CONKERY GRAVITY

The Pagoda Tree in Fall

Gosh, days like these. It’s warm, the sky is a lucid blue and there’s an autumn breeze rippling over the park.

Too warm for a coat, and perhaps too warm for a jumper. Nevertheless I clutch one and wear the other, out here under the Pagoda Tree, watching the white clouds and elegant shadows.

It’s a horse chestnut. At this time of year, it drops conkers in spiky shells. They’re currently thudding into the grass at periodic intervals. There are leaves fluttering out of the branches too - my guess, disturbed by twitching grey squirrels somewhere in the vast canopy above my head.

I wonder what would happen if I got hit by a falling conker? Would it be enough to knock me out? Or would it just hurt? Would I burst into a pained ow or just develop a new theory of conkery gravity?

Just gravity isn’t it? Apples and conkers alike succumb to Newton’s foe sooner or later.

The trunk is sturdy. I’m reclining against it, coat upon my lap, lost in the dark circle of green shade under this magnificent tree.

These are still my favourite kind of days. They’re just like school days and early university days - crispy brown leaves lit by long shadows, silver sunlight and emerald green grass. I love the light as it falls on the trees, and the gilding of leaves that flap inside out in the sunlight. I love that it’s still warm enough to sit out without shuddering, but long gone is the stuffy heat of summer. 

There are squirrels clicking and scratching now. I can hear them. Another half conker comes pelting out of the Pagoda Tree and thumps into the soil about a foot away. I’m starting to wonder… no, surely they can’t be… are they really that clever and that territorial? Am I getting paranoid?

What Newton worked out was that gravity is working as a force between Earth and apple, despite the preposterous size difference between them. Every bit of mass is attracted to every other bit of mass by this remarkable force, and therefore, he could use it as a theory, not just for apples, but for all the planets and moons and stars as they get pulled into orbit around each other in complicated attractional patterns. It’s basically Love Island, though of course Newton would have been more of a fan of Drag Race UK, I suspect.

I’m moving. These squirrels are sounding angry, and they’re pushing into lower branches. Soon they’ll be close enough to aim their horse chestnuts directly at my head, and I am in no mood today to be conked on the conk with conkers.

It remains though, a beautiful autumn day.

PERFUNCTORY PREMIER AND THE LAST PLANE HOME

All I could think about was Lenny Henry, smiling as he disappeared into his ridiculous pillow. I bet he never had any trouble finding the Premier Inn. They probably helicopter him in.

I was hot and bothered. It was dark and my bag was heavy. And I had been circling the Glasgow International Airport Premier Inn for a second loop. It seemed the entrance was always on the other side of the building - and the rest of it was surrounded by airport fencing. I know airports are notoriously unnavigable sometimes, but I wasn’t expecting Brigadoon. There, floating above the dark like a neon planet, was the snuggled moon, the smiling, sleeping, preposterous logo of the Premier Inn - unreachable, ethereal - and now looking exactly like the sainted snoozing face of the blesséd Lenny Henry.

I’d elected to split my journey into two on the way back. One flight across to the mainland, a sleep, then the second daytime flight from Glasgow back to London.

The first flight was a gorgeous, moonlit adventure across the clouds. Silver candyfloss this time, wispy but just as smooth and as bouncy as it had been on Thursday. The clouds hung serenely above the twinkling lights below.

Glasgow was a bright and brilliant network of light, spread out like a map beneath us. Roads, street lamps, football pitches, tennis courts. As we descended, the details grew clearer and clearer, until we could see headlamps and brake lights, and tiny soccer teams running on floodlit green grass.

And then moments later I was circling the Premier Inn.

I got there in the end. The great thing about the Premier Inn is the bleak familiarity - you’ve been to one and you have been to them all. From the canvas print of abstract flowers to the astonishingly noisy kettle; from the plastic plants to the clinical corridors, you know where you are.

“Room 237 sir,” said the guy checking me in. “It’s right at the end of the corridor, up on the top floor.”

I checked. There were 238 rooms. Of course.

Anyway, a perfunctory sleep preceded a perfunctory breakfast. After that, I made an egg and sausage sandwich from the all-you-can-eat-breakfast-bar, and wrapped it in a napkin for lunch. I’ve never been sure what places make of this creative take on the continental buffet but I still do it. Then, having repacked again, I stepped out into the daylight, found the road that had eluded me the night before and caught the 10:55 flight from Glasgow to Heathrow.

