Tattie Bogle

We saw the first one at the turning for Carbost, on our way to Talisker beach. A gypsy scarecrow in a bus shelter, it struck a faintly sinister note as we headed into ever more remote country on increasingly narrow roads.

The Stig himself stood at the entrance to Carbost village.


Further along, a cheerful Dalek guarded a cattle grid. We all know they can't go up or down stairs, but what about cattle grids? We had seen no humans by this point, which reinforced our unseasy feeling that the inhabitants of Carbost had been taken over by some extra-terrestrial invasion.



'They' had taken over the post office, in a regulation Royal Mail postie's jacket:



And the health centre, in the guise of Dr Who.


There was the grisly, outside the Carbost Inn. We revised our earlier plan of having fish and chips:


And the benign, in school uniform outside the primary school:


In fact there were so many that driverly patience began to wear thin at the frequent cries of "stop! just one more photo!". We did go into the Carbost Inn for a cup of tea, where all seemed normal. So normal that we didn't quite like to ask about the alternate reality outside.

On returning from holiday I've discovered that there are scarecrow festivals held up and down Britain. 'Tattie bogle' is Scots for scarecrow. I've always found the name faintly scary, redolant of boggarts and freets and a whole faerie world of babies stolen while their mothers pull bracken, and Thomas the Rhymer transported away by the Queen of Elfland.