Lord Of All I Survey

01/02/2006

Our snowfields recede up the sides of glen Trollaigh as a whiff of warmer weather flows over us from the west. At first, the weather girls warned of heavy rain, but that seems to have missed us and all the garden birds are very active which is a sign of a thaw. The ground beneath our boots remains perma frost, all our support systems are holding up, Lachie and I must check our water everyday for any sign of freezing, and so far, power supplies have held out as well. However, I see that the new Russian Czar, Putin, has started to squeeze gas supplies to the west on the day that he assumes the presidency of G8. This supreme power over energy, which we have thrown away over the years, will now come home to roost at 10 Downing Street, but will our President Blair in turn commit the ultimate folly of keeping himself in power by allowing the homes of middle England to be warm and the TV’s humming, at the expense of industry?

Today, a visitor was kind enough the leave a copy of “The Daily Torygraph”, an organ with which I have little sympathy, however after scanning it’s broadsheet pages I can recommend an article by Jim White on page 18 about Naked Swimming in schools. A lively piece on changing attitudes with a wonderful twist about the difficulty of squaring reaction to reality.

Of course, the reason for many callers appearing today and indeed your many messages of congratulation has been my appearance in the New Year’s honours list. Having received a few honours and inherited more, I can safely say that I am slightly against the current system which seems to heap more glory on noisy pop-star tax exiles, than upon the equally worthy charity workers and school crossing controllers. I have known for some weeks that I am to receive KBE for my services to the shipping industry and so I have been able to twist a few arms to replace the knighthood with the honorary title, Lord Glentrollaigh. I shall not be using the title as if I did, I can expect to be stoned every time I drive through the village, however, it will be a great pleasure, indeed an honour to visit the Palace and add another gong to the trophy cabinet. So to all you plebs, a very Happy New Year, I have a feeling in my waters that it is going to be a stonker, a thousand good wishes, cheers, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.