newly posted at periodicities : a journal of poetry and poetics: folio : Barry McKinnon (1944-2023)

folio : Barry McKinnon (1944-2023)
, edited by Jeremy Stewart and Donna Kane

Jeremy Stewart : Introduction : Something – for Barry McKinnon ;

Hope Anderson : Tribute ; Elizabeth Bachinsky : Three poems ; bill bissett : ths xcelent prson  k.darcy taylor  was driving me away ; Marilyn Bowering : Barry McKinnon ; Lary Bremner : heart in place  out of time for barry mckinnon ; Brian Hiram Coulter : There was this kid in band ; Pierre Coupey : a few words for barry ; Justin Foster : Caledonia ; Solomon Goudsward : On the Death of Barry McKinnon ; Donna Kane : Barry here ; GP Lainsbury : Phenomenology put to work in the Poetry of Barry McKinnon ; rob mclennan : I wanted to say something ; Matt Partyka : Out of the Blind World ; Graham Pearce : No Distance – Three Poems ; Al Rempel : Anecdotes ; Clea Roberts : What can be done, as if an answer/ is possible? ; George Sipos : Tribute ; Jeremy Stewart : something (postscript for Barry McKinnon ; Paul Strickland : Tribute Red Shuttleworth : Tribute ; Sharon Thesen : A FEW WORDS FOR BARRY MCKINNON ; Simon Thompson : Tribute ; Michael Turner : Tribute ; Fred Wah : Bundling Barry ; Tom Wayman : Tribute ; Gillian Wigmore : Tribute ;

extras: John Harris : Barry McKinnon -- We Remember ; Paul E. Nelson: Barry McKinnon in ICU ; obituary by rob mclennan ; obituary by Paul E. Nelson ; obituary by Andrew Kurjata, CBC ; from the archives -- Remembering Barry McKinnon (1944-2023) by Cecil Giscombe, The Capilano Review ; Barry McKinnon's 2022 Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] interview ; Barry McKinnon's website ; other tributes (from Barry's website ;

photos of Barry McKinnon throughout provided by Joy McKinnon ;
[except for photos provided by Simon Thompson + rob mclennan,

See the full folio [with links] here

Second star to the right, and straight on 'til morning,

In case you hadn’t heard, we spent last week in Florida, attending to Disneything. Myself, Christine, our two young ladies and mother-in-law, running around and doing many of the many things. Given the Covid-era, as Christine says, we hadn’t a family trip beyond our big July drive [see my report on such here] that our young ladies can even recall (three years in the house, after all, and we haven't been even to father-in-law's condo in Boca Raton since Rose was a toddler), and apparently Disneything is an important part of Christine’s own childhood, having made their way there repeatedly. Christine was also worried about our young ladies aging out of making the trip worthwhile. And so, we are here.

Although: this is not our first time. Do you recall when we went there as part of that last Boca Raton jaunt back in 2015? (I know Rose doesn’t.) [see my report on such here]

Thursday, November 2, 2023: We flew, late. And our 4:55pm direct flight to Orlando was delayed by nearly four hours, due to something discovered on the flight that landed, earlier that day. Why did it take so long to discover, and then search? Because we weren't told anything at all, I simply presumed it to be a loose monkey on the plane (I attempted to tell this to others around us, but I don't think anyone bought it). Apparently they even had to bring in a sniffer dog. We weren't even sure we'd make it out, honestly. But we did. Aoife knocked out cold on the plane.

Friday, November 3, 2023: We woke slow, set in what was most likely a former condo. Oh, how late we got in. Once up, we headed for a full day of Universal, Orlando. Is Orlando a real place, or is it imaginary? A city of highways, condos, resorts and warehouses, it would seem. A city of palm trees and ridiculous adventure-lands. This city might just be imaginary.

