Musings from the Merse
Sunday, June 22, 2008
FLODDEN FIELD-REVISITED
To instill some instant culture we took two Antipodean friends to Flodden Field, the scene of a serious own goal by the Scots in 1513 and soon to be at its 500th anniversary. What fun that will be for every patriotic Englishmen. Flodden has no interpretive centre as such but there are the odd information boards and you can walk the battlefield walk and wonder at the suicidical tactics of the Scots, culminating in the King, James IV dismounting from his horse to join the pikemen on foot and being chopped to pieces by the English swordsmen who made short work of the wooden pikes.. The only real winners were Hume's Borderers who left the battle at half time with their loot thus leaving a hole in the Scottish centre which the English exploited killing about 10,000 Scots and losing 4,000 of their own side. All in a single afternoon
The best view of the battlefield is from the Flodden memorial on Branxton Hill-as in one image above. This is looking south from the English lines towards the Scottish positions on the hill to the south-the killing grounds were in the valleys in between.
The best description of the battle can be found in Branxton Church where the body of James IV lay the night after the battle-and then taken in triumph to London where it was buried in an unmarked grave.
A big blow for the Scots and all because they did the French a favour.
Moral there somewhere
(click on the images for greater detail)
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Congratulations to the Coldstream Pipe band for doing what VisitScotland should be doing -attracting our French cousins to the Borders. See opening of a story in this weeks Berwick Advertiser:
THE entente cordial is alive and well between Scotland and France and bride Christele Roy and groom Philippe Derrien were the first French couple to marry in the newly refurbished Coldstream Marriage Room.
When Coldstream Pipe Band visited Mont Brisson last October Philippe, a member of the audience at one of the band's performances, got chatting to bass drummer Alex Thomson and explained that he and Christele were planning a visit to Gretna Green to marry. Alex explained about Coldstream Marriage Room and put the couple in touch with his wife Joy of Coldstream Weddings Personified.
The sad fact is that everyone has heard of Gretna Green, once the target for young eloping couples from south of the Border and narry a soul of a similar facility in Coldstream, until now that is. And it is cheering to see the Gallic groom in a kilt:
The Waterloo Hunting Tartan?
Mind you there is a lot to do before more French couples will be flocking over to tie the knot over here: 'Coldstream in the Spring' or 'Scotland's First Border Toon for lovers' don't quite trip off the tongue
Labels: Coldstream Wedding Room, French, the Borders
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
L'Affaire Societe Generale has left Hutton mostly unmoved and has not even rated a mention in the Berwickshire News So I am indebted to this news item for further enlightenment on the (allegedly) fraudalent activities of this outstanding example of a cheese eating surrender monkey.
FRENCH TRADER WAS FORCED TO WORK 30 HOURS A WEEK
FRIENDS of rogue trader Jerome Kerviel last night blamed his $7 billion losses on unbearable levels of stress brought on by a punishing 30 hour week.
Kerviel hid his November losses in a batch of wonderfully fresh croissant
Kerviel was known to start work as early as nine in the morning and still be at his desk at five or even five-thirty, often with just an hour and a half for lunch.
One colleague said: "He was, how you say, une workaholique. I have a family and a mistress so I would leave the office at around 2pm at the latest, if I wasn't on strike.
"But Jerome was tied to that desk. One day I came back to the office at 3pm because I had forgotten my stupid little hat, and there he was, fast asleep on the photocopier.
"At first I assumed he had been having sex with it, but then I remembered he'd been working for almost six hours."
As the losses mounted, Kerviel tried to conceal his bad trades by covering them with an intense red wine sauce, later switching to delicate pastry horns.
At one point he managed to dispose of dozens of transactions by hiding them inside vol-au-vent cases and staging a fake reception.
Last night a spokesman for Sócíété Générálé denied that Kerviel was overworked, insisting he lost the money after betting that the French were about to stop being rude, lazy, arrogant bastards."
The author is not named nor the provenance clear but one gets the impression that the writer is not much of a Francophile.
The croissant in question (allegedly) is pictured above
Labels: French, Frogs, Societe Generale
