maybe you’d prefer coffee?’ said Morag, thinking perhaps Christine had spent another drunken night with Lachlan and needed something to restore the pep in her.

‘Tea,’ said Christine, and the word came out snappish and spat.

Evelyn volunteered to help Morag with the tea. Not that there was much to keep two busy, but it gave her a chance to talk quietly with Morag in the back of the shop.

‘Sorry?’ said Morag.

‘For not being in yesterday. For Christine having to take on my clients and being as cross as crabs this morning.’

Morag waved a hand in the air, as if to say there was no need to apologise. ‘It’s not for you she is cross. It’s Lachlan. He was seen drinking alone in ‘The Ship’ last night and no sign of her nibs. They must have had a falling out. Flowers one day, flung words the next.’

Evelyn felt a little better.

‘I think Christine actually enjoyed her spell with the old scissors and comb yesterday. Finished ahead of time we did and she shut the shop up early. Said she’d meet me in the ‘The Ship’ later on for a drink and she was buying. Only she wasn’t there as we’d arranged. And Lachlan was, empty glasses stacked before him and cursing all women till his words came out making no sense at all.’

Evelyn checked that Christine was still at the desk. Then she rolled up the sleeve of her blouse and showed off her ‘Kelso’ tattoo. No words to go with what she did, just revealing the scruffily written name in blue-black, bleeding under her skin so that the letters seemed furry in outline.

It was not a surprise to Morag. Not really. She knew about Kelso, had guessed at least.

‘Fucking stupid, don’t you think?’ said Evelyn.

Morag shrugged, not committing herself to an opinion that might later get her into trouble.

‘He’s with Berlie’s. Now he’s back and he says there’s someone else. Just like that. Says that it meant nothing what we did. And I should have known. He was drunk and so was I. Of course it meant nothing. Except I spent a year convincing myself it did. Bloody waste of time that was. I’ll get it removed. You can do that. Not pretty afterwards, but that’s the price.’

‘Sorry,’ said Morag. ‘We could go for a drink after work, if you like.’

‘All men are cunts,’ Evelyn said. Then she rolled down her sleeve again and fastened the cuff button. She poured out three cups of tea, one after the other, not saying another word till she was done.

‘Yes,’ said Evelyn at last, setting the teapot down on a cork mat that was there for the purpose. ‘A drink, sounds good to me. A few drinks. And who knows, maybe some guy will get lucky tonight,’ and she laughed when she said it, walking back into the shop carrying tea for Christine.

Morag thought she would say something, about men and what Evelyn had said they were, but then she decided to hold her tongue.

News and then the lovely Mhairi in PB

(Some uplifting news this week: a former colleague from the Fiction Workhouse asked me to look over a story they had written and were thinking of entering into a competition. The person said some flattering things about how helpful and how thorough and how insightful my crits always are. And two of my stories have got onto the shortlist for a nice competition bringing my total number of hits to twenty for the year so far. That feels very good. And some of my pieces are being hung up on the internet... have been a bit lazy about sending stuff out there this year. And here's the next installment of Port Brokeferry... and there is a girl I know who runs such a shop and her name is Mhairi!)

MHAIRI’S NEW PAINTING

There was a new picture in the window of Mhairi’s Port Brokeferry Giftshop. A larger piece than she was used to painting so that she had to rearrange everything in the window around it. It was in Mhairi’s style, even though the brushstrokes were looser and broader, as befitted the larger canvas. The colours were hers and the lines hers, too. And it was recognisably Port Brokeferry: the beach, and the sea coming in or going out, and the sky all burnished and blue and the sand a wide yellow stretch. And, if there had been any doubt that it was the beach at Port Brokeferry, there was Mad Martin in the picture.

‘It’s Martin. And he is not with Col. Just Martin. And Mhairi is there too, though you cannot see her, for she is behind the picture. But she is there all the same.’

It was only right that Martin should be the first to view it, and so Mhairi had arranged for Athol Stuart to bring him along early to a small unveiling in the window of her giftshop. There was a cloth draped over the picture at first, like it was a secret or a surprise. Then Martin was there, sometimes looking over his shoulder as if he was expecting that someone else would be there also, and Mhairi pulled back the cloth, slow, like she was performing a trick on stage, and she revealed the painting specially for him.

