Page 28 - James Pirie News

Little Donkey

The picture of the two donkeys isn’t because we are practising for a Nativity scene, but from our recent trekking  expedition near Carcassonne. The donkeys are Bamboo, the bay and Ballotte the black and they were hired from a donkey refuge to take us rambling. We were inspired by that great writer Robert  Louis Stevenson  and his early work Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes...

Latest Posting Dates 

It’s time to get cracking with posting those cards and presents to friends, family and loved ones abroad. 31^st October is the last day for the USA and Canada, so happy Halloween! Beat the rush and see the festive season in with less fuss.

Posting to HM Armed Forces

Posting International Economy...

Gin’s It!

Everyday’s a school day they say and for me it’s often true. Can you bring me Four Pillars Bloody Shiraz I was asked by one of my friends in France, I can’t get it easily here? When I had figured out it didn’t really involve swearing, I said I’d give it a go. It seems this is an Australian gin and it’s twice been voted Best Gin in the World. Well you could have knocked me down with a feather...

Come on Baby Light My fire

We have friends in Carcassonne in the south of France and we love visiting the place and went there for our honeymoon and it’s one of the few places that it’s okay to fly direct to and we pop there when we can. And this time there was an even stronger reason than normal to visit. It was a fire place. We have a fantastically efficient German log burner which with the current...

A Busman’s Holiday

Well you know how it goes, the prospect of a significant birthday and the weather at home isn’t all that, so a birthday abroad is just what the doctor, if not what the bank manager ordered. And being well, in the business of fine glassware why not take a peek at the making of glass across the narrow sea. The first stop on the holiday though was to Rome. There were plenty of glass...

Love at First Bite

When we think of a blood sucking parasite we normally think of the wilds of Transylvania and the canny Count Dracula or the brand new Inland Revenue office in Glasgow’s Atlantic Square not Scotland, but the nation was very much a part of the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s classic tale. And to celebrate this a new festival is being proposed to batter home those links with north east...

Sometimes there is something in the air, a trend that becomes almost compulsory and everyone’s at it and quite often we don’t always know why. One of those trends is re-wilding which is like a snowball gathering pace as it rolls down the hill. Recently bison, beaver and pine martens have been introduced and there’s talk of wolves and no doubt someone somewhere wants to reintroduce Mammoths, Velociraptors...

The news is full of energy stories at the moment and the drive towards renewables is in full flow with wind farm after wind farm either proposed or approved for the near future. In Scotland there has been an announcement for three new developments in the waters around Shetland which are expected to power some two million homes when the wind blows. The Crown Estate Scotland owns the seabed around the...

Are you finding the travails of modern life a bit much? Has the trek to work palled, or the working from home become a chore? I’ve included a lovely picture of the sea at sunset, that always makes me calmer and it is the view from our house. But many people need to get further away than just a sunset. For those of a sturdy independent cast of mind there is an opportunity to become that solitary creature...

Well it’s come to my attention that the legend of the Loch Ness monster might be somewhat based on fact. It seems that from a fossil discovered on the riverbed of an ancient African water course such creatures might have lived in freshwater. The rub is of course that the fossil is about 100 million years old and Loch Ness itself is only 10,000 years old.  The telltale fossils of the prehistoric monster...