SUBMARINE

Nobody sees him dive.

He is a quick white arrow; the water heals around the wound he makes. He drops into the dark; the fires in his throat are out. He swims like a fish, cold-blooded in the weeds.

His hair flows like seaweed, wide twisted ribbons of kelp. His eyes are blind clouded pearls. His skin browns and darkens. His flesh grows spare; curious creatures watch it flake away into the sand until there are only the bare bones of an old story. If you came upon him then you would find nothing but a figure of a man outlined in bone within a tumble of darkness.

The moon cannot find him. She slips down slowly and presses her changing face to the water. She floats facedown on the current like a dead balloon, but she cannot reach the deep dark where her man is sleeping.

In his sleep he makes the water dream new noises. When the tide changes the currents wake him and watch as he slowly puts on new flesh. His muscles move; his eyes fill with the sea. His skin is gold.

Nobody sees him crawl ashore, naked over island rocks. His voice dries in the sun. He sings himself awake.

Loch Ewe, May 2008

What do you do when you’re branded?

Branded!

Marked with a coward's shame.

What do you do when you're branded,

Will you fight for your name?

When I was a kid there was a fairly rubbish western on TV called Branded. It was about a US cavalry captain who'd been falsely accused of cowardice in battle - "scorned as the one who ran." Back then, branded was a pejorative - implying an indelible mark, an ugly label you'd never be able to shake. Something limiting and restricting, which marked you out as a coward or a slave. If you were branded, you were owned, conquered, shamed.

A little later, when I was at college in the 70s, my friends and I would buy supermarket toothpaste, butcher's loose sausages, no-name ketchup. It was usually as good as the stuff made by the companies that advertised on TV, and it was cheaper. Not buying the big names was a matter of pride, a kind of small-scale piracy which kept us free. We weren't lured in by the big-budget ads, we declined to worship at the temple of Heinz and Cadbury. We didn't think Colgate could give us a ring of confidence and we suspected Wrigleys wouldn't double our fun.

Yes, there was a touch of teenage elitism about all of this. Yes, we thought we were clever. But our cool was homemade, not bought in ready-designed, and even when egg-white Mohicans and safety-pins replaced cheesecloth and lovebeads, it was our imagination that shaped the trends as much as anything from the chain stores and the high streets.

I don't know when branded goods became a badge of allegiance instead of a mark of slavery. Maybe it was some weird takeover, like the pod-people in Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers. As I struggled in various capacities with the world of late c20th business and commerce I heard terms like "consumer confidence" and "brand equity" and wondered what they could possibly mean. The world was changing, and the brand names and logos we had laughed at in college were deemed to have real value.

Some businesses seemed to consist almost entirely of their brand names, the goods or services they offered fairly irrelevant by comparison to the name they bore. There were even "premium brands", strangely aristocratic items whose value - like that of the old upper class we'd all rejected - seemed more imaginary than demonstrable. This is worth more of your money because I say it is, the ads barked. Pubs, hotels, restaurants were not to be judged simply on the food, ambience and service, but on the size of their name and the strength of their presence, like an invading army. Even the term "rollout" suggested tanks advancing inexorably across the countryside, eradicating the friendly anarchism of seaside B&Bs, suburban corner shops and village pubs.

Brands fought for our allegiance, sometimes to ludicrous effect. In a retail park in our nearest cityof Inverness, a branch of Pizza Hut and a drive-in Burger King glower across the car park at a new J&B Sports fitness centre. Drive in, pay, get fat, pay all over again to get thin. All this in a city surrounded by rugged countryside where you can shoot rabbits and game, gather wild food and walk for miles. But that doesn't stop people flocking to the lure of slave-jobs that pay cash to buy all the things the city offers. And I'm no better. I may walk past Burger King with my stomach full of home-grown organics, but I'll greedily chomp through the latest fodder from Hollywood in the big fat multiplex a few yards along.

Even virtual worlds like the net's Second Life - created, perhaps, to provide an escape from the first - are being invaded by brands. Recently, Starwood Hotels became "the first hotel brand to place a 3D computer-generated property inside a virtual world". The irony of this seems to have escaped almost everybody, as has the daftness of spending real money to buy designerwear for your computer-generated avatar or dollar-a-go "gifts" for your Facebook friends.

The adage about a fool and his money is an old one. But considering web inventor Tim Berners-Lee sacrificed a personal fortune in order to give us virtual freedom, it's hard to understand why anyone would want to use it to buy designer snake-oil for an imaginary projection of themselves.