I don’t think I’ll catch another plane for a long time. It occurred to me today that it’s hypocritical to marvel at the natural wonder of a place, then actively contribute to its destruction. Four flights took me to the Hebrides and back - I’m too scared to google how much CO2 that is.

Anyway, I have had a really good adventure. I’ve stood in the wind and laughed in the sun, I’ve walked in the rain and shuddered in the cold. I’ve had time to think and pray and mull and read, and I’ve done all of that without ever once feeling crowded or in a place packed with tourists. In all these adventures this has been the one with the fewest other people - replaced by the widest and wildest spaces, and the biggest skies. Always a win.

Home. I clambered off the Rail Air Link at the station. There was Edward VII with his orb and cape; there was the Thames Tower and the Oakford and Malmaison, and the glinting clock of the Town Hall. Under the blue September sky, it all looked rather clean and pleasant. This, I thought, is what I come back to. It’s not the wild cliffs of the parish of Ness or the windswept serenity of Eoropie. It isn’t the cosy feel of quaint old Stornoway or the grandeur of Lews Castle. It’s the place I grew up - the town I chose to come back to again and again, where memories still gather like old friends in nicer times.

It was time, I told myself, to head on home.

EOROPIE FREEDOM

I whacked my head into the wall this morning. It really hurt.

That though, is what happens when you’re quickly trying to repack your bag and you’re spinning around looking for something you’ve forgotten. Thump.

I’m alright. It’s just bruised and grazed really, but for a while I was thundering around the single room of the Park Guest House, palm pressed over the wound in case any brain matter might fall out of the gaping hole in my cranium.

The unbelievably packed rucksack

I have a first aid kit. Unfortunately it meant unpacking and repacking the rucksack a third time but I quickly swabbed the wound and stuck a plaster on it. I will live, brain intact.

It has been my last day though. I checked out of the hotel, shortly after 10am, leaving the bulging bag in the locked room for later.

At breakfast, a fellow lodger at the Park Guest House had been very chatty. He was from Aberdeen but liked to explore the western islands from time-to-time he said.

“Have you been to Luskintyre Beach?” he asked me.

“No,” I said, “I’ve only been here for a few days.”

“Ah you’ve got to go, it’s absolutely stunning.”

I looked it up on the map; really difficult to get to without transport. It’s near Tarbert (I had bus times to Tarbert from my contact in the Information Office) but too far from Tarbert to work out a route. Beautiful it may be; I wouldn’t be going.

“Ah maybe next time,” I said, with a smile. He gave me the standard look of someone who’s just been told ‘maybe next time’ by someone who didn’t mean there to ever be any such thing as a next time, and is completely aware that everybody in the room understands this arrangement.

That is a good question though. The standard question in fact, I always ask myself at the end of these expeditions. Would I come again? Would I revisit Stornoway and the Isle of Lewis?

I would like to. I’d like to visit the beaches on Harris, try the famous gin distillery, take a boat trip perhaps - but that’s a really different thing to actually doing it. And my life from now on will be in a different shape - it might not be possible.

I thought about all of this at breakfast while my newfound friend was extolling Luskintyre Beach as though it were in the Caribbean. But rather than heading South today, I had already made a plan to head north.

And so I did.

The bus was a coach. Figures eh: minibus west; coach north. Of course! Presumably the bus to Harris and Luskintyre (in the south) is an HGV.

Much of Lewis looks like this.

Anyway, the coach north rattled through the landscape. I could never have walked it. Treeless, windswept moorland stretches for miles between villages. Every now and then a dilapidated stone house with no roof flashes by. A barn, a row of houses perhaps, surrounded by acres of bleak field. Wind turbines spin slowly and the concrete road twists through their shadows.

The villages are made up of rows of smart-looking bungalows. At points, the sea tumbles away behind them and you can make out large glass windows. Many of them have flowers in the front; some have sheep sitting in the gardens. I wondered what it would be like to live there.

I got off the bus at a place called Eoropie. I don’t know exactly why. I was glad I did though; within a few minutes I was standing alone, miraculously alone on an enormous, sandy beach.

Eoropie. There’s no way to capture how alive it is here.

That was magnificent. The waves ripped in, huge and white; the wind was deafening and the sun painted the sand gold. It was so wild, so fresh, so beautiful. Plus it just so happened to be the furthest north I have ever been. A strange ocean (the icy North Atlantic) ahead, the moonlike dunes of sand behind, and not a soul in sight. I was loving it.

