O' Flouer o' Scotland...

Whin will we see yir likes agen?

oops - weeds

I'm just back from spending 3 weeks at home in Scotland, and instead of sitting on my behoochie creating digital farms on the internet (don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about!), I've been staging war against brambles, wild strawberries and other evil garden interlopers IN REAL LIFE! Yes indeed!

I swear to the Lord of the Undergrowth that it was an unfair fight, though. The garden itself has been left to its own devices for a few years while my Dad was unable to tend it, and some of it looks like it has never seen cultivation in its life, even though it was growing some very tidy bedding plants/shrubs/rows of veggies not 4 years ago. But thanks the the by-pass last year and a marvellous hip replacement, he's been back, hoe in hand, beating the living crap out of it.

fine scottish melons... as it were...

The vegetable plots are full of potatoes, peas, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, onions, beetroot, butternut squash, and spinach... The rose garden is flourishing and already on 3rd/4th flowering. The greenhouse is fit to bursting with already-ripening tomatoes, peppers, melons and other hot-house goodies! The raspberries, redcurrants and strawberries have already been and gone (nom) and the rhubarb is still happily churning out stalks of goodness in every direction it can.

I gave myself the task of ruining the lives of the wild brambles and strawberries that had seeded and laid runners around the place. I mean. Sheesh. You'd think the brambles, being thorny and catchy and owners of long, LONG roots and generally mean-minded buggers would be the worse of the two, but the wild strawberries had infiltrated the whole garden with their subversive underground runners (no doubt stroking their pet white cats at the same time) and were impossible to remove completely.

< insert evil laugh here >

They look so innocent with their teeny tiny fruit and angelic white blossoms, but that pretty face conceals a malevolence of unfathomable (almost) proportions: They were down the sides of the pathways, choking the aubretia (the aubretia fought back, though); surrounding and UNDER the foundations of the greenhouse; strangling the lilac tree; suffocating the miniature roses; congesting the borders with throttling runners. Generally staging an all-out garden coup, and winning.

So I armed myself with a garden fork, a hand fork, a trowel, a small spade and some totally unprepared muscles, and went to work.

I have to say I had a lovely time digging and annihilating! Very cathartic (after the initial muscle shock had died down) and it was a real pleasure to see turf (I didn't mention the overgrown grasses, did I?) and tangles of wildness turn into beds of dark, brown, earthy lusciousness, ready for planting!

pretty wildness

Yet somehow, there's something very beautiful about wild flowers in the garden...  a splash of colour when the hardy perennials are still gearing up for their own shows...  Just don't tell Dad I said so!

Goodbye, Mister Wobbles

RIP Fluffy Monster

You were always a little scared of my long swishy skirts when I visited your Mummy, but you'd still manage a hello, even if it was from the safety of the hallway!  (And egged-on by the promise of a treatie!)

You brought your own brand of wobbly happiness to our lives, wee man, and you are going to be sorely missed.

mickey: the owner of my wee sis from 08/08 to 22/06/11

Weather Fronts

Outlook: gloomy, dull, with bands of soul-drenching rain.

Instead of 2011 being a kinder, healthier, more giving year than 2010, it has already taken me down a dark alley of US urban legend and roughed me up, with the promise, implied by two fingers pointing to its eyes, then mine, then its own again, of more.

Outlook: Stormy, with chance of being struck by lightning, or maimed  by metaphoric hail the size of golf-balls.

Not content with private pummellings, 2011 has also given me a public drubbing and strapped me in the stocks, in readiness for further trouncing, no doubt.

Outlook: Low pressure to the North will bring with it bands of meh.

Meh.

Outlook: A little brighter, with the chance of some rays of sunshine.

Ding-dong.  Well, actually, the doorbell to my flat doesn't do that cheerful 'Avon-calling' malarchy.  Hell it's not even a bell.  It's a buzzer that when set off, sounds like someone using a pneumatic drill.  Just to the left of your ear-drum. I'd give you some onomatopoeia here, but words, even made-up ones, just cannot do it justice.  So we'll say drrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr and give you a tiny, and not really close, sample of the real thing.

Drrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.  Hello?  (Thank heavens for intercoms. Even the ear-drum-tearing kind.)  Ja, hallo! Pakketje voor U.  (A small package? Oh - probably for the girl who lives downstairs.) Ik kom... (Followed by some careful negotiations of 2 flights of Dutch stairs, the steepness and general craggy-mountain-reaches-where-only-ropes-and-God-will-help-you of which have to be seen to be believed.)  Handtekening hier, alstublieft.  Ooh.  It's for me.  And has an enormous printed out address label with pretty things and a lovely font, and a return-to address which indicates said gorgeous-looking package is from my DS.

The time to scribble my signature on the receipt form and race up the stairs to open said pakketje has only been bested once.  That instance involved no signature, just a very full bladder, so least said...

Chocolate. Wool. Beaded wire-work hearts. Scented candles.  Niknaks. (Nom!) Make-up. More chocolate. Hair thingies.  A little hug-on-a-card. My favourite body butter. Apple and cinnamon tea-bags.  Still more chocolate.  And a metal sign that informs visitors that singing, dancing and swearing are not allowed in this respectable house.  (Oh, how I laughed.  And continued to do so whilst placing it at the bottom of the stairs by the front door to make sure that it's the first thing that people see.  And ensuring that they will laugh, too. People who know me, I can guarantee, will see that sign and, at the very least, give a hearty snort.)  Thank you, sister-mine.  Just when the clouds were settling overhead, you sent me a box of sun beams.

Forecast as promised: Rays of sunshine.

A Touch of Frost

the pretend melt

Thanks to a not particularly excellent end to 2009, including my Dad having his hip replaced and getting a free heart-attack into the bargain, my poor Wronicles have been sorely neglected.   Poor Wronicles.  So, to begin 2010 in a blogoriffic way, I think it's time to start the ABC-along: 2010 Edition.

Well, kind of...  as I'm already cheating, albeit in a completely cunning and creative way...  So, welcome to A Touch of Frost.  (See what I did there? Huh?  Huh?  Am I amazingly devious and deviceful, or what?!  Yeah, okay, so I'm reaching already...)

So, after what was pretty much a Year of Suck, I spent the last weeks of the 2009 and the first of 2010 in the haven that is my parents home in Scotland.  (My Dad, btw, is well on the road to recovery, thank the stars.)  Haven and very nearly hermitage, thanks to the snow, though.  Lots and lots of snow.  The first morning after I arrived home I attempted to go into the nearest town from the village and was presented with a veritable blanket of the white stuff:

9am and the sun is just rising over a snowy landscape

And it only got worse...  It was very pretty though, if you didn't mind not being able to go anywhere!  But, armed as I was with my trusty little camera, I did manage to get some arty-farty photos in the can!  My favourites being of the type belonging to the following strain:

footprints in the snow

I love this photo - taken on some freshly fallen snow at the back door of my DS's house, it looks like blackbird tracks but in the style of a book of dancing steps.  (One, two, three, turn with the left foot, two, three, back, two, three...)  But where there are birds, you'll also find the neighbourhood cats...

Doesn't look like he was successful, though...

Home Sweet Home II

So, where was I before I rudely interrupted my musings with news of the impending destruction of the village pillagers? (HUZZAH!)  Oh yes...

 home - behind the delphiniums

Well, the garden was still looking in fine fettle when I was home.  My Dad was particularly pleased with the dahlia show and rightly so, they were beautiful:

I'd missed the sweet-peas, of course, which are always spectacular, and also the livingstone daisies and all the lovely Summer border flowers, but witnessed the addition of the Winter pansies just before I left, which are ever so pretty.   The tomatoes in the greenhouse are mostly past now, and the cucumbers and peppers are long gone, but there were 5 rather massive marrows there awaiting a time when my Mother will turn them into marrow and ginger jam.  NOM.

Well, in addition to pretending to be a tourist and taking all sorts of arty-farty shots of the ancient buildings, I also indulged in a spot of nostalgic piccie-taking of my old school...  Although I use that word advisedly...  I know the word nostalgia means a longing for the past, and invokes feelings of warmth, of golden, happy times and I shouldn't really use that word in any sentence pertaining to my school years (as I have very mixed memories of secondary school... well, to be honest, I have mostly bad memories of secondary school) but I could never complain about the aesthetic beauty of the senior building and its wonderful, if very draughty, quadrangle... Sadly I couldn't take pictures of the quad, as the school was closed for the October holidays, but, although the building is only 180 years old or so, I remember the quad appearing very old indeed.  I guess that's what happens when you combine the local sand-stone used for building most of the old structures in the town, and the sharp, salty sea air...

madras college - senior building

I do, however, remember enjoying lunch-times when I would stay in the music house and practise the piano, which is where the real nostalgia comes in...  I learnt my first Chopin nocturne on the piano of the room above the bowed windows, on the first floor...

the music house in all its autumnal glory

The buildings of St Mary's College, part of the university, was also a must on the 'got to photo' list.  St Mary's College is the home of the teaching of Divinity and was founded in 1539 and is still housed in its fine sixteenth-century buildings, and I have to say, they are beautiful!

