David Grant Remembrance

David Renwick Grant (5th May 1941 - 5th June 2022)

Foreword


When my neighbour David Grant died in 2022, I made a pact with myself that I would write a remembrance. The text below was written in September of 2023, the very day after an all-consuming contract job ended and I finally had some time to myself. The delay in publishing this blog entry is quite another story in itself ...

Two years after David died, I was informed that a gravestone had just been erected in the grounds of Kingoldrum Church. I naturally went to pay my respects and connected by touching the headstone. I loved the restrained but expressive memorial and I knew David would have felt the same way. 

 

David's Grave

Visiting the grave was a weird experience, as the church was now a private home, and the churchyard was someone's garden. Fortunately there are no windows on this side of the church, so there is some degree of privacy for the home-owner and the party paying their respects.

Kingoldrum Church Yard with David's Grave

I had thought this visit would make me publish my remembrance, but I still hadn't got explicit approval of the text from everyone I had asked.

Anyhow, on the 23rd of February, this year, the estate sale of Alisoun Grant took place at Pentland's Auctions in Kirriemuir. Alisoun had married David's cousin called Alexander/Sandy. With the passing of Sandy, then David, and now Alisoun, I realised that time runs out for all of us, and that I should finally publish.

I got a few old framed family photographs (~ 1890 - 1945) from the auction which will lend a stylish historic atmosphere to the castle.

In January of this year, I visited my first broch on a trip to Orkney. I have just now put two and two together. This is the very broch (Broch of Gurness), of which, David was a curator.

David Grant Remembrance

I prefer the word remembrance to the word eulogy, because as merely his most recent and now last neighbour, there's no way I could do justice to the entirety of his life. However, I could write about the man I came to know and indeed came to love. Only now, looking back, I see what I did not see before: he was a true friend.

When I first moved to the castle and had my first castle bonfire event, my new neighbour David attended. He lived at the bottom of the castle drive and rumour had it that he was a published author. In person, I was struck by his charm, his articulacy and his stylish silk cravat. After the event, I reflected on how lucky I was to have a neighbour like this and looked forward to the future.

In retrospect it was a slow burning friendship, David invited me down to his place every so often for meals. Conditions at the castle were spartan for a long time, so a proper meal and a seat in front of a roaring fire were a godsend. It goes without saying that conversation with David was always a joy, and perhaps an art form. Even towards the end when Alzheimer's was well advanced, I preferred chatting with David to most other people (allegedly) in their right mind.

Conversely David would pop up to the castle for a cup of tea and a cake, and I think this became more important to him as the Alzheimer's got hold and his universe started shrinking in other areas. I was particularly delighted when my recent friends Solveig and Jonny were also charmed by David even in his declining years, and they took him under their wing. If only Solveig and Jonny could have met David at the height of his powers.

David gave me a copy of his travelogue "The Seven Year Hitch" about his journey around the world in a horse drawn wagon with his family. I should point out that the ladies of this family, his wife and his daughter, sensibly bailed out half-way round. There is a doggedness in the character of some men, which can lack sense or can be admired and I deliberately never questioned the wisdom of the expedition. The achievement, however, is undeniable and the resulting book is a great read. I am an extremely discriminating reader, and it was instantly clear that the book is brilliantly written. So much so, I gave my copy of the book to my sister knowing she would love it, and shortly before the end of his life David gave me another copy when I told him this.

Obviously, David gave me insights into his life. He had crofted, been the curator of a broch, been involved in a scheme to bring cheap user-maintainable plywood cars to Africa (Africar). In short, he had lived what one would call an "adventurous" life. He had a great love for Scotland, its history and its myths and stories. He was drawn to the Vikings and was a student of wildlife and particularly birds. He had been brought up in a well-to-do environment in a Victorian villa in Edinburgh, which made him a disparager of Victorian flim-flam, like many of his era. On the other hand, he was not blind to the charms of the antique, and his book-lined living room was decorated with family heirlooms and family portraits. I particularly loved the 19th century oil painting of an elderly lady relative with an ear trumpet.

