The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Oh my word!
Have you ever, out loud, corrected anyone’s grammar, spelling or pronunciation? Telling them that they shouldn’t say “teef” when they mean teeth, or must use a singular verb with an uncountable noun, or suggesting they “try to do” instead of “try and do”?
It’s for their own good. You’re doing them a favour by setting them on the right path. But people don’t take this sort of thing well.
Let me tell you a terrible story. To be honest, it is a tale in which I don’t behave very well. But in my defence I was severely provoked.
A few years ago, in a local branch of one of the nation’s biggest supermarket chains, I attempted to inform the staff that they had misused an apostrophe. The fresh foods aisle had a sign that declared: “Fish isn’t just for Friday’s”.
I told you I was provoked, didn’t I?
I buttonholed a shelf stacker to pass on my grammatical wisdom. He looked at the sign, looked at me, looked back at the sign, and said it had come from head office as if that made it sacrosanct.
But I insisted that, wherever it had come from, it was wrong. Fridays (plural) doesn’t take an apostrophe. He continued to look puzzled but said he’d alert his manager. I’m not entirely sure he knew what an apostrophe was.
I waited defiantly under the offending sign.
The frostily polite manager, when she eventually swept into view, promised that “of course” she would have the sign changed, and that this was, indeed a “very important” matter to have brought to her attention. She was “so, so thankful” to me for taking the time out of what must be a very busy day to enlighten her and her staff.
I’m not the type to submissively suffer such a salvo of sarcasm.
With a reciprocally condescending mien I assured the management ice maiden that if she had any further trouble with basic spelling or punctuation then she could email me – or perhaps phone if she didn’t think she could spell the words she was struggling with.
I left in high dudgeon (great phrase) my chin up, and making straight for the door caring not one whit for the biscuits and teabags I had intended to purchase. Hah! You can have the English usage advice free but I’ll spend my ginger snaps money elsewhere, thank you very much.
People hate to be corrected on their spelling or spoken English. Somehow the “bad” person in the exchange becomes the one who points out the error.
I take this, overall, to be a good thing. I’d like to think that many people believe their spelling and grammar to be quite good, and are embarrassed when told it isn’t. Perhaps they might take more care.
The B9120 linking the Howe of the Mearns with the coastal plain crosses the whaleback ridge of the Hill of Garvock overlooking the town of Laurencekirk. It’s one of a tracery of roads, some of them old drove roads, crisscrossing the hills. Once described as “a steep, rough road over the Hill of Garvock” it gained importance as the main route for hauling lime from the lime kilns on the coast at East Mathers, south of Johnshaven.
Garvock means rough field and that windswept hilltop must have been a hostile place to cultivate in early centuries when farmers had just rudimentary ploughshares to break the ground.
I often stop, even briefly, at the viewpoint on the summit where my father used to read me the poetry of Violet Jacob who grew up at the House of Dun near my hometown of Montrose, and is one of my favourite poets.
Looking inland across Laurencekirk there are 180-degree panoramic views up and down the Howe of the Mearns and Strathmore. The views on the other side, eastwards to the coast and the sea, are just as rewarding. Garvock church sits in a hollow a quarter of a mile off the road. It’s a simple rectangular country kirk like so many now, without a congregation, but the graveyard is well kept.
A sign at the end of the road to the old kirk directs you to Collardo Wildlife Walk which has been developed on Collardo Farm. There’s a car park, tracks have been laid out for easy walking, and I suspect it is wheelchair friendly – but it would be wise to check first. Interpretation boards along the way tell you what to look out for. Nesting boxes have been put up to attract barn owls.
The farm is home to tree sparrows which are less common than their house and hedge sparrow cousins. Tree sparrows have a brown back, grey underparts, small dark bib, chestnut crown and a conspicuous black spot on each cheek and thick seedcrunching bills.
It was sunny and the snow had all but melted on a warming westerly wind. Woodpigeons digesting their morning feed burst out of a plantation of Scots pine and holly and other native Scottish trees with a great clatter of wings. They’ll go back to the stubbles to feed again before returning to the wood to roost overnight.
As I walked to the edge of the wood a roe deer doe ambled down the field on the other side of the fence. I froze behind a half-grown Scots pine. She was hardly a dozen paces from me and with the sun on her she made a perfect picture.
I didn’t dare move a muscle to lift my
camera or she’d have been off in an instant. They are such bonny animals, the embodiment of the wild, ever on the alert for danger, their large radar ears receiving and decoding all the messages coming from round about them. For the minute or so she was in sight I stood and enjoyed her company. It was special to be able to watch her at such close quarters.
Pussy willows are starting to flower. And there are rabbits in the wood – their droppings evident in patches of snow beneath the trees. A line of fresh molehills told me that the ground had unfrozen enough for the earthworms to come back to the surface with the hungry moles not far behind them.
It was only when I got out of the wood that I heard the skylarks’ “rain of melody” showering the earth – such small birds to produce such a “delicious cascade of joy”. I couldn’t see them in the cloudless blue sky
but it’s their memory.
The walk borders the Tullo and Twinshiels Wind Farm. The hypnotic mesmerism of the gently spinning blades of the wind turbines is a familiar feature of our north-east landscape.
Wind farm has always seemed a semantic fudge dreamed up by the advertising industry to confuse a credulous public. No one ploughs the fields and scatters wind seeds, nobody grows wind and farmers don’t combine a wind harvest. Wind farms are electricity generating stations – why not call them so?
It was only on my way back to the car that I saw the tree sparrows flocking in a hawthorn hedge – gregarious little birds flitting just ahead of me. When they ran out of hedge they disappeared in a chorus of their chip, chip chirruping song.
It’s a delightful walk that I hadn’t sweet song that stays in the
before but I shall go back in a couple of months for the spring colours and spring sounds.
Snowdrops are flowering in the home woods where Inka and I usually walk. The hardy wee flowers emerged unscathed from the snow and nod companionably to each other in the breeze. I picked a bunch for the Doyenne. I learned a long time ago the value of a well-timed posy.
It was special to be able to watch doe at such close quarters
Sir, – Edinburgh University tied itself in knots over the Hume Tower and now Glasgow University reveals it’s also riddled with ‘wokism’ over Greg Clark’s invitation to speak on the effects of genetics on social outcomes.
This nonsense dominates some universities in much the same way as religious mantra did in centuries gone by.
My impression in reading Professor Greg Clark’s work is he was investigating why social mobility doesn’t work effectively: Not defending it.
Why if his work is such garbage the “woke offenderati” don’t simply tear his ideas to pieces when he finishes speaking? Sadly his theories aren’t easy to demolish.
Rev Dr John Cameron. Howard Place, St Andrews.
It’s good to learn that the end is in sight for Covid restrictions but an Angus reader says that she will miss all the “nice post”, as she terms it – letters, cards and photographs that have been sent to her during lockdown.