Admittedly, the high point was the Harry Potter world stuff (Rose and Aoife had been years collecting change in a jar, all of which was for us to come to this specific place), both Diagon Alley in one corner, and Hogsmeade in another. The children hated the butterbeer (butterscotch foamy drink). I enjoyed a real beer. A dragon breathed fire. There were so many shops! They just wanted our money, methinks. We rode the Hogwarts train. The children collected wands. We went on a Minions ride that was amusing to all. Aoife met characters from the movie Sing. We saw Krazy Kat, and various Marvel things. I purchased a t-shirt.

Saturday, November 4, 2023: We had a quiet day, mostly at the condo space. I spent some time with notebook, and books by Laynie Browne, as well as my copy of Barry McKinnon's i wanted to say something, which I'd brought to poke through. I made various notes, some of which I'm still processing, adding to. I am still thinking upon. Christine and her mother made plans.

The tennis court across from our window also included a pickleball option, and large-scale chess and checkers, which occasionally folk would wander by and attempt. The children, at one point, made for the pool, so naturally I brought my books and my notebook, sketching out an hour's worth of notes. We wandered stores (I bought new shoes), found a dollar store and Christine and I picked up armloads of candy we can't get up here. Baby Ruth! Beer-flavoured jellybeans! What! Dinner at Red Lobster, a restaurant I don't think I've been to in years. My mother used to enjoy going regularly to one near home with my sister. I always think of them when I think of Red Lobster. The corn bread was excellent.

Sunday, November 5, 2023: Disneything, Animal Kingdom. Why are there Christmas trees and decorations everywhere? I don't want to think about that yet. We left our morning condo for our Disney-specific resort, meaning we became folded into the Disney space for five full days. We were beyond the scope of the real world, caught up in what only existed within. Aren't there science fiction films that begin this way? We saw wild animals in wide open spaces and attended an animation session, learning how to draw the sea turtle from Finding Nemo.

We saw a giraffe, some lions, some hippo. We saw artificial mountains. The scale of this place I find quite overwhelming, quite terrifying. Why is everything so enormously big?

Monday, November 6, 2023: Magic Kingdom, day one. Did I ever imagine myself here, let alone three times, including twice in one week? It is all madness, really. The real chaos is knowing that, no matter how busy this seems, we're here in the off-season. We wandered spaces and rides, and the young ladies caught photos with Winnie-the-Pooh and Tigger (I kept calling them "Winston the Poop" and "Tiggles," which my entire menagerie found rather irritating). I was surprised how much Rose was enamoured with all of this, less than three weeks away from ten (when she would be priced as an adult, which was a big factor in the timing of this trip). Apparently Winnie-the-Pooh is her favourite, which I had no idea. I should tell her about the Winnie-the-Pooh and the Blustery Day VHS that we'd put in regularly when her big sister Kate was a toddler, when we needed just twenty minutes or so to be able to breathe on our own (we played that thing hundreds of times, I think). Aoife even insisted on writing Winnie-the-Pooh a note of thanks, while I think Rose caught an autograph.

The young ladies later had the (mostly) full princess treatment, and even dinnered at the castle, with five different Disney princesses wandering through. Rose and Aoife complained heavily on their paper placemats of the obvious Disney-specific Paw Patrol knock-offs, "pupstruction," and I admired their venom, but not sure which side to be on, in this one. Both sides have their problems, but one would think that Disney would have been able to find their own characters to display instead of skewering another, right? It was ridiculous, with wait staff dressed in castle finery, and various princesses wandering through for photographs and autographs (all of which our young ladies garnered), and they were both given plastic swords at the end (apparently boys got swords and shields, and girls were supposed to get something else, but they were out of those). So many small girls in that space dressed as princesses, swinging plastic swords around. More princesses need their own swords, I say.

Oh yes, and the "it's a small world" ride, once more. We did same with toddler Rose, but she remembers none of it. Both ladies were quite taken with it. I mean, the old standards are important. And Don Quixote!

