The last time I was in Aberdeen, I caught a ferry to Torshavn, capital of the Faroe Islands.
Which is a daft thing to do.
In February.
On an overnight crossing.
When you can't afford a cabin ticket.
I can very clearly remember leaving Aberdeen dock, and that feeling I got (an anxious thrill thing going on) on leaving the land behind. It had been raining. I could see a huddle of grey, slate-tiled roofs slanted above grey, granite terraces; the cold, weak February sunshine occasionally and unexpectedly bright, flashing off windows, and glinting as sunshine does when a storm starts to gather in.
Aye. Ill-experienced in north-Atlantic ferry crossings. In February. With no cabin ticket. And a storm on the horizon.
When I arrived in Torshavn the following day I was a half-frozen, shaken up mix of exhaustion and exhileration. And, amazingly, after the seas I had seen, still alive.
For I had also seen the ferry slip past a string of improbably green, beautiful, vertiginous islands scattered like a handful of leaves across the surface of the sea. On one, a solitary farmhouse, and a farm dog doing its mad farm dog thing: barking at us as we went past.
Or barking at me at any rate - everyone else was tucked up asleep in their bunks. It was all I could do not to bark back.
31/03/06 @ 19:06