Visibility Good
What is your favourite quote?
Sutherland, 3rd August 1966
Sit yourself down. That chair’s sound enough.
I’ll not keep you long. The gate wants checking at twenty to, and I’ve the lamp to see to before it’s properly dark. Which won’t be for a while yet. August. This far north, you forget. Half ten and there’s still light in the sky. Not blue. Not anything, quite. It just declines, slowly, like it’s not entirely sure.
The heather’s turned early this year. You can see it on the hill across the line. I’ve known it later than this. I’ve known it so poor it was barely worth the name, and then the next year it comes back, thick as ever. The moor doesn’t need your opinion of it. That’s what I like.
[She fills the kettle, sets it on the range, and stands for a moment with her eye on the clock above the mantelpiece.]
The 11.47 is due at eleven forty-seven. Glasgow service. Twice a week up the strath, same run, same time. If there was trouble I’d have had a call on the line. I’ve not had a call.
That’s how you read an evening. By what you haven’t been told.
He taught me that. My husband. Not with those words. I watched him work the gate for eighteen years and I thought I understood it, and then I was doing it myself and I understood it properly. There’s a difference between the two.
The railway wrote to me in January of ‘62. Said they would send a replacement. I wrote back. Said I was fit to hold the post. They wrote again. Said they would send a man to assess things.
He came on a Tuesday. I showed him the log. I showed him the lamp. I walked him out to the far gate and back and made him a cup of tea. He said he would make his report.
No one came after.
[She moves to the window, looks at the track a moment, then comes back to the table.]
People ask, do I not find it quiet, out here. A good few have asked.
It is quiet. That’s not the same thing as what they mean.
The wireless helps. Valve set, in here. Home Service, mostly. I keep it on through the evenings. Last Saturday they were all going on about the football. England. The World Cup. Great carry-on down south.
Good for them.
It’s not my world, football. Nor England, for the most part. But you hear things. You’re not cut off. You just hear them at a distance, and you think: well. There it is.
[She glances at you, as though remembering you asked her something.]
A favourite quote.
I had to think about that. I’m not a woman who keeps a store of quotations. My mother had a few. Psalms, mostly. My husband had none at all. He wasn’t that kind of man.
But I have one.
Visibility good.
That’s it. Two words.
It’s from the Shipping Forecast. The late forecast, BBC Home Service. Sea area Cromarty. I listen most nights when I can’t sleep. Viking. North Utsire. South Utsire. Forties. Cromarty. Forth. That voice, at that hour. There’s something in it. Not comfort, exactly. A kind of order. The sea areas are named, the wind is given its number, and somewhere a person knows where things stand.
February of ‘63, there was a snowstorm. East wind, which is unusual here. It came in hard and fast, and by late evening I couldn’t see the far gate from this window. I was standing in this kitchen thinking I would have to ring the signalman and stop the line. I thought: I cannae see far enough. I don’t know what’s out there on the track.
And then the forecast came on.
Cromarty: visibility good.
I stood and listened to the rest of it. Malin. Hebrides. Irish Sea. When it was done I looked out again and the snow was already easing. By midnight it had stopped. By morning the track was clear.
The following week I found a newspaper with a weather report that used the same two words. It took me a while to find the right one. I cut them out and stuck them up there.
[She nods toward the cutting above the range. Newspaper print, slightly yellowed. Two words.]
It’s not about the weather, is the thing.
It’s about being able to see far enough down the track to know what’s coming. Most nights, you cannae. You’ve done the checks, you’ve lit the lamp, and still you don’t know what the dark has in it. You do it anyway. You lower the gate and you wait.
By morning, as a rule, visibility is good.
I’m not saying God. I’m not putting a name to it. I’m saying: you do the next task. You wind the mechanism. You make the call if the call needs making. And somewhere past the end of what you can see, the line is clear.
I’ve found that to be mostly true.
[She lifts the kettle and checks the weight of it. Not ready yet. Sets it back.]
Mind, the snow still came. That’s the other part of it. Visibility good doesn’t mean nothing will come.
[She looks at the clock.]
I’ll need to go shortly.
The gate’ll want its chain checked. I’ll put the lamp out to the crossing, stand my ten minutes, and when she’s through I’ll raise it again. Same as it was last Tuesday. Same as it’ll be next week, God willing.
[She lifts the lamp from the shelf by the door. Runs her finger along the edge of the wick, checking it. Nods once, to herself.]
Kettle’ll be ready when I’m back.
Bob Lynn | © 2026 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.