Glamis Castle grounds

30 August 2012 23:47

The long driveway which leads to Glamis Castle is flanked by fields of cattle, if you have to be a cow this is one of the best places to be one I think. Good grass, lovely trees to hide from the sun, when we get it, not a bad life – for a while anyway.

cows at Glamis Castle, Angus, Scotland

This fountain is just beyond the field of cows and if you’re in the castle you would be looking out on to it from the front windows, unfortunately it wasn’t up and running, which is a pity because I love fountains and for some reason there aren’t enough of them in Britain. Nice trees though, the whole area is well planted tree wise. As you can see from the blue rope there was some sort of festival going on at Glamis and they were busy preparing the grounds for it.

A fountain at Glamis Castle

Going beyond the castle you come to this dinky wee bridge which I just had to have a look at, bridges being something else I’m keen on. We never did find out what was over the bridge as you can see you aren’t meant to go over it. There were a few cars coming over it in the other direction, belonging to the Strathmore family I suppose.

Stone bridge at Glamis Castle, Angus, Scotland

These two statues are of Stuart kings. This one is James VI of Scotland – he was Mary, Queen of Scots’ son and when Elizabeth I of England died with no heir, he was next in line for the English throne. He’s known as James I in England and he is probably best known nowadays as the man who had the bible translated into English – hence it being known as the King James bible.

King James VI of Scotland

This one is King Charles I (Stuart)

King Charles I

He was a bit ‘thrawn’ as we say and his determination to hold on to all of his power led to him having his head chopped off which more or less ended the English Civil War (which actually spread all over Britain.) It was about fifteen years later the Restoration brought his son, Charles II, back as king.

Captain Hook from J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan is traditionally modelled on Charles I.

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Categories: Scenery, Scottish History, Scottish literature

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Glamis Castle, Angus,Scotland

29 August 2012 23:38

During the last week of the school holidays we took ourselves off for a day trip up to the Kirriemuir area, north of Dundee. Well the sun was shining and you know what it’s like, you feel you have to grab every good day that comes when the summer has been so pathetic. Before I go any further I must just mention that Glamis is pronounced Glamz, the ‘i’ is silent. I saw on a blogpost written by an English person recently that it should be ‘Glarms’. Well it gave me a laugh anyway because of course it’s an appearance of the sound of an extra ‘r’ which people from the south of England somehow manage to conjure up in their speech, which makes things like the phrase law and order sound like Laura Noddah – while they miss out the letter ‘r’ when it is there to be pronounced.

Glamis Castle distant

Driving past the sign for Glamis village we decided that we would stop off there on the way back and have a look at the castle. Unfortunately this meant that we were too late to actually go into it as by then it was after 5 o’clock. Luckily the grounds are open until 6 o’clock so we took a walk down the driveway and we walked and walked and we almost gave up but then decided that we must be at least half-way there so we eventually made it. It was supposed to be a kilometre but I think that it must have been a country one!

Glamis Castle closer

This castle was the childhood home of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the lady known to my generation as the Queen Mother although of course to older people she was the Queen. She was particularly loved for taking the job on when she hadn’t expected to have to, due to the dastardly abdicating behaviour of Edward VIII (as wasn’t). You can read more about the castle’s history here.

Glamis Castle close

As you can see, it’s a Scottish baronial castle and is set in beautiful countryside, but more of the surroundings another time.

Glamis Castle turrets+flag

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Categories: Architecture, Scenery, Scottish History

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The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope

29 August 2012 14:59

First published in 1872, The Eustace Diamonds is the third book in Trollope’s Palliser series and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I read it on my Kindle although I have a paperback copy of it and at 770 pages it’s the usual Anthony Trollope chunkster.

Lizzie Greystock is the only child of Admiral Greystock who died penniless and in debt, and as Lizzie’s mother is already dead it means that Lizzie needs to marry money to make her way in the world. She’s not going to earn an honest living as a governess, as many women in her position have done before.

