Stornoway at Night
On a golden brown Autumn day in 2020 I moved from the croft home I had shared with my beloved cats on the Isle of Scalpay. My destination a flat in sheltered social housing, in Matheson Road, in the middle of the town of Stornoway.
All winter long I gazed out of the large window in my lounge/bedroom at the house opposite with its black railings, tree, the packed away borders.
It started on a whim. Bent down outside the creamy yellow house fallen back from the road. A magenta hydrangea bloom collected from the pavement.
Sleep often eludes me. I take to strolling in the adjacent wide streets; pluck flowers tumbling outside gardens to garland my kitchen, lounge and shower room.
Yet more, the wild flowers grow. Delicate pink orchids, pale lilac milkmaids decorate and refresh the flat.
A pink/purple fuchsia bush now broken away from cultivation, in front of an empty property silhouetted outline framed against the sky of midnight blue.
A serene stillness cloaks the world. Distant from the teeming traffic of daytime. The forgetting of the purpose of the light hours carrying drivers, passengers to needed trades, jobs, appointments around Stornoway, the Isle of Lewis, Harris and beyond.
Walks extend to encompass the broad harbour. A ferry waits like a ghost ship in the silence. I pick one of the petunias from the statue, a tribute to the historic working women of Stornoway.
The lives of others, incorporated into mine.