The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk;The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk

The Fallen Sparrow- hawk

Mayday’s Eve 30^th April, 2002

We set off from the Doon around midday. Stuart at the wheel of his van, Damait and

Ishtar. First stop Monreith Estate which we drove through stopping only so I could

climb up to Mryton castle. The stones were used to build Monreith House for the

price of £2000 when the architect conned William Maxwell’s wife, (grandson of Sir

William, to replace the castle instead of extending it as was the intention. There is a fine

view of the White loch from the tower.

From Monreith we went to some ancient standing stones one of which had fallen

leaving two which had once formed part of a huge ring. The energy of the stones was

extremely strong smarting the hands on contact, waves and waves of energy fizzes

and pulsated around my own field.Unfortunately, we didn’t stay long enough for the full
top-up but it was good to feel the lay of the land.

We stopped off at Grahams for a cup of tea. Graham makes furniture out of wicker,

willow and ash. He also makes sculptures. He was working to dead-line to complete a

table for a client, so we headed for the Maxwell burial ground in Kirkmaiden-in-

fernis.

I was in search of Jolly’s grave, while Stuart was more fascinated by the tale which put
 kirkmaiden on the pilgrim’s  map before the Maxwell monopolised the energy. Medana was
 an Irish princess who converted to Christianity.

On Monreith bay, close under a steep, wooded slope, is one of the oldest churches in

Scotland, Kirkmaiden-in-fernis. Its origin is connected with the story of Medana, the

beautiful daughter of an Irish king. Among her many suitors there was a soldier- Miles

Nobilis-who was especially determined to win her. The princess, however, had

embraced the Christian faith and had secretly taken a vow of celibacy. Rendered by

her suitors persistence, she fled with two handmaids to Galloway and landed at Portankill

in The Thinns, a place which took its name from the chapel she built there, and led a

life of poverty and good works. One day she was startled by voices on the shore. Her

soldier rushed in and threw his arms around her. She slipped from his grasp and,
followed by her handmaidens, rushed into the surf and took refuge on a rock amid the

water. Her lover hastened after her; but before he could reach her the rock floated and

carried its precious burden across to Monreith bay, where Medana found a short-lived

peace. Her lover discovered her new place of retreat. When he came into sight the

lady promptly climbed a tree. “Why persecute me thus?” she exclaimed. “Those eyes

compel me,” her lover began, and before he could say more, she tore them out and

threw them at his feet, saying, “Take them then!” distracted, broken-hearted and

repentant, he went his own way. Medana came down from the tree and asked her

attendants for water to bathe her aching face. Just as she was being told there was

none at hand, a clear, healing stream broke out of the sloping ground where her eyes

had fallen. She washed with it and recovered her sight.

The chancel of the old church is the burial place of the Maxwells of Monreith. It has

been restored in the mid nineteenth century in the style of twelfth-century architecture, with a Norman arch and a round headed window.

In one of the nameless graves in the churchyard lies the body of Captain Thurot, a

French naval officer, who distinguished himself in the war between Britain and France in 1760.

Beyond the chapel’s consecrated ground whose boundary is marked by rusted iron

railings some two feet high, on a piece of flat earth, just before a precipitous drop to

the water, was exposed here and there a roughly hewn slab. On Jolly’s unmarked

grave, wings out-spread, lay the body of a fallen sparrow-hawk.

End.

The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk; four Seasons in One Day

Four Seasons in One Day April 26 2002

The wind blusters around the caravan this morning and the wind turbine howls

healthily. Vans have turned the car park into a chaotic drive-in. we have new arrivals

in the form of Andy and his two sons Ryan and Kean. Jeff left with Alison for

Edinburgh and returned with a new van and his daughter. Alison returned after

nightfall with her purchase from the auction at Talamh. And there is Stuart’s van.

I have become close to Stuart since his arrival several days ago. First of all, it was
the relief to have another man to hang out with, though this man had a very real
side, a messed up, boisterous and a no-nonsense-get-on-and-do-things side; an absolute enthusiasm for other people and life. He has an avid curiosity for local history and has begun reading my library book, Highways and byways in Galloway and Carrick to me. I stopped him every now and

again to ask questions. He’s read to me a couple of times, once in my caravan.

He is not gay having three daughters with three different women. He is a sensitive

soul and is having a hard time with the mother of his daughters. There is

love, but it sounds a very destructive relationship involving violence. I can see how

drink might turn Stewart belligerent and add to his innate bullish nature.

Capricorn gets on with his Taurus sign, and Tiger, which I am, gets on with Horse.

It was Stuart who persuaded me not to high-tail it back to London. Taken to the brink

by the return of Jeff, the Dagda, aka Kurtz/Quixote and his tyrannical ways, (which he

hasn’t lost), I had the notion I would find emotional solace down south. Stuart simply

said, “If I was gay, I think it would be ideal for you”. This was in a pub in Wigton

with hours to go before I was due to step on a bus bound for London.
I admitted it was what I needed at the Doon, companionship and there and

then, we established our friendship when Suggs’ It Must be Love, Love, Love came on

the duke box. We said it would be better without the sexual side and agreed deep

friendship and agreed that sexual, emotional involvement only spoiled things.

The leaves are beginning to fall unfurl. Brett has been digging up new potato patches;

the seeds in their trays have sprouted seedlings. The slash and burn fires have ceased,

and since my arrival we have acquired four hens, one cockerel and a pot-bellied pig.

children are in abundance; Jack and Evey have playmates in Kean and Ryan and

Jeff’s daughter Ishtar. Damnait and Jeff’s boy pushes wheeled toys, and Ruby, Alison

and Brett’s youngest, grinds her four teeth together in her carry chair.

The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk;Notice; Goats and Pigs

Notice: Goats and Pigs, April 25, 2002

I hereby give notice that I cannot permit tenants to keep goats and pigs in their farm houses the mischief done to fixtures and fittings by these awful beasts is incalculable. Not least, the awful stench inhaled when my sheriff calls to collect due tithes is appalling and shall not be tolerated.

Tenants found keeping them after this notice will be subject themselves to my displeasure. Eviction shall immediately ensue without further notice or warning.

By order of the honourable

Lord Laurence Waldran

Lord of the Manor

This notice, a genuine enamel affair was discovered when Jeff, Stuart and myself were on our way to collect Napoleon, and copied by me on our return to the Machars.

Our arrival found Alison tearful in the car park. The appearance

of an un-quorum pig exasperated her patience with the increasingly volatile Jeff, heretofore referred to as The Dagda.

The arrival of Vicky, Kevin and Mark from Talamh formed an instant team to carry pig and cage to a designated terrace very close to the Doon.

The team of porters were made up of Stuart, Kevin, Brett, Mark and me.  Two ash poles were put through the cage and secured as handles as those on a sedan chair or the type used to transport the statue of the Virgin Mary in many Spanish festivals. Our passenger was nothing holier than our new acquisition, Napoleon.

The cage weighed a ton and, heaved up on four shoulders, we edged ourselves forward along the rough path past the gardens, staggering and stumbling under our load. Feet sunk deeper into mud than ever before under our charge. Weight redistributed regularly on the wandering whim of the pig. We developed a rota system whereby one rested while four changed places and shoulders, as yard by grunting yard we edged our way towards Napoleon’s new paradise.

New paths had to be cleared, branches hacked away and the bridge made secure by additional planks. Damnait, with Ishtar (her one year old boy) walked ahead singing a vague Irish air.

