Monday, October 31, 2005
A Sting In The Tail
10/31/2005
Over the past week I have been required to scoot from one end of the country to the other and only now, on All Hallow’s Night can I find a moment to write a few words. I am hoping that some of the young from the village might come to call as over the years the Tower of Glen Trollaigh has hosted some super games and wheezes on this night. The Tower is, of course well suited to such a night with its dark stairs and corners were many an old Trollaigh may lurk. However, the best fun was always the riotous games of indoor football and tennis in the Long Gallery when the local urchins, faces blackened with soot and clothes turned inside out would beat the Trollaighs to pulp for a handful of peanuts, while the fathers were entertained at a roaring library fire and cheek warming drams. To-day it seems that one’s nipper must be dolled up in a starlet’s costume and a karaoke machine will blare out a version of X Factor’s latest whilst expensive gifts are exchanged. I rather favour the Brazilian Day of The Dead, when the cash is spent on decorating the tombs of the old ancestors, with enough set aside for a damned good party. Bah Humbug! We have had a range of unusual weather from storms and torrential rain through to spring like days of 20 degrees with bright sunshine, but always strong southerly winds. One evening I had the wypers on double time in a roaring Fort William, whilst the next morning I was breaking sweat in warm sunshine chopping winter firewood with Lachie. The main change is, of course our move to GMT, I always find this most depressing as the sun sets before 4 o’clock and it’s walking about dark at 4.30 with worse to come by 22nd December when we have three hours of sun on the Tower of Glen Trollaigh and only six hours of daylight. However, we shall have this wonderful lifting of spirits by the 10th of January, our Old New Year’s Day, when each day starts to lengthen by a few minutes. The warmer weather has brought us one visitor, wasps; I now understand that these buggers help gardeners by eating grubs and aphids in the spring then seek sugar in late summer and just become a bloody nuisance in the Autumn. One of these spiky devils managed to sting the baronial arse whilst I was adjusting the sluice on the number two septic tank that had been under pressure following illegal flushing of Johnnies from the guest wing. As I danced about in agony I must have kicked the bally lever to full open, my popular stock in the village must have fallen when the police had to patrol the street advising all and sundry to keep their windows and doors shut. Now a host of PhD’s are circling Glen Trollaigh with test meters, I can expect several missives each day about my activities, but we will fight them on the beaches! Yours Aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.
Monday, October 24, 2005
Swan 68 Dreaming
10/24/2005
I stand at the Morning Room french windows as torrential rain runs down them and I gaze onto a foul day complete with a full Easterly gale, perhaps some second hand hurricane from the mid Atlantic. I worry about our last night’s guests who have left for the Colonsay ferry; it will not be a smooth crossing. My dream of the momment is to let the Tower of Glen Trollaigh to some Russian oil tycoon with interests in Scottish football, whilst dearest Dottie and I live on a Swan 68, but days like these remind me that it probably would be pure Hell! As the day wears on, I have to get away from the desk, so I don the full wet weather togs and set off to blow the cobwebs away with a hike all the way across the high pass with a full pack of brutes hanging on. Quite splendid, why can I seldom find the time for this glory that is on my doorstep? I return as darkness begins to fall and the storm begins to abate, my e-mail box is full of enquiries about yesterday’s tale of the Lady D’Abanville. That is the whole point of the deathbed story so frequently told by my father, just whose member was she hanging onto at her last breath? My father was sure that it was the 9th Baron to whom she may have been reconciled, or was it one her many dusky admirers, perhaps the mulatto Colonel Mackay, of whom she was particularly fond. Certainly, the dark Captain had been hung at the yardarm some two years earlier. The most likely suitor was Winston Churchill’s great great grandfather who was known to be bollocking about Port au Prince at that time. What a terrible bore as the Churchills are an overrated bunch of snobs at the best of times. I feel an Ardbeg momment coming on to ward off the chill, cheers, Yours Aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.