Friday, April 22, 2005
Dalmore No MOre
04/22/2005
MESSAGE FROM THE OLD HOUSE. A CANCELLATION MEANS THAT THE OLD HOUSE IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR ANY WEEK BETWEEN 30TH JULY TO 20TH AUGUST.
Wonderful day once more! Plus 17 degrees, clear blue skies from dawn until dusk, when a full moon pops over the high ridges to the south east of us. We endure a brisk easterly wind, no rain, and the entire glen, waterlogged for many months’ starts to dry out, surprising to see the colour of the earth change in front of ones eyes. Once more, our day still revolves around office work, when we desperately want to be out and about in the grounds. The radio is full of election fever and we are trying to make the right voting decision. To everyone’s surprise, we have always been floating voters. My natural feeling points me towards the Tories as we know the local candidate well, but by default, I am tempted back to the SNP who are making all the right social-democrat noises, but is this really a wasted vote? We certainly completely distrust “new labour” and the “liberals”, horrid lying oicks to a man. Dearest Dottie is on red alert for tomorrow’s visit by the Neil Munro Society, Mhairi is brewing up vats of soup and Lachie is artistically manipulating our farmyard piles of tin sheeting and old tyres into some semblance of respectability. My task is to produce some decent wine, without burrowing to far into the good stock. Fortunately, a petting farm in Comrie has infected most of their guests with something horrid following contact with new lambs, so we hope that our urban visitors will not indulge in mutton molestation of any variety, however, one never knows! Dottie, Mhairi and Lachie have attacked the spring-cleaning, in the course of which they have uncovered some whisky with “only a little left in the bottom of the bottle”. One of these dregs is the 78 Dalmore that I have been instructed to “finish off”, poor fools. I raise the Dalmore, Yours Aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Trotskyite Springtime
04/21/2005
MESSAGE FROM THE OLD HOUSE. A CANCELLATION MEANS THAT THE OLD HOUSE IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR ANY WEEK BETWEEN 30TH JULY TO 20TH AUGUST.
My golly, what a day, the first true spring day, not a cloud in the sky, sunshine on the tower from just after eight till seven, plus 16/17 degrees, high pressure and a light easterly. It is made even better by the fact that the Argyll glens get the best weather in the UK. It is raining in London! And almost everywhere else! All the signs come in one day, our first swallow sighting; we hear our first Cuckoo and the bats are out in force after dark, driving cats and pine martens into frustrated hunting frenzies. We even manage to sit outside in the garden chairs with a glass of super cold semillion and crisps for a momment at six o’clock. Absolutely wonderful, who cares about the rest of the world. Despite the weather, I am chained to the desk and telephone for much of the day, a box of matches bursting with energy in my pocket as I look out at areas of the hillside that should still be ignited. I reserve my strength to nip out from time to time to tidy the grounds nearest the tower in anticipation of forty guests for Saturday luncheon. I have been told, at the last minute to put on a good show for these worthies who are coming to revere the obscure visit of an ancestor to the tower in nineteen canteen. It will be a wonderful diversion as I do so enjoy playing the eccentric host to such groups when I can ham up the Monarch of the Glen image that they all love so dearly. Hercules transport aircraft over-fly us, Liberal politicians continue to lie to us, and The Trotskyite Jimmy Reid speaks out for the SNP, which means that they will get my vote, especially as I think Jim Mather, ex European president of IBM will stand for them, a man I greatly admire. What a superb day in every way, here is to tomorrow! Yours Aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.