Martin in the picture was wearing his kilt and his grey suit jacket, the same as he wore every day, the same as he was wearing now. His painted shoes were off and his painted socks too. He was shown from behind, looking away from the artist, looking out over the sea, the foaming edge of which was like ribbon lace.

‘It’s Martin,’ he said again.

Mhairi grinned at him from the other side of the glass and nodded as though she was translating into movement Martin’s approval. When she came out to where he stood, and where Athol Stuart stood, she asked Martin if he liked it.

Martin was pressed up against the glass, as if he might enter the picture again if only he could find a way through. He did not reply to Mhairi’s question. It was as if he hadn’t heard, so Athol Stuart spoke for him.

‘It’s a grand work,’ said Athol Stuart. ‘Yes, a really special piece. I hope it stays in your window a long while, Mhairi. I hope it does.’

There was a small cream coloured card tucked into the edge of the mahogany wood frame. The picture had a title. In blue writing with all the letters curling and coiled, it said: ‘On The Beach at Port Brokeferry, with Martin.’ The price was written underneath.

‘Though I fear it will not be with us long, seeing what you charge for it,’ said Athol Stuart.

Then Martin did speak, showing that he was listening all the while. Spoke without taking his pressed-face from the glass.

‘Charge more, Mhairi. So that nobody will buy it. So that it will be there in the window for a long time. And I will come and see it every day. For as long as it is here. Long enough that Col will see it when he comes, too.’

‘I’m glad that you like it, Martin,’ she said, and she fetched a smaller sketched version from inside the shop. The same picture, but everything thrown down in a hurry, and the colours all washed through and the pencil lines showing. It was framed too, and Mhairi had signed it in the bottom right hand corner.

‘This one’s for you, Martin.’

A Bit of Heaven and a Bit of Sin

(A fitting Sunday piece for Port Brokeferry... although in PB it is still only Saturday!)

PAN DROP MINTS

The minister sat with Lillian. Side by side on the sofa in her front room, turned into each other. He held her hand, his head bowed as though he was praying. She was telling him about Christmas with her late husband, Preston. And how Tom came over for Christmas dinner and he always brought soap in blue or yellow tissue paper. And he stayed late. Stayed even when Preston had departed this world. And there were letters that she read to him, letters from a daughter called Angela to a father called Tom.

The minister should have been listening. But he was dealing with his own loss. He’d been a friend, old Tom. They’d played cards together, every week for as far back as his earliest days in Port Brokeferry. They played for pan drop mints. Some weeks Tom was up, some weeks the minister walked away with a pocketful. He dropped them into the clutch-cupped palms of the children who came to church on a Sunday. Bits of heaven, bits of sin, he thought. Never touched them himself.

‘So, minister, what do you think?’ said Lillian.

He should have been listening. He said he was sorry. He hadn’t slept and his mind was on all that he had to do. Lillian squeezed his hand and said she understood. She said she was being silly, burdening him with all her nonsense.

He called in on Doctor Kerr after he’d been to Lillian’s. Just to let him know. And to let Margaret know, too. It was like he was there for an appointment. They talked in the surgery, Doctor Kerr behind his desk and Margaret standing beside him.

There were tears in Doctor Kerr’s eyes and he pressed his lips together, like there were things he could say but he kept it all back. Margaret talked for him. Polite things. The things you’d expect to hear.

The minister was elsewhere, his thoughts at least. His hand was in his pocket, riffling through the cards he had picked up from Tom’s bedroom the day before. It wasn’t just cards and pan drops that he shared with Tom. They talked. About the news and what was what in the world, their world shrinking through the years to the limits of Port Brokeferry. The minister tested some of the material for his sermons on old Tom. Changed a few things too after speaking with him.

‘Minister?’

He should have been listening. He apologised. Said he’d been by Tom till the end.

‘I just wondered if he’d suffered,’ said Margaret.

‘No, there was no struggle and no pain. He slipped away easy. In his sleep, the doctors said. Yes, a blessing. But already I miss him,’ said the minister.

Then he called on Susan Downs. He didn’t know why he did that. He’d heard things and thought she might need a kind word. Maybe it was just that.

