One Day In June
Nobby sank back into his bed and blinked at the ceiling a couple of times. He felt some exhilaration and a little satisfaction but wasn’t excited – not yet. More than anything he was just very tired. He kicked his boots to the floor. Outside, a bird’s sudden sharp tweet punctured the black dinghy of night sending it whizzing off to a yawning Australia, and a grey light stole through the curtains onto Martin’s paint-streaked brow as he drifted off to sleep.
An hour later and several miles away, Smelly Angus was setting off to his job at MacAllum’s Prawns. He loved the early mornings out on his tractor, Margo, with hardly another soul stirring; he was king of the B483 at that hour and could usually coast all the way into town in 3rd.
“So long, suckers! I’m outta here!” he screamed maniacally at the road-side sheep whose backsides he’d damn near sheared as Margo whipped past.
The sheep watched the old red tractor for a moment, chewing thoughtfully, and then returned to their discussion about notions of free will and whether the course of true love e’er did run true with particular reference to the pioneering French scientist in the field, Proffesseur Rene Gade.
Meanwhile, Smelly Angus and Margo were racing towards the notoriously dangerous kink in the road known as Eejit’s Bend. Angus knew he could take it at 30mph – he’d pushed Margo that hard before; but something in the light, some indescribable joy in his heart, and very possibly a wee something in his morning cuppa, made him feel that anything was possible that morning – and crazily, giddily, he knew that Eejit’s Bend at 31mph was possible. Oh, he knew people would think he was mad to even attempt it; that Margo was long past it. But he had faith in his old red lady and besides, wherefore the thrill? The thrill of life, and of man and machine in perfect harmony? Yes, wherethefeckfore it, if not here, on this day, on this road?
The road was sinuous and he only had a limited stretch of straight run-up before the Bend to work up the speed. Right after Derek’s Ditch he’d accelerate to about 28 and then, at the slight turn at Half-Cut Corner, he planned to really go hell for leather, consequences be damned! He was exhilarated. He was alive!!
Here we go! thought Smelly Angus.
Oh shit, thought Margo, who, despite being a tractor, had more free will than you’d expect, but rather less than she’d like. She was looking forward to reincarnation*, possibly as a gently-used toaster with an elderly owner someplace pleasant with a sea view.
“Derek’s Ditch then,” said Angus. “That’s it Margo, girl! Nicely handled…26mph…27…28…now, Half-Cut Corner …29…WHATTHEFA…?
Margo came to a screeching halt almost tipping Smelly Angus out onto the road. He bounced his head off the steering wheel and rubbed his eyes; he could not believe what he was seeing. Margo wiped her windcsreen too. As they’d swung round the corner the whole of the opposite side of the valley had come into view and there was something very wrong with the mountain on the other side.
Very unusually for this part of the island**, there appeared to be the head and shoulders of some sort of enormous naked woman on the hill. A head and shoulders that had not been there yesterday. Another small hill was obscuring her lower half. As Smelly Angus and Margo neared her, they could see that she’d been formed by someone cutting the turf and painting the exposed peat a brilliant white. (In fact it had taken Nobby some 7 hours and 8 gallons of Co-op’s own “Snowflake” emulsion to make the 240 square feet figure, loosely based on Joanna Lumley.)
Smelly Angus looked at her face in awe – she was truly beautiful. He looked at her perfect round breasts which followed the contour of two gently undulating small hillocks exquisitely. With a dry mouth, his eyes moved down over the belly-button boulder glimmering in the morning sunlight. And then, as the old man and his tractor rounded the last bend which they both knew would finally bring her fully into view in all her glory, they saw…
“Ahdammitall! Dammitall!” cursed Smelly Angus, all dismay and wretched disappointment. She was wearing knickers.
Margo coughed a little diesel puff of relief.
But there was something else. Something on the knickers. Squinting up his raisiny little eyes, Smelly Angus read the following message painted onto the peat across the knickers and on either side of a highly laquered little bench: FREE TIBET OR THE KNICKERS COME OFF. I MEAN IT!
