Page 25 - James Pirie News

When the wind blows we now have a great deal of relatively cheap energy and as seaside dwellers we are seeing ideas floated for our local area for wind generation across our horizon, but what happens when the wind doesn’t blow as it didn’t most of last summer and when those windmills are just very expensive skyline ornaments? Well the people in Scotland have the answer it’s a hydro scheme designed...

Naw ye canny shove yer grannie

Cause she's yer mammie's mammie

Ye canny shove yer grannie aff a bus

Sung to the tune of:  She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain

This is a song that always makes me laugh and it carries a serious point that your granny is your mammie’s mammie and therefore due even more respect than any other old lady. And with Mother’s Day just around the corner and no buses in sight...

Mother's Day  Mother's Day Mother's Day Mother's Day Mother's Day Mother's Day Mother's Day Mother's Day Mother's Day

I just looked at the weather map and there is a yellow hammer shape over the entire east of Scotland and that said hammer is an amber weather warning for snow. Oh, it’s chilly I say! But I’m not there of course. I’m currently ‘babysitting’ a friend after an op. A series of yellow...

This year Mother’s Day is on Sunday 19^th March  and it’s almost upon us. So don’t miss out on the opportunity to show that wonderful person that you love her. Of course the origins of the day is Mothering Sunday when you returned to your mother church, but don’t let that stop the demonstration of your respect and affection. Do you know the full story of our mum, or your mum in –law? It’s often in...

The dog in the picture is Max and he’s a part of the story today, because this week we have decamped away from the sea side to the depths of the country  and to a friend’s house. We are looking after her after a knee operation and Max comes as part of the package. We have to walk his dogginess twice a day in the open country; and of course it is a delight. Points of information about Max, is he’s...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 14^th of February. And of course there...