Monday, May 02, 2005
Blue Monday
05/02/2005
MESSAGE FROM THE OLD HOUSE. A CANCELLATION MEANS THAT THE OLD HOUSE IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR WEEKS COMMENCING 30TH JULY AND 6TH AUGUST.
18 degrees, mainly dry even a glimpse of sunshine, a brisk southerly wind keeps everything fresh and spring like. On our early morning arduous training route march, dearest Dottie and I find lots of wild flowers, violets, anenomies and banks of sheltered wild primroses. The flytrap plants are very green, ready for their spring feasts. We also spend a minute or two picking up rubbish left behind by one of the glen’s bank holiday campers. God such crass mindlessness always drives me mad, why oh why do people come to enjoy the freedom of the countryside and abuse it with bottles and cans. I really do try not to get paranoid about it, but what makes these people tick, are they just pig ignorant? Despite it being a bank holiday Monday, we seem to be as busy as ever, with constant phone calls interrupting my efforts to catch up with piles of paperwork, and of course, the people that I want to contact about some of the papers are firmly on holiday, so lots of queries to roll over until tomorrow. If I can just get over the next ridge of paper perhaps I can get out into the garden and start some of the work I meant to start in the winter. Now grass needs subdued and weeds attacked as well, maybe in a day or two! I find a relaxing Ardbeg and watch some TV with Dottie. Tomorrow is another day! Yours Aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.
Sunday, May 01, 2005
Royal McNabs
05/01/2005
MESSAGE FROM THE OLD HOUSE. A CANCELLATION MEANS THAT THE OLD HOUSE IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR WEEKS COMMENCING 30TH JULY AND 6TH AUGUST.
Dearest Dottie chases me from the Great Bed of Trollaigh in the early dawn to drag me up the hill as a start to a regime of fitness. Great gusts of wind whistled around the Tower of Glen Trollaigh last night, but it is calmer in the dawn as I pull on my boots and gather the pack to head of up the Alt Trollaigh with Dotty. It is a bit murky with spots of rain from the east, although the breeze backs west while we are on the hill. Our task is to check the burn for drowned animals following the heavy spates of two days back, and we do drag a couple of ewes and a couple of lambs out, swept to their deaths trying to cross the watersheds higher on the steep hillside. Lachie has been muttering about the deprivation of foxes on the lambs, but I think our loses have been fairly light. The telltale signs of heads and limbs nipped off before the remains are taken back to dens are evident, showing signs of foxes, but no clue about a resident pack. We must be vigilant. John phones to report a camper lost in the River Orchy and certainly we see the police helicopters in the distance, however inviting a wilderness may be, it must be treated with great respect and although we all are saddened by loss of any life, it serves to remind us that life in the mountains can be tough. But the joys of our isolation are all around us with the swallows and house martins fairly whizzing about the Tower, new life both animal and vegetable pushing up all around us. A call from America reminds me of the of the golden age of The Royal McNab, sadly for one reason or another now almost unobtainable. Mhairi is most indignant as I sit in the kitchen with an illicit Sunday lunchtime dram and wistfully recall that golden August of ’58 when everything was possible and many of us young wasters managed to achieve our goals. Was it that year that Kilwhinnie won through to the Double Royal? Yours Aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.