Sunday, December 16, 2007

What’s In A Name

12/16/2007

I can scarcely believe the number of Hills in Scotland, by which I do not mean the geological variety, rather that clan born three or four hundred years ago of a chap with a high sperm count living at some elevation. Almost every committee and Quango seems to be padded out with a Hill or two, be it Mr, Mrs, Ms, Master or Doctor H. For some unexplainable reason this pride in the name Hill extends beyond the normal direct lines into the unreliable realms of double-barrelledness. I continually fall over references to Balfour-Hill, Roberts-Hill or indeed Hill-Roberts; it seems we are not entirely blameless with our own dear aunt being a Mackenzie-Hill who also seem to specialise in the Hill’s love of shortened Christian names, auntie being “Mingo” (recently featured frozen on these pages) although I also hear of a Matty Mackenzie-Hill who if one is to be believed is making a great success of importing oak game larders from Hungary. It is inevitable that amongst the tribe of name shorteners here should be a “Piggy” Mackenzie-Hill a high priestess of the noble onion in the Fens of Norfolk that unlucky area which the beardie wierdies now promise will be sub sea at any moment, presumably the same day that hell freezes over. Of course others have hills named after them, Mount McKinley for example, although I have always thought this sounds like a military command, or at least a cry at a Rugby School rag. We Trollaighs have Ben Trollaigh though strangely this lofty peak is not to be found in Argyll, but it is the ninth munro in the fisherfield group on the borders of Wester Ross and Sutherland, although one has to acknowledge that munro status is still disputed by some of the more rotten mountain mounters.

Those of you with a bit of savvy will realise that this nonsense has to be brought to you via some pretty spiffing wireless technology as the services provided by that great organ British Telecom stops some twelve miles short of The Tower of Glen Trollaigh along with all other terrestrial signals. It will not surprise you, dear reader that we have a bit of a thing about new gadgets and we love all that silky touch screen stuff, though frankly the native Tom Tom bongo is more use in the North Argyll glens than its electronic antecedent and i-phones fizzle out far south of The Highland Fault Line. Techno thoughts have been prompted by the heavy thud of a legal document on the coconut matting, this multi-claused rain forest basher has been whipped from the ether by word processor with many an error and presumably at £150 per page. My heart goes out to tweedy legal eagles everywhere that surely look on technology with horror, trusting only the wiff of Quink and a scattering of Amo, Amas, Amat may heaven preserve them. Yours aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.