I remember the first time we set foot in the house at the farm. What I mean is: I remember arriving, walking down the little stone path to the back door. I can still remember the way the flagstones fell under my feet – the angles of the different stones, which way they faced, how not to trip up in the dark, even if you’re running. I remember the smell of the elder tree that grew next to the path, and the coldness of the stone wall you walk past on the way to the back door.
It felt like one of those rare moments when you know you’re about to cross a threshold and something big is going to shift. And it did. The earth shifted under our feet. Well, metaphorically. We were children, but we could feel the magnitude of the quake. I remember it so clearly.
The House
The house at the farm had stone floors – very cold stone floors – and no central heating when we moved in. It was entirely heated from wood stoves, and we were often cold. But we didn’t really notice. We were too busy doing other things. That first visit, Bruce played the accordion while we danced and jumped about.
I remember the sound my school bag made as I chucked it down on the porch – there was half a bit of decking there. The specific noise it made. I remember kicking my shoes off. The exact sound of the door going into the house.
You would come into this little porch area, a little hallway that was dark, where we hung our coats. There was a mouse hole in the corner. Once, when our cousins were visiting from London – city kids, city mice to our country mice – a rat appeared at the worst possible timing. It came out of the hole in the middle of the day when they were there, and they were so freaked out. But for us? We didn’t really care.
It’s important for me to talk about this because it’s really sad to think about, but the house has now been gutted. It was condemned. The inside of the house doesn’t exist anymore. So it’s important for me to remember what it looked like.
Inside
If you came through from the porch into the hallway of the house, right across from you there was a bathroom. You would go into the bathroom, shut the door and lock it, and it felt like the only place in the house where you had any sort of privacy. It was like a sanctuary. Sometimes I would just sit in there because I could shut the door. Not that I wanted to escape from the rest of the house – I just wanted my own space. Kirsty & I shared a room for years. There wasn’t a lot of personal space. But I’m incredibly grateful for the fact that I never felt lonely.
There was a window in the bathroom that was permanently open, to the point where the Virginia creeper outside would grow in and down the walls of the bathroom. From the outside of the house, this window looked like it was next to another door – I don’t know why, maybe there was a historical door there. Every so often, tourists would come and try to get into the house. I think they found it so charming – “Oh look, a little Scottish cottage!” – and they would knock on the window, thinking it was some sort of museum.
I wish it was still a museum.
We discovered that the old doors in the house had doorknobs that you could actually take off, and then they functioned as keys. So we’d go around and lock people in rooms.
The Kitchen
If you came out of the bathroom and turned left, you’d step up into the kitchen. On the right by the kitchen door, we had this height chart that was created over years and years. All our friends would add to it, the family. Over time, we amassed a lot of people on that height chart.
Next to that, there was a huge notice board with people’s phone numbers – hundreds of people’s phone numbers. Back then, we didn’t have mobile phones, so everyone’s number was on the board. We had an actual phone line. When someone phoned, you could sit on the window sill in the kitchen and chat to them. But there was another phone through in the living room, and people could lift it up and listen in. Which we sometimes did, for fun.
The kitchen had a stone floor. The rugs we had were completely ragged. It was heated by this ancient sort of Aga-type thing, but not the posh ones people have today that look nice. Aesthetically, it was – shall we say – not polished.
The kitchen was a place where we had loads of meals. Sometimes with all the volunteers, there would be fifteen of us sitting down together. Sometimes we would have friends from school – I think they were a bit bemused by how many people were around the table. We didn’t have fancy food or anything, but there would always be pots of soup and oatcakes.
By the window, there was this massive double sink. Huge taps. Everything would get washed in there – from potatoes for dinner and sweetcorn to, sometimes, my little sisters having baths in there. It was that big.
When we left the house, my sister actually bought the sink off the estate. They were cheeky enough to charge her £30. I have it now, in our house. It’s on our porch. I remember I drew the sink as part of my degree show. I have some sort of strange attachment to that sink.
There was a little room off the kitchen – a really cold room. We used to have the fridge in there and store things that needed to be cold, like milk. I remember my little sister used to go and steal butter from the fridge for some unknown reason. Our fridge never really worked – our milk always seemed to be off.
The Living Room
Then the living room. The living room had a piano in it – no idea where it came from, but we knew lots of musical people. There was a book called “Rise Up Singing” – a traditional folk book – and we would often sing and have music sessions.
At one point, my room was the little room off the living room, this tiny, tiny little room almost like a cupboard under the stairs. I plastered the walls in National Geographic photos of nature.
Me and Kirsty had an open fire in our room. It was always freezing. Our toy box would regularly be moldy and all our clothes were damp. I guess as a kid, you just accept these things as normal.
The Farm
The farm was different from Musselburgh in every way, and somehow it echoed the freedom of the islands. It felt like we’d been saved. Not that Musselburgh was a bad place – this just felt more like home.
Life on the farm was pretty amazing. We were very involved with harvesting, and every school holiday we would have a rota where we’d do things like clean the chickens out, collect the eggs, grade the eggs. We’d always have Saturday jobs and jobs during the week as well. We weren’t allowed to do anything until the jobs had been done.
