Sabhal Mor Ostaig, Isle of Skye, 1st April 2000

2000 has been a quiet year. We have gone our longest period ever without a gig. We stopped playing during Rod’s move to Kirkcaldy. Skinz, the other guy who organises a lot of gigs, has been snowed under at his work leaving no free time for his shitty punk band. When we were playing all the time people would phone us constantly asking us to play, but if we don’t play then the offers begin to dry up as well. Out of sight, out of mind. Everybody wants to play gigs and the gigs are out there if you just want to ask for them, but without Rod and Skinz’s prodding we’re just too lazy.

Deek Allan of seminal Edinburgh vegan-core band Oi Polloi has been getting back to his roots. He’s let his hair grow into a Mel Gibson Braveheart style and has been studying Gaelic. To get himself fluent he has moved to the Isle of Skye to study for a year at the Gaelic College there. He invites us up to play. We’ll lose money but it’s been so long since we were away on a trip that we jump at the chance.

We arrange a van and I’m driving. There’s no cash left in the band kitty and so everyone has to put up twenty quid to get in the van. Lynne, her kids and her boyfriend Brad have gone up on the Friday and booked a Bed and Breakfast. The rest of us plus our two hangers-on, Nick and Barbara from Edinburgh, are leaving first thing Saturday morning. In a hire van it should take five or six hours. We could get almost get to London quicker.

On Saturday morning I sleep in. Skinz arrives to give me a lift to the van place while I’m still in the shower. We’re 45 minutes late to pick up the van. We’re at the end of a queue of ten people. After half an hour we get to the front. The guy bringing our van in is still in Bathgate, it will take at least an hour for it to get here. Great.

An hour and a half later and our van turns up.

‘Fucking hell, look I’m sorry about this, pal. You’ve been really good about this,’ says the guy in charge.

‘Don’t worry about it. Shit happens, eh?’ I reply. Note how reasonable I’m being. I’ll come back to this later on.

We start doing the rounds, picking people up, stopping for carry-outs etc. We get to Glenrothes to pick up Dave Peggie and his pal, Dave Mackie from Paisley. It’s now midday. The sun is high and it looks like the perfect spring day for a trip to the Highlands.

Going north we start to count lochs. Loch Leven is one. Loch Faskally is two. Ah but wait, Loch Faskally is a man-made loch created by damming the River Tay at Pitlochry, according to smart cunt Skinz, so it doesn’t count. I count it to myself but don’t let on. Loch Laggan definitely counts, being both huge and natural.

Once again we would probably have been quicker had we gone by Crianlarich but this time the fuck-up is mine. We see another loch. Rod, the world’s most pish map-reader, tries to find out what it’s called. He declares it a previously unnamed loch. I claim it. From this point hence it shall be known as Loch Adam.

‘Oh wait,’ says Rod, ‘naw - it’s still Loch Laggan.’

The radio signal fades to nothing. We miss a couple of turns. This is a pretty good achievement as there are only about three turnings the whole way between Fife and Skye - a right, on a bit, a left, on a big bit and right. Our recovery from the wrong turns leads us fifteen miles along single track roads. The back-of-the-van drivers are so smart after the event.

We stop at some twelve foot high teuchter clan monument. Rod proves how smart he is by scrambling to the top and being unable to get down. A flock of sheep roam past. Everyone makes really predictable jokes to Gav.

Barbara begins to feel sick in the back of the van. So would I after a couple of hundred miles back there with those cunts. She comes into the front. Barbara, Nicky’s girlfriend, is an Austrian who now lives in Edinburgh. Her English is perfect and, if nobody told you, you would assume she’d been born and raised in Scotland. As we get further north and the mountains get higher I spend more time with my head jammed against the windscreen trying to see some peak or other. Barbara just shrugs.

‘In Austria we wouldn’t even call these mountains,’ she chides.

Loch Oich is loch number seven or eight, depending on whether you counted Faskally. We see the Five Sisters (five very, very big mountains). I stop the van, it’s as good a place for a piss-stop as anywhere.

‘Wow,’ everyone except Barbara goes.

