Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Troublesome Traps
05/22/2007
Dearest Dottie views the F A Cup Final on the library telly, blue and white rattle at the ready as she disputes each decision of the referee without an iota of knowledge of the rules of the beautiful game. Her support of Chelsea is based on a love of the King’s Road, Peter Jones and the peace of the Physic Garden rather than the reality of the blue bears of Stamford Bridge. However this allows me to slip away for a little scribble and an early Saturday afternoon stiffener courtesy of Messrs Hendricks and Schweppes. Perhaps it is just happenchance however as I settle in front of the Great Fire of Trollaigh the beastly gale and driving rain that we have endured for the past 24 hours seems to ease a little, so I may at last have a tramp across the Long Glen path before dark to see what damage the high winds have wrought.
A busy week draws to a close with almost every bed taken by the EU Advisor and a steady stream of acolytes bending the knee before the EU cash machine. That sounds a little harsh when in fact we all had a jolly good party, gone this year were the Liberal Democrat Depute Ministers as they are currently deposed and chewing their cheeks whilst working on a “strategy” to allow themselves to sell their principles down the river in exchange for some power once more. Instead we hosted a few fat man lunches for groups who wanted to meet a real live EU Advisor, this proved very useful for both sides with wry smiles all round at the astonishment spreading across her face when the Scottish Land Reform Act and its implications were explained to La Belle Dame, I am pleased to report that there appears to be absolutely no way such an absurdity would even be dreamt of in any other member state. The “managed retreat”, so much a buzz word of poor government policy on UK farming also cropped up in almost every conversation. Where will our farmers and farm land be when we need them, as we surely will when China buys the entire North American wheat crop, Australian crops fail and the Russians turn off the gas and oil. Hopefully the supermarket queues gazing at empty shelves will be satisfied by chewing on RSPB leaflets, while stocks last!
A lighter note brought the Girls to Glen Trollaigh to help with the heavy load of feeding and scrubbing the high number of visitors and to indulge in the start of the Great Trollaigh Spring Clean. An event planned for each year, but only completed on a more irregular basis. My task seemed to be to service and set one hundred mousetraps, fingers are bruised and battered and the air a deeper shade of blue. The discovery that many of our older carpets have become serious breeding grounds for moths is alarming to say the least, however anti moth warfare has been engaged and every outbuilding is festooned with relics and the scent of mouldering mice is subdued by essential oils of Cedar and Lavender whilst smaller rugs and the like displace old salmon and game in the deep freezes! Yours aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Seven SEAs.
05/14/2007
To bumpkins such as I, Academia is the name of a bridge over the Grand Canal in Venice, however to the world at large the word encompasses a life devoted to study, learning and excellence. These boffs care not a jot for calf scour or sheep scab let alone the imagination required balancing budgets or the guilt ridden angst of self assessment tax returns, however I now share one thing with them, namely, a lack of sleep. Dearest Dottie and I spent Saturday in a damp Inveraray in the company of academics at the AGM of The Neil Munro Society, a worthy body if every there was one. The papers they delivered on the variety of post-romantic Scottish literature in the chill of the village hall followed by the splendour of the castle went a bit over the baronial bonce and left me a little numb around the wethers, however these coves enjoy a party, therefore long words were leavened with plenty of food and drink in the jolly atmosphere of “Brambles” culminating in music and song with even dearest Dottie being persuaded to give her lively rendition of “These Are My Mountains” at 2.00 am. The dogs had me up at a rain sodden 7.00 am, followed by a rather long winded evangelical church parade, so now that the first salty Merlot is sieved through the baronial mustachios the body’s sleep account is in debit to the tune of three or four hours.
Those of you with an agricultural bent will know, that like our gracious monarch, cattle and sheep have an official birthday, it being the 15th of May when all calves and lambs miraculously change into hoggs, gimmers, wedders, shearlings and other terms mainly designed to divide town and country. This date now also heralds the arrival of my short skirted EU advisor, hot foot from Bruxelles. The main purpose of her visit is to progress our Tobacco crop which we had to compost rather than sell last year to achieve the maximum £50K EU grant. Following this success we are seeking permission to increase our acreage from 110 to 150 acres; hopefully the lovely lady will endorse this blatantly bonkers request. The dear always sends a full written briefing in advance so that yours truly is fairly buzzing with jargon by the time Tanya’s Taxis delivers La Belle Dame in front of the Great Steps of Trollaigh, where the incumbents fawn and grovel before the laptop case that contains a quarter of the Tower of Glen Trollaigh’s annual running costs. Scanning the briefing I note with some relief that the catch word of the last two seasons “community”, a word with which I have never been entirely comfortable, has been replaced with the bright shiny 2007 word “strategic” so there are many references to SEA “Strategic Environmental Assessments” and such tosh. However, I must make every effort to gently persuade La Belle Dame to retitle her proposed “Strategic History Including Trollaigh Estates” whilst assessing the viability of the UK Tobacco crop, before putting our joint proposals before her mighty masters. Yours Aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.