SOMETHING TO GROUSE ABOUT?



Around the Lammermuirs the air is full of smoke. This is Sign of a Borders Spring # 56. Slash and burn somewhat reminiscent of parts of the Third World. No slash actually except for/by farmers caught short far from home comforts but plenty of burn. This is not to turn the acres of heather into something more productive for humankind but to encourage the growth of green shoots, Phoenix like, amongst the ashes-the staple diet of wee Grouse chicks. Who then grow up to be fine game birds providing sport for wealthy visitors-stockbrokers (if any left) and dismissed Bankers fresh from perching on their large pension pots, sitting comfortably in/on their Butts, Purdeys poised.


The image of the heather fire is from near Longformacus that rather unusual village in the foothills of the Lammermuirs which seems geared primarily for the shooting. Perhaps the only village in the known world where worshippers cannot bring their cars into the Church car park which is reserved purely for beaters. As you my revisit here
Verb sap: if you are an overweight hunter wishing to walk off your aforementioned pension pot you would be wise avoid the charming walk along the road towards the Warch Water reservoir.Or at least do not be tempted to try the charming rustic bridge close to the road. If you are about the average weight for a HBOS executive director (16.2 Stone apparently, or that may be a Scottish front row forward)) you would be in danger of falling straight through the rotten planking which has mostly been repaced with grass sods. In this event you would be in severe danger of damaging any

remaining assets

Labels: Burning the heather, Grouse, Longformacus, Slash and Burn

  ¶ 11:10 AM (6) comments

 


The Ghurkas were here

Yes really and in a very unusual setting. Abbey St Bathans, almost more than Hutton, is the sort of place that 'time forgets' to borrow from the language of Newcastle, Norn Iron's tourist people when signposting sights of obscure interest around the town. Rather like Hutton, Abbey St B is not really on the road to anywhere and when you have got there up a steep winding one track road traversing grouse moors you have to make sure you are looking out of the left hand window otherwise you might miss it completely. A pity if you do as it has a really good restaurant and a pretty church. The only human life you are likely to see on the road up are beaters with flags rousting out the grouse for stockbrokers to shoot and on the way down the odd body of an unlucky city banker mistaken for a game bird-not a crime to shoot one as bankers are still in season (up to mid-December). No need to rush. Stocks seem unlimited.

What has this to do with the Gurkhas? There is a very narrow footbridge across the Whiteadder which was apparently erected by a Gurkha squadron to connect the Left Bank with the Right-or in this case possibly vice versa, near the church. You can read the sign about the engineers by clicking on the appropriate image. Some of the glorious scenery may have reminded these Nepalese visitors of their own country although the Lammermuirs are not on the same kind of scale as the hills around Kathmandu. And how on earth did these soldiers get involved in Abbey St B in the first place-a peace keeping mission to separate the Stockbrokers from the City Bankers? Or were they retained by the Grouse Protection Society? The narrowness of the bridge may have been quite deliberate. Any plump city banker, bulk increased by his Barbour and the excellent lunch from the Riverside Inn, would have found it very difficult to cross the footbridge at any speed (or at all) when being hunted by a vengeful bird loving Gurkha. And the erudite old Etonian, being so hotly pursued, will have known all too well that once a Gurkha's Kukri has been drawn it only can be replaced in its sheath after it has been blooded. In the absence of Royal Blue Blood that of a senior stock broker or 'someone in the city' will do

just as well

Labels: Abbey St Bathans, Grouse, Gurkhas

  ¶ 12:07 PM (0) comments