Yesterday morning I went to visit J. on my way to pick Jo up from the ferry. J. worked for my grandparents on the farm up until my grandfather died 12 years ago, looking after the horses and I suppose the other animals too. She still lives in a little cottage in the village with a dramatic rose garden out the front. J. taught me to ride horses and I loved going out on the farm with her when I was little; she seemed to me indestructible then and not much has changed now, though she's riddled with arthritis and can hardly use her hands.

She said the BBC were coming to see her next week; they'd been reading old newspapers and found out about her winning the ploughing matches in the 60s and 70s and wanted to interview her.

The first year, she won first prize in the ploughing match. The second year, she won it again, but the boys weren't happy about a lassie winning so in the third year, when she won again, the men who won second and third swapped the trophies over.

"That's the lassie's trophy," the judge stepped forward and said when they announced the winner. "We'll sort it out at the end," they said, but they never did.

"I didn't mind for myself," said J., "but my dad was on his deathbed at the time and he was awful sad."

She didn't go in for it for the next couple of years, but when she went in for it the following year, arthritis had already got a hold of her and she had her right arm in a sling.

"I can do it with both hands though," she said, and she went on to win the match. The men who had swindled her out of the trophy two years back came in second and third position.

"I knew then I could die tomorrow," she said. "I had my three trophies and I beat those boys."

As we sat in her quiet kitchen, the Aga humming in the corner, three cars went by the window in quick succession, over the little narrow bridge just beyond the rose garden.

"That's the ten o'clock ferry in," we both said, knowing that a stream of traffic in these parts means the arrival of the boat.

The boat is the clock by which Mull time ticks. Everyone knows the timetable off by heart because without it, the papers don't arrive, the Spa shop runs out of supplies and no one gets on or off the island. There is something extremely satisfying about knowing exactly when things and people will arrive- like knowing the timetable of planes coming in and out of Dakar- but I don't quite know yet what it is.