‘I hope I’m not disturbing you, Susan, only I thought I might invite myself for a cup of your tea, and maybe a slice of toast. If it’s no trouble. Only I was in the hospital last night and old Tom passed away.’

Susan made the minister a cup of tea. He took it black with two sugars. She made him some toast, too. They sat at the kitchen table. She was sad about old Tom. She said so. But then she began talking about Kyle and how it was with them, all the bad stuff that was between them. And now Kyle was seeing a woman called Lynn who came with the fair.

The minister nodded, looked sympathetic and thoughtful. And he was thinking, but not about Susan Downs.

When there was an end to her talking and space left in the air between them, the minister spoke. ‘I was wondering if I might ask your daughter, Corinne, to sit with Lillian a while today. I think Lillian could use the company and Corinne was such a comfort to old Tom. She was reading him poetry. Before. I think it helped.’

‘Corinne?’ said Susan Downs.

And there she was, as though conjured up by the minister talking about her, or Susan Downs saying her name: Corinne, just out of sleep and her hair all tangled and tossed. And she was yawning and stretching, being herself, not knowing there was company.

The minister said, ‘Good Morning, Corinne,’ and as soon as he said it, her name, he felt he had said something he shouldn’t have and he was off balance, and didn’t know how to proceed, so he offered her a pan drop mint from a white paper bag.

And Corinne was off balance too, and she took a mint from the minister without really knowing what she did.

In Alice's Bed

(Continuing with Alley-Cat and Dodie Bredwell from Port Brokeferry, here's yet another Saturday piece... and I always said that Dodie was someone to like...)

A BOY CALLED MORAY

‘Is he a nephew or a younger cousin, or your father as a boy? Or is it someone you taught once? Is that it?’

Dodie was talking about the picture by her bed. The one of the boy in a fisherman’s jersey and his sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Alice should have put it away before. Every morning that she can remember she has woken seeing the boy’s face, seeing his smile thrown off the yellowing paper into her room. She called him sweetheart some days and bastard on other days. Always there, always young, and Alice moving further and further away from him, it seemed, further away in time. Still she’d kept him there in the gilt silver frame. But these past few days somehow Alice had forgotten he was there.

‘He’s someone I knew, that’s all,’ she said.

Dodie picked up the picture in its frame. She wished that he hadn’t.

‘I want to know everything about you, Alley-cat,’ he said, looking at the picture.

‘I am forty six on my next birthday. I am a teacher, but you know that. My favourite writer is Hardy, and I like Bach, and Play For The Day on the radio. I take my tea weak with no sugar and my toast with honey. I have a birthmark like a swallow tattoo on my shoulder and, unaccountably, I am in bed with a strange man who calls me by a strange name.’

‘Tell me his story,’ Dodie said.

She kissed him then, kissed the man she called Toadie for fun. He did not turn into a prince and she thought about saying as much. But he was still looking at the picture, still wanting to know.

Alice looked away from him and away from the boy mending nets who’d written his name on the back of the picture in case she forgot. The curtains were open and she could just see the furthest reach of the sea, just where the sky lay down on top of it. Bright blue the sky today, and the sea a blue-mist smudge beneath it.

She drew breath.

‘He’s a boy. I knew him once. When I was just a girl. He meant something to me then. His name was Moray. He worked on one of the boats. Fishing. There were a lot of boats then. A shrunken fleet, but still a fleet. They went out from the harbour here. And when they were gone the women kept oil lanterns lit and sitting in the window, so the boats and the men could always find their way home. My mother did the same once, for my father. I thought they were silly, those women. The boats came back or they didn’t and it wasn’t the lights that brought the men safely home. He said he wanted to marry me. Said he’d tell his mother. I watched him walk the length of the street to his mother’s house. But I don’t know if he told her, don’t know if she kept a light on for him that night or if that was my responsibility once he’d told her. There was no light in my window, not that night or any night, and Moray did not come home from the fishing. Not ever.’

Dodie set the picture down beside Alice’s bed.

‘It was a long time ago,’ she said, returning to herself, and she turned to face this man in her bed. ‘He was just a boy.’

‘And you were just a girl.’ Dodie stroked her hair. ‘My Alley-cat, a girl. Now there’s a thought.’

