The Dodgy Duck
Standing Stone - North Mull I first came across lichen simulacra when investigating standing stone alignments on north Mull. The stones themselves are thought to celebrate the winter solstice or form some part of a cult which followed the long-term cycles of the moon. They may also have been connected to the pole star, seeing as they point (roughly) to the north.
The north Mull alignments, along with their chaotic lichen, also provide the best medium for taking the lichen Rorschach test. This may have interested the original builders of the alignments, as the lichen pictures last for decades. Perhaps the Bronze Age people viewed them as the guardian spirits of the stones.
Of course lichen elves appear in any old rocks but there's something magical and funny about them when they appear on standing stones.
The most unusual picture I've yet seen on a rock was part of a synchro-web involving Uri Geller. It started one day when I was wandering by a magazine stand. I came on the long-standing sci-fi magazine, Interzone. On picking it up it immediately fell open on a story written by Uri Geller. He's recently turned his talents to writing fiction. As soon as I looked down I read of a character who lived in Oban, Argyll, at 2 Mull Terrace. I blinked in surprise and looked around me. But this is Oban I thought, shaking my head. I bought the magazine and wandered out onto the street reading the story as I walked home...
Some weeks, perhaps months later, I was sitting in Mull reading the Oban Times. I enjoy the letters page as there's always an interesting photograph, which in this issue happens to be a landscape photograph of a loch with a rock in the foreground by the water's edge. So there I was about to turn the page when I noticed a familiar address. The photo had been taken and sent in by an Anne Barr, of 3 Mull Terrace, Oban. Doing a double take I said, 'Huh?' and stared back at the photograph. Then I nearly jumped out of my seat. The rock in the front of the photo presents a simulacrum of a large, sinister duck-like creature which is staring straight at the damned camera. If you think I'm taking the Mickey here, just take a look at the archives in the Oban Times offices. The stone duck has a sinister glare, as if to say, 'Wot you starin' at then?'
The Witch's Tree - Isle of Mull (I don't have a copy of the dodgy duck photo so you'll just have to make do with this strange looking tree I found on Mull : ) The Oban Times never mentioned the kelpie in any future issue. (Water kelpies of course are seen to take the form of a horse, but it's a conveniant enough term to use here.) The photo itself came out on April the 1st 1998. The date suggests a prank of sorts and if it was, it won't have been the first hidden joke to grace the pages of the Oban Times.
Another author with links to Argyll, Lisa Tuttle, also turns up in Uri's issue of Interzone. Lisa wrote the excellent children's novel, Panther In Argyll. The book contains a scene in which a girl emerges from a camera shop in Oban only to find that an image has turned up in her photographs which wasn't there when she took the original snaps. The image is that of shapeshifting panther.
I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure Uri's a charismatic prankster when it comes to the spoons. I think it was rather revealing when he appeared on a television programme which also had two men carrying out the old blindfold, 'describe what the audience is wearing' routine. Children can develop their own verbal code in 5 minutes. I wasn't impressed - outdated nonsense.
But as to Uri, who knows?Strangely, several months before the photo appeared in the Oban Times I'd written to Uri Geller - as invited in an afterward in his novel, Ella - and shared some experiences. A week or two later he phoned me up - in Oban - and we had a chat. It wasn't a very in-depth conversation and it ended with me asking what he was writing about recently. Mr Geller said a few things and then ended by telling me about his Times (London) weekly column. I told him I hadn't seen it - I don't buy The Times. He misheard me and then asked me to E-mail The Times newspaper to tell them I was a fan of his weekly column.
Well, I wasn't on E-mail, had never read his column before, wasn't a 'fan' of his and felt as you can imagine that he was viewing me like I was a potential mark. We politely said our goodbyes and that was that. I then walked through to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. I have to admit I looked twice at the spoons in the drawer and later returned with my tea to the living room. Sitting there I got to thinking of my fondness for the man - via the media - as a child. But now I'd just heard more of a cheeky chancer on the phone rather than an authority on E.S.P..
Witch's Tree, Mull Uri Geller asked me to congratulate The Times with their column, Uri Geller's Weird Web. I didn't. Instead I found myself in the role of witness, several months later, to the Oban Times' wyrd web. What Mr Geller makes of this I have no idea.
I'm not dismayed with my own view that Mr Geller is a prankster. After all there's no point in the mug blaming the card-trickster in the market. If they lose a pound to the hidden queen they've only themselves to blame. Plus they've paid a tiny fee for what they're really after - a step into the fairy world. Mr Geller on the other hand doesn't charge us a penny, and some of what he makes goes to charity. He also gives the impression of having a genuine interest in synchronicity.I've no real idea as to where the loch kelpie comes from, but the three main takes seem to be conspiracy, magic or chance. Could it be that Mrs Barr - Uri's holiday-home neighbour? - teamed up with him, along with the Oban Times and then laid down the coincidences and photograph like a trap, waiting for someone to spot the kelpie? Was it an attempt to cultivate a puzzle less infantile than the Loch Ness Monster?
Nessie's well out of date. It's like some kind of relic from the naive Seventies. In fact most children in InvernessShire give up the entire debate (of whether or not it exists) when they out-grow Santa Claus and the Toothfairy. I've experienced this myself up there as a child, just over the hills from the loch. This is why I find long-winded tracts on 'why the creature doesn't exist' hilarious, as they bring back memories of self-serious 7 year olds earnestly lecturing 5 year olds in the primary school playground - often watched by a bemused, indifferent 11 year old.
Was the Loch Etive kelpie then a modern piss-take (quack quack) on the old water creature joke? A peculiar conspiracy involving several people? I guess it's not. I guess it's genuine, not enhanced on a computer. But I guess it was likely spotted by someone at the Oban Times as having potential double value for April the 1st. The address given for the source of the photograph is genuine enough and Mr Geller's similar address may - by chance - be his holiday home, or was back in 1998.
This is the 'magical' take on the story, the idea that the process is driven by the hidden resonance of synchronicity; exotic and out of control. Delightful but kind of spooky. Humbling too.
The 'chance' explanation is the same as the magical but with the strict rationalist's view that no coincidences are unusual - to quote Persi Diaconis, 'the only unusual day is the day in which nothing unusual happens.'So for what it's worth I'll state here that the Loch Etive kelpie was nothing to do with me and I've never been up to any prank with Mr Geller or the Oban Times. I should think that my own comments on both parties on this page are further evidence to this.
Have fun everyone, bye : )
Standing Stone Simulacrum, Mull Notes:
The other joke I referred to in the Oban Times actually turned up in their free spin-off, the Oban Extra. It is a reference to two cartoon characters supposedly being under the influence of L.S.D.. This appeared in the children's section of the television guide in the paper. The joke - if you could call it such - appeared at the height of the newspaper's 'War on Drugs' including its fears that such dangerous, illegal drugs could fall into the hands of innocent children. I wouldn't have minded the blatant hypocricy and self-generated hysteria behind this, only the various children who delivered the free paper to my door would shove it through my letter box despite my protests to keep it to themselves. I don't like junk mail.(To be sure I've made references myself in the past to Zippy and George from Rainbow being drunk and stoned. But I'd have some reservations of popping such a remark onto say, an exclusive children's web-site. I'm not moralising here, or particularly bothered, just completing the story. Some people did ask.)
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