Bryan Islip's Blog, page 56

High hopes

We're getting good results from Googlemaps, our web-site and our road sign. Everyone says this is in general a poor year for visitors to Wester-Ross. The well below par weather, the notorious Icelandic ash clouds and the World Cup (football) are getting the blame. Oh, and of course the so-called recession that I call a re-alignment might have something to do with it! However, as I say, we are doing OK with the new B&B. Occupancy better than expectations. Thus far we have welcomed visitors fr...

Less is better?

I'm just back from our regular Tuesday market at Poolewe. Pictures and Poems does consistently well there, and this year's take is significantly ahead of 2009. However the talk was all about this so-called 'recession' and how it is affecting business up here - even the kind of micro businesses with a presence at our village hall market. Market visitor numbers this year are beyond doubt down on last but the more important fact is that each person through the door is spending less and giving mu...

When to the days ...

Whem I woke up this morning I noticed a strange blue mark on the back of my hand. Sort of abstract representation of a fish! Brief moment of panic before yesterday came back in a flash, for yesterday we had put up our Pictures and Poems stall in Ullapool, on the pier, for the Rotary Club's annual market. To go off the pier and come back without getting charged an entry fee one needed to be branded; just as, in the old days, you were similarly branded for leaving and re-entering a dance hall. ...

Blow wind, crack your cheeks ...

Yesterday we endured a real gale of wind up here. Most unseasonal: most unfair. Our new B&B sign was tested to its limits before I capitulated and took it down. No problem. Dee had already decided to leave it in 'No Vacancy' mode, our last two guests having left after breakfast and the next party not due until this afternoon.

All day long the wind moaned and cried down our chimney, whipped the sea into great, angry, white crested rollers and set Dee's bird feeders to dancing crazily under the...

Comfortable bed, great breakfast

Our B&B sign went up on Thursday and within a day it had attracted our first guests - a couple of passing ladies from Essen in Germany. But if I ever needed an illustration of the power of the web ... a month ago a friend advised us to put our new bed and breakfast venture on Googlemaps. This I did. Easy even for me. Cost? Nothing, and we have had, as a result, advance bookings from Italy (two) Australia, and another from Germany. Advanced bookings earn you a 10% discount. Clever, eh? Anyway,...

In Memoriam

Four

We two, this day in silence
walk the beaches, hills and woods
where once our Sorosh
and our lovely lady Mati ran
now just the two quick shadows
never out of sight or mind
remind us of those perfect times
transferred from dogs to humankind.

So often do we each recall
those simple pleasures
shared with them, and think of
how we came to understand
the chains that evermore must bind us
four together with this grand wild land.

One year ago they left:
so calm did they together go
from furry warm to cold of...

Reading the writing

Tuesday night was reading/signing night. Reading extracts from my novel Going with Gabriel, that is. Signing purc hased copies of ditto. Venue: Hillbillie's Bookshop / The Mountain Coffee Company in Gairloch's Strath Square. This was my first reading and therefore I was a litle apprehensive in advance, but three things helped the session go with a good strong swing. (1) Dee and I sent out fifty or so personalised invitations and the place could hardly have contained any more folk than those w...

My oils and the midnight oil

Sixty six people attended our pre-view the other evening. Pre-view? An exhibition of my paintings, each of them with attribution (how why where what etc) and accompanying verse, staged by the Gairloch Heritage Society at the Museum. A couple of originals were sold plus lots of Pictures and Poems cards amd calendars etc. Good few bottles of wine were sent on their way. Everyone happy by all accounts.

We had dug several of the 'not for sale' pics out of our attic. Stuff I painted years ago - one...

Cybergeddon

Can you have too, too much communication? Do you actually need all that web-planted information in order to navigate the waters of modern life? I reckon yes to the first, no to the second. Being of an age group the vast majority of whom manage their affairs very well without a PC, Dee and I are probably the exception in having one PC each plus our own e-m addresses (4 in total) our own web-sites (also 4 in total)and signed up membership of Facebook, Blogger of course, Zazzle, Scribd, LinkedIn...

The Cat and the King

In my middle twenties, by then a father of two and set on a career in industrial marketing I had this urge to paint. When everyone was in bed and all was quiet
I would get out my basic set of oil paints and brushes and my Daler boards and my library art books to copy the paintings of masters old and not so old. From Picasso and Braque and Matisse back through literally all the impressionists and some of the Dutch masters to the one above, by an Italian whose name I've lost in the mists of time...