Swan 68 Dreaming

10/24/2005

I stand at the Morning Room french windows as torrential rain runs down them and I gaze onto a foul day complete with a full Easterly gale, perhaps some second hand hurricane from the mid Atlantic. I worry about our last night’s guests who have left for the Colonsay ferry; it will not be a smooth crossing. My dream of the momment is to let the Tower of Glen Trollaigh to some Russian oil tycoon with interests in Scottish football, whilst dearest Dottie and I live on a Swan 68, but days like these remind me that it probably would be pure Hell! As the day wears on, I have to get away from the desk, so I don the full wet weather togs and set off to blow the cobwebs away with a hike all the way across the high pass with a full pack of brutes hanging on. Quite splendid, why can I seldom find the time for this glory that is on my doorstep? I return as darkness begins to fall and the storm begins to abate, my e-mail box is full of enquiries about yesterday’s tale of the Lady D’Abanville. That is the whole point of the deathbed story so frequently told by my father, just whose member was she hanging onto at her last breath? My father was sure that it was the 9th Baron to whom she may have been reconciled, or was it one her many dusky admirers, perhaps the mulatto Colonel Mackay, of whom she was particularly fond. Certainly, the dark Captain had been hung at the yardarm some two years earlier. The most likely suitor was Winston Churchill’s great great grandfather who was known to be bollocking about Port au Prince at that time. What a terrible bore as the Churchills are an overrated bunch of snobs at the best of times. I feel an Ardbeg momment coming on to ward off the chill, cheers, Yours Aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.