Happy Hebridean hols
Early days…
So here we are on holiday. I’m coiled on the sofa with a mug of best Colombian gazing at the horizontal rain. Chaipaval is wearing a trilby of mist clamped firmly down over its nose, the waves are crash-bang-walloping against the sand. Sunday is liquefying before my very eyes. I can hear the siren song of a good book.
I should start this with a digression. You may ask what a holiday diary is doing in the midst of a wine blog? The simple answer is that it is important to give oneself a holiday from wine (other than through illness!). I’m not giving myself a holiday from drinking wine, although I do give myself a break from being critical. I’m doing it to take a massive chill pill; after twelve months of dealing with difficult customers and importunate wineries you need to see that there is a world of sweet reason out there. One of the things I love most about Harris is the way that passing places make everyone a more careful, considerate and smiling driver. The brashest vehicles will give way to the rustiest tin cans; we are all fellow travellers on these beautiful (sheep-inundated) roads.
There was a fair amount of huffing and puffing and blowing the odd gasket getting here. We left London with our brace of imps in the back and enough luggage to start a clothes emporium – although I, flushed with optimism decided to pack three pairs of shorts, swimming trunks and no rainwear whatsoever. The M1 was sclerotic in the late afternoon and consequently we spluttered towards Brum where the toll road ejected us quickly into the next segment of snarldom. We eventually decided to call a halt to creeping-crawling and break for a spot of supper in one of those delightful zero-option motorway service stations. As usual the choice of dining establishments was limited to a Burgerking, a Costa and an Eat with an assortment of barely appetising hot trays – curry and chips, chicken and chips, fish and chips. Given their captive audience the dirth of decent nosheries surely represents not only a lack of service but also a missed opportunity. Having said that these franchises are run on low overheads and huge margins; charging a lot of money for you eating their old ropey food. I would pay quite a bit more for something wholesome and nutritious and I’m sure other people would.
We were privileged to witness a stunning sunset and the Lake District, especially the bare sheep-pocked hills and high moors of Westmoreland were welcome visual relief after hundreds of miles of fairly flaccid countryside.
And so on and so forth on through the night. It was was odd driving past Loch Lomond, up over Rannoch Moor and through Glencoe with on the merest sense of the scenery. Dark shapes loomed and lowered. Occasionally, the headlights would pick out the orange eyes of a stag or doe floating mesmerically above the road.
We hoved into Uig at 5.30 am and slept fitfully in the car for a couple of hours. The ferry crept dutifully over the little Minch towards Harris which was covered in a wet sock of rain. Eventually, we arrived, decanted our stuff into the room, and went down to the beach with the younglings to Scarista beach. The wind was wuthering, hoovering up the sand and blowing into our faces. Jessa fell over a couple of times and in no time we were feeling fair weatherbeaten. Having unpeeled their damp sandy clothes they played happily on the carpet while I slumbered on the sofa.
Felt a bit woozy. Dinner was lovely – a rich soufflé made with smoked scallops, the creamy sauce mopped up with excellent soda bread; rack of lamb cooked pink with a Madeira sauce, some courgettes, carrots and potatoes, a chocolate sponge with gorgeous ginger ice cream and some fabulous cheeses including Cromarty, a brilliant smoked cheese called Ardrahan and a tangy Isle of Mull cheddar, We drank a half bottle of Sancerre Vigne Blanche, ripe gooseberries all the way, and warm, tobaccoey, herbal 2003 Chateau Pibarnon, Bandol Rouge.
The children are going stir and since the weather was less sturm and drang than har-de-har we drove out to Nisabost for our annual pilgrimage to the Clach Mhicleod, a ten foot standing stone atop the dunes overlooking Traigh Iar one way and Taransay in the other direction. Legend has it that this monolith was one part of a gigantic stone limpet hammer belonging to an equally gigantic witch which split into three fragments when she endeavoured unsuccessfully to prise a stubborn limpet from its moorings on a rock.
The walk back to the car along the beach was invigorating. The wind was now more of a flirtatious whistle and the air filled with a moist, salty-sweetness.