Tibet? But this was the Uig road. Why would anyone paint a gigantic naked woman and urge us to free Tibet on the Uig road? Smelly Angus wished he’d left his tea alone this morning. And then, like a flash of lightening it came to him. The knickers…yes…and the bench: the loins of the naked except-for-her-knickers woman were right across Morag’s Mound!!
Morag MaCLeman, the late wife of Councillor MacLeman of Valtos ward had loved that spot and right before she’d died from chronic fatal misanthropy she had requested a simple monument to be placed on that mound in her memory. Her husband the Councillor, knew that when Morag said simple, what she really meant was a huge baroque gazebo job, gilded if possible. He was not a rich man, nor had he loved Morag especially much, but appearances were important and it was important for a man in his position to have as decent and sour-faced a wife as possible. Indeed, Morag’s face was so very like a well-slapped bum that he had risen quickly in local government and he was grateful to her for that. So he’d bought the shiniest bench he could find as a memorial and named the site Morag’s Mound.
But here, thought Smelly Angus, was the Tibet link!
“You see,” he explained, aloud for your benefit – yes you, the hapless readers of this tripe – “Councillor MacLeman has a younger brother, a bald, trembly kind of a brother who had travelled the world as a missionary for the Free Church and had come back in a deep, black funk about the state of the world past Inverness. In particular, the Buddhists really seem to have pissed him off. He was so virulently anti-Buddhist that he couldn’t even watch Richard Gere films any more without throwing bibles and simple wooden crosses at the telly. He was suspected of throwing a brick with a note attached reading DYE BUDDHISTS! through the window of the Yoga For Expectant Mothers class at the health centre but the brick had gone missing from the evidence cupboard at the police-station, along with the note. This had been a blow to the case against the brother, because Mrs. Etta Mackenzie, his English teacher at the secondary school, was prepared to testify in the upcoming trial that he’d never been able to spell for toffee. Could this be the Tibet link in this puzzle?”
(All this Smelly Angus postulated aloud – but not at all discordantly with the story. Cordantly he postulated it, incredibly cordantly, so’s you can be following the narrative an’ that.)
Revving poor Morag back to life, Smelly Angus, tore off down the road to raise the alarm in town. The ceich was really going to hit the fan with this, he thought, not ungleefully. For the Rude Woman of Uig, as he’d dubbed*** her, could not have appeared at a worse time. No less a personage than the reverend Billy Graham’s first cousin, Chet, was arriving off the lunch-time plane, due to take a tour of the island’s beauty spots and preach to the faithful. He was looking at Lewis with a view to opening the Billy Graham Evangelical Call Centre on the island, on account of its devout and decent populace who would man the mostly American calls on questions of scripture and rural Midwest meth-induced crises of faith. Reverend Graham himself had declared the Hebrides as one of the last bastions of precious poe-faced prurience in this sinful, over-sexed modern world.
But what would the Reverend Chet make of this beauty spot? Who had painted her, and why?
To be continued…
* Tractors are, almost all of them, Hindus. Massey Ferguson tractors anyway.
** God only knows what goes on in Scalpay.
*** Smelly Angus, for one mad minute, considered doing a bit more than dubbing her, but he knew God, and very possibly Spectacled Katie-Anne from over the way, was watching. So he drove on.
June 6th, 2007 at 2:01 am
Australia is often yawning. Well, at least I am and I’m in Australia. I’m yawning constantly. Except when I read your stories, dahlink!
I have to say, though, that an enormous naked woman loosely based on Joanna Lumley seems to me like it would be something VERY RIGHT with the mountain – at least in Smelly Angus’ point of view. Furthermore, if I wanted this comment to make sense I would delete that sentence. Hmm.
Anyway, lovely and climactic and Oooooh, I wanna know what happens next! Why, why? Why Joanna Lumley, and not Justin Timberlake? I’ll be tuning in.
June 6th, 2007 at 4:53 am
FREE TIBET OR THE KNICKERS COME OFF. I MEAN IT!
