An extract from Kathleen Jamie’s ‘Cairn’, our Book of the Month for July.

Something in the tilting of a certain late-night herring gull over the tenement lums, underwings slicked by street light, brings to mind a favourite island. Far out in the Atlantic north-west, it’s a place long uninhabited, an idyll known only in summer. Though that particular gull doubtless raids bins and discarded chips, it evokes the scent of pink thrift and guano. Days in the sun! You lower the blind against the dark, then turn on the radio. South or south-west 7 to severe gale 9 later. Rough or very rough.

How now, green island? A battered mile of storm-howl and sea-roar, rocks lobbed thirty yards ashore, grasses ripped from their roots. No birds, save for a crashed corpse or two. But still, the automated lighthouse on the hill will be warning of the island’s existence, though ships all use sat-nav these days. Every twenty seconds through the dark, it sends out three sweeps of redundant light. You measure it to yourself as you fail to fall asleep, a trio of flashes, then a long pause, a signature written on the wind.

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This is an extract from Kathleen Jamie’s latest non-fiction title, a coda of sorts to her trilogy of ‘Findings’, ‘Sightlines’ and ‘Surfacing’. Reproduced here by permission of Sort of Books.

‘Cairn’ is out now and available here (£9.49). Read Annie Worsley’s review of the book here.