Alice in Wonderland

09/29/2008

“Only a fool makes predictions” said Farrington Trollaigh in his riveting tome “When to Keep Your Mouth Shut”. (A few hard back copies still available, priced £124 plus vat and postage from the publishers, The House of Glentrollaigh.) Never was a truer word spoken by FT, when yours truly predicted that our Swallows and House Martins would be away by the time we returned from Burghley and Deal. Indeed for the first time since I took on the tenure of the Trollaigh tower the wee blighters were still zooming about the battlements on the 23rd of September. However they are away south now, and fieldfares arrive by day to feast on autumn berries, owls hoot by night and red stags roar in the corries. The bracken has turned, as once again I have left my bracken composting scheme too late, to say nothing of long grass being impossibly wet and matted for the annual topping. Every cast into the dark, swirling pools of the high Alt Trollaigh picks up a Silver Birch leaf or two, rather than the intended fishy prize. The temperature settles to the low teens and daytime temps of six or seven centigrade are expected later in the week, heavy showers sweep the glen, so the seasons change.

Thanks to cross border contacts made during my enforced Swiss caravanning holiday earlier this year, combined with a conservative savings policy, mean that dearest Dottie and I have so far managed to avoid the financial melt down threatening many of our chums. However the outlook is bleak and all our energies are directed at self-sufficiency; stags are stored not sold; potatoes, berries, nuts and fungi gathered in, firearms kept to hand to harvest the odd rabbit, and Lachie and I spend hours planning tree felling to provide fuel for heating and hot water over the winter in the hope that we will not use our kerosene swallowing central heating system at all. (Note to any guests, bring your own thermals and whisky.) We have even dusted down the micro-hydro generating plans, though I am frankly horrified by the obstructive attitude of authority to alternative energy proposals, when in this day and age one might expect them to be falling over themselves to encourage us to avoid taxing the capacity of the national grid. Apart from the hydro scheme all capital expenditure is on hold, so I can safely use this scribble to inform all builders, tradesmen, purveyors of motors and yachts that you are not going to see the Trollaigh coffers spilling forth a bean for quite a while, so do not waste calls or bumph on me for at least eighteen months, when we pray that we may to able to see the wood for the trees, assuming we have not burnt them all.

Prudence, apart from being a pleasant name for a pretty girl, is a watch word that was instilled in all of us at our father’s knee, and then hammered home by a succession of sepulchral bank tellers through our early careers. It comes a bit of a surprise to learn that one small recent banking collapse had deposits of 200 million but loans of 500 million. I would suggest that the 300 million short fall showed an extreme LACK of prudence, particularly in view of the zillions dished out to its Directors. Our only consolation is that the equally generous share options gifted to said buffoons by themselves can now only be used as bog bumph. It comes as no surprise that Beastly Brown imitates Pontius Pilate by washing his hands of any blame for running the UK economy on debt for the past nine years, of course with “prudence” being the key, even providing a gag inducing photo opportunity by kissing his wife in public to show us all what a good egg he really is. Presumably BB will bury his head in sand as an encore, heaven help us all. However we can all sleep easily in our beds over the winter as, in response to the cancelling any additional financial help to those in fuel poverty, Beastly Brown has consulted the Met Office (a fully government funded agency, ho ho.) and predicts, yes that word again, that we are all going to have a very mild winter and we will not need even a extra cardy to keep toasty warm. Why does the populace continue to believe these blatant lies? Yours aye, from under the Great Duvet of Trollaigh, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh. 

Lets hope Adam & Co are a bit more cautious than there ultimate owner Baron.