But maybe that's the secret. Maybe it simply doesn't matter whether we get anything real for our money or not. It's the brand we're buying - not the trainers, not the perfume, not the coffee. That might just as well be pixels for all the use it is. It's the idea. The association. The cachet...or the catch. Because sooner or later, be it Jimmy Choo, Cadburys or Coke, we're hooked.

What do you do if you're branded? Nothing. That's the point. Unlike the poor old cavalry captain, we're conniving at our own slavery, baring our backs for the hot iron. We want to be abused. We want to be owned. When we buy our little nuggets of nonsense, we want to display that ownership. Because in some weird, weak, way, it makes us feel safe.

Home is where the heart is
first published at Myspace blog 29 October 2007

II've always felt vaguely displaced. Despite never having been homeless, I've never really felt I really came from anywhere.

There was the faceless London suburb I grew up in - a wasteland of lamp-posts and gutters, tarmac streets and forlorn scraps of woodland on the edge of what had once been green. Endless vistas of interwar "semis" with cars tucked away in back-lane garages, railway embankments where ox-eye daisies danced through the chain-net fences.

Then there was Norfolk, where I escaped to university and afterwards to dream in a haunted farmhouse, plotting escape from a marriage that was suffocating me even as the vast skies mocked me with freedom.

There was London, where my parents were born,where I slaved in offices like killing machines, got sacked for being "too ginger" or for writing poetry when there was no work to do. Once, even because my boss discovered I played in a band. In London there was the river, one or two bridges, alleyways and churches...sometimes, a night in a theatre or a concert hall. But that was all.

And there was Cambridge, where I looked after choirboys and tried to fit in to something which was too old and set in its ways. I had two babies with my new husband and tried to be a good middle-class mother, but the other women knew I wasn't a true believer.

None of these places were home.

In 1999 I moved to Scotland because it gave me a sense of exile from everything I'd learned to loathe. To an edge where land and sea met under the mountains and the changing skies and I could breathe without the world breathing down my neck. My half-Scottish children soaked up the speech of their fathers, said "aye" and learned Gaelic at school. I grew vegetables and walked for hours. I wrote. I left only when I had to. I loved the place and everything in it, but something still wasn't quite right. I'd never felt English, my blood being a migrant mixture; I still didn't feel Scottish as my husband and sons did.

And then, in the last few days, two things happened.

I lost a major English freelance client. I'd worked for them as a weekend writer/editor for years, producing international business news on the tourist/hospitality industry. Suddenly - and what a shock it must have been to them after so many years - they realised I couldn't do the job from Scotland. They needed a Londoner, because of course only Londoners can report on the things that Londoners want to read. Scotland, of course, doesn't have a tourist industry. So they put their foot down, and I lost £500 a month. Just like that, and just before Christmas. God bless us every one.

The other thing was perhaps a random incident, perhaps just the accidental coincidence of a Scottish flag, an American musician and a Melbourne stage. But even before I got my marching orders from corporate London, the sight of Chris Cornell wrapped in the Saltire suddenly meant the world to me. It made my heart swell with pride and love and it made me feel that maybe I'd been getting steadily more Scottish all this time, without anyone (least of all myself) ever really noticing. That was my flag. This was my country. And looking at those pictures, I felt that I was looking at a magical defence against all the bullshittery of the world. And I felt that finally, somehow, inside my head, I had come home.






With thanks to Soph and Ami for their photos. And I'll add this one of mine...

Clubbing a few more...
first posted at MySpace blog 24 September 2007

Just a few more things of mine that have got into print recently.

Here's my interview with Chris Cornell guitarist Yogi in Subba-Cultcha - you can also find it on my Chris Cornell Fan Page.

A couple of interesting album reviews - punk survivor Siouxsie's Mantaray and cello-wielding Finnish band Apocalyptica's Worlds Collide.

On the classical side of things, here's a review of film composer Helen Jane Long's new album Porcelain, and a profile of acclaimed British opera singer Kate Royal - both from HMV's customer magazine HMV Choice.

You can't wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club...
first posted at MySpace blog 19 September 2007

Jack London said that.

Here are a few of the things I've clubbed down in recent weeks, with varying levels of success:

Reviews of two shows on the recent European leg of Chris Cornell's tour - here's The Roundhouse, London - and here's The Academy, Birmingham.

