Flying dishes are not enough to stop these hardy broadcasters

By iain maciver

Published:

SPARE a tiny thought this fine day for the hardy souls who are just back from Rockall. Skipper Angus Smith took the party of determined Belgian radio amateurs and hardy locals on his go-anywhere, do-anything super-yacht Elinca to try to get on and transmit for two days if they could find a couple of square feet to set up among the guillemot poo.

Alas, Mother Nature had other ideas. It was blowing a right hooley and the sea frothed up wilder than a Harris councillor on learning that Uist colleagues want the St Kilda centre to be on Benbecula.

It was raging. So nobody got on this time. I have the photos here. I am wetting myself just looking at them. The laundry would have been a challenge if I had gone.

However, my faithful old retainer Cameraman and Chris Murray did go. Former Ex-chopper dropper Chris can fight hurricanes with one hand, but Cameraman, who is Parkhead green round the gills at the best of times, still has an unpleasant technicolour hue.

Had it not been for the professionalism and gallantry of Angus and his crewman son Innes, who is three years younger than the 24 some scurrilous media had him down as – for another couple of days, anyway – Cameraman tells me that the roaring, icy blast would have swept them somewhere off Nova Scotia by now.

So my plan didn't work. Maybe if I give Angus a backhander, he might just set Cameraman and Chris adrift in a dinghy the next time.

Meanwhile, it is hot air that is the problem at committee meetings of Western Isles Council; and Gaelic hot air at that. Translator Dollag, a Niseach, sits in a booth at the back and rabbits away, converting perfectly good Gaelic into a squawky north-of-Galson dialect that, being heavily guga-flavoured, has only a passing resemblance to the Queen's English. Still, it's only for the benefit of the handful of councillors who are non-Gaelic speakers, so they can sit there nodding, wired for sound.

Unfortunately, I have to report that the usually reliable process of simultaneous translation sparked unseemly scenes at a recent meeting of the transport committee. In the chair was the usually precise and immaculately spoken member for Barra, Donald Manford.

He began proceedings by reading out the announcements. They included a reminder to everyone present to switch off their mobile phones. A mischievous imp who was there tells me that Donald was distracted by something and misread the note. Instead of asking the councillors to put off their phones, what he actually told them was to put off their clothes.

There was a stunned, awkward silence. Then the voice of an audibly shocked Dollag could be heard in the headphones. Afraid that the elected members were taking the dress-down concept way too far, she was heard protesting loudly that there were some things she just would not translate. So there.

The Gaelic-speaking members were in total disarray. Stornoway North member Murdo Macleod's jaw dropped so much it nearly fractured the desk; Morag Munro, of Harris, needed smelling salts, and Benbecula's Martin Taylor had to jump on Catherine Macdonald, the Dame of Drinishader, as she tried to comply with the chairman's instruction. Isn't it a pity that council proceedings are not televised?

A supremely remorseful Donald Manford feebly tried to excuse his outrageous conduct by explaining it was an easy mistake for him to make because the note was written in a dialect he was not familiar with – Lewis Gaelic. His colleagues now hope he will get more familiar with an optician.

My Gaelic, of course, is immaculate. That is because I keep it polished by listening each day to Radio nan Gaidheal. Putting it on satellite TV was a fantastic idea. I was able to turn it up far higher than a tinny transistor radio and get an invigorating blast of heedrum-hodrums each morning courtesy of Morag Macdonald, of Mire ri Mor.

I had it booming so I could hear it in the kitchen, the bedroom or even the bathroom – wherever I do my business. I give it so much welly that the puirt-a-beul rattles the china cabinet, petrifies the pooch and annoys the neighbourhood. Maybe that is why Dave and Marje next door stopped speaking to me last October. It was just the very dab to get me through the vacuuming with gusto. Alas, no more. Channel 0139 has died.

I called BBC engineering back in December to tell them that the BBC Radio Coinneach Mor channel on Sky was broken. They said I probably had a misaligned dish. “What could I do?” I asked. It was essential that dishes point east, an Auntie Beeb technical person told me.

Strange, I thought. Still they know what they are talking about. So I turned round every dinner plate, side plate and saucer in the house. Even the dog's bowl was upended and rotated to face the Plasterfield radar station. But still nothing. That was when they told me they meant the dish on the side of the house.

Before I summoned Mrs X to get her toolbox out, I checked with all the Sky TV subscribers I knew. It's easy to find them. Just think of people who have been on BBC Alba. They always immediately get Sky so they can watch the repeats of themselves. They, too, reported long periods of silence and snatches of unintelligible static. Just Morag speaking normally, then.

But, more than three months later, it is worse than ever. The snatches we do get of poor Morag now make her sound as if she has her head in a bucket. Just a thought: If she does actually do her morning programme in one of her farmyard pails on the Black Isle then obviously the service has now improved immeasurably.

Sadly, her 9am-10am colleague is also still completely unintelligible. But then Kenny Mor Maciver has been like that since they switched the Gaelic over from medium wave to VHF.