They say at times that the [true?] word was close to the lads of the South side. All the folk over there think that they are related to Ailean Sheonaidh. But the lads of the North side are not so slack. I happened to meet a young man connected to me in the Criterion a day or so back - the son of Murdinag Dhomhnaill Fhionnlaigh. 'Anything going on out your way?' He said. (He lives in Stornoway and he does not get out of the metropolis often) 'I haven't heard anything,' I said, trying to be clever. 'I don't believe that any of our people have died.' 'That's good,' he said, 'what with my suit away at the cleaners.' Just you wait a bit though...
Who should meet me then but 'Chuck', and naturally I understood than someone connected with me had died and from the kind of pleased look that he still had, it must have been quite a loss. If there was one other fella in Scotland to do the needful, he's the one. He was hard, he was quick, and he was strong, and he had a kick like a donkey, but his talent went down the urinal drain in The Higlanders. I won't say anything more.
I was not there when Mairead Ros came around the corner of Cromwell Street. She had a big wad of cash in her fist, asking would I make a film with her. There will not be much pay, she said, but plenty of expenses. We will go to the best possible place on the face of the earth and have a little bit of conversation on camera [ris - in fact is with the camera]. Well, sure, no bother. I said, what about the Seychelles? I'm afraid the budget would not stretch to the Equator, and so it turned out that we settled on Ranish.
I am going to show her [dhi - to her] the cliff on which my grandfather Prabag, who had the 'gift' [buisneachd - magic], would go rock fishing for codling on which we lived.
I was fairly young at the time, and my memories are fairly vague (meadhanach - middling) but the Geaman was telling me that Prabag would cross one foot over the other four times and spit five times before he cast his hook into the sea (sàl - seawater). I don't know whether I ought to show the magic well to Mairead (what with the pay being so poor), but what the hell I was getting a plug for the Novel. It's in the Sloc nam Marbh that the epic starts [Sloc nam Marbh - 'pit of the dead' - perhaps the saw-pit for making boat timbers which was traditionally haunted]. A wee lad, who has no idea who is his father. Ranish and the days of my youth have been on my mind recently and it worries me. I haven't the slightest notion of what I ate this morning but I remember what Bolaidh said to Iain Mhurchaidh on Tuesday evening in 1949. I've heard about these 'lucid moments' coming close to the end, and I would like to write [it all down] before the bell rings.
Kenny was telling me yesterday evening that his father, who remembers Prabag, appeared to him a short while ago. The old lad only has black-and-white and he does not see much colour. Who should appear but M. Thatcher in a black dress. 'O, God!, 'he said, 'when was it that her husband died?'.
