There would be ice on the loch maybe, and stags roaring up in Coire nan Laoch. Findlay might persuade Eddie Lub an Eòrna to give him a lift along the lochside. ‘They say the herring were playing in the Camas Dhu last night’, Findlay might say. The herring, coming into the loch to breed, might, like the phosphorescence, be here one night and gone the next. ‘Will we try a net?’ he’d say. Findlay had a physique you’d often see in the West of Ireland and the Western Highlands in those days. He was tall and rangy and looked as if he couldn’t fill his clothes properly. He was old enough not always to notice if he had a drip on his nose, and he lived in the old family home by the lochside with his brother. He was open and hospitable, and if you were there at tea-time he’d clear a space to put you a fresh sheet of the Daily Record on the table. He’d made a start at teaching my dog Gaelic, too. I knew I liked him a lot even then, but now it feels as if maybe I loved him, in a way, though I have only recently started to admit that kind of thing.
You lucky man, to have accrued such experiences.
Put them all in a book!