Over a plateau of bracken and finally Napoleon was home. Four hours to cover a distance which normally took twenty minutes. It took a while to erect the solar panel charged electric fence, in the meantime, the women arrived with a picnic and the children in tow and we all ate while Napoleon slept or cowered in his cage. The fence erected, he was released into his new home.

The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk; Napoleon

Napoleon

It was one step forward then two steps back then sudden leaps forward, then absolute sudden stand-stills, that describes my relationship with the Dagda aka Jeff. His tyranny could, I hoped for a moment, be due to a Scottish accent grafted on to a northern Irish one the barking manner of which people in Belfast speak; Ian paisley could make the words ‘Thank you’ sound like an insult…and yet Jeff looks like a western Christmas-card Jesus.

Stewart, who I like immensely, said, while taking me to Wigtown in his van so I could get a bus ticket to London, that he too had taken on a low-impact, environmental project and had, consequently become so fanatical with tunnel-vision that anyone who did not measure up to the ideal was summarily dismissed. Though the information gave me insight, it didn’t help. Nevertheless I didn’t go to London and fabulous things were accomplished like, for example, yesterday.

We, Stewart, Jeff (Dagda) and myself went to another community off the upper lowland walk, Ayrshire on an errand to fetch a yurt and ended up with a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig; a male boar, black and named (pending meeting) Napoleon, after George Orwell’s porcine character in Animal Farm.

A cage was improvised from pliant fence wire and a square metal cage. The openings were covered with the wire. The cage in the back of Stewart’s van; we had only to catch the pig. Neither Jeff nor I had caught a pig before. Stewart flatly refused to be involved.

“I’ll get the head, you get the back end”, I was volunteered. My adrenaline level went up; there was an unknown quantity in strength getting suspicious in an extremely filthy pen. Jeff was trying to bond with it by offering the pig half an avocado pear, my lunch; it wasn’t working. I thought Jeff was going to evoke the mighty heroes of Irish myth and legend in order to deal with the mighty energy of the pig, but I detected fear in his voice; adrenaline surge.

When I jumped into the pen, Jeff stood crest-fallen with the avocado. My movement made the pig run into an inner pen then run out again and the race began.

Liz, owner of the pig, suggested, from the other side of the gate that Jeff , “throw himself on the animal, wrestle it to the ground, then clamp its head”, and that someone else, (me), grapple hold of its hind quarters. Without the plank, jutting out, perpendicularly from one of the sides, into which the pig got stuck after a long drawn out chase, which involved  high-pitched nightmarish squeals, and Jeff barking like a mad man in his grimy plus-fours and old tweed poncho, (which Liz suggested he throw over the animal) – we might never have caught the him.

So, trapped a second time, we seized the opportunity, Jeff  straddled the neck, head-on, and with the squealing reaching a terrifying pitch, Jeff, in full rant, I felt, at everything  else on the planet; the whole becoming a shouting match between the pig and Jeff.

“I’ve got the legs! I’ve got the legs!” I shouted.

The pig, now in an embrace, we lifted it out of the pen and step by pig-squealing-Jeff-ranting-audience-encouraging-step we forced it into the cage where it quickly settled on to the bed of straw provided.

Jeff and I huffed and puffed as though we’d fought a Minotaur, (each others Minotaur more like).

We were to have taken the female but given her position in the pen with two others and the ordeal we’d had with Napoleon, we decided our good fortune began ended with one. And anyway, Liz, the owner, had become extremely fond of her girls.

The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk; The Dagda

The Dagda,

Hubris has arrived in the form of Jeff. He is a tightly drawn muscle of intolerance; his anger and impatience very close to the surface. The founder of the Doon of May, he behaves more like a cantankerous slave owner. He has the imperious features of a Rasmussen or Thesiger, with bright clear blue eyes, large firm slightly hooked nose, a pale green tartan poncho, a green tartan waistcoat above green plus fours and an array of amulets around his neck; he carries a cane. His tone can be extremely dismissive, he raged at me about soap being used on his favourite cast iron pot, and the rain-gathering system not working. When he rounded on me again for some other perceived incompetence I told him that I was not his whipping boy and to change his tone. He swings between Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s heart of Darkness and Don Quixote but resemble the Dagda.

He let slip that he had himself voluntarily sectioned and the diagnosis of his ailment was, ‘A psychotic need to save the planet’... well, I wish I’d known before; ‘fool’s paradise’ springs to mind. But it is not easy to write Jeff off as a tyrannical (read colonial) environmental pied-piper. He has created a beautiful space out of his fevered mind, and may be intolerant with anyone he perceives falls short of his ideas and ideals; these people he terms ‘gormless’ (without sky), and although he doesn’t pick any one out for this insult, at the first meeting since his return, we are all made to feel we might qualify.

It does take a certain amount of vision to leave a full-time job as a suited computer analyst  and don the nomad’s garb and adopt a low-impact life-style. A lot has indeed been established in the four years he has been here, but I don’t think his idealism should lead to bad-tempered remarks as though he and he alone knows and the rest of us are incompetents. This is a trifle unfair, he has the conviction of his beliefs, and he does not suffer fools lightly.

My gripe is he has been off wandering for five months living in Spain and everyone else has kept things going and yet he strides in and lays down the law, as though we were under his employ. An interesting study; A mad man; he says he is the re-incarnation of an old angry Irishman. 

The fallen~Sparrow~hawk; The dance of the Flaming Arseholes

The dance of the Flaming Arseholes     April 19, 2002

Jeff returned, the Dagda, in long beard and poncho. He immediately surveyed his domain, the progress of tree growth, clearings, new planting and general condition of the place of which he was the founder. Jeff  had been driven back from Beneficio, a similar community in Spain, by Stewart. His arrival coincided with that of Tanya and Billy and Hazel. Jeff went off to be reunited with Damnait, a reunion that began to take on a comical air when they kept missing each other.

The evening found Tanya, Stewart, Billy, Alison and myself on the Bog Myrtle and spliffs. Once the talk had moved from plants to foxes to lambs, (tail-docking) talk of other communities, horses, workhorses and their ability to drag twenty feet logs to build the cabin, hares, hounds and the prices they fetch, chickens and especially Alison’s new five hens and one cock; willow and the suppleness of its branches for basket weaving, a conversation, in short, bursting with abundance, the toil of spring, for the abundance in summer.

After Tanya and Alison retired Stewart and Billy found a mutual love of sailing, Billy  having sailed on many fishing boats off the West Coast including the fated Solway Harvester, about which he said, “There were three decks and the sleeping cabins were right at the bottom, so before you knew you had rolled over, it was too late. The boys were found in their beds”. It was surmised that the boat could have been hit by a container.  “It, the Solway harvester, is lying in the Isle of Whithorn (or beyond) and you can see by the dent in its side, something barrel-like hit it, you ken”. Billy also said “A good seaman can’t swim, and a good skipper doesn’t swim. Doesn’t want to, will do anything not to get the lifeboats out and get his feet wet, you ken”. It turned out that Stewart and Billy had drunk on the same boat off the west of Mallaig and Elgin and seen the northern lights.

Stewart was overjoyed that he had finally met another man who had actually not only seen, but participated in the ‘Dance of the Flaming Arseholes’. A ritual which takes the form of a rolled up newspaper stuffed between the bum-cheeks with the other end set alight. These flaming cockatoos, drunk I may add, danced about on a wooden ship, (this caused me hilarity). The one to keep going to the last wins. Many have received severe burns playing the Dance of the Flaming Arseholes.

