The Horizon Pool on Radio Four

Britain's' most northerly 'Lido', the sea-water Trinkie pool near Wick, established in a fit of healthiness in the 1930s, is the setting for my story 'The Horizon Pool', read on BBC Radio Four's Afternoon Reading on Thursday June 9th.

Commissioned as part of a themed series of stories about outdoor swimming, two very different Lido stories by Michelle Roberts and Stella Duffy (both great treats) will feature on the Tuesday and Wednesday. Mine is certainly the chilliest! I've walked past the Trinkie many times and in many weathers, and still never seen a swimmer in it, even at its most inviting.

Wick and area intrigues me. It has a great sense of ancient history in its brochs and castles, and more recent industrial history in its once-thronged herring harbours. Always elemental, empty, and rather sad, it suited the journey of the teenage character in my story very well.

You can find some of my photos of Wick's ghost words here.

The Silver Darlings

eh?

What would Neil Gunn have to say about the title of his novel about the early days of the herring industry on the coast of Caithness being adopted for rumps and sirloins in Wick?

'They forgot all about the ship; they forgot everything except the herrings, the little silver fish, the swift flashing ones, hundreds and thousands of them,the silver darlings.'
page 26, The Silver Darlings, Faber and Faber

Wick's streets are so full of words like this, displaying themselves on buildings, walls, windows. Many are left as shadows of a former use, ghosting under new names and titles and warnings. Some are barely legible now. I've been so struck by them, that I'm making a collection of photos here.