I’m getting a T-shirt printed today. Maybe a whole line of … OR THE KNICKERS COME OFF. I MEAN IT! shirts.
June 6th, 2007 at 6:04 am
COMMENTER IS OFF HER FACE ALERT!
I am, as the above hints at, off my, as it were, face.
Carolyn, one day I’m going to travel to Australia for the sole reason of having beverages with you.
It ought to be blindingly obvious why not Justin Timberlake, though. He’s just not iconic mountainside protest material. The peekaboo mountain scene doesn’t work on account of is lacking the requisite boobage, and an extra member in the knicker topography would render the FREE TIBET message meaningless. Plus, there’s his name: Just in? Is that the kind of man women hanker for? Not in the Outer Hebrides they don’t. I can’t speak for the Inner – funny bunch they are.
Sneezy, You’re right! I think it works better without the Free Tibet part. Although on the T-shirts I was hoping for a bit of Tibetan government-in-exile-al sponsorship as far as purchase of basic t-shirts and ink went. I guess they’re too busy trying to regain their sovereignity or something. Tibet is no place for the modern entrepeneur. Ireland it is then! Let that Celtic Tiger roar and produce quality low cost per unit t-shirts for our noble ends!
June 6th, 2007 at 8:44 am
Margo has many, many elderly Massey relations in these parts. I can see one of them as I finger tap – a fine specimen, 30+ years old, resident in an appropriately appointed retirement shed, and ‘turned over’ once a week by its retired farmer owner/lover.
June 6th, 2007 at 9:43 am
Ah ha but what are your feelings on the proposed windfarm that they are going to build on another reclining lady of Lewis
June 6th, 2007 at 10:11 am
Coast in third, in a Ferguson ?. Place ones boat like shit encrusted wellie on the lift side peddle and stand in it, them by god you will get the real buzz. To push out the boat further, fill the vicon with a half ton and go on the two rear wheels. Steering is them achieved by splitting the right side peddles. In the days before the EEC roll-bar requirement, twas many a lad with his lass on the mudguard mingled beneath.
June 6th, 2007 at 10:12 am
Ooooh, you’re welcome any time for drinks, lady!
Ah yes, the boobage. Of course, I should have thought about that. It’s a requisite of any decent/indecent protest.
Poor old JT, he just can’t cut it! Nonetheless, I’ll always keep a place in my heart for the boy, bless him.
June 6th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
I want a tee shirt too.
This blog is amazing!
Feckin’ amazing (does that sound Scottish?)
I’m sending your link to everybody!
June 6th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
You know, my day was kinda’ heading south, but that put the smile right back on my face. If any one in this here corporation pisses me off today, they’ll get the , “do my bidding or the knickers come off” line.
June 6th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Conan, without regular lubing she might well seize up. And a good buffing is always worth the effort.
birchsprite, I say build ‘em. We have to start with the alternative energy somewhere and if you can’t put them in one of the most remote parts of the country where they bother the absolute least number of people then we can’t put them anywhere. And it’s very very windy there. The case against migratory birds is overblown (Look! See my joke!!) and, although there are risks, they can be managed such that they are very minimal. I love Lewis with all my heart but I quite like the planet too so I’m for it in principle. I’m not all that au fait with the latest specifics, mind – they seem to change every week.
Vince, you are clearly a man who knows his way around a tractor. When we lived in Minnesota my dad would come over at the time of the annual state agricultural fair and spend days, days walking round the farm machinery with similarly drooling males. Nobody even bothered to hide their longing and desire in that metal market. Disgusting. It was tractor porn is what it was, masquerading as agriculture. I don’t care to think how many hours would be lost in filthy talk of torque and load if you and Conan and my father were in the same room/field/county with a tractor.
Carolyn, JT’s too boyly for my tastes. He needs a few years yet, I reckon but then my tastes run to the older male anyway. There’s been a woman about our town lately protesting global warming with her boobs. She rides up and down the main street bare-breasted, on either a bike or on roller-blades with an inflatable earth bobbing along behind her. She was smart to have picked a southern clime for her protest; I think she might well winter in Mexico.
