Monthly Archives: February 2023
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Posted: February 27, 2023Categories: James Pirie News
Read more »Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murdering pattle!Well Robert Burns the bard of Scotland has been somewhat disrespected by English barbers. A first edition of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect had to be rescued from the said barbers barbarity after...
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Posted: February 27, 2023Categories: James Pirie News
Read more »Well you know when you’ve spent a deal of money on a coat and see the same coat worn by someone that you know and they bought it for a fiver in the charity shop, well that’s a tiny bit of how I feel having just been to the Arctic to see the Northern Lights when they were seen last night from Scotland and Northern Ireland to Cornwall and Kent. Well you’ve all seen the magical lights now I hope, but...
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Posted: February 26, 2023Categories: James Pirie News
Read more »This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.Well it’s rather happier return than the lines of the late and very great Robert Louis Stevenson, but we are home from the sea and a very great voyage into the frozen north it was. And it reminded me of the strong, strong links between our isles and the Viking...
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Posted: February 26, 2023Categories: James Pirie News
Read more »Sir Alexander Fleming
Bacteriologist and discoverer of penicillin
“A good gulp of whisky at bedtime - it’s not very scientific, but it helps.”
I was looking up quotes of the great and the good and this one by Alexander Fleming struck me as most apposite for a bedtime dram. In 1928 he discovered what was later named Penicillin from the mould Penicillium Rubens. This discovery is described as the "single...
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Posted: February 07, 2023Categories: James Pirie News
Read more »Well, well Valentine’s day is almost upon us and it’s surprising how from small beginnings a giant tradition has arisen. In Holland it’s Valentijnsdag, in Sweden it’s Alla Hjärtans Dag (All Hearts Day), in Germaany it’s Valentinstag and in France it’s rather grandly La fête des amoreux, Le Saint-Valentin. And in case you are suffering from amnesia the day is the 14th of February. And of course there...
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Posted: February 01, 2023Categories: James Pirie News
Read more »There’s whole debate about log burners at the moment as to whether they are healthy or appropriate, but we love ours and it’s been the saving of us this winter and it is very modern and as clean as possible. As we are an upside down house, beside the sea it’s been on all this winter to keep our gas and lekky down and it is mightily romantic to curl up before a fire of an evening. Plus knowing we are...
