Coll to Chile ...
For years my Grandfather has been badgering other family members to travel to Chile in search of the rest of his extended family who emigrated there from Scotland back in 1880's. He's mainly motivated by the mysterious fact his father changed his name from Gilchrist to Thompson (not an obvious choice!) and no one seems to know why.
Some years ago I visited Coll (A Scottish Island!) with my collaborator Karen as part of our project A Hypertext Journal (now identified as a pre-blogs blog) anyway at that time my motivation was that we were diligently following Boswell & Johnson's journey to the Western Isles and I only spent about 4 hours there due to both our gruelling schedule and the quite bizarre Cally Mac options.
It was only after I got back that my Grandftaher revealed that this small island was in fact where my Great Great Great Grandparents had lived for some years before departing for the other side of the world. Since then I've always wanted to go back and look into this, so the run up to my 40th seemed as good a time as any.
Mr. P&M (otherwise known as 'Eagle Eyes' but that's another story) managed to find the grave in question within about 40 minutes of us arriving on the island. As it then rained for the next 5 days consistently that left a lot of time to peer through the downpour at illusive shapes in the sea (mainly waves) fantasising that we'd spotted a killer whale or at least an otter. I did see one in the end (it was on Tiree in fact) at a distance, but the sort of scamper it did up the beach gave it away.
You can see the little fellow's paw print as evidence on my Flickr photos, as well as the incredible range of wild flowers we saw despite the rain.
Some years ago I visited Coll (A Scottish Island!) with my collaborator Karen as part of our project A Hypertext Journal (now identified as a pre-blogs blog) anyway at that time my motivation was that we were diligently following Boswell & Johnson's journey to the Western Isles and I only spent about 4 hours there due to both our gruelling schedule and the quite bizarre Cally Mac options.
It was only after I got back that my Grandftaher revealed that this small island was in fact where my Great Great Great Grandparents had lived for some years before departing for the other side of the world. Since then I've always wanted to go back and look into this, so the run up to my 40th seemed as good a time as any.
Mr. P&M (otherwise known as 'Eagle Eyes' but that's another story) managed to find the grave in question within about 40 minutes of us arriving on the island. As it then rained for the next 5 days consistently that left a lot of time to peer through the downpour at illusive shapes in the sea (mainly waves) fantasising that we'd spotted a killer whale or at least an otter. I did see one in the end (it was on Tiree in fact) at a distance, but the sort of scamper it did up the beach gave it away.
You can see the little fellow's paw print as evidence on my Flickr photos, as well as the incredible range of wild flowers we saw despite the rain.
posted by Nina at 2:59 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home