Do you see the thorn tree to the left of the bottom picture?  Legend has it that it was planted by Mary Queen of Scots during one of her visits to the town...  Okay, okay - a 500+ year-old tree?  Well, the chances are that if it's not the original tree, it's certainly a descendant, so it's still rather on the WOW side!

Another ancient structure to be found is the West Port which was originally built in 1589 and is, I think, the last remaining civic gate still in existence in Scotland.

west port

I must have walked through the port a thousand times, but I have to admit that I've never really looked closely at it before (you know - that thing about familiarity breeding... blindness), but have camera, as they say, take close-ups...

king david and his lance... don't ask - i have no idea!

To finish with, I'll show you the LYS - it's situated in one of the wee closes (pronounced with a sibilant s and not a z, meaning a narrow alley to a courtyard) opposite the school. The building is itself a great example of the typical mediaeval house that was found in the area, with the dwelling spaces on the upper floors and the ground floor used for housing livestock. Inside it's all wooden beams, creaky floorboards, rough walls and yummy yarn!  I can think of worse places to drool over wool!

Oh, and yes, I did take photos on different days... although anyone visiting Scotland will avow, it is possible to have sun, rain, fog and snow within a few hours of each other.  And that's just in Summer!  Heh!

U is for...

Update

 googlemaps.com - we love you

A few months ago I embarked upon a tirade against the injustice of having my village pillaged.  (And I may even apologise for that dreadful rhyming at some point...)  My village is pictured above and you may (or may not) remember the post, but it involved turning the massive field/old commons, in the centre of the photo, into a housing estate.  Ugh.  With 30 houses.  I mean... UGH.

As you can perhaps imagine, I was not looking forward to seeing the state of affairs when I got home to Scotland this past month...  And things certainly were not very pretty when I got there...

from my DS's house (note pleasantly doom and

gloom-ridden skies!)

DS has (oops) HAD a spectacular view from her windows across the field and to the hills beyond.  The houses may not be up yet, but the fencing to keep noise pollution down is already a pseudo-white-picket eye-sore...

from the main road looking north-east

from the main road looking south

As you can see, that's a fair bit of ground to cover with houses, particularly in a quiet, provincial wee village.  So far the field has been partly levelled and new paths are being made along-side the site...  It's a muddy and a noisy mess.

BUT... the day before I left, my Dad came through with the local newspaper, in which there was an article by the developers who stated that works on the site would be postponed until the housing market gained some strength again...  The same day DS (and all the folk who live around the field) received a letter from the developers saying pretty much the same thing...  It also said that they would tidy up the site, finish the paths and take down the fencing and boarding until such time as they could resume building again...  It is now also common knowledge that the developers have had to lay-off 14 employees, also due to the down-turn in the housing market.

Now, although I do feel for those folk who have lost their jobs, there is a HUGE part of me going "Ha ha" a la Nelson in the Simpsons...  The developers are a greedy mafiastic coterie, and that they are losing money hand-over-fist brings the word 'karma' to mind.  Rumours are already circulating that the company has gone bust, but I think that's just hopeful thinking!

Now, of course, I do realise that building will start up again in the future, and the development will eventually grow, like mould, across the village, but for the time being I do believe folks are sighing with relief...

Home Sweet Home

Now there's a confusing title for you... Home Scotland, or Home France?  Well, for this little ditty, I shall go with Scotland...

rather draughty, but I call it home

I took over 500 photographs during my two weeks in Scotland.  That's not bad going, even for me!  I shall concede, however, that 500 photos in one post may just be a tad on the WAY TOO MANY side, so I think a few posts may be the order of the day.  Well, order of the weekend, anyway...

I don't usually take the time to be a tourist in my local town.  It's my local town - I've been going there for as long as I remember... and more.  And, like most folk, I haven't really paid much attention to it...  Familiarity breeds, well certainly not contempt, because I love the town, but I guess you just get used to things being there and not looking at them any more...

