Ganesha back piece

The ferry didn't run again today, so I walked along to the shelter by the pier, the one with the blue paint peeling off its back wall. Mrs Gillies painted the elephant god there the summer after her husband's boat went down off the Skerry. She said somebody had to be in charge of clearing the road in front of people, and she had no patience for the sea doing it on its own terms. The trunk curls round a little dish of sweets, and the crown is real gold leaf she bought from a chandler in Oban who didn't ask what it was for.

The men on the island call him Big Ears and leave cockle shells at his feet as a joke. But last Tuesday the Morag girl came in soaked, her bicycle wrecked on the causeway, and she sat under him and laughed until she cried. I think that's the job, really. Not stopping the storm, only making the waiting bearable enough that people stay put and talk to each other.

The thing I actually wanted to tell you is that I finally found the mouse. Mrs Gillies had painted a small brown one in the bottom corner, carrying a sack of rice, and I'd walked past it for six years without seeing it. He rides a mouse, you know, which looks a poor choice for a god until you've watched how far a mouse will get into a locked boat when nobody has the key.

Tell Aunty I'll be home when the boat is. The mouse is still there, and I'm going to bring a shell for his feet.