Jali, damn, but you’re a doll. I love ya! POI: feckin can be heard in Nothern Scotland but is usually associated more with the Irishers. People in SE England fahk and in Northern England they fook. Hardly anybody just holds hands any more – no time, see. Feckin, fooken and fahking all have to be done quickly in the busy modern Britain and Ireland, especially if you’ve wasted time going to a movie beforehand. God knows what the Welsh do but whatever it is it probably has too many consonants in it.
June 6th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
John, missed you there, hun. Use the threat of knicker removal with great caution though. You don’t know what havoc you could wreak in an office environment and they run the air-conditioning awfully high in some of these modern-buildings too. Have a scarf and a wooly hat handy if you choose to weaponise your knickers. Some corporations are just asking for a massed down-knickers though. Do what you must, John, we must all do what we feel we must.
June 6th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
What colour would he dye the Buddhists I wonder. Saffron? I could see that all so clearly you clever girl. One of my favourite people is called Angus bu he isn’t smelly praise be.
June 6th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Quality low-cost-per-unit t-shirts? Made in Ireland?
Sam, we don’t make quality low-cost-per-unit t-shirts over here. The people who make that kind of thing live thousands of miles away, and they’re all under twelve.
They send them to us, and we put them in our shops, and then other poor people from thousands of miles away come into the shop and buy them.
June 6th, 2007 at 8:11 pm
Ah Sam, you do not know the half of it.
. But for someone with issues towards three point linkages, front and rear coupling(new tech) and not a word mentioned about harvesters.
But t’wasnt until the study of the Classics, the true depths of depravity that could be reached. Them Greeks and them Latins knew a thing or two about the simile use of plough and field. Green field, stoney ground, bad ploughman and well watered.
One of the few female lord of the Isles, Anne I think, was described as ‘a field ploughed, ploughed often and by many….’, this quoted by a Scot. There is another bit to this quote
June 7th, 2007 at 10:59 am
“Margo wiped her windcsreen too.”
No seriously, I’m down to one working lung and this nearly closed it. Between that and diesel coughs of relief I was almost undone.
June 7th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
“Dye Buddhists!” made the tea go up my nose, Sam.
June 8th, 2007 at 6:33 am
Class Sam…pure class.
It’s half past two in the morning here and my minions are about to do my will or face the threat of knicker removal.
Just what you started here?
June 8th, 2007 at 7:06 am
“Morag?s face was so very like a well-slapped bum”
That’s a wonderful image, Sam. If it were a well-slapped baboon’s bum I’d feel really sorry for her. How much bum slapping goes on in the Western isles?
June 8th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Sam, have a delightful weekend, it’s sunny here and I’ve never seen so much milky-white skin exposed before. SUNNY though!
June 8th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Lovely story and it left me with a wistful longing for a 300 foot tall Joanna Lumley of my very own. She would have to have that hairstyle she had in the New Avengers though. Now that was cute.
PS Please, please tell me that the knickers do, in fact, come off.
June 8th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
But, is it the Patsy Joanna or the Avengers Joanna?
June 8th, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Sam; remember Sapphire & Steel; Lumley and David McCallum. Now there is something to be repeated and not that endless loop of Friends.
June 8th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Would that be not being able to spell for McGowans’ toffee with a Highland cow on the label sticking all your molar together and removing your fillings kind of toffee ?
June 8th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
like this?
http://www.thegreendoorsweetshop.co.uk/showprod_CNV0364.htm
June 8th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Free Tibet, or the Knickers Come Off—You will Dye, Buddhists!
Thinking about Richard Gere makes me feel funny.
June 9th, 2007 at 12:15 am
Pat, i imagine he’d like them tie-dyed to death in mostly reds and purples. I like people smells as long as they are same-day smells. I loved the smell of my grandpa’s hat and of my children’s heads. Sweaty men, fresh from some recent exertion or other, are very, very sexy.
