When I was age 12, we went on a family holiday on the island of Barra in the Outer Hebrides off Scotland’s west coast. I was pottering around the jetty at Eoligarry on the north end of Barra when local men, boys and dogs suddenly appeared. They asked me if I wanted to help with the sheep shearing on a nearby uninhabited island. I ran to the holiday house where we were staying to get my parents’ permission.
It was a strange flat-bottomed craft which chugged its way across the
