Midges to the Left of Them, Midges to the Right.

06/01/2008

We Trollaighs have been blessed for generations, too numerous to count, with a direct line to God.

Many of you will be familiar with The Blessed Mary MacKillop-Trollaigh who only requires an attributed miracle or two to achieve total beatification, and we earnestly pray for that day, with the accompanying cash revenue. To be fair, Bruce and Mai-Ling MacKillop of Toowoomba, Queensland, recently relabelling themselves MacKillop-Trollaigh, are up and running with a pack of Sydney Lawyers to scoop the Vatican Contract for St Mary and it would be churlish of yours truly to make a major challenge as dear Great Aunt Mary from Roy Bridge did spend most of her working life in Oz. However we have an even holier contact still in the shape of St Cuthbert of The Glens. References to good old Cuthbert Trollaigh do require a bit of research as he apostatised in the early hundreds AD bringing Christ to the lawless North Argyll Glens and of course you will know that many of his relics are still believed to reside within the Father’s Arch which now forms part of the Long Gallery decorations.

You may wonder what the old fool is wittering on about, and the answer is two-fold; running and midges. Yes, those beggars have arrived with a vengeance, possibly worse than even 1948, so that when the breeze drops it is difficult to see the hay barn from the Tower of Glen Trollaigh through the thick white swirling clouds of the bally bloodsuckers, rendering even the most speedy and simple of outside tasks completely impossible. Of course one has to run when the blighters appear and most of us blokes simply stomp off at a steady pace, saving our energies and relying on the age and thickness of tweed for protection. It has to be noted that the ladies see running in a completely different light, the dears have a lightness of step that is bred from the ballet school, except curiously, dearest Dottie who will Jive, Rock and Fandango with the best of them, yet struggles in the basic running department, with a flat footedness that vibrates along the galleries in the early hours. This is not to say that dearest Dottie cannot run, far from it, there is simply nothing finer than witnessing “herself” running with the concentration of innocence, arms and legs pumping with the anticipation of a startling, skinny dipping, midge avoiding plunge into the River Trollaigh “Witches Pool”! Maybe the midge season is not without its benefits, and certainly warm towels and a dram are on hand for both the plungee and the lazy bystander.

With our direct line to the almighty, we just keep asking for those midge moving breezes. Yours aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.