Author: Gail McNeillie

We’re back, moored up, at the Isle of Whithorn, and working night and day, burning the midnight oil in the Wheelhouse, to prepare the typescript for Archipelago 2:2. Our catch is one of the best (and biggest) we’ve ever landed. So there’s a lot of work to be done, checks and balances, and ‘casting off’, in that other dialect, of the print works, and not the nautical one we so crave the moment we tie up at the harbour wall and find ourselves in dull and deadly lubberdom.

As you see, on this last trip, we managed, by expert reading of the stars, to meet up with the intrepid kayaking historian David Gange, inspirational devotee of ‘big seas and small languages’ and author of The Wild Atlantic Edge (2019). Never before have we attempted to come alongside a kayak. Even with RNLI operative Eleanor Hooker aboard, we found it something of a hair-raising challenge. Not since our legendary moonshot off Inishbofin have we put our seagoing skills to so severe a test. But we managed the handover and took David’s essay ‘The Archive of the Oar’ aboard safely without anyone being drowned (at LONG 6° 54.75′ W  LAT 58° 17′).

We won’t give you any further spoilers. Just rest assured: you have a treat in store. So be sure to get your order in straightaway….. while we gauge our print-run, before setting sail again.

This is how we are in August, all at sea, searching the waste of waters, fishing for issue 2:2. There’s only a temp in the office, to package orders, stalk through the Post Office with the mailbag, and drop in at the PO Box. There, the other day, to everyone’s delight, awaiting collection was a copy of the latest issue of the ASLEF Journal (that is the journal of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers & Firemen). We’ve long been in negotiation with ASLEF over a discretionary Archipelago subscription rate for the membership, many of whom have been dropping in at the London Review Bookshop and buying their copies there at the standard rate. This has more than once led to delayed departures from Euston, St Pancras and King’s Cross. So we are keen to reach an agreement. They are tough negotiators, for sure. But to show the extent of their good will towards us, and especially ‘The Skipper’, the editors of the journal have given us a little publicity in the July issue of their journal, as you may see for yourselves:

The ‘Quote . . . Unquote’ feature is from Robert Minhinnick’s contribution to Archipelago 2:1 ‘Wild Swimming’. It appears at the foot of a piece entitled ‘Shameful and seedy’ citing Lord Patten’s opinion (and that of Dominic Grieve) of the late Boris Johnson. ‘The Skipper’ has given his grudging approval to the article (he has nothing but kind words for Patten, in whose company he says he was once at dinner) but makes it clear that the only Tory he’s remotely interested in is Tory Island. He is otherwise over the proverbial with pleasure and has filled the intercom with a long ramble about the occasion, in the late 1970s, when he was in the company of Ray Buckton (ASLEF General Secretary 1970-87) and a certain ‘Comrade Viktor’, ‘Cultural Attaché’, Soviet Embassy, at a country house just south of the Ashdown Forest. What the old boy was doing there remains obscure. Some have wanted to believe he was working for MI5 and that his habit of writing poems, such as the one that follows here (from a sequence ‘A Little Bagpipe Music’, and in honour of all Locomotive Engineers & Firemen), has been nothing more than an ingenious, or not so ingenious, front.

The Age of Steam

A corridor-train, the kind you only see
in monochrome movies now, full of smoke,
undercover men, and others à la Buchan
on the run. A dodgy priest. A family
moonlighting with all they own
in a bulging suitcase, belted like a fat man.

Lower the window by pulling on
the broad leather strap and let it slip
through your hand. Take the air.
Stick your head out to get a better look
at those islanded moorland farms,
through a stinging eyeful of soot.

Feel the hot smell of steam
moisten your cheek. Watch the telegraph poles
flash by and the wires dip
and rise between them, cradling
the nation’s calls, urgent news,
the operator eavesdropping.

Look out for the solitary one
bound for the end of the line and the ferry.
No, he’s not me. I’m the one
in the guard’s keeping, to alight
at Dumfries, change for Newton Stewart,
and meet my great aunts there.

Welcome aboard the latest addition to the Archipelago fleet. One of our readers came upon her in Dundee harbour on, to be precise, 9 March 2021 CDE (Covid Delta Era) and after a phone-call with the Northern Lighthouse Board, we sealed the deal, well within our Tax year, enabling us to write her off at once, as we prepare to finance 2:2. She was ours in return for twelve copies of Archipelago 2:1 on condition we tow her away promptly. We haggled, starting the bidding at six copies, but the Board would have none of it. So twelve copies it was. A lick of paint and a few new fittings and there we were ready to put out.

It was immediately obvious where ‘ARCLIGHT’ would be most needed. So we went round Scotland, beyond Cape Wrath and brought her down to Poll Gairnmhick, where she’s currently riding it out between Bearasaigh and Beàrnaraigh Beag, to be on hand should our intrepid kayaker David Gange get into difficulties, in his current explorations, and to help steer him home, should he find himself returning to Port Nis (where he’s been lodging) after nightfall. Issue 2:2 awaits his log with unprecedented excitement.

As soon as we hear from the Professor that he’s tackling the Flannans, the Skipper will up anchor (gruelling work: there are four of them) and head there. The old boy’s otherwise uncharacteristically happy, fishing for his supper with a handline.

Meanwhile, there’s not much we can do in the Wheelhouse, but read and write and do arithmetic, on the bank account. To help pass the time the insufferably vain and egotistical author of Striking a Match in a Storm : New & Collected Poems tunes in to You-Tube to watch himself read a selection of his poems, under the sharp eye of no-nonsense Professor Alan Riach (the best part of the show). If you missed Carcanet’s zoom launch of the book, you can watch the event on YouTube here. If you didn’t miss it, then of course you’ll want to see it again, over and over.

Archipelago 2:2 looks to be shaping up well. We’ll keep you posted.