Tuesday, November 7, 2023: Epcot, wandering. We went through Canada, of course, as I sang songs by The Tragically Hip under my breath. We caught the Day of the Dead festival display in Mexico, and mother in law purchased a cuckoo clock in the German Pavillion, to replace one she once had, long gone. I considered a stein, but the price, weight, travel considerations and the fact that I don't even use the ones I have at home prompted me to rethink (they were pretty cool, though). Did you know that "stein" translates to "stone"? There was a grand arch in the Chinese Pavillion (ours in Ottawa is better). We had lunch in the same German buffet we did from that prior visit, but mis-timed from the show. I kept telling Aoife that we were depending upon her German language classes for the sake of ordering, which terrified her (no! I can't do that!). The food was grand (traditional!) but uber-expensive. Mein Gott!

We caught a ride with Olaf and Elsa and Anna. We wandered the whole history of human civilization through Epcot, and dinnered with an aquarium of fish (where Rose, again, complained of the placemats and character knock-offs). We rode through Imagination Land. A sequence of days where there was barely enough time to wake, check email, and leave. Once back to the resort at the end of the day, we all crashed.

Wednesday, November 8, 2023: Cafeteria breakfast, at the resort. As this snapshot suggests, Rose is leaning pretty hard into pre-teen stuff, I would say. I ask you: what is morning? What is coffee? A needlessly-expensive bottle of (what I would discover to be) terrible wine collected for evenings.

There is an island by our resort with a pool, so I sat with Barry McKinnon again, as mother in law and the children splashed about. I made further notes, and thought about whether I should garner a beer, for Barry's sake (it was barely 11am, so decided it was a bit early).

Today was Hollywood Studios, so I was pretty excited for the sake of the Star Wars stuff. I took Barry to see the Millennium Falcon, naturally. I took Barry McKinnon into the Cantina. Not even the Storm Troopers who came through could wrest that away from me. And we realized that Christine, in her own way, was inadvertently dressed entirely appropriate for Tattoine.

We went to a Mickey Mouse animated short in one theatre, and had a 3-D Muppet Show experience in The Muppet Theatre. We went to Potatoland. We had buckets upon buckets of popcorn. We had dinner in a drive-in theatre that showed theatrical trailers from classic horror flicks! After the past couple of days, Christine appreciated how quiet this particular dinner was, volume-wise. All eyes caught up on the big screen. Plan 9 from Outer Space!

Thursday, November 9, 2023: Not enough food here is shaped like Mickey Mouse. Is this a real complaint I have? Hard to tell, isn't it. We took a riverboat after breakfast to one of the other resorts nearby, mainly so we could catch a riverboat, but also, so we could make the French Quarter resort and have those sugar-donut things. What are those called? I know Christine and I had some back in New Orleans in 2012 [remember when we were down there?]. Naturally, Rose managed to get white sugar everywhere (and yes, they were shaped like Mickey Mouse, as they should be).

After that, we made for our second Magic Kingdom day before heading out. We saw the noon parade, which we caught the tail end of again, repeated, later on. How many times does one see two parades in a single day? Hard to imagine the staff not sick of such things, after a time. The sky was perfect blue.

We caught an enormity of rides, again. They caught Aladdin's carpet ride at one point, the spinning aliens from Toy Story, and the Dumbo rides (classic), of course. Which day did I regrettably catch The Guardians of the Galaxy ride that nearly killed me? I can't even remember now. I regret it, terribly. It nearly did me in. And there was a follow-up, a day or two later, via Star Wars that nearly did the same. And yet, the children were fine. Let us speak no more of this.

Honestly, the craziest part of Disney is that we kept seeing these things. The future, indeed!

And Aoife wanted a picture of this guy, who I recognized but she didn't. Quite terrifying, really. At least he's the mandolin player (as we all know: bass players can't be trusted).

I insisted on catching the Hall of Presidents, also, before we left the park. There was considerable resistance by the adults in our group, but it was better than we might have thought. Odd, the whole thing of it. What are the stories we tell ourselves of ourselves?

And then leaving the park at 5pm to get back to the resort to pick up the car and our stuff to drop the car off at the airport and catch our 9pm flight home. A bit of chaos, that. And the smallest one barfed a couple of times right at the moment we were entering security (she was fine in the end, but it made the whole experience askew). Both kids slept on the plane. I did, also.