Sometimes life’s a bit like that. You stick to your plan, or God’s plan, and everything just sort of works out alright. Standing in the wind on Eoropie Beach was a real highlight, probably more so than the crowded rain-flecked trip to Luskintyre would have been. It all just kind of worked out.

I’ve been heading home since then. I got the coach bus back, mooched around Stornoway before collecting the rucksack and getting the taxi to the airport.

“Do you think you’d come back?” asked the taxi driver, remembering me from Thursday. Those same earrings still jangled against her neck.

“Yeah, I think so. One day, if I can,” I replied, truthfully. I was smiling under my mask.

OBSERVING THE SABBATH

If the buses are sporadic on a Saturday, they’re non existent on a Sunday. And that’s because of an amazing thing they do here on Sundays that they refer to as the Observance of the Sabbath.

I know, right. The bus drivers listen to the bagpipes (music that their grandparents might have described as ‘live from Satan’s synagogue’) and on a Sunday, everything - and I mean everything - shuts down. I’ve not seen this much Observing of the Sabbath since Israel.

I packed up my things for a hike. No buying food on a Sunday so I had to be well prepped - bag stuffed with goodies and a flask of room-kettle-tea. I headed out.

By the way, O-ing the S was another factor for the folks who prayed for revival back in the 40s. They saw the old ways sliding and the young people caring more for the pleasures of the world on a Sunday than they did for the house of the Lord. It lit a fire in them that led (among other things) to the Lewis Awakening.

It was a very sunny Sunday morning. I hacked round the coast for a bit and found myself sitting in the sun on a cliff top over Sandwick Bay.

The wind roared. It was so windy in fact, that I could feel it pushing me backwards. I dug my walking boots into the soil and, having retrieved the flask, leaned into my rucksack. I was contemplating the beauty of bleak places - a concept that I hadn’t thought about before, but one that the Hebrides was bringing home to me. The sea rippled bright blue and white, waves chopping violently in the wind.

Speaking of the tea flask, it was too windy to pour, up there; I would have been splattered with tea like a Jackson Pollock. I drank it straight from the flask.

Facing the wind makes it so much easier to be yourself. There was nobody around to hear me shouting over the bay, or laughing hilariously at something that tickled me. Even if there were though, they’d never have heard it, even if they were sitting next to me. I love that.

After that hilarity, I went back inland for another adventure walk. I found a path behind the golf course and I had no idea where it would lead. That kind of thing excites me, so I headed into the woods, dappled green by the sun and shadow.

Twisted trees and a trickling stream, a dense forest of bracken and branches, scratching their way up steep inclines of stone and soil. The sun blinked between the trees as I followed the trail. It occurred to me that nobody anywhere had any idea where I was - not even me. Narnia? Stuck in an Enid Blyton story? Exploring the Amazon with nothing more than uncharted excitement?

I was weirdly thrilled when the path opened out into a clearing and I realised I was back at Lews Castle. Next to not knowing where you are, the best feeling on an adventure is knowing exactly where you are.

Sammy and I have been working on ‘observing the sabbath’. We’re not doing as thorough a job as the good people of the Outer Hebrides though; Sainsbury’s is just too accessible - and there are things to be done on a Saturday/Sunday. I can’t imagine what the people of Lewis circa 1949 would have made of our society, had they seen it. I think they’d be praying for our souls as keenly as if we were cut adrift in a fishing boat in a storm.

And perhaps that’s exactly right.

SIMPLE, SILENT, SOLEMN

The Tourist Office guy failed to mention that the ‘western circular’ bus doesn’t actually look like a bus. So, when a minibus pulled into Stornoway bus station, I assumed that ‘Hebridean Travel’ was just the name of some private taxi service, and I didn’t get on it.

The lady in the bus station was sympathetic after that. She gave me the details.

“Aye, the next one’s at erm…” she shuffled her papers, “Five past one.”

I smiled weakly underneath my mask and then checked my watch. It was 9:55am. To be honest, it would have been much worse if I’d been stuck somewhere else on the island and couldn’t get back; the Information Guy had at least been right about that! Plus, this morning I was thankful that the sun was shining.

So what to do instead? I decided I would hike my way round the coast in the other direction for an hour and a half, then come back.

The sea was calm, the sky blue-and-white like the saltire. I picked up the path beyond Lews Castle and strode around the bay, listening to music and podcasts as I went.

I’ve taken to listening to Gaelic Psalm-Singing. They don’t really do hymns up here, and they value the simplicity of worship without instruments. In the revival, that’s all they had had. That first night in Barvas, when hundreds of young people flocked to the church instead of the dance hall, they sang a psalm outside on the steps - just the voices under the stars of a December night.