This story was told by Billy at the end of anecdotes about the initiation rites of young new recruits on boats. “One has his leg tied to a big rubber tire and is told to wear it in case he goes overboard; it will keep him afloat, as a good sailor can’t swim; the tire will drag him straight down, which is better. The new recruit drags a tire around for days, you ken”

Another initiation finds the new recruit attached to the bow of the ship to shout out obstacles through the mist, meanwhile the crew are below having a laugh surrounded by remote tracking radar; they speed the boat up to twenty knots until the poor soul is screaming his head off.

Billy talked of the Jollys. I told him I wanted to go drinking in Dunragit. He confirmed they were good boxers though rough. One pub in the middle of the high street was okay to go to while the other two were rough, “you ken”.

Stewart asked what my particular interest in the slave was. It is not the first time I’ve been asked. It is a question any reader will ask. Being mixed-race and being brought up, and having expressed mainly the white side, I am asking myself my feeling towards and about my black heritage and slavery.

Stewart was under the impression that I straightened my hair;  as it is the Jollys who, reputedly, shave or straighten their light-coloured frizz, or indeed, have taken to wearing wigs. I do not have light frizzy hair but loose curly hair, taking after my English maternal grandfather. My European features make me look Mediterranean, Brazilian or North African.

My interest? It has become a JOURNEY OF COLOUR. A journey of  a mixed race man back to part of his roots. The roots that is the racist killing of his, and racial subjugation, however subtle of his brothers and sisters. Moral; avoid the error of ever denying of one’s own origins. This is my story. It needs to be told, not in fiction but as it is unfolding. Are they, the descendants of Jolly, still in these times, ashamed of their black heritage? (I know that Irma, the jolie laide perniciously directed me towards the Jolly story.) It is a ‘stigma’ they have carried for an inordinate amount of time, over two centuries long; black people have not only been in Britain in our cities and in the countryside since the 1950s, they have been here for centuries, more than we know have a trace by now.

A part of me descends from slavery. It is a sad as it is but a part of me as much as my Irish heritage and its painful legacy. Can I really experience being black? Plastic paddy, bogus black; not black enough; olive skin, light brown, I am in between (I have been lynched by whites and mugged by blacks) and by knowing and owning my that part of my African history gives me a confidence that can transcends race to stand up against those who seek to denigrate those of African descent.

So, Jolly, a slave, who fell in love with a local girl, siring great-, great-, great-, great- grand children still living in the same community after over two hundred years.

The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk

Obscurantism versus evolution or The old ways versus the new. April 18, 2002

“Just to think, it took four hours to prepare and just ten minutes to finish”. Alison said staring at her empty plate with a look of bewildered exhaustion. They, Alison, Brett and their three children had just returned from the south of England visiting relatives who lived, unlike themselves, in brick dwellings in which everything was at the flick of a switch. i.e.: wood-chopping replaced by a flick on the central-heating; switch!  Washing day to washing machine, load wash; five minutes; switch! Scraping pots and pans reduced to loading dishwasher; switch! Wood-burning stove to cooker and enough leisure time to lounge in front of the television; switch, or even take a full-time job to pay for it all; switch off.

You see the thing is all the switchflicking has to be paid for; there are unseen hands chopping the proverbial wood to feed the national grid; there are unseen water-gatherers, food-gatherers, clothes-scrubbers, stove-feeders, entertainers and boredom-breakers, nature-filmers and, with the proviso of disproportionate profit, they must all receive a promissory note of payment, they can use as currency in a promissory world.

At the Doon one is working for oneself. It is a job that has to be done. If the wood store goes down there is no fuel to cook and no heat in winter. This becomes immediately apparent and, like it or not, it has to be done. The same goes for water-collecting, laundry, planting and gathering the whole day taken up with tasks necessary for living.

Before the slow rise of the on-the-flick-of-a-switch consumer society there was no perceived choice. You either had slaves or servants or relied on the division of labour; the husband went out and toiled and the wife stayed home with the kids and cleaned and cooked all day. The idea of lying around all day, as Jane Austen’s characters do, was completely foreign to such women, (working class I mean).

So, the evolutionary urge to improve upon inventions; the hoe to the tractor; salt-storage to the fridge; water-collection to the stand-pipe and so on.

People live longer, they have an easier way of life; rent, gas, electricity, council tax and food bills paid; then follows a life of ease. Self-sustaining; wind turbine/generator, endless wood fuel, inexhaustible water supply, food from the ground; potatoes, celery, lettuce, onions, berries, herbs, broccoli, Spring onions, pulses; milk from goats, bread from the stove. What for money?

Of course everything takes that thing the modern world has managed to…manage; over manage, - time. ‘There are only so many minutes in a day’.

The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk; The One Hand Clapping

The One Hand Clapping.  April 16, 2002

What does that expression mean?

Gypsy John came today and I was still feeling the effects of alcohol poisoning I contracted somewhere between Billy Boyd’s (a local musician), party and my belligerent Sunday evening at Roy’s. To tell the honest truth I was kind of rampantly horny when John arrived and his tattoos were a bit of a turn on as were his massive hands, but the fact that he’s ex-SAS and suffers from manic depression since his wife left him deterred me from making any sexual suggestions.  I think I am going slightly loopy here with nothing but the clear fell to look at. I was bored today and slightly depressed but the last two days put the effects of alcohol into stark relief. I am allergic to the stuff. My breath went, almost suffocating me, I was in a panic and my mind went more than a little skew-whiff. I will die if I have more than two glasses of wine or two glasses of beer. I will keep my in-take to the minimum.

The lady from the Edinburgh National Gallery returned my enquiry into the Jolly (Sir William Maxwell) painting being perhaps a Sir Henry Raeburn. It isn’t; it is too early and they have a copy of it which has been dated by someone, by the costume, at 1760 or thereabout. So, Sir William would have been in his early forties.

I’m a bit scared about my future. I haven’t been offered anymore work with immigration; my phone is so crappy, and quite frankly, I’m a bit tired of waking up in this area. I’ll see how I feel tomorrow. I’ll have more energy to leave and check out the bookshop in Wigtown. Roll on the money; I’m desperate.

I would eventually like to start writing another book. I have the bare bones of the slave story but, like The Cuckoo’s Diary, I’ll have to set the scene elsewhere. Glencolmcil is a fascinating place, frightening.

Things are scary; the lambs will be taken and slaughtered in a couple of months. There are things people say and things they don’t say. Things get around about people. There is also a sexual tension in the air that could be dangerous. People take their comfort where they find it. I remember the Gaelic football team in Ireland and how I fancied number 7, a stocky sexy guy with a cute face and attitude, (I do love them built like bulls).

My sexuality’s gone through the roof. Anyway, tomorrow I hope I feel less depressed and more positive. I’ll have a nice wash and cycle.

The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk; Strange Fruit

Strange fruit,  April, 14, 2002

Since a few weeks ago the gorse bushes have blossomed everywhere. Farmers are ploughing their fields accompanied by cawing crows or screeching gulls. Smoke continues to billow up from the horizon as heather is burned and, of course, we are blessed with gorgeous sunlight and crimson sunsets. Buds are slowly opening on the trees and I have been on seed watering duty since Jenny, Alison et al went away. Most are grown indoors until the shoots are ready to be planted in the garden. I am amazed at how quickly they are sprouting. The geese are not as vociferous as they were a month ago, thank God. The wind generator turns on the odd days now but there is still ample voltage from the batteries; same with rainwater which occasionally fills the jerry cans.

Maddy and Tristan left with their twelve-day old baby. I felt a little sad, if not bitter, to see a couple arrive make manifest their love through a child. It made me want to speak to someone close and I chose Mark.