Lizzie learned a lot from her father and has the same spendthrift ways, nevertheless she manages to hook a wealthy husband who is already seriously ill, Sir Florian Eustace dies within a year, probably hastened by Lizzie’s behaviour as he soon realises that she’s an avaricious minx. He leaves her an estate in Scotland for her lifetime and plenty of money. Well, it would be enough money for most people but as Lizzie has always lived way beyond her means she can’t change her ways and still finds herself in debt and having to frequent the pawnbroker’s office.

She has in her possession a diamond necklace valued at £10,000 and although it has been handed down in the Eustace family for generations Lizzie chooses to regard the Eustace Diamonds as her own property, rather than something which should be kept for future generations, particularly her baby son Florian Eustace. Legal battles ensue. Lizzie is one of those peope who just can’t tell the truth, and quickly comes to believe in her own lies. It’s fair to say that if Lizzie were in a panto we’d all be hissing at her but she’s so ghastly she actually manages to get decent people on her side. I think nowadays she’d be described as being ‘a piece of work’.

In tandem with that storyline is the fortunes of Lucy Morris, in a similar situation to Lizzie, she opts to become a governess and earns her own way in the world and is the exact opposite sort of character to Lizzie. She’s honest and true and wins the heart of Frank Greystock, a good man although he has inherited the same spendthrift Greystock genes as Lizzie, he is really in need of a rich wife who can help him on in his political career. Frank is Lizzie’s cousin and he becomes embroiled in the whole murky Eustace affair.

Well, that’s as much as I’m going to say about the storyline, if you haven’t read the Palliser series you might like to start from the beginning with Can You Forgive Her? which you can download for free from Project Gutenberg.

On a personal note I was absolutely amazed when the action in the book shifted to Ayrshire in Scotland, and to what I’m sure was Culzean Castle although in the book it’s called Portray Castle. We recently visited Culzean, you can see my post here and if you know it I’m sure you’ll agree that this passage from the book describes the place perfectly, it begins:

‘The castle stood on a bluff of land, with a fine prospect of the Firth of Clyde, and with a distant view of the isle of Arran.’

It’s a long description but it all fits with Culzean so I’m sure Trollope must have been there at some point. This and the fact that two of the characters ended up getting married in the episcopal church in Ayr, which happens to be the church which my brother-in-law was curate of way back in the 1970s, meant that I was recognising places as well as characters, because Trollope was so good at writing about people, their thoughts and experiences.

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Categories: Books, Scenery, Scottish History

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The Old Scottish Alphabet

27 August 2012 00:39

Have you ever wondered why so many Scottish names are pronounced entirely differently from how they look? Well in the case of words with a Y or a Z in them it’s quite simply because the letter of the alphabet which was originally used to spell it is now no longer in use because it’s archaic.

Think of the names Dalziel, Dalyell (both of which are pronounced Dee-ell).

Then there’s Culzean (Cull-ane)

The name MacKenzie comes originally from MacConnachie/MacKennie/MacKinney …

Then of course there’s Menzies which should be Ming-iss.

There are a lot more I’m sure but I can’t think of them at the moment. Anyway, you get the idea.

The letter of the alphabet which is no longer in use, and causes the confusion is yogh and you can read about it here in an article about Scottish handwriting.

Yogh looked like the letter z with an extra loop on the bottom, or sometimes like a 3 slightly below the line. I’m sure you’ll probably remember seeing it on old documents if you like perusing things like that.

I’m mentioning it because when we went to visit Culzean Castle recently the guide told us that he had no idea why it was pronounced Cull-ane, I suppose it was originally Cull-yane. Anyway, we enlightened him after the tour and he was going to add it to his explanations. I thought it was something which was commonly known, but maybe not.

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Categories: Scottish History, Scottish words

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Scottish Politics, Independence and Energy

26 August 2012 00:20

You might know that the Scottish Independence campaign seems to have been kicked off in Edinburgh yesterday with both Alex Salmond and Gordon Brown giving speeches on the subject. It isn’t all that often that I dip a toe into politics, usually it’s just when I feel the need to have a wee bit of a rant but James Stafford of Oil Price sent me a copy of an interview with Alex Salmond, and I suppose we should all be gathering as much information as we can, prior to voting for or against Scottish independence in the 2014 referendum. It’s quite a long interview but if you’re interested you can have a look at it here.

