otters – A. L. Lester

Surfacing Again: Otters and anthropomorphism

Morning everyone! Surfacing Again is 99c for the whole of this week and I thought I’d share a bit about otters. This is largely an exercise in basking in cuteness for five hundred words, so please do excuse me.

close up shot of otters — Photo by Silvia Heider on Pexels.com

As you know if you’ve met any of my Celtic myth retellings, they are all based on some sort of legend from the westward Celtic fringe of the British Isles. I began by making them Celtic (hence the name, doh!), but I’ve expanded a bit for the sake of a good story and St Cuthbert was actually knocking round Northumbria in the very early middle ages, during the seventh century. His church was part of the Celtic tradition, but he wasn’t a Celt. I made an exception for him because I was so taken by the otter story. (The whole Celtic church versus the Roman church is a whole other post, so we’ll go with this oversimplification because it’s a niche interest 😊)

So. Cuthbert was an extremely austere chap, who used to go and stand in the sea to pray. When he got out, a pair of otters would come out of the sea too, and dry him off. We know this because a creepy stalker-monk spied on him and later told St Bede, who wrote it in his Life of St Cuthbert.

This is…not usual otter behaviour.

cute wild otter swimming in lake — Photo by David Selbert on Pexels.com

Here in the UK we don’t have sea otters. We just have otters, some of whom prefer to hang out on the coast. I like to think of them as water-cats, or maybe water-dogs, because they are so active and playful. They are the European otter, members of the Mustelid family which also includes stoats, weasels and mink. They’re all pretty fearsome creatures with an exciting set of teeth that you don’t want predating in your chicken house.

They are also exceedingly rare in the UK at this point, although I believe they are less rare than they used to be. My sister (to whom Surfacing Again is dedicated) is our local point of contact for one of the otter protection organisations and she does counting and watching. This seems to mostly involve dangerously hanging over bridges and wading through unpleasantly deep streams to change the cards in her wildlife cameras and then watching the footage and logging what she sees. She also counts up footprints and spraint that she finds. Because they are so endangered, people aren’t encouraged to deliberately go and search for them.

I think we have this anthropomorphic idea in our heads about some wild creatures that doesn’t serve us well, simply because they are so charming. Otters fall into this category I guess.

They eat mostly fish, but will also eat birds, mammals and frogs if they’re hungry. Because they’re inquisitive they will interact with humans occasionally in the way they do in Surfacing Again…coming up to see what’s going on. But like all wild animals they aren’t tame and we shouldn’t see them like that. Having said that I loved Gavin Maxwell’s Ring of Bright Water when I read it in my teens. In my opinion it’s the ultimate otter book. Maxwell lived with a house full of otters on the west coast of Scotland—he was a naturalist who travelled widely in the interwar and post WW2 years and brought his first otter back from Iraq . It was a different time and these days you have to have a licence to keep a wild animal as a pet.

In my story I tried to balance my desire for Mustelid cuteness with my feeling that otters are wild creatures who should be respected. I hope I’ve done that.

Surfacing Again

Melinda is staying on Lindisfarne for a Christmas break with her old friend when an unexpected argument leaves her alone for the holiday.

It’s the first Christmas since her mother died and the island’s peace and wild tranquillity bring balm to her wounded heart. Two chance meetings, first with a pair of wary otters and then with cafe-owner Rowan, bring her genuine joy.

Will her tentative relationship with Rowan survive the end of her holiday and the turning of the year?

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otters drinking water from river — Photo by Kieren Ridley on Pexels.com

Surfacing Again: Otters

Surfacing Again came about because I essentially decided I wanted to write a story with otters, for no other reason than otters; so I went looking for myths I might be able to adapt. There are quite a few otter-myths in the UK—I liked the Otter Kings of Scotland very much and might see if I can write something longer about them at some point. But I was also very drawn to St Cuthbert and his helpful otters on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne.

