Caorunn Gin with George Mackay Brown

My first brush with Caorunn gin was in Aberdeen airport, my sister bought a bottle when we were en route to Shetland for a family visit. We drank it with enthusiasm, and on the way back I bought more, it's been a favourite ever since. (Which was helpful when we first got it at work, the rep was so pleased with my enthusiasm he gave me another bottle - he's a lovely man).

Caorunn is made in Scotland, specifically at the Balmenach distillery in the Cairngorms, where they can draw on a long history of distilling. The name is Gaelic for rowan berry - which is one of the botanicals, rowan's have all sorts of mythology and folklore attached to them (planted next to a house they're meant to keep witches and other evil spirits away). The five sided bottle is inspired by Scottish Art Nouveau, and the five pointed star shape on it references the five specifically Scottish botanicals which also include heather and bog myrtle. This is a product that celebrates its provenance, it's also really good.

The result is a clean crisp gin in the London style with a nice balance between spice, citrus, and juniper. It makes an excellent G&T, and is a good all round cocktail gin - garnish wise Caorunn suggest red apples (apples are another botanical) and they also have This recipe for a winter toddy with apple juice, port, bitters, lemon juice, and sugar. It's one I'll be trying.

I think someone has just started making gin in Orkney, but until I get to try it, and despite gin not being the first drink I'd associate with George Mackay Brown (that would be whisky) the personality of Caorunn seems well suited to his work. He said of himself that "I sometimes see my task as poet and storyteller, to rescue the centuries treasure before it is to late. It is as though the past is a great ship that has gone ashore, and archivist and writer must gather as much of the rich squandered cargo as they can".

It's what he does time and again in his short story collections along with celebrating the landscape and the seasons. In its own way Caorunn does that too with all the ways it references its Scottish origins, along with the hint of ancient folklore tied up in those botanicals. Not that there's anything nostalgic about this gin - it's more a sense that it celebrates where it's come from. Anyway, it seems perfect, especially in toddy form, to enjoy with Mackay Brown's stories of Orkney life - especially when the wind blows and the rain chucks it down outside (as it is tonight).

On Holiday

After what feels like an eternity but has in fact only been 4 months it's time for me to go on holiday again. The Scottish Borders are calling, and I am packing. So far I've packed marmalade, champagne, pearls, plenty of books, a large bottle of gin, a warm jumper, rhubarb, some wellies (which auto correct is determined to turn into willies - which is not what I mean to say at all) and enough clean underwear to see me through - though I may have broken the golden rule and packed more books than knickers. Whatever the weather does I'm confident I'm going to enjoy myself, though I do wonder what will happen of Scotland ever gets border control. Is rhubarb likely to be a prohibited item? Do I really need to take it on holiday with me anyway? And perhaps most vitally what have I forgotten to pack which I might really need when I was thinking waste not want not over the rhubarb.

Reading, as you can see, mostly sponsored by OWC

Hawkfall – George Mackay Brown

I’m putting sink troubles behind me this morning because the sun is shining again (second day in a row – amazing) and I have the morning off (not focusing on having to work very late, not thinking about it at all...). I’ve made lots of pancakes and eaten quite a few as well which has made me feel at peace with the world. Work to often gets in the way of things like this (eating pancakes on your own whilst still delicious doesn’t generally make you feel like you’re taking part in a long tradition) and now I have to think of something to give up for lent. Without being in any way religious I still think this is a good opportunity to implement a change in life – a second chance at a New Year’s resolution. This year I’m resolved to give up sneaking recyclables into my ordinary rubbish. The bottle bank is close enough for there to be no excuse.

These are the kind of things that George Mackay Brown makes me think of (you see there is a sort of point to all that rambling). He’s also a writer I find myself turning to over winter and spring – I see I was reading him this time last year as well. ‘Hawkfall’ was a happy find (at the Astley Book Farm) a pristine copy of a book I’ve wanted for a while in a half hearted sort of way. I thought it was a novel for some reason and I’ve struggled with Mackay Brown’s novels – but happily it’s another collection of short stories where I feel he’s hard to beat.

Fair enough I get a sense of déjà vu reading these stories now because there is a similarity between them; I’ve got well over half a dozen collections and found myself in very familiar territory, that said I think this is one of the best sets I’ve read, I didn’t want to finish it. I also found myself actually making notes whilst reading which is something I rarely do – of course I’ve lost them already, but all the same... What I haven’t lost is a sense of connection with the season changing. A reminder that the sky is sometimes blue, and will sometime be blue again, after spending most the daylight hours of the last 5 months in a windowless corner surrounded by wine bottles it’s something that’s nice to know.

It’s all summed up in ‘The Tarn and The Rosary’ (which has to be Mackay Brown’s own biography) Colm who has become a writer is living in Edinburgh trying to finish a second book. It’s hot and somehow unsatisfactory he wants to go back north, and at the same time doesn’t, writing to a friend

“I am not coming north this year. There are its true so many things I want to see – Tumilshun and the hills, the churchyard, the school, the piers where I fished and the ditches where I burned my fingers. But there are other places that give me a pain at the heart when I think of them – the doorless houses in the village, the Godspeed rotting on the beach, the black forge...”

But self imposed exile gives way to a new realization by the end of the story:

“During the last Gospel it came to him that in fact it would be the easiest thing in the world for him to go home. There was nothing to keep him here. There were still meaningful patterns to be discerned in the decays of time. The hills of Norday were astir all summer, still, with love, birth, death, resurrection.”

And that’s exactly why I read George Mackay Brown.

George Mackay Brown – a Give away...

