It had been an amazing day, taking my youngest son and his radge pals up to the Falls of Falloch to chuck themselves off some big drops and have a watery adventure up the canyons at the back of the falls. The boys had just been released from the first Rona lockdown, and with a second possible hoose arrest on the horizon, we took the opportunity to get ootside, off their devices, and experience life away from online schooling and Zoom calls.

Patrick is 18 now, five years ago they were a bunch of mentalists bursting into their teenage years. He was riding shotgun in charge of the music playing a selection of mumbling rappers which, to my old ears, sounded like vandalism of the music I  listened to when I was their age.

The Falls of Falloch are about an hour and a half from Stirling, we headed out to Balloch then turned North and followed Loch Lomond’s western edge, near the top of the Loch, we passed a boarded-up café. It may have been protected due to the inactivity of lockdown, but the brief glimpse made my stain brain decide it had been closed for a wee while and lying in a state of disrepair for years. That speedy drive-by caused another story-brainspunk moment. My creative writing had lain dormant for a while, similar to the roadside café. Since finishing the Dukes Pass story, I hadn’t wrote anything creatively, I’d considered that maybe, the story-writing well had run dry. I hadn’t mourned its departure,  it’s not like the end of a professional football career. It had been something I’d felt like doing. It wasn’t organised, there was never a plan to hide away and write a few thousand words a day for months, it just happened.

For sure, it’s a delight when words are flowing out of my chunky fingers, but it didn’t put me up nor doon when the electronic pen lay redundant. Tapping out the previous story, whenever I sat down, gave me something creative to occupy my time, although I felt like an e-hermit sometimes, not conversing, with my heid doon licking my phone screen. That was before Instagram got its hooks into me. Sometimes it felt good not to be nervously blethering away trying to fill nervous silences, but these days it’s rubbish sitting at coffee breaks or on trains, everyone is electronically mute. Folk never chat about the weather or take the opportunity to over share with a stranger.  We are happy to scroll the day away. I’m really bad for it myself, which is maybe why a third story has been lying derelict and forgotten like the café in this story.

This second story was again tapped out on my phone screen, one fat-fingered letter at a time. Lessons learned from Dukes Pass were applied although the process was similar, with decided directions and scenarios altering most times as soon as I started tapping away.

So, back to the van full of radges heading home, after some heart-stopping cliff jumping. On the return journey, instead of considering how old I had become because I was more terrified than excited when launching off big drops or that, I couldn’t appreciate the music of the youth, I had a waterfall of possible storylines running through my boulder nut, the main one being, What would happen if folk used the café illicitly during this covid crisis? 

A few imagined scenes and conversations were “funk me” moments, where I surprised myself. In fact, that’s not true — I’m constantly in disbelief at how stupid I can act. But then again, there are the odd glimpses of intelligence that help me to realise, that I am not stoatin about like Terry Fuckwitt all the time. There was moment, lying in my offshore scratcher, when the plot altered completely. It had me in an emotional whirlpool. I was writing, correcting, writing, adjusting — tap, tap, tapping away with my face leaking loads. I could hardly see because my eyes were full of tears. Crikey. I’m definitely getting to be an auld emotional mannie. But then again am always greetin these especially when that emotional music starts on the telly and folk begin describing a loss of an important scarf or hamster.

I think what I enjoy most is concocting ways folk’s lives change — moments in time when things will never be the same. It’s that initial moment of “Oooooh ya dancer.” Like watching Patrick and one or two of his timid pals take ages to build up the courage to launch off a high ledge for the first time, then appear from the deep, dark  peaty, cold water with a massive grin, before racing up the steep rocks to jump again without fear. Or like me eventually getting off my erse and out of my comfort zone to try and have folk read these stories or encourage them to experience the benefits of cold water with this this Swim Outside malarkey. 

Please enjoy Lomond Lockdown Café:

If you enjoyed this story or ma previous one The Dukes Pass, a wee review would be appreciated to help share them on the interweb.

And, if you fancy a watery adventure — maybe a little less sedate than the one described in the ramblings above. You may fancy a wee dip in a local loch, or maybe you want to take your own bairns or grand-bairns jumping in waterfalls but don’t know where or how to start, drop me a message and we can figure something out.

Swim Outside. Feel Better.