Rùm in February, a month that tests everything.

I’m sitting here in my conservatory, looking out at the cold grey sea and the angry grey sky. It’s hailing; loudly. I shiver uncontrollably.

February.

A month sent to try us.

The winter months are long, dark and quiet on a distant island with just 43 residents. In October the tourist numbers start to significantly dwindle, but we have Halloween and bonfire night to look forward too. Halloween means a party in the village hall, dressing up, carving pumpkins and swedes. My personal favourite Halloween costume was a weeping angel from Dr. Who, If you don’t know what that is, I went dressed as a grey creepy looking statue, complete with white sheet toga, full length cardboard wings and a wig made from grey wool.

Kilmory Glen by David MacKenzie

Preparing for bonfire night includes organising all the available scrap wood and building it into a bonfire – this is an event in itself; come rain or shine, the fire must be built. The kids make a ‘guy’ at school to sit on top and between us we rustle up items to eat – mulled wine (it is apparently never too early for this), pumpkin soup, parkin and bonfire toffee. Before Covid we used to have a communal barbeque; Bonfire night 2020 was a strange affair of socially distanced family groups each with their own food, but five years later we haven’t got back to the big communal barbecue properly yet - our traditional wood fired BBQ frame made from two halves of a 45 gallon drum sadly corroded away.

After bonfire night, Christmas takes up everyone’s bandwidth, more parties, mulled wine and dressing up – finding someone to be to be the fella in red for the children’s party is always amusing, willing volunteers are few and far between.

After Christmas there is Hogmanay, and a ceilidh or gathering in the village hall. A day of decorating the hall, a day of clearing up afterwards and another couple of days of nursing hangovers for some. After all the Christmas decorations come down on twelfth night, there are a couple of weeks for reflection, usually taken up with new year’s resolutions, tidying up and getting back into the rhythm of work. Until Burn’s Night, perfectly placed on the 25th of January. Burn’s night is another community event in the hall. A long table lit with candles, home-made venison Haggis with neaps and tatties, whisky and poetry. Friends and stories.

And then. It is February. The shortest month, it may be, but it can feel much longer.

We lurch from festival to festival – pagan, Christian, literary to quietly put off the darkness of winter.

But February takes no prisoners. There is every kind of weather, as long as it includes rain. Cold icy rain.

It still gets light late and dark early.

Mostly too cold and wet to spend long outside, but when the weather does occasionally threaten not to rain, it’s a dash outside for whatever vitamin d the sky is offering to splash in puddles, dig a patch of garden or empty a clogged gutter. Grim, but I’m smiling as I write. This is part of my life, and I accept it with joy.

For me, it’s the end of a long winter with not much income and lots to do before spring. It is also a time I can spend quietly reflecting and planning, at the same time as watching oystercatchers and curlew forage on the seashore. They don’t mind the rain.

It is a trying month. Island life not for everyone, but February on an island is also not for the weak hearted or the easily bored. The wintering period, the dark meditative months are there for hibernation and reflection and this is not everyone’s default place to be.

Rum has, by hook or by crook, a superfast internet connection and there are plenty of places online to hide from the quiet that February offers with open hands.

Take it if you wish, it is given freely.

Soon it will be March; the sun will shine, the days will get longer, the tourists will return and we will be busier.

And you might, just might, find yourself missing February.