Friday, November 10, 2023: We are home, exhausted. Exhausted. Landed well after midnight. In our beds after 1am. We move very little once we are up in the morning. If at all. Did we move at all?

 

Barry McKinnon (1944 – October 30, 2023)

Rae Armantrout and Barry McKinnon at VERSeFest (Ottawa), March 2012

Sad to hear from Paul Nelson that Canadian poet, editor and publisher Barry McKinnon died 11:30am on Monday morning in Prince George. Nelson writes that “plans for a spring memorial service will be made soon.” I don’t precisely recall when I started interacting with McKinnon, but I know I was reading his work in the early 1990s, sitting in the Morriset Library at the University of Ottawa reading The the. (Coach House Press, 1980), i wanted to say something (Red Deer College Press, 1990) and Pulp/Log (Caitlin Press, 1991), all of which became important for me in terms of thinking of the cadence and breadth of the long poem. If you can, pick up a copy of The Centre: Poems 1970-2000 (Talonbooks, 2004), a collection that really displays the ‘poem as long as a life’ mantra that bpNichol articulated, something shared with Nichol’s own multiple books of The Martyrology (1972-1993), or Robert Kroetsch’s Completed Field Notes (2002).

There was something jwcurry once said of McKinnon’s poems, his long poems, that I always thought was interesting, suggesting that the first half of any McKinnon long poem is working up to a single point, and the second half working away from that same point. My collection Glengarry (Talonbooks, 2011), was one of a number of works I produced over the years as a direct result of reading Barry McKinnon’s work. At McKinnon’s prompt, as well, I’m probably one of the few continuing the “Sex at 31” poems he and Brian Fawcett began, something I wrote about a few years back as part of Jacket2. It must have been in 2000 or so that I was up in Prince George, staying with McKinnon for the sake of a reading, and digging around his archives to see what there was. He handed me a “Sex at 31” poem by Artie Gold that he produced back in the late 1970s, which Artie allowed me to reprint as an above/ground press broadside, a poem that later fell into the second ‘best of’ above/ground press anthology. Thanks to Barry, I followed that particular thread (composing poems for every seven years, as was their original consideration: thirty-one, thirty-eight, forty-five and fifty-two, so far), and am still pulling away at it, in as much homage to McKinnon and Fawcett (and Gold) as anything else.

Barry McKinnon and Brian Fawcett post-Talon/ECW launch, Toronto, 2004

In McKinnon’s basement circa that 2000 visit, as he was complaining that a particular bill bissett title he produced in 1970 (Stamp collection) wasn’t seen or acknowledged by anyone, and he opened a cupboard to reveal a stack of a few hundred copies. Hard to get attention for something sitting in your basement storage, I suggested, so he gave me some fifty copies to distribute, which  I handed out at further stops on that same reading tour, including in Calgary, Winnipeg and Toronto. We met prior to the reading over drinks, and he offered me a copy of The the., telling me it was one of only five copies he had left (extant copies had fallen prey to one of Coach House Press’ infamous “dumps,” which left unannounced copies out at the curb). After the reading, we went out for drinks, landing late in his living room. His wife Joy, unimpressed.

We launched together in 2004, having both books in the same season with Talonbooks, landing in Toronto as Brian Fawcett heckled us both from the crowd (David Phillips, on his part, heckled McKinnon through his Vancouver launch at the Kootenay School of Writing space). We even brought him to Ottawa for VERSeFest in 2012 [see my report on such here], where he participated in The Factory Lecture Series.

It always felt like Barry McKinnon was a poet who deserved far more attention than he received, and how moving north to Prince George to teach in 1969 put him on the outskirts of literature (this was certainly how he felt), despite the enormous amount of activity he encouraged, prompted and hosted during his time in the north. Who else would have brought Robert Creeley to Prince George? i wanted to say something, originally self-produced through his Gorse and reprinted years later by Caitlin, is an important early long poem from the Canadian prairies, one that was hugely influential to other writers, even if the larger public weren’t aware of it until long after those influenced by the poem had published their own variations. McKinnon became an important figure in Northern British Columbia, as publisher, poet, organizer, teacher and as an example of someone in that geographic space who was able to produce interesting work, and take seriously the conversation and thinking of literature. I know over the past twenty years or so he was getting frustrated with traditional publishing (he’d long been a chapbook publisher, so one foot was always on the outside), focusing more on putting work online than sending it out to anyone. I would recommend working through his website and seeing everything he’d putthere.

