Robert McNeil: Alone in a remote cottage. Nothing could go wrong, could it?

Published on Wednesday 12 August 2009 14:01

AS I left the city, rain lashed down as if it hated the place. On the CD player in my trusty Focus, I played some "new country" music and the latest CD by Jimi McRae. Some of you may remember Jimi from Edinburgh's High Street, where he would stand and play the bagpipes. Stirring stuff it was, too, and he looked the part in a right Braveheart-style rig-out. I always thought Jimi would go to Hollywood.

But he's a braw piper and Global Gathering, his new CD, is a splendid mixture of trad and mod, if that's the right expresh. My country stars were Ryan Bingham, Nels Andrews and Trent Willmon. Ryan and Nels formed the soundtrack on my last trip to south-west Scotland. Music helps to define trips (it was always the Small Faces in Yorkshire), sparking memories and associations.

Trent is a more recent discovery, playing straighter country than the other two, though thankfully without a surfeit of clichd steel guitar. He's the cleverest lyricist I've come across in years (wit, wisdom, drink, work, and a bit of Jesus, alas, but we're talkin' Texas here and that ain't Dawkins County).

I must have driven down the coast road from Ayr to Stranraer before. I remember doing at least one news story here, and that must have distracted me, because this time I was knocked out by the scenery. The sun was shining now and lit up stunning sights: seascapes, Ailsa Craig and roly-poly, hedge-and-hillock countryside.

At Turnberry, there appeared to be some sort of golf tournament taking place, so there were lots of police around, in case anyone went berserk with excitement. Joke. In Stranraer, I skipped joyfully around Tesco Express and left without the thing I'd gone in for (something for my tea) as I'd decided it would be a whisky week, and spent ages choosing that. The plan was to have just one nip before bed. It never worked.

I settled for peat-smoked Laphroaig and, to wash it down, Old Speckled Hen ale from my beloved England. I also bought something else I love: local papers. Here, integrity and reporting for the record remain. The internet will never supercede the pleasure of getting your local weekly every Thursday or Friday and peering through the pics and pars at leisure (or, preferably, at work). It's a marker on the week, a punctuation on community life.

Through the village, down a tree-lined side-road and past the farm, I came to my cottage. It was so cosy, with whitewashed walls and a well-designed garden. My own garden consists of three consecutive rectangular areas – and nature abhors a straight line – with everything in the wrong place. I'm too frightened to do anything radical with it, and I don't like uprooting well-established big bushes. I wish I were harder on the natural world sometimes. It's been hard enough on me.

The cottage was owned by a Derbyshire couple, who couldn't have been kinder. They'd provided a welcome tray containing beer, wine, butter, tea, coffee, and biscuits. Their CD collection included works by angel-voiced Eva Cassidy, sadly no longer with us, and by Kate Bush, the goddess, the most creative pop woman, like, ever. Funnily enough, I rarely play her now. Like the Beatles, her music is too significant and affecting for me. Effectively, you go into another world, another time and space. Kate, alas, has never been the same since being seduced into having a family, which kills creativity and ends communal obligation.

The book collection was interesting, too, with St Dawkins, Lord of the Rings, and up-to-date stuff by John O'Farrell. However, I was intrigued by volumes with a more sinister edge: Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, The Vault of Bones, Bloodheir, The Last Templar, and Life Swings by Nick Faldo. Scary stuff. It didn't help that the novel I'd taken from my own bag was called Smallville: Hauntings.

Around the house I'd noticed statuettes of owls – harbingers of death in some cultures. I'd already had a brush with a bat outside. I went back into the garden to watch the setting sun. As darkness gathered, I heard a sudden noise from the bushes. Peering in, I found a tarpaulin held down by stones. It was about the size of a grave.

I half-exepected a peal of thunder and flash of lightning. I was a lone journo nosing around. I imagined that sinister bloke in The Armstrong & Miller Show, watching me with one raised eyebrow before saying calmly and decisively into an intercom: "Kill him."

In the cottage across the road, I fancied I saw twitching curtains. Then I remembered the cottage-owners telling me the chap there was a high priest of Wicca known as … The Painted Man. Ulp!

Read Robert McNeil every Tuesday and Friday in The Scotsman.