Flight of the buisnessmen

Nananananananana Croft Man!........sorry

The day of the meeting dawned and I sprinkled “luck and success powder” on my file and into my shoes, just for extra help. I caught a bus into town and walked into the Starbucks where the meeting was to take place.
I’ve come to think of coffee houses like these as a creeping illness that destroys the places I love when my back is turned. While me and Vikkie were looking for our second year housing we came across an add which read “Ten minutes from both a Starbucks and a Costa Coffee” which sounded promising until I pointed out it could be anywhere in the UK or indeed America. I made a pact with myself that if any such operation started up on the island I would leave.
Daniel Shield arrived a little after the time we had agreed, as if he had timed his fashionable lateness to the nanosecond. He was surprisingly young, looking even more so in his suit and with his briefcase. He ordered a latte with practiced efficiency and sat down at my table as I waved at him, recognising him from his secretary’s incredibly accurate, and none too flattering description.
“Good afternoon Miss Glade”
“Good afternoon, Mr Shield”
God he was intimidating. No one had ever called me Miss Glade before; the closest I’d ever experienced was at school, where teachers had referred to me as Glade out of forgetfulness.
“You have a plan then” he gives my papers a nod “That’s good, some people show up with no idea, total time wasters”
I nod sympathetically
Oh God
“Well” he continues “let’s get down to it shall we? You want to take over one of the crofts, the one with the house, yes?”
I nod and open my file, trying to stop my hands from shaking.
“I looked into putting some mod-cons into the building. A sink, stove etc and budgeted according to the grants. I’m planning to keep my expenditure pretty low.”
What was I coming out with? He was nodding which had to be good.
“Let’s get to the business plan then.”
I’d been hoping for a little more preamble
“Well, I came up with a few…rudimentary ideas.”
Oh God, his eyebrows knit together instantly.
“Are you telling me you haven’t got a business plan, because I believe I was very clear…”
“Of course I have!”
“Well, what is it.”
“A campsite!” I blurt triumphantly, my eye caught by a print of hikers and tents peeking from the bag of a woman at the counter.
What?!
His face relaxes into an expression of tentative approval.
Take it back you idiot!
“Yes, I was reading a magazine article about the island and despite its beauty it does appear to be lacking in tourist accommodation.” I cover smoothly whilst my brain screams at me that I am a moron.
“Yes actually” he smiles “that is a rather brilliant idea, obviously you couldn’t run something like a farm out there, it’s just unrealistic.”
“Exactly” I agree, eagerly.
Bastard.
“How do you envisage the facilities?” he takes a sip of coffee and I realise I’m supposed to be speaking.
“I was thinking…” I scan the picture again for inspiration “the basics you know? Very basic…basics, for the devoted campers who only need, you know…”
“The basics?” he supplies smirking slightly.
I will jam that cup so far up his…
“Exactly” I grin my best grown up, professional smile, glancing at the picture, only it’s gone.
Crap.
“Yes, well you know what’s on a campsite, I don’t think I need to bore you with the details.”
“Well, I’m pleased with you, and from what you’ve said you certainly seem competent, despite your age.”
I was probably only a year younger than him, the crotchety old fraud.
“I think if you can cost this project and send it to this address” he gives me a card “Then we can get down to some practical things like…contracts.”
I shake his hand and walk out of the coffee shop, knowing I am in a lot of trouble.
Not the best of starts, I promise more island action soon, there’s just one more character to introduce, because it’s never as easy as it sounds.

The Squee of a lifetime

Seriously visit the hotel, for every person to show up and quote the blog I get a cookie.

