December News 2013

December started well. I met up with a bunch of Gransnet friends, old and new, at the Royal Overseas League on Princes Street, Edinburgh. The organiser had got speakers from Genealogy Scotland, Scottish Beavers at Knapdale, the Children's Hospice Association of Scotland, and a supporter of the SNP's Scottish independence campaign. All the talks were interesting and informative. The last one in that list, which was actually first in the programme, generated the most discussion, as might be expected. I shall be voting No on 18 September 2014.
           The organiser of the meet up persuaded her brother and sister-in-law to come and lead a Scottish sing-song in the later part of the afternoon. Funny how all the non-Scots knew all the songs ;-) – Scottish culture and uniqueness is alive and well in the United Kingdom (not to mention the rest of the world). 

Some of us

Me laughing; can't remember at what.
There was lots of laughing.

A Rotary colleague and I have been getting a Rotakids club up and running at Luss Primary School on the banks of Loch Lomond. The certificate of its formation arrived on 2nd December so now it's official.

I took advantage of Toad working at home (and therefore the availability of the car) on the 9th to head Oban-wards to visit another gransnet friend, KintyreAnnie, who'd been transferred there with a very stubborn bout of pnuemonia. The pictures I took on the way there and back are here. Annie was in hospital for another week after my visit and had worked her way through an astonishing variety of anti-biotics. Thankfully something kicked in eventually and she recovered well. She expressed her appreciation of the care she received at the Lorn & Islands District General Hospital in a letter to the Oban Times.

I passed a number of vintage cars on my drive. I wonder if they were heading for Oban Airport for the "Le Jog" classic car rally?

At Taynuilt I noticed stone field walls that I'd like to have a closer look at some time; at Fearnoch it was oak trees; and in Oban itself evidence, in the form of piles of seaweed, on the landward side of the waterfront road of the storm that hit on 4-5th December (the storm that brought down our eucalyptus and old cherry trees).

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I've identified a few more of our garden mosses, and a lichen or two, this month. The moss count is up to nineteen. One of the fun things about looking at mosses through a microscope is seeing a variety of wee beasties that make the mosses their home. So far they've come in white and pink, with white legs and greens backs, and in segmented grey. Most are too tiny for me to see without magnification. Food for troglodytes and Paridae, I presume.

The old Salmonberry bush at the top of the garden has died. I broke up the branches and shoved it in the old goose house along with other small twigs and branches. More firewood.


Christmas came quietly to the boggy brae. The commercial razmataz holds no appeal. For me it's about celebrating the passing of the shortest day, celebrating without excess. It was not an untroubled day because Toadlet succumbed to a migraine. She had allowed herself to become dehydrated the day before. Beats me how a thirteen year old manages to do this so I'm beginning to wonder if she just doesn't feel thirst in the usual way. So now the question is: do we go back to the doctor and say the preventer medication didn't work, or do we first attempt some dehydration prevention? Maybe both. The phrase "learning the hard way" keeps popping into my mind. Once the up-chucking and bucket emptying was over we settled down to a pleasant Christmas meal with DivingDaughter (who had come over for a few days) of roast lamb and roast vegetables. Toadlet ate a boiled egg.


On the 29th Toad and I took part in the Archery Interchange UK (AIUK) Ironman Frostbite Challenge with Giffnock Archers on a draughty rugby field down Newton Mearns way. Toad had injured his lower back slightly the previous weekend and this came back at him towards the end of the tournament when he found he couldn't pull his full draw length because of pain and lack of strength. This affected his scores for the last few ends. Given how little outdoor practice at appropriate distances I'd had this winter, I was pleased with my shooting and my score, which happened to be the highest in my category, "Lady Recurve Barebow". My ability to shoot eighty-four arrows with my new Border limbs (that's archer talk for the bendy bits of the bow), which are a heavier draw than my old Samick limbs, also pleased me. I guess it means I've got used to them and can now concentrate on the finer points of shooting accurately.

Ready for the cold

A bit of the cherry tree

Late December sunrise

The back terrace

You can give your boots a wee rinse in the 'moat' before you step inside.
If water does run over the doorstep it doesn't matter as there's a drain in the concrete floor of this outhouse.

October News

The month ends in an ocean of worry for a friend who is missing in the Haute Savoie region of France. Carol was last seen on Sunday 27 October and no-one has been able to contact her since. She often went hiking in the mountains near where she lived  but never left indications of her plans with anyone so searching for her cannot be narrowed down very easily, especially as her car, a black Fiat Panda 4x4 licensed AZ522AP, has not been found. If anyone reading this feels they could help in the search in any way at all, either on the ground or with communications, please look at the Facebook page members of her family have set up for information.

Early in the month I heard from friends in Utah that their daughter-in-law, currently in Japan, had been taken to hospital with a threatened miscarriage. Margaret flew to Tokyo to help with the toddler. On 2 October the baby was delivered weighing 3lb. Last I heard he was doing well and Margaret flew back home in good time for her youngest son's wedding on the 26th.

Back here the inconvenience of having our car off the road for five and a half days for a major repair, the fitting of a new (well... secondhand; it's such an old rattletrap that 'new' parts no longer exist) rear axle pales into insignificance.

There was a parent's evening at Toadlet's school. I met five of her teachers. Liked them all. She's brilliant at art and chatting in class. No surprises there. She is much better at Maths and French than she thinks she is. And I was amused in particular by her PE teacher's assessment. He put it more diplomatically but he has clearly sussed her other great talents – a penchant for stubbornness (a useful trait; let's not knock it) and a certain scattiness. I seem to remember my mother rolling her eyes about my scattiness at a similar age. So, in short, she's doing fine. This month also marked the official start of her teenagerdom. One of her birthday presents was a trip to a hairdresser to get her hair purple dip dyed. It's much nicer than I thought it would be. In fact, I positively like it!