The first conversation was one-upmanship and I had to call him again and have a proper conversation in which he said I could call him any time. We sound in love. I do want to see him, to hold him and be close to someone. I was lamenting how difficult I can be in relationships and wondered whether I was in self-imposed exile here from my emotions, which is probably partially the case. I can be a cold-fish sometimes and must endeavour to say what’s on my mind and especially what’s in my heart.

For some reason I have been very tired of late, sleeping a lot.

I thought of the sentence, ‘I am the only black face at the cattle market’, to start my new book, Strange Fruit. I think it will be about a twin, one of which is murdered and leads the other to investigate. I will transpose the story of the black brothers I heard about in glen Colmcil, in Donegal to Galloway. There will be a birth of a mixed-race child and one of the twins will be blamed for it and lynched. The other brother will stay on his friends remote farm (low-impact community) and, from there, discovers the child’s birth; the real father being a throwback to an 18^th century slave. The death is only discovered after the Whithorn digs reveals DNA evidence linking the child to the body, that of Jolly. A great opening image, harrowing because true, white men, dress in costume indistinguishable from the eighteenth century and today, chasing a young black man through woods across a stream; this links  the plight of Jolly with, well, Stephan Lawrence and our twin. Lynching still goes on all over the UK, very subtle; no need for a tree and rope. For reasons of internalized self-hate Britain’s gays are practitioners of it in its verbal, and sexually inverted racist form. Sleep-with-them (Blacks and Latinos) but don’t bring ‘em home; they seem to labouring under the grandiose delusion that fascists won’t come for them too. I once asked a very successful black gay social worker about the phenomena of inverted racism, and he said he always quickly establishes in the initial conversation whether the interested Caucasian has any black people in his/her dinner/party set. “If there are none, you’ll never be invited in darling, as they see it, they are racially slumming it”; There are many ways to lynch a black man and the Brits might well be pass-masters at it and especially if the white man perceives that the black man may be in anyway on a par or passing him, a better job, clothes, car, girlfriend, house, education, accent; this sends his entitled gyroscope reeling; it was ever thus. The black man, in the Southern states of America, could, on the turn of a pin, be perceived as ‘Uppity’ and on the gossamer fragility of a white’s insecurity, and be strung up from a tree.

The gold inscription below the painting of Jolly and Sir William Maxwell was probably added later. Even so, once again I can’t help thinking; it is a bazaar choice of pose to have his servant stand in the background with the instrument of his death in his hand. Sir William Maxwell does look very effeminate.

Re. burial. It is unknown where Jolly lies. The Maxwell cemetery is outside the town of Monreith, Meades or something. They have discovered a girl’s grave under a fallen tree but there is another unidentified grave somewhere.

When Tristan drove me into Newton Stewart, I swear, after exiting the petrol garage, I saw two young men walking  toward us on the open road ahead, the same two wild men Nick and I had met at the entrance to the forest a year ago, but I don’t remember passing them or them turning off anywhere. I remember looking behind for them. No where!?

There are ghosts at Monreith House. One is a maid and there is, reportedly, another man. It is rumoured that Jolly’s ghost haunted the castle, but it is mainly a rumour...

I have yet to meet a member of the Jolly family. Hopefully Richard from Belfast will give me an intro. Richard told me that Jean Jean told him that Jolly’s grandchildren did all they could to erase the parish records of their grandparent’s marriage, and their own birth certificates to hide their negro origins.

The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk: A Biblio-Thief

ABiblio-thief. April 12, 2002

“Try carters Bookshop in Wigtown”, said Archie, present caretaker at Monreith who I encountered once back outside in the grounds of Monreith house. “Carter was caretaker here for ten years and took a lot of the Maxwell collection with him when he left”.

When I entered G C Books in Wigtown, two women sent me to the back of the shop where indeed the booty from Monreith House was kept. I wanted assistance. I retraced my steps and noticed a middle-aged man behind a computer.

“I hear you have most of the Maxwell collection”. I said with undisguised lack of tact. (Immobilise your prey with attack). He bade me sit down and was extremely forth-coming about Jolly; source material, history, a candid appraisal of the way local memory worked, and his undisguised dislike for the present caretaker of Monreith House.

“Evening memories is the Herbert Maxwell to read.” He maintained. “There is an account of the first wheeled vehicle arriving in Wigtownshire by ship”. It seemed that wishing to arrive at a local election with great panache Sir William Maxwell, third baronet, had the stone dykes opened to widened the bridle paths for his new carriage... once at the meeting he was shouted down by the opposition for his involvement in smuggling. Though the mandate was to stop it going on, it appears Sir William Sir William  was making vast sums and avoiding taxes on in tea, whisky etc, by using the farms on his land to hide the contraband coming over from the Isle of Mann.

Carter believed, because of the lack of roads Jolly came from Liverpool which took a few hours to get to by sea. Carter spoke with an English cockney accent and reminded me of Fagin in Charles Dicken’s Oliver Twist. Maybe the rumour that he had begun his bookshop with the Maxwell collection made me prejudiced, whether it was guilt or genuine altruism he divested himself of all he knew.

“Sir William was heart-broken when Jolly died. He had hit him in a fit of temper” and “Yes it was with a cane. Friday was a lot older than he was in the painting”.

Carter did not think it was a Raeburn. His, (Carter’s) own name was cited for the collection for tax reasons; they had become national property on the proviso that the public could view them once a year. Carter put forward the hypothesis that Sir William, himself, has had the painting commissioned after Jolly’s death, so grief-stricken was he.

“Jolly married a local girl but continued to work for Sir William. When people remember around here they remember things passed down. The Jollys, and it is pretty certain, all descend from Jolly. You can tell when you look at them”.

It seemed Sir William had Jolly as a status symbol; “It was swashbuckling to have a blackamoor in those days and Sir William saw himself as such”

“Sir Herbert gives an account of why there was a move from Myrton castle to Monreith House in Evening memories”.

The image of the arrival of the first carriage is fascinating; Wheels arriving from a ship, the first wheeled vehicle ever, and the first blackamoor.

Carter told me about a book of letters written by a fourteen year old boy working on a slave ship. These are published. There are other sources. I would need to sit down and read these patiently.

If Sir William commissioned the painting why have it feature the cane in the very hands of the person it mowed down? Was this some kind of penance, a reminder of the wicked deed?

“There are graves in the garden near Monreith. It is where they used to be buried; it is supposed they buried Jolly there too” said Carter.

I felt sad for his life wrenched away from his father, taken and sold into slavery, Alesander Selkirk, the inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, fell on hard times and betrayed his Man Friday and resold him into slavery.

I have yet to visit Whithorn.

When Carter got up to see me out he had an acute hunchback and supported himself with a cane…!

TheFallen~Sparrow~Hawk: Radio Roy

Radio Roy.  April 11, 2002

Roy, angry, bitter, nosy, opinionated, manipulative Roy. He’s gotten under my skin. I am patently aware that this being a relatively small community, that of Wigtonshire, that gossip apart from drifting dandelion-like borne by the post woman, Roy also spread news with authoritative relish. He phoned up yesterday and has phoned before and his nosiness and his negativity annoy me. He begins sentences with,”I’m only going to tell you this once...” and you think you’re going to be reprimanded. He talks about other people, namely my friends here.

I think he’s going to offer me things so he can get me to do things for free. I will say no, otherwise there’ll be no end to his calling. I think he is extremely negative like my mum, and he is closed. I will owe him for the tobacco, but I’ve got to be stubborn with him. Today, I’ll rotivate the garden but take a lot of spring onions, leaks and broccoli for a stir-fry. Damnait can relieve me. Maybe my irritability lies elsewhere, but being obligated to break my time going to Roy’s is annoying. I think I’ll not go just to make a point.

