Moniach Mhor

Last week I found myself on a train bound for Scotland, on my way to a writing course in the Highlands outside Inverness. At Edinburgh a group of Americans boarded and not so much sat down around me as swamped me. Swamped me with happiness and positive vibes and Karma. They were on their way to a Singing Camp outside Perth. Wasn't it wonderful that they had all bumped into each other in Edinburgh the night before and discovered they were all headed for the same place?

A happy coincidence, I suggested, trying to mask my cynicism.
'There are no coincidences,' smiled the woman from Vermont, 'Everything happens for a reason!' Cosmic.

Did I want to come along? They were very persuasive. There was room for one more. Before the trip, my wife had jokingly warned me to beware of wily Scotsmen who might try to get me drunk on whiskey - the real threat was earnest Americans trying to get me high on life. I was one verse of Kum Bah Yah away from being kidnapped into a singing cult.

I thanked them for their offer of hospitality, clutching my laptop to my chest like a ragdoll. I explained that I was on my way to Moniach Mhor, above Loch Ness, to attend an Arvon course.
'Great!' they cheered, congratulating me, 'wow! Arvon, is that, like, cosmetics?'
'They run courses for writers,' I answered. 'I'm going on a retreat.'

I admitted that the writer's retreat was probably not going to be as much fun as the singing camp; while they were all sitting around their campfire with their guitars, I'd be locked away in a stone house with a bunch of other misanthropes talking about character and dialogue, on a rainswept moor with no internet access or proper ground coffee. Nothing to do but write.

It wasn't like that in the end, it wasn't like that at all. The writing course was fun. The sun came out, I didn't miss the internet, the coffee was good. The other writers were were engaging, intelligent, and not the least bit misanthropic. We even sang a little.