Saturday 26th July is a red-letter day in the calendars of many from South Lewis, because it's the Lochs Agricultural Show. The Lochs area is in the central south of Lewis, just at the foot of the Clisham hills that divide Lewis from Harris (I think I've said before that they aren't separate islands, geographically at least). So on a baking hot day me and Bon* got in the van and made our way there.
I've always liked agricultural shows - I used to be quite a fan in my earlier days, because I used to show things, horses in particular but also, as I've alluded to earlier, guinea-pigs - but I must admit I really like looking at the animals, and the stalls, and I do like to drink tea out of a polystyrene cup. It's a small show, but the cars were already lining the (single) road and the carpark was already full of land rovers and trailers. Beyond the inevitable bouncy castles lay tents full of photography, baking, vegetables, flower-arranging, knitting, and various crafts, but the bit I like best is the farm animal classes. Such fantastic sheep you never see out on the fields. Huge rams (and ewes) with curly horns, and an entire flock of (well, about 7) smaller sheep who appeared to have been dyed orange for the day. Apparently it's a common thing - nobody seems to think it's odd - and a small knowledgeable boy in a football shirt, who I had seen wrestling sheep into pens a moment earlier, told me it was 'stuff to bring their coats up'. Sure enough, they were springy as anything. (I don't think the orange can be a religious thing - it's more of a dark peach really - and there weren't any corresponding pens of green sheep, but then Lewis is a Protestant island). Bonnie, as an unemployed Working Beardie, has always been keen on sheep, and despite the heat and her interesting intestinal condition (she is currently 'under' the excellent vet in Stornoway, Hector Low, not now for her neck, but for digestive issues you wouldn't want me to explain further) she was completely riveted.
A rousing introductory speech about the state of island life and its political challenges was given by Lesley Riddoch, a prominent Scottish broadcaster and commentator, who managed to be both controversial and friendly at the same time. She's written a book about the Hebrides, cycling pretty much the same route I've done (I don't envy her being on a bike) and was on the committee that successfully oversaw the islanders' buy-out of the Island of Eigg, so she knows a thing or two. The main issues include (and this is partly for John Alderson, who I think likes the political bits) land ownership, where to put wind-farms and who gets the proceeds, how to create sustainable enterprise on the islands and stop exporting just raw materials (wool, seaweed, milk, fish) for other people to finish and get the profit, the status of the Gaelic language (particularly in education), why they can't get money from the government to build footpaths, how to keep young people here, Sunday ferries, the demise of the fisheries, and the increase in the 'de-crofting' of land to build houses - the converse being the lack of housing for people's families who want to stay on the islands. I'm not sure which of these she touched on in the speech and which in her book, which I've just finished, but that's a summary of the hot topics here at the moment, I think.
After her introduction, we got down to the business of comparing two Shetland ponies with each other (OK, the entries to the classes were small), judging the orange sheep, and awarding rosettes to chickens. An enterprising person was grilling salmon for sale, there was the inevitable face-painting, and a sheep-shearing demonstration that had Bonnie quivering and whining to the extent that I had to take her away. I went and touched one of the fleeces in the heap - after they're taken off, they're amazingly white inside where it's been close to the sheep's skin, and also very oily: your hand comes away shiny. That's the lanolin that makes them so waterproof, I guess. The sheep-shearer was encouraging kids to come and have a go (I was really tempted, but didn't want to compete with the island children who might make a career of it based on this one encounter) and later, after it was over, I saw him talking to someone else while a curly-headed two-year-old boy was holding the (switched-off) shears and pretending to use them. The little boy then giggled and ran away, and from the speed of the sheep-shearer's pursuit of him I guess the lad was his own. So he's going to be proficiently shearing before he's five, I should imagine.
There was an exhibition of 'waulking the tweed', which is stretching wet tweed to make it ready for the tailor (it shrinks as it dries, and then won't shrink after it's made up into garments). This is done by a row of women sitting each side of a trough full of water, simultaneously banging the tweed in and picking it up and pulling it. There are special 'waulking songs' that go with this, which these women just about remembered, that they use to keep the rhythm - a bit like the songs the American soldiers sing when they're marching. They're a sort of call-and-response in Gaelic, and the women insert odd bits of gossip and teasing into the verses. At the end of each length of tweed they pat and pass up the tweed for folding, and there's another special kind of song that goes with folding it up and patting it flat. The demonstration was done on a dry table, rather than round the rather less salubrious trough, and you had the impression that these weren't women who normally did this kind of thing (they were too young, for a start, and were a bit hesitant about the singing) but there was an older lady at the end, knitting, whose job it was to check and see whether the tweed was ready at the end of each song. She looked a lot more like she'd been involved in the real thing. (Tweed is going through a bit of a tricky time at the moment - there are now only two ageing independent weavers, without apprentices, in the islands. They work on hand looms. The rest of production comes from one factory, recently bought up by a business consortium who has reduced the range from over 5,000 different designs to just eight, mainly men's jackets. It means that independents can't sell anything except raw tweed (not made-up designs) and only in a limited range of colours. And the factory's policy means that many colours are falling out of knowledge - and most of them used to be made with natural dyes, collected around the islands, which is another side-industry gone. Anyone who's a clothing designer who wants to work in tweed, come up here immediately - the independent weavers need you.)
