Windy Days in Scotland

The Island of Lewis is a windy place. It was not difficult to feel that the whole island was in motion, being birled about in the general movement of the planet, and
with a definite danger of being blown off, into the sea, into space. In winter gales it had a loud, eerie howl, which one grew to love. My mother used to put a coat over her head, and a jacket over mine, and we would go out and stand at the end of the house for a while, in the dark, listening to the wind and enjoying it. It was a sensuous and emotional need, not like the doctrinaire theory of an old Lewis bachelor of whom I heard, who made a practice of going out first thing on a winter morning, in his nightshirt, in the belief that if you got a good chill then you wouldn’t feel so cold for the rest of the day.

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