With a Rotary partner, Mary, I've been involved with setting up a Rotakids club at Luss Primary School, the same school that did the Loch Lomond Powan fish project which I spoke about here. We've had an initial chat with the kids and we'll get started properly next Tuesday.

Last night at Cubs we did a lantern walk – tea light in decorated marmalade jars (knew they'd come in handy) held on a stick with wire. About half of the time was spent re-lighting lanterns. Hey ho, ;-). We'd left Sumbdy's Dad back at the scout hut in charge of a camp-fire and cooking Bratwurst (we've had a German theme to our Global Challenge this term) which we ate dipped in tomato sauce that had had some mild curry powder mixed into it. All except one of the Cubs loved it. It was a fine night, which was a great bonus as the rain earlier in the day had been positively tropical, in its ferocity if not its temperature.

When I went out to empty the compost bucket this morning, I was surprised and delighted to see this lovely yellow dahlia, growing out of the compost heap but on the field side of the fence.

I shall call this the Hope Flower for Carol

Just near there is the old bird cherry tree with its fascinating gnarled growth. On the right of the following picture is where a large branch has been removed many years ago and where the sulphur polypore fungus grows in the summer.

Sulphur polypore fungus on 9 June

Looking up at some of the younger branches and their autumnal leaves

Autumnal peony leaves

Sunrise at the beginning of the month

And at the end

I leave you with the rain belting down again after a sunny morning and pleased to hear just now that the police in France have finally started an official search for Carol.

September News

September has been an awesome month for fungi at the boggy brae. See here and here for a few examples. By the end of the month the ash log looked like this:

Earlier this year at a Rotary meeting our District Conference, to be held at Crieff Hydro, was mentioned. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to go. On the one hand I'd never know quite what to expect if I didn't give it a go but on the other hand Rotary does have a reputation for rather more formality of dress than I wish to be bothered with nowadays. Our own club is pretty informal – it's good to find like minds where unnecessary formality of garb is concerned (especially at a time when school uniforms seem to be getting more rather than less formal; Toadlet has far more uniform rules to put up with/resist than her sisters had to deal with) – but I didn't know what to expect from the rest of the district. Toad and I have had no need of formal attire for a long time. So long a time, in fact, that we'd forgotten whether he actually possessed a 'lounge suit' for the Saturday evening dinner dance, which is what was specified for men if they weren't going the whole hog with 'black tie' or formal kilt! Then I vaguely remembered dust-covering a good jacket of his with an old nightshirt and, it turned out, he had a matching pair of trousers. He had to buy a new shirt though as his usual scruffs, which are fine most of the time, are not what you would call smart. As for ironed... well... tell me another joke! He baulked at wearing a tie and went cravatted instead. Well done, that man. If Rotary really wants to attract younger members, they could start by learning to 'chill' a bit about people's attire. Respectable is fine; formal – meh!

I wore some plain black trousers, and a silk tunic and scarf, which latter contained in its pattern the same colour as my new 'understated elegance' (some of my readers will get the joke about these) shoes: 

So, you see, we went. The decision was made when Toad mentioned a half-day Zoology conference in Oxford that he wanted to attend the same weekend. "You can't," I said, "We're going to Crieff that weekend." Funny how decisions get made when you think a choice is being removed from your grasp. Toadlet came too. She enjoyed staying in a proper hotel instead of the usual youth hostel or tent, and she especially enjoyed getting to go on two hacks on two different horses from the hydro riding stables.

I enjoyed the various talks and presentations and an enjoyable walk with a few others along the River Earn on the Saturday afternoon. The best speakers were the younguns, confirming the conference theme of "Today's Youth – Tomorrow's Rotarians". Eleven and twelve year olds from Luss Primary School spoke about their highly successful hatching of powan fish eggs and the release of the hatchlings into Loch Lomond. The powan fish is native to Loch Lomond and only Loch Lomond and is suffering from predation of its eggs by an alien invader fish. You can read more about their success here.

The Lussers were followed by three brilliant young debaters from the third and fourth year at Glasgow High School defining "Britishness" in the here and now. Other young speakers included three young professional women who had been on a group study exchange to India and spoke of their experiences, what they had learned and the friendships they had made. Two members of Renfrew Interact Club came and spoke, with much humour and evident enjoyment, about what they get up to, and there was a presentation by members of the district Youth Leadership Award scheme.

The older, more practised Rotarian speakers were no less interesting in what they had to say but my overall impression was that they simply had too much to say. Perhaps they had not had the benefit of learning how to be succinct that the younger people clearly had. Or maybe young people are just better at cutting through padding and speaking more to the point.

The only thing I really disliked about the conference was the fact that (a) there was a Sunday morning religious 'service', and (b) it was overtly christian in flavour instead of being, as in my opinion it should if there must be a service at all, non-denominational, even non-religious, while still encompassing the universal secular values and ethics of all Rotarians whether they are religious or not. I did give some 'feedback' about this on one of the available forms, though whether anyone will take any notice remains to be seen. In my view secularity is something else Rotary officials need to think about if they want to attract more young people to become Rotarians.

Overall an enjoyable weekend, and the food was fab.

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The first half of September was quite cold, marking the getting out of sheepskin slippers and the stacking of the winter wood supply. The second half was milder and typified by the penultimate day of the month when Little She Bear and I used my last year's christmas present from DivingDaughter – a champagne tea at a local hotel. We went for a wee walk on the loch moraine afterwards while the tide was out and enjoyed the blueness of the day and looking across at the beauty of our home ground.

Happy October, folks!