I interviewed him a few times, including in 2012 and more recently, for Touch the Donkey. I reviewed a number of his works, and even attempted a lengthy essay on his work circa 2006, which fell into my first essay collection with ECW Press. Paul Nelson also did an interview with him in 2015 that is worth paying attention to.

He was always kind to me, and deeply engaged at what was going on with writing. Those visits were always few and far between, and I shall miss him.

 

Touch the Donkey supplement: new interviews with Sandals, Best, Austin, Wallace, Mody, McKinnon + Naughton,

Anticipating the release next week of the thirty-fifth of Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal], why not check out the interviews that have appeared over the past few weeks with contributors to the thirty-fourth issue: Leah Sandals, Tamara Best, Nathan Austin, Jade Wallace, Monica Mody, Barry McKinnon and Katie Naughton.

Interviews with contributors to the first thirty-three issues (more than two hundred interviews to date) remain online, including: Cecilia Stuart, Benjamin Niespodziany, Jérôme Melançon, Margo LaPierre, Sarah Pinder, Genevieve Kaplan, Maw Shein Win, Carrie Hunter, Lillian Nećakov, Nate Logan, Hugh Thomas, Emily Brandt, David Buuck, Jessi MacEachern, Sue Bracken, Melissa Eleftherion, Valerie Witte, Brandon Brown, Yoyo Comay, Stephen Brockwell, Jack Jung, Amanda Auerbach, IAN MARTIN, Paige Carabello, Emma Tilley, Dana Teen Lomax, Cat Tyc, Michael Turner, Sarah Alcaide-Escue, Colby Clair Stolson, Tom Prime, Bill Carty, Christina Vega-Westhoff, Robert Hogg, Simina Banu, MLA Chernoff, Geoffrey Olsen, Douglas Barbour, Hamish Ballantyne, JoAnna Novak, Allyson Paty, Lisa Fishman, Kate Feld, Isabel Sobral Campos, Jay MillAr, Lisa Samuels, Prathna Lor, George Bowering, natalie hanna, Jill Magi, Amelia Does, Orchid Tierney, katie o’brien, Lily Brown, Tessa Bolsover, émilie kneifel, Hasan Namir, Khashayar Mohammadi, Naomi Cohn, Tom Snarsky, Guy Birchard, Mark Cunningham, Lydia Unsworth, Zane Koss, Nicole Raziya Fong, Ben Robinson, Asher Ghaffar, Clara Daneri, Ava Hofmann, Robert R. Thurman, Alyse Knorr, Denise Newman, Shelly Harder, Franco Cortese, Dale Tracy, Biswamit Dwibedy, Emily Izsak, Aja Couchois Duncan, José Felipe Alvergue, Conyer Clayton, Roxanna Bennett, Julia Drescher, Michael Cavuto, Michael Sikkema, Bronwen Tate, Emilia Nielsen, Hailey Higdon, Trish Salah, Adam Strauss, Katy Lederer, Taryn Hubbard, Michael Boughn, David Dowker, Marie Larson, Lauren Haldeman, Kate Siklosi, robert majzels, Michael Robins, Rae Armantrout, Stephanie Strickland, Ken Hunt, Rob Manery, Ryan Eckes, Stephen Cain, Dani Spinosa, Samuel Ace, Howie Good, Rusty Morrison, Allison Cardon, Jon Boisvert, Laura Theobald, Suzanne Wise, Sean Braune, Dale Smith, Valerie Coulton, Phil Hall, Sarah MacDonell, Janet Kaplan, Kyle Flemmer, Julia Polyck-O’Neill, A.M. O’Malley, Catriona Strang, Anthony Etherin, Claire Lacey ,Sacha Archer, Michael e. Casteels, Harold Abramowitz, Cindy Savett, Tessy Ward, Christine Stewart, David James Miller, Jonathan Ball, Cody-Rose Clevidence, mwpm, Andrew McEwan, Brynne Rebele-Henry, Joseph Mosconi, Douglas Barbour and Sheila Murphy, Oliver Cusimano, Sue Landers, Marthe Reed, Colin Smith, Nathaniel G. Moore, David Buuck, Kate Greenstreet, Kate Hargreaves, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Erín Moure, Sarah Swan, Buck Downs, Kemeny Babineau, Ryan Murphy, Norma Cole, Lea Graham, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Oana Avasilichioaei, Meredith Quartermain, Amanda Earl, Luke Kennard, Shane Rhodes, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Sarah Cook, François Turcot, Gregory Betts, Eric Schmaltz, Paul Zits, Laura Sims, Stephen Collis, Mary Kasimor, Billy Mavreas, damian lopes, Pete Smith, Sonnet L’Abbé, Katie L. Price, a rawlings, Suzanne Zelazo, Helen Hajnoczky, Kathryn MacLeod, Shannon Maguire, Sarah Mangold, Amish Trivedi, Lola Lemire Tostevin, Aaron Tucker, Kayla Czaga, Jason Christie, Jennifer Kronovet, Jordan Abel, Deborah Poe, Edward Smallfield, ryan fitzpatrick, Elizabeth Robinson, nathan dueck, Paige Taggart, Christine McNair, Stan Rogal, Jessica Smith, Nikki Sheppy, Kirsten Kaschock, Lise Downe, Lisa Jarnot, Chris Turnbull, Gary Barwin, Susan Briante, derek beaulieu, Megan Kaminski, Roland Prevost, Emily Ursuliak, j/j hastain, Catherine Wagner, Susanne Dyckman, Susan Holbrook, Julie Carr, David Peter Clark, Pearl Pirie, Eric Baus, Pattie McCarthy, Camille Martin and Gil McElroy.