It was never explicitly stated as such, but I knew David was a first generation hippy rebelling against a repressive "Victorian" Scotland and determined to live his own "authentic" life on his own terms. I love the original generation of hippies, as they were not cynical and had a genuine heartfelt idealism. And while we now know this idealism was youthful and misguided, there were many positive outcomes and society is a better place as a result.

For a while David toyed with the Baháʼí faith, and I attended and enjoyed a number of Bahai gatherings at his cottage. These are all about telling stories and reciting poems - I cannot remember what my own contribution was. It is a faith which embraces all other religions non-judgmentally but is deeply rooted in the human experience. You can understand why the faith appealed to David, and the social networking with decent minded people was a distinct bonus.

His disenchantment with Baháʼí started as the faith forbids involvement in politics, and David was a radical believer in Scottish Nationalism. I can remember for a long time, human-sized large blue polystyrene letters "Y E S" standing outside his cottage. :-) In fact the actual "N O" result in the 2014 referendum was devastating for David. He had invested so much effort and emotion into the campaign that he genuinely believed independence would be the outcome. David was never quite the same person afterwards and I believe the disappointment permanently broke his health.

David met most of my friends at the castle and three of these he identified to me as "wrong un's". I don't know how he did it but each of these "friends" later betrayed me behind my back in separate and disconnected incidents.

He was thus demonstrably an excellent judge of character. He was certainly intolerant of any sign of "fakeness", "inauthenticity" or "pretension" in anyone he met. David was sometimes described as "difficult". I never found him thus, though I can imagine he would be merciless with anyone perceived to have done him wrong. :-)

He was an extremely witty man, and during conversations he would frequently destroy mutual acquaintances with a single swipe of his tongue. I love a bit of "throwing shade" and these moments were a complete joy. The point about throwing shade is that it is not simply nasty, but that it is incredibly revealing and insightful and served in an (almost) palatable witty form. I simply cannot repeat some of the best things he said. :-)

What I can reveal are those very few moments I managed to throw David-quality shade back, and over time I learned that the ruder you were to him the more he liked it.

We were talking about predicting the sex of an unborn child with a pendulum.

David G. "I have that gift. Some people sung the pendulum back and forwards, others swing it round in circles.

Me: "And what way do you swing?".

The hand gesture I got back from David was worth its weight in gold.

David G. "Do you know David, the older I get the more cantankerous I find myself becoming."

Me: "Is that even possible?"

This elicited another hand gesture! :-)

David Grant attended a Burn's Night at Balintore that has gone down in legend.

We didn't quite have enough ladies, and I recall my friend Brian twirling David around the dance floor during the ceilidh. David disported himself with an impressive vigour, remarkable at his or indeed any age.

David left for his cottage at the bottom of the drive around 2AM, and the rest of us chatted round the fire. At 4AM we heard a noise in the corridor outside and each of us were absolutely scared witless at this ghostly phenomenon.

There was no time to fully vocalise our fears to each other. Someone managed "What's that?!". I managed "It's something intelligent" as the noise had a pattern to it, rather than being random. At that moment a pale white skeletal figure walked into the corner of the Victorian kitchen where we were chatting. It was not human, as the creature was devoid of all blood.

We all saw the ghost at the same time: the frightening noise has suddenly turned into this petrifying apparition that our brains simply could not process.

It's quite possible that this was the most frightened we had ever been in our lives.

It took perhaps 30 seconds for us to recognise this as David Grant. He had got lost in the deep snow, blizzard conditions and darkness and had been walking around in circles until he stumbled once again upon the castle.

He was suffering badly from exposure and was ice-cold to the touch. We warmed him up in front of the fire, and I drove him back to his house, making sure he went through the front door. Ever after, I always escorted David back to his house on foot, always making sure he went through the front door. It felt a bit "nanny state" but the close call with death that night had given me no other option. I don't think David would have survived a third hour in those sub-zero conditions.