'Your Alley-cat,' she said. And she laughed and touched his lips with her fingers and then with her lips. When she opened her eyes again he was still not a prince. And this time she told him as much.

Sharon at the Victorian Hotel in PB

(Here's another Saturday PB piece.)

TOUCHING THE BERLIE’S FAIR BEAR FOR LUCK

Sharon touched the Berlie’s Fair bear for luck and went upstairs carrying Mr Struan Courtald’s cup of tea.

He was expecting her. This morning no different to any other, except perhaps there were more names in the book today, more visitors to Port Brokeferry for the start of the season. They’d taken on an extra girl to help with cleaning the rooms and making the beds. Edwin’s wife, Helen, helped in years past, but now she had Grace’s baby to think on, so they had found someone new. A girl from the school. In her last year and wanting some money, enough to take her places. It was Mr Struan Courtald’s responsibility to make sure she was turned out right.

Sharon set the cup down on the desk in front of Mr Struan Courtald. Then she stood back waiting for him to complete his inspection of her hair and her skirt and the buttons on her blouse and the shine of her shoes.

‘Thank you, Sharon,’ he said. That was all. Like she was dismissed and could go. He hadn’t even looked up from the register that he was checking. Looked like he was checking it, at least.

She did not move. She waited for him to take notice. She waited in silence.

Then the phone rang. Mr Struan Courtald picked it up.

‘The Victoria Hotel, Port Brokeferry, how can I help you?’

His voice was different when he was on the phone. All clipped and official sounding. None of the usual warmth that she heard when he spoke to her in the mornings. Even today’s ‘Thank you, Sharon,’ was softly spoken. She watched him on the phone. Watched him listening as intently as she had listened once to him teaching her how to set the knives, forks and spoons of a table. He made a note of something in the book and thanked the person at the other end of the phone and hung up.

It was then that he saw that Sharon had not left, had not returned to the kitchen. He lifted the cup to his lips and sipped at the tea. ‘Thank you, Sharon. The tea’s fine.’

Still she did not go.

He put down his pen and gave her his full attention. ‘Is there something?’ he said. ‘Something your mother said you should say, perhaps?’

‘No, Mr Courtald. My mother gave me no message today, though I am sure she will expect you to call on her later. She likes it when you call. Looks forward to it. Never a secret, you see. Mr Struan Courtald called today, she says when I get home, and the difference in her is all bright and her cheeks flushed pink.’

Mr Struan Courtald did not know what to say.

Sharon brushed a loose wisp of her hair back from her face. She cleared her throat, like Blair the postman did sometimes, only a quiet sound that was hardly a sound at all, a quiet prelude to speech. Then, without looking at Mr Struan Courtald, she continued with what she had to say, something she had practiced in her head before this day.

‘I just wanted to say thank you, Mr Courtald. For everything. For your visits to my mother. For the teaching you gave me so I could secure this post, all the time you spent making sure that I was up to the task. That was the phrase you used, ‘up to the task’. And for the gift,’ Sharon said. ‘Thank you, Mr Courtald, for the watch that you gave me for my birthday, that you gave so quietly I thought at first it was from my mother. But it was from you. I do not know why it is that you did that, but it is a lovely watch and I thank you for it.’

Mr Struan Courtald still did not know what to say. There were things he might have said, but not then, not standing there behind the desk of the Victoria Hotel and Sharon standing on the other side, the image of her mother years back and Mr Struan Courtald was just plain Struan then.

‘That was all,’ Sharon said, and she turned, pirouetted like a dancer, and went back to the work in the kitchen where Dugald McVey was already preparing breakfast. Sharon touched the Berlie’s Fair bear again for luck.

Uncle B in PB

(Here's another piece from Port Brokeferry. Remember that Rose is here in PB to recover from some sort of 'breakdown' and that she is a writer trying to get back to writing, and she has been to PB before, as a child with her sister Carrie and her mother and a mysterious other that she knows only as Uncle B.)

INVENTING UNCLE B

The back door was open and Rose was already writing in her notebook. On the table in front of her and propped up against an empty sugar bowl, just where she could see it, was the photograph her sister had sent her, the one with ‘Uncle B’ written on the back but the man himself cut from the picture.