There’s a lot of power in the simplicity of it, not to mention the silence between the singing. I wonder sometimes whether our modern instruments fill in far too many of the gaps.

The tunes are all in the pentatonic mode, which makes them easier to sing - think Amazing Grace: the melody happily sits on just five notes of a scale. It means that, like a piper’s drone, you can hang your voice on the tonic and it will always fit.

Simple, silent, solemn. Perhaps there are some keys there, to a deeper thing.

There’s a river that runs inland from that headland, so I followed the trail. Water gushed over rocks and formed mini waterfalls as I headed upstream. Green trees hung with bare branches tickling the torrent, and the woods grew thicker and greener as I went further in and further up.

Eventually I reached a drinking fountain, just as the my phone buzzed to tell me it was time to get back for the 13:05 bus.

Back in Stornoway then. No mistake this time. I clambered on to the Hebridean Travel minibus.

For some reason I said,

“Do I need a ticket?” to the driver, who took one look at me, nodded slowly and said, “Aye.”

I bought a return.

I was planning on going to the Callanish Stones, probably the island’s most well-known attraction. 

Older than Stonehenge, they stand mysteriously wedged into the earth - ancient monoliths in a stone circle with four rows of smaller stones expanding out like the points of a compass. As with a lot of these Neolithic wonders, the stones are of course… in the middle of nowhere.

Dramatic though. The rain flecked from the deep grey clouds, and the sun lit the silver lochs below. The wind blew the long grass and the shadows fell from the rough-hewn edges of the jagged stones, just the same way as has been happening season by season, year by year, for millennia.

They don’t know why the stones were put there, four thousand years ago. Perhaps a temple, perhaps a burial site? One legend is that they’re the souls of those who refused to convert to Christianity - stone pariahs for all the pagans out there who don’t toe the line. Tosh comes in all sorts of forms through the ages.

The bus doesn’t come so frequently though. I had to wait for hours for the Hebridean Transport minibus back to Stornoway! I read a bit more revival story, listened to the waves of the nearest loch lapping quietly on the stones, worked out when a poster had been sellotaped to the bus shelter, and then listened to some more psalm singing in the ethereal Scots Gaelic of Back Free Church. Finally the bus swung into the Callanish Stones Visitor Centre Car Park and I got excitedly on board with my return ticket.

In the 1949 revival, the presbyters and officers of the church put out a statement asking for prayer for young people to avoid the ‘devil’s man traps’, by which they really did mean the pub, the ‘picture house’ and the dance hall. One lady refused to let her teenage daughter stay at home with the record player because she couldn’t have her house become a ‘synagogue of Satan’ while they were at a revival meeting. ‘Satan’s music’ at that time was apparently the Jimmy Shand band playing Scots reels on the bagpipes and accordion, still a favourite it turned out, of our bus driver, here in 2021.

Tamer music you’d struggle to find. The bus flew round corners and bounced by misty hills and lakes. 48-bar jigs happily breezed through the bus as though we were on our way to a ceilidh. I thought about that a lot.

We’ve overcomplicated a lot of things that we’re always meant to be simple.

SHOUTING INTO THE WIND

So, it turns out that a ‘Full Scottish Breakfast’ is exactly the same as an English one. It was a nice treat, but tomorrow my internal organs will thank me greatly if I switch to porridge.

Which is ironic, given that porridge really is a Scottish breakfast.

Anyway, it was raining on the glass roof of the dining area this morning. It had that autumnal feel - a dark grey sky, soggy leaves, street lamps that couldn’t work out whether it was time to switch off yet. Working from home has made me forget mornings like this.

“Aye, it’s set to last in to tomorrow,” said Roddy, my host, clearing the teacups. “It’s a shame - we had it alright up until yesterday, so we did.”

It wasn’t too cheery to know that the current rain had started moments after my plane had landed. To be honest, I’d rather not have known.

I went back to my room, threw on my rainies, packed my bag and headed out.

I started out in the Tourist Information shop. I decided I would ask for bus timetables.

“Where’re you heading?” Asked the friendly man behind the plastic screen.

“Um… I don’t know,” I said, “Kind of anywhere.”

I understood why he looked a little flustered behind his mask. He pulled out a ring binder and reluctantly unclipped a few sheets of complicated timetables, one that goes North, one South, and two that go round the island. Then he went on to deal with another group of tourists who had just wandered in, while I surveyed the numbers.