The weather in Harris is tolerable when one isn’t getting soaked or blown off one’s feet. Today, however, a claggy mist envelops the landscape in a soggy veil. It is actually extremely mild, but somehow seems a negation of weather. I’m reading a fictional biography of John Clare, a poet who sensed nature on the pulses, for whom life seemed a riot of throstling and jostling, a carnival of all the species acting out. I’m enjoying it the novel which is suffused with a gentle melancholic lyricism although even if I didn’t have a fair idea of the story portends that that way madness lies (to coin a phrase).Through the inspissated gloom you can barely make out the sea at the end of the beach; there may be birds but they are invisible and skylarks may be lilting for all I know but their song is muffled.
Monday’s dinner was an ooh-er and ah-er. We started with a spinach roulade stuffed with mushrooms and hazelnuts on an intense red pepper sauce followed by a plate piled with Harris langoustines with a kind of mustard mayo for dipping accompanied by black olive crushed new potatoes, broccoli and baby sweetcorn. Dessert was a delicious lemon tart with crème fraiche and a splash of raspberry coulis (don’t like the word, do like the sauce). We drank 2006 Jurancon sec from Clos Lapeyre which was tight and tart and very agreeable with the langoustines. A couple of generous drams of Islay malt, a roaring fire, some amiable conversation and all was right with the world.
Tuesday began with a power cut (a cable had severed off the coast) and the flirtatious hint of blue sky. We drove to Tarbert through four different types of cloudburst, bought a few groceries and a waterproof top (to come to Harris sans rainwear is to ski down the Eiger in bedroom slippers) and returned to the cottage. Then it was out to the South Harris Agricultural Show - to give it its full name. The show, situated in a field behind the local school, comprised a sheep-pen (for judging and shearing), a somewhat inebriated bouncy castle, a couple of merry-go-rounds, a pair of tents and Bubbles the clown folding balloons for dear life. Sam queued patiently for one of the few attractions that looked fun, a swimming pool filled with transparent plastic bubbles into which small children could be inserted and try to manoeuvre across the water. As Sam finally climbed into his bubble, another bubble with a wee girl in it popped, thereby consigning her to a soaking. Meanwhile, some ominous clouds had gathered and were beginning to shed their booty and finally the generator which powered the machine which pumped air into the bubbles broke down! It was not meant to be. At which point the heavens dumped and everyone crowded into a small tent.
Wednesday
Dreich out there? This is what we call a “Lewis day”, when we do a circular tour incorporating all the sites of special interest. Numerous cataracts tumbled off the Clisham which has mist down to its ankles. We finally reached Stornoway and turned onto the road to Borve across the great expanse of bleak, black moor in central Lewis.
Our first port of call was the Black House at Arnol, a traditional Hebridean thatched cottage (museum) that aims to capture the ambience of island crofting and living. A black house usually comprised a long narrow building, often with one or more additional buildings laid parallel to it and sharing a common wall. The walls were made from an inner and outer layer of unmortared stones, the gap between them filled with peat and earth. The roof would be based on a wooden frame, resting on the inner stone walls, giving the very characteristic wall-ledge. Over the frame would be laid an overlapping layer of heathery turves, and over this would be laid a layer of thatch. The thatch would be secured by an old fishing net or by twine, attached to large rocks whose weight held everything down. More rocks would be laid around the bottom of the roof, where it met the inner wall.
The roof traditionally had no chimney, the smoke from the peat fire in the central hearth simply finding its own way out as it could. The smoked thatch was considered an excellent fertiliser and it was normal to strip it off for this purpose and rethatch the roof each year.
The floor of the living area of the black house would usually be flagged. The animals would be at one end of the house, and in the byre area there would be earth flooring, usually with a drain for some of the animal waste. Part of the black house would also be used as a barn for storage and processing of grain and other products.
It is tempting to think that the name “blackhouse” had something to do with the largely windowless darkness in which people would have lived, or the peat smoke. In fact it stems from the introduction of more modern housing from the end of the 1800s in response to legal and other pressures, especially to separate housing for people from housing for animals. These new cottages became known as “white houses”, and the more traditional dwellings they started to replace became known as black houses simply to distinguish the two styles.
Black houses fit snugly into the landscape, especially a gale-ridden one. They were an efficient use of space and of resources. One can imagine that the lack of natural light would be somewhat depressing, but the crofters would be outside most of the day, whatever the weather and that there would be a fair amount of socialising around the hearth with a kettle and a dram or two.
Sam and Jessa loved the low doorways, watching the crackling embers of the peat fire with its blue-grey smoke and exploring the different parts of the house.