I had been intending to do a post on Scottish politics anyway, because Cardinal Wotsisname, head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland is having what in my family I call a huff-huff in a huff-tree – in other words he isn’t speaking to the Scottish Government at the moment because it’s likely that gay marriage will become law in Scotland at some point in the future.

Actually, despite my having no interest in any religion I do have some sympathy with them, although I understand that under no circumstances would priests, ministers, rabbis and the like be forced to perform marriage ceremonies for gay couples, I can’t really understand why gay people would WANT to be married in a religious ceremony. It sort of smacks of them poking a big stick at an already sore spot.

Homosexual couples can already become civil partners at a registry office, just as many heterosexual couples have done for years. It’s exactly the same for them all and heterosexual couples don’t go about saying that they had a civil partnership nowadays, it’s just called a wedding or marriage, no matter what it might be officially. I can’t see that what it’s called matters at all, it comes to the same thing, and if they want to break up then they’ll have to get a divorce like anyone else, in fact it seems to me that it’s all just more money for lawyers – as usual! Will getting hitched in a church make any difference? Well it hasn’t done for heterosexual couples.

But, to get back to the cardinal. I know how the next verse of his ‘I’m Not Speaking To You’ song goes, I’m sure everyone else knows too. It’s something like this:

If you don’t do what I want you to do Mr Salmond – then I will tell all of my flock that they must vote against Scottish Independence and the SNP in general. (The tune is Gleeful.)

Given that the turnout for any sort of election is woefully low now, that sort of manipulation could make a big difference. To make matters even more worrying, it’s a well known fact that until very recently the Catholic Church, in common with others was ‘fizzling’ out. They have even closed the seminary because they had no trainee priests. However in recent years they have had a big boost to congregations, due entirely to the eastern European economical migrants who have settled temporarily in Scotland.

The upshot of that is that the whole future of Scotland might be held in the hands of people who have no real interest in the future of the country, because they know that they’ll only be here for a few years, then they’ll go back home again.

It’s those evil twin subjects which should always be avoided in polite company – politics and religion. I know I’m being terribly impolite but it’s a bit of a worry when religious people with power over a lot of voters insist in flexing their muscles.

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Categories: Politics

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Toad in the Hole – a recipe containing sausages

25 August 2012 00:19

No toads were harmed whilst making this dish.

Toad in the Hole

Toad in the Hole sounds disgusting, doesn’t look an awful lot better but it is a very tasty and economical meal. This isn’t something which I was given as a child, in fact I must have been over 20 when I first tasted it as that’s when I made it for my husband. It had been a staple of his childhood. My mother regarded it as TOO ENGLISH for us – being Scots and I think she objected to the pork meat which ‘link’ sausages usually contained, she preferred Scottish beef. Anyway, I’m sure it’s a well known recipe but in case it’s new to you – here goes!

Cooking time 35: – 40 minutes
Oven temperature:- 450-475 F. Gas Mark 7-8
then 375 F. Gas Mark 4-5

For the Hole
Basic pancake batter:

4 oz plain flour
1 or 2 eggs
half a pint of milk

For the Toad:
A splash of cooking oil
1 lb of sausages

Make the pancake batter in the usual way. Use 2 eggs if you want a richer mix.

Then put the cooking oil into a large metal roasting tin and heat in the oven for about 4 minutes. I cut each sausage into three pieces to make sure they’ll be properly cooked through but I’m sure it isn’t really necessary. Add the sausages to the roasting tin and heat in the oven for about 8-10 minutes.

Remove from the oven and carefully pour the pancake batter mix over the sausages. Cook in a very hot oven for the first 10 minutes, until the mix is beginning to rise. Lower the heat to moderate and bake until golden brown.

The edges will be quite crisp whilst the middle will have a softer consistency. Halved tomatoes or mushrooms can be added in with the sausages if you want to make it a bit different. Serve with a side salad.

I always use really nice sausages, you can get all sorts of different types now of course with added herbs, leeks, wine, beer and even cheese.

