THE SHELTER STONE. A sad ballad from a distant land.

The Shelter Stone

Mixed media on paper

38 x 56 cms. 2016

 

In my youth the Shelter Stone had a fabled reputation. It was the one place that young, aspirant mountaineers wanted to spend at least one night under. Situated in the center of the Cairngorms, between the massive bulks of Cairngorm and Ben Macdui, it was considered remote. To reach it from any direction required a long walk.

With the construction of high car parks and ski lifts in the northern corrie of Cairngorm, all this changed. As the story below relates, you could jump on a chairlift, walk up to the summit of Cairngorm and down to the Shelter Stone in an afternoon.

The drawing was made in 2016. I spent the night at Bob Scotts then walked in to the Shelter Stone carrying only my sketching kit and a light load. Although it was late May it was still cool with melting snow drifts at Loch Etchacan.

 The trip related below happened in the 1980's, when I was living in Edinburgh. Neither my pal or I had a car so we took the bus to Aviemore then the local service up to the ski slopes. As is often the case, wild weather trips are often the most memorable.

A SAD BALLAD FROM A DISTANT LAND

I must admit, we cheated. The car parks were deserted but the chair lift was running so we jumped on that. Back in Edinburgh I'd said to Ronnie,

"May is a wonderfully dry month with great, long days to wander in the Cairngorms."

Some hope. The rain  was torrential. We disappeared into the clouds rattling and swinging, clutching our packs with frozen hands and screwing our eyes up against the stinging rain. This was no pleasure. The Ptarmigan café at the top of the lift was a damp, miserable bunker where we huddled for a while, waiting for the rain to pass, but it didn't. All we could do was grit our teeth and plod on to the summit. Things could only get better.

We dropped down on a bearing to Corrie Raibert across big, soggy snow fields. Lower down I noticed we had company as two figures appeared out of the mist, walking on a converging course. As they drew closer I could see one had long hair and a beard with, rather oddly, a red air horn strapped to the back of his rucksack. His friend never said much and seemed cold, droukit and dead beat. Their destination was the same as ours, the Shelter Stone.

This well known howff was frustratingly close, but getting there was another matter. It lay on the other side of the wild Feith Bhuidhe. This burn was in full spate, with the normal ford impassible. I suggested walking up the hill to find another crossing but had to stop where it thundered out from under a snow field. The bearded one, lets call him Steve, wanted to cross the snow, until I pointed out the penalty for going through a rotten snow bridge, into the burn was certain death. It wasn't worth it. Instead, we retraced our steps to where the burn spread out and entered Loch Avon and splashed through the shallows there. As we looked at the ground any thought of camping was finally abandoned. Every flat spot was under water which gurgled and burbled from every crack and orifice. A night under the Shelter Stone seemed suddenly appealing.

Comfort is always relative and initially, just to get out of the wind and rain was comfort enough. As our eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, however, we could see that our accommodation was damp, dark and scattered with rubbish. Steve's friend, I'll call him Dave, immediately crawled into his sleeping bag at the back of the cave. He was not happy. I couldn't help quizzing Steve about his red air horn.

"I carry it in case we get lost. It's very loud."

They'd camped near the summit of Cairngorm in wet and windy conditions. His pall had been on the windward side of the tent and the rain had sprayed through and soaked everything he had. They hadn't slept a wink.

I was cooking up rice and tins of beef chili for our meal while Steve lit his petrol stove, pulled out a bag of flour and began making chapattis. I'd never seen anyone doing this before, especially under a boulder. He was a vegetarian and appalled at our diet. He didn't actually say that we were 'polluting our temples' but that's what he meant. As a greasy omnivore I defended myself as best I could and one of the usual arguments ensued between meat eaters and vegetarians, too boring to relate here. His feelings were deeply felt, for the more agitated he became the quicker his hands flew, working the chapattis, which incidentally, were delicious. His ideal was a world where everyone lived off the food they grew on their own land.

"Have you got a bit of land?" I asked.

"No!"

Making chapattis under a boulder
Pencil and watercolour

After eating I pulled out the whisky and offered everyone a dram. Dave seemed to cheer up a little and actually smiled, before returning to his slumbers.

 In the increasing darkness, illuminated by a flickering candle, Steve told us a story from his life. He was married and lived in a town in the English Midlands. One day his wife went out and never came back. Her parents grew concerned and contacted the police. He was taken in and interrogated, but released. One  day the police descended on his house with a warrant and started ripping up the floorboards, then dug up the garden. They found nothing. With no evidence of a crime he was never charged. One day he was walking up the street when he bumped into two of the detectives that had been involved in the case. Harsh words were exchanged and then punches. They gave him a good kicking and left him lying on the pavement. After this he decided to put as much distance as he could between himself and his past and flitted to Orkney. Now you may ask, was I not concerned about spending a night with someone who may have been a murderer? In the circumstances his story was like a sad ballad from a distant land and anyway, I was too busy just trying to keep warm.