The last Burns Night at the castle David attended was also memorable. He was so frail at that stage that I wondered about even inviting him, but Jonny wanted to see him. I am so glad we went ahead, as this turned out to be David's last party and a farewell for many of us on what was a lovely occasion.

David left around 11PM this time as he was getting tired and cold, and naturally I drove him home and made certain he got through the front door. Jonny sent me a group photo of the event after David had died, and I realised I was holding on to David, propping him up and making sure he did not fall over for the photo shoot. Somehow at the time I did not twig that I had taken on the role of carer, but the undeniable physicality of my actions captured in the image showed me how much I had cared about the man and this made me cry.

Towards the end, David got stuck in a bog in the glen for around 5 hours - he simply did not have the strength to pull himself out. A farmer passing on the road in the late evening heard the distant calls, and saved his life. David would not have made it through the night. Even so, the experience took a toll on his health.

His ex-wife Kate wisely remarked that this is the way David would like to have gone, and being taken into a care home (where by all rights he should have been) would have finished him off in a much more distressing fashion.

The bog incident rattled me deeply, and I "woke up" in the middle of the night several days later, with an apparition at the end of my bed on the left hand side. Golden light was streaming from behind the figure, which was in silhouette and I could not identify who or what it was.

I was absolutely petrified, and to try to calm myself, I made a joke "Is that a David Grant?". The figure assured me that this indeed is who he was. We had a pleasant enough chat, but the lingering sense of fear caused me to actually wake up. I found myself panting. Looking at my watch it was exactly quarter past midnight. I wrote down the time, because if I later found out this was when David had passed through the veil, then it would be evidence of an afterlife.

It then took me a week to call round at David's cottage to see if he was still alive - this was in part fear, in part the thought that my vision had just been nonsense, but also other things in life simply popped up. When I eventually called round, I was astonished to see him answer the door still alive and chatting as if nothing had happened.

Perhaps a month later I called around at another neighbour's house. In fact for the last 16 years of castle ownership I had called round occasionally at this house but had never found anyone in. Of late, I had been calling round more often i.e. wherever I went past, as I wanted to discuss some land issues.

Anyhow, after 16 years I finally got to meet my other neighbour. In our general chat, I ask him how David Grant was doing.

"He's dead!" came the reply.

"When did this happen?" I ask.

"Today!"

I was in disbelief, I had never met this person before in my life and he might be the type of person who winds others up. I asked more questions. David had been found in his bath unresponsive 10 days earlier and had been taken to Ninewells Hospital in Dundee. This had the ring of truth, rather than of fabrication.

When I drove back to the castle, I remained in the driver's seat for the next 30 minutes in deep shock, too deep to even shed tears. As you get older, the shock of learning about an upcoming death is greater than the actual death and it was the "apparition" that had told me clearly of David's death and that had unsettled me more than his actual death.

I was down in England while the open air funeral in Kingoldrum Churchyard took place, but some friends of mine kindly went along as representatives.

Towards the end, one of his sons, his ex-wife Kate and a carer Gwen called round regularly to ensure his physical needs were taken care of, so my grateful thanks go out to them. Of course, it never felt like I called round enough, and I was aware that every visit could be the last one.

His sons Torcuil and Fionn came to clear the cottage over several weekends and we got chatting. Sadly, I could not afford David's lovely gothic desk, which I had joked about "inheriting" while David was still alive.

David particularly loved it when I once said to him:

"One of these days, I am expecting to turn up at your cottage, only to find you dead on the floor, gently decomposing. And I only hope it is not the summer."

and it was only then I twigged quite how dark a turn his humour took.

The sons offered me an Edwardian chest of drawers which they liked. Ironically, I had brought this for David as a gift when he wanted to replace some melamine drawers which had rattled apart. David knew I liked frequenting the auction rooms.

I said I could not take the item for free as it had been a gift, but I could give them £60 for it which is what I had paid. I said they should spend the money on a meal together, and remember their father.