The fallen~Sparrow~Hawk: A Portrait

The painting, April 9, 2002

The road to Monreith estate is bordered by a curb-side of exotic foliage in luxuriant single file on one’s approach. It decides to begin a few hundred yards from the gates and impalpably announces the exotica to come.

I would need the knowledge of a botanist to name the huge red tubas which adorn a bush on entering the garden of Monreith House; gigantic deep red and pink tubas here and there. On the grounds were many species of tree and bush and flower; I recognised some from a previous visit to Kew gardens.

Out of nerves, I bided my time by taking a stroll around the grounds. A path lead me to the white loch, the whole place buzzed with birdsong; a veritable symphony of birds happy in their environment of exotic trees.

There were several privately own cottages on the grounds besides the South cottage at the entrance and the north cottage at the extreme end of the Loch. I did not go as far as the boat house, but I saw the ruined keep of Myrton castle.

The lands of myrton (village of the miry place. Old Norse) belonging to the Maxwells of Monreith (Gaelic; Moine riabhach, grey Moor) previously the McCulluchs, Sir Alexander entertained James 4^th on more than one journey to and from Whithorn.

In the seventeenth century the Maxwells had a home beside the White Loch. They were descended from the first Lord Maxwell in the fifteenth century and inter-married with the McCulluchs of Mryton and the Agnews of Lochnaw.

The path wound along until I caught a glimpse of Monreith House sideways on.

At first impressive, a modest estate house in disrepair on the outside. It reminded me of a plantation estate. Very tall with long bay windows and a circular bay window at the back. Four columns, cracked and peeling, framed a large black door which concealed an interior glass door through which I could see a hallway on the walls of which hung crossed swords, paintings, a large thermometer/weather clock.

No one was in though the doors were both unlocked and stood ajar.

Above Right door; Harmonia

Left Door; Hilaritas

Drawing room; Concordia

I tried the handle and entered.

William Maxwell of Monreith. 1712-1771.

Sir William sat at a huge chair with a letter in hand proffered to an unseen person. Behind him stands Jolly, a mere boy of around fifteen with a cane with an ornate bulbous handle. In gold is written Sir William Maxwell 1712-1771.

The other portraits in the room bare the gold inscriptions in the same gold lettering. Whether these were inscribed by Sir Henry Raeburn, the name in gold on the other painting, maybe these were added later.

I remember the slave’s large eyes, the eyes of a boy. He is holding the cane with a golden bulbous handle, which was to be his destruction.

Mrs Sykes (caretaker) husband was told by Sir Michael Maxwell himself that after flying into a rage Sir William had struck Jolly on the head causing a brain haemorrhage from which the slave died.

If the painting is a posthumous portrait of Sir William then the artist knows the story, either that or it is indeed a terrible irony that Jolly was made to pose brandishing the cane. Nick, a London mate, who emailed me earlier on, seems to think it would be typical of a sadist to make his victim pose with the weapon of punishment, for Nick believes the beatings would have been regular. Jolly is dressed in red embroidered silk.

I feel sad for Jolly, stuck up at Myrton Castle with a cantankerous old man. It is interesting that after his death Monreith House was built, maybe to erase the memory. Jolly, apparently did not reach 25 years of age.

Is there any mystery in the letter Sir William holds in his hand? Has he received news which made him angry? Has he called Jolly to fetch the cane? Is that fear in his eyes? Has he discovered that a local girl is pregnant? The letter looks unread….

Did Sir Henry Raeburn paint the picture?

Notes: I have emailed the Raeburn Archives for an expert to assess whether the painting is a Raeburn who was born  1758; Raeburn would only have been 13 years old, so could not maybe have painted the picture unless posthumous to Jolly’s death. Though he did paint Sir William’s daughter Eglantine.

The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk: Slash and Burn

Slash and Burn, 8 April 2002.

My trip to Belfast threw up a surprise encounter. On Saturday Mike (a friend I met some years ago) introduced me to Richard who, it turned out, was a Scotsman lurking behind his acquired northern Irish accent. Richard was originally, from Dumfries and Galloway. Richard conformed that he not only knew of the Jollyss but said that they wore wigs to hide their frizzy hair, the gene-pool having been so diluted that Jolly’s genes have not strained out. He said he knew a Jean Jolly, before he left for Ireland. He maintains that Jean Jolly traced her family back to the slave and that he married a girl from Dunragit, down the coast from Stranraer. Apparently, William Maxwell got angry and beat him to death. He said that Jean Jolly would be 70 now if she were still alive.

Richard said the Jollys have a kind of grey frizzy hair when it has not been straightened, shaved or covered by a wig.

I returned to the Doon of May last night and it seems the whole sky, in all its vermilions and puce, was greeting me. Turning from the coast up the Culshabbin Road there was a gorgeous sunset. I got a direct and an extremely fortunate lift from a boat-and-plane-enthusiast.

Once the sun went down, I noticed what seemed like a forest fire that seemed a quarter of a mile wide over beyond the entrance to the Doon.  It’s a bit early for slash and burn. On close inspection it looked like a make-shift runway at night or the site of a plane crash. I’ll check it out later on the way to Roy’s.  There was also black smoke billowing on the horizon beyond the clear-fell and the loch. It would be a great background for the book, though it smacks of ‘Gone with the Wind’.

There are two new arrivals plus a baby; Gareth and Hazel have come down from Glasgow and might move into Maddy and Tristan’s bender. It is strange when people arrive. It reminds me of what the Wild West must’ve been like, with the odd wagon arriving at a settlement. White Settlers again. This really is an alternative existence.

Tomorrow, I finally get to gaze upon the face of the portrait of Jolly. It will be strange knowing what I already know. 

The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk; The Commercial, Port William

The Commercial, Portwilliam.      April 3, 2002

I decided today I would go to Portwilliam on the rumour that the Commercial Public House was owned and run by members of the Jolly family. I would have to be discreet. I took the bus from Newton Stewart following a lift from Tristan. I was extremely exhausted. I sat in the Commercial in the company of the landlady and a ginger stray stretched luxuriously in front of an open fire. Her husband, a beefy dark-haired man in his early fifties emerged from the back. He turned out to be loquacious, explaining he had had the pub for a year and was building up custom. He was at present levelling ground out back to make space for two static caravans. His eyes were a translucent brown and I tried to see the face of the slave in his strong jaw-line and deep-set eyes; his hair lacked the legendary frizz. A character came in briefly. He looked like a big English school boy in kaki shorts. When he left the landlord said, “His mother’s just died. He’s burying her tomorrow. Brilliant musician”.

“What’s his name?” I asked in an attempt to get to the subject of surnames”. The landlord said a name I can’t now recall… (Means to an ends).

“Is that a common local name?” I asked, getting warmer.

“Well, yes” said the landlord.

“What are the other local names”, I queried. He reeled off a couple and after a pause he said, “Jolly”.

Bingo! I thought.

“That doesn’t sound like a typical Scottish Name”, I said rolling my cigarette with an air of indifference.

“Well”, he said “There is a rumour…..”

The landlord explained that the Jollys made every attempt to straighten their hair, even to the point of shaving it off. It is well suspected there might be Negro blood there but, the family being reportedly rough Celtic- Rangers-staunch-catholic bunch. I would have to go to Dunragit, but broaching the subject of their slave ancestor would be a very delicate matter.

