Handicapped at school by his dyslexia and facing the strap at home, Rocky seeks out his own education from the fields and streams around him on the Isle of Skye. He develops an instinctive talent for improvisation: cord to snare rabbits fashioned from nettle stalks, a bicycle from scrap metal, a trip to France with just a few coins in the pocket of his shorts. Lyrical and continually surprising, this is a heroic narrative on a down-to-earth scale.

‘Natural Mechanical is wonderful – a memoir written in language that is cannily involved with the ordinary miracles of childhood. By looking hard and exactly at particular things in a particular place, it speaks to everyone, everywhere.’
      – Andrew Motion