As I wrote in my previous post, Lindisfarne is a small island off the North East coast of Northumbria in England, and the first, wooden, monastery was built there by monks from Iona (in Scotland) under St Aidan in 635AD. St Cuthbert was the Bishop of Lindisfarne from 685AD until he died in 687AD, but he seems to have been ubiquitous to the area for a couple of decades before that. Bede wrote a ‘Life of St Cuthbert’ in the early years of the eighth century and that’s where the otters come in.

“…[St Cuthbert] went down to the sea, which flows beneath, and going into it, until the water reached his neck and arms, spent the night in praising God. When the dawn of day approached, he came out of the water, and, falling on his knees, began to pray again. Whilst he was doing this, two quadrupeds, called otters, came up from the sea, and, lying down before him on the sand, breathed upon his feet, and wiped them with their hair after which, having received his blessing, they returned to their native element.”

It all sounds extremely unlikely, as Lin comments in Surfacing Again…however, it also sounds extremely charming and I couldn’t not use it.

The UK’s species of otter is Lutra Lutra, the Eurasian otter. We don’t have sea-otters, we just have some colonies of otters that like to hang out by the sea. They’re part of the mustelid family, which also includes stoats, weasels, polecats, ferrets and mink…they’re essentially enormous aquatic weasels.

They live in family groups and stay with their parents until they’re fourteen or fifteen months old. Population is gradually increasing again in the UK where they have been very sparse in the last few decades due to river pollution. You can read more about them and their habitats at the UK Wild Otter Trust and there’s a bit more about Coastal Otters in Scotland on the Forestry and Land Scotland website.

Here are some Asiatic Short-Clawed otters from New Zealand, making their characteristic chirping noise:

Surfacing Again: A short contemporary lesbian romance

Melinda is staying on Lindisfarne for a Christmas break with her old friend when an unexpected argument leaves her alone for the holiday.

Will her tentative relationship with Rowan survive the end of her holiday and the turning of the year?

A short sapphic Christmas story. With otters.

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And finally, you may have realised my title is taken from the Seamus Heaney poem The Otter.

Surfacing Again: Lindisfarne

Surfacing Again came out yesterday and I thought today I’d give you some back ground about it’s setting, the ‘Holy Island’ of Lindisfarne, just off the north-east coast of England.

Map of northern Britain in the post-Roman period.

It’s a tidal island, accessible twice a day during low tide. These days there’s a causeway to drive across, but in days gone by you had to walk across the sands to reach it, along the ‘pilgrim way’. The path is marked by large stakes driven in to the sands and you can still do it today reasonably easily, so long as you don’t mind a bit of paddling.

The first monastery there was founded in 635AD by St Aidan as a daughter-house of Iona. That monastery was probably where the parish church stands today, but was made of wood, so no visible trace remains. It’s this monastery that was responsible for the beautiful Lindisfarne Gospels and where St Cuthbert was Bishop in the 680s. After his death it became a place of pilgrimage. Most of what we know about St Cuthbert comes from his ‘Life’, written by Bede, a monk at the monastery of Jarrow in the early ninth century. You can read a translation of his Life of St Cuthbert here.

The monastery was devastated by a Viking attack in June 793. There was a huge sense of disbelief across the continent that one of the largest and holiest foundation in European Christendom could be destroyed rather than protected by its patron saint. Subsequent attacks finally drove the monks out to Northam on the mainland in the 830s and in 875 they formally abandoned the island and eventually settled in the old Roman fort of Chester-le-Street seven years later. St Cuthbert’s remains ended up at Durham, where they became a good money-spinner for the abbey there.

In the meantime, there’s evidence from gravestones on the island that a small Christian community remained on Lindisfarne; but the priory wasn’t rebuilt until after the Norman conquest of 1066 as a daughter-house of Durham. That’s the ruins that are visible today. The monks were turned out and the priory abandoned during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the mid-sixteenth century. You can read more about the history of the priory here. With annotations!

The castle, at the opposite end of the island to the priory, began life as a fort in the mid-1500s with stone robbed from the abandoned priory. At that time England was still very much threatened by Scotland. However when Elizabeth 1 died in 1603, the two countries became ruled by the same monarch and the threat disappeared.

