It's a dog's life as we wait for the snowplough

by rain, wind and dusk. It seldom features heavy snow; in any event,

such inconvenient quantities of the white stuff as do descend come in

the New Year. Not in December. Not two days before Christmas.

In 40 minutes I would be leaving for Stornoway and the airport. I

finished my coffee. I went to the door and called in Smudge. Smudge is

my little dog. She is seven months old, and her antecedents include

quite a lot of chihuahua and corgi and just a little black terrier,

white terrier, labrador and border collie.

''Squeak, squeak,'' said Smudge. ''I'll be home for Christmas, if only

in my dreams,'' I trilled ironically, and we padded around the house

shutting things down. The bed was stripped. The central heating was

flicked off. The Rayburn was left low as a guard against frost. I put a

new message on the answering machine. I poured away the last of the

milk. I gathered Smudge's growing collection of toys, chews, and

novelties and dropped them in a bag and put the bag into a basket and

dumped it by the door with my own luggage.

Smudge whimpered. It was as I marched to and from the car that I began

to worry about the snow. It was coming very fast now in big feathery

flakes. It was already three inches deep and growing. It fell from a

low, grey mass of cloud. Eerily it muffled the noise of the township.

Already dismal sheep looked about them as snow crusted on their backs.

I carried Smudge's things to the car and tossed Smudge in after them.

I returned to the house and fetched my own baggage and put that in the

boot. I collected my keys and, for the first time in a month, I locked

the door.

As I sat in the driving seat and clunk-clicked my seat belt, and

Smudge squirmed onto my lap, I noted with a prickle of worry that our

single-track road was white with snow, deep, and there was no sign of

grit or melting.

Maraig was already shrouded in a winter wonderland. And the snow fell

steadily on.

Hack and puppy, forth they went, forth they went together. The car

started readily enough. The wheels began skidding almost at once. We

nearly did not make the little hill by the new cemetery -- the car

trying to slide slowly, gently off the road -- but at length we crested

the brae, and trundled nervously through the village. We passed the new

cemetery. We passed the fish farm. We passed the fank. We passed the

crofts of Mr Donald Morrison, Mr Donald M. Morrison, Mr Donald J.

Morrison, Mr Don Morrison, and Mr Donnie Morrison, and I exaggerate not.

Soft the rumble, timid the grip of tyres on lovely fresh, white

treacherous snow. I think I knew we would never make it. Maraig is

linked to the darkness beyond by one very steep road, plugging up a

mountain for half a mile to a hairpin bend, and then doubling round and

back up the hill to the Stornoway/Tarbert highway -- but I nearly did

it. We were only a few yards from the bend, on a bad incline, when the

wheels spun and whined. I changed gear. The whine changed pitch. The car

held for a little, and began sliding backwards. ''Whimper,'' said

Smudge. ''Blow,'' said I. Only a snowplough would free us now, and I

must not block the road. I reversed gingerly into a passing place. The

snow whirled and spun and fell on, happily, deeply. I turned off the

engine. I opened the door and threw out the dog and we abandoned the

car.

DISCONSOLATELY we trudged back down the hill, the snow thick and deep

around my ankles. Home we went through a quiet ghostly township, like

chilled refugees on retreat from Moscow. We resisted the temptation to

rape and pillage.

A car slid by us from nowhere, shuddered and stopped. It was George

and Mary Flora from Tarbert. George is an honest builder. Mary Flora is

a retired but still honest grocer. They offered us a lift.

George had a troubled look. ''Some weather,'' he said, ''we could

hardly find the road when we came down.'' They had come out of Maraig to

give my neighbours, the MacRaes a lift to town. The Rev. Donald MacRae

is our retired local minister. Seemingly he and his wife were also

flying to Glasgow that day.

We half drove, half tobogganed to the bottom of the village. George

reversed the car into a snowdrift. I said my hasty thanks, and Smudge

and I bolted for the house. The chances of George, or myself, getting

out again were slim unless . . .

''A snowplough?'' said Mr Smith the policeman, when I rang the Tarbert

nick. I begged for a mercy dash on account of scribe, clergy and Apex

fares. ''Hold on and I'll ring you back . . . I will call Roddy

MacAskill.''

