From riverside shed to distant seas and mountains
Dr BARRY SMITH is well known in Scotland as both a former influential lecturer in outdoor pursuits and as the woodturner who used to make delightful items in his riverside shed in Cramond.
What he is less well known for is his earlier career as an adventurer, undertaking such challenges as being one of the first to kayak around Cape Horn, crossing the Atlantic in a tiny yacht and being arrested and locked up as a protester against Trident.
Now in his seventies, he has gathered together a remarkable, privately published collection of short stories about these adventures which turns out to be rather good.
His trick is in his rather purist, wokish motivation. A man of strong principles, he has no interest in show boating but feels that these tales should be written down for their own sake, and he does it well.
An academic to trade, he has a particular interest in the sociology of island communities and approaches his adventure stories in a slow and objective manner with few jokes (I don’t remember a single exclamation mark) and concentrates more on the places he has been than how they have affected him. Which is sometimes a pity.
Personally I would rather learn more of why he takes the risks or indeed is so angry about Trident that he ends up very briefly in jail. But that’s not his style. His background is that his father was a merchant seaman who liked to vary the routes he sailed for the sheer fun of seeing the world and one has the impression that Smith followed suit and used his skills to record with an objective style that reeks of integrity.
A keen vegetarian, he typically records being deeply disgusted when crossing an ocean in a tiny yacht and a massive tuna is unnecessarily caught and battered to death on the deck and points out the hypocrisy of enthusiastic meat eaters being inclined to walk on the other side of the street when passing an abattoir.
This is a must-have story collection for any of the hundreds who own one of Smith’s wood turnings or the thousands who remember him as an innovative lecturer who taught and thought differently and encouraged others to do the same.
Like so many privately published works, it could do with a tad more editing, but the language is sound, if a little sameish, and overall I recommend it strongly.
MAXWELL MACLEOD
Where Sea and Mountains Meet, Dr Barry Smith From: barrysmith@gmail.com, £10, plus post