Andrina and other Stories

I keep hearing that short stories are a dying format and that nobody wants to buy them, a viewpoint I’m particularly glad that Birlinn/Polygon aren’t listening to because I’m relying on them for a regular stream of George Mackay Brown shorts. I’ve said it before, and will be saying it again (and again) I think George Mackay Brown is at his best in short story form. So much so that every time I get a new collection I seriously consider re-tackling his novels and having a good hard look at his poetry.

My last foray into Brown was ‘The Masked Fisherman’ which was not perhaps the best collection that I’ve read, but the two just released – 'Andrina and Other Stories'and ‘The Sun’s Net’ (originally published by the Hogarth press and I would give anything apart from the money demanded – which I don’t have – for some of those original editions in their lovely jackets) are impressing me no end.

‘Andrina and Other Stories’ feels like a fairly loose collection – no particularly unifying theme but rather a gathering of all the themes that seem so dear to Brown’s heart, so wherever his tale is set be it Africa or Mongolia he’s still seeing it from an Orkney window. His concerns are time, tide, season, poetry, and faith – the things that shaped his life as an islander and story teller; equally his hero’s are fisherman, farmers, sailors and poets. He has little time for the laird or the minister, manse and hall being the traditional enemy of the crofter, but there is plenty of his (clearly deep and Catholic) faith here as well.

It’s hard to write about short stories, especially when some are only a few pages long; what can you say without giving too much away? I find this especially hard with a writer whose prose is as lean and succinct as Brown’s tends to be. He really doesn’t waste words, though he does make up some absolute corkers – at a slight tangent he doesn’t use much dialect either, odd bits and pieces nestled amongst the text but that’s it. Still, two from this collection really stood out for me – The Lost Boy; a Christmas eve miracle that I find as heart warming as it is brief, and The Feast at Paplay which enlarges on an event in the Orkneyinga saga (a major influence for Brown) it deals with the murder of Earl Magnus, later Saint Magnus, by his cousin Earl Hakon. Having killed his kinsman Hakon arrives at his aunt’s house for a feast meant to celebrate a peace between the two men. Thora is forced to treat her nephew as a son and to beg for her own son’s body to bury. These are the bare bones as laid out in the saga which Brown builds on, but oh how he builds; a pig is to be killed for the feast, but its death also doubles for the death of Magnus:

“John set the bewildered piglet on its feet in the yard. He took a knife out of his belt and pushed the blade into the pink throat. The beast squealed. It ran and staggered, and the blood welled out of it. It stood still then shook its head in a sad puzzled way. Blood spattered on the paving stones.”

There’s a stylistic echo of the sagas in that as well, but mostly I just find it a deeply affecting telling of death.

Anyway if you don’t want to just take my word for it and feel you want to read for yourself I’ve acquired a copy to give away. If you’re interested leave a comment (and if commenting on blogger proves difficult an email will do just fine – details are in the profile box) Always assuming that more than one person shows an interest (actually hoping that at least one person shows an interest because I’m very enthusiastic about this book and want to share it) then I will pick a name out of a hat next Wednesday and post on Thursday...

Apologies for the lack of a proper picture, blogger's just not having it tonight.

The Masked Fisherman

Due to technical problems yesterdays book picture refused to go up; but now here it is!

The Masked Fisherman – George Mackay Brown

(And other things)

It’s been a long week, and with more training in the offing next week is likely to feel longer. This time I’m off to a golf course somewhere outside of Reading for three nights. Days will be spent incarcerated indoors learning the professional equivalent of sucking eggs. Nights I can at least read, unless I’m forced to socialise with colleagues (small talk with strangers or reading? It’s a choice that will bring out my inner misanthrope every time.)

Three nights is longer than expected so I’m wondering exactly what to take to read – I have a pile of tempting things and a pile of things I feel I should read but which will require more effort. Still I have twenty four hours to decide, a possible trip to the book farm tomorrow - so plenty of potential for impulse purchases, and will have to walk past (into) Foyle’s at St Pancras on my way to the course...

So: ‘The Masked Fisherman’. I was reading this whilst waiting for ‘The Chapel at the End of the World’ to arrive partly to get me in the mood, partly because I find myself drawn to Mackay Brown as the seasons turn, and by the by in direct contradiction to my assertion that Orkney isn’t always grey, the cover of this book is exceptionally monotone, also a lot of the stories take place in the dark of winter –and yet I still find it somehow uplifting. I’m going to quote the back cover blurb at this point as its apt and in Mackay Brown’s own words: “Many of the stories in this book are set in winter, round about the solstice and Christmas and New Year. In the north, winter has always been the time for storytelling... Winter, season of storm and dearth, is still a might quickener of the imagination.”

In the past I’ve struggled with Mackay Brown’s novels, but I can’t think of a better short story writer (plenty that are as good, but no one to beat him). ‘The Masked Fisherman’ has encouraged me to try again (I my well take him away with me to see what he makes of the Reading golf course) but there’s a magic in these short stories that I think comes partly from their brevity. This was a grand collection to get me in the mood for ‘The Chapel at the End of the World’; they share many of the same themes – patience, acceptance, endurance, hope, faith, timelessness – the sort of thing I feel in need of to get me through the last few weeks of winter.

There is always a cycle of tide and season in Mackay Brown’s writing, never more than in this collection which is what makes the dead of winter seem so hopeful – winter means spring is on its way; the light of a single candle is a forecast of the sun to come. I have to slow down to read these and feel my way into his sense of time; ease myself into a rhythm controlled by light, dark, storm and calm.

I’m aware that I’m not expressing myself very well here – the charm with Mackay Brown is that he does – the images he creates on the page, with really astonishing economy, are vivid before me as I read them. I don’t consider any bookshelf well dressed without at least one volume of his stories up there. Even if the subject isn’t your cup of tea he should be read for the style, and if I manage to convince at least one person of that I’ll be very happy.