After that, I walked along the river and crossed the little footbridge that leads to Lews Castle. The wind was turning my hood inside out, and seemed to be blowing the water back up a little waterfall under the bridge.

Lews Castle sits between the trees - a magnificent sight that emerges like a stag from a glen. Victorian, imposing, handsome in form and brick, it overlooks Stornoway harbour and the hills beyond.

I wandered in.

It was splendid inside. There was a wide hall that led into several rooms - a library, a comfortable lounge with posh sofas, an empty music room (in which I  very much tested the acoustics) and a ballroom, which looked for all the world as though it was set up for a wedding.

Each room had high ceilings, ornate decor, and bounteous windows out onto the woods and water. The hall too, was no exception: it was adorned with a vaulted roof of exquisite dark blue, with bright, golden stars painted between the beams. There above the tall wooden doors, were carvings of mahogany, trailing along the fascias until they met above a grand staircase and a fine old clock, which, I checked, was precisely correct.

The only amazing thing was that there didn’t seem to be anyone else there! Then, I spotted a notice that said ‘Accommodation Guests only beyond this point’ and I realised that I had absolutely been poking around a private hotel and probably shouldn’t have been there at all.

I listened to a bit more on the revival today. After I left the castle grounds, I needed something to occupy my mind so I slid the headphones in and pressed play on the audiobook. Voices from the past, full of reverence and seriousness about what had happened, filled my ears - their Scots-Gaelic accents resonating with scripture. There is so much to say, and so much to ask God about.

I walked a few miles round the coast. It was bleak today. By that point it had stopped raining, but the wind roared into my ears. white waves smashed around the rocks out to sea and gripped the stones on the beach. I found myself at one point shouting ‘Revive Me!’ into the wind, arms outstretched and rainmac flapping. I turned around to see a man walking his dog, both looking unimpressed.

I found a coffee shop back in Stornoway and had a cup of tea and a flick through the timetables the tourist-info guy had given me.

“It’s not a tourist bus service,” he’d said to me, “There’s a real chance you could get stuck somewhere and not ge’ back.”

So it seems. The rural buses here are… sporadic. Nevertheless, I think I’ve worked out a plan for tomorrow.

ARRIVING IN THE OUTER HEBRIDES

It’s hitting me how tired I am. I mean, fair enough I’ve travelled several hundred miles today, to the opposite end of the country. I’ve caught two planes, a coach and a taxi and I’ve shuffled around airports with a bulbous rucksack. I deserve to be tired.

I think my tiredness runs a little deeper though.

That being said, I’ve arrived in Stornoway (or Steòrnabhagh as the airport terminal declared it in big letters). It’s the main town on the Isle of Lewis, right out here at the edge of the world. I’m here for a few days.

I’ve enjoyed the flying. The sun lit up the clouds like cotton wool beneath our plane. It looked just like you could jump out and bounce on them, or snuggle into the giant candy floss from 24,000 feet. Then, under their shade, the ocean swam into view, wide and blue with tiny white waves. I love that.

The plane banked over land - bleak and almost flat against the sea, as though a green tablecloth had been laid over it. The green was interrupted with enormous puddles, misshapen lakes that stretched across that low land of the South Lochs. Tiny rivers trickled between them, and way in the distance, scattered toy houses, the farms and homesteads - hamlets of the islands, between the dirt tracks and thin grey concrete of passable roads.

Down came the plane, wispy clouds parting, rumbling onto the wet concrete runway. 

“Here for a holiday, or for work?” asked the taxi driver. Her large round earrings bounced against her neck as the car bumped along in the rain.

“Just a short break,” I said, acutely aware of my English accent and unhelpful propensity for revealing next to nothing. I told her I hoped to do a bit of walking and exploring, which made her shoulders rise and fall with a shrug. Laughter? Amusement? Scepticism? The rain smeared across the windscreen.

“The rain should ease up by Saturday,” she said.

I’m not exactly sure why I’m here in the Outer Hebrides. There was a 1950s revival here of course, which I’ve been reading about on the way up. But even that doesn’t feel like the main reason; I’m afraid revival tourism doesn’t interest me any more than going to Italy made me want to dress in a toga. Revival, I think, is never really about the location.

No, I think it just got in my heart as a ‘thin’ place, perhaps where God might say something new to me. Remote, windswept, beautiful, in its own quiet and undiscovered way. I hope he does; it could be bleak without him.

