COTLANDS (anag)

Having lived in Scotland for over 12 years Huttonian and the wife decided that it was about time we bought a Scottish newspaper. Not to overdue it, once a week and good riddance to the overblown,overbearing, oversized and overpriced Observer; so Scotland on Sunday it is: a good old fashioned broadsheet and 50 p less than the 'O'

You won't find much Borders news we were warned; no matter, we have the Ber Wick Shire for that. But as it happens one of the main articles in 'Insight' in SoS is mostly centred on one of our select band of Borders'Bloggers-not about her blogging skills but her Scrabble. Apparently the lady in question is the No 1 Woman Scrabble player in the World, if not No One. Full stop (It seems from looking at the rankings that its usually the men who head the lists. Why?)
So if you head along the Whiteadder Valley and come across a women fitting 'Cotlands' (the only allowable anagram of Scotland) onto a board you will likely have discovered the author of Country Strife (See link or go here) and I suggest play her not for money. Not during the credit crunch at any rate.

I fear that Scrabble is not my game given my uncertain spelling and reliance on Spell Check (Irish English) The rules on what words you can legally use are very strict and I am sorry that a term I claim as my own : LOWHEIDYIN is, according to the World No One not eligible -see here for elucidation. But as you can google it it might come into common currency one day. Google 'lowheidyin and not low heid yin btw) and see what comes up ** I am thinking of writing to the Highheidyins or High Heid Yins, to be pedantic, of the World Scrabble Governing Body and asking for a more flexible approach to newly coined nouns.

I hope Country Strife will support me. And I also hope she can confirm that the five letter F word in the image, more or less dead centre of the board-click to enlarge (Thankyou betsymartin of flickr)is not kosher, Scrabble Rules Wise.

** Enough links for one post. Blog Ed)

Labels: lowheidyins, Scrabble, World No One

  ¶ 5:08 PM (7) comments

  Backwards to the Future

Huttonians do not traditionally show much sympathy or even regard for Paxtonians but one of the latter ilk is on the wrong end of one of the stupider planning decisions to issue from the lowheidyins of the planning office in Duns. Full saga can be found here

But if you want to avoid wading through faff, suffice it to know that a very junior planning officer, on her own initiative, it appears, has turned down a planned extension to an existing building on the grounds that it interferes with the privacy of a house yet to be constructed: rather like:

Yesterday upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today, Oh how I wish he'd go away.

You might say.

If she had bothered to look closely at the plans for the proposed extension and put them with the design of the house which is not there (and in the present climate likely to stay that way) she could have worked out that the only way that the privacy of the virtual house could be jeopardised by the not quite yet extension would be for some one in the room on top of the extension, when completed, to peer out of a window (someone should hold his legs) proposed to put in and by turning his head 78 degrees to the left and looking down at an angle of 97 degrees might just be able to see part of a corner of a room, as yet non existent, unless of course the eventually to be hung curtain was drawn. Then he could see nothing. Tough being a Peeping Tom in a future Paxton.

I suspect the appeal will find for the applicant. In which case one hopes a sharp rap on the real knuckles of the Planning Officer in question might remind her of the purpose of her office is to be helpful and constructive to Johnny Citizen and not a pain on the collective backside of the Merse community.

Dream on

Labels: lowheidyins, Paxton, Planning, Scottish Borders Council

  ¶ 12:09 PM (3) comments