The next morning, after a nice breakfast, I jog downstairs to return my tray to the desk and pay for my time at the hotel. The same woman as yesterday, Pam, I had learned this morning, greeted me warmly.
“Morning! How did you find us then?”
“Great, thanks” I say, counting out my money carefully.
“Any plans for today then?”
I was beginning to think she was getting these questions from a book.
“I thought I’d take a look at the croft, wherever that might be.” I hoped she would give me directions
“Oh! You’re here about the house!” she said, as if things were finally clear to her.
“No just the croft…”
“Well the house is on the croft! Well…not really a house, but still a building anyway. I suppose that’s why no one has taken the croft; they don’t want to be saddled with preserving that wreck just as it is.”
I extract myself from the conversation and walk outside. A house? I hadn’t considered the possibility that there would already be a house there. In fact that was the place where my plans had always hit a blank wall, for there was no way I could afford to build one. Pam had obligingly equipped me with some hazy directions and, because I wouldn’t believe it until I saw it, I set off for the house.
I walked quickly around the church, finding myself in a small walled graveyard. I opened the little gate at the back and went up a set of small stone steps. Then there was nothing, nothing but a thin winding dirt path over a wide expanse of windswept grasses and heather.
It took about forty minutes for me to shamble up the path, trying to ignore the bitter wind that blew from the deceptively bright sky. But then I saw it.
I’ve often heard about things that people fall in love with at first sight. My best friend Vikkie and her boyfriend for example or…Vikkie and any kind of biscuit. But this wasn’t like that. I wasn’t in love or anything but, for the first time since I moved to Bath I was completely relaxed, like I could breathe again now that I was away from the city.
The house was on the cliff, the highest point of the island. Around the curving lip of the cliff someone had built a stone wall, which crossed between the two half-moon points in a straight line in front of the house. It was the loneliest looking house in the world, at one time plastered white, but now flaking and grey. The wind that still scoured the top of the cliff had stirred the dirt around it, so the small square dwelling was surrounded by a small hillock, making it look like a large stone that had been washed up on the beach. Within the stone boundaries of the garden, wild grasses stuck up in fans, stiff and dry; reminding me of the time I did Vikkie’s hair with peroxide and baking foil. Between the grasses there were enormous bushes of untamed rosemary and lavender, and a tall spiky broom plant knocked to one side.
I hurried up to the gate and pushed the crumbling wood open. The path beyond was straight and made of aged bricks. The front door of the house was padlocked, but it was so corroded I broke its moorings the first time I pushed on it. Excitedly I pushed the door open and stepped into the semidarkness. Inside there was just the one room, plastered walls with notches and a floor of wide, soft stone flags. At the back of the room was a raised area, reached by stepping up three steps of bowed and scoured sandstone. Above were the beams of the roof, which was still fairly sound, its thick cut clay tiles apparently immune to the wind. There was nothing in the house except the chimney space and a few leaves, dried to ghosts.
I sat down on the floor for a while, enjoying the feeling of home that whispered from every crevice. I could see myself living here, which was the strange thing. Pam had told me that the building had to be more or less preserved as it was, and I was fine with that. It wasn’t like the other houses, she had told me, and I could see that. The other homes were grey stone and slate tile or thatch. This house had many components, none of which seemed to have been brought from the direct mainland. The sandstone front step, the brick path and the clay tiles, all things that had been brought here from the other side of the British Isles. Someone had wanted this house just so, someone who had spared no expense in constructing this modest home.
Right then I understood why.
I went back down to the village and waited with Pam for the daily boat to arrive, when it did I utilised my return ticket and endured an unsteady ride to the mainland. I called Daniel Shield’s office from my now co-operative mobile and learnt that he wouldn’t be able to talk to me until next week. I made it clear that I wouldn’t be in Scotland next week, and the woman on the phone promised to have him email me. With nothing left to do I wandered round the city for a while, checking out the various shops and a tacky amusement arcade. Eventually I gravitated back towards the station and began to reverse my long journey. Every chug of the wheels of the train took me further from the house or, as I increasingly thought of it, my house. I had happened across a bright shiny new life, and the only thing holding me back was a business idea. I had one week.
I walked from the station in Bath to catch the campus bus back to my room; it seemed years not days since I had been there last. I wandered through the block to my door and went in; I was assaulted by my things, the things that characterised me as The University Girl. I hated each and every thing in that room. Reluctantly I changed out of my clothes and into a fresh skirt and T-shirt. I had no time to do anything else before Vikkie barged into the room.
“Where have you been? Greg said he saw you at the station this morning, but you couldn’t have been because you didn’t take those books home for your mum.”
“I didn’t go home” I say, flopping onto my bed “I told you, I went to Scotland.”
Vikkie stood frozen with disbelief for a moment, then she exploded.
“Scotland!? Why would you go to Scotland? And why did you lie to me?”
“I didn’t, I told you where I was, when you called you got me on the train.”
“Why were you in Scotland?”
“I wanted to check something out. They have crofts on this Scottish island, Ilensay, and there’s this gorgeous house, and they’ll give me money to set up a business, except I don’t have one, but I need one to live there…Vikkie, please help me.”
It says a lot about Vikkie that, firstly she understood what I was saying, and secondly agreed to help. We spent the next few days jotting down business ideas, when we weren’t going to classes and when I wasn’t catching up on the work I hadn’t done in the holiday. It was quite hard thinking of something I could do on an island, I could see why no one had taken one of the crofts yet. We settled on some kind of cottage industry, growing crops in the garden that I had vividly described to Vikkie. Then converting the crops into something saleable. We thought of candles and lip balm and all sorts, before finally coming to a conclusion. Chickens.