The oven temperatures and times may differ slightly depending on your oven.

This post is linked to Weekend Cooking at Beth Fish Reads. Hop over and have a look at what other people have been cooking up.

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Categories: Recipes

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The Village by Marghanita Laski

23 August 2012 22:16

The Village cover

This is the first book by Marghanita Laski which I’ve read but I’ll definitely be reading more in the future. It was first published in 1952 and my copy is one of the books which I stumbled upon recently in one of those bookshops in Edinburgh which I didn’t even know existed, close by the east gate of the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens. It’s not a Persephone, it’s one of those Companion Book Club publications, just in case you’re interested in such things.

The story begins the night World War II ended. The inhabitants of the village of Priory Dean aren’t quite sure what they should be doing now that there is no need to worry about air raids and casualties of war. They’ve been dancing in the streets and the whole place is practically unrecognisable as they can actually see now that there’s no blackout.

Mrs Trevor and Mrs Wilson come to the same decision separately and so both take themselves off to their usual destination – the Village Hall where they would normally be on Red Cross duty, each of them dressed in the Red Cross uniform. They had always liked each other but they were from entirely different backgrounds and in fact Mrs Wilson had been a ‘domestic’ for Mrs Trevor in the past.

They have a lot in common really, their families are uppermost in their thoughts but Mrs Trevor is seen as one of the upper class families and lives in a large house while Mrs Wilson lives in Station Road which is a very much poorer part of the village.

A sense of ‘class’ stops them from being friends and when a romance springs up between their grown-up children – Margaret Trevor and Roy Wilson – the Trevors are appalled at the thought of their eldest daughter having anything to do with the Wilsons. But Roy Wilson had been a sergeant in the army and is determined that things are going to be different now that he’s in civvy street and earning very good money as a printer. As far as he’s concerned the forelock tugging days are over.

This is an entertaining and at times quite comical read. I saw a comment on a blog recently to the effect that all English novels were about class, it made me laugh but I did think that it was a wee bit unfair, because ‘class’ is a universal thing. Think of Mark Twain and Louisa M. Alcott. To Kill a Mockingbird is as much about class as it is about racism. I’ve always found Germans to be much more concerned about class than Brits are and every Polish person I’ve ever known has claimed to be of aristocratic blood!

So yes it is about class and the fact that Margaret Trevor has ‘no sense of class’ despite the fact that she is supposed to be from one of the ‘better’ families. She was the heroine of the story, unloved and taken for granted by her snobbish family, she rose above it all whilst they thought she was marrying down.

The world of Priory Dean seemed so familiar to me, in the 1970s, when I was young, there were still some dinosaur types around who thought they were better than everyone else but were penniless and up to their eyes in debt. Have they all shuffled off now? I hope so but you can never be quite sure.

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Categories: Books

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Beveridge Park, Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland

22 August 2012 23:30

Beveridge Park in Kirkcaldy is one of those lovely old parks which sprang up at the back end of the 19th century. The postcard below shows the lovely old gate posts and gates as they were originally. Sadly they’ve gone from bad to worse in recent years. In common with most parks and homes the gates and railings disappeared sometime during World War II. They were removed as part of the war effort, the metal was supposed to be needed for war work – building ships or aeroplanes and the like.

Beveridge Park Gates, Kirkcaldy

Of course it was just a propaganda con to make the British people feel that they were contributing and helping Britain fight the Nazi terror. The metalwork just rusted away in dumps as it wasn’t the correct sort of metal. I’m annoyed about that because it would cost about £3,000 to replace ours!

I’m even more annoyed about the state of the gates now. I took the photo below just a couple of weeks ago and as you can see one of the lovely old red sandstone gateposts has gone. Apparently it was demolished by the back end of a circus trailer as it went through the gateway. That was over a year ago and absolutely nothing has happened since then.

Beveridge Park Gates 2012

I know it can take a long time for insurance claims to be settled but over a year seems just too long. Has there been a problem with the insurance, was the circus vehicle insured, who was stupid enough to allow a circus to set up business in the park? I think we should be told.