My sleeping position was next to the entrance and a howling gale blew in. The polythene that someone had rigged as a door was flapping about and useless so I stuffed a couple of rucksacks in the gap to cut out the draught. Then, as it grew totally dark we were disturbed by loud rustlings and rummaging as a regiment of mice moved in, trying to carry off Steve's chapatti flour. Intermittent hostilities continued for a couple of hours, until they grew tired of the game and marched off with band playing.

It would be nice to relate that the dawn was bright and clear, but when we looked out the wind was even stronger and the rain lashed down. Neither Ronnie or I had the stomach to traverse the high tops in these conditions, so implemented Plan B. Leaving the others still sleeping we headed for Ryvoan bothy by crossing the Saddle and sloshing down gloomy Strata Nethy. 

About lunch time we arrived at Bynack Stable, an old corrugated shed with a stall for a pony. It was great to get out of the weather and we soon had the Primus going. Another walker arrived, then another and another. We were standing chatting and passing round biscuits when a big, fit looking guy with an enormous rucksack barged in. It's amazing how much you can learn about complete strangers in these situations. Apparently he'd divorced six years ago and since then walked across Scotland six times and run thirty six marathons. I was impressed.

"Here, have a nice cup of tea. It may help calm you down a bit."

JOHN BELLANY AT WORLDS END

John Bellany at Worlds End.
Oil on canvas

By 1975 I had been living in London for five years but never bumped into John Bellany. That summer my pall John Kirkwood came to stay for a few days and suggested we pay him a visit. He knew John and also where to find him. I have this memory of walking across a huge flat area of crushed red brick, with the twin chimneys of Lots Road power station belching steam in the background. In the Bible it was Lot's wife who looked behind and was turned into a pillar of salt. There were no pillars of salt here but we were at a place called Worlds End that looked like it had been cleared by a nuclear explosion. The demolishers had left part of a row of what were called 'artisan dwellings'. These were two story, red brick buildings with very small rooms. We made a bee line for the very end one which I thought was derelict. The door was open so we shouted and went in. We squeezed past a large canvas covered with slashing brush strokes and climbed the stairs.

John Bellany was talking to a young woman who was just leaving and he welcomed us in. The two Johns did most of the talking. I didn't know much about him except that he'd been a star at Edinburgh College of Art and at the Royal College in London from 1965 - 1968. He had a reputation of being a brilliant painter but as I'd seen little or any of his work I was still to be convinced. He sat slumped in an old armchair wearing a fashionable, but ludicrous patchwork denim suit.

"Well," I thought, "This guy fancies himself as a dandy." Then I looked at all the pictures on the wall behind him. Little portraits, fishing boats and harbours, probably done when he was at college in Edinburgh. They definitely had something, almost a folksy naivety which I liked. These, I knew were not his best or recent work but personal things he'd kept. All this seemed to fit in with the sartorial absurdity of the denim suit - he was a showman.

In the painting I included an accordion lying at the side of his chair. I can't remember if it was there or not but he was a good musician and singer. During his time in Edinburgh he played in a band called the Blue Bonnets. In the film his son made of Bellany's life there is a piece of blurry, black and white film of him moving between the tables in a pub, playing the accordion and singing the 'Road and miles to Dundee.' He was a natural entertainer with a good voice who sang with feeling.

Bellany suggested we went to an Irish pub that had good music. I imagined it would be a raucous bar packed with hairy Irishmen swilling Guinness. Nothing could be further from the truth. This was very much a family bar, everyone sitting at tables and no bad language. At closing time the band played the Irish national anthem and they all stood up. We did not attract attention to ourselves by remaining seated!

Sadly, I thought that Bellany was only half the character I'd expected him to be. He was reputed to be the life and soul of the party but seemed to me quiet, distanced and preoccupied.

Of course, I had no idea of what was going on in his personal life. Earlier that year he had split up from his wife, Helen and their three kids. This provoked a nervous breakdown and he hadn't long returned from Edinburgh where he had fled to recover. When I met him he was still the the depths of a dark depression.

