I was in desperate need of a decent picture for my photo journal. I simply couldn’t find anything nearby that was interesting enough to snap. Then I struck upon an idea. If I travelled back in time just a couple of weeks, I could capture the excitement of Christmas.

My first stop was the Isle of Skye in early December 2011. I boasted to a stranger that I’d come from the future. When he said that he didn’t believe me, I boldly replied “You will when you hear the news on 13th January 2012 that a huge cruise liner has run aground on rocks off the Isola del Giglio in Italy”. He couldn’t care a fig. If I were him, I would have rushed immediately to the bookies. I wrote off the conversation completely when he then confessed that he had never noticed the message grown into the mountainside across the valley. The vegetation spelt out “Hush! Silence as you commute to work please”. You really couldn’t miss it – unless you were the least perceptive man on Skye, of course.

Next I set off for Portree to see what I would find to photograph there. I was surprised to discover that the capital of Skye was large enough to have its very own China Town. Then I worked out that I had now somehow travelled forward in time because here they were all celebrating Chinese New Year. I was just about to settle down for a meal in a Chinese restaurant run by a bald English man when a family of four came through the door with a complaint. The little girl had found tooth-sized lump of wood in her takeaway. The owner was highly embarrassed and asked me to promise never to admit that I had witnessed this incident.

I left the restaurant and continued my quest. What would I photograph now that I had several options? There were trains, a ship against a beautiful sunset, and a field full of sheep. Just as I trained my lens on the flock a dog jumped up at me and stole my shoe. Then my friend SL ran up to me in a complete panic with something urgent to tell me. As the sun went down and all natural light with it, I sacrificed my last opportunity to get a picture to listen to SL’s dark secret. It really could have waited. All she wanted to say was that X’s voice really irritated her.