‘They’re not even pointed,’ says Barbara. Oh fuck off.

I’m just stopping willy nilly whenever I see something that looks interesting. Eilean Donan Castle, the Highlander castle - not a real castle. It’s been reconstructed from a ruin. Cluanie Dam. I remember that. Kyle of Lochalsh. Very picturesque. The Skye Bridge. The toll is five pounds, a sky-diver, or even a Skye-diver. Five pounds each way. Fucking hell, I’m glad I don’t live here.

We’re going to Ardvasar which is as far south as you can go on Skye. The countryside is bleak. If it was red it might look like the surface of Mars. The European Union has built a new straight road through the neo-Martian scrub for which we are extremely grateful. You can see the old pre-EU single track road winding it’s way along side us. It looks like it would be difficult to drive a sheep along this road never mind anything with a motor in it.

When we figure we’re nearly there we pop our new Saltire flag out of the window. The resident Skye gale catches it and it’s almost lost. We try a house. It’s the wrong one. We ask at the Youth Hostel and they don’t know what we’re talking about. We put the flag away and drive on.

We see another house that looks a likely suspect. We get the flag out and tramp to the front door. We bang the door, the windows, scramble round the back and peer in the kitchen. It’s not here. We put the flag away and jump back in the van again.

A car comes up the road and pulls into the driveway of the expensive looking house across the way. Out jump a crowd of kent faces from Edinburgh. The flag goes out the window again and we roll up the drive, late but no longer lost.

Inside the house we find Lynne and about twenty people from Edinburgh who’re making the most of this chance to come and see Skye. Lynne has been to see the Fairy Flag in Dunvegan Castle today. This is Skye’s one and only tourist attraction, if you don’t like mountains. Sorry, no time to fart about, I’ve got a PA to collect and a van to dump so I can start enjoying myself. Deek shares the house with another ex-Edinburgh guy, John Adams, who’s helping put the gig on. Judging by his accent he’s been up here a lot of years.

We have to go twenty miles back up the island to find the PA man. I wonder how many hires he must get here. There’s seems to be miles between each house. Surely there’s a guy up in Portree has got that market sewn up? How many hires can the handful of people down here generate?

Deek and John guide us to Sabhal Mor Ostaig, the Gaelic College. This translates as The Great Barn of the East Bay, so I’m told. I’ve found out that Gaelic has twenty words for ‘water’, thirty words for ‘big hill’ and no word for ‘No’. How convenient.

Posters advertising ‘The Newtown Grunts from Dun Eideann’ are everywhere. It seems you can’t wait on a bus or use a public phone box anywhere on the island without knowing about the gig. The hall itself is big with a high stage. I’m sure I’ve seen this on ‘Eorpa’ or ‘Telefios’.

The gear shifted we head back to Deek’s for a vegan tea. Like the total prick I am I manage to scrape our hire van down the gate on the way out of the college. Whoops. The worst bit is that I braked as soon as I heard the noise. This meant that when I tried to pull away I had to listen to the rest of the noise as van and gate separated again. Fuck a duck. It might be the 1st of April but this is no joke. It’ll cost us.

Come gig time and the hall is only half full. There are enough people from Edinburgh here for us to know that we’ll do okay but there’s a definite ‘us and them’ split emerging between the incomers and the locals. We’re ready to go with our first gig in over three months.

It’s okay with the exception of ‘Buckfast’. Rod does his usual running around forcing a quick blast into people’s mouths. He tries this on some Skye woman who recoils in horror at the prospect with the net effect that the bottle bangs into her tooth. She starts screaming that it’s been chipped. Rod does his best to apologise but there’s only a couple of bars of the guitar solo left and he has to get back on stage.

After we play Rod’s still trying to say sorry but the girl is having none of it. We give her a free record and CD and it’s probably fair to say that they’ll be in the bucket by tomorrow morning. Lynne tries to console Rod by saying she deserved it ‘cos she was a torn-faced cow anyway. How does Lynne know? Girls just have an instinct for these things.

