Monthly Archives: March 2015
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Posted: March 26, 2015Read more »
The great triumph of industrialisation is the ability to endlessly reproduce the same thing from a packet of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Coca Cola Bottles or even an Apple Ipad. South Sea islanders shown packets of sweets in the 1960s weren’t amazed by the sweets they were amazed that every packet was identical. We have lost the wonder of sameness and we now look for exclusivity in the things we want to...
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Posted: March 26, 2015Read more »
The man who saved Caithness Glass and led a remarkable life has passed away this week at the grand old age of 95. He was George Mackie, later Lord Mackie of Benshie, a man bristling with, commonsense and the canniness of his home, Kincardineshire. Mackie ran a farm and rescued Caithness Glass in the 1980s. A proud Scot he said “A millionaire is no use to anybody, but a chap who can make a million...
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Posted: March 26, 2015Read more »
Bill Millin was the only member of the invading forces in June 1944 to wear a kilt. He was the person piper of Lord Lovat and is remembered for playing the pipes whilst under fire during the D-Day landings. Bill played "Hielan' Laddie" and "The Road to the Isles" as his comrades fell all around him on Sword Beach. Millin wasn’t shot by the German snipers because they thought him a madman and it was...
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Posted: March 26, 2015Read more »
The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating...
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Posted: March 26, 2015Read more »
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below. -
Posted: March 26, 2015Read more »
Mackintosh’s unique talent was that he could make something new out of the existing, without losing his delight in ornament and decoration. One critic said ‘With his pursuit of the “modern”, his love of the old, and his obsessive individuality, he was one of the last and one of the greatest of the Victorians.’
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Posted: March 26, 2015Read more »
If you want to know how we came to think about wedding anniversaries you have to go back deep in history to the Holy Roman Empire, when after 25 years husbands crowned their wives with a silver wreath and on their 50th with a gold wreath.
These days you might get receive a message from the Queen for 60th, 65th, and 70th wedding anniversaries, and any wedding anniversary after that. But you have...
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Posted: March 20, 2015Read more »
Patrick McGoohan filmed the cult series The Prisoner in Portmeirion in the 60s and this is how people around the world began to know the name of the extended folly that is the tourist village of that name. It was designed and built by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis who died on April 9th in 1978. At around the same time that Sir Clough was allowing the filming of The Prisoner his daughter...
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Posted: March 12, 2015Read more »
What is the link? Well it is a love of fine Scotch whisky. Ava, the glamourous movie star said: ”I wish to live to 150 years old, but the day I die, I wish it to be with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of whisky in the other.”
