Waste Not

We took our honeymoon in Ireland. This was in the days when Tim Berners-Lee was still developing prototypes of the World Wide Web, so the tech revolution that (along with EEC/EU membership) transformed Ireland into a Celtic tiger was not yet on the horizon. I remember that everywhere we went, we drove past fridges, abandoned, mainly in bogs. Fly tipping is to be condemned, but why do the Irish only fly-tip fridges?

Echoes of this have returned on Mull. There are plenty of bogs, but no abandoned fridges (so far). Instead, Mull's foible is to bedeck its farmland with white tin baths, frequently with taps attached. We have even encountered a barn full of baths, piled high, awaiting a vacancy in a field corner or hedgerow. Of course they are livestock drinking troughs. It's not the first time I've seen this kind of repurposing, but never on this scale or ubiquity. As in Ireland, I wonder what particular mix of cultural and economic factors has brought this about - to say nothing of the obvious question about the source of all the baths! Have former whisky smugglers diversified into vintage enameled iron?

In a way, then, a collection of second-hand chimney pots is less surprising than it might be. They have been removed from the chimneys of a rather grand country mansion and replaced by some surprisingly utilitarian new ones. What fate awaits them? A forced rhubarb enterprise to challenge the Yorkshire triangle? An innovative sport in the 2023 Mull Highland Games? Bollards on the new Dervaig bypass? The island will find them a purpose

Mull played every card it has got today: ice on the puddles, an aurora, incandescent stars, including meteors, a red-sky dawn, waders on the loch, songbirds in beech woodland, intense low winter sun, a 3 metre standing stone casting a 6 metre shadow, ocean views, island views, storms tracking over the sea, but never over our heads, rainbows, endless cloudscapes, closing with a fiery sunset looking like molten lava in the sky. I took so many photographs, but this is the one that will always intrigue me