Page 23 - James Pirie News

Ferry Nice

If life on the Ocean wave calls you, but you are just a tiny bit of a landlubber, then have a think about buying yourself a ferry rather than a deep sea sailer. And it’s not just any ferry it's the one between John O'Groats in Caithness and Orkney, one of the ferries that until nowe hasn’t been in the news. Buy this ferry and you can be independent yourself, just as the islanders themselves...

Well Wimbledon has begun and as we approach the second week even the redoubtable flying Scot Sir Andy Murray has met his Waterloo. So I content myself with thinking about nature and its beauty and difficulties. It’s been breeding time for Britain’s biggest type of grouse, the capercaillie. Forest clearings in the Highlands are their grounds and the hens sit in the trees watching the mating rituals...

Yes I know it was Greta Garbo who vanted to be alone, but right now with the shortage of water that we have and no great prospect of showers soon, my poor old lawn looks like the wreck of the Hesparus. It is so dry and covered in vampire grasses of one sort or another, smothering the real green grass. Damn you trefoil!

And did you know that Bram Stoker’s vampire Dracula has a Scottish history? If...

The Loch Ness monster is a handy driver of tourism so let’s hope that she exists and can become one of the wonders of the world, but the beast would be in danger at the moment anyway as Loch Ness has a serious drought problem. It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that it hasn’t rained much lately and with water being drained away for hydro electric power there’s concern about the water levels of...

When I was just a little scrap of a thing, maybe two or nearly three years old I was crying sitting on the toilet- having got into some trouble or other and my dad shouted: “Put a sock in it!” And not wanting to get into any more trouble I dutifully took off my socks and flushed them down the toilet. Oh, be careful of what you ask for with literal minded children! The plumber’s bill was immense.

And...

Did you know that yesterday was Mother’s Day in France, I had no idea until I heard it on the commentary on the French Open Tennis? I would normally be fretting my way through Sir Andy Murray’s matches, but he decided not to play on the clay again this year and I’m hoping he’ll play at Eastbourne, which is a trek, but I know I can still get tickets for that. But old habits die hard and so I was catching...

I was looking after a friend who had a knee replacement operation in March and was involved in a low speed lamb chase myself. She has a field that she lends to a local shepherd and he fattens his lambs on it, but they can be extremely frisky and troublesome. Out in the garden I heard, “Get Adam!” The last two remaining sheep had escaped the field and were in the garden munching prize plants. So I sprang...

The signs were there when Phillip Schofield was reviewing the great Charles III coronation memorabilia on This Morning Live without normal co-host Holly Willoughby present and instead there was celebrity pawnbroker Dan Hatfield. They were there taking a gander at the goods, including our very own Coronation Paperweight with royal cipher. One television industry veteran, me, says: “Now with hindsight...

Have you noticed how men like machines and history, it’s not terribly sexist to say so I don’t think, not that many women don’t too, but we with X and Y chromosomes are especially known for it. Me, I’m an unashamed history buff and I love the skirl of the pipes and a dram of history. So I was interested that they are rebuilding the possibly arson prone replica of an Iron Age village at the Scottish...

Way back when I was student I studied Anglo-Saxon and the whole of this area of subject had only one joke, “The Study of Anglo-Saxon has no future.” Yes them’s the jokes.’ It’s only a joke, because the language had no future tense and in that sense was a fairly primitive language, but at least there were existing texts and books and stories from that age. The word Pict may even be pejorative, as it...