Here's an interview with Cally Calloman, who runs the estate of late singer-songwriter Nick Drake. He's promoting the release of new retrospective Family Tree, but he was an interesting guy in his own right - an ex-colleague of Island Records supremo Chris Blackwell and a talented designer and band manager.

Finally, here's a light-hearted piece on songs about telephones from UK print magazine The Libertine:

Death In The Afternoon
first posted at MySpace Blog 18 August 2007

Two small deaths. Neither of any great account in the world, really, but worth recording.

On Wednesday last, on of our cocks killed the other. Flyboy was a splendid Welsummer purebred - multicoloured, proud, slightly mad. My son Callum had hand-raised him after his mother tried to peck him to death soon after he hatched. He'd always been a little strange - he would pursue you in the mornings and try to bite your bootlaces - and after the death of his dad had for a while co-ruled the roost with his half-brother, a Rhode Island Red hybrid the boys had named Pope Gregory The Ninth. (Don't ask).

Then, one day sexual maturity had kicked in sufficiently to make them fight, and we'd separated them just in time and kept them in separate areas. On Wednesday Flyboy muscled out of his run and some time in the afternoon while we weren't even there to witness it, the two of them met and fought to the death. We found Flyboy stiff and dead on the ground, his bright button eyes closed and his plumage matted with mud and blood. Pope Gregory the Ninth was crowing fit to bust on top of the woodpile. RIP Flyboy. To the victor, the spoils.



The other death was even smaller: a small, everyday friendship between one family and another, barely begun, suddenly withdrawn without notice or explanation. There was no fight, no blood, no crowing. I do not know the reason and when I ask I receive no reply. Rural villages can harbour strange currents.

Heroes And Villains
first posted at MySpace Blog 21 June 2007

Last month I did what people say you should never, ever, do. I met one of my heroes.

Chris Cornell - his voice, his music, his lyrics, everything - have been an inspiration and a joy to me since I discovered him in the mid-90s. I've been what you might call active in the fanbase for some time - working as part of Audioslave's fan club team and, more recently running A Chris Cornell Fan Page. And as I mentioned in my last entry, through a combination of great good luck and kindness, I found myself invited to interview him before his show last month in London.

He was honest, open, courteous and genuine - pretty much the man I'd always felt he was. The conversation covered a range of topics from his music and lyrics to his recovery from addiction and his sense of himself as an artist and a performer - and although he must have been busy he repelled numerous attempted interruptions at the door so we could finish the interview undisturbed. His demeanour and attitude were matched in the people around him - his wife, his band, his employees were all bright, funny, friendly and generous to a fault.

That night at London's Astoria I also blundered into a hero from my childhood, the magical (in every sense) Jimmy Page...now white-haired and tiny, a Gandalf-The-Grey disguise for some of the most dangerous musical power I ever watched being unleashed on a stage. As I was talking to Chris Cornell, Jimmy Page was waiting for him outside the door. Even a month later I am having trouble filing that fact away in my head.

I've no idea how unusual an experience mine was: I've heard horror stories from people who've found out their heroes were fools or worse, who wished they'd left their illusions intact.

On the basis of what happened to me, though - I'd say go for it. Trust your instincts. What you feel about someone in your gut is more likely than not to be the truth.

You can read the full and unabridged text of the interview here.

And just to prove that I wasn't dreaming, here's a picture of me with Chris, taken by his wife Vicky after the show.




As for villains - well, we're being bombarded with news media right now about the last week of the reign of King Tony. If I didn't think what's to follow might very well be worse, I'd be dancing in the streets, or at least I would if there were any streets where I live.

The best comment of all on his so-called legacy? This woodcut from Stanley Donwood, who does Radiohead's cover art. It's subtitled: RIP Dr David Kelly. And it says all there is to say about the triumph of lies, spin and disinformation in the world. Sometimes it kills. And the responsibility lies - good word, that - with Tony Blair.

New Company, Bad Company
first posted at MySpace Blog 11 June 2007

I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company. - Gaston Bachelard

Here is some of the wandering my words have been doing over the last month or so.

A song: Can You Cry Under Water? Hear it here. It was commissioned by AQA, a research service which answers questions that people text in on their mobile phones. Each of the ten bands who feature on this promotional album wrote a song around a popular or interesting question received by AQA....we turned ours into a sort of sideways look at some of what global warming might do. Lyrics and backing vocals by me, music by my husband Alasdair.