The landlord turned out not to be a descendant of the young slave and did not confirm the rumour that The Commercial had been owned by them in the past. He did confirm, a) that the Jollys have frizzy hair and, b) that they are a rough lot even down to the children and c) that they all live in Dunragit.

The landlord wanted to know, once I had opened the subject of the slave Jolly, who he married. I told him I was due to visit Monreith House on the Tuesday 9^th and Wednesday 10^th April in order to see the portrait and go through some papers and books of Jolly’s owner to establish how much William Maxwell paid for him. I will research his burial, marriage and arrival and the descendants. Where is he buried?

The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk; Heimweh

Heimweh, April 1, 2002

I’m becoming quite irked by Douglas Botting’s biography of the writer and aristocrat Gavin Maxwell. The irk is in the similarities. I have already quoted the paragraph of his liking for ‘nostalgie de la boue’, but there is a passage written by Gavin Maxwell’s ex-lover, Thomas, that I could relate to and am disturbed by as reflecting my own unease with the here and now.

‘Gavin cut a very romantic, adventurous figure in society but this was only one side of him, for in reality he was two different people – the respectable publics figure, (the aristocratic painter, author, ex-Guards officer and member of learned societies ,and the less respectable one, (the homosexual, the outlaw, the fearful, repressed, inhibited man). So though he was not schizophrenic he often behaved like one – he separated his personalities into two distinct parts and led two compartmentalised lives like everybody who has an unresolved emotional problem, he was a role player (…) Gavin was too fearful to live in his essence, so he lived in his ideal, and, like many people in conflict, he lived as he wished to be, not as he was, he faced life seeking rather than being- for only an integrated person can be – and in this sense he was a genuinely romantic figure, like a knight on a quest.’

The writer, lover or biographer doesn’t take into account the fact of his Chinese star sign; Year of the Tiger. Those born under this restless sign are just that, restless. They are natural loners destined to shift, often loveless, from one adventure to another; boredom being their worst enemy. Reputation is all important to a Tiger and works, creative or otherwise are periodically meted out lest one be entirely forgotten.

There is another quote somewhere about creativity only possible at the place of one’s roots. Gavin Maxwell has to return from his travels and from London to the Western Highlands in order to write.

I’m going in the opposite direction, Western Lowlands towards London. I have never had homesickness before, but looking at my diary and the map of London, I had sudden nostalgia for places as crushingly mundane as Deptford, New Cross, Brockley; basically, the familiar grot that is south-east London. I am so familiar with London it is incredible. I have, in various guises, walked its streets and riverbanks; in love, broke, with friends, after dinner, before and after the theatre, in exploration of a new venue, on a mission of sleaze, desperate, familiar, suited on the way to work as an interpreter, on the way to a gig or a coffee house, the British Library, (the old one), with Alfie, Laurence, Keith and among strangers. I’ve walked tirelessly, like a pilgrim, the route from Earls’ Court to New Cross and back again on a mission of self-destruction mingled with creative revelation; pearls in pigswill. I’ve walked Sundays with girlfriends, through trendy markets with other bewildered fashionable couples; Camden, Greenwich, Pettycoat Lane looking at things I could never afford, lips pursed in arrogance. London, the trail from Nick’s to Wickham Road, to Gary’s to Ben and Jo’s to Keith’s to Soren’s to other people’s lives; to Scotland!

The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk; A real and Virtual Cattle Market

A Real and Virtual Cattle Market. March 31. Easter Sunday

I went to Cloe’s, the herbalist, the day before last and collected some of her herbal potion for asthma. It has Thyme and labelia and elecampangne in 40% alcohol. It is fantastic and instantly appeased my asthma. Cloe also gave Maddy some remedy for external vaginal tearing after the birth.

I had stir fry at Boggy’. He is cute and Pisces/dog, right up my alley. Vicky and Boggy are both Dogs. His children are cute and the youngest, Beadie must be two or three but her use of language is incredible, very articulate indeed.

I got on Gaydar and managed to pin-point gays in Dumfries. Two were year of the Dog, 19, and one was Taurean and another bi-guy, 26, Sagittarius, tiger or cat. The Sagittarian, Andy, left a message and I emailed a more extensive profile of myself. One guy from Ayrshire sent me a message.’ Come over now’, with a dodgy picture. I don’t know, with spring having sprung a shag wouldn’t go amiss. I’ll check out the Dumfries lad, Andy, who sounds eminently up for it.

I am reading the biography of a local writer Gavin Maxwell author of A Ring of Bright Water and of the powerful Maxwells of Monreith. There is a funny quote;

All this too, was part of the man’s contradictory and complex nature, for the knight errant, who pursued a beautiful vision of unattainable freedom and beauty also suffered from nostalgie de la boue’.

I would like to visit Monreith House still. At Boggy’s I read a book of Cloe’s, a collection of short stories of Galloway. Sawney Bean and his cannibalistic cave-dwelling family along the Ayrshire coast, the covenant martyrs drowned tied to a stake in the sea. I must borrow it. Vicky says there is a crest on the Galloway road depicting a slave in shackles. I’ll have to investigate. I’d like to go to The Portwilliam Pub to investigate the Jolly’s as they own it.

I would like to incorporate the Isle of Whithorn digs. Irma said she became quite possessive over the body she found, sneaking out at night to scrupulously brush the dirt away with a toothbrush. I don’t know what I’ll do with the info. I don’t want anything trite. It doesn’t have to be a murder mystery; the life of the Jolly character will do, unless I stumble upon a secret.

The rumour of a painting hidden away in a locked room made me curious. Also the mystery that the young blackamoor slave may have been flogged to death by his master was of great interest; though both of these rumours are as yet unproved.

In Newton Stewart I was tempted to enter the cattle market but unfortunately it was closing. It was about five o’clock and most of the farmers were in the pubs across the road; which reminds me of Gaydar. Gaydar, the social networking site for gay men, seems to have a stratospheric hierarchical categorisation system. When I tried Quick – Search - Bi-Guys, I got a list of those available in Scotland-rest, but when I clicked on one I was told I would have to join as a ‘Gold Member’, which my friend Alan tells me is a fee-paying customer. How and why these bi-sexual guys are herded into a pen of elite heifers, I don’t know. It was the same with a ‘Business Men’ and a ‘Professionals’; when I tried to access one I got the same curt reply. How they, at Gaydar, decide the pecking order is beyond me. Maybe having a job gains one points. There is a ‘Platinum Membership’ which obviously houses within its hallowed lists British aristocracy and members of parliament. One can obviously ask to be Gold or Platinum member and thus benefit from a triage of the rabble. Pedigree on Gaydar; it’s like the levels on the Titanic. I must explore this virtual cattle market which has gone très Animal Farm, ONE JOB GOOD, NO JOB BAD’.  Is normal membership the equivalent of steerage, a virtual sticky carpeted rusty hold where blow-jobs and loos cohabit in a swill of beer and vomit and where  un-Happy Hour never ceases? And the fee-paying look down on the plagued and palsied below? Probably. Must check my E-Mail.

The Queen Mother died yesterday. 101 years old?!

The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk; Birdsong and Engine Sound

Birdsong and Engine Sound March 26 2002

Last night was a false alarm. Maddy did not give birth and I awoke to the absence of the midwives’ vehicles. At first, I thought the deed done and announced such around the Doon. Alison, however, wanted to visit before she left for the south and, once up there, found out.  The midwives came again this afternoon and are still at Maddy and Tristan’s.

I, however, have taken the time to go and sit by the loch without Horse, the dog, who tirelessly begs for sticks to be thrown, and is sadly a distraction. Instead I sit on a promontory made by a single large rock with a sparkling view of Mochrum loch.

