ABSTRACT

I was brought up in a small village in the North West Highlands of Scotland during the 1960s. The village was breathtakingly beautiful but remote, with little in the way of amenities or services. There was a one-teacher primary school for the dozen or so children who would then have to move on to board away from home to attend secondary school. There was a man living in the village at that time in a house on his own (I’ll call him Calum). Calum was a gaunt, unshaven man in his thirties or forties who dressed in little more than rags. He spent all his time pacing up and down the village with a cigarette permanently clamped between his teeth. Calum would rarely talk to or even acknowledge anyone else, but he would appear to have animated conversations with himself and sometimes he could be heard shouting from within his unlit and dilapidated house. The village children were wary of Calum, although he would never acknowledge their presence, but we were also curious about him. I remember asking what was wrong with Calum and being given the explanation that ‘his brother was killed by a torpedo during the war’ and accepting this, as children do, as a reasonable explanation. The only time I remember Calum conversing or interacting with anyone else was when he had heated arguments in the village shop with the lady who served behind the counter when she refused to sell him any more cigarettes unless he also bought some food (presumably from his welfare benefits). I also witnessed the same lady going into Calum’s house with plates of food.