Winter stores and storms
There are fridges stacked solid with every conceivable cut of our pork, not just at home, but along at the pub too.
The belly and burgers, sausages and shoulders have their own section in our store, but there’s also a good-sized corner that owes nothing to the sacrifice made by our porcine pals.
Our protein-fuelled winter also owes a debt of gratitude to the inhabitants of Loch na Cille and the Sound of Jura.
You can tell by the screams if a kid looking for a Calippo or a choc-ice has swung open the wrong freezer door.
A swarm of claws, antennae and googly eyes await the unsuspecting lolly-hunter.
Brown crabs were regular visitors to our creels this summer, joined occasionally by a couple of langoustine and, less often, the odd decent-sized lobster.
There’s enough in there to break up the ham-fest and, along with the buckets of paté whizzed up each time the loch bubbled with mackerel - we’re pretty much set for a long, well-fed winter.
We lifted the pots for the last time weeks ago and tidied away the rods at the same time, yet the poor wee boat is still out there bobbing nervously as each named storm rolls in.
Storm Arwen barely touched her. She’s seen worse waves at the height of summer, but its easterly counterpart Storm Barra was a different kettle of fish altogether.
It’s December, she should have been holidaying in the tranquil waters of Tayvallich Bay where she has a winter mooring, but there she was alone in the path of a storm; the tide was high and she was holding on - just.
Her captain had been rounding up pigs, pickling veg and cooking vats of chutney and, somehow, just hadn’t got round to steering his wee boat out the loch and up Loch Sween to her holiday home.
We knew the storm was coming. The weather forecasts had taken on a Dad’s Army quality. We were all doomed.
With no time to sail her to safety, the only option was to haul her out with the trailer.
The captain was home alone, his crew all elsewhere engaged with their land-lubber concerns.
The boat could only be rescued at low tide and, inevitably this was at 2am. So, in the kind of dark you only get on a thick winter’s night in the furthest reaches of Argyll, he led the boat along the jetty to the shore and jumped into the car to reverse the muckle great trailer into the loch.
As the waves lapped the trailer it suddenly nose-dived, its support wheel shearing off and rendering the boat’s only support vehicle entirely useless.
And so she faced Barra’s wrath alone, tied back on to the jetty which, by the time I arrived home to help, was submerged by a combination of storm surge and high tide.
Wading thigh-deep along the jetty armed with extra ropes we put on yet another show for the neighbours.
They’ve previously seen me push the boat off and forget to jump aboard, ending up fully dressed and fully immersed in the loch.
They’ve watched us lose oars, fall off paddle boards and sink kayaks, but the sight of me dangling horizontally in an easterly gale tying ropes to every cleat I could find struck a new level of entertainment.
They’re our gift to the community, these hapless exploits.
I’m sure we provide a warm sense of wellbeing to neighbours who can rest assured that whatever the Argyll weather throws at them there’s something dafter going on at the wee croft along the road.