By 1900, the fort was in ruins. It was bought by Edward Hudson, who employed Edward Lutyens to turn it into a little castle, where the nobility of the day came to socialise. He also employed Gertrude Jekyll to create a walled garden for him.

You can visit Lindisfarne for the day or you can book accommodation. If you can’t manage that, I recommend the magic of Google Street View. You can visit the priory ruins, walk along the beach where Lin meets her otters, see the ruins of St Cuthbert’s monastic cell on the additional tiny, tiny island and even walk across the sands on the Pilgrim Path.

And as a final note, I was at Ofelia’s blog yesterday with the ginger biscuit recipe that Rowan uses in her café. Find it here!

Read on for more about Surfacing Again and an excerpt.

Surfacing Again: A short contemporary lesbian romance

Melinda is staying on Lindisfarne for a Christmas break with her old friend when an unexpected argument leaves her alone for the holiday.

Will her tentative relationship with Rowan survive the end of her holiday and the turning of the year?

A short sapphic Christmas story. With otters.

Buy Surfacing again

Chapter 2: Christmas Eve

“You look like you could do with a hot drink. Your lips are blue,” the small woman wrapped in the huge green apron said. She was sweeping the windswept grey pavement outside the little cafe on the corner in the village as Melinda peered through the window at the menu, wondering whether they were open.
“Are you serving?” she asked.
The woman was about her own age, with a geometric blonde haircut and an impish expression as she looked at Lin over her broom.
“I’m not actually open for another couple of hours,” she said, smiling and leaning the broom against the wall. “But come inside while I set up. You must be frozen. It’s a bitter wind.”
Melinda smiled at her. “Why are you bothering to brush the pavement then?” she asked.
The other woman smiled again. “Habit,” she said. “It’s habit. I like my routines. Come on, come in. I’ve lit the log burner already, so it’s toasty inside.”
There were a couple of sofas set at angles in front of the log burner and a few small tables squeezed in around them. It really was a tiny cafe, probably converted from someone’s front room that had been knocked through into the room behind at some time in the past.
“Here,” her saviour said. “Sit down, take your coat off. “What would you like to drink? I’ve got…well, anything really. Tea? Coffee? Hot chocolate?”
“Tea would be wonderful, actually,” Lin said. “I haven’t had any yet this morning. I got up early to watch the sunrise.” She was determined to make the most of her stay on the island of Lindisfarne, despite the drama of the last couple of days.
She sighed.
The other woman flashed her another grin before she could get too lost in her thoughts. “It was beautiful this morning,” she said. “I’m Rowan,” she said in a friendly fashion, going behind the counter and putting a kettle on.
“I’m Lin,” Melinda said. “Is this your place?” She hunched forward and stretched out her frosty hands to the fire.
“Yes. Me and my girlfriend started it a couple of years ago, but it’s just me now.” She shot Lin a sidelong glance.
Melinda smiled back. “It’s lovely,” she said. “Very cosy.”
“It’s tiny, but it works. I live upstairs.” She nodded toward the back of the cafe where there was a closed door beside the one that led out to the kitchen, presumably leading to some stairs. “We only do drinks and cakes, and soup and sandwiches and breakfast rolls; a very limited menu. But it’s all people need if they’ve come over to the island for the day. No-one wants to waste time with a full sit-down lunch.”
She put a tray with a pot of tea, a jug of milk, and two mugs down on the low table between the sofas, sinking into the one opposite Lin.
Lin nodded. “Yes, that makes sense. It’s quieter at this time of year, though?”
“Yes, very much so. Although it can get busy now for a bit, around Christmas. And people stay in the self-catering properties and guest houses all year round, obviously. If I didn’t need the income to live, I’d say I prefer it when it’s quieter.” She said that with an open smile. “Present company excepted, of course!”
She leaned forward and poured them each a cup of tea. She seemed to have all the time in the world to chat to a random stranger she’d rescued from the freezing morning.

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