A View from the Hebrides

Hi

So many pages in the Scottish Daily Record carry full-page advertisements, for the likes of Aldi, M&S, Sky and Morrisons, all opposite hot celebrity gossip. What’s new?

Calum, a young Welshman who helps out at First Fruits Tea Room in Tarbert on the Isle of Harris took our order and said, “Have you read the goss?” I didn’t quite catch what he meant.

First Fruits is at the hub of Tarbert on the Isle of Harris. The building was once a crofter’s cottage. Now it’s a friendly and inviting cafe with treadle sewing machine tables and where Steven, the proprietor, rules supreme, and where everything is “no bother”. It’s the staff’s cheerful attitude towards their customers that’s like a breath of fresh air.

Then Calum mentioned Robert. Ah, I worked it out: goss is for gossip! Calum had seen a a big article in the Daily Record with the gossip about him moving in with an older woman, 36 year-old Reese Witherspoon. Hilarious. It makes it sound like an old lady has taken pity on poor young Robert Pattinson, my nephew.

“A source said”…. I love this classic phrase. They repeated this journalists’ mantra twice before changing tack and referring to “an insider”. It’s an easy option for plucking something out of nothing, making up a story, guessing.

Hollywood…a leak here… a source there. My eyes roll across the page of fantasy.

We mustn’t forget, the next film is just round the corner.

Calum in the tearoom in Tarbert asks what we’re doing today. “Nothing much”….a source tells him.