He was neither old nor young. Neither tall, nor short. But to the girls he filled a space as big as any hole can be. He was all the father they knew so that they did not understand why they called him Uncle B.

B for Brian or Bob or Ben.

And Uncle B loved the woman who was their mother, said he did over and over, so much that she protested sometimes, her protests all bright-eyes and smiles. He wrote it in the flat wet sand and the frothing sea made of it a secret again when it came in and washed clean what he’d written.

Their mother’s name was Kate and, laughing like it was a joke, ‘Kiss me Kate’ he whispered to her, and Uncle B whispering was never so quiet that they didn’t hear and his kisses never so concealed that they were not seen by the two girls. And all their sunshine days were measured out in those kisses, and in the dark of storybook nights they compared notes on the kisses that Uncle B gave, tasting of ice-cream sometimes and other times of mint or cigarette smoke or beer. The ice-cream kisses were the best.

Rose drank from her cup and looked out at the day. Brighter today than yesterday and all the clouds chased from the sky. She felt lighter somehow, like it was doing her good being back in Port Brokeferry. And she was writing again. That was something. She set her cup down and returned to her notebook.

B for badger or bull or bear.

And Uncle B loved them, too. I love you Rosemary, he said, and I love you Caroline. And he carried them on his shoulders, taking turns, seeing the world from the highest high, and his hands holding their legs kept them safe. Like riding an elephant, they said, afterwards, and his shoulders rolling and their hands wrapped about his head like they’d made a turban out of their fingers.

And he built castles out of sand with sea-shells for windows and a cigarette packet for a door. And he invented a prince and a princess for the castle he’d made and a whole kingdom of frog-legged courtiers and maids-a-milking and a witch with a black sea-weed dress.

And Uncle B filled their heads with happy-ever-afters, and the summer seemed neverending and all their tomorrows promised to be the same as today.

Rose could not see where this was going. Something of the story she knew, for it came from her own head, and something mixed with memory is what it was, this Uncle B and his one-swallow summer. But they’d never talked about why he left, not Carrie or Rose or her mother.

Came a day that was not expected, a day when the sun dipped behind a cloud and the sky was bruised and the wind whipped up the sand on their beach. The mother and her girls still smiled for the camera – smiled only in black and white – and a man called Uncle B crept out of the picture, out of all their pictures.

They packed away their buckets and spades, the gingham cloth they’d spread on the sand, and the swim suits with matching sun-hats. They returned the shells to the sea, and walked barefoot up the sand one last time. There’s a picture of them then, just the three of them, and they are wearing coats and the street is wet and it is not Port Brokeferry anymore. On the back of the picture there is writing in pencil worn as thin as smoke. It says ‘And the sunny time was over’, and Uncle B was forgotten, like he had never been.

Rosemary asked her mother once, or maybe she thought she did, and she asked where he had gone and why, and her mother said that B was for brute and beast and bastard. And her mother swearing was the last word on the matter.

'B is for brute and beast and bastard,' Rose said out loud, and she looked again at the picture that Carrie had sent, at the man's hand reaching into the photograph and the grey shadow laid on her mother's cheek. 'Bastard,' Rose said again.

News and a PB piece

(News just in: have just been told of another hit with my writing for this year... this time a competition win and quite a nice one, I think. Certainly there are some nice writers' names amongst the lists from previous years. A win is good news... even when you know it's just the view of one judge or in this case one panel of judges. And here's another Port Brokeferry piece from Saturday in PB.)

BACK FROM A LONG TIME AWAY

Izzy’s mother rose early. She would take her turn in the shop today, she told Izzy. And the mail, she would sort the mail for Blair. No, really, she’d like to, she said. And she meant it.

It was like she was back from a long time away, that’s what Izzy thought. And her being back made everything right in their world: the mother was the mother again and Izzy was the daughter. Always the same after Izzy’s mother had one of her turns. Izzy made a note to herself to talk to the doctor about it when she next saw him.

Downstairs, the day outside was already brighter than the fluorescent-lit day inside and already poking impatient fingers between the gaps in the shutters. Izzy watched her mother at work, sorting through the letters and the small parcels. She was wearing her glasses, but still she held the letters and postcards close to her face so she could read the names and the addresses. The larger parcels she set to one side. Izzy watched because she expected something. She’d paid first class postage, and it hadn’t come yesterday, so she felt it had to be there today.

