So, after the four of us miss the Ferry from Mull to Oban....oh my god...don't ask....they tell us, after we yell and scream for a while....and get called Americans...... that there is a smaller ferry coming for 5 cars....WHAT!?? So we end up on this amazing crossing on this teeny fairy......that was actually my first instint on the spelling of Ferry.....hehehe....and the sun is all shining.....George spies a seal... Auntie Pat and Ma are happy and have their shades on like movie stars.....
We drive down the coast of Loch Fyne and I find myself in this little quaint fishing town in western Scotland....near the Isle of Bute.... I don’t care how juvenille it sounds....that words sounds like....looks like...Butt....and reminds me of a movie that I saw at my friend Thom’s house called ‘Lust in the Dust’ starring Tab Hunter, Divine and Lainie Kazan......in which you see the last two’s stunt asses... if you don’t know what I mean.... or believe it, watch the movie. I digressed....man...Tarbert is a town from Ma and Auntie Pat’s youth....travelling with them has been a treat...going on a trip somewhere is all well and good but going with people who know the area...who grew up in it is a fine thing...places you never might go....histories you never would have known....after hearing so many pearls of wisdom from them for 5 days it was a wonder that one day I turned and asked about a castle and Auntie Pat looked at me and said....’Oh, I don’t know!’....I guess I ask alot of questions....we stopped in a town called Kilmartin....a place their Uncle Angus and Auntie Kate lived a full life...going to their greater rewards at the amazing ages of 93 and 96, respectively. Their is a churchyard in the tiny town of Kilmartin that houses ‘standing stones’. From what I gather... after reading about them for years and chatting with Auntie and Ma...that ‘standing-stones’ are stones that were fashioned and placed in the ground hundreds of years ago....and no one....NO ONE....knows why...I think the wicans think they do....I am sure the druids might know....but no one is admitting to it. They are so...ancient...and being around them gives me a great excitement....I want to know the secrets...I want to find a clue...one stands like a watcher in the cemetary at Kilmartin... which houses alot of medival gravestones...
...which I thought were ‘standing stones’ and got a bit confused ...I mean they were very cool...don’t get me wrong...some of them had warriors and celtic inscriptions on them and them but they just didn’t seem mystic enough..and then ....camera in hand....I turned around and there was stone rising from the ground in front of me with a .....was it?.....yes, it was... a face....like the faces I have seen in pictures of the self same stones in books and magazines of the stones on Easter Island.... a big idol....it stopped me in my tracks. It is the only one that I have no picture of. I guess I had stood looking at it for such a length of time I had worn my camera battery out....or had I? HOOOOOOOOO!
No, really, it was very moving and cool. We found Uncle Angus’s and Auntie Katie’s shared plot....with their lovely stone...Auntie Pat told me that Angus died some years before Katie .... when Katie passed someone played a bagpipe song that had been written for her during her lifetime, and carried her from her home, where she died, across the road to her resting place. I don’t know why this story affected me so....but it made my eyes water, as it did Auntie Pat...and we sat silent for a moment in the small hotel where we were eating our lunch... she...Haggis.... me....Egg Mayo....like Egg Salad but heavy on the mayo.... Anyhow....when George and I found their headstone...I took a picture of it...
which is probably all kinds of bad luck...or weird...but I didn’t even think of it..... and then I turned right around to photograph their view......it was a gorgeous view. They lived a long life, in the place they loved and went into the ground together to look out over the fields.....
Should we all be so lucky.
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