CalCan

Setting off from Teanocoil yesterday, it wouldn’t have been unreasonable to wonder whether the luck with the light had run out. It was grey. Just after I’d pulled onto the first section of winding road, the phone rang. It was William, giving me an errand to run in Oban before catching the ferry. It felt like two pieces of a jigsaw slotting together, the foot slipping perfectly into the boot. As the conversation ended, a patch of grey parted for a moment to reveal the blue lining, then it was closed once more.

Driving and photographing at the same time tends to be a bad thing. I had planned to stop whenever the inclination took me, and take me it did. It's hard to drive down the bank of Loch Ness without stopping at least once, as the endless food wrappers in the lay-bys  will attest to. The atmospherics were putting on a low-key show, with wisps of cloud drifting along below the tops the hills. 

I jumped out to shoot this because that wisp of cloud conveniently passes between the hill and the isthmus, creating a sense of depth in what would otherwise be a flat image. I never really know until the paper comes out of the printer whether a shot is finally going to print. The combination of subject and image contrast here augur well.

Driving down the Caledonian Canal is driving through theme-park Scotland: lochs, mountains, heather, clouds, pines (mostly non-native and in military rows) and endless little tourist operations, more guest houses than tea rooms, and more tea rooms than garages. Always fill up at any opportunity on this road. The gaps between fuel posts are enormous.  So are the atmospherics.

Looking at Ben Nevis seems a suitable place to be able to play at being Constable, with his cause and effect  light over landscape. This is a very special vantage point but it's called after itself, the Commando Memorial. It doesn't mention that it's hosting one of the very best views in the world.  More on this at another time.

Affric

We got up at 4.30 this morning, breakfasted frugally, and set off for the loch. As soon as we'd stepped outside the White House, we knew there was a chance of finding what we'd come here for. The stars shone brightly beside the recently-full moon and there was the satisfying crunch of a light frost in the grass. 

There had been time the previous evening to get out on the loch for half an hour or so before sunset. We'd rowed as far as the lodge (which I'd last visited when Jonny and Alice were married more than two decades ago, when they had left in a rowing boat with piper standing in the stern) and then drifted back to the jetty through the sunset, Jonny occasionally flicking out a line with the casual aplomb of a lifelong fishionado.

There were no midges. There were no fish interested in the fly. There were no other people. Anywhere. In the entire glen. The silence as we allowed the clinker-built dinghy to drift was drinkable, like the water from the loch. By the time we returned to the White House, we knew that what had seemed as if it might, possibly, be a goodish wheeze, was showing all the signs of turning into a wizard wheeze.  Supper was taken, whisky was drunk, and the sleeping bag delivered sleep almost before the zip was pulled.

So there we were this morning, sizing up the chances of success. The conditions seemed right but, so far, there was no sign of what we were looking for. Unusually for this part of the world, our quarry was not a living thing, in that it neither flew, ran, or swam. We were looking for a combination of elements, the first two of which, clear skies and a frost, were present. 

Crossing the loch was smooth and quick. Soon we were climbing the hill on the other side. It seemed a little bigger than it had looked from the water. Jonny strode on. I followed, looking over my shoulder every few minutes.

The eastern horizon was just starting to glow, when we turned a corner and saw what we'd hoped for. The distant water, when we'd last seen it , had been glassy, smooth, a clean straight line. Now, it had grown an undulating white fur. 

A mist had come up, ground hugging cloud, if you will. It was the third element.

From this moment onwards, photographing at dawn becomes frantic. The light and the visibility are changing radically every minute. You need to keep looking in every direction , checking the west while you're clicking at the east. 

I won't really know whether the shots have worked until I try to print them. What is for sure is that the expedition worked. We had decided not to attempt the highest hilltop, but it had been a close-run decision. Had we done so we would have been disappointed as it was shrouded in its own little cloud for the whole morning. 

It was all too beautiful. Snipe shot up, shouting, from under our feet. Stags could  be heard from every direction. Jupiter (perhaps) shone steadily in the west. The moon continued to hold her own against the rampaging sun. And still we had the glen to ourselves. Not until we were nearly down the hill did we hear the almost shocking sound of a car engine. It was the only thing we heard until after we'd packed up and left, apart from our own oft-repeated "Aye" of appreciation.

Spooning

As I sit here in the Spoons' kitchen, family members pass in and out of the room. Iona is offering her mother some help with her quiche, saying she has pastry ready. (She once did a one month cookery course, but says that all she learnt there was how to follow a recipe, and how to slice carrots 17 different ways. She now cooks regularly for the fishing lodges in the area.) Euan, having been out on the hill for a stag at dawn, is now out with a ferret and his friend's grandfather. Rowena, having been pulling pints until three this morning , is not yet back; she stayed with her grandmother last night. Jonny has just disappeared around the corner, sitting on the back of a quad bike and trailer driven by his youngest boy. I still haven't go all their names learned, but that leaves two unaccounted for.