It is amazing to think that some black houses were being lived in thus until the mid twentieth century. You still see the tumbledown walls by the roadside adjacent to the hideous kit bungalows, although there a few examples where the houses have been reconstructed – and modernised.
Dun Carloway Broch
There are few more imposing structures in the Lewis landscape than the cooling-tower-shaped broch at Carloway perched on a mound overlooking Little Loch Roag.
Dun Carloway was probably built some time in the last century BC. It would have served as an occasionally defensible residence for an extended family complete with accommodation for animals at ground floor level. It would also have served as a visible statement of power and status in the local area.
The broch is extremely well preserved. It was built at a time when brochs were already starting to be replaced by other forms of housing less demanding on scarce resources (and wood in particular), and it is not known how long it remained in use. It seems to have been still largely complete in the 1500s when some of the Morrison clan sought refuge inside the broch after being discovered stealing the local MacAulays’ cattle. Donald Cam MacAulay climbed the outside of the wall and threw in burning heather, smoking the Morrisons out.
The broch is next mentioned in a report by the local Minister in 1797. By this time, brochs were believed to be watchtowers used as defence against, or by, Vikings. Dun Carloway featured prominently in reports on Western Isles brochs in the latter part of the 1800s, and as a result it was one of the very first ancient monuments in Scotland to be taken into state care.
The building has been cannabalised at some point to built adjacent walls and black houses, but it is still fun for agile monkeys and wee children to explore. You can crawl on your belly into various tiny tenebrous chambers or clamber up a slippy outer staircase or even teeter up the walls. Jessa tripped and started to fall; Em grabbed her by the arm, I caught her by the scruff of the neck. Having started the day by getting her fingers trapped in the front door and ending it sprawled in the carpark at Callanish, Jessa was gracing the cultural highlights of Lewis with an assortment of cuts and bruises. With our clumsy genes she and Sam don’t stand a chance.
Standing Stones (or Scones)
Loch Roag is the sea loch that bites deeply into the north west coast of Lewis, part of which envelops the island of Great Bernera. On the east shore of the loch the neck of a headland is home to the small linear settlement of Calanais, and, on a hump of land between the village and its jetty, the Calanais (or Callanish) Standing Stones.
The area around Calanais is home to over 20 monuments erected between 3000 and 4000 years ago. Most famous by far is Calanais I, a complex arrangement of some 50 stones. At their heart is a circle of 13 stones between 8 and 13 feet tall, surrounding the tallest stone on the site, 16 feet high and weighing in at about 5.5 tonnes. Sometime later a stone tomb was added to the centre of the circle.
Extending north from the main circle is an avenue formed by a double row of stones, while single rows of stones extend roughly east, west and south from the main circle.
It is thought that the alignments of the various stones were used to mark significant points in the lunar cycle. The stone circle and the north avenue were probably built before 2000BC, while the three single lines and the tomb added around 1500BC.
Going to Calanais has become for us a ritual almost as lost in meaning as the original purpose of the stones. It is a democratic experience; you are allowed to move, unsupervised, amongst the stones. You are enjoined to see the stones as part of the landscape as well as part of history.
When we arrived back in Scarista it is was somewhat warmer and the beach looked inviting. I ran into the surf with Sam clamped around my neck like the old man of the sea and proceeded to get smacked amidships by the seventh wave – and then some – with much hysterical chortling from the passenger on my back. After the initial shock of sizzlingly cold water the adjustment was rapid and it was very enjoyable to take the hooks, crosses and uppercuts of the sea.
Finished Adam Fould’s The Quickening Maze. Beautifully written and predictably tragic even if one had no inkling of Clare’s madness. Started The Shadow of the Window by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, an intelligent thriller very much in the vein of the Name of the Rose crossed with the Phantom of the Opera. It’s witty and clever, although you can see the twists coming a mile off, and the true definition of a page turner.
Thursday
Finally, a day to cast off the shackles and yomp the good yomp. A breathless day with high cloud, then sunshine making it quite muggy so that our perambulations were attended by a moving cloud of pesky buzzers.
We were climbing hump-back Chaipaval from the wrong (south) side ascending from the chapel, clambering over rock slides, hanging on tufts of greasy grass and generally bruising our ankles. Early whinging aside, Sam was most philosophical and the higher we climbed the more into the swing of it he got. Meanwhile, Em carried Jessa in the baby backpack, no mean feat considering the steepness and J’s propensity to wriggle , thwack her on the back of the neck and yank her hair.