Running Barefoot
We spent entire summers at the farm running barefoot. By autumn, our soles were thick like leather. We rarely brushed our hair. We didn’t care what clothes we wore. It was more important to be outside, to explore.
We’d run up the lane next to the house – a narrow little road like the ones in the Highlands. There was a huge avenue of lime trees. They hummed so loudly back then. Not so much now. Just buzzing with bees. The sound was constant. It filled the air.
There were so many bees that the road would be scattered with their bodies toward the end of summer, when they’d worn themselves to death. Honeybees. Their dead bodies stung our feet. They didn’t mean to, but they did. Again and again, as we ran over them in bare feet.
We played on bikes and skateboards, on roller skates. We got used to the pain. We didn’t care. We kept running.
Over the years, the lane grew busier. But in the beginning, it was ours. When there were torrential thunderstorms, my brother would be straight out there in his waterproof jacket, building dams in the road. Just completely immersed, forgetting he was actually on a road. He would float little paper boats down the streams.
The Woods
Even the walk to school through the woods was an experience that shaped me. I have these really profound memories – even from being quite young – where I would just feel so incredibly joyful walking through the woods. Feeling the morning sun on my face and feeling so lucky to be alive.
I remember this really special tree we used to walk past, with a hole in it. When our little sisters’ teeth fell out (they were quite a bit younger than us), when they would get wobbly teeth, we would put the teeth in this tree. Because it felt like a magical tree. Not sure why.
Sometimes the whole path would be carpeted with bluebells. The path was only one or two feet wide in places – just enough to put your feet. You had to know where to step. We could walk that way in the pitch dark and still know the route. No need for torches. We knew the woods so well. There were a lot of trees, but we never walked into them. You just knew where things were as if they were just furniture.
Building Things
I remember these three Americans came to the farm. In those days, we relied on volunteers that came from all over the world. These guys were some of the earliest volunteers – Marty, Pat, can’t remember the other one’s name. They helped build the barn.
Before that, we had a lean-to shed that was like a grocery shop. It had a basic set of scales and sold dried flowers and honey and vegetables. There was an honesty box for when there were no adults there to man the shop. If we were going on a walk in the woods – which we would often do at weekends – we would just leave the honesty box, and it worked well. I remember Bruce being really happy one day because we took ten pounds. That £10 note seemed like a lot of money then. I guess it was.
The Americans helped build the barn. I think Bruce had been down at the local pub scribbling plans on a piece of paper, maybe got his architect friend to have a little look over them. And then suddenly, these three Americans were building the thing.
I remember the smell of the creosote on those heavy, tar-soaked electricity poles. That’s the kind of place the farm was – a place where buildings just grew, like mushrooms in the night.
Fire
There was also a wooden bothy. One morning, me and Kirsty woke to the smell of smoke. The bothy had burned down in the night. Marcello had filled the stove full of wood and must not have shut the air vents down, and it overheated. There must have been a fire from the chimney or something, but he woke up just in time to grab his precious guitar. Everything else went up in flames.
I remember walking out that morning with the smell of smoke. The whole caravan – the bothy – was just totally disfigured. The walls were at weird angles. It was just a shell left. Marcello was pretty shocked, and we helped rake about in the remains to find his possessions. The fire brigade had been in in the night, and everything was soaked.
Kirsty found what she thought was a fabric scrap, but it turned out to be Marcello’s jean pockets that had survived – and it was full of cash. I remember that being a really happy memory. He was so happy that Kirsty found this treasure for him in the remains.
Community
So many people passed through that house. It’s unreal. We would have this summer barbecue that was huge, and everyone on the phone list in the kitchen would get phoned and invited. People would bring food, and the whole garden would turn into almost like a festival site where even a stage would be built. Bruce was so into music. I remember one of the volunteers on the farm had a band called the Tartan Amoebas, and they played. We danced.
Over the years, the parties got bigger and extended to the orchard opposite the house, closer to where the barn eventually got built. There was a stage, and people would just come up and do sort of impromptu stuff. Some better quality than others.
One guy, about two in the morning, got up on the stage. No one knew who he was, but he launched into some sort of surreal-haiku-think-piece. After pausing for a moment, He began- “ Wheelie bin..wheelie bin. Where have you really bin?’ It was this completely surreal moment. But stuff like that would happen all the time. Strangeness was accepted and expected.
In the orchard, we had absolutely tons of campfires all the time, and we would sleep outside. Me and my sisters would bring our bedding outside and just sleep in the orchard, on the ground. There was also a little valley in the field next door to the orchard where we would have fires. We would cook on the fires. Like we had all the time in the world.
Despite setbacks, the farm just kept growing. More people came. Some went, some stayed. I can’t say it was always easy, but I feel incredibly grateful to have been surrounded by people from all over the world. I learned a lot about people.
Over time, we built this incredible community. It formed around us, like a mushroom ring.
I just thought that was normal. And for me, I suppose it was.