The chest of drawers sat in my entrance hallway for some time. I could not be bothered carrying it up the stairs. Then the gamekeeper's wife next door said they were on the lookout for an antique sturdy chest of drawers. As they had been good to me - once rescuing me from a car hanging over a cliff in the snow - that I gifted them the drawers.

So a chest of drawers with a story. I bought them twice, never owned them, but they have resided with two of my neighbours. It is a tale of community.

I asked Torcuil and Fionn if David kept any form of diary, and they showed me a large cardboard box stuffed with diaries and journals. So as painful as a bereavement is, I am sure they will find comfort and illumination in the future in these journals.

On their last clearance trip, I invited Torcuil and Fionn for a meal at the castle with my friends who knew their father. I wanted their last memories of Balintore not to be the misery and hard work of emptying a cottage.

More recently, I was discussing the glen's water supply with the local estate. I had just been to hell and back with Angus Council over fitting UV water filters at the castle. I could not find any firm to do this, and eventually asked my friend Andrew, who had ordered the bits, but the final stage of the installation itself was delayed by Andrew having a cold. I kept the Council fully informed throughout of what was going on. At this stage the Council threatened me with prosecution !!!

Eventually, they did apologise for this bullying behaviour, when I was clearly on the case of the filters, but the process of the obtaining the apology was incredibly painful

Anyhow the estate factor revealed that after installing UV filters at David's cottage, David had simply turned them off and refused to turn them on! Good old David - the story made me laugh. When someone can still make you laugh, even after they have died then that is assuredly a skill.

The appended eulogy gives more fact about David's life, but I wanted to record what David meant to me. The one thing the eulogy does not mention is David's recent qualification in "Myths and Storytelling" (or something similar) from the University of the Highland and Islands! Taking academic courses later in life is a great thing, and he graduated in the magnificent St. Magnus Cathedral
in Orkney, which I visited for the first time a few weeks ago.

David Renwick Grant (Eulogy at the Funeral)

 

David was truly a man of many parts, he had extraordinary talents in all kinds of directions. Author, musician, photographer, ornithologist, adventurer, sometime journalist and a man who could get by in many different languages, far ahead of the rest of us in many ways.

He was one of the first people in Scotland to do an ecology degree. Fashionable now, but certainly not when he did it.

He came to Skye in the mid-70s after the breakup of his first marriage to Julia Peake. For a time, whilst trying to reset his life, he was living in our cottage at Viewfield. 

David and Charles's mother, Amy, was a Viewfield Macdonald, the fifth child of my grandfather's uncle Tom, one of the Viewfield brothers.

Amy was my grandfather's favourite first cousin, and he took a keen interest in his cousins’ children. 

David was unfailingly enthusiastic, never afraid to try something new; very few people of his generation will have done as many things as he did in his life.

He was a polymath who knew in depth about a lot of very different things; a man who studied and read voraciously, on subjects of all kinds.

He was an adventurer, almost from a bygone Edwardian age of exploration. 

By the time he arrived in Skye in his mid-thirties David had done more, and travelled more widely, than most of us have done in our entire lives.

I arrived in Skye at much the same time. David took me under his wing, despite the half generation age gap we became friends.

He grew a bushy black beard and was quickly named "the gorilla" by my grandfather; a name which stuck in my family. His habit of Elvis-style wearing blue suede shoes with his kilt caused some amusement.

 

David was born in Edinburgh on the 5th May 1941.

He was my father's second cousin, although by this stage the generations were stretched. I don’t know much about the Grant side of the family. I was 11 years old, when I last visited Mansion House Rd.

David finished his schooling at Merchiston and then went off to Aberdeen University, where he did an MA in English.

After finishing University he set off, under the government's "£10 Pom programme", to Australia (with my grandfather's encouragement) and spent a year Jackarooing and sheep shearing, after less than the compulsory 2 years he returned to the UK, as his mother was becoming unwell.