Best of all I met Dawn Susan, a basket-weaver who Annie knows, who** we were to have done a basket-making workshop with on July 22 but it was full. She had her own stall (you can see some of her baskets on the web at thewesternisles.co.uk/baskets), and spoke very highly of Island life -she moved from London 18 years ago - and we discussed, among many things, the challenges of growing tomatoes in polytunnels up here (they don't ripen: the light coming through the plastic isn't strong enough, and the growing season is too short). I bought from her a basket woven in several shades of willow, which is practical as well as smelling lovely. And of course some marmalade, among other things, from the other stalls. I couldn't quite bring myself to buy any decorated eggs, but I had a useful encounter with the woman who made them, who it turns out is a member of the Working Beardie Society (created so that people with non-pedigree dogs like Bonnie could register them and breed them) and may know where to get a Bonnie-like puppy. Shh. Don't tell the Bon.
Annie had warned me about the cake at these events. Before anything like this happens, the women of the community (presumably while their husbands are out dyeing sheep orange) bake their socks off, and the result is a tea canteen populated by (as well as the perennial enormous teapots) trays, and trays, and trays of ever-replenished cake. I'm afraid I wasn't going to hold back at this event (I don't know if you can tell from the photos I am getting wider - but what the heck, I'm brown) and even took some home at the end. And the enterprising ladies, realising that many people would get home late after a tiring day, had made takeaway curry and rice to reheat for later, for those who wanted it. (I had a veggie one, which tasted very nice, although the potatoes were crunchy).
The presentation of prizes (from on top of a curtain-sided 'Hebridean Haulage' trailer) at the end was quite draw out, mainly because of the reticence of the islanders in coming up on the stage ('And congratulations to Shona MacDonald for winning the Lochs Challenge Cup, sponsored by MacIvers, for the most points in the home craft section. Shona? Where's Shona? She must be here somewhere. Well, can any of the other MacDonalds come and take it for her? I can see about fifteen of you from here. Ah, here she is. Well done Shona!') Because the entry was relatively small (this show last ran in 2002, and has been revived) two farmers seemed to share most of the trophies, with one chap barely able to carry his off the stage. They also drew the raffle for a car, which I was grateful not to have won (although cash equivalent would have been OK). What puzzled me a bit was the lack of applause, despite the size of the crowd standing there. The only thing I can think of is that competition is not really part of this culture, and people are very communally-minded - and if you win, someone else has to lose. So despite Lesley Riddoch's exhortations to give so-and-so a big round of applause, it was rather slow going. It's a bit hard to give prizes to people who don't want to win. I think most people go to these things for what's called 'the ceilidh' - I've recently learned that this isn't a dance, it's any event where people get together and socialise and swap news - and while it may include music and dancing, it doesn't have to. So if any Gaelic speaker says 'thanks for the ceilidh' when you leave their house, you may now understand why, even if you've only been there for a cup of tea.
On the way out, an old-timer insisted on giving me his phone number so I could come and camp on his croft at Carloway on the west side, when I finally got over there (I was meant to go today, but ended up sunbathing all day and not going anywhere). I have just realised I was meant to ring him between 8 and 9 tonight and have forgotten, thereby cementing the reputation of the feckless, faithless English. However, I do feel a bit funny going over to camp on the field of a complete stranger, even if everyone round here can probably recite his family tree from memory right back to the Norsemen. All he would have to do is lock the field gate with my van in it, and that would be me. Caught forever in a life of baking and sheep-wrestling. At least I know I can get the cake-tins and the sheepshit-proof trousers at Lewis Crofters - if he ever allows me out.
*My mother would comment here that it's meant to be 'Bon and I' and not 'Me and Bon'. Because we are the subject of the verb. Now you can see where I get it from.
** Another comment from my virtual mother. See, you don't actually need your parents to be present at all - once you get the hang of them, you can have whole conversations with them inside your head. So yes, I am using 'who' and not 'whom' and 'with whom'. Unless I'm in particularly posh company, I just can't do 'whom'. Even to my mother.
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