Such an Air—a Coda
The poet John Sharkey's arrival in Rousay was completely unexpected. He had followed Ian from Edinburgh, more or less on a whim. Malnourished, impoverished and sick with the rigours of travel, probably by hitch-hiking, he spent a week or so recovering in hospital in Kirkwall. John had begun his career in Ireland as a medical student, but dropped out—in due course identifying himself (after Jack Kerouak's novel) as a "dharma bum". Youthful and essentially fit and used to the work, he returned to Rousay and was taken on by the road squad and allocated a caravan. Following the fire that destroyed this—as described in one of Ian's poems—he was given a room in Millburn. This was a development that may have prompted Ian—not in general unsociable but wanting privacy— to spend more time at Nethermill. Some documentary evidence, including “Finlay’s House (in Rousay)” in The Dancers Inherit the Party, eventually to be discussed in this writer's biography, and summarised in Rousay Mending: a Footnote, implies that he would at times have slept there.
After Ian left Rousay in May 1959, John continued living at Millburn and working with the squad until later that year, when he decided he would either have to leave or never get away. He returned to Edinburgh for a couple of years, then moved to the Bristol area for a time and became known within the concrete poetry movement, of which Ian for several years was acknowledged internationally as a leading member. He edited an anthology, Mindplay (1971), but Ian declined to appear in it; among other reasons, he felt “outside and uninvolved in what is happening now”. In the London art scene, John participated with Gustav Metzger in DIAS, leading to some controversy, and worked for a time at the ICA. He later published several volumes on such topics as Celtic Mysteries: The Ancient Religion (1975) and latterly lived in Pembrokeshire, in a rural cottage he was pleased to note resembled a fisherman's.
One skill that it seems he acquired at Blossom, that stood him in good stead when he found a job a few years later in a Cornish tin mine, was in the use of dynamite.