Changeable: Barometers and mind games in North-East Scotland

If you can't change the weather with your mind, change your mind about the weather...

“No-one knows what the original people of Scotland were �" cold is probably the best informed guess, and wet.” A.A. Gill, 1954.

 

My father was a Scot. Despite living in Australia for almost as long as he lived in Scotland, he never ceased to be a Scot. He contributed to the National Trust, returned every second year and cavorted around in a kilt, addressing the haggis in his native dialect at Burns Suppers. For those of us who are not Scottish, this is a curious display of patriotism involving the national dish, the national dress and a Scottish poet from the 18^th century. 

Since my father passed away, I try to get to Scotland as often as possible. I stay in the old stone farmhouse which has been in our family for generations, and enjoy the second country in which I feel at home - but always in the summer!

 

Aberdeenshire in the summertime can be a joy. It is located on the eastern side of the Highland Fault Line, where quarrelling tectonic plates caused the birth of majestic dark mountains that cascade into dramatic glens. Hollowed by retreating glaciers, the peaks ease down into rolling purple hills of heather and fields of golden barley.

 

The farm house is located between mountains Bennachie and Tap o’noth. On a fine day you can see all the way from the peaks to Aberdeen, and a long line of monstrous oil industry support vessels queuing for the harbour entrance. The daylight lasts until 10:30 at night, and returns at four am.

On days like this, only thick wooden shutters thrown open, roadside poles to measure the depth of snow drifts, and stone houses with their backs turned to the ocean behind sea walls, suggest that the weather here can be anything other than pleasant.

 

But that is just the problem. Water, heated up in the Gulf of Mexico circulates upwards to the United Kingdom as the Gulf Stream. It meets cold air coming down from the pole and abruptly dumps its moisture on Scotland, making the weather largely unpredictable and frequently revolting.

When I was ten, my father promised me five pounds for every day we were in Scotland and there was “Not a cloud in the sky”. Needless to say, he was never forced to pay up.

 

This year, I land in Glasgow and ask the man at customs how the weather’s been. With a perfectly straight face, he replies; “Aye, it’s no’ been so bad. The rain is vertical now. Last week t’was horizontal.”

This year I come with my sister-in-law from The Netherlands. She lands at Aberdeen Airport amidst an army of oilmen from the rigs, in the pouring rain.

 

“It’s even sunny in The Netherlands,” she says accusingly as I pick her up.

I begin our holiday by introducing her to Aberdeen’s famous roundabouts. Three lanes enter from five different directions, but the roundabout itself has only two lanes. Stuck in the rapidly disappearing middle lane between a truck and a bus, my guest is not certain she has made the right decision in coming here! She is equally unimpressed by the Haggis supper I propose �" she’s done her homework on the internet. I remind myself I have been eating this patriotic mixture of lamb’s lungs and assorted offal with oatmeal, wrapped in a stomach lining long before I learned of its contents. But I am determined she will come to love this country as passionately as I do, and I have one week to convert her!

 

On the first day, it rains. The streets of Stonehaven, slightly south of Aberdeen are fresh and wet. The sky is low and grey, and the clear North Sea licks the sea wall ominously. Ropes left on the wharf wash themselves, and old nets are strewn upon the rocks. The ruins of Dunnotter Castle are partially obscured in by the mist, nothing but a ragged cliff-top silhouette. Large gulls turn endless circles above the cliffs, crying so forlornly that the Hebredian Islanders believed the birds contained the souls of the restless dead.

 

We explore the castle from top to bottom. Strategically placed, this ruin was first built in the 14^th century, and has been intimate with most stages of Scotland’s modern history including the era of witch burning and the Jacobite Uprising. It even suffered 10 days of cannon fire from Oliver Cromwell, which accounts for much of its ruined status. The cramped dungeon once housed 167 prisoners, the result of a religious dispute between the Protestants and the Catholics.

 

The rain comes down in cold, wet sheets and from where we later sit in a cosy Stonehaven pub, an idea is born.

 

“We will change the weather with our minds,” my sister-in-law declares, “Each day we will think of a new way.”

My travelling companion is a psychologist, and you can’t argue with a psychologist �" especially not a Dutch one!

I propose the first and most obvious weather-changing idea �" Denial.

We drive north to see if it works, to a tiny fishing village called Cruden Bay and the remains of Slains Castle. Bram Stoker visited this castle, and Dracula was born �" right here on this Scottish cliff-top. The wind has picked up now, and the cruel North Sea pounds the rocks some three stories below. Bubbles of sea foam float surreally through the castle and land upon small yellow flowers growing through the stone floor.

It is not raining. That is not a horizontal sheet of rain racing in from the North Sea. I am not cold. I am not wet. The sky is not black.

Does denial work? Absolutely!

 

By the time we drive back to the farm, the windscreen wipers are no longer necessary, and a little patch of blue sky has broken through!

The next day my sister-in-law is speaking to the barometer on the living room wall. “Changeable,” she says, “This means you will change to Fine.”

Over breakfast she proposes our next theory �" Murphy’s Law. We leave for the coast with no hats, no sunglasses and no cameras.

Does Murphy’s Law work? Absolutely!

