The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
End the damaging anti-vaccine rhetoric
Sir, – I watched the Scottish Government Covid-19 committee meeting while Danny Boyle of BEMIS Scotland articulated how Covid was affecting ethnic minorities living within Scotland.
Many have their own community folklore which can make them vaccine hesitant.
Some sub-saharan Africans are being fed the lies that this vaccination programme is an
experiment by big pharma.
This is no experiment, this is real. The vaccine has been tested as every other vaccine is tested.
One surprising statistic was that people from the Asian subcontinent were, if overweight and contracting Covid-19, twice as likely to die.
They were also more likely to contract Covid as, generally, they lived in larger multigenerational family groups.
These groups that will benefit twice as much from the vaccine, do not need to have the additional hurdle of antivax messages.
Alistair Ballantyne. Birkhill, Angus.
City streetscape
Kenneth Baxter has supplied the photograph on the right and says: “I thought the attached image might be of interest to Craigie readers.
“It is a photograph of the High Street from the Nethergate, Dundee, taken in the early years of the 20th Century, with the entry to the then much narrower Crichton Street also visible. The building, seen on the far right of the photograph, at the corner of High Street and Crichton Street can still be seen today, albeit in modified form.
“However, apart from the just-visible spire of St Paul’s Cathedral, everything else featured in this view is long since gone. These buildings were removed due to the widening of Crichton Street and the construction of the City Square.
“The most notable loss was that of the famous Town House which can be seen on the left of the picture. After many years of debate about its future, the council finally decided to demolish the 200-hundred-yearold building in early 1932.”
So remarkable
Rev Gordon Campbell of Kingoodie emails: “David Dakers Black published a history of Brechin in 1867, three years after he retired as the city’s town clerk. In that book he relates an incident witnessed by, ‘a very aged gentleman ... then only a boy at the school ... the thing was so new and so remarkable that he never forgot it’.
“What was this unusual occurrence? Lady Saltoun, visiting in 1780, and putting up an umbrella (‘large green silk’) when it started to rain! A few years later, a visitor from Montrose also appeared with an umbrella,
‘and such attention did it command that the lady was never permitted to walk the streets, with the instrument displayed, without attracting a host of spectators, male and female, who, despising the rain, followed her wherever she went’.
“Life is pretty tough for many people at present. Perhaps if we take a second glance at all too familiar surroundings, we may recognise things and people we have too readily taken for granted.”
A nation of gardeners
Whether planting potatoes or cultivating herbaceous borders, the Scots have long been known as a nation of gardeners. Murdo Macdonald, 63, from Edinburgh, makes his debut as a presenter of a new series called Gàrraidhean Mòra na h-alba/
Gardens of Scotland on BBC ALBA this month which celebrates some of Scotland’s most important gardens due to their design, plant-life, setting and history.
Murdo says: “My own garden is my haven, there’s something very therapeutic about the solitary nature of gardening, the rhythm of it and the sights and sounds of nature.”
The series begins on February 15 and Murdo visits Scone Palace Gardens, near Perth, in episode three. It has many sites of interest, most famously the historic Moot Hill, the ancient crowning place of the Kings of Scots.
The village of Scone once stood within the grounds of the palace but was moved two miles away during the landscaping work of the palace grounds. Old Scone’s mercat cross, burial ground and archway can still be seen at Scone today.
Gàrraidhean Mòra na h-alba/ Gardens of Scotland is on BBC ALBA at 8.30pm every Monday from February 15 until Monday, March 8. The series will be repeated in late summer/autumn this year.
Would you like ice?
A reader tells me he was reminiscing about the old Dundee Ice rink on the Kingsway when he remembered the bar, running almost all the way along the side of the ice, and said to be the longest bar in … was it Dundee? Scotland? The UK?
Another thing he remembers was an advertisement by a skating teacher, offering ‘proffesional tuition’. It was there for years.
But something he has forgotten is exactly where the building was located, and what is on the site now?
Episode 50
Daisy looks at her father. “Would that be such a bad thing? I’m in a rut, Dad. You have a more exciting time of it than me these days. “My thirties are marching on. There’s no man in my life and I’m fed up to the back teeth of fairs and boot sales. I need a change.”
The fairs are no picnic. Bad enough setting up, hauling a dozen or more boxes of objects into some draughty hall and then building a decent display, but the breaking down at the end is arguably worse, with everyone trying to park as close as possible to the venue and falling over each other to get away.
Somebody will always mind a stall for you while you go to the loo or fetch a coffee, and Daisy has friends who can sometimes be persuaded to help. Her father volunteers as often as he can. But too often, she does it all by herself and by the end of the day she’s exhausted.