Jonny and I were up on a small hill hoping for morning mists at 6.30 a.m. We didn't get them, but the clouds hugged the hilltops in a friendly way. As we returned, Angus hove into sight, striding across the field to see who was about at this early hour. Behind him, his sheepdog was passing the time driving the sheep around the field. Angus's hand shake was surprising. I hadn't looked closely at the outstretched digits, so when it closed around my puny hand, it felt like an entire tanned hide was wrapping itself around.  He put the dog through its paces; as it was still really a puppy, the performance was impressive.

Since I started writing, Archie has come in and started to play a version of backgammon called AC/DC with his father. Both claim to be the best at it. Rowena has returned and is sitting on the sofa with the half-blind kitten.

It's like a cross between Swallows and Amazons and Little House on the Prairie here, the kind of life that, when described as an ideal, is usually rejected as being just a fantasy that never existed. Tonight, we set out on the big expedition, up to Affric, just Jonny and I. Preparations are being assisted by the entire family. If this is fantasy, count me in. I don't want to return to reality.

Llama karma

Heading across the country from north Yorkshire to Penrith, it becomes hard to understand why anyone in search of beauty needs to leave these shores. The sky opens up above, no matter that it is filled with clouds; somehow, there are more greys on view than seems possible. The ground rises and falls in increasingly magnificent fashion. Its character is defined not by man-made boundaries such as patch work fields and hedges, for, although those are present, the dominant feature becomes the shape of the land, here climbing and soaring, there rolling and generous.

Vanbrugh's words echo at every turn: "the tame, sneaking South of England". This landscape that I now look out on was what he was comparing it to, as he wrote to his northern patrons, bemoaning his enforced sojourn in deepest southern Britain. I'm sitting in the Llama Karma Kafe. In the environs of Hastings, that name would send me spinning on without stopping, aware that a moniker of that sort has to denote a worthy but pointless alternative to the traditional greasy spoon.

Here in the north it's just a gimmicky name for a first class cafe. The best bacon and eggs, good coffee and friendly,smiling staff.

I already feel as if a mild adventure has begun. This is a different world to that of the racing south. Even in this little roadside cafe, there is a sense of people connected to each other, a sense that's hard to find south of watford.

McBof

Tomorrow morning I set off on a short northern trip, a tour even.  It's going to be eight hours, even from here in Yorkshire. I drove here yesterday, and that took four hours.

It seems like I'm already getting into the kind of mindless numbers games that start to sprout inside my head on long drives.

Picture hunting. Inverness. Colinsay. Carlisle. Finish off by taking a diversion to the viewing day for Chatsworth's attic sale before getting home in time to see Bee. 

In between, I'll be crashing in on three different worlds: Highlands, Islands, and Borders. What'm I going to hear? What'm I going to see? What'm I going to do?

WHAT?!?!!

An upsetting moment yesterday: having been to the fakes show in the Sainsbury Wing, it seemed churlish not to steer my young companion towards my favourite self-portrait (Rosa, see above - or is it below?)

It wasn't there.

Apparently, it's gone to Dulwich. I'll track it down and make sure it's still on view - it would be criminal to lock it away.

selfish portraits

The self-portrait is an odd one. Why do we do it? There's the constantly-seeking-artist reasoning, which says that it's a good way to try out techniques without damaging a precious sitter. Then there's the the no-nonsense self-promotion angle, and, finally, pure vanity. The painting I've been back to see more times than any other is the self-portrait of Salvator Rosa in the National Gallery.

Fot those too young to have learned the Latin at school, a loose translation of the board in his hand reads "Either put up or shut up". (Literally: "Either stay silent, or say something more interesting than silence.")

Why do I find myself drawn back to it so often? Well, he certainly looks cool in that grumpy artist way. And the extraordinary resemblance to Jose Mourinho is not uninteresting. But it's the hold he has from over all those years: standing in front of the canvas, there is a real sense that he is there, in a way that rarely comes across in portraits. There are other portraits in the same room; all of them, in their own ways, are wonderful but none has that same immediacy. There is a distance, something between the viewer and the sitter.

That something is probably the artist, and that would explain the draw of the self-portrait: for once, he's not there to get in the way.

The self portrait we see most of today is an unusual one, in that it's a sculpture, or many sculptures. Anthony Gormley's pieces are all based on models of himself. Even so, they're not really self-portraits in the traditional sense. They are more akin to Hitchcock's appearances in his own films, the placing of the artist in the frame as an everyman. Gormley's frame is the whole wide world, and you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be a whole new chapter in the story of the self-portrait as a result of his work.

Here, then, is my own Gormless Self-Portrait.