THE HEBRIDES

I’ve been here, at my home in southwest France, throughout lockdown. I’ve been confined to quarters, literally. Here in France lockdown is called confinement. It’s been a very busy year but I haven’t had any travel of any kind.

I was last in Scotland in January 2020. I had done a book launch for A Silent Death, which is set in Spain. Normally my books come out in January and I come over to the UK and do a lot of media stuff for a week and then I do a book tour, and for a lot of that we focus on venues in Scotland. So, in that January we were in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Perth, Inverness. The problem is with the timing of my book launches I always get the worst of the Scottish weather.

I’ve definitely missed the Hebrides more than anywhere else. It’s my spiritual home. Although I was born and brought up in Glasgow I think I have a greater sense of affinity with the Hebrides than anywhere else. I spent half of the 1990s living there, filming Machair, the Gaelic soap opera that I was producing at the time. I got to know the place really well – in all weathers. And then writing my Lewis trilogy and some other books that had a Hebridean setting that really cemented my relationship with the place.

I certainly don’t miss the weather, but I have so many friends there and so many people that I know that it’s always great to meet up with them. And compared to when I lived there in the 90s there are a lot of great restaurants, so it’s really fun to eat out there now. Although sadly during the pandemic, one of my favourites was forced to close down and I’m not sure

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I’ve definitely missed the Hebrides more than anywhere else – it’s my spiritual home

that it will reopen. However, others have sprung up that I’m looking forward to trying. There’s a shack on the east coast, on the border between Lewis and Harris, looking right down Loch Seaforth and you eat outdoors, so you need half decent weather. I hear they serve the most wonderful seafood.

Scotland has some of the best produce in the world, and it gets exported everywhere. It’s only in recent years that we’ve really started to exploit the quality of the produce ourselves, by producing cuisine of a standard to match France. It all comes straight out of the sea.

I remember when we were filming on the west coast of Lewis, there was a little restaurant that we used to go to. It was just a bungalow down by the sea and if you wanted lobster you would need to order it 24 hours in advance. They would keep them in the sea, in the creels, in the water until you got there. While you were having your starter they would take it out of the water and cook it. You don’t get much fresher than that and it was the most wonderful tasting stuff.

I can’t wait to visit the Hebridean beaches when I can go. I’ve got a nice new Panasonic Lumix camera and I’m dying to get up there and go to some of my favourite places to get some photographs. I’ve only ever been around with the iPhone, which is great, but there are so many spectacular places up there, so I’ll be taking the new camera to see what shots I can get.

I’ve never had a home in the Hebrides, I rented while I was living there. I’d love to have a home there, but there’s a problem with people having too many second homes. Young people can’t get houses in the places that they’re growing up and I wouldn’t like to be responsible for people not being able to live in the place that they were born in and where they grew up.

There’s a film crew from a TV station called Arte, which is a French/German TV station, and they’ve been doing a series on places that are important to authors. We were supposed to do a programme on my relationship with the Hebrides last May and that go cancelled due to the pandemic. Then it got cancelled again, and now it’s possible that it might happen this summer. That would be quite nice.

I think my first visit, if it’s with the film crew, will be a bit of a flying visit, so it might just be two or three days. But if I go under my own steam it would certainly be longer. I’ve got friends in various parts of the islands that I can stay with so it’s possible to move from one to the other, see everyone and spend a little time there. But the pandemic is still the deciding factor. It depends on how free we feel to travel and how safe it’s going to be.

I’ve just published a new book in March called The Night Gate, which is set here in France. I wrote it during lockdown and that’s why it’s set in France, because I couldn’t go to research anywhere else. So, for now I’m having a break. I’ve written something like 20 books in the last 20 years and I think I’ve kind of earned a wee break. I’m going to relax. The weather is really crap here at the moment, it is the worst spring that I can ever remember in France. It has been cold and wet and we have had terrible frosts that have killed all of the fruit. That’s climate change doing its worst.

I’m really hoping for decent weather this summer so that I can get out in the garden and read and relax underneath the plum tree with no plums on it.

Clockwise from above: Author Peter May at Stornoway Harbour; Luskentyre beach; Gearrannan Blackhouse Village; high and mighty; sunset over the stone circle at Callanish; lunch with a view at Taste n’ Sea.