The forthcoming thirty-fifth issue features new writing by: Garrett Caples, Sheila Murphy, Stuart Ross and Brenda Coultas, and a collaboration between Chris Turnbull and Elee Kraljii Gardiner.

And of course, copies of the first thirty-four issues are still very much available. Why not subscribe? Included, as well, as part of the above/ground press subscriptions! We even have our own Facebook group. It’s remarkably easy.

scotland the brave (or: when we were high(land,

Did I mention we were away for nine days? No? Only our second child-free travel together since Rose was born [see our prior trip here], organized in part because Christine received a writing grant earlier this year, and part of her pitch included some research at the British Library (we’ll be getting to that soon; we’re not there yet). Our wedding anniversary occurs here as well, which is pretty exciting. What might we get up to? So, here we begin:

Tuesday, Sept 25th

We left the wee girls with mother in law for the sake of a later afternoon flight for Halifax. A flurry of motion, moving, activity, and even saw a friend of mine at the Ottawa Airport, heading his own way back west. How random! After our first flight, we spent some three hours in the Halifax airport, where Christine wrestled a dinner-lobster larger than our smallest child (or so it seemed). We traded toddler stories with our waitress, who spends a couple of days a week with her granddaughter.

I learned: I do not like lobster poutine. Very bleh. One bite was enough.

Mother in law emailed, asking: what time does Aoife usually go to sleep? Out cold by 6pm (an hour earlier than we usually attempt her down).

I’m reading Stephen Collis’ Almost Islands: Phyllis Webb and the Pursuit of the Unwritten (Talonbooks, 2018), a title that landed on my doorstep some two hours before we left for our flight. It seemed to make sense to bring it along.

I read, worked a bit. Took many notes. Slept.

What time is it now? I have no idea. An overnight flight to London.