 

THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE FISHWIFE

 

Oil on board, 51cms x 61cms. 2021

 While reading a book about the Scottish Enlightenment I came across an amusing account of an accident that happened to the famous philosopher, David Hume(1711-1776) which he related in a letter to a friend. By this time in his life he was not only a philosopher but a highly regarded historian and his books were read all over Europe. By never marrying and careful budgeting he had managed to amass a modest fortune of one thousand pounds a year, which in those times was enough to keep him in considerable opulence. He was affable, courteous and amusing, so much so that his smiling corpulence was seen as a decoration to all the best dinner tables. The fact that most of Scotland regarded Hume as a shocking atheist was passed over by those that knew and loved him, for if he was an atheist, he wore it lightly.

As a symbol of his affluence he purchased a house in the brand new St. Andrews Square. To get there from the old town, where most of his socialising still took place, was not easy. Edinburgh is a place of crags, ravines and valleys and the great north bridge connecting the black, stinking old town to the new St Andrews Square was yet to be completed. The North Loch had been drained but left a stinking bog polluted by the effluent from tanneries, butchers shambles and the night soil emptied into the numerous closes. Only a narrow path, created by custom and practice, made it's way across this fetid swamp.

The sun had sunk well below the western hills by the time Hume had made his fond good byes and set out carefully across the narrow track. Somewhere along the path he stumbled, or more likely after too much claret, staggered. The stagger became a slide and his body had a hard time keeping up with his legs, which ended thigh deep in the obnoxious mud. He stood there for a moment, swaying and trying to catch his breath. He was glad not to have gone in head first, but every time he tried to move his feet were sucked further into the mud. Night was falling and there was no one about. What was he to do? He needed help to get out of the bog and started shouting "HELP! HELP!" No answer. He had been stranded there for some time when a strange, humped back figure shuffled out of the gloom. As it grew closer he realised with relief that it was a fishwife with her wicker creel on her back.

"Madam! Madam! Oh dear, kind fishwife, please help me out."

Her look of surprise turned to one of contempt.

"I ken you! You're Davy Hume, the infidel. Whit wad I help you for?"

"Madam. Madam, I'm a poor lost soul stuck in the mud. Is it not your Christian duty to help those in distress?

She thought on this.

"Weel, that's true. I'll help ye if you recite the Lords Prayer and the Apostolic Creed."

As it happened, Hume had been brought up in a deeply religious family, which probably initiated  his contempt for religion. He took a deep breath and regurgitated what he  regarded as mumbo-jumbo word perfect and even with commendable feeling. 

He limped and dragged himself up the slope to St Andrews Square. His feet hurt on the sharp, unfinished road as he had lost his shoes to the bog. His fine, silken hose dragged round his ankles encrusted with disgusting filth and his best white breeches were ruined. Fortunately, no one of 'quality' witnessed his passing. Only an old soldier employed as a night watchman on the building site looked up from his blazing fire and touched his bonnet as a sign of respect. 

"A braw nicht for a walk Sur."

Then he turned and stared into the fire. He had seen much stranger and more terrible sights in the shambles of battle.

Etching by John Kay,1742-1826, 

ENLIGHTENMENT

Enlightenment

Oil on canvas, 61cms.x 81cms.

Does your head glow in the dark? Probably not! But the great thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment were brilliant luminaries. They had no need for caddies carrying a lantern to lead them up the dark, stinking closes of Auld Reekie to their favourite taverns. They just thought great thoughts and illuminated the World.

Are you enlightened? I suppose most people think they are, which only proves that 'enlightenment' means different things to different people. To eastern religions it signifies a spiritual awakening and oneness with the world, but to westerners 'the Enlightenment' means a specific period in the 18th century. For various reasons many Europeans began to question the old certainties and look at how people actually, rather than ideally, thought and behaved. They also began to apply this to  the natural world and scientific investigation began to expand. It was an attitude of mind that encouraged individuals to think for themselves and question everything. In short, they invented the world in which we live today.

So, I was plagued by a vision of members of the Scottish Enlightenment going about their business with heads glowing like brilliant lanterns. This seemed immensely silly and I had to unload this burden somehow. What if I gave a glowing head to Henry Raeburn's popular but very silly portrait of the Reverend Walker skating?

The Rev. Robert Walker skating
By Sir Henry Raeburn
National Galleries of Scotland

 

There was a precedence for this. I remembered the painting

by Belgian Surrealist Rene Magritte, 'The Pleasure Principal'. In this, an anonymous male figure sits at a table with his head obscured in a great blaze of light.

I bought a small reproduction of the 'Skater' from the Scottish National Galleries shop and started to copy it. Very soon I realised that I did not want to paint a sub Raeburn but a genuine Gray. I turned the figure round so it was heading towards the viewer and introduced Edinburgh, the Firth of Forth and Fife with the Lomond Hills in the background.

