Tuesday, October 18, 2005
The Lord Mayor, The Captain and Ronnie
10/18/2005
The following facts are connected; there are no domestic fowl between Dalmally and Ballachulish; the lifts failing on a newfangled tower in Pompey and Jubilation at 10 Downing Street. The link is one Ronnie Armstrong. This personable youngster was a guest of our daughters at the Tower of Glen Trollaigh for a few days in August; he has become my mole at Downing Street where he fills some junior position, personal private assistant to someone’s assistant I should imagine. Ronnie is just off the phone with the news that the champagne corks are popping tonight with the news that poor old Ken Clark is the first to fall in the current competition to select a new leader of the Conservative Party. Ken is the only Tory that both Blair and Brown fear and they are overjoyed that yet another no hoper will now be the leader of the opposition. The jubilation is so great that Blair and Brown appeared together at an upper window to fire corks at and pour scorn on, a group of peace protestors foolish enough to set up camp in the street below. The reason for their foolishness is to imagine for one momment that our president will take the slightest notice of any protest. Ronnie is also linked to the news that a tourist attraction in Portsmouth, an enormously high tower with bells and whistles, opened today some six years late and 36 million pounds over budget. Unfortunately, as the Lord Mayor of Pompey and the Captain of The Dockyard risked the inaugural run in the exterior glass lift, the bloody thing jammed and as far as I know, they are still up there. Ronnie’s part in this was to design the winding gear for the lift in a previous career. This shows that Ronnie is not perfect and brings me neatly to the missing hens of the Argyll Glens. Ronnie, perhaps having had one lunchtime Tesco’s gin and tonic too many, took dearest Dottie’s comments that the local hens were not worth their feed as they were not laying, rather too literally. He spent that afternoon riding a quad bike furiously up and down Glen Trollaigh and Glen Orchy dispatching every fowl he could find in a fusillade of gunfire. In view of the imminent arrival of the pestilence that cannot be named, perhaps the bollocking that poor Ronnie got from the girls was a little harsh, although extremely funny! Talking of The Pestilence, the radio that has gone absolutely potty about spreading fear and alarm, had a vox pop about who should be in receipt of the limited number of anti-viral treatments. A wonderful old biddy, quietly told us how as an old age pensioner, registered blind and a regular attendee of both her GP and her local A&E arriving at these facilities by free transport, must surely be in line for the life saving medication. I have bad news for you my dear; you will be the last bloody person to be saved! Cheers, Yours Aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Your Urals Do Not Match
10/16/2005
Fair autumn weather cheers us up this week, cloudy, dry and about 12 degrees, ideal for outside work and maintenance. Those of you who are in the happy band of regular readers of my scribblings will note that I have locked the comments section to block those annoying oicks who have found it funny to fill it with rubbish. My efforts have been so effective that I cannot get into the bloody thing myself and I spent the allotted 32 minutes trying to unfangle my IT problems with some Johnnie in Mumbai. I could not understand a word he said, however, it has something to do with the Urals apparently. Globalism seems to be a wonderful thing; my box of bits is designed in the US, assembled in China, sorted in India and its problems have something to do with Ivan. I can easily remember the happy days when the village Blacksmith sorted horses, garden gates as well as motors, and any local plumber worth his salt would fix lead work and roofs as well as drains. If you cannot find a local man for the job, its not worth doing. Speaking of local things, Argyll and Bute Council have at last started to make some progress towards their recycling obligations under a load of European directives cobbled together by hundreds of commissioners and a forest of Phds. A large blue wheelie bin has been delivered, well abandoned half a mile away. No more will we causally toss all our rubbish into the green wheelies, now paper and cardboard will go into the blue one, but for some reason the system will be jiggered if one envelope goes in with the paper, why? At the Tower of Glen Trollaigh, we already make an effort, composting everything degradable, avoiding plastic bags and over packaging and, of course making the all-important fortnightly run to the bottle bank. I think that all the efforts from Brussels to Oban on rubbish and recycling are to be applauded, however it remains the case that the vast majority could not give a toss and assume their waste is someone else’s problem as they gaily tip their rubbish as they go. What’s to be done? I must close by thanking Old Sea Dog for his obvious concern over my health, fear not old salt I am very much in the pink, my GP surgery get a cash incentive for keeping the old folk of the parish alive, assuming of course that everything falls neatly into office hours and outwith local or bank holidays. Yours Aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.