There’s fuc*k all on Rockall   57°35’48”N 13°41’19”W
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  Monday 19th September 2005  Rockall   Powered by Yeast Logic
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Rockall Diary: The loneliness of the long-distance islet

Inside the head of the world's remotest outcrop
by Kim Lund and Lester Haines

Rockall: The loneliness of the long-distance isletThe following is an extract of the so-called "Rockall Diary", chronicling highs and lows of life as the world's remotest islet. It includes the innermost thoughts of the North Atlantic outcrop, as well as some profound philosophical revelations which attempt to answer the question surrounding the very nature of being: What the bloody hell am I doing here? It first appeared in The Rockall Times on 9 February 2004, but we are delighted to reprint it today in recognition of the British annexation of Rockall on 18 September 1955.

Rockall Diary

17 July 2003: Jesus H. Christ I am so fuc*king bored. Three years since the last ship crossed my path and just the same old shit from the albatrosses giving it all that about having spent the last six months in the Pacific. Out here we have 170 different words for "grey", but trust me once you've been watching the Atlantic from horizon to horizon for millions of years, one grey looks pretty much the same as any other.

18 July: To my absolute amazement and delight, a group of men approached this morning in a 40-ft yacht, manually inflated a tiny rubber raft and attempted a landing on my near-vertical shores. After several hilarious attempts to land the silly sods gave up and returned to whatever godforsaken place they came from. Shame, I was hoping we could do lunch and catch up on some gossip which did not come from a fuc*king albatross.

19 July: Spotted a distant whisky bottle bobbing gently on the swell. Thought immediately of yesterday's visitors but on closer inspection it turned out to contain nothing more than an "SOS to the World", apparently written by someone called "Sting". Bloody awful name.

3 September: Got shat on by three thousand migrating sea birds. Enjoyed that thoroughly. Really. Better than Wash'n'Go.

7 October: Did some solid work of eroding in today's tradewinds. I used to be 3000 metres tall, you know, and I can remember when it was all fields round here. Now there's just 25 metres of me left above the relentless monotony of the Atlantic. Each passing gust of wind and each wave carries a little bit more of me into oblivion. I calculate I will only have to put up with this view for another 3.2 million years before sinking heroically beneath the waves, which cheers me up immensely.

13 November: Tried to spot one of the outer Hebrides through a light drizzle. Then remembered I haven't laid eyes on another piece of land for millennia. Thought I saw the lights of St Kilda through the darkness, which got me musing on the terrible price one must pay to live on the edge of the world. Reminded of some Vikings who sailed by around 1,000 years back, heading West. Saw them again two years later, complaining about a "New World" and its crap food and shocking levels of gun crime.

19 November: Watched a sealion start a punch-up with a pack of belligerent orca over a herring. Sometimes the struggle for survival is an uneven one. And sometimes sealions — who aren't the sharpest chisel in the mammalian toolbox at the best of times — surpass even my world-weary expectations of stupidity. While they were going at it hammer-and-tongs, the herring made good its escape, eventually taunting the whole enraged group of belligerents from a safe distance with the most appalling language. God alone knows what Darwin would have made of it all.

24 December: Spent Christmas Eve playing spot-the-illegal-oil-exploration-vessel with a drifting iceberg. I won 27 to 24. Afterwards, the majestic floating ice castle asked me if I'd like to join him on a trip to the Equator. I said no, and strongly advised him against the plan. Of course, he ignored me. Ah, the impetuousness of youth.

7 January: Getting paranoid and lonely. Miss the old days. Even that lot from Greenpeace who came and gave me a big hug a few years back. I vaguely remember the British Navy visiting once. It was less of the hugging in those days — the buggers dynamited my top off and attached plaque claiming me for "Britain". God alone knows where that might be.

19 January: I'm old and tired and I need something to see me thorugh my retirement. So, finally signed a contract giving a bunch of drunks the rights to exploit my name for humorous purposes in perpetuity. In return I'll be the centre of world attention yet again.

9 February: It's good to be back in the public eye. Of course, there's a downside: boatloads of tourists coming for a nose with their digital camcorders and whining children. Worst still, got a call from Ryanair asking if I'd like to offer a €10m "incentive" for the airline to operate low-cost flights out to the North Atlantic. Politely declined. Clouds are gathering to the West, promising rain.

Editorial note

The sacred islet's thoughts on the successful landing by a Rockall Times assault squad on 16 June 1995 are unrecorded. Members of the team, however, record Rockall's mood as "almost cheerful" on that historic day, despite being caked in a good inch of malodorous guillemot guano.

Rockall resources on The Rockall Times

 The Peoples' Republic of Rockall Heritage Paint Range