95

There's shouting. I walk across to the Cannich shinty park and find a game in progress.

It's a rough business – a sort of mad hockey.

A lofted ball loops high very nearly the whole length of the long pitch. Sticks clash overhead or whack on shins. One player takes the ball full on the chest, stops it dead. Heart-stopping, more like. There are bruising encounters but no one seems to feel the pain.

Two swallows flit across the field. On the horizon, a large black bird circles in wide sweeps above the treetops. I think it may be an eagle. But as they say, if you only think, then it's not.

It's all action on the pitch but on the sidelines we supporters – in groups of twos and threes and two dogs – lean on a gate or loll on the grass or, in the case of the dogs, express lordly indifference. Hills, trees, river, puffy white clouds in a sky of blue – the scene is idyllic. It's possible, if you try, not to notice the pylon at the corner of the field.

Half-time and a grey-headed veteran comes along rattling a plastic bucket with coins in the bottom. ‘For team funds,’ he says.

Did he play? ‘Forty-five years ago, fifty. You had a struggle to get in the team in those days, not like now. If you were seen out and about on a Friday night, you were out of the team for Saturday.’

It's the second team today.

‘What are the first team like?’

‘Bottom of the league,’ says he, ‘and last year they were top.’ Like the shinty ball, their fortunes rise and fall with rocket-like velocity.

Life's like that, sometimes.