Wednesday, Sept 26

On the airplane to London, I took notes, I read Collis’ new memoir. Wow. I scribbled and slept and we both slept, landing in London at 8am local time (five hours ahead, don’t you know).

Which means: 8am local time means our bodies recognized 3am.

Three hours in London, where we breakfasted or lunched or something I’m not even sure before flying the ninety minutes north to Inverness. What might we see at Loch Ness? I slept the entire flight up to Inverness, preferring to sleep there than, say, once we landed.

We landed, dropped off our bags. Air B+B, up three flights of stairs with our bags. 

Heading out again. Stamps. Postcards. Cobblestone, catching the toes of our shoes. The most beautiful antiquarian bookstore space, held in a building attached to a church (with a circular staircase, wood fireplace and stained glass windows). The most beautiful store, but nothing I could find for the sake of purchase. Christine bought a memoir by a former editor, Diana Athill, that intrigued. Apparently she was editor for V.S. Naipaul, and wrote something interesting on him after he died.

The only Canadian-esque poetry titles we could find: Robert Service.

And then, exploring a churchyard, at the Old High Church. The many names of the dead, less old than I might have thought.

We found a decent enough pub-chain for the sake of dinner, and managed to also enjoy my very first deep fried Mars bar. Apparently they were invented nearby in 1992 (and are neither endorsed or even recommended by Mars Inc.). It was strange but I liked it. Better than the Philly Cheesesteak, better than the Lobster Poutine (bleh). Even better than the crawdads in New Orleans (which I liked). Christine presented paragraphs of Diana Athill’s memoir; okay, this was worth it.

And then we crashed at our Air B+B. A shower, to remove three different flights, involving three different countries. God sakes.

And, being in the Highlands, I put in my tartan underwear.

British television, as Christine says: you need to watch. Every channel, everywhere: four hours-plus worth of nothing but repeats of Top Gear. Is this normal?

Thursday, Sept 27

Waking up at eight a.m. local time was rather exciting (we are still pretty jet-lagged), especially given we were taking a twelve-hour Highlands/Isle of Skye tour, scheduled to leave the station at 8:30am. At least the station was only two doors away (thanks to a very clever Christine).

We had a TWELVE HOUR TOUR ON A BUS (apparently this was my anniversary present from dear wife). It was unexpectedly: highly entertaining, highly educational and interesting, and the lunch and food dinners we ordered off the menu were quite worth it. I took notes, and sat beside an American woman, Lisa, who was pretty lively. Originally from Los Angeles, living currently in Utah, and only days off a trip to Hawaii, before her five weeks in Scotland (meaning she was seven hours off the time zone of home, but twelve hours off her trip from Hawaii).

Urquart Castle, Loch Ness/Inverness

We went to Loch Ness,where we learned entertaining facts about the incredible depth of the infamous Loch. We went by the ruins of Urquart Castle, Grant Tower, St. Columba and the Hill of the Fairies. We heard about the Caledonia Pine Forest, Rowan berries and saw Highland cattle. We heard of goats who had been living in Scotland for 4,000 years, but not yet considered a local species (how much longer do they require?). Jacobites. Silver birch wine, once made by monks, who have long disappeared, along with the recipe.

Eilean Donan Castle

Glen Cluny, Loch Cluny. The Cluny Inn, from the 1950s. The five sisters of Kintail, whereabouts our McLennans originated, back in the 1840s. Dragon’s breath, covering the hills. Eilean Donan Castle. We later learned, a Mackenzie castle, said to be looked after by the Macrae and Maclennans at various points. The ugly mermaids of Raasay. Lusty Malcolm. What exactly was peat, and how and why to gather to burn. Christine looking particularly Gael (channeling The Outlander's Claire).

rob and Christine promoting their new BBC adventure series

We saw an awful lot of rainbows. I mean, a LOT. At least three double rainbows. Perhaps it was all the rain. Torrents of rain rushed and ran dozen of silver threads down the endless hills. With the hills angled straight down, such a volume of water has no choice but to tumble. Oh my.