We reached the summit marked by a triangulation beacon and gasped for air and at the scenery. Em and children had lunch whilst I tried to fend off the flies and midges that were lunching on me.
Laid out like pieces of a jigsaw were different islands in the Hebridean archipelago, Immediately below us in the Sound of Harris were Ensay and Killegray, flat islands with sandy skirts. Pabbay was a bigger bump and behind that Berneray with its long golden strand. Circle-shaped North Uist was easily visible as were the two mountains on the east side of South Uist, an island which stretched out like some massive aircraft carrier. Skye dominated to the south east with its basalt sea cliffs and the incisive black Cuillins thrusting dramatically upwards like ominous needles. To the south west were the stacks and islands of St Kilda, jagged teeth jutting out of the sea. And finally, the sweep of Scarista into the west coast of Harris fringed by fingernails of golden sand clawing into deep purple-blue ocean bounded on the horizon by the stegosaurus plates of the north Harris hills. In the effort to suck in the gorgeous panoramic my head was revolving like Linda Blair’s in the Exorcist and the camera shutter button was taking a fair battering.
We descended the face opposite Northton and the going was much more agreeable underfoot consisting of mainly grass and springy heather.
There are few things as cleansing for the soul as justified physical exhaustion and although you can’t replicate the exact images you are left with a feeling of good will and inner warmth. The grail of any walk or climb is not just to touch a cairn but to stand and gaze at nature’s secrets revealed, or, to put it more crudely, to bask in epiphany.
A glorious day culminated in a typical Scarista sunset, fire streaking into the Atlantic with the irradiated clouds looking like smoke signals.
The following day I roused myself early to play some golf. The weather was back to its default setting of misty rain and my play justified heaven’s tears. Fortunately, no-one was on the course to see me defile the fairways and greens. I sclaffed and skulled like mad, the clubs (made slippery through rain) squirming in my hands and launching the ball in all directions except down the fairway. The more gigantic the heave the less impressive the result, the ball invariably bumbling off the tee into the rough like some drunken rabbit. The course is beautiful, but I wasn’t in the mood to appreciate its playful undulations and natural features; to enjoy golf’s epiphanies you have to manufacture one or two of your own.
Saturday
Spent the afternoon on Scarista’s neighbouring beach, a medium length curve of sand. Walking in the sea is surprisingly tricky, the sand shelves away quickly, the surf punches hard and there was is a discernible undertow. It was relatively mild, ideal for wading or paddling in the ocean and generally messing around in rock pools. We were the only people here for much of the time. Jessa was a tiny nuclear reaction all day, throbbing with sobs.
Sunday
Another glimmer of what might be. Aquamarine seas and blisteringly white sand drew us and a host of others (probably about fifteen people or so) Scarista’s three mile shoreline. Whilst the children built a sandcastle I strolled through the gently lapping waves lulled into happy oblivion by the rhythmic chanting of the sea and by the ineffable sense that these moments were meant to be inhaled, absorbed to the maximum. You know you are on holiday when your thoughts become one with your feelings and you exist in the moment (even if it is only for a moment).
Monday
Lethargy sets in as yet more mist displaces the high cloud. Weather can’t decide whether it is Arthur or Martha. In preparation for my grand Hebridean paella we visited my childhood haunt on the other side of the island reach by a serpentine path along the shore of the sealoch. We passed by my old house (longings? Perhaps a few) and around a bend to Eilean Raineach, “island of bracken”, where we discovered stones encrusted with chunky-looking bivalves. We harvested a couple of dozen turning up some tiny scuttling crabs in the process and skedaddled back to the car. A rare event - we decided to eat with the children; I allowed them to see how I was making the dish and they each had the opportunity to drop ingredients into frying pans and give them a stir. The dish was a huge success; Jessa and Sam loved the moules which had lots of flavour despite being tiny and the spicy chorizo from Brindisa was very popular with requests for more.
