Sailing, I am sailing (but not with Rod Stewart)

I got in touch with Jac Volbeda from the Hebrides, he is an artist and the owner of B&B Bagh Alluin where I planned to stay in May. I was prompted to contact him thanks to Calmac Ferries informing me that that their summer timetables and bookings were now available.

I thought I had better check with Jac, to see if he would be open, he responded almost immediately: I have no idea at the moment. If the whole situation improves dramatically I will be able to host you but no guarantee. Keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the best. What more should I have expected, and just how deeply do I need to read these words to find a little bit of hope.

Well I thought, there's lot's of sincerity in there, and for a Dutchman, for whom presumably English is a second language, there is lots of flow. Also when I read his closing words I felt some good degree of communal reassurance; they went like this: We will be keeping a close eye on the situ Christoper. 4 month to go so lets be optimistic!! Stay safe and I do hope we will meet.

Not quite so much luck on finding a crossing. There are timetables, but not for the routes I had planned on using. There are glitches in the software, or rather their systems are counter-intuitive: Four steps forwards, then that missing bit of information, which means five steps back. But we have sailed with them before so I do know that if I ever can make a booking, then the sailing itself will be fine.

Jumping ship, so to speak, my morning meditation asked me the question: Who am I? To which my instant response was: I am the person who cannot begin a spoken conversation, no my social inadequacies mean that I have to write my words rather than pronounce them. 

So there you have it. And here is a poem from yesterday's Poetry Review which expands on that theme, but which also helps to transport me to the Hebrides:

Thoughts before I go Senile

I sit in my chair
Look out across the morning garden
Where the sunlight sprinkles the trees.
Ambition, status, god-damned promotions
That working life is over, left behind.
The young (and middle aged) stallion
Has travelled his distant and wayward miles.
In defeat, or is it retirement
When the days are not so sparkling.
In my time, and in time before me
We have all lost our way.
My pension forbids a trip to the moon, or the Maldives
And to be honest why would I wish to go anywhere else, other than the Hebrides.
The foolish man, however little he knows
Knows that society is as society is for a purpose.
But I won’t be beaten back
My poetry will precede me
As I eulogise about the oceans and the beaches.