Chapter 1

Please start here… https://schnark.home.blog/2024/10/16/the-man-who-wrote-real-fiction/

NOTE THERE ARE TEN CHAPTERS BEFORE THIS ONE

Or, if catching up, go here for chapter selection… https://schnark.home.blog/category/other-things/fiction/

Mikey climbed down from the bus at Kyle of Lochalsh, looking around briefly to see who might be waiting, but remembering he’d never given Callum a time, he set off to see the bridge, the strange new structure that looked like it belonged in the Natural History Museum, and linked the island of Britain, to the Isle of Skye. On the way he called Callum again, who, it turned out, had not thought his friend serious, and had expected “at least a second phone call to confirm arrangements”, “well this is that” said Mikey, and Callum would be around within the hour. Mikey had thought of walking, he’d have got there some time tomorrow, and he could have hitched, its getting harder and harder to get anyone to stop, but more so, as you get older and life gets more complicated, you just don’t have the time, no, he felt it was a courtesy if he’d be staying with someone, to make that someone his first contact, and you never knew who you’d bump into hitching.

George was struggling a bit here, Mikey was on home turf, but George was an interloper. He knew the lie of the land, but he felt a complete pretender. Even Mikey was going to get a frosty reception, if he claimed anything more than a casual acquaintance, he’d been away a long time, there’d be a lot of incomers that wouldn’t remember him and some of the old timers would make him work, they’d want to hurt him a little before they could renew their friendship. George knew this from other places, the North East of England wasn’t so different, and George too was an emigrant, but George was pretty sure he’d never go back, he hadn’t burned his bridges, but was pretty sure they weren’t safe. He was nervous here of being cocky and trying to claim more understanding than he had, he wanted to get up there, spend a few days or weeks in the hills, and then get spat out in foul weather, and spend a few nights in a local bar, and have the locals accept him, yes, as stranger, but if you hang about for long enough, you can be a stranger that folk will talk to. For now, he needed to keep it all a little bit vague, a little bit existential, as that was the one thing he could be sure of for now, Mikey, and Callum, and existence.