The entrance to the park is a pitiful sight when compared with how it used to look. New gates should have been commissioned for the centenary celebrations, it would be nice to think that the powers that be might think about doing it now or when they eventually get around to rebuilding the gatepost – if they ever do!

The Kirkcaldy Council should sort out the park gateway, instead of spending bucketloads of money on things like speed bumps which are completely useless, their only function seems to be to give work to the local car repair workshops as the bumps wreck the sills of some cars, no matter how they go across them, no matter how careful they are.

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Categories: Local interest

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The new Sonia Wayward by Michael Innes

21 August 2012 22:59

The new Sonia Wayward

I’ve been meaning to participate in the Crime Fiction Alphabet hosted by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise, for weeks now, but somehow I was always just too late. Anyway, here I go now, this week’s letter is N and I’ve read a Michael Innes book which was first published in 1960.

The new Sonia Wayward is an unusual book because there are no really likeable characters in it, which for me anyway is usually a real turn off in a book but this one manages to overcome that huge disadvantage.

It begins with the very sudden death of Colonel Ffolliot Petticate’s wife, Sonia Wayward, whilst they are out sailing in their small yacht. It’s a financial disaster for her husband as Sonia was earning the money as a writer of very popular fiction. The colonel is retired from the army and only has a small pension to live on.

After imbibing a large quantity of whisky to settle his nerves, he decides to dispose of Sonia overboard, with the intention of telling everyone that she is travelling, it’s important to pretend that she’s still alive, so that he can continue to live his very comfortable life. He takes on the task of finishing Sonia’s latest novel and fends off all inquiries as to Sonia’s whereabouts.

At the beginning the Colonel decides to keep the lies and deceit to the minimum, but they multiply like crazy and he finds himself in a very sticky situation when his live-in servants become suspicious as to the fate of their employer.

That’s really just the bare bones of the book as I don’t like to say too much about crime fiction, but this book is absolutely full of twists and turns from the very beginning and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Michael Innes was born in Edinburgh in 1906, was educated at Edinburgh University and Oriel College, Oxford and went on to become a Professor of English at various universities. He had a very long writing career which you can read about here. He also wrote under his real name, J.I.M. Stewart, and those books are also well worth reading.

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Categories: Books

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Brave – the film

20 August 2012 23:28

We don’t go to the flicks all that often, which is a shame because I do enjoy going out to see a film but there’s hardly ever anything on which I want to see. There was a lovely wee film called La Luna on just before Brave and it was worth dragging myself out just for that one alone.

I wasn’t at all sure about going to see Brave because I thought it might just be a 21st century version of Brigadoon but I must admit that I did enjoy it, and it was such a relief that the Scottish accents were authentic, not the usual phoney ones which grate on the ears of anyone who really knows what a proper Scottish accent should sound like, mind you there are so many different accents within Scotland.

Basically Brave has all the elements of a classic fairy tale or mythology. The king and queen are looking for a suitable husband for their beautiful daughter so the lords of all the various far-flung parts of the kingdom travel to the palace in an attempt to get their eldest sons married to the princess. So far so like the beginning of Song of Achilles in cartoon form. Throw in an old witch with a cauldron and spells for added humour, especially her call menu of potions.

Princess Medira has developed a mind of her own though and she isn’t going to conform just because her parents expect her to marry. She wants ‘freedom’ – is there a rule now that that word has to be used in films set in Scotland, since Braveheart? Brave is about all sorts of things like times changing, things not being as they seem and is all for independent women, particularly princesses with long red hair. What a shame I neglected to be born a princess.

We were told that this film was for children but the film theatre was full of adults, just a few kids, who all behaved themselves after the one who was sitting next to me and wailing all the time was taken out. I don’t think it was anything to do with me! She was just too tired and too young.

Alex Salmond, the First Minister – or in other words ‘the high heid yin’ went out to the US to see the premier of Brave as it is hoped that it will encourage people to visit Scotland. I can’t quite see that myself, it’s not as if there was any real Scottish scenery in it, it is a cartoon after all. It sounds like clutching at straws to me. Surely everyone knows by now that Scotland is a great place to visit, if it doesn’t rain.

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Categories: Films

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