What Crowvus Did - Culloden Christmas Fair

 Coming home on Sunday night, there were – as Virginia put it – strange things in the sky. Heading over the Causeymire (known as the A9 to visitors!), we caught sight of one of the tell-tale signs of the Northern Lights: a spotlight which beams downwards instead of up from Earth. Unless there were UFOs in the area, it was a pretty sound Aurora Sighting. Aurora Watch also registered an Amber Alert at that time, which provided reassurance that we could trust our instincts.

The Merry Dancers were not the only strange thing happening in the sky either. As we passed through the Causeymire Windfarm, we saw a broad, golden light shoot through the sky – far larger than any shooting star I’ve ever seen. Perhaps, on this occasion, it was a piece of space debris falling to earth nearby: that would explain the strength of the light we saw. As thoughts turn towards Christmas, these phenomena put you in mind of all those angels in the sky above the shepherds. When my very matter-of-fact Dad first saw Northern Lights, he described how they immediately made him think of angels.

The Nativity played a wonderful part of our weekend. While visiting our sister’s family home on Saturday evening, we were treated to a wonderful retelling of the Christmas Story: our niece performing her entire Nursery play, complete with a track load of songs. Every verse was sung, and most lines were shared. In the final performance, her real line will be, “I bring you gold” as she’s playing one of the kings. She is clearly chuffed with this casting.

Earlier that evening, we’d had a sort-of-more-grown-up outing: the three of us and our sister – a pre-baby treat, as Lydia is now so big that the new baby looks ready to make an appearance at any moment. Everything from standing too long in line, to eating a spicy pizza, to her pulling open the door made us think that something could have been triggered. But her first baby didn’t make an appearance until the very last minute of her due date, so perhaps we shouldn’t be expecting any earlier this time.

It was a wonderful magic to spend time together – the four of us. It’s an unusual combo these days, as there’s usually Lydia’s husband and daughter too, or Mum and Dad, and any mixture of the three dogs we have between us. And I wouldn’t swap all those wonderful, busy gatherings for anything, but it was still lovely to spend the evening with just the four of us. Mum’s “Little Women”. In what feels like a previous life sometimes, we all used to sing and perform together. Tight, neat harmonies which were worked out carefully by Lydia and then practised meticulously until they were absolutely spot-on. Nothing less was acceptable. “I didn’t realise you were like the Von Trapp family!” I remember my college crush saying to me once after we’d given a performance at the local Festival.

There was no singing on Saturday night, but there was a lot of hilarity and, in that laughter, there’s plenty of music. We found everything funny: Lydia is a bright, extremely intelligent, and organised professional woman but, at nine months pregnant now, there are hysterical moments of baby brain. She suggested I give my surname at Pizza Hut to make the booking, before realising that our surnames are still the same. But she wasn’t the only one who didn’t know how to use the drinks machine: Clemency also had a lot of accidental fun choosing random flavours for people’s drinks, and fortunately they all liked vanilla!

It was the perfect way to end such a busy day, and another hectic day of sales greeted us on the Sunday too. Culloden Moor is a name which strikes a note of despair in many hearts – my own included – and the first time we visited in 2009, we didn’t even get out the car as the sense of devastation and loss hits you like a blow to the chest. It isn’t only the loss of the Jacobite cause (which would have been my cause if I’d been around at the time), it’s the knowledge of everything which followed as a result. Without Culloden, there would have been no Clearances and no mass emigration, the results of which are still felt keenly in Scotland’s more rural areas today.

I returned to the battlefield in 2012, for the Memorial Service on the anniversary of the battle, which seemed like an appropriate reason to get out of the car. On Sunday, I walked up to the big cairn twice, trudging over the mass graves of so many highland soldiers who gave their lives to a cause they believed in, but one which was already close to being lost even before the battle. On our wander back up to the Visitor Centre, Clemency and I discussed how the Jacobite leadership had all but given up on the hope of winning by the time Culloden happened, with everything consistently stacked against them and internal bickering colouring the top ranks of the Jacobite army.

