heart was always there and I’d always planned on going back to where I was born and brought up and spent my
formative years.” Moving into the family home he had inherited, Norman quickly readjusted to island life: fishing, crafting and rekindling old friendships.
time in the ı990s, it wasn’t that easy to sell practices. So I thought rather than get to that point and be forced to sell, it would be better to do it on my own terms. I’d said for a while that if the right opportunity came along, I’d sell up.” Norman finally left Glasgow in 2002 to
realise his life-long intention to move back north, first to Stornoway – where he spent about ı8 months working part-time – and then to his home town of Carloway. “I’d lived in Glasgow for almost 45 years,
but I always went back up to Lewis on my holidays. My parents were up there, my
The experience evoked many childhood memories, including watching his bach- elor uncle, who lived with the family, weaving Harris Tweed in the house’s loom shed. “As far back as I can remember as a little
kid, I’d be in the loom shed with my uncle, watching him weaving away the Harris Tweed. I was very friendly with my uncle and would watch him for hours on end, absorbing it all and learning the craft. “When I was a teenager, I’d have a
wee go myself when he wasn’t looking. And whenever I came from college or university, I would do a bit of weaving to earn money. But once I qualified, although I would come home, I didn’t bother
with the weaving, because I didn’t need to!” And, true enough, weaving did not cross
Norman’s mind for another 40 years, until a chance conversation presented him with an unexpected opportunity. “The house’s loom shed was still there,
but the loom had long gone. So it was only by chance that my neighbour mentioned he was getting rid of his loom to get a bigger one. And he was just going to dump it in a skip, so I said in a moment of weak- ness that I’d take it off him. He wouldn’t take any money for it. “I had it installed in the old loom shed
and started weaving bits for myself. I found I thoroughly enjoyed it, reliving my child- hood as I was weaving away, and thinking of my uncle who’d been there all his life, and all my neighbours who’d been weaving in those days. All the houses had looms when I was a kid, but the Harris Tweed industry went downhill a bit in the ı980s and nearly disappeared in the ı990s.” Unlike the vast majority of Harris
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