PAPER!

Town Mouse has posted about the difficulty of getting a newspaper in the wilds of Dumfries and Galloway. Either bike or drive. Cycling to get one was never much of an option for the Huttonian ensemble. The nearest newsagent involves a crossing of the notorious Bluestane Ford-impassable after rain or when the Whiteadder Reservoir has one of its regular water lettings, said to be Wednesdays but could happen, without notice, just at the time one was wobbling across with the Grudiuan in the wife's swallow crap streaked basket. A rumble, a whoosh and you are on Spittal Beach with all the other flotsams and jetsams and soggy (and worse, unread) journals.

For our first few years we enjoyed the services of Dave the Paper. Sometimes arriving in his ancient land rover ,used when the other car was off the road having come off worse with an encounter with a (the?) local deer. Rain, shine, snow, ice-Bambis permitting, he would be there. He gave up as there was little money in it and after a court case when he was sued by an indigent customer who thought she had been intimidated by Dave when she had failed to pay his bill. He could look a bit intimidating with his barrel chest and jutting beard but was, in truth, a gentle giant and may, admittedly have been a bit cheesed off as the account remained unsettled for several months. I like to think that my character evidence secured his discharge. But he gave up his huge 6 hour Merse round in disgust

Now we take it in turns to get the papers (by car, I fear) with a neighbour. He insists on the English Edition of the Daily Mail which is not widely available outside Berwick-try asking for it in Greenlaw-dirty looks and no paper. But both newsagents in Duns have it (one more then than now) and the tiny shop in Chirnside which also takes the Guardian and the Observer. But the process is not always hazard free. Last Thursday one of the newsagents in Duns handed the Mail back to me saying, disapprovingly 'This is the English version' I agreed and said that I actually wanted it and handed it back for the scan commenting that she seemed to stock quite a few. 'No accounting for taste' She then said 'But you have two Berwickshire's. I agreed, again, explaining I got one for the same neighbour who reads the English edition of the Daily Mail. Her eyebrows disappeared into her hairline as if to say ' English Daily Mail, Scottish Berwickshire' There really is no accounting for taste'

But she should know that in Kirk Lane:

we are a broadminded lot.

One image is from the Scottish Daily Mail-same bugs as in England but possibly more of them-especially Midges.

And the other is of the Irish Daily Mail-won't get that in Greenlaw. But Town Mouse will find it in Dumfries-the high road to Stranraer-if desperate enough.

Labels: Berwickshire News, Daily Mail, English newspapers

  ¶ 9:13 AM