  

At first the figures head was hidden by a brilliant glow, but found this unsatisfactory and painted in the Rev. Walkers head. This I found boring, then thought, "Aha! I'll change it to a woman" I rounded out the sharper angles of the figure. Then, "why not a woman of colour?" If a woman of colour had been a skating minister of the Kirk of Scotland in the 1760's, that would have been enlightenment indeed.

IN PRAISE OF SCOTCH MIST

"Why should I hate the Scottish climate?

 Some of my best times have been in shitty weather.

AHOY THERE! Embrace the haar within you!"

 Fergus More

When I was little a great monster terrified me by moaning outside my window.

"BAAAAWAAAA OOOOM, it moaned, BAAAAWAAAA OOOOM."

 I leapt up screaming, ran to my parents room and crawled in between their warm bulk. 

"What's wrong son?" asked my father. "What's wrong?"

"There's a monster outside my window."

"Dinnae be daft. It's only the fog horn. The haars come in."

That morning my father took me by the hand to the top of the braes overlooking Kinghorn beach. The mist had lifted a bit and the tide was far out. And lo! Sitting on top of the Hummel rock was the pilot cutter, high and dry like Noah's Ark.

It was on a very wet and misty day I came closer to a herd of red deer than I'd ever been before. Climbing out of Corrie Fee in Glen Doll, I headed towards Finalty Hill, which over looks the great corrie of Cean Lochan. The map suggested there was a stalkers hut there and I thought I'd have a look and see if it was still there.

The wind was in my face and the mist thick with driving rain. It was not a pleasant day to be wandering about on a high, featureless plateau. I could see very little with my hood up and my head down, walking on a bearing. Suddenly I realized some thing had changed so I stopped and looked around. I was surrounded by a forest of antlers. I must have let out an involuntary gasp of surprise for the stags suddenly leapt up and fled into the clouds. The senses of red deer are usually acute but with the wind in their face they'd neither smelt or heard me.

Some nights on the River Tay were wonderful, working by moonlight under the starry heavens. The only disturbance to the peace was the steady tonk, tonk, tonk, of the salmon cobbles single cylinder engine. Other nights were as black as pitch with the rain hissing on the racing river. Haar was the devil, for you could hardly see the other end of the boat and only the faint glow of a cigarette indicated human presence. The gaffer fiddled with the Tilley lamp which flashed into a brilliant light and blinded us all. He leaned out over the bow, holding the lamp up like the hero in some Victorian melodrama, looking for our mark. We weren't actually lost, just didn't know where we were.

Coming to the end of my schooldays I had a romantic notion that commercial salmon fishing on the Tay would be a good summer job before I went to art college. It was and it wasn't. I hadn't really considered that I'd be out day and night irrespective of the weather; work five hour shifts twice every twenty four hours; live in a bothy with five other strangers; sleep, when you could sleep, on a lumpy straw palliasse; cook your own food and generally fend for yourself. All this aside, I grew to enjoy the work.

I was standing at the tiller of the cobble bringing the net into the winch. I couldn't see the shore for it was the calm, grey light of early morning and the haar was thick. At night you aimed for the distant glow of the Tilley lamp but in mist you had to watch the net corks flying off the back of the boat. The center cork was bigger and was the signal to turn and make a run into the beach. You had to use all your animal senses and judge the course by watching the direction of the wind and waves. Suddenly the mist began to swirl violently and rather alarmingly round the boat. I hadn't the faintest idea what was going on but some instinct told me to look upwards. I could see the little disc of the sun, far, far away, looking down a long vaporous tunnel at me. The mist swirled and twisted upwards, flashing red and golden. I was looking up the eye of a twister, but one that was entirely benign. In a few seconds the mist was sucked up, vaporized and gone. The sun beat down. None of my workmates commentated on this strange phenomenon, because they hadn't seen it. I'd been at the right place at the right time and it seemed like Nature had put on this wonderful demonstration just for me.

I was sitting on the summit of Ben Lawers with a couple of palls, quietly chatting and eating our pieces. It was a mild summers day with light wind but a thick, lugubrious mist blanketed us and hid the view. To our surprise out of the murk appeared a group of teen age school children. The first to the top was a girl, who was muttering to herself,

"Aw this fuckin way and nae view.  A dinnae believe it! Nae fuckin view".

She paced around in an agitated manner then standing at the edge of the swirling void on the highest point in Perth Shire bellowed out,

"BIG FUCKIN WOW! BIG FUCKIN WOW!

On Ben Vrackie

Two white haired ladies,

Natter, natter, natter,

in the mist 

Of children in Australia.