Thursday, March 09, 2006
Spring In The Air
03/09/2006
Atlantic fronts start to ease our Alpine weather eastwards, frosts fade and daytime temperatures rise bringing cloudy days with light showers. The snow melting may not be pleasing our climbers and skiers, however, the bulbs and buds pushing up in the garden of The Tower of Glen Trollaigh have brought a population explosion of birds. We see our first siskines and gold finches, woodpeckers drum in the beeches and flocks of blackbirds make a lot of joyful din. Dearest Dottie’s wild wood animals start to stravaig about the policies with a bit more purpose, perhaps spring will arrive a few days ahead of the met office official date of the 21st of March. This will not be a momment too soon for a very hungry looking stag that I surprised on a trudge up the Alt Trollaigh in yesterday’s gathering dusk, where I also spotted the first otter tracks I have seen up there for some years. I must say that we have enjoyed unusually pleasant weather this winter.
I was chatting to a school master a couple of days ago who confirmed my suspicions that these coves scan the skies daily hoping for sight of a snow cloud which automatically heralds school closure on the grounds of health and safety. This nonsense has been further compounded this year because the eastern counties have had about seven more “snow days” than the west, serious consideration is being given to granting teachers in the west an extra week’s holiday (on top of the current 16 weeks holiday) to bring fairness to the profession. No wonder our public services are in such a mess, and I note to-day that our minister for health has been forced to admit that the implementation of a new contract for hospital consultants has a salary bill four and a half times greater than planned, naturally with no material benefit to any patient. The underlying problem with those in public life is that, PhD or no, they are as thick as two short planks, which allow any professional body to run rings round them. I suppose part of the problem is that the civil mandarins do not give a toss, as they are only putting in their thirty years until early retirement on full final salary pension, a gong and two fingers to the rest of us.
On the subject of health and safety, I am not sure whether to laugh or cry over the failed ceiling beam in the Scottish Parliament building. On the one hand, this shows how appallingly bad building workmanship is, even with a £400million price tag. On the other hand, it shows the full force of regulation, responsibility and liability, as a cast of thousands crawl over the building tut-tutting and sucking their teeth. All that is needed is a shipyard jimmy with a big wrench to tighten up the wiry bits that hold the whole bloody thing together, probably slackened off during Edinburgh University Fresher’s Week. In the meantime, while representatives of everyone from the builder to the chap that sawed down the tree stare into space, our august executive, after a snow day or two, have been moved to another building, ferried there and back each day from their offices in a fleet of buses and taxis. What does all this cost, not only in cash terms, but also in terms of the all important carbon emission audit. It would have been better if the roof had fallen in on top of the lot of them, for all the good these wasters do. Yours Aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Puppy Dog’s Tails
03/01/2006
Last week I sat with a sore bum through a lecture on bio-diversity and eco-systems and why they are so terribly important to new age land managers such as I. Frankly, it was rubbish and to my mind failed to answer, or indeed consider the single most important question about today’s countryside, namely do the PhDs and clip boards want anyone other than conservationists living here. On a day like today, I can understand why they want us all to move into cities and leave this glory to the experts. It is simply wonderful with a chilly north wind keeping the skies blue and snow thick on the ridges and summits, at sunset we enjoy spectacular skies to the south and west, while wintery squalls rush down the mountainsides at the north end of Glen Trollaigh but fail to reach the sheltered Great Tower of Glen Trollaigh.
That wanker, Ross Finnie has once again added to the anti rural conspiracy by banning the docking of working dog’s tails. I will personally continue to bite the tails off my pups despite the ban. This practice avoids doggie damage and painful amputation in later life, but the whole point is lost on the bleeding hearts of Morningside who must cast more votes than us bumpkins. One such prole verbally abused me by telephone when it was reported that we were trapping Mink on the River Trollaigh as part of a successful programme to encourage the return of Water Vole and Otters. The argument ran that Mink could now be considered as an indigenous species and therefore part of our blasted bio-diversity, do they not know that Mink come from North America and were released by that misguided sod Burberry in Appin. Perhaps Mrs Morningside would care to see the carnage of wanton murder committed by Mink on native waterfowl before she sounds off about such utter nonsense.
On the subject of political correctness, I note that the populous are up in arms about giving school children ID numbers. It seems strange for the working classes to be making such a fuss when those of us who struggle to survive on the Single Farm Payment had numbers allocated from the age of five. Mine was 424 and I still come across long forgotten woolly socks with this number proudly stitched on. It does make one wonder whether or not some poor devil had the number 666 or 999 and if so what became of them in later life.
I cannot sign off without mentioning firstly, Scotland’s wonderful win over the English at Murrayfield, I was there close to the Princess Royal, we could hardly bare to watch, what a triumph! Secondly, Erica Kerr of Glen Orchy managed to squeeze a few column inches in the Sunday Times Travel Section, page 13, praising the North Argyll glens and our local chippy. Anything for a free meal, my dear? Yours aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.