Selecting the Stones - The Stones and the Stars: Building Scotland's Newest Megalith - page 169

F IG . 6.6 Another unsuitable stone (John with paintpot)
To identify our stones, Gavin Roberts provided a paintbrush
and a pot of black paint (Fig. 6.6 ) . He was anxious that the crosses
shouldn't wear off before the stones were extracted, unnecessarily
as it turned out, as blackboard paint is virtually indestructible.
After erection at Sighthill, the black crosses on the stones were to
remain visible for years.
The first stone in the sequence was ceremonially claimed
by my first wife, and as project manager, I ceremonially claimed
the second (Fig. 6.7a ) . John claimed the third after some question
over whether it was the right one (Fig. 6.7b, c ) . But after that, as
access to the stones we wanted grew more difficult, I was happy to
defer to John's expertise in rock climbing (Figs. 6.8 , 6.9 , 6.10 , and
6.11 ), while Gavin continued to document the process, alternating
between black and white and color.
Gavin had decided he would follow the bowed stone of
Fig. 6.11 through the entire process from selection to completion
of the circle. The circle is not completed to this day, but the career
of the bowed stone was to be much shorter (see below).
Figure 6.11 also illustrates the biggest difficulty we encoun-
tered as we worked our way around the quarry. Having been
brought down by blasting, many of the slopes now consisted of