Before he set off for the antipodes my grandfather had introduced him to his McKinnon relations who had big sheep rearing properties in and around Melbourne. 

When my brother tried to do the same thing, some 20 years later my grandfather refused point blank to make the introduction. I still have no idea what David did!

When he returned, he did a stint as one of the RSPB wardens for the Loch Garten ospreys.

That was an exciting period, the ospreys in Loch Garten were the first to successfully breed in the UK for many years. David, as always, was there at the beginning.

David was already a keen ornithologist, but I think that experience sparked his interest in all things ecological because he then went to Edinburgh University and did an MSc in

wildlife management and ecology (DDT and misguided fishing interests had decimated the Ospreys).

After completing his second degree he joined the Nature Conservancy as an assistant regional officer.

When his first marriage to Julia Peake got into difficulties it didn't stop David, he set off for Africa with Quest 4 an Adventure Tour company, who had a philanthropic ethos. 

David was part of a team of 6 who left from Peterborough with 5 long wheelbase Land rovers, catching the ferry from Southampton to Tangiers.

From Tangiers they drove to Algiers where David sorted out the appropriate paperwork to allow them to cross the desert and work from Tamanrasset.

David has been described by some of that team as driven, enthusiastic, bombastic and "always right".  I have a suspicion that “always right” may be a Macdonald trait. 

He was evidently always keen to hunt down the fieriest harissa and is remembered as being a soft and kind man at heart, but not the most diplomatic when it came to team dynamics. Months in the desert travelling through Chad and Niger threw up many small problems broken back axles, broken springs and half shafts.

Finding the best way to get an elderly heart attack victim from no man's land, between border posts, to a hospital over 300 miles away.  David rose to all these occasions and built a personal team, with friendships which lasted for the rest of his life.

3 of those who went with him are unable to be here today, but their thoughts are with his children and for the friend that they have lost.

 

Back in Skye David found a Croft. He set himself up as a crofter / fisherman and in the best traditions of crofting had other jobs as well.

The first boat he bought sank in Stonehaven Harbour it was of course, “someone else's fault”. I remember the rage!

He was the secretary of the Skye and Lochalsh council for social services from 1976 to 1978. 

This was a part-time job with a limited salary.  David's timing was not the best because as soon as he left, it became a full-time job with a half-decent salary. 

During this time he met Kate Cochrane. David took me up to Flodigarry to meet her, before he popped the question. They got married in Portree in 1978.

David’s Croft was in the township of Kilvaxter, north of Uig, on the Isle of Skye.

I still remember the fabulous views of the Western Isles and the glimpse through the sound of Harris from his sitting room, but oh the wind!   My car door got snapped clean-off one day. It had been no more than a little breezy in Portree and I was unprepared.

I remember the picture window in his living room bowing in and out visibly whilst we sat there after dinner, me with half an eye for flying glass. I expected the window to blow in at any moment. Eventually David had to have a metal astragal welded into the frame, after the insurance company said

enough was enough.

Kate planted trees and tried valiantly to have a successful kitchen garden; everything blew away. Charles told me Seton Gordon had claimed that his rhubarb flew over his garden wall one year! I can believe that.

Not disheartened David as usual thought of a different way and he set off down to the Alternative Energy Centre in Wales and purchased the first ever wind turbine that arrived on the Isle of Skye.  David got very excited when showing me the meter in the cupboard running backwards as the turbine generated. 

The wind continued to blow, but it was too much for the turbine. The blades were supposed to feather out in a strong wind, but they never did. Turbine number one was replaced under guarantee, turbine number two was factory repaired. By the time turbine number three malfunctioned the company had

gone bust.

The third turbine having gone into overdrive with sparks flying around in all directions David, a member of the Auxiliary Coast Guard, found an expired rocket launcher for firing a breeches boy rope.
 

He fired this at it to stop it from killing one of his children, or worse one of his cows.   The following week a cartoon in the West Highland Free press showed David (with his unmistakeable black beard), on horseback, dressed as Don Quixote, tilting at his windmill.

