Category Archives: Personal

Eric Brown – author, family man, friend and a true gentleman

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Eric Brown

March was a very sad month for us as our dear friend of over 30 years Eric Brown unexpectedly got the worst news possible. The medication just didn’t work and his hopes of being able to hang around for between two to five years faded, and it was down to a couple of weeks at best. We still can’t believe it, but yesterday we were at his humanist funeral, along with his much beloved family and many friends and neighbours. This afternoon I actually managed to get some gardening done, and I found myself thinking because he was a keen gardener, ‘I must tell Eric ….’ it’ll be some time before it all sinks in.

Eric was a well-known SF author and more recently he turned to crime fiction with his Langham and Dupre series, set in the 1950s, right up my street. He was lovely enough to dedicate one of his books to Jack and myself. Truly you couldn’t find a better human being, it all seems so unfair. He was 62.

Anyway, the poem below was part of his service.

Poem by Mary Fry

He chose The Byrds Turn! Turn! Turn! as his final music.

Boxing Day walk near Errol, Perth and Kinross

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Christmas this year was hosted by one of our sons and his wife so we travelled to rural Perthshire on Christmas morning, the small twisty turny roads were fairly empty. It was lovely not to be doing all the cooking and a good time was had by all. On Boxing Day we went for a crisp walk around the countryside which surrounds the nearby village. It was a wee bit icy underfoot in parts.

Winter Walk, Errol, Perthshire, Scotland

The photos below are of the wee village of Errol, if you want to see them enlarged click on the photos. The church in the photo dates from 1833 so it’s quite new, but the bells still ring out the hours and one of them is cracked. It sounds quite charming somehow. My strange looking shadow is towards the right of the second photo.

winter Walk, near Errol, Perthshire

Winter Walk, near Errol, Perthshire

All of us in shadow form. We’re shy!

Winter Walk, near Errol, Perthshire

From these photos the area looks fairly flat but in the photo below there is a snow covered hill which I think was probably a Pictish hill fort thousands of years ago. The River Tay is not far from the path we were walking on and that of course is famous for salmon fishing, but nowadays any salmon caught must be put back in the river – carefully.

Winter Walk, near Errol Perthshire

Well we walked off some of our Christmas dinner calories, I hope!

My Autumnal Garden

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A couple of weeks ago I took some photos of my autumnal garden as I thought that the leaves wouldn’t be hanging on for much longer.

The acers (Japanese maples) are looking good, as you would expect.

acer, my garden

acer , Japanese Maple, my garden

acer, Japanese maple, my garden

Our weather has been so mild that everything is confused about the seasons, with some birds actually starting to nest again. As you can see the ceanothus (Californian lilac) beolw, which normally flowers in July and August, has begun to bloom again. It’s more than a wee bit worrying!

ceanothus , garden

I think the berry tree below is some sort of cotoneaster. It has lovely bright berries anyway and at the moment I’m trying to turn it into a manageable shrub rather than the too big tree it was becoming.

berries, my garden

The hebe (Veronica) is always a good splash of colour in the garden at this time of the year.

hebe, Veronica

Below are some general views of parts of the garden.

garden

my garden

my garden

The photo below is of one of my favourite plants Viburnum tinus, the birds love it for the berries, it’s evergreen and the flowers last so long too.

viburnum, my garden

Don’t look at the leaves on the rose below! I have no idea what the rose is called but it flowers like mad and the cold weather seems to have no effect on it at all, it gets really big so I’ll have to be brave and whack it back. Sadly it has no scent.

pink rose, my garden

Two weeks on from when I took these photos, the begonia and fuchsias are still going strong. I can’t bring myself to clear the begonia away until it dies from the cold. The fuchsias will be good for next year though, I’ll give them some shelter over the winter.

begonia, fuchsia

It was a strange gardening year as it was much hotter and drier than we are used to here in the east of Scotland. You would think that that would be a good thing but the flowers didn’t last nearly as long as they usually do and it was sad to see blooms over and done with so quickly. Yes – we gardeners are never happy!

Saint Giles’s Cathedral

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My brother, the one who was the Scottish soldier in my previous post about the Queen – Elizabeth the Great as she is sometimes being called now – suggested that we might need our heads examined when he phoned me tonight from the Netherlands and I told him that we had been in the queue to get into Saint Giles’s to pay respects to the Queen. But it seemed like the right thing to do, although it’s something I would never have imagined I would have done. But that brief glimpse we got of the hearse when we were on the motorway bridge near Kinross as she travelled down from Aberdeenshire to Edinburgh didn’t seem like enough.

St Giles's Cathedral at Night.

We knew that we wouldn’t be allowed to take any photos in the cathedral and I must admit that when it said on the radio news that the queues were so long we might have to shuffle along for as much as seven hours before getting into the catherdral, I assumed that would be an exaggeration, it was slightly, it turned out we were in the queue for five hours. Luckily it was a dry night, otherwise we would have given up I think. We weren’t alone, thirty-three thousand other people felt the need too. The photo below shows a small part of the queue snaking though the Meadows in Edinburgh. We were about an hour in by that point.