SO... I embarrassed my DS (again) by taking photos about town when I was home... (Hai K!) 

The one up top is not, as you may have guessed, my home. It is in fact the ruins of the cathedral.  Building started on it around 1130, but thanks to several incidents, (e.g. shortly after the nave was completed, the west end of the cathedral was blown down in a gale in 1270. This was rebuilt in a slightly different position, where parts of it remain today. Then the English stripped the lead from the part-built roofs to make shot during the Wars of Independence. In 1378 the cathedral was badly damaged by fire and had to be extensively rebuilt. And in 1409 it was the turn of the end of the south transept to collapse under the force of a winter storm) it is now in a ruinous state.  Very picturesque, though!

cathedral centre, the roundel house left, and the pends right...

the roundel house with the typical fife/dutch gabling

Then we have the castle.  Poor old castle - there's not much left...

castle and castle sands, with the old step rock bathing pool

The site was fortified by the 1100s, and from around 1200 it was adopted as the main residence of the bishops and archbishops of St Andrews. As such, the Castle became the principal administrative centre of the Scottish Church and was the setting for some of the key events in Scottish history.

main range and gate

The Holy Trinity Church is one that I've walked past thousands of times, but never gone in... until now.  And I was much taken aback - it is very beautiful indeed...

autumn colours - beautiful!

erm - wow!

The church itself dates in parts from circa 1412 (March 15th, possibly around tea-time) and the stained glass windows (although being relatively modern) took my breath away...

:: sighs happily ::

And there's more of the town to show... but I shall leave them for another day... I'm nice like that!

There goes my chidlhood...

I'm upset.

By the next time I'm able to get 'home' home (my heart rests in Scotland...) my village shall be changed beyond recognition. Oh, I know, it's all about letting go and moving on etc, but I tear-up every time I think about it, which is often...

© Jim Bain

This little village is where I spent the first 19 years of my life, before going off to college. It is where my mother was born, where my grandparents lived and we can trace our family back generations to this small area. According to a local history book* it appears on record for the first time in 1144 and lies between medieval roads leading to an important religious town 3 miles away. It nestles between 2 hills and its name means 'The Valley of The Kinness' (which is a small burn that meanders its pretty way out to the North Sea a couple of miles away.)

But, yes, it's fair to say that there has been some development over the years: outlying fields having the odd house built upon them, old farms being turned into steadings, the biggest of which was to the north-west of the village around 20 years ago, with the addition of a small council estate. But the village has basically remained in it's very old formation for centuries, with the old common grazing ground in the middle: once the place to keep your sheep. You can see it in the photo - the massive patch of green to the top-right... In the past 200 years or so (since the need for having your own sheep nearby was no longer relevant, I presume) the field has been used for growing crops.

Ah, the memories - fields of barley to run through... (on the tractor tracks - we was good little people!); the hay bales to make fortresses out of in Autumn; the tall Summer grasses to make little palaces out of when it was a fallow year; the Bonfire Night festivities which my LS and I would watch from our Gran's living room window opposite the field, oohing and aahing at the fireworks when we were wee... This field is the heart (and soul, if you'll allow) of the village.

3 Years ago a housing developer approached the owner of the field in regards to buying it to build 28 houses, a shop and a flat there. There were many things they were proposing to change along with the building works and the village went up in arms. They were thankfully successful in blocking the move and we all breathed a sigh of relief.

Fast forward to April 2008 where there are major changes in the local council - new people in, old people out. Suddenly there are signs on the field telling us - TELLING US - that there will be works beginning in the early Summer 2008 on a new housing scheme on the field. 30 houses. ('affordable housing', so the sign informs us - how generous of them...)

Of course, it is inevitable. It is prime real estate. The owner is a greedy old bastard who is flagrantly going against his father's wishes in selling the field in the first place. (The family have been farmers here for generations.) But to shove 30 houses into a not-enormous village commons, a commons which is surrounded by ancient cottages and huge gardens, seems avaricious beyond belief.

It will affect a huge proportion of the village, considering that most of it was built up around the commons in the first place, and by the next time I'm home in October there will be nothing left of the centuries and centuries of history encompassed there. Nothing but the building works of 30 cramped-together houses, and memories.

*'Fife in History and Legend' by Raymond Lamont-Brown