“You need a shop.”
“I can’t afford to rent a shop.”
“You could easily afford it if you sold Auchenblae.”
“I could buy a shop if I sold Auchenblae. I could buy a shop and a house of my own.”
“Exactly. And wouldn’t that be better than camping out in a crumbling mansion? Wouldn’t that be the sensible option? Why do anything different?”
“Because I’m my mother’s daughter,” she says, before she can stop herself.
He sighs. “There’s no arguing with that. I just worry about you.”
She’s not even sure that she wants a shop. It’s the kind of thing that sounds wonderful in prospect, but she’s worked with the general public before, and they can be a sore trial, day in and day out. Especially when you’re on your own.
“Listen. The house isn’t going anywhere. Nor the contents. What I’m thinking is that I’ll spend the summer on Garve. I’ll have a good look at what I’ve got.
“I’ll get proper broadband installed and carry on with the online business. Explore. Research things. I’ll sell things from the house, but on my terms.
“It just seems wrong to let it go, to abandon it without documenting it all in some way. I don’t think I could bear to just invite some auction house in and have them clear it all out.”
She has been thinking about this for the whole drive from the island. Working out the possibilities. Now she realises that she can’t bear to let Cal take what he wants either.
Has he earmarked things? Did he do the inventory? Did he find the picture of Lilias on that first visit? Did he hide it? People do hide things.
She’s done it herself, burying desirable objects in the bottom of boxes of rubbish on viewing days so that a casual browser might not find them.
“Wouldn’t that be easier, though? It’s one hell of a job for you. And you said yourself, it’s mostly junk.”
“It would be easier. But think of what I might be missing?”
“You wouldn’t miss things. They’d value things for you. Sort them out for you. Sell them.”
“I don’t just mean that. It’s something to do with my history. My heritage. We lost Mum when I was too young to have asked her anything.”
“But the family were just incomers to that place.”
“Yes. They were. In a way. But they were Neilsons and they lived there for a hundred years. Maybe there was some connection with the island already.
“The names are so similar. Neilson and Mcneill. I just don’t know.
“Maybe there are family papers, letters, photographs. The kind of thing I’ve never had. Or only on your side. Never on Mum’s.
“I’m curious. And I won’t know until I’ve looked at what’s really there.”
He shakes his head but she can see that he’s half resigned to her plans already.
“I suppose so. I suppose it would do no harm.”
“There’s this portrait. It was in the tower. Stacked in a pile of pictures on the floor. Not hung on the wall or anything.” “You said.”
“Lilias Mcneill. It’s absolutely stunning.” “Worth a bob or two then.”
“Yes. I’m sure it is. But it made me think. Who was she? Who painted it? Why? There’s an inscription on it.
“It says: ‘A time will come’. Un temps viendra.
“I began to think, maybe this is my time. Maybe I need to spend some time there. Give a bit of time to the house.
“It feels so neglected. I could go. Just for the summer.”
“You’ve got too much imagination for your own good, Daisy,” he says.
“But I suppose that makes you your mother’s daughter as well.”
“Well, I’m being practical too. There’s enough cash for me to live there for a few months, do some online selling.
“It needs a massive declutter and since I’m in this business, I might as well do it myself. Otherwise I’m just handing it over to somebody who might know even less than I do about it!”
“That’s true. And you can always keep your options open.”
“I can. And when you’ve finished touring, you can come and see for yourself.”
“Aye. I will. I’ll do that. Maybe visit a few old haunts.”
“We could see there.”
“Didn’t you go?”
“No. I didn’t. I thought about it. I thought about going to see where Viola’s buried as well, down at Keill, but I didn’t do that either. Maybe next week.”
“Do you remember the tree?”
“All too well. The road past the house doesn’t go anywhere else.”
“I wonder if people still tie their wishes onto it.”
She catches herself thinking that maybe she could walk up there with Cal and Hector.
And then she thinks about the inventory and her suspicions.
Of course, she could be imagining it. It might have been somebody else entirely who valued the contents of Auchenblae.
She makes a mental note to telephone Mr Mcdowall tomorrow and ask him about the situation.
But perhaps she shouldn’t be going anywhere with Cal and Hector.
Perhaps she shouldn’t trust Cal at all. if the Clootie Tree’s still
It’s something to do with my history. My heritage. We lost Mum when I was too young to have asked her anything
The Posy Ring, first in the series The Annals of Flowerfield, is written by Catherine Czerkawska and published by Saraband. It is priced at £8.99.