Oast Boast

When I was a little kid, we had an old biscuit tin with a picture of an Oast House on the lid, an image that was exotic and foreign to a Hebridean child. If my memory serves me well, it was the home of the family photograph collection. There were not many photographs, and sadly over the years most of them were lost or got impossibly dog eared with frequent handling. We never had a camera, so photographs were rare - there were none at all of me and three of my seven siblings as babies. I used to wonder if we were all adopted until my Mother took me to the mirror and asked me if I could be anyone else's child but hers!

Today almost everyone has a camera and we have multiple means of capture, storage,viewing and printing. I wonder if we value images as before. I value the memory of some of the lost photos, especially the one of a beautiful young woman with long dark hair, smiling as she played the piano, my mother as I never knew her, as she was 40 when she gave birth to me, worn out by bringing up a large family in difficult circumstances.

So these Oast houses are for her, Annie Beattie Barbour, and all her wonderful patience and care for me, her youngest and most troublesome, wayward, demanding child.

Oh, and they are the Oast houses next to our barn where we are staying in East Sussex, sheltering indoors at the moment because of the blazing 27 C sun.