I Vant to Be a Lawn
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 you thought the garlic clove to ward off evil, the steak right through the heart the only way to killing the blood thirsty vampire were Stoker’s invention you would be wrong. They were recorded by a Scottish woman, Emily Gerard a mid 19Th century researcher into all things Transylvania.
Ms Gerard tootled around the Carpathian region interviewing all and sundry about Nosferatu the original name for his nibs Dracula. Without her books on the area Stoker was going to set his Dracula books in Austria and we wouldn’t have known about Transylvania. Not even about Vlad the Impaler, who many reckon the origin of the evil. The derring-do of Ms Gerard, who was born in the Borders in 1849, might have been to escape the rigours of mid-Victorian Scotland and since she went on to marry a dashing Polish cavalry officer, there’s further proof of an adventurous spirit!
Now Dracula was first written in 1896 and published in 1897, so there isn’t an anniversary here to hang my hat on, but hey, it’s 2023 and I can say it was published on the seventh anniversary of the founding of James Pirie so there’s a reason to talk about celebrations. And since we have long passed the era of mother-in-law jokes, like “Why do you call your mother-in-law “Treasure?” “Well everyone asks, where did you dig her up from?” And in the true spirit of the age I can say we have given a lot of thought to celebratory gifts of many varieties. So for a gift for the ages try this Daffodils Tall Vase in a beautiful gift box from Royal Scot Crystal. Every time you put fresh flowers in the vase the gift lives again. It’s on at half price too. Can’t go wrong.