There’s a techno DJ also up from Edinburgh who goes on after us. The Gaelic word for techno is teacno. It surprised me that they had a word for it. We dance the night away. I can’t believe how many people here are actually wearing Arran sweaters. At the end of night we traipse the couple of miles back to Deek’s house. You don’t appreciate how dark night-time is until you go somewhere like Skye. With no glare from street lights for many a long mile the night is absolutely pitch black. Someone at the front of the group has a torch without which we could just walk straight into the Atlantic.

It’s cold like only the Highlands can be, a biting chill stabs through your clothes. Once we get back to Deek’s Norri decides he’s off out to explore. Good idea Norri, do some paddling, see ya later. In true on-the-road tradition we party till the last man falls over.

The next morning it turns out that the biting chill we assumed was par for the course on Skye is in fact an incoming blizzard. We pack our gear, say our goodbyes and start on the long road south. Deek and John wish us something that sounds like ‘Choccy La’.

‘What did he say?’ asks Norri.

‘Dunno, something in Garlic,’ says Rod.

A game of football against some Skye Arran wearers, arranged for one o’clock on Sunday, is deefied. They’re probably in church anyway. No doubt if they had turned up it would have been with a bunch of mental Wee-Free’ers and a Wicker Man.

On the way off the island there’s a wee Skye guy laden down with bags sticking his thumb out. We pick him up. He’d been at the gig the previous night and was making his way back to Portree. It would take him a few hours. There were no buses because it was a Sunday and they’re mental like that on Skye. We take him as far as we can go and drop him off. We drive towards what we think is the Skye Bridge. After ten minutes I reckon I’m going in the wrong direction because that fucking big mountain is getting bigger and there shouldn’t be any mountains between us and the bridge. I turn around. We drive back past the wee guy we’ve just dropped off and he waves.

Why didn’t he say anything? He must have known we were going the wrong way. Maybe he didn’t know how to say it in English.

I’d never been to Loch Ness before. I had hoped to make a wee detour on the way up but we were a bit pushed for time. I decide, in my infinite wisdom, to go round the Loch on the way back.

The gales are getting up and it’s starting to pish with rain. The rain changes to snow. I push on regardless. Barbara and Nicky are sitting in the front.

‘Some fucking weather,’ I remark.

‘Hardly,’ says Barbara. ‘In Austria we wouldn’t call this weather.’

We get to Loch Ness. It’s several miles wide and God knows how many miles long. Sadly, the snow is now so heavy that we can hardly see the front of the van. We stop in Drumnadrochit - ‘home of The Loch Ness Monster’, halfway up the Loch, and spend a king’s ransom on a round of veggie burgers. We go to Inverness, then spin round 360 degrees and start down the A9. It’s a long way for a short cut.

The snow and wind chase us down the road. Not long after we get back they close the A9 at Aviemore. Osha, that was a close one.

I know I’m going to hammered for the scratch on the side of the van, although that’s all it is, a scratch. There’s no dent, it’s just a black line along the side. The hire place is closed when we get back so we leave the van and pop the keys into the night safe.

The next day I’m back at work when the van cunt phones. It’s the same guy that said how reasonable I was when he fucked up getting our van there on time. I admit, being an honest cunt, that I scratched the van. They say they’ll bill me for the repairs and the excess mileage (wasn’t Loch Ness a good idea?). The maximum they can charge me is the value of the insurance excess - £250. Surely to fuck they can’t reckon a scratch, just a scratch, will cost a quarter of a grand? Surely.

What do you think? The worst bit is that they’ve got Skinz’s credit card number. He left it instead of £100 deposit. The robbing bastards take £250 off it. They send me a bill saying that the "work" cost something like £260. I phone the manager to argue. I accuse him of fining me £250 for damage they won’t even repair.

‘You think we haven’t repaired the van? Do you want to come up and see it?’ smarms the manager cunt.

‘Och ..... I suppose not,’ I mumble, my bluff called.

Conclusion: Skye is bleak but beautiful, Austrians are not impressed by Scotland and never ever ever use Condor Hire Drive, Tollcross, Edinburgh ‘cos they’re fucking robbers.