Huey’s Foreword: This may have been the first piece I wrote for my creative writing studies at the University of East Anglia (UEA). I don’t remember what my inspiration had been, other than, at the time, I had a deep longing to be in Scotland. Added to which I still felt the grief from my dad’s passing, more than five years earlier. What’s more, I had a young son, then five or six years old. These three concerns combined to meet the brief for a story of less than 1,000 words.
It’s 800 words, a five-minute read.
I hope you enjoy. Don’t forget to like and share. Thank you.
Huey Hawke, 2025
Midges
We had achieved it, as I had done with you thirty-one years before to the day, having climbed the Lorne as you had termed it. A mini Munro, a Corbett, and a proving ground for countless tiny Stewarts and my seat that moment as I perched on your boulder the size of a small car, about one thousand feet up, beneath the summit, a storm just passed and calm restored and with nothing better to do than squash midges in the palms of my hands, waiting for Hamish to finish his wee in the stream just out of sight to my right.
He’s a good lad, you’d be very proud of him. Pride is not a word I would often use, but in this instance I feel it is well placed, not unlike his ability to score a goal from ten metres with the outside of his left foot which, along with his other, carries him with speed and without complaint up alternately shattered and boggy hillsides to places most sensible people would not dare venture, on escapades similar to those you had to drag me on.
I do not need to persuade Hamish. Healthy curiosity, a quirky imagination and bold athleticism are all the motivations he needs. Only nine days ago a teacher found him stuck fourteen feet up a twenty-foot apple tree, during a thunderstorm, with a bamboo, gently prodding a small wasps’ nest while his best friend attempted to throw stones at the insects’ construction and his class, from inside the school, shouted, ‘detention, detention.’ He explained at the subsequent class 2F interrogation that he had only hoped to learn if the ‘queen wasp had a throne.’ Being the third such incident this term, he received two lunchtime detentions. Perhaps that is the price to pay for curiosity.
‘Dad, dad?’ My first instinct upon hearing Hamish’s words was to think of you, all those years ago, when I became lost on the way down Lorne. I recall going off trail in my eagerness to return home to play once more on the Scalextric for the umpteenth time and finding myself without Dad, calling your name, to which you replied with a voice like God himself, ‘He’s riding on the clouds’. You appeared out of the mist with a smile mum always described as ‘cheeky’, and hugged me with an intensity I thought was pure love, but looking back now, having heard Hamish’s words, I think could have been fear. We had surveyed the view together, that day. And you had said, ‘Set against all this, we’re all just midges.’ It meant nothing to me then.
I called to Hamish and he appeared from out of the shallow ravine and scrambled across the scree to join me. I pulled him up onto the boulder and he sat down next to me. In silence, awe perhaps, we surveyed all the land, like two golden eagles scanning for peculiar mammalian twitches and furtive retreats in the vastness and infinite horizons. The view was staggering. I wasn’t sure how far we could see but it must’ve been hundreds and hundreds of miles, all around. Smudged horizons embraced crystal-clear vistas nearer at hand. There were other islands, like giant pieces of driftwood in the ocean; some flat and others with mountains towering upwards to touch and scratch the ever-changing clouds, casting moods, shapes and shadows on the sea and slopes. Yachts and ferries, container ships and fishing vessels, zipped hither and thither crisscrossing the sounds, firths and forths in the region, gently unzipping the polished sapphire waters creating wakes and ribbons of sparkling ocean like jewelled necklaces. Looking across the Firth of Feur towards the mainland, and the cloud and storm now passed, range upon range of mountains disappeared into the distance, across Scotland, each more epic and grand than the last. Purple, blue then black. Some had green forests like rustic patches stitched to their slopes or in the glens below, but all were capped by deep, twisting funnels of charcoal and onyx-coloured clouds, hammerhead topped. I remember you saying as you bade us farewell to join your ship, en-route to the Falklands, how much you hated the colour grey. But its shades, seen here through the prism of air swept clean and washed down by a storm, were astounding. Greens turned blue and yellow; browns were reds, oranges and purples. Greys could be anything. Nearer at hand, the mountainsides were covered with shimmering scree and shattered rocks, and scarred with deep gashes that twinkled with dribbling water. Clouds had formed around peaks like grey halos. The whole range of nature, her epic architecture, her colours and her tempers, was exposed for a time, and for a second, well, for a second I fully understood your words.
The End