Bock, I can see the efficiencies inherent in that t-shirt distribution system. I believe in buying local to keep the littler places going and stuff. I used to try to buy Hebridean, wherever possible but in the end I had to concede that mutton and turnip just isn’t a balanced diet, and Harris Tweed does not make good underwear. (Whispered) Chafing. Don’t ask me to explain.
Vince, I hope they had some method of crop rotation for Ann to keep her fertile. Or at least used some leguminous nitrogen-fixers in the foreplay.
fmc, hope you’re feeling better, luvvie. It sounds foul. I’ll be off round your’s in a bit to see if you’re still all of a sneeze. Would it make you feel better if I told you that Margo’s diesel cough was a chesty, hacking one too? Margo’s diesel cough was both chesty andhacking. Suffering is so much better if you can suffer alongside a tractor, n’est-ce pas?
Medbh, where does the tea go though when it goes up a nose? What does it see? What does it know? Ta, toots.
Hangar Queen, if they’d only employed some guerrilla knicker tactics in ‘Nam I’m sure it wouldn’t have ended up being “a draw.”
Nanas, I couldn’t tell you what the bum-slapping statistics are for the Western Isles, officially or unofficially. At the age of 16 we have to dip our left elbows in blood and swear never to reveal them. I got the well-slapped bum line from my dad who said it about one of the ladies at a wedding when i was the 8-year-old bridesmaid, just about to follow the bride down the aisle. My girly guffawing was only suppressed by the evil eye of my mammy on me and a mammoth effort of will which I have never been able to equal since. I also suffered headaches after that wedding.
fmc, “IIIIIIII’m gonna soak up the sun, gonna tell everyone tooooo lighten u-hup” is not a lyric you’ll hear much in the pale Celtic places, for it is impossible for we peelie-wallies to lighten up any more.
asym42, I’m afraid I can’t uncover any more details right at the moment. Soon, all will be revealed, although by that I’m not intimating that all will indeed be revealed. It may be so; it may be son’t.
Joeinvegas, she can be whichever Joanna you’d like her to be, that is her appeal.
Vince, nope – a wee bit before my time, hun. I did like David MacCallum in The Man From UNCLE, though – I though Eliae Kuriyaken was the coolest name I’d ever heard and called some of my teddies it.
Apprentice, I have bookmarked that site – it’s like a step back 25 years. I loved rhubarb and custards and cola pips. I want imported midget gems right flippin’ now. Only the mils separate us. I am so going on a nostalgic sweetie-buying binge this weekend, sistah.
Sassy, I couldn’t be more agreeing in my agreement. Thinking about Richard Gere is something that, happily, doesn’t afflict me much but when I do, I find I have to rinse my brain out with a good half-hour’s ponder on Ralph Fiennes.
June 9th, 2007 at 7:51 am
The official style of Anne before 1707 was “Anne, by the Grace of God, Queen of England, Scotland, France, Defender of the Faith, etc.” (The claim to France was only nominal, and had been asserted by every English King since Edward III, regardless of the amount of French territory actually controlled, AND ANY CLAIM TO IRELAND HAS BEEN EXPUNGED.) After the Union, her style was “Anne, by the Grace of God, Queen of Great Britain, France, Defender of the Faith, etc.
The last Stuart to sit on the Scone;
Crop rotation was not the problem, any crop would have done.
I keep forgetting, that in Ireland. Some of the telly, seen in the UK, might take 5-10 years before it arrived here. Then came the satellite, and now wish it never arrives. 3000+ channels and cack on most.
June 9th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Diana Rigg was fitter by a mile…..
Nice work Sam.
June 11th, 2007 at 12:26 am
Do you think the post-modern world will be oversexed as well? I hope so.
June 11th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Indeed, Morag?s face was so very like a well-slapped bum that he had risen quickly in local government and he was grateful to her for that.
Back from vacation and trying to catch up, and this is the image that greets me.
For shame, dear. For shame.
Cheers.
June 11th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
I once saw a buy one Tibet get one free sign.