We used to live at the head of the loch in a big house with walls two feet thick. My room had a sloping ceiling with a deep window sill where I used to sit and watch the snow, waiting for Father Christmas. Once, my sister and I opened our stockings at 4 in the morning and then wrapped them all up again so that we wouldn't get into trouble for opening them before morning. I don't remember it being that cold but I do remember having electric heaters, so I don't think we had central heating back then. They were the happiest memories of my childhood, that feeling of driving over the cattle grid knowing that granny and poppa were waiting for us in the house, and Dolly, their springer spaniel, would come out with her soft brown ears and wag her tail. Getting there meant weeks of freedom, doing roly-polies on the lawn, exploring the trees and moss in the wood behind the house, swimming in the river, riding the ponies.

Yesterday I went to the house for the first time in the ten years since we sold it. The family welcomed me in and gave me a tour of the house. They've done nothing to it since we left, except changed the kitchen a little bit, so all the old furniture's still there, though where there was once a grand piano is now a ping-pong table, which I think we would have preferred. The banisters we used to slide down seemed tiny and the stairs where my brother got us to jump down (I think my sister broke a bone) would have been easily manageable now. The Aga, where I learnt to cook, seemed so small to me now and the big kitchen table where Grandpa would lift me up to sit on while he cooked, was just an ordinary height table. Everything seemed smaller, just a normal house really.

"We've been very lucky," said the current owner as we sat in the warm kitchen and drank tea and ate flapjacks. "We've had ten happy years here."

The house is full of children, dogs, welly boots and dripping wax jackets. The sheds are brimming with bicycles, tools, kayaks and quadbikes for the farm. Everyone seems really happy, the house full of life. As I left I gave a heavy stamp down the sloping hall floor which runs the whole length of the long, narrow house. It still made the same hollow noise as it did when we were kids and we would race eachother down that hall, invariably annoying some adult who was snoozing infront of the fire.

The other night I had dinner with C. and A. who, as usual, provided me with brilliant conversation, our topics darting from wrestling to peoples' love of eagles. A.'s watch is broken and the watch face and half the strap are attached to his wrist with three red post office elastic bands. I worried that the bands were uncomfortable but he said not; C. assured me he was going to get it fixed at some point.

On the way home from their remote house overlooking the Treshnish Isles and under a perfect mackerel sky- where the sky shines silvery and the clouds ruffle like the dark and light strips on mackerel skin- I met with various creatures of the night; rabbits (all grey but for one tiny handsome black rabbit), highland cows grazing the hedgerows, sheep whose eyes glinted ominously in the headlights, and four hedgehogs. One sloped off quietly, one puffed itself up and I watched fascinated as its cream spines grew from its black fur, one sat in a ball as I managed to swerve around it, and one was recently dead, its bright red blood spilling from its ruptured middle, a gory mess splattered majestically across the road. Over all of this, two stars low in the sky: one white, one glowing orange, probably Venus. It is in places like this, on remote hilly roads, that one remembers that up there is a whole other world to which we are totally unimportant.

I've not been to the Salen Show for years, probably since I was a little girl and used to enter my grandparents' Springer Spaniel Dolly in to the dog show. We were so proud of the rosettes we brought home; I remember a blue one which must have been second place.

Today I went along to the show, parked in the field and walked across the bridge at Aros Mains to where the Highland cattle were snorting and huffing from their pens. A judge in a tweed hat and a thick gold wedding band on his purple wrinkled hands stood in the middle of the ring and tenderly felt each cow in turn: the horns, the neck, the hips, the tail and the legs. He had them parade around and around, pulling on the ropes attached to their heads, and all the while the owners groomed and preened their long red hair, combing the fringe right down over the eyes almost to the noses and the fur on their coats upwards so it curled and flickered in the breeze. The farmer from Laganulva, not far from our house, took the first prize in a few categories and everyone leaning on the metal fence clapped and admired the beautiful beasts as he shyly slipped the red rosettes into his jeans pocket.