There is a cacophony of recognisable and unrecognisable sounds, mostly the calling of geese, mallards and gulls flown in from the nearby coast. (At present there is a knocking, as on wood, which I believe to be deer butting against trees.) These are birds that prefer moorland and mountain freshwater lochs and streams. Apparently these are barnacle geese from Spitsbergen, via Iceland some 1,500 to 1,800 mile north, 3000 of them. Pink-faced geese from Iceland and Greenland. Greylag and Greenland whitefronts and some Baikal geese from eastern Russia and western bean geese. There are whooper swans, golden plover, oyster catcher, curlew, denting pigtail, scup, knot, widgeon, redshank, teal, ringed plover, bee-tailed godwit, plus hen harriers, marlins, peregrine falcons and kestrels.

The loch’s habitat for goosanders, mergansers, golden eye, tufted ducks, pintail, sparrow-hawks, buzzards, barn owls, swifts, swallows, sedge warblers, willow tits, pied fly catchers and grasshopper warblers.

The birdsong is drowned out by the occasional roar of fighter jets from a nearby RAF training ground. They shriek over a clear skyline and drop mock bombs on to a private beach between Auchenmalg and Portwilliam. The pilots are obviously aware of people watching from below because they get a bit flash executing all kinds of manoeuvres.

Cormorants stand sentry on the rocks out in the centre of the loch. They seem to be competing with the noise of the gulls.

The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk; A Full Moon

A Full Moon                                                27-28 March, 2002

At quarter to midnight my mobile phone rang and Tristan’s voice announced, “Maddy is in labour….. The midwives willl be due within a few hours; I’ve given them your number.” As planned, Maddy hoped she would have her child on the full moon and, indeed, it’s a big juicy one with a thin wisp of cloud passing over her face like a coy lady behind a veil. Shortly after Tristan’s call, I received one from the midwife; she would arrive in about twenty five minutes. I said I would be waiting. It is my task to guide the midwives up the path and into the woods along muddy tracks and over burns up towards the Doon behind which Maddy and Tristan have erected a superb bender in preparation for the arrival of their child.

Ladened with oxygen cylinders in holdalls and numerous drugs we, Helen and Carol, wellies on and torches flashing, made our way to Maddy’s. As it is her first birth, labour could last well into the morning and beyond. Apart from Helen, (The first midwife to arrive), nearly hitting a stray bull on the road, it is all going fine. Maddys’ contractions are half an hour apart and Tristan seems calm having been awoken from sleep.

When the news came through of the labour I paged Brett and Jenny and left a message on Alison’s’ mobile. Having had a child here herself she, Alison, will probably not stir to investigate until tomorrow; Tristan will phone me once the baby is born.

I walked up on to the top of the Doon and offered a prayer to the moon and the Goddess for the safe delivery of the child and for Maddy’s health.

I was amazingly aware of the seasons today; the buds are on the trees, geese are coming and going, the days are miraculously longer and all this wonderful cycle of winter, spring, summer and autumn… and winter. Now, today is enhanced by the possible birth of a child, with a stray bull on the loose to boot!

The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk; Clear-fell

Clear-fell    March 27, 2002

It dawned on me that the area of cleared trees that stretches out to the loch is called ‘clear-fell’. When I first grasped the sound I thought it was ‘clearfeld’; it could easily be the origin of this Afrikaner word as with ‘field made ready for planting’.

Today, though there is a chill wind blowing, I fancy the loch shore. I might identify some of the birds with the help of a book and a pair of binoculars.

There are mole hills pocking the farmer’s field by us and the occasional badger has been spotted. There is also an otter which I would love to see.

I am living off oats in the morning and whatever potatoes I can find. There is also rice and cabbages. It is possible to sustain life and limb this way.

Roy, who I have only seen once since I got back, told me to beware crossing the moors as it is lambing season and the sheep and the rams can get pretty boisterous in defence of their young. I have already had a run-in with them once in the Lake District. Roy said an acquaintance of his was first knocked over and, because their backs are flat, he was bounced around for a good while and came out of the experience pretty beat up and sore. I think I’ll take the road to Roy’s for the moment.

Mentioning the clear-fell, the caravan I have been staying in since my return from Glasgow is on the edge of the clear-fell and will, because of the dampness, be swarming with midges come the right conditions. I hope they don’t come indoors.

Green funerals, I’ve been looking into it. I wouldn’t mind becoming a green funerals broker. There are apparently 150 woodland areas which allow woodland burials. There are coffin makers and painters and designers of urns for ashes. There are also celebrants, 9 I think. (That is the word for those who hold ceremonies?). Many people would like to design the ceremony themselves, but if I could have agents working for me, for whom I get bookings then they could orchestrate the whole thing. I would like to visit one on the 14^th. I must do it properly though. I would like to drive. Get the manual or handbook of locations for £12 something. I’ll send a postal order. I would like to visit each woodland area to describe it to people and create a package that of course is cheaper than the normal funeral. I must research the whole thing.

Anyway, I screamed at Mark for having, as he put it, ‘been forgiven by Debbie’ ( thus forgiving himself lightly), which I didn’t think was fair. I lied and said I had spoken with her and that I had a boyfriend and that I only went with men who had girlfriends. He text me the words. ‘You cunt’ and ‘You should be happy now you’ve destroyed me in every way!’

The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk; Babes in the Woods

Babes in the woods 26, March 2002

Life at the Doon has settled into its normal pattern of peace and isolation. Since my return from Glasgow the weather has become markedly milder. The geese are migrating in a racket of twos and threes and larger groups, the days are longer and the gorse is in bloom. Maddy’s only a few days away or even hours away from giving birth. The other day I found her asleep on the Doon, a lone figure wrapped in green tartan facing her first labour. The midwives have come and left cases, oxygen bottles and sundry syringes in case they are needed.

Today Maddy is preparing a dinner. Tristan, her boyfriend, is an absolute treasure of a handyman and as well as being hansom is taking the whole business calmly. He has built wonderful shelves and a worktop. I feel absolutely pathetic in comparison.

I haven’t yet decided where I want to live though I suppose I could take over Maddy and Tristan’s bender when they leave in April. They have carpets and a beautiful space, but I have to make an effort if I am to stay here. One really has to be hands-on for this type of life. There would be some satisfaction in making a cosy nest rather than being ‘on the fence’ and betwixt and between re. this life-style.

The problem I have is money. My interpreting jobs are just not enough at present to sustain me. Ben has forgiven me for not paying the phone bill and there is a bill here that will need paying. I have to get money soon. E-mail is much cheaper.

Today was a conservation work day and last night Boggy brought his horse over called Azoule, meaning blue in Spanish. I quite like Boggy. It’s a shame he got drunk and burnt himself falling over the stove. We removed some old rusty fencing to make way for a paddock for goats and a horse. Azoule was yoked up and dragged some heavy trunks along the track.

Between here and maybe the end of April I have no money whatsoever so I must just starve. Mark might come to Glasgow for a few days which will be nice.

It would be nice if Jill Foster liked The Cuckoo’s Diary and had it adapted as a film. There are lots of fantastic characters, The Major, the Captain, D Deveer and the boys, Beccy and the governmental hunting party, Madhatter and Beanie and Mark Burrows the protagonist. It would really highlight hunting and the massacre would be a just sacrifice. Please, please. I will phone more publishers. Mark will probably print out more copies of The Cuckoo’s Diary. If it is accepted then I can go and help the screenwriter with it and watch the filming. It would mean money hopefully lots of it to party and live well. Fingers crossed.