Roddy MacAskill is a brother of Mary Flora. He is a sturdy businessman

of considerable shrewdness, whose only eccentricities are a dreadful

tweed jacket and a huge green Range Rover with personalised number

plate. He operates a big quarry on the Clisham and a haulage business

and a plant hire business and a road contractor business and a shop and

a filling station and has the contract for winter gritting and

snowploughing.

I feared he would be rather busy.

I had made another coffee before I remembered there was no milk left.

Smith rang back, his competent Lewis tones reassuring. ''The snow is

very bad all over the island. Roddy has a plough and gritter out by

Husinish. They're having great difficulty coming back, because they can

hardly see the road. But when it comes back it will refill at the

quarry, and then straight out to yourselves . . . I'm sorry. I couldn't

say exactly what time.''

I phoned the MacRaes. Mr MacRae is warm, funny and infinitely

solicitous. I updated him on events. He asked if I, on account of a

mutual destination, could give them a lift to the airport, seeing as the

MacAskills were already behind. I said solemnly that I would, if my car

could be dug out and retrieved. I said that I would pop in for a milky

coffee.

The snow fell on. It came in great gobs, already thick in the bare

willows and rowans at the burn, heavy on our roofs, on the sheep,

clouding in slush at the margins of Loch Seaforth.

''Umm, umm,'' said Smudge, dancing about, wanting out again. I put on

my wellingtons and put my good city shoes, snow-sodden, into a carrier

bag. We went out. I locked the house for the second time and collected a

shovel. I would have milky coffee and sympathy at the MacRaes and then I

would head out to the car and dig it clear and wait for the snowplough

and I might, just might, have a fighting chance of making the last

flight before Christmas.

At the MacRaes there was a jolly atmosphere of crisis. ''A cup of

coffee in your hand?'' said Mr MacRae. ''A biscuit?'' said Mrs MacRae.

''Oh doggy, doggy,'' said George. ''Cuileag beag!'' said Mary Flora.

''Ingratiating whimper,'' said Smudge, and put her head on George's lap.

I TOOK the coffee and we chatted rather hysterically of snowstorms,

blockages and avalanches past and present. I said I had better go to sit

with the car. I left Smudge behind, squeaking total betrayal. ''I'm

going out now,'' I said darkly. ''I maybe gone for quite some time.''

Sadly I plodded through the white wastes of our buried highway. I had

already missed a rather good party in Stornoway. There now seemed an

excellent chance of missing the Glasgow plane. It seemed quite probable

that Smudge and I would celebrate Christmas with a plate of turkey

burgers washed down with black coffee. And I gazed about our new Arctic

landscape: the white peat stacks, the frosted sheep, the Alpine hills,

the ballooning drifts, the green Range Rover bowling towards me in a

cloud of flakes . . .

The green Range Rover . . .!

As it crunched to a halt I read with wondrous eyes the runes on the

plate: RMA2 . . .

''Well, John,'' said Roddy MacAskill pleasantly, draping an elbow over

the steering wheel. There were two sturdy Harrismen beside him, and

three sturdy Harrismen behind him, and three more sturdy Harrismen in

the back and they all clutched enormous shovels, and smiled shyly

beneath their bonnets.

''The cavalry,'' I said brokenly.

And then Roddy MacAskill descended to Maraig again, and returned some

minutes later with the Rev. Donald MacRae straight and proud beside him,

and Smudge squealing ecstatically in Mrs MacRae's lap. I helped them all

into my car, with bags and belongings, and the sturdy Harrismen stood

about murmering in merry Gaelic.

I stood by my car and gazed about me. A peeping sun shone low and pink

on snow-covered mountains. Clisham and Sgaoth Iosal and Sgaoth Iolair

and Toddun stood proud over Loch Maraig and I thought of the year gone;

of scribes and books and lawyers, of fishing, of hillclimbing, of Free

Presbyterian communions, of sheep living and dead, of little black dogs.

The plough was waiting. The MacRaes had bid their farewells to the

sturdy Harrismen.

''Happy Christmas,'' I said sincerely.