Ah the immortal words of me. Yes that was indeed my business plan, and in a bit you can see what Daniel Shield “Croft Man” thought of it.

Touch down

Ok, so I’m on a train to Scotland and Vikkie has just phoned me at insane o’clock to ask about my whereabouts. I’m going to need a montage to catch you up at the beginning of each post at this rate.

For a moment I was speechless, why was she looking for me at six in the morning? Then I remembered.
“You were supposed to meet me in the café on campus, Speb is coming to visit this weekend remember? We were going to pick her up at seven”
I suddenly remembered the reason why I had booked holiday from work, not to visit home but so that me and Vikkie could show Speb (Stacey Patricia Elizabeth Baker - long story, even longer name) around Bath.
“Oops….I don’t think I’m going to make it” I said apologetically
“Why? What are you doing?”
“I’m going to Scotland”
Usually I’m a good liar, I hardly ever got detention at school, I covered up a multitude of absences and always managed to get debtors off the phone at home. But at that moment I could think of nothing to say that wasn’t the truth. Sadly, despite a friendship longer than half our lives, Vikkie can never quite tell the difference with me.
“That’s very mature Emma. Seriously, where are you?”
“I’m on a train, right this second, on my way to Scotland” I insisted.
“Fine! Don’t tell me, I’ll pick Speb up and see you later, but I’m going to want answers.” she rung off.
Sighing, I replaced the phone, just as the train pulled into the station at which I needed to change. I packed my things up quickly and jumped off the train.
At the end of my journey I emerged, blinking and irritable into the early morning light. I had a contact number for Daniel Shield who, the website informed me, could provide me with the paperwork that I needed. Provided I pass an interview with him of course. This part unnerved me slightly, I’ve never really interviewed for anything before. I got my first job because my phone voice is rather masculine and after confessing that they thought I was a man on the phone, they couldn’t turn me down. No university thought it necessary to meet me, something which I’m not sure I find complimentary. In fact the only interview I have ever suffered through was for a job at a cheap clothing shop, where the manager was an embarrassing twenty minutes late and I’m still convinced that is the reason why I didn’t get the job.
Before I got into the practicalities however, I wanted to enjoy a little more of the fantasy. Also, being my parents daughter, I was not about to sink time and effort into something without seeing what that something was. So, I found my way firstly to a supermarket for some provisions, and then I followed the signs for the ferry over to the island.
The name of the island, Ilensay, was stencilled in white on the side of the battered craft. It had six seats on the unvarnished deck, and several more in the electric tape patched glass cube that housed the captain. The boat rocked on the fringe of icy winter waves, at the end of a stumpy wooden protrusion into the open sea. On the horizon I could see the misty green and grey shape of the island, a speck of mineral colour between the gun metal sea and the roiling sky.
I paid for a ticket, I was the only passenger, and took a seat inside the glass shelter, hoping for some slight protection.
No such luck.
I rock in my seat as another wave crashes into the prow and foaming water hisses angrily across the deck. The radio in the console up front spits static and the kind of weather warnings you usually hear in disaster movies. The captain flips switches and jerks the impossibly small wheel around, to no noticeable effect. I lost sight of the mainland a while ago and still the island seems no closer, in fact I have not caught a glimpse of it since we set off.
Water slaps against the glass, making me jump. A fine mist sprays through a crack into the warmish clammy air. The wood around me groans and the metal judders like a speeding train. In moments the whole thing could collapse and the one solid thing in this world of water would vanish, leaving me and the captain in the wide mercury sea.
The boat lurches from the top of one wave to another in deep bobbing leaps that jog me in my seat. But at last I can see the grey shore of the island between the threatening crests. The captain aims for a promontory, a narrow plank walkway that runs between the rocks, leading, mazelike to the beach. For a few moments the boat continues to run and then the engine cuts off. I realise with a start that he expects me to climb out there, into the howling storm. Feeling less and less sure of myself by the minute I open the door to the deck and step out onto the slick planks.