We went over to the Isle of Skye. The hill of the Old Women. King Haakon. The ruins of the McKinnon stronghold. Saucy Mary. We climbed a damned hill. Some seven minutes of climbing, our tour guide claimed; we could see an alternate tour higher up, part of a four-hour excursion atop the hill, akin to goats, perhaps. We were pleased to not be part of that, set in the wind across the moors and the heather and the thistle and bristle and rain, attempting as best we could to avoid the multiple small piles of sheep dip.

A piper came to play at Kilt Rock, Isle of Skye. The way the Tour Guide was speaking, I had to explain to him that I'd heard pipers before, and heard the Scots Gaelic, and that I grew in a place that has language classes for such (he had no idea; it had never occurred to him).

More information than I could ever recall, record or retain. I have much to look up.

What I enjoyed was the plethora of place-name I knew as familiar, from my corner of Ontario: Glenelg, Perth, Avonmore. Glengarry.

Isle of Skye: why yes, I did have a whisky. When in Rome, etcetera. 

So, do I drink whisky now? Perhaps.

Beaulie, a town name from the French – beau lieu – meaning “beautiful place” (what say you, derek?).

The tour was impressive, and I would highly recommend (WOW Scotland). When Sandy (we loved his knowledge and his enthusiasm), our tour guide, wasn’t talking to us, he was talking to the driver, who seemed both amused and slightly irritated by Sandy’s constant suggestion (again, the enthusiasm) to stop, mainly for photos of further rainbows, “oh, here’s a spot…”).

We found a post-tour pub for a pint and a bit of food, but the piano man was too loud, loud, loud. Retired instead, pick up some bits at the corner store, return to Air B+B, up those three flights of stairs. Top Gear. Red Dwarf XII. Mock the Week. Star Trek: Into Darkness.

Friday, Sept 28

A quieter day, including leaving our Air B+B, wandering out for breakfast and figuring out our day, before an 8pm train overnight into London. We gathered ourselves to a dip into the mall to see what options we might have (where I finally picked up a copy of Hera Lindsay Bird’s Hera Lindsay Bird, as well as Luke Kennard’s CAIN) (Rose also informed us that we are to collect them both books and chocolate, which we are keeping our eyes out for).

Figuring out the local transit, post-mall, we made our way to the Culloden battlesite, where I clearly didn’t know nearly enough of what it was all about. Jarring, the whole thing, seeing the battlesite, and multiple stone markers set in the 1880s for mass graves. Gordons, Campbells (the closest my family might have come), Fraser, McIntosh, McGillivray, etcetera. 

We learned the term “Johnny Lobster,” a term for the Government soldier, and were given a rather lively ten minute demonstration of gear and fighting, as well as the tricky ways in which the Government filled their soldier-ranks.

I was part of the demonstration, with my faux-musket, holding my own as firing-line two (my compatriots, line one and three, were far less enthusiastic about participating).

The four-minute immersive room/film was quite frightening, not only for the brutality, but the speed at which such historic battles began and were simply over. Less than an hour, and history irrevocably turned. I clearly have to read more up on this, especially how it basically provoked a decimation of the highlands, etcetera. Christine found some information on the internet (somewhere) that spoke of eleven McLennans/Maclennans being captured after the battle, but the fact that we weren't there due to our being nearly decimated at some early pre-Jacobite battle. Ah well.

Although the immersive film was quiet the first couple of minutes, showing and feeling the empty Culloden Moor. I actually turned to Christine at one point and asked: maybe this is the immersive film for the day prior to the battle?

Post-battlefield, we visited the gift shop, where I picked up a mangonel (I had really been hoping for a trebuchet, but there you go; Christine won’t let me have either one properly, so I finally have something, if only in pencil sharpener form), and had a meat pie, soup and a pint (Wooha). Back to the bus, we figured out that we were seven minute past the time when the hourly bus returns (our driver there lied, saying it was every thirty minutes) to take folk back to Inverness, so we went back for a (well, ahem, another) pint. Christine visited the shops. I worked to complete and post this very entry (how meta!).

And then the overnight sleeper train, heading overnight into London.