Drun Alban

06/11/2005

Two fair days to finish the working week with good sunshine and temperatures, occasionally a large cloud threatens but the glen remains dry. The forecast is for more changeable weather to arrive over the weekend. The fair weather and a midge free breeze allow me to get some work done outside, but these are mostly routine maintenance tasks and checks. Dearest Dottie is in painting mode because the Tower of Glen Trollaigh absorbs a hundred gallons of paint each year into its extensive exterior woodwork. The sacred lawn is flourishing under Lachie’s care and the revised grass cutting schedule under BOGIE guidance is not only saving a lot of time and carbon emissions but is giving our new wild flower banks and edges a wonderful fresh look with bluebells flushing the woodland knolls and the longer grasses carrying a host of seed heads. I watch a pair of House martin chicks take their first tumbling flight from their snug nest in the stable block gable, ah summer! Europe is the main topic amongst the chatterers in the North Glens and generally, folk here are astounded by a naive “sound bite Tony” falling into the Franco/German trap of exchanging bon mot on the UK rebate versus French agricultural subsidy. This is a pure Chirac ploy to steer the spotlight away from the desperately needed total reinvention of euro-management, which does not suit Fritz or Frog. 10% unemployment and the disastrous economic state of french affairs makes Chirac’s autocratic delivery totally unacceptable to all but a power hungry German Chancellor, now where have we heard all that before? Blair appears unaware of the way in which top-heavy bureaucracy affects rural affairs, and obviously one cannot trust a French President who has never been prosecuted for his corrupt involvement with an African Dictator who kept the body parts of his political opposition in a freezer. Euroland fails to grasp the concept that most of its population apart from a few fascists and jingo maniacs support euro principles but are fed-up to the back teeth with the remote, corrupt and unaccountable top brass. A strange enquiry from someone called Foukes about Dorsum Britanniae which she claims straddles Glen Trollaigh, I fane ignorance, but of course the ninny is looking for Drum Alban or Carndroma in Glen Lochy. I suggest to her that I will exchange my intimate knowledge of these matters in exchange for a case of the young Ardbeg, she has already pencilled in an appointment, and is wildly enthusiastic about a visit to the Tower of Glen Trollaigh, “one of Argyll’s lost mansions” she croons, well I can always find it! Yours Aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.