Uncle Ronnie

Uncle Ronnie cut the last stones.

Alone on the rock, the last mason,

He put a year under his chisel

Until the work was done.

Ailsa Craig is silent now,

Even the lighthouse is automatic.

But, on a rink somewhere, an edge

On a stone, one of Ronnie's strokes

Slides across the ice, a memory.

© BH 2012

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Andy McCallum Crawford published his poem 'End' on the Wee Fictions blog. I posted Uncle Ronnie as a comment.

My Uncle Ronnie (Stephen) was a stonemason from Peterhead. He worked on Ailsa Craig at the end of its production and spent a year alone on the rock. Back then, I should think, the lighthouse was still manned. You can read about that in the 70s in Peter Hill's book Stargazing: Memoires of a Young Lighthouse Keeper. 

Ronnie came home and gave up being a stonemason after a bad fall. He damaged his back when he fell carrying a granite block which crushed him causing spinal injuries. 

I believe that the masons who worked on the rock, having quarried the granite, roughly formed the curling stones before they were shipped to the mainland. At the base of the rock near the landing stage, you can still see the last quarried stones and, among them, partially cut curling stones.