Wednesday, March 28, 2007

s’Morgenmufferl

03/28/2007

The weather sage has been almost correct in his forecasts, for apart from a few clouds rolling into Glen Trollaigh from the south west this evening, our weather remains fair and for the first time in yonks the blaze remains unlit in the long gallery Great Fire of Trollaigh. Some of our views have been spectacular over the past days with ten hours of warm sunshine creating floating misty ridges reminiscent of the label on a bottle of chilled Cloudy Bay. The old governor, my father used to refer to this striking effect as “maggie’s arse”, I have never been sure to whom this affectionate term referred, it may have been Princess Margaret Rose, of whom the governor was an enormous fan, or perhaps Margaret, sometime Duchess of Argyll who allegedly would display the Ducal charms at the drop of a hat, headless or otherwise. I used to consider the old duffer’s comment was a little coarse and uncalled for, however as I reach old age myself I must enjoy the same freedom to be as loopy as one likes.

Dearest Dottie and I accepted a kind invitation to the cinema to enjoy “300”, my basic advice is do not watch it. We had a lovely trip to the flics in Glasgow, always an experience, particularly on a Saturday night after Scotland has won a World Cup footie match. 300 is a Greek fantasy rather than a Greek tragedy, and amongst all the blood, guts and amputation one realized that a French director must be involved, suddenly the grotesque campness of many players and the 300 in their bizarre posing uniforms made some sense, enforced by the million decibel sound track. Only the French can really screw up a multi billion dollar movie, their genre remains in black and white with Brigitte in angel’s wings. However for fans of the source material it will be stern stuff, but not for me.

In my view another Rubicon of decency has been crossed with the broadcast of TV adverts for “stool softeners”. One should take the rough with the smooth; however it now seems that one can abuse the gut with burghers and junk and expect a chemical collation to smooth things out. What rubbish, eat plenty of roughage, lots of grains and veg, swallow gills of the Young Ardbeg and one’s stools will be as constant as the sun without a multi-national profiting from your rear end. A late turn round the policies with the hounds in the fading 9.00 pm daylight with a touch of moon shadow brings a hoot of owl and a snipe drumming, what could be better, bugger your stool softeners! Yours aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.