Dear Jamie,

Well, I would respond to your USA news with something from these shores, but Storm Georgina (for I think it is she) has knocked out our internet and TV signals and, I have discovered with sadness, my neat little ‘city’ digital radio doesn’t work out here. When ferry and plane are cancelled, one doesn’t even get good old fashioned newspapers and so the seemingly constant feed of news miraculously dries up.

I find this an intriguing experience. No news of the world and no connection to one’s emails and other electronic intrusions creates a lacuna of quiet which is at first slightly unnerving. What to do? I’ve shouldered into the wind, felt the sting of salt spray, marvelled at the crash of wave on rock. Back in my wee temporary bolthole I’ve scrunched up old newspapers (reading bits that catch my eye) into the hearth, put match to them and watched kindling, coal and logs begin to crackle and warm to their task. Tea steams in mug, dog tunnels under blanket, storm rages outwith, yet silence prevails within. 

Aha! An idea surfaces from memories of yore, simpler times and younger days. I fetch book from bedside and curl up on the sofa. Reading, in recent years, has become confined to bed, which is a shame really as I usually only manage a few pages before sleep engulfs. Here, now, I can see that it can regain its former importance in my life for it is entirely acceptable to spend an afternoon reading – how wonderful.

I may take up knitting as well.

The habit of e-connectivity is hard to kick though, and after a while I decide to drive to our cousin Bill’s place at the other end of the island, to see if their internet is working. It is. After a lively ceilidh (this just means a chat here, not a dance!) I’m settled at their kitchen table with a coffee, but I somehow seem to have forgotten why I so urgently needed to get onto the internet, and so find myself writing this instead.

Bill keeps up with the news via subscription to various e-papers, and is a wealth of up-to-the-minute information. Today has the usual suspects on stage. UKIP leader Henry Bolton says he’s in ‘lurve’ and cannot give up his thirty-years-his-junior blonde girlfriend who has shot her shapely mouth off about Meghan Markle’s heritage in terms too right wing even for the rightest winged of parties. Everyone wants to get rid of him, but he won’t budge and it looks as if the whole racist house of cards will collapse around him while he canoodles with his toy-girl, blinded by lust. She is doing us all a favour.

Shambolic Boris Johnson is in trouble again for going ‘freelance’ with his garden bridge idea (originally mooted by national treasure Joanna Lumley who, much as we all love her, is really rather too wedded to the posh club and seems not to have noticed that construction of her ‘green’ bridge would involve the decimation of many lovely old trees at either end, to say nothing of the human communities thereof). The project has been dismissed by current Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, but not before a cool £30 mill of public money was spent on the whim.

Boris is also in trouble for his England to France bridge notion of course…..

Jazz legend Hugh Masekela has died. At this news I immediately email my friend Pat, who knew and worked with Hugh at the very difficult beginnings of his career in South Africa in the late 1950’s, when ‘whites’ and ‘blacks’ were not supposed to work together, and has stayed a close friend ever since. I feel sure she won’t mind my sharing her reply (although if this ever goes to press I will check this out) as it illustrates the deep pockets of human love that span miles and years, space and time, as if they were nought.

‘Thanks Jules, It has been a day of sadness and tears, for me and for many people, I think. Hugh and I saw each other so little over the years, but I always felt him to be friend and brother. The time in between fell away whenever we met. I loved his music (well of course) but also everything about him, his mischief and humour, the profound and straightforward way his mind worked, his lack of fear, his capacity to speak out no matter how difficult the circumstances …. but over all, and truly, I loved and love his heart and spirit and perception, his essential self, I suppose you could say. No conversation I ever had with him over the years was wasted. For his sake I’m glad he’s gone, because the last few months of the illness must have been really difficult. So my sadness is selfish.  I just wish he could still be around and well. But he will certainly always be in my heart, and remain a beacon of how a human being can be, even when, in reaction to pressure they seem to be at their worst, in his case through all the booze and drugs in response to the many pressures. But he came through.’

Pat was part of the legendary production of ‘King Kong’, South Africa’s first ever mixed race musical, and worked with many artists who subsequently became famous, including Mama Africa (Miriam Makeba) herself. Pat has just published a memoir, King Kong: our knot of time and music to tie in with the current revival of the musical, and a few weeks ago she wagged her finger at me across the ether of Skype and said, ‘don’t leave it as late as I have to get published Jules! My good friend Doris Lessing used to say to me “the only difference between you and I, Pat, is the thickness of our skin – mine is a thick hide and I haven’t let criticism and rejection stop me” and look where that got Doris!’

As I type this sitting at Bill’s kitchen table, I hear him chortle from his seaview armchair and he comes over to show me today’s cartoon ‘Cash for Haggis’ in The National – Scotland’s independence newspaper. It depicts a sliced haggis on a giant pound coin and parodies the ‘cash for access’ scandal with something along the lines of:

‘Downing Street’s Burn’s supper serves up more haggard creeps and patsies than haggis, neeps and tatties’

And on that cheery note I shall sign off!

Surf is up, sun is out, must be time for another beach blast ;~)

Adieu ~ mar sin leat ~ cheerio the noo ~