Salt spray slaps me in the face like a wet rag, followed by the steady flow of relatively warm rain. Carefully I make my way across the rain soaked boards and slowly lower myself over the side, tennis shoes groping for the planking. No sooner have I steadied myself, than the captain starts his craft with a splutter and begins rocking through the deep wave basins, back towards the mainland. I watch the tiny vessel disappear, swallowed by the fury of the weather. I feel very small and alone.
The sky above me is black and rain has already soaked my denim jacket and jeans. I begin to walk, feet already frozen. Negotiating the sharp dark rocks on either side of the path, sliding between them and climbing over their leaning spikes. The beach is a band of pale grit, stretching endlessly away in either direction. I follow a path upwards, to the grassy fringe which quickly peters out. From my new position on the ridge I can see the only buildings on the island, huddled like crows against the wind. A few grey stone houses in a ragged string and a small church, encircled by a tumbledown wall.
For a moment, against the dark sky, I can almost see another squat shape, up on the cliffs, but then I blink and it is washed away by a fresh sheet of rain. I walk, soaked, towards the village and find, when I get there that it is even smaller than it first appeared.
The string of houses, sunk in the stony soil, surround the church like crooked tombstones. The ground between them is paved with flat grey stones, pieces of brass set into them to form a massive sundial, it’s shadow caster a tall hunk of wind pitted stone, glittering with mica. Standing in the rain I look helplessly along the houses and then I spot a small purple sign which identifies the house as a hotel. Though I distinctly remember that the article said the island had no hotels, this one seems so small as to be unworthy of mention, and sure enough, upon closer inspection it advertises only one room.
I push the door, and it opens, I sigh with relief as if this place had been closed out of season, I would have nowhere to go. Inside there is a plain plank floor, cream walls and tastefully bland pictures. The desk is unoccupied, but I ring the small brass bell and a slightly over middle aged woman appears, dressed in a lavender cardigan and looking very surprised to see me dripping in her lobby.
“I’d like a room please” I say, as she seems frozen in place with shock. My request seems to put her back on track.
“Oh course you would dear, oh look at you, you must be freezing!” she picks up a piece of card and hands it to me, attached to it is an old fashioned key and printed on the card is the price list. The off season rate nearly makes me faint, it’s less than a cinema ticket per night.
“You get yourself settled in and I’ll pop in with a menu for dinner at eight. Usually we don’t get many guests during the winter, so I’ll have to do the cooking if Maud, that’s the cook, is unavailable.” She looks at me and I realise some kind of response is called for.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine, thank you.” I add as an afterthought.
“Oh no trouble at all dear, now you get upstairs and wring yourself out! The room should be all set up.” She smiles with genuine sincerity and gestures up a small set of glossy wooden stairs. Gratefully I pick my bag up from the floor and slowly climb the stairs. At the top is a small cream corridor with only three doors. One says “Staff Only” another marked “Toilet” in the middle, my room, a plain door with a simple “1” on it in brass. I smile despite myself; the only room in the “hotel” is numbered.
I unlock the door and step inside. This room has carpet, light lavender, matching the bedspread exactly. The bed itself has a white iron bedstead and is stacked neatly with purple cushions, stitched with iridescent beads. I drop my bag onto the vanity table and strip off my wet clothes, draping them on the radiator. I am about to change into my spare set of clothes when I notice a set of grey and purple pyjamas on the bed, wrapped in cellophane. I put them on instead, pleasantly surprised by the hospitality. A glance at the clock reveals that it is only 2 o’clock; I sink down into the fluffy pillows and duvet, oblivious.
Just to be a shameless plug for a few seconds, the hotel really is lovely and if you ever find yourself all the way out here without plans for accommodation it is a great place to stay the night. Now all that “why are you on the island?” business is explained I get to talk about the house...oh lord the house!
　
　