Anyway, tomorrow I’ll do a bit of exploring and see what it’s like in the daylight. Breakfast is booked for 8:15am, and I’m told a full Scottish breakfast waits for no man. Meanwhile, I’m going to see what I can do about that tiredness.

INVISIBLE STRING

I bet you know what I’m going to write about today. 

Well, you might not, I suppose.

Anyway, now that’s it’s public knowledge I can tell you about what it feels like to be engaged, affianced, betrothed… what the thought of marriage is like, and how it all happened for Sammy and me.

Sometimes life’s big events aren’t the same as we expected or predicted, are they? They can be so much richer and deeper and more personal. I’ve been surprised, I think, about how deep and how personal it is, navigating through this season. It is not what I imagined.

For the first time, there are two of us. That’s weird for a single person to get used to. I’m writing, not from my own experience, but from ours - I’m intertwined, and more and more so, with another beautiful person. Every where I go, and everything I write, now has an attachment to Sammy. It’s like Taylor Swift says - invisible string. She’ll read this (Sammy I mean, not Taylor Swift), not as a friend perusing my adventures with a raised eyebrow, but actually being with me on them, knowing me inside out, being on the other end of the string. That feels like a huge shift. Plus, she’ll absolutely pull me up on the details if I misremember something.

We talked about getting married ages ago. Then we looked at rings. Then, on a trembly, rainy lunchtime, I bought a diamond in setting of platinum. I went to see her dad in the middle of the Belgian Grand-Prix and found him delighted. He asked me if I was happy, and I loved that question and its answer. Then, last weekend, I chose a careful moment of sunset and summer, I got down on one muddy knee and asked the question. She said yes, and now here we are, hurtling towards a wedding day in the Spring.

So. I said I would explain what the thought of marriage is like. I’ve figured it out. It’s like bungee-jumping with your best friend. There you are, standing on the edge, strapping yourself in to the harness. What you’re about to do looks a little bit mad, and you don’t know for sure whether you’ll make it. Though you both sort of know that you will.

But you’re together. And however scary it seems, you also know that it’ll be exhilarating being those daredevils, like the greatest adventurers ever… and you’ll be scared and excited and thankful and over the edge together, connected by, and to, that invisible string, knowing that God is in the midst of it, operating the physics, holding the other end of the bungee rope, laughing with you, as you whoop and holler through the air, “This is amazing! Let’s do this forever!”

And that I think, is absolutely a thing to look forward to. In fact, maybe it always has been.

WORD TOASTER

For the longest time, I’ve been trying to turn ‘bread’ into ‘toast’. It’s a word game I play to get myself off to sleep: you try to turn one word into another by changing one letter at a time. Each change in itself has to result in a proper English word and you’ve got to finish it in as few goes as possible.

For example, to turn ‘ham’ into ‘egg’ you could do this:

HAM

HIM

AIM

ARM

ART

ARE

AGE

AGO

EGO

EGG

Did that in 9 moves. There’s probably a faster way. That's all part of the game.

Anyway, while dropping off to sleep, I mostly got lost in the middle of words, randomly calling out things like ‘FLIPS!’ into the darkness, and wondering out loud, ‘BRAST? Is that a word?’ until I fell into dreamland. I’ve done some easier ones - CAR > BUS and WALK > HIKE. If you want to have a go, you should be able to do those in fewer than 10 moves. 

Anyway, BREAD > TOAST has eluded me for nights on end. I got from BREAD to FLIES (ew), and going the other way, I’d got from TOAST to READY (which seems appropriate), but I just couldn’t link them up. I figured out that it’s more difficult to shift consonant patterns, especially when your start word has two in a row (BR...) and your target word also has two difficult ones in a row too (...ST), but at the other end of the word. Somehow, you’ve got to switch from CCVVC to CVVCC, and that takes some shuffling.

And then, with something like a fanfare in the night, I actually did it. I actually found a link to turn BREAD into TOAST! Here it is! It took 27 moves, but I think it works! If you can find a quicker way (and one that doesn't bother your neighbours in the middle of the night), by all means have a go at BREAD > TOAST, and let me know.

In honour of this, and in a spirit of self-congratulation, I think I’m going to call this game ‘Word Toaster' from now on. Enjoy.

BREAD

TREAD

TRIAD

TRIED

TRIES

FRIES

FLIES

FLIPS

FLAPS

FLATS

SLATS

STATS

STARS

SEARS

SEERS

SEEDS

REEDS

READS

READY

HEADY

HEAVY

HEAVE

LEAVE

LEASE

LEAST

BEAST

BOAST

TOAST