The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Love is in the air but does a tarradiddle of a lone woodpecker a summer make?
Does hearing your first great spotted woodpecker tapping out his noisy tarradiddle of love to the lady great spotted woodpeckers on one of the beech trees that survived Storm Corrie make a summer?
It’s probably one of nature’s great imponderables but it’s good to know that love is in the air.
We all know that one swallow doesn’t make a summer. I haven’t seen one yet but a reader has seen his first swooping over his house in Glenesk. By the time you read this he’ll likely be seeing dozens more.
Larch trees are the only conifer that shed their leaves, or needles. There are a number in the woods on the road from Fettercairn to Edzell and they look particularly lovely at this time of year with the first flush of brilliant green of the new needles.
It’s a contrast to autumn when the needles turn golden and fall, littering the roadside verges.
As you can imagine, words are my seed corn and I like nothing better than coming across words or expressions which were commonplace in my grandparents’ time but have fallen out of use or are forgotten.
Some are pithy and couthy and the best can encapsulate a whole philosophy of life in just a short phrase.
I came across an article online about the infamous Australian bushwhacker, Ned Kelly, who was hanged after a short career of mayhem including shooting three policemen. He rode round the countryside dressed in a suit of homemade armour, and on the day of his execution was described as “grog blossomed”.
I shouldn’t want to give the impression that I keep doubtful company, but I can recall several people in the past who could readily have been described as grog blossomed. My mother would have described the condition much more sympathetically, saying that they seemed to have acquired a distinct “tea flush”.
I’ve just seen my sister off on the train, back home to Brighton. Because of Covid and lockdown and other unwelcome interruptions to normal family life it had been several years since we’d seen each other. She wanted to drive to some of the old haunts we used to visit with our parents. Over the Cairn o’ Mount and into Deeside was one of the favourites.
We’d stop at the viewpoint at the summit of the Cairn looking down across Strathmore to the coast for the white pencil of Scurdyness Lighthouse to help us find our home town of Montrose. She and I were sent to climb the Cairn itself and add another stone to the top.
As a historical aside, an Alyth man called
Adam Bowman drove the first charabanc over the Cairn into Deeside. The road had been one of the traditional drove roads for bringing cattle from Deeside down to the great cattle tryst at Falkirk.
Adam told me the most difficult part was the last left-hand bend before the summit. I’m not surprised – a touch of frost can still bring traffic to a standstill at the same spot.
Before that particular part of the road was tarmacked it had been concreted in the 1930s and known as “concrete corner”.
Near the top, a simple drinking-well on the right-hand verge of the winding road, commemorating a young officer killed in the Second World War, is now so overgrown you are past it almost without noticing.
A favourite walk of his family’s had been up the Cairn, stopping for a breather and a couple of handfuls of cool water from the spring. I remember drinking out of it when I was very small but sadly it has dried up.
And now some advance publicity about a special charity weekend of art and culture in aid of the brave people of Ukraine.
Dates – Friday May 13 to Sunday May 15. Place – Kinblethmont Gallery, which is on the B965 out of Arbroath. The gallery is well known for its original and stimulating events.
A poetry afternoon, with tea and biscuits, will be hosted on Friday at 5pm. There will be a book launch with poetry and music, and 18-year-old Ukrainian Vavara Shevtsova will talk on her escape from the conflict. On Saturday, she will be joined by Allen Scobie, Tayside agricultural consultant, who was in Kyiv when the Russian invasion began, and both will talk on their escape out of Ukraine. On Sunday, a silent art auction finale has been arranged for 5pm.
On Saturday and Sunday, from 11am to 5pm, readers are encouraged to “just turn
up” and enjoy the woodland walks through the extensive gardens. House tours are scheduled for Saturday and Sunday at 11am and 2pm.
Entry to an exhibition and the sale of works by Ukrainian and British artists in Kinblethmont Gallery is by donation, with donations matched by the gallery.
To book tickets, visit eventbright.com and search for Kinblethmont.
It’s probably one of nature’s great imponderables