Bright Lights by Dr Sunil Angris

 

This month I am pleased to welcome Stromness Writing Group member Dr Sunil Angris to the Quoyloo Quill.

For those who don't know Dr Angris, he is a semi-retired medical doctor living in Holm, having moved to Orkney in 2019 after many years of holidaying here. He wrote extensively for the medical press while a GP in England and had regular columns as car correspondent for the magazines 'GP' and 'Pulse'. Now that he is semi-retired, he has more time to give to his creative writing, mainly poetry and short stories. Other hobbies include walking, music and sport.

This is a piece Dr Angris contributed to the successful 'Bright Horizons' online foy in 2020.

For me, “Bright Horizons” began a train of thought leading straight to these islands. The sequence goes thus - “ I fell in love with Orkney for many reasons but chief among them was that the light and the horizons here aren’t bright! 

Words conventionally used to describe the opposite of bright include “dark”, “lacklustre” and “dull”. Of course, any word is open to interpretation and relative in meaning - however, these descriptions intrigued me and pricked my desire to articulate more clearly, the reason why the light on Orkney seduces me so powerfully. 

For me, bright horizons are those I’ve witnessed in India, the Cote Azure and Cornwall. Colours are acrylic-vivid, and even when the sun is low in the sky, one normally has to shield the eyes from the excessive colour bombarding the retina. They are the bold colours Van Gogh yearned for and left his native Holland to find, discovering them around the area of Arles in southern France. His paintings from that period take a step change in colour and brightness from the earlier still lifes and landscapes in earthen hues in Holland to a bright vividness that takes the breath away, setting the bar for geographical bright horizons. They waken the senses like a jolt of electricity, but often make it difficult for my eye to judge landscape perspective, distance and nuances in contour. 

By contrast, Orkney light is more like a watercolour - even at it’s most bright there is a pearlescent diffuseness, a soft gossamer quality which enchants rather than overwhelming the looker’s eye. This ethereal sense is retained throughout the seasons, even in winter when the light is often the Google definition of the opposite of bright - that is, it's dull or dark. However, it is never lacklustre and always retains a vitality which reflects well the people, wildlife and fauna native to these climes. And the soft, diffuse nature of the light never compromises the clarity of the view - when staying at Harray earlier this year, my walks from the hill down to the loch gave incredible views of Hoy. Often, the contoured details of those hulking hills around Rackwick which dominate the skyline never looked clearer than in the slight haze and subdued light of an evening sky. The only places I’ve witnessed similar air quality are the extreme poles, especially when the air becomes so cold that one can see minute frozen water crystals suspended within it and the surrounding landscape shimmers like a giant snow globe. 

It was these qualities which slowly but steadily seeped into my conscious and subconscious thoughts over many years until, when the time came for my wife and me to decide where we wanted to spend the rest of our days, there really was no other option which even came close. 

And that mesmeric quality is there regardless of the surroundings, from the wild Atlantic coast around Birsay, Marwick or Yesnaby to the Shire-like calm and beauty of the lochs around Harray to the wider, flatter landscapes of east mainland in Deerness and Tankerness. As I sat at my dining room table in Holm committing these thoughts to virtual paper, I took in a vista stretching across Scapa Flow from Hoy in the west to Cantick Head lighthouse due south, to John O’ Groats in the south-east. The weather changed through the day from thick mist to clear blue sky to overcast dreich. And each change brought its’ own quality to the light which was as pleasing alluring and mesmeric as the others.