Don’t mind me, I just used to say these things.The kids swore the other things are out of the question, though I would never be sure they’d played safe till I could see them certified pure on the autopsy table aged 75, like all mothers of my sort, the anxious kind, the ones can’t believe their luck.In the snow, that comes more rarely to us here beside the sea than in the ways a few miles and up by the Ben, the snacks we sell go in the deep frier Duncan and I bought for our 12th anniversary from the mail order. It’s a lid goes on over the squiggling fish pieces inside, you scoop it all out with a slotted spoon, dish it out on greaseproof and shake over the vinegar. Hand it out fast as you can fry it up and the hot smell moves along the pier with the wind.Strangers talk to one another eating hot food in the snow They don’t eating the cold snacks in the heat. It’s to do with my theory that folk don’t enjoy things that come too comfortable. Standing in the snow, with the white islands on one side and the raw hill on the other, the sea actually under their feet that slip about on the pier, these people behave as though they’ve made their way over 20 miles of ice to make it to our wee booth, even though there’s the hotels over the way, the railway cafeteria and the Chinese up the alley behind Chalmers and MacTavish’s selling the 20 different carryout potato fillings.The best day in snow we’ve had at the booth was this January, right after the New Year. It was that chilly I’d invested in the gloves with the cut- off fingertips and a wee flap goes over like a mitten, so you’ve got the movement of the fingers and the recovery period for them after inside the top bit that goes over like an egg cosy.There was one of these groups of folk around that isn’t any shape, just humans not seeing each other, the tall ones with guncases letting dogs in and out of cars, the other ones not wearing enough clothes and shouting at one another from close up and telling jokes without listening. There was some call for the soup I keep on the go, it was kidney bean and lamb skirt, Duncan was busy at the frier, and Joanne was cutting monk tail for the mixed seafood medley.

The boys were preparing the two coatings in the back, batter and breadcrumbs It offers a choice to the mouth Men take crumb and the women batter, I find But I can be wrong. After all, it’s a crude division, sorting people into sexes.Then up the pier comes a wee thing on high bootee heels, with an umbrella covered with yellow flowers Her feet leave treads small as marks in pastry in the snow She’s giggling like a bird. The seagull next to her looks as if it could pick her up by its beak with the one orange dot on its hook. She’s Japanese, come to see this other wee country that’s made such a success out of the whisky.Her man is reversing down the pier away from her but towards us, his black loafer shoes going blacker with the snow, and the turnups in his trousers collecting it.

He’s snapping her of course, and she’s posing with a soft handful of snow, her face up squint to it like a bunch of flowers, breathing in the crystals, and blowing them off the snow in her hands out to him and to us It’s the kind of snow takes its time about landing. It twirls and rests in any light it can get.We’re watching her as she leaves these little steps as small as the gulls’ triangular plods, but pointing the other way, the way she’s coming. The light is the snowlight of glary grey though the mountain is all white, and the islands are blue and yellow in the folds of their whiteness. The brazier is black and blue and red and the frier fills the air with a bottled up hissing. I notice that the characters around our family booth have become a group. They have been woken up for a while from themselves.Down the pier she comes with her snow posy and we watch her yellow-flowered umbrella come closer behind her, her bit of private weather.Just as the Japanese man’s about to catch his raincoat on the brazier, two men budge and pick it up to move it, taking care to adjust it between the relative heights of their grips, so the coals on the top stay level Nothing disturbs the glow of the brazier The heat between the coals is like red mortar.

Only the ash shifts and falls, leaving a grey trail in the snow.The Japanese man turns round, perhaps feeling the heat moving back and away from him in the cold Western air, and seems to be taking it all in, the plastic striped tent, the fried food in paper, the redfaced people of differing largeness, the brown dog with a tuna-coloured nose, the black one whose tail has drawn a fin in the snow, and he includes us all in his greeting, “Good evening.”By the time the girl has arrived and shaken the snow off her woolly gloves, he is half way round the individuals who now compose a group around the brazier outside the tent where I hoped to keep my family safe from the world outside. I flip back the knitted snoods of my mitts, and begin to use my fingers, until I am almost enjoying the sensations they are prey to, bitter cold, a stinging where the vinegar gets into the cuts I’m never without, the chill glittery ribbons of iceberg, the hot stubbled shell of the fritters made with crumb, the light deflatable sheen of the battered fish. I enjoy the dexterity the exposure has given me.Ian and Dougie and Joanne are posing for the camera in the snow outside our small striped plastic tent The couple take several more snapshots of the group More snacks are ordered. I thin the soup to make it go round, it’s so thick after its day reducing in the stockpot.In Japan, someone will almost certainly think that the booth is where we live, up here among the snows and floating islands of the West Coast. They will see our brazier and the people around it and in their minds will arise some idea of the tribes within which we live, huddled together for warmth, waiting for boats to take us away to islands in warmer waters, accompanied by dogs and protected by taller men with guns.You can take it any way you need to.Since round about then, I’ve been letting the children out and about that bit more.

Duncan has gone shares with a man sets creels not far out beyond Kerrera. We’ll sell the lobster here from the tent on the pier, when we get some.The year is outwith my control, as it always was. I am letting the days come in with what they carry and leave with what we can give them. When I cut the icebergs into these light shreds, the thing that was the size of a head is spun out and the gaps between its smithereens filled in with a thousand layers of air so you get a basin of stuff airier than lawnmowings and sparkling like fibreglass.