After his time at the Council of Social Services David ran the job-creation schemes for the Manpower Services Commission in Skye.

Amongst other things he built a helipad in Portree, it is still in use today and is described as a model of its type. David was always thorough with his research although he was inclined to discard information that might not suit his own plans.

David's children Torcuil Eilidh and Fionn were a great source of pride to him.  Kate of course didn't get any credit for them at all.

Torcuil was taken into Portree hospital, shortly after he was born, to be presented to my grandfather for inspection. He was delighted to meet the “baby gorilla”.

David's fishing ventures were not entirely successful, as always, he had a slightly better way of doing things than everyone else. 

His first boat burned about 25 gallons of diesel a week and he was able to make a comfortable living creel fishing for prawns.

David thought that he would make more by buying a "fast worker"; this was a flat-bottomed boat with an outdrive and a huge and very thirsty engine. His idea was that he would be able to fish three times as many fleets of creels as anyone else in a day. Of course, the boat burnt 45 gallons of diesel a day

rather than half that in a week; it quickly became rattled about by the wind and waves suffering constant breakdowns. Instead of making more money he was losing money fast.

Never short of ideas David sold up in Skye and headed off to Ballantrae to run a bakery with Kate and the three children. After a while he got restless and Kate was left with three children, all under six and a bakery to run, while David went down to Lancaster to work on the ill-fated Africar venture.
 

In 1989 David Kate and the children moved to Orkney where David continued to do a variety of odd jobs, as he had been doing in Skye.

He was the part-time custodian of the broch of Gurness and he worked as a "runner"; for the then unknown Film Producer Chris Young on his first film “Venus Peter”. 

It was while there, that he planned his world trip by horse drawn caravan, following a family holiday in Ireland, which sparked the idea.

David and his family set off in their custom-built caravan in 1990. After travelling through most of Europe the family was forced to stop in Slovenia, because in 1991 the Balkans war kicked off.  While there he made many friends and they have sent their condolences to his family. He played the pipes on

the eve of Independence in Dravograd, Slovenia.  Stories of this trip are far too numerous to recount; best to buy his book "The Seven Year Hitch";.  Remember that it is David's account. His family sadly will have other memories.

Always a keen photographer he took over 10,000 photographs of the whole experience. 

 

Once back in the UK he still had itchy feet and never lost his insatiable desire to study.

In 2000 he made a solo kayaking expedition from Sweden to the Black Sea following traditional Viking trade routes across the Baltic Sea, voyaging up the Divina the Berezina and down the Dneiper river. You couldn't do that today.

Another book followed "Spirit of the Vikings".

 

He finally settled at Balintore near Kirriemuir, where he wrote two more books "A submarine at war.. the brief life of HMS trooper"; in which is half-brother Alec died when it was torpedoed off Crete in 1943, followed by “The wagon travel handbook".

He continued to study and take yet more further education courses including a TEFAL at Dundee college, courses in video production, learning about proofreading and copy editing and an internet course on the Vikings Society from Gotland University. He became a member of the Baha'i faith, campaigned for the SNP, the Palestinians, and got involved with many other causes including the Tay Beaver Group, where his wide experience was greatly appreciated.

 

David always wanted to know news of Skye and from the time he came back to the UK he was a frequent visitor and a regular correspondent.  He often looked after Viewfield if Linda and I needed to be away during the summer season and he always specially made time to visit his friends in the North

end of Skye. 
 

He had a remarkable ability to keep in touch with all of his friends: these were many, varied and from all over the world. He was not always so good at keeping in contact with his close family

Not too long ago three complete strangers met on a sleeper travelling between Delhi and Rajasthan, one of them was an Italian living in Kurdistan!  All three had stories of David.
 

He will be missed by so many people and their thoughts and mine will all be with his former wife Kate, their three children Torcuil, Eilidh and Fionn, his brother Charles, his half-sister Elizabeth and his wider family.