Pennan

Weird chain of thoughts, leading up to this entry: I was going to say something nice about the good times and great meals I had with a friend ever since he asked me over for dinner for the first time nine months ago. By way of paying him a compliment. Not that he would ever learn about it, he doesn’t know my cyber identity. It was merely for my own pleasure and to have a topic for today: home cooking. And yours, too, hopefully, since I was going to look for some cool music to go along with it. Having gotten that far, a tune I had not thought about or listened to in many years entered my mind and would not go away. Going Home by Mark Knopfler from the movie Local Hero. As I started to wonder why – this was certainly not the type of music I was planning to post in my entry – I recalled the conversation I had with this very friend last night. He asked me about the children I never had. Which provoked memories I didn’t particularly enjoy having brought back to mind. I used to listen to Mark Knopfler a lot way back when I did lose my first baby. Explanation for tune-in-head was found: last night’s talk provoked it. So I set about to search youtube to see if I could find this song. I did. And I also found clips from the movie itself. As I started to watch some of them, I realised that I have seen this movie only once in my life. Must have been in the eighties, since the film was released in 1982. Back then, I hadn’t been to Scotland yet. A couple of years later I went to that most beautiful country quite often because I got married to one of the natives. My favorite spot in Scotland happens to be Pennan. Don’t ask me why. I have been pretty much all over the place with the exception of the very far north west of Scotland. But this little village squeezed into the frill and only a few feet wide strip of land between the towering red cliffs and the wild sea, accessible only via a narrow and practically vertical dipping byroad, really did me in. As my in-laws lived close by, I had the opportunity to visit Pennan regularly. I always felt threatened and protected by nature at the same time in Pennan. It seems mystic to me to this day. Watching the film clips, I realised that the movie is almost entirely set in Pennan, of all places. Odd, how everything is intertwined. Go figure.
Here’s a little Local Hero teaser for you. Pennan included. Oh, and I will pay that compliment some other time…