Next......an interview with Chris Cornell. More of that later. But I also met another kind and graceful man the same night - producer Steve Lillywhite, who also agreed to give me an interview. A week or two later I phoned him at home in New York and had a friendly chat about the making of Chris's album, Carry On. Read all about that here.

I've also had the chance recently to review some terrific music. Wunderkind Martin Grech's dream of isolation, The March Of The Lonely....and I got a chance to interview him, too. Car mechanic-turned-tenor Alfie Boe's sublime set of songs, Onward. And on a similar theme, I suppose...Chris Cornell's new statement of intent, the diverse and lovely Carry On.

Next? A fairy tale about a serious little boy and a box and a magic prince. A haunted tale of bog bodies and forgotten embraces. A story about a lost boy and a halfway house which comes and goes, like the girl who lives in it. A song about size and scale and what makes a witch. Because....it really is time I caught up with some of these wandering words.

Reasoning The Need
first posted at MySpace Blog 5 May 2007

On the published writing front, just had a rather unusual piece published in a UK poetry magazine called Libertine. Their strapline is "Liberating Language: Poetry and Lyrics" and it's a pretty cool approach to breaking down barriers between different genres. In the current issue there's a piece reappraising radicals William Blake, Robert Burns and Woody Guthrie, an exclusive interview with amazing old hippy Roy Harper....and an article of mine comparing the writing of Chris Cornell with 17th century metaphysical poetry.

Sounds unlikely? That's why I went for it, because it's something that's been clawing at the back of my mind ever since I first discovered Soundgarden in the mid-90s and I wanted to see if I could make out a case. Have I suceeded? You decide. Drop me a line with any feedback. Oh, and if you've never heard of Chris Cornell, check him out at my fansite. If you've never heard of metaphysical poetry, check it out here at the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

I also just got to interview another of my heroes - the stunning but criminally underrated Martin Grech, who has a brave new album March Of The Lonely out soon on his own label, having been left for dead at the side of the road by the lovely Interscope. Such is business. That piece should appear towards the end of the month.

And one of the best albums I've heard in some time dropped onto my review pile last week a stunning return to form by the amazing Tori Amos with American Doll Posse. Read what I thought of that here.

Water, water everywhere, not any drop to drink
first posted at MySpace Blog 14 March 2007

I live in a remote crofting (farming) community called Inverasdale in the western Highlands of Scotland, a place where water is not in short supply. A lot of the time it is raining, and even when it's not we move damply through seafog or that strangely inconclusive state known as "scotch mist", very fine rain that doesn't so much fall as soak the very air we breathe.



The land is a vast sponge and water must be drained relentlessly from any land we actually intend to use. Water pours down from the hills and mountains in torrents and our croft is criss-crossed by trenches and ditches and culverts designed to carry the water away, down to the vast saltwater sea-loch which laps at our borders.

Our small community used to get its water from one of the fresh lochs up in the hills....it was filtered to take out the bits, but uncontaminated with chemicals. It came out of the taps pure and sweet, sometimes a little brown with the peat but always soft and drinkable.



Then local government in its wisdom decided that we should have a modern water treatment plant. Money was airlifted in from some impersonal European Union fund designed to help "deprived" and "peripheral" communities like ours. We welcomed the fact that it would provide a couple of extra full-time jobs for local people, and an environmentally-sensitive building was designed, clad in grey stone to blend with the landscape (so as not to spoil the summer tourists' holiday snaps). It all cost a fortune.



And suddenly our water wasn't pure and sweet and slightly-brown but foul-tasting and loaded with chemicals, including chlorine bleach. It still came from the loch, but now it tasted so bad that no-one wanted to drink it any more. People bought drinking water in the village stores, or went to the old natural spring by the roadside with buckets and bottles and filled up from there. The smell of the bleach in your bathtub overpowered the smell of the designer bubbles you added to try and fool yourself you weren't replacing the dirt and sweat with something worse.

The whole community complained in every way it knew how. We complained through the community council, we complained to the water company, to our local councillor, to our MP and our MSP and our MEP. We were told that the level of chlorine was within EU guidelines. One of our neighbour's cows got sick and almost died, and the veterinary said the water was to blame. The crofter hauled in water from the spring, and the cow got better. A local woman developed unexplained skin rashes. I went to the doctor for a well-woman check-up and was told by a worried GP that there had been a cluster of new breast cancer cases in our area. She wondered whether the water was a factor.

