The Romesdal Blog

It is mid January in the year 2007.

Hello all you people in blogland. My name is Joe and I have decided to create this blog to help pass the long, dark, winter nights; and also to inform, educate and amuse, just like the BBC, only without the TV and radio stations. The cast of characters will include cattle, sheep, some humans and a bearded collie cross who goes by the name of Jay. The weather will get more than a passing mention.

I have recently arrived on Skye from London, where the nice people of my previous employment, which funnily enough was the BBC, kindly set me free. There was not enough work to go around, they said, so they asked for volunteers to leave and for me it was a first, to take one step forward that is, instead of two steps back.

But where are those Highland cattle as, after all, this is a site dedicated to them? In the field in front of the house is the answer, vainly trying to munch grass where no grass has grown since last year. The field also is sodden from far too much rain. There has been gale after gale since I came here at Christmas and it makes you wonder when it will all end, the gales that is. Blame global warming and very large carbon footprints if you will, but please Lord, just give me a dry day or three.

On previous pages of this website you may have noticed that Romesdal is a 'croft' but failed to understand what this parochial little term means. Well, I will tell you. Around here they say a croft is a small piece of land surrounded by regulations and they are mostly right, for every week brings a new crop of departmental directives through the letterbox.

Now some Crofters may await eagerly this detritus, like deep sea fishes in anticipation of the next descending dead whale, but most, probably just can't be bothered. For the non Gaelic interlopers it might just as well be in Gaelic and for the Gaelic, perhaps Albanian or Swahili, as the English it is written in makes little sense to me. Also, the EU seems to figure prominently, lurking in the preface and snapping in the end paragraph, with a circle of stars as a nice logo. Maybe it is code?

But what more of our brave Highlanders? Still trying to munch non existing grass, I'm afraid, in the still sodden field. Not that they are starved or starving, just hungry and bemused that the winter has caused them to be so dependent on the the perpendicular ones, who feed them hay and buckets of bruised oats mixed with shreds (which is is a by-product of sugar beet) and topped with tasty, cattle cobs. The blaggards! Once the summer comes the horns are out for them, or so my tiny imagination imagines them thinking. And that is because, like us, cattle can't survive on fresh air, rain and a nice view. They also need feeding in the winter, which means every day, Sundays and holidays of obligation no exception.

Till the next time.
16/01/2007