7

At the Spar shop, Cannich.

Here comes the Charm in deerstalker hat, upright on a yellow bike, pedalling in stately fashion down the road past the hotel.

He dismounts to buy milk and a loaf, a tall figure, erect, elderly, white moustached. I say hello and we talk a bit.

‘Blethering again,’ says a man in passing.

The Charm remembers Tom Weir in Affric. He showed him an eagle's nest and he admired the wee man's neat footwork on rock.

Blethering . . . For no reason at all, he starts to reminisce about the war and how he was captured at St Valery, fighting with the Highland Division in the rearguard on the way to Dunkirk. It rankles still that they were left behind. How the Germans walked their prisoners all the way to Poland, where he worked in a coal mine deep underground for two years. After that, they were marched back again, on the road from January to March, their progress marked by a line of turds in the snow, mile after mile.

As I leave the shop with the newspapers under my arm there's no sign of life at the sad hotel across the road. Nor at the distressed cottage in a field round the corner with sagging tin roof and flaking walls. It looks derelict but someone lives there and in the small caravan parked beside it all the same. He's called Geordie. His rag-fleeced sheep crop the grass around the cottage and the neighbours complain when they stray beyond. Gardens are sacrosanct.

Further on, past the shinty park, are the modern bungalows of ‘Little England’, an unofficial name where, no doubt, few of the residents speak with a good Scots accent. Not that it matters – incomers or not, we're all Jock Tamson's bairns, aren't we? Among the pine trees stands Marydale Church and Sister Petra Clare's solitary quarters, silent and still, peaceful as should be.

A puddly road leads to the caravans and my temporary quarters. I turn in, thinking that this place begins to feel like home. I could live here – well, for a little while at least. On the other hand, I'm not country and I suspect I'd find it hard to adjust. I wave to Matt who runs the site with amiable efficiency. An incomer from the south, he has seamlessly integrated into the community – obviously no problem for him. Little England? Pah!