And I'm off...

This is the part I was dreading, no matter how I tell this I always feel awful. I’m about to prove that despite all appearances I am indeed a flighty moron.

Another bus ride and I’m back on campus. I go straight to my room and pull out a kettle which I plug into the socket above my desk. I know that technically I’m not meant to cook things in my room, especially not bacon and not with curling irons (I’m kidding, I own no curling irons.) but me and Vikkie have always watched “Frasier” and had tea and hobnobs, ever since they gave us free periods at school. (Independent study? Please I did enough of that in lessons) so it just seems natural to have tea here instead of in the kitchen like a peer-pressure sheep person.
I flip the kettle on and as it boils I add hot chocolate to my Eddie Izzard “Cake or Death” mug. I put the DVD into my lap top and place it on the bed, then wrap myself in my duvet and put on my jogging bottoms (never used for jogging) and some pink and white fluffy socks. Bliss.
I add the water to the mug and stir vigorously, then add the free packet of marshmallows that came with it. While my laptop warms up I take out the magazine and begin to flip through.
Normally I don’t buy magazines, barring the one spiritual/eco monthly that I actually enjoy reading. But sometimes when I’m feeling affluent and girly, I do buy fashion magazines. Sometimes I buy them for less moral reasons, as it turns out that anything stuck to the front of one looks like a free gift (apparently not Danish pastries, but your luck could be better than mine).
I bypass the contents page (it’s a magazine not the encyclopaedia) and graze the pages for interesting things like attractive products and films to watch (online naturally - I would pay for that kind of thing). As I near the back of the magazine something catches my eye. It’s an article about an island, rating it for tourism, on which it scores pretty low on account of having no hotels or even a proper pub. This isn’t the interesting thing however. At the end of the article there is a small blue box which is advertising the island to potential residents.
It turns out that much of the small, but stunning, Scottish island is given over to larger fields that were intended for agricultural crofts (yeah, I don’t know either), but that these crofts (apparently an old English word for land on which someone lives and farms) had recently been opened up to any business and prospective entrepreneur.
For a moment I just stare at the page in disbelief, and then I open up the internet on my laptop and begin to type furiously. Never mind that I have no business to start up, or that, like it or not I am currently a university student, I just have to see this. Google opens up onto the webpage and another stunning view of a totally deserted beach running up to a hill clad in rough turf and clumps of wild grasses. I click through links until I find the right one. My heart just about stops for a whole twelve seconds.
£40,000
That is not, as you might expect the cost of the land, or even a laughably high rent. That is the amount of money that they are willing to pay you to live there. I read the rest of the text and phrases jump out at me.
…Extra grant money for renovations to current domicile…
…Exceedingly low rent at £2,000 pounds yearly…
…Grants for business start up…
I forget about the film, and the buffer, and my room. I drink my hot chocolate and eat the chocolates in lieu of dinner. I stay up until ten, typing and researching and adding things up on excel. Finally I stop, fingers aching and probably forever marked with confused layers of letter shaped bruises. A sheaf of paper comes out of the printer, black with type. Hours of work, hours and I have come to one startling, shining conclusion.
I can do this.
You can’t do this.
The little voice whispers even as I grab things from my wardrobe and shake the contents of my bag onto the bed. But I can do this; I’m doing it right now.
I snatch up clean underwear and a T-shirt and then change into jeans and another T-shirt. Travelling clothes. My wash bag is still packed from life on the dorm and I add it to the pile, followed by my new book and a plastic wallet containing all my precious information about the island. I stow all this neatly in my sleek purple crocodile bag feeling suddenly adventurous and excited. I grab the last few things that I need - my purse, MP3 player and mobile.
It’s still quite cold outside, being winter and all, so I pull on a knee length thick knit scarf and my long denim jacket. Then I write a hurried note to Vikkie saying that I would be back before the end of winter break and asking her not to worry, and pinned it to the door.
By this time it was well and truly night. The club going students had already left and those who, like me, favoured sleep had already turned in. I walked down the hall and out of the door, then across the clipped grass and sandstone of the courtyard. I took a last look at the enormous red brick building, soaking in the sight of it. Then turned and walked down the dark street.
I took the late night campus bus then walked to the train station. The bright fluorescents made it seem like day. I drew out some of my bursary cash and consulted a tired ticket vendor on the best way to get to where I was going. While I waited, hideously expensive ticket in hand, I realised I was famished and bought a sushi selection from the mini-Sainsbury’s by the platform. When the train arrived I got into an empty carriage and placed my book and food on the plastic table in my booth. The train rolled away with a hiss of closing doors.
It had all happened so fast, the trouble was that on the long train journey, I had time to think it over and realise how crazy I was being. Ok, so I wasn’t going to miss work or school because I was on holiday and meant to be visiting my family. That didn’t make what I was doing ok. In the last twelve hours I had broken down in tears, made a rash of impulse buys and then decided to travel across the country to an island populated by roughly fourteen people. What was I going to do then?
What was I going to do then?
Eventually I distracted myself from my dilemma by reading my book, but unfortunately the story took a turn for the all too familiar when the heroine left her marriage and impulsively bought a house in France. I closed the novel, disgusted that I was having a midlife crisis at the tender age of eighteen.
At that moment my phone rang, filling the carriage with a tinny rendition of “Hit me with your best shot”. Sighing I delved into my bag and flipped it open.
“Where the hell are you?” growled Vikkie.
Yes she does indeed growl, I got a little adjective happy over this bit, but then it is important. Also if I make her look like the Wild Woman of Borneo you’re less likely to judge me. So yes, I’m on a train to (gasp) the north, only really I’m at home on the island I’m about to arrive at.....yeah that makes sense. Next time I’ll try to describe it to you, or at least upload some pictures.