Blackhouse God's House

Born in a blackhouse, with three indulgent cows at one end, sleeping quarters at the other and the requisite peat fire in the middle, my father, a precociously observant child, grew up amid the blissful sounds of skylarks and the stark reality of religious discrimination, in the form of shunning as well as outright hostility. Among his kaleidoscope of scenes: the cries of lambs being separated forever from their mothers; the husband and wife arguing over how to properly set up the peat in front of their house, to the amusement of the whole village; sister Annie washing the feet of the elderly after they had walked barefoot eight miles over the moor to attend Communion service; the short period when his blackhouse became "God's house"; his father and six others frantically escaping a German sub with the help of a godly fog and Uncle Roderick on the beach in Stornoway, a victim of the Iolaire disaster, dressed in military attire and looking as if he were ready to attend a formal military ball.