Wednesday
This will be known as the Husinish day. As usual the weather was a turmoil of heavy showers and lancing sunshine. We sat in the car, hemming and hawing, before deciding to brave the scenic sinuous road. And what a road – starting at the base of Clisham and curling around the coast with the chimney from a ruined whaling station in Buinnamhuinnader , then Britain’s most remote and expensive tennis court, an incongruous green splosh against the bare brown moors with breathtaking views over West Loch Tarbert, the crazy hairpin bends descending into Meavaig, the dramatic peaks of Tirga Mhor and Oreval, the Amhuinnsuidhe river thundering into the sea by the castle and finally into Husinish past the sheltered sandy beach where you park on the machair opposite the island of Scarp.
The walk starts with a happy yomp through a small meadow of wild flowers saturated with the scents of clover, before climbing quickly above the shore line. You hug the edge of the cliff and see cormorants and sheep happily sharing the same space whilst gannets dive bomb the channel between Scarp and the mainland. The path ascends to a bridge two thirds the way up the mountain to cross over a huge fissure. From that point it is downhill towards a fine mile long strand of dazzling white sand. You are in a natural amphitheatre; Scarp rising to 1000 ft opposite, the mountains of south Lewis to the north sheering over Loch Resort, and the cliffs behind the beach, home to eagles, buzzards and ravens. The Scarp channel seemed to a motorway (or flyway) for hundreds of birds, judging by the numerous flotillas of cormorants and ducks blackening the surface of the water.
The sun was reluctant to grace our end of the beach and it was getting quite chilly so we decided to up sticks. I noticed a dark blob about sixty metres off shore. Closer inspection through the binoculars revealed a triangular dorsal fin. There was another more slender fin in attendance and another dorsal fin about fifty feet away. It looked like a school of porpoises. Unlike a porpoise the creature was not breaking the surface. Soon the first fin began to approach the shore very quickly until it was in the shallows approximately twelve feet from the rim of the sand. We ran towards it thinking it might about to beach itself when the tailfin emerged as a rudder and steered the body away in a powerful movement.
It was a basking shark!
The shark moved back and forth on a parallel course to the shore before veering away back into the middle of the channel. Further north the other dorsal fin was cruising. After a few minutes one of the sharks surged into shore literally to where we were standing; half a dozen strides into the water and I would have been touching it.
It’s a cliché to say that being close to wild animals is a humbling experience. Being reminded that we share this planet with other species, that we are small and ultimately fragile, and somehow less at home in our element, than these various creatures in theirs, is a salutary lesson. The basking shark are enormous, powerful, yet gentle; they induce a kind of wonder in us which is like being a child again. All the dozen or so people on the beach that day were shiny-eyed with excitement; strangers talked easily to each other united in the wonder of nature.
Thursday
Perhaps the best way of seeing Harris is from a boat. Scenic Cruises, run by Hamish Taylor. You can a sense of its geology, geography and history that you might easily miss if you were looking it at from the land.
The first thing you notice is the impact of the sea, the combination of steady erosion and land-shattering storms.
We learned that cormorant are delicious (a tasty alternative to duck), that seals congregate in bays that have rivers running into them (the rivers being a conduit of fish), that the schoolteacher at Stockinish used to keep a loaded shotgun in his classroom in case some supper flew by the window, that there was a character called Benny, who joined the French Foreign Legion and now gets his kicks kayaking to St Kilda and Cape Wrath (via every rough stretch of vicious water imaginable) We found out about the migration of families from one side of the island to the other and then to Canada. We puttered a mile or two into the Minch to search for whales and porpoises (Hamish had seen a few Minkes recently) but the slightly choppy waters stirred by a gruff breeze made mammal-spotting nigh impossible. A few Manx Shearwaters, erm, shearing the water, aside, the sea was bereft of life. Sam was allowed to play cap’n for a while and revealed an alarming propensity for spinning the boat in circles or steering it unerringly towards the rocks.
Finally, we returned to Flodabay and our reception of flubbery common seals basking on the rocks.
Earlier in the day I skulked back on the golf course to try to reclaim some dignity. The first few holes were encouraging; some flagrant duck-hooking and woeful putting aside I was managing to bunt a few decent shots and even played some aesthetically pleasing short irons. After my best drive and a not bad follow up iron my game proceeded to implode dramatically. Overall verdict: poor, but no need yet for loaded service revolver and a decanter of whisky.