Queue In The Meadows Edinburgh

It was 3.30 am before we got in there for our four minutes or so, but it was certainly an experience, there was nobody in tears, it was just very dignified and serene. But still, as we left, I couldn’t stop myself from looking back a few times, it still seemed unreal.

This photo from the television coverage was taken before we left for St Giles’s.

Queen at Rest in St Giles's Cathedral

The Queen, opening yet another building

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Everyone seems to be relating their experiences of meeting the Queen, but that’s something that I never did although she did zoom past me in her very posh car when I was about six years old. My school had been taken to the street outside the school so we could see her going past. She had been in Dumbarton to open the new county council offices, and John my biggest big brother, who is twelve years older than me was part of the guard.

If you look at the photo below the Queen’s left shoulder is situated right in the middle of John’s chest. He had been in the Territorial Army, I think he joined to learn to drive and they also went skiing and mountaineering. I don’t suppose he ever thought he would end up being inspected by the Queen. They were kitted out with very special uniforms and they weren’t even allowed to put anything in the sporran, so after it was over and he went home he didn’t have a key to get into the house and everyone else was either at work or school. So he climbed in via the kitchen window and not long after that the police arrived as a neighbour had phoned them to say that our house was being burgled. We still laugh about it – as who could believe that anyone would go burgling in full Highland dress uniform?!

Doesn’t the Queen look so young though.

Jackie

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

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I’m not a mad Royalist but I’ve always loved the Queen. THEY say that All good things must come to an end. But honestly today’s sad news of the death of the Queen at her beloved Balmoral, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary or Lilibet as she was known to some – is something that I have been dreading for some time. I had daftly hoped that she could go on forever, the one mainstay in all our lives. She has had a lot to put up with recently, family wise and politician wise, and of course with the loss of Prince Philip just over a year ago she must have been very lonely, family can only do so much to help. It looked like she was just waiting her turn to join him – wherever.

We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

The painting below is by Pietro Annigoni.

queen

Springtime walk – daffodils

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Daffodils , Balbirnie

Over the past week my morning walk for the newspaper has been brighter and sunnier than usual. It’s the daffodils that are doing it. The poor things have been taking a wee bit of a battering from the wind, but they’re tougher than they look.

Daffodils, Balbirnie

These ones are at Balbirnie, a place that has become a lot busier since lockdown!

Daffodils , Balbirnie

A snowy walk in Fife

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garden snow 2

Yesterday we woke up to about five inches of snow which had fallen overnight. The first real snow of the winter, prior to that we had only had sprinklings overnight which only lingered on the grass. I had been able to smell snow for a few nights running earlier in the week, but that must have been on its way to England as unusually they got it before we did. Above is a photo of my back garden.

Balbirnie Snow, Scotland

Balbirnie Snow, Fife, Scotland, trees

The walk for the paper was actually easier than it had been as for weeks on end we had had to walk gingerly on grass that was so icy it resembled an ice floe. I can’t honestly say it was cold either.

Balbirnie Snow, Fife

If you look at the right hand side of the photo below you’ll see some kids having a fine time sledging. There’s not much home schooling going on – and who can blame them, it’ll be the first real snow that these kids have seen in their lives probably.

Balbirnie Snow , Fife

Balbirnie Snow, Fife

It’s a strange sort of snow, I’m sure that if we got lots of snow we would have a special word to describe it but I can only say that it’s soft powdery stuff which is very pretty as it looks like individual snow particles are glistening in the sun instead of it all being lumped together and smooth.

Balbirnie, snow, trees

The Balbirnie estate gates are enhanced by snow, it settles on the stonework of the gateposts. It’s a pity there’s a car parked there otherwise it would look white Christmas card-ish.
Balbirnie Gates, snow, Fife

This morning there was even more snow, we now have about nine inches of the stuff!

Golf Course Walk

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In normal times when we go for a walk locally on Sunday we rarely saw anyone else, but last Sunday we had to veer off the woodland paths as there were so many people on them!

a frozen golf course

We decided the golf course would be a safer option, there were some kids sliding in the bunkers as they are full of ice at the moment, but they were off in the distance, it was good to see them having some fun. The patches of ice in the photos are where the ground was flooded with all the rain we’ve had. The golf course is closed at the moment which seems a bit strange to me as I’m sure it’s very easy for them to play and stay socially distanced.

frozen golf course

The photo below is of a frozen water hazard which claims to be five feet deep and has a life belt by it, just out of shot. That’s some hazard.

frozen golf course

The grass itself was very icy but we managed to stay upright, as usual we weren’t all that keen to go out walking in the cold but felt we needed the exercise, we did feel virtuous when we got home though!