I belong to the Hebrides, the sweep of islands formed when the Cailleach Bheur, the benevolent giantess of Celtic mythology, let stones fall from the creel carried on her back while wading off the Highland's western shore. It is a place more of water than land, of wild seas and calm bays, amber burns and white desert sands which surface at the ebb-tide; islands among islands, pools within pools, the indigo skerry at Europe's edge. Ours was a family of mariners; a boat load of sailors and dreamers. The Gilleans had their own ark, or so my father often told me. When the rains came and Noah battened down the hatches against God's flood, the clan crowded into a cockle-shell coracle and huddled under a tartan umbrella until the storm had passed. They were used to inclement weather. They were Scots. After forty damp days and nights their leather boat came to rest not on the mountains of Ararat, where the torrents had been stopped, but on a soggy bed of peatmoss beside a silver Caledonian firth. Our forefathers sent forth a curlew, for they had no dove, and it returned with a sprig of heather. The men, their wives, sons and son's wives took each other in their arms and rejoiced. They had found our home.