I began to feel like Erin Brockovich. And like everyone else, I stopped drinking the water. Then it all took a turn for the surreal.

We began to plan a building project on our land - a new cabin which could become a home for my husband's mother (old and ailing and wanting to move near her family) and later, perhaps, a home for our teenage son. Paid work is scarce and hard to come by up here, and we also thought it might also sometimes become a valuable source of income for us - a kind of pension plan - if we decided to rent it out. We applied for planning consent and got it. We hired a builder and paid him 50% upfront. We made plans. And then we were told that Scottish Water could not give us a mains water connection and that without it, our planning consent was invalidated and we could not proceed with the build.

The reason? The brand new water treatment plant couldn't even cope. Unable to poison our tap water fast enough in situ, it sometimes brought in bottled water by road, eighty environmentally-unfriendly miles by truck from Inverness. There were also problems with "leakage", we were told. And just to go all the way to absurdity, the national regulator, SEPA, had laid down limits on how much water could be drawn from the loch to be adulterated with chemicals and piped into our homes. Take too much water from the loch, they said, and there would be an adverse impact on the environment. Yes, even as we dug and baled and drained our waterlogged land.



Were there plans to change the limits to supply water to the new homes being built in the area? No, not for the foreseeable future. Did they really think the loch was going to run dry? No comment.

Our community may be remote, but it is growing. There's a small but steady stream of incomer refugees from urban living, and both locals and new arrivals are wanting to build new houses to live in and new premises to expand their small businesses and increase their income. All this is vocally encouraged by local government, even as it is being prevented by those they charge with providing essential utilities.

To my knowledge there are about sixteen new houses waiting to begin construction in the three small villages that make up our lochside community. They, like us, have been refused water even as the rivers rise and the stuff teems out of the sky. The local builder is laying men off because without houses to build there is nothing for them to do -- so much for the water treatment plant bringing more employment to the area. And we have already spent many thousands of pounds on materials for a project which has been put on indefinite hold.

Unless something is done to make the city bureacrats see sense and stop strangling life along this loch, our only way out of this mess is to spend another £10,000 we haven't got on having a private well dug on our own land, digging down to the water table, pumping the stuff into our properties and disconnecting ourselves from the mains supply entirely. If we can produce evidence of a private supply of safe water, we can begin our build.

However, there is no guarantee that what we regard as safe will satisfy the bureaucrats. After all, we have been told the roadside spring water is "unsafe", yet we all drink it with no ill-effects at all. We have been told the tap water is "safe", yet people and animals get sick.

Meanwhile, it's still raining.





You've read the truth. Scottish Water have demonstrated that they don't care about our lives, our health or our livelihoods. Now here are the PR lies. From Scottish Water's website:

"LATEST WAVE OF WATER INVESTMENT FOR HIGHLAND

5-Mar-07

Scottish Water today (Mon 5 Mar) revealed the flagship projects in a £154million investment programme for the Highlands.

Communities the length and breadth of the region are being promised further improvements in the taste and appearance of drinking water and extra capacity to cater for the surge in demand for new housing. The investment is part of Scottish Water's new £2.4billion programme for Scotland – the second biggest in the UK and the biggest to date in Scotland.

Sheila Campbell-Lloyd, Scottish Water's manager for the Highlands, said: "Since we launched in 2002, we've invested over £200million in the Highland Council area – that's over £2,400 per household compared to a Scottish average of £800. We've also kept household charges steady. Today's announcement clearly shows that we're not resting on our laurels. The Highlands is a great place to live, work and visit and we fully intend to play our part in keeping it that way by further improving drinking water quality, preventing sewage polluting the environment and helping new developments to connect to our systems."

WATER PROJECTS

Key drinking water projects include:

Assynt (Dingwall and the Black Isle), Inverness, Acharacle, Arnisdale, Badcaul, Blackpark (Aviemore area), Fort William, Garve, Inverasdale, Kinlochbervie, Kyle Regional Scheme, Dornoch, Newmore (Easter Ross), Dunvegan, Scourie, Tarskavaig and Toftcarl (Caithness).

These will improve the quality, colour and taste of the water."

You've been racing through the best days
first posted at MySpace Blog on 18 February 2007

Strange how the smallest incidents can make you stop and think. Cause a diversion.