The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk: Zena the Cleaner

Zena the Cleaner                                        March 10, 2002

Irma had heard the story of  Jolly from Zena. Zena was part of a team of cleaners employed at Monreith House. The first thing she said when, having traced her number through a Kirsty, was,  Zena told me that Jolly is depicted standing by the side of a seated  Maxwell in the dining room. The painting is kept ‘downstairs in Sir Michael’s living quarters. Jolly came to Monreith in the 17 hundreds and married a local girl. Proof of the marriage was erased by their children. I would like to know where Jolly is buried. Why the parish has no record of the wedding or death. How much was paid for Jolly and from where was he bought.

I had strange dreams about nappy-headed locals.

There is a high infant mortality rate among the Jolly descendants and I wonder whether it was because the Jollys were throw-backs. Was he flogged to death or was that Irma-say. Anyway, I’ve thought of the song Strange Fruit about lynching in the Deep South. It could easily have happened to Jolly in Monreith.

I am up in the air at the moment. I don’t know where this is leading. Should I pursue the Jolly story? I want to get the bus from Auchanmalg to Whithorn and maybe hang out in the pub there. It would be good to speak to the descendants. Maybe one of them will spill the beans on what went on.

The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk: For He's A Jolly Good Fellow

For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow                                     March 9. 2002

In Newton Stewart library are the Old Kirkyard Parish Memorials of Dunragit.

Francis Jolly who lost 5 children between the ages of birth and 15 yrs. Another Jolly also lost children.

I haven’t established if the slave was indeed a Jolly. I do, however, know that a painting exists. Today I phoned Elrig House. I tactlessly asked if it was open to the public and was curtly told no, probably by the laird. I rang back and spoke to a woman in an eastern European accent. She said she knew of the painting of the slave and that it was at Monreith House. Unfortunately, Sir Maxwell was presently away. I tried to phone Monreith House but got an answer message in a Yorkshire accent.

So, the painting is a mystery, or will Sir Michael Maxwell let it be seen? What does it depict? Why was the slave painted and who was the artist? Who ruled the house? How far back do the Jollys go? Is there a time when the name is untraceable?

The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk; Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead                                                      March 8, 2002

Yesterday was simply all systems go. The batteries were finally connected to the generator and the volt meter read a healthy 12 volts which we must try to sustain because they wear out quicker if they are allowed to run below 12v. The inverter was attached by a cigarette car lighter plug and socket and into the normal socket we put a four socket extension. The lap top sprang into life; Then the answer machine and on pure wind power! I was able to charge my mobile phone. Pure luxury.

Meanwhile, next door, in the office static caravan, Maddy was being checked over by the midwives. They were due back again later on today to check the position of her bender which, having not yet been built caused  Maddy to want to put them off from coming round. They need to do a risk assessment given Maddy’s age etc. A group of us, nevertheless, dragged hazel bender poles and tarps up to the designated site. Today, they are preparing to erect the bender.

I asked Roy about the veracity of the slave Jolly story and, having never heard of it himself, put it down as a colourful rumour. I wondered if the locals weren’t doing a Margaret Mead on me. Margaret Mead was an anthropologist who wrote a famous book on the sexual habits of a certain tribe. She had gleaned her knowledge by talking to various women who each had a spicy tale to tell. Miss Mead did not know, however, that asking a direct question is considered highly rude and that sex and talk of it is equally highly taboo. It was only when other anthropologists followed in her tracks that they realised that everything in her book was bunk and fanciful lies told by the natives….who must have laughed themselves silly. What is the truth re. the Jolly family.

The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk; Negro in the Woodpile

Negro in the Woodpile                                            March 6, 2002

I left the Doon of May for the bike ride to the Isle of Whithorn yesterday at 10.30am. I took the coast road past Port William, Monreith, and Glaserton. I passed Dave painting a house, I had met Dave and Irma the previous year when I drove up with a friend Nick for a May Day festival, I had liked them instantly. Dave said Irma would be home and pleased to see me. Irma, a lovely Dutch woman, actually looked like the portrait of a Dutch woman by Breughel une jollie laide, a Caucasian simian with vibrant eyes. Irma is married twenty years with two children. The ride there is about 18 miles, most of it pretty level, with one major ascent to Monreith. The Maxwell family have, for some centuries, been the Lairds up at Monreith House.

After making me tea and some food after my long bike ride, Irma said “There is a tale that certain inhabitants who carry the surname Jolly are “exceedingly good dancers. The woman responsible for moving from the original draughty house to Monreith house in front of the White Loch apparently had a slave shipped over from Jamaica or aome other island. This slave obviously sowed his wild oats in Dunragit whose gene pool was already very weak through the inevitability of incest over generations, there being only two other surnames. That was prior to the arrival of the black slave 'Jolly’’ according to Irma, due to inbreeding the inhabitants are extremely ugly. So, the descendants of the slave, though white, show signs of ‘good rhythm and their hair is short and tightly curled’. Sounded like a bad joke or a racist cliché. He is, apparently, not talked about, this ancestor. “After siring these half-caste children Jolly attempted to escape. When caught, rumour has it, he was whipped to death. In Monreith house there is a locked room which has a painting in which the slave is depicted. No one else is allowed to see it”.

Irma said that the lady who up and moved to Monreith had it built slap-bang in the middle of a stone circle to get all the energy, selfishly, for herself.

Dunragit and other villages have lost a lot of men in the two wars, along the route are monuments naming the dead; Sad!

I think I’ll have to go investigate the story of Jolly the slave. I should have a word with the caretaker. I looked in the phone book and there is, indeed, a number under that name. I will hang out in the local pub and pick up some local history in Dunragit.

The cycle back was against blustering winds and I’m shattered.

The midwives are coming to inspect Maddy tomorrow. She’s insistent on the place she’s chosen for the bender. The child will come by the end of the month.

The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk; Sap Rising

Sap Rising                                       March 5, 2002

From the pier at the Isle of Whithorn you can see five kingdoms the kingdom of Wales; The kingdom of England; The kingdom of Scotland (on which you stand); the kingdom of Ireland and the fifth? Look around, the kingdom of God.

Saint Ninian brought Christianity to Scotland from Ireland through Galloway. Apparently, he travelled centuries ago in Curagha, wood framed boats covered in ox hides made water-proof with grease. The sails were woven wool. Tristan, Maddy’s boyfriend made one and sailed from Brittany around the coast of Ireland west and past Scotland.

The land hereabout was staunchly Presbyterian and had serious run-ins with Charles II. Many talk of the ‘killing times’ when King Charles’ dragoons hunted those most resistant to the Church of England and slaughtered them on the spot. All over Galloway are tombstones to the martyrdom of those killed. Somewhere, hereabout, is a stake to which they tied the dissenters, when the tide came in they drowned.

Roy mentioned the change in fishing over the last few decades which lead to the depletion of trout, flatfish, tarp and basking sharks. From the beam net and trap nets and gill nets the big trawlers use mile-long nets and indiscriminately haul in everything; those fish too small for the table are turned into compost for the land which is mainly acidic.

Free Kirk, those who live in the North of Scotland and on the Isle of Skye. They are fanatic believers who shun mirth, music, drinking and dancing and those who do all of the above. A couple of bender dwellers made their way, on hearsay, to the Doon yesterday from Skye looking for people they might have parity with; John and Magna and their two children. They looked ragged and weary. Bewildering, they reminded me of Wild West frontier folk who might have broken with a wagon trail and gone in search of better land and opportunity. Brett and Alison were impressed with them and also grateful that their kids now had others to play with.