Armchair Traveller
So near and yet so far
The perfect shag. She was wild and alluringly beautiful. She was alone and seemingly unattached, and was certainly not going to hang around. It had all been so quick. She left barely before I had time to gasp more than a murmur of my appreciation. Afterwards, I felt a compulsion to tell my wife who was 5,000 miles away in India on business about this irresistible force of nature that I had experienced while I was on my own in the Isles of Scilly. Well, not exactly on my own: I was with our three young children. And also, of course, with my wild, wonderful and totally unexpected shag. The children had witnessed it too. They had been as excited as I was. You must tell Mummy, they shrieked. Shhh, I said, as by then they were really shouting. I didn’t want them to share this private moment of natural passion quite so volubly with the world at large. It had seemed rather an intimate few seconds. But then everything changed and it became exceedingly public. The captain of the Firethorn of Bryher, our island ferry, boomed out on a loudspeaker the news that what everyone thought was a shag, in fact was a cormorant. Both are black and beautiful and apparently are often and easily muddled. Sorry, guys, I fessed to the children, I got the wrong bird. Silly Daddy, said my six-year-old twins in unison. No, just in Scilly, was my lame riposte.
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