 

As we arrive in Pennan, a small fishing village on the north east coastline, the sun is shining and the weather is warming up. It is a perfect day for photography, of course! This village is one of a series of tiny settlements seated at the foot of high, red granite cliff. The Highlanders were the first people to populate this frozen coastal stretch when, regarded as “Gaelic-speaking savages”, they were driven from their homelands to make way for sheep and civilised society in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

 

Forests of bull kelp wilt in the shallow water, slopping up and down on tiny swells. The water is flat and blue and the tide is out, as if the revolting weather has decided to batter another shore, and take the sea with it. The beach reveals a bunch of confused Scots, undecided on what to wear over their brilliant white bodies. The Scottish response to fine weather never ceases to amuse me! They swim in an ocean which reaches 10 degrees in the middle of summer, and give the impression that this is fun. I seem to be the only person who still feels a jumper is necessary.

I once put my foot in the North Sea. I removed it, quickly.

The following day, the barometer reads ‘Changeable’ once again, so we decide to change the weather with the next theory: Illogical, unshakable positive thinking.

 

We head west this time, to Inverness and the Black Isle where the dark mountains look down on eerie Culloden Moor; a cold, flat expanse of ground beneath which the bodies of over a thousand Highlanders lie. Some years before the Highland clearances, the Highland clans rose up against the government with Bonny Prince Charlie, to decide who should be the King of Scotland. The poor, ragged regiment never stood a chance against the Government Red Coats. They marched all night to the battle ground, to be defeated by their own rain and mist before they even arrived. I wonder if Bonny Prince Charlie had an instrument that told him the weather was ‘Changeable’.

 

We stand on Culloden Battlefield, and loudly praise the small openings of blue sky above us. The rest of the visitors assume we are insane.

Close to this site of war graves is another type of cemetery. The Clava Cairns are prehistoric mounds of smooth, grey rocks arranged within a boundary of larger stones, thought to have been erected along the meridians of the moon some 4000 years ago. The ice age had receded and people had developed primitive agriculture. They cremated their dead, placing the collective remains in these stone structures. I couldn’t help wondering how a future civilisation might view ours, based on the remains of our cemeteries with hundreds of single headstones. Individual and ultimately insignificant? 

 

Running out of ideas as the clouds build over the Black Isle, I suggest an Australian Rain Dance. Since it never rains in Australia (until it pours), perhaps doing a rain dance would actually discourage the rain. But this theory is quickly discarded because my sister-in-law does not believe in mischievous rain spirits, and I propose to substitute a didgeridoo with the old set of bagpipes in the cupboard.

 

Deciding a little indoor education is in order, we begin at the east end of the Highlands and work our way through the distilleries. The tours are free, which is a pleasant surprise and we learn about the process of creating Scotland’s best known export, Single Malt Whiskey. Interestingly, the only variables in taste come from the water, the proportions of the Still and the casks in which the liquid is left to age. Most distilleries have bought up the land around them and left it to the wild in order to protect their water source.

 

On the tour, we learn an interesting fact about the weather. Between one and two percent of the whiskey aging in casks evaporates into the atmosphere each year, where, presumably the angels enjoy it, which is why it is called “The Angels’ Share”. With all the distilleries in Scotland, this equates to roughly 300,000 litres of whiskey sitting up there in the Scottish skies. This certainly gives the rain a whole new feeling!

 

‘Rain’, reads the exasperating barometer the following morning. Defeated, we rack our brains for new theories, but find none. Denial, Murphy’s Law and Positive Thinking have all been used, and rain dances have been ruled out. Back at the house, I look to my father’s book case for inspiration �" volumes and volumes on the history of Scotland, books on every castle, every town, every industry... and there it is! Sitting between Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Highland Clearances, a field guide to clouds!

Now here is something you can’t do in Australia!

 

Just by looking out the window, I see a stratus covering the entire sky, extending its blanket to the ground. A cup of coffee later, a patch begins to clear and I see nimbostratus sitting above. Oh! All the clouds I have been missing! Layers of cloud tumbling down the Cairngorm Mountains into valleys, clouds moving across the landscape in great sheets from the West, clouds billowing out over the North Sea. If only I had found this book earlier, they could all have had names!     

 

“Well,” says my sister-in-law. “If you can’t change the weather with your mind, you just have to change your mind about the weather.”

At the end of our week, she tells me she loves Scotland as much as I do, and I have succeeded!

 

But ultimately, it’s that Irish b*****d Murphy who triumphs in the end.

The day I drop her back at Aberdeen airport bound for Amsterdam, it’s warm, the barometer says ‘Fine’ and... there is not a cloud in the sky!

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

I been to Scotland a long time ago. I love the people and the beauty of the country. I like your father. We need to hold on to our heritage. The people of Scotland had to fight to hold her piece of land in this world. I was station in Europe for three years. I remember a lot of rainy days and few sunny days. A good ending to a excellent story.
Coyote

[Hawkmoth]

Excellent story, it was a swift read and full of interesting information. As I child I was mad about Scotland; when I finally paid it a visit I fell head over heels in love. Glad to know you managed to enjoy your share of good weather! Scotland looks even more amazing when the sun is shining :)