I remain unshakeable in my conviction that, had they continued on from Derby the previous winter, the Jacobites would have taken London, and the architecture of British – and world – history would look very different.

Still, that is the life never lived. Every moment of every day could be filled with “what ifs” if we let it be. At the start of the market on the Saturday morning, we asked ourselves repeatedly whether we would make any sales at all and wondered if the whole exercise was going to be a pointless waste of money. It became evident very soon that it couldn’t be defined as that: our fellow stallholders provided a treasure-trove of unique gifts for people to open on Christmas morning, and there are several now sitting in my bedroom, waiting to be wrapped up.

For our part, we began to make sales later in the morning and, by afternoon, we had more than paid back the cost of the stall for the weekend. Everything we made on the second day was a profit, and we also got the wonderful satisfaction of engaging with readers about our books. First question is always, “Are you a keen reader?” Followed by, “Well, if you can tell me any genre you prefer, I will do my best to match you up with a book.”

That’s something we take a great pride in: the eclectic nature of our book collection. We have everything from picture books to memoirs, through middle grade, kids’ non-fiction, young adult, and virtually every genre of adult fiction apart from scifi and romance. Even with those two genres somewhat lacking from the catalogue, we can point people in the direction of something which might well fit the bill. Many people bought a book, some people commented on just how many different books there were on our stall, and only one person said, “I love to read but I don’t like books like that.”

It's quotes like this which make me smile wryly. If you take part in these markets, you psych yourself up to know you’re not going to make a sale to every person. Sometimes, you have a great conversation with someone and think they’re about to buy a book but then, at the last minute, they change their mind. This is just the way of how these things go, especially at the moment with people feeling the pinch more than they have in a generation. All you can hope is that they’ve felt the benefit of that conversation as much as you – the seller – have done. And perhaps that – when circumstances are kinder to them – they may consider purchasing a book.

But, like the lady who vocally doesn’t like any of the books we have on offer, there are one or two other things which set my teeth on edge. The main one is adults who pull children past the stall, while the little ones gaze, wide-eyed at the literary feast in front of them. This happened a couple of times this weekend, and it has happened at virtually every event we’ve been a part of. Again, we understand that money is tight, but we always say our display copies are for reading so, if your child is interested, leap on that and take them through one of the books. A magic moment this weekend was a granny reading Craggy the Coo to her granddaughter while they stood at the stall. No sale was made, but the child’s interest in reading was given much needed nourishment by granny’s support.

Other personal favourite moments of the weekend (sales-wise) included a lovely couple who came around to the stall just before lunch. I’d just noticed that Costa Rica had secured their surprise victory over Japan, and I shared this enthusiastically with the man, while his wife shared knowing and long-suffering looks and comments with Clemency. These non-football types just don’t get the excitement we feel when there’s a surprise result (providing it’s not our teams who are suffering the surprise defeat!) At the end of the conversation, they left, assuring us that they’d be back to buy a book later. And, Dear Reader, they did come back to buy a book, which made my day!

Another moment which I will treasure was when I took my niece to buy a present in Inverness, having been collected by her and my brother-in-law at lunchtime on Saturday. I asked her whether she would like a toy or some clothes and, instead, she marched up to the book section of The Works and started selecting ten different picture books, for the bargainous total price of £10. These prices aren’t available to many retailers, and I suppose they must make authors and publishers cringe to see their books being sold for a pittance, but it’s hard to begrudge them when they’re fostering a love of reading in little ones.

It's that love of reading which underpinned the event at Culloden for me. And, beyond that, it was the love that every person had there for what they were doing. Fabulous artisan craftspeople were utterly inspiring, and I didn’t hear anyone complaining about anything. It certainly felt that the people of the Highlands had enjoyed the last laugh at Culloden: they lived and loved there, celebrating their cultural heritage and their future in a way which would have seemed impossible in 1746.