Islands in the Stream of Consciousness

I am rather fond of islands. It's been illuminating to recall the 25 or more that I have been lucky enough to have visited, or  inhabited, over the last 68 years. I'll give them their original Cymraeg/Brythonic names where applicable. Why not? Scroll on if you're not one for lists.

Arran (Ystrad Clud/Strathclyde, described as “Scotland in miniature”); Burgh Island (Devon, of Agatha Christie fame); Derwent Isle (Derwentwater, Cumbria; an island in a lake); Desborough Island (Walton on Thames); Enlli (Bardsey, Gwynedd, “island of 20,000 saints” said to be worth half a pilgrimage to Rome); Guernsey; Hayling (Hampshire); Islay and Jura (Argyll and Bute, where I allegedly own a plot of land of 1 sq.ft., thanks to a whisky distillery); Lindisfarne (Northumberland); Madeira (a favourite haunt before that pandemic was delivered in flying metal cylinders – they should have called it the “Plane Plague”); Ynys Manaw/Isle of Man; Mull (Argyle and Bute); North and South Islands (Seland Newydd/NZ); Portland (Dorset, location of a previous espionage blog); Portsmouth (Hampshire: yes it's an island city and my first home); several islands of Ynysoedd Erch/Orkney; Prydain/Britain (many choose to forget Britain is not the Main Land); Saint Michael's Mount (Cernew/Cornwall, and its equivalent in France: plenty in Cymru too in places where hills or mounds are associated with churches of Llanfinhangel/St Michael); Singapore (the safest I've felt anywhere); Skye (Highland); Ynys Bŷr (Caldey, Sir Benfro); Ynys Gybi (Holy Island, Ynys Môn: an island off an island, but aren't they all?);Ynys Môn (Anglesey) itself; lastly and in my mind every day, Ynys Wyth/Isle of WIght (home between 1976 and 1985, and still home to family).

But what's the attraction? There is a frisson associated with places “on the edge”, indeed places surrounded by “edge”. When I worked in the arena of Mental Health ['arena' sometimes synonymous with a field of battle] on the Isle of Wight, the hospital was, in contrast with other such institutions, as far from “the edge” as possible, being tucked away cosily in the centre of the island. A psychiatrist there observed that the ferries crossing The Solent (the water between The Island, as it is known, and the mainland) were full of people escaping from a part of themselves, one way or the other. Those I worked with, either side of the water, seemed to confirm this. It probably says something about my island hopping too.

I recall German psychologist Hans Eysenck undertaking research on personality traits while I was there in the early 1980s, I was told he viewed the Isle of Wight as something of a microcosm of the rest of Britain, so an ideal setting for his work. The fact he had a holiday home there (in the village of Lake) may have been more to the point. Much of his work is now largely discredited, but at the time led to people I worked with, colleagues included, being “experimented on” with powerful psychotropic drugs. The battle ground of mental health will be the subject of a future blog post.

Much has been written about islands as places of experimentation, retreat or refuge. Their use for testing biological and nuclear weapons is well known. Their relative isolation has also led to many infamous places of incarceration around the world. Napoleon was exiled to Saint Helena and Elba; Nelson Mandela to Robben Island. Long before, from 1497, sufferers of syphilis were sent to Inchkeith in the Firth of Forth. Inchkeith had also been the site of an experiment to discover if people could develop a natural language without hearing one. Two infants and a woman unable to speak were abandoned there in order to find out. The story is apocryphal, but some claimed they naturally started speaking Hebrew.

At one time the Isle of Wight had three top security prisons. I knew them all through my work. In the fictional world of The Prisoner (Everyman Films 1967), “The Village” was too on an island of involuntary exile. The series was influenced by true stories of a fairly secret "home for spies" in Scotland during the 2nd World War: for those who "knew too much". In today's tragic truth we read about the obscene notion from the Sunak/Patel axis of sending asylum seekers to Ascension Island. They've had to make do with sending those traumatised by small boat crossings to be re-traumatised on a larger boat moored at another island: Portland.

Thoughts of remoteness lured me to Madeira (Portugal, 700km from the African coast). The bustling main city, Funchal, clings to vertiginous slopes. While displaying cosmopolitan, British and Brazilian influences, there is an appealing edge-ness to places there, such as the many local “snack bars” (back street pubs) which seem to have grown out of the owners' garages, with makeshift tables and barrels for chairs. There is an honesty about their basic decor and ambience. In some old-town Funchal bars they sing Fado. Songs of longing, of Saudade, of Hiraeth, that convey so much even if you don't understand Portuguese. You may be asked to leave if you talk during a performance. 

A couple of years before I left the Isle of Wight, three brothers from the Isle of Man penned “Islands in the stream”. This much-covered BeeGees song, best known through the Parton/Rogers version, was named after a Hemingway novel in which the protagonist sought tranquility in rugged island life “on the edge”.

“Sail away with me, to another world … A-ha ”

LINKS

Books: An exploration of humankind’s fascination with islands | HeraldScotland

Tales of espionage in four ports: Portsmouth, Portland, Porthmadog, Portmeirion. Part 1. (cambriancrumbs.blogspot.com)

I will probably never visit Tasmania (cambriancrumbs.blogspot.com)

Rebel with a cause : the autobiography of Hans Eysenck

The lure of the island. How can we understand island… | by Bram Wanrooij | Nine by Five Media | Medium

The story of the bizarre Inchkeith language experiment (ramblinghistory.co.uk)