Rain on my Window, tears in my eyes.

RAIN ON MY WINDOW, TEARS IN MY EYES.
1.12.2006

Our bedroom window looked over the sea to the East from our farmhouse of Whitehall, Stronsay, in the Orkneys. Rain spattered on the window pane in the early morning dark, the unrisen sun still below the horizon. Wind whistled through the chinks, a burble of water gurgled from time to time. Yet it was morning, the farm was awake. So we, younger brother David and myself but often just myself, got out of bed, struggled to find our clothes in the dark, tiptoed downstairs and to the kitchen where the “girls” were getting the day moving, the iron stove fire stirred up, the kettle singing, the porridge bubbling. Breakfast still some little time away, we put on our rubber boots and headed outside. Sharp, breath-catching wind whipped round the corners, horizontal rain swept past, heads down as we headed for the glimmer of light from the byre door just across the road. The door, upper and lower halves, let us in to the shelter and warmth of the cattle, shut quickly behind us. The cattleman Jock O’Sound, alias Peace, was just lighting the oil lanterns on top of the bruised oats kist (chest), lanterns new filled with paraffin oil at the end of each day ready for the morrow, the smell drifting towards us mixed with Jock’s pipe tobacco smoke. Each lantern was hung from a pulley suspended from the rafters by a thin rope and tied to a hook on the wall. The fattening two-year-old cattle ( feeders to us ) stirred and some got up, stretching. After the lanterns were lit, Jock spread out the feed boxes around the bruised oats girnel, a scoop measure to each, then a sprinkling of linseed oilcake on top, and, with two in each hand between thumb and fingers, made his way between each pair of tied-by-the-neck feeding cattle, one box to each. Well trained, they parted company to let him up into their stall. Start at one end, finish at the other. We boys carried some but only one box at a time, it would be long years before we could emulate Jock, if ever.
As each pair finished their feed, the boxes were removed, refilled and recycled up the byre. We would then try to help in our own way by scraping the dung down the stalls. After all the feed boxes were removed Jock went to the “neep” (turnip) shed to start the laborious back breaking carrying of speil baskets of swede turnips to each pair, again up between them. More than we could carry, but we could help fill them in the shed, turnip by turnip. Some cattle got sliced turnips, usually those whose teeth were changing from calf to adult, so were less able to break and eat the whole swede. The open neep shed was cold in comparison to the byre, draughty, the quicker we worked the sooner we would be back to the warmth generated by the cattle.
As the feeders munched their way through their neeps Jock accurately threw one “windlin”- a large armful of new threshed straw twisted and tied in the straw barn with long-learned skill - over each of them into the straw rack on the wall at their heads, finished the scraping down of the overnight dung in the stalls, a light bedding of clean straw, loaded and removed the dung on a wheelbarrow to the outdoor midden. Sometimes to save straw he only gave a light dusting of chaff instead of bedding straw. Then he took a canny look-over to see that every beast was happy and content, nothing suspicious to suggest any ailment, even indigestion. As he blew out the lanterns, the morning work done in that byre but with several more to see to, the door opened and closed, a blast of cold air heralding our father’s entry. “Boys, breakfast is ready, in you go.” But we had helped. And so to breakfast, hot newmade oat meal porridge, milk, brown sugar for my brother, and wash and tidy ready for school half a mile up the road. At least the wind and rain were on our backs going, and the sky was lightening over the sea to the East.