A word about Scarista House. Even the unremitting beauty of the location would not be enough were it not for the personality of the owners, Patricia and Tim, and their obliging staff. Although we are renting one of the cottages, we effectively decamp to the house for dinner. The atmosphere is invariably friendly, fellow travellers who either wish to share their first experience of the island or seasoned pros exchanging anecdotes. No choice is the best choice of all - the food is consistently good: I remember turbot, halibut, dover sole, john dory and cod, two superb lamb dishes, beef, venison and pork, all served with locally grown veg. Kipper pate, cauliflower veloute with smoked scallops, smoked ham salad, chicken liver parfait served with a glass of sweet Jurancon were some of the starters. Being a cheese fiend I don’t recall any of the desserts other than a bread and butter pudding and various things with raspberries and strawberries. We drank uncritically, but the wine which got me yumming enthusiastically was the Cotes du Rhone-Rochegude with heady scent of violets, brambly fruit, whiff of tar and fragrant helping of tapenade. The COS Cerasuolo di Vittoria Classico was utterly delightful, marrying a cool floral side with some savoury plumminess and lurking gamey notes.
The journey home…
If you are looking forward to being somewhere the process of travel can be anathema. The journey up had a sweet prize at the end, an expanse of humanless sand and ocean whispering (or roaring) sweet nothings. The return was the customary slalom through the highland highlights: the Cuillins, the Five Sisters of Kintail, Lochaber, Glencoe, Rannoch Moor, Loch Lomond. Scenery on a shortbread tin; you half expect to find a piper on every ridge serenading the views. Nothing is more abstruse or contorted than the Glasgow one way system (especially, when certain parts of certain streets are closed and no diversions are indicated), but after half an hour hacking through the centre of the city we alighted on our hotel. Two weeks in Harris makes me feel like a country bumpkin; I’d rather be bouncing across the machair in my bare feet than think about what to wear for dinner. I never love Harris so much as when I have to leave it and seeing the long island filling the horizon in the wake of the boat I experience a wee jolt of ceanlas, a yearning for home. Many years ago, arriving in Harris, after a six year absence, I felt precisely the same sensation, that of returning to a place that meant a great deal more than a mere holiday destination.
I spent most of my childhood holidays on the islands so, yes, tearful nostalgia creeps in. Happy sniff! So every year we rent a cottage for a fortnight, get a sea air tonsillectomy, suck on an epiphany or two and I come back bushy-eyed and-bright-tailed ready to climb the mountain of paperwork that is my in-tray.
Sunset Over Scarista
To close my eyes and feel the whole world swim, this dreaming sea
Flanked by the blue-black gape-mouth strong sgurr
Serrated ramparts, a company of knolls and bare-bellied hills
I click the shutter fearful of not capturing the soul of the day
As it exhales into the simmer din, the twilight, the limbo of the mind
Cobalt blue of the sea and the aureate sky
Footfalls of orange light
Lance my blinking eye.
On Sgarasta shore I beckon each mantling wave
To create a covenant between sound and soul;
Each roll and unreeling of the deep
Washes my gaunt and trembling frame.
The ocean murmurs creamy nothings into
The lips of the sand
As the fiery sun dips on the western edge
Now crimson, now incarnadine,
Melting into blue-grey waters
Dimly warming this exile-at-home.
And with the flavour of salt-spray on my lips
The scent of wild orchids from the machair in my nostrils
Reborn in midnight’s dawn,
Silent and alone in this amphitheatre of mountain and whirling water,
I map the mystery of my existence,
Music, delirium and the hour of rapture.
Holidays are all about sustaining ourselves and find a place or a means to put our narrow concerns into some sort of proportion. To wake up (or to be on the verge of going to sleep) and glance out at the morning-milky sea engaging its silken rhythm, to hear the galloping waves crunching onto the beach, and to sense the soft balmy kiss of flower-salted air wafting through the open window. And the views that open your eyes to horizons. To the north the time-scarred mountains which divide Harris from Lewis are bathed in opalescent glow, out to the south west juts the hunchback massif of Chaipaval wearing a coronet of cloud. To feel “at one alone”, to feel surprised and elated as opposed to jaded and cynical, to be alone with one’s thoughts on a mountain, to revert to instinct to guide each step, to exist, albeit briefly, timelessly, in contrast to the urban world of other people’s expectations, deadlines, guidelines, tramlines, where all you seem to do is look down the barrel of a day and bristle with self-justification to avoid uncomfortable truths. And you hope your family will feel the same way and regard your escape as their escape.