Izzy’s mother asked about a woman called Rose staying in one of the cottages at the front. Old Annie’s cottage, she called it though Annie had been dead for longer than Izzy had been alive. There was a letter for this Rose and she wanted to check that there was such a woman. Izzy told her there was and her mother slotted the letter into the right place.

Then Izzy’s mother stopped what she was doing.

Izzy stopped too. Pretended not to see the start in her mother’s face. Pretended not to hear her mother’s held breath.

‘It must be,’ Izzy thought, and there and then, for the first time, a small doubt sprouted, and in the short space that it took for Izzy to go from ‘It must be’ to ‘It is’ her doubt mushroomed to something bigger and then it was as quickly gone.

There was a small parcel with her mother’s name on it and a franked German stamp in the corner. The name and the address had been printed on a white label and stuck to the plain brown paper wrapping. That made it different from the parcels her mother once received from Johannes, but still she did as she had done before, years back: Izzy’s mother slipped the small parcel into the pocket of her dress, did it quickly and looked up to see if she was observed.

Izzy walked away. ‘I’ll open the shop,’ she said, tossing the words over her shoulder as she went.

There was a company in Germany that Izzy had found and she’d written to them and it was not so expensive really and she’d thought it would be something bright in their day. Now it was arrived there was a new doubt and she was not sure if she had done it for her mother or if she had done it for herself.

Once Blair had set out with the mail and Izzy was busy serving customers, Izzy's mother crept into the back kitchen and she took a pair of scissors to the parcel she had received. Her hands shook. Inside she found a small white cardboard box lined with corrugated card, and inside that a bottle with a gold screw top, and a blue and gold label that she recognised, and 4711 on the label.

A Mini Book Tour

I am returned from a five event whistlestop 'book tour' of the Western Isles. Because my children's book, 'The Chess Piece Magician', is set in a place called Uig on Lewis, the nice people organising the Faclan (Hebrides Book Festival) thought it would be good to get me to visit. I began in Stornoway with an event for four schools at An Lanntair (the Arts Centre in Stornoway). I had the whole beautiful stage to myself and a tiny lapel microphone so that even my smallest whisper could be heard at the very back of the auditorium. It was brilliant and just the kind of venue I can really perform in. I did story-telling and a magic trick (my only one) and talked history and writing and the book. I also got to meet a family on holiday and the two children, Kissy and Noah, had just finished reading my book (which they had loved) and they had asked specially if they could sit in on the event... of course I signed their copy of the book, but I also got to put my name on their keepsake holiday stone on which they had painted a Lewis chessman.

My second event was at the small primary school in Uig itself. I had never been to Uig before so it was a thrill to be somewhere that in my book I had 'invented'. It was a much more majestic landscape than I had imagined and I apologised to the staff and children there for making it a smaller place than it was. The children in the school were lovely and chatty and we had some fun together.

On my second day, after a ferry trip, I was further south in Benbecula and the Uists. I did two school events there, one at a place called Lionacleit and one at a place called Daliburgh.

Everyone was so welcoming and so warm and the children in each place got to help me on stage and were stars themselves. I also got to see some of the breathtaking scenery as we drove long distances between the events and the weather was kind and everything sunstroked and the water everywhere so beautifully blue.

My final day was on Barra. I had visited Barra before, when I was a younger man. My wife and I spent four holidays there before our children were born. It was, therefore, a huge thrill for me to be back there and this time as a writer and performer. The place was unchanged and so so beautiful. My plane landed on the beach (with the tide out) and would take off again from the same beach the next morning. Once again I was most warmly appreciated by all the staff and the pupils at Castlebay School had a great time as I entertained them for an hour.

Copies of my book and study resources designed by library staff in Stornoway will be sent out to all schools over the next couple of weeks. The resources look very exciting. I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who worked so tirelessly in making this trip so enjoyable and so easy for me. Thanks especially to Kathleen Milne and Felicity Bramwell who looked after me so well and to The Scottish Book Trust for funding such events. I just hope that the book festival staff like my next book and invite me back sometime.