Letting Go

Today promised good weather so I drove to Claonaig over the the road to Skipness and caught the ferry to Lochranza.

Arran was at its magnificent best in the June sun and I drove to Brodick and visited my old haunts. The primary school children were working outside in the playground, so different from the dark dusty classrooms I remember, but the old school looks just the same.
The scent of the Escalonia hedges along the seafront brought memories of other warm summer days, ice-cream in Pelligrinis' Café, buying fishing nets in Alexanders' and old Mrs. Currie who was always so kind to me and gave me some old costume jewellery - it could have been the crown jewels, I was so pleased.

I walked up the hill to my old house and looked in the wee burn where Sara B threw my teddy in and he never squeaked again, I tried to remember which house the retired district nurse lived in, she baked cakes and left them on the open kitchen window to cool and our dog ate them (many times).

I hadn't just come to reminisce - there was something I had to leave behind in that place where my life had been so uncomplicated, so free, so happy. A place where I had been too young to know the pain that comes with growing up and moving on.

So on Brodick beach, where the beach huts had been all of these years ago, I let go the last link to my old life, on the shore where as a child, grown up lady had shared my delight and wonderment at the sea creatures and shells I had collected in my little pail. That unknown woman made me believe it was a good thing to be interested in nature, in life and our world.

G arrived not long after I got back to Kintyre and we had dinner and walked along the shore and took pictures as the sun set and that wonderful west coast gloaming enveloped us.

So rather than the photographs I took on Arran I want to share this one of a lone sailor heading for the shore, there is a barbed wire fence on the beach, supposedly to keep the cattle away from the campsite. Somehow it seems to symbolise that even in the face of incredible beauty there can be cruelty and sadness.