Page 23 - Blog

The wedding season is in full swing and kilt hire companies are swamped with orders. But what do you give to those getting married when there is a squeeze on all our spending?

I did some research on wedding gifts through the ages and celebrity presents in the recent past.  When The English King Charles II and the Portuguese Catherine of Braganza married the dowry was pretty immense. It included trading...

For £200 I got a view of a man’s head.

Regular readers will know I am nuts about watching tennis that involves Sir Andy Murray the Flying Scotsman on a grass court. So I was greatly pleased to get Wimbledon Quarter Final tickets, despite their huge price of £200 each, thinking I would see the great man himself, but I was grievously disappointed when he was knocked out in the second round. But tickets...

There is a tiny speck of rock 230 miles or 370km west of North Uist. It’s way out in the middle of nowhere in the ocean and it’s called Rockall, and indeed there is rock-all there. But it attracts adventurers who want to break the 45 day record for living on that tiny speck of granite. Just above the water level, Rockall is only 100ft or 30m wide and 70ft or 21m long that’s a lot smaller than most...

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...