Yesterday, I was driving to the village in my knackered old Volvo with husband, kids and dog in the back. I haven't passed my driving test (I've never really got around to it) but I'm fairly experienced driving on our local roads, which are mainly single track roads with passing places. A lot of people are afraid of these roads, especially as they tend to be bounded by ditches on one side and precipices on the other, but they're what I'm used to. (It's the big city highways that terrify me, but that's another story.)

So, we meet a man and his wife coming the other way, driving a gleaming new Audi. Obviously tourists. Instead of pulling over as would be normal practice, he drives straight past his nearest passing place, and bangs on the brakes right in front of me. He indicates angrily that I should reverse, but my most recent passing place is being dug up by roadmenders and consists of a cordoned off hole in the road.

My husband gets out to explain to him that this is the case and that the next passing place for me is about half a mile back, along a dangerous stretch of road, uphill. He refuses to move. My husband points out that I am a learner driver and that Audi man's passing place is much closer and more accessible. By all the rules of the road Audi man should reverse, but he still refuses to budge. His reply is "well, you're supposed to be in charge - if she can't do it, you'll have to."

At this point I lose my temper and get out of the car and advance, spitting venom. My husband, meanwhile, shifts across to the driver's seat, backs up the car and Audi man sweeps magisterially past me as I scream abuse at him. I am left standing in the road.

I found this unsatisfying on many levels. As my first road rage incident, it amazed me how furious I actually got. I wanted to kick the Audi's lights in. I actually wanted to drag Audi man out of his car and throw him down the hillside. It took me half the day to calm down from the mingled anger at the other driver's unreasonableness, the fact that he'd successfully bullied me, and the fact that my husband had taken the matter into his own hands and thereby allowed the Audi to drive on and ignore me. I'd been robbed of my confrontation. I raged and fumed for hours.

And then I thought: why was this so infuriating? Why was it so important to me to obliterate this mannerless obstacle that had been placed in my path? And then the answer suddenly came - because I was actually angry at myself for not making more progress with my own writing and my own life. I was deflecting all the anger I felt at my own inner blocks onto this tangible one in the road.

Because the truth is that I've been hiding behind a lot of activity - displacing the confrontations I really need to experience, which are not with ill-mannered motorists or online message-board opponents, but with my own demons. I've been making myself permanently busy, occupying myself with all sorts of stupid things in order to avoid the stuff I really need to do. Which is to forge on, be secure, make myself strong.

That means something different for everyone, of course, but for me I believe it means to stop spinning my wheels and drive. To have the courage to say, I'm Clare O'Brien and I'm a writer, whatever that means. Even if it marks me out as a freak and a loner. To use my own "energy and focus", as someone I know recently put it, to be myself.

After all, it's all that you can do. Maybe I'll even take my driving test.

I wish I could speak whale
first posted at MySpace Blog 5 February 2007

..not that I'd have had much luck with this poor creature, who washed up dead at the bottom of our croft last week. The weather had been cold, windy and wet for days and so we just hadn't been down to the bottom field where several hundred strawberry and raspberry plants are currently looking rather uncared-for.

On the other side of the fence is the loch shore, and that's where the poor beast ended up. First thing we heard of it was when the man from the local radio station Two Lochs Radio phoned to ask for comments about the whale. What whale, we said, and that's when our 14-year-old son Callum said yes, there are some people down there cutting it up.

Callum spends a lot of time in the bottom field trying to shoot tin cans and sometimes rabbits with his air rifle, and it turned out that he'd had a whole conversation with the Men from the Ministry (alerted by a local fisherman) who'd come to do an open-air autopsy. (Of course, being a 14 year old boy it hadn't occurred to him to tell us.)

They'd said it was a bottlenose, though by the time we got down to see, its head and most of its insides had been removed and piled up neatly beside the corpse, so it was difficult to appreciate what it might have looked like in happier times. The Ministry Men (and one woman) weren't terribly friendly or forthcoming and having disassembled the body they disappeared, leaving the mess for the sea to clear up.



Our local wildlife ranger was the next to arrive. She couldn't confirm it was a bottlenose as the head had been taken away by the Ministry, but she did say the skin was quite scarred. It looked as though the whale had died naturally at sea and just happened to drift ashore rather than sinking or being swept out into the open ocean.

We've seen live minke whales in the loch as well as dolphins, but bottlenoses are rare on this coast. It was a privilege to see one, even dead. Two days later the council rumbled along the shore in a JCB, scooped up the remains and buried them.