The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
World of new smells for Hamish as he sniffs in Doyenne’s seasonal cooking
This will be Hamish’s first Christmas with us so he didn’t recognise the signs. It’s the time of year, of course, but I doubt if Hamish’s life is regulated by the seasons of the year. Seeing the Doyenne put on her trademark green pinny might have forewarned him but she does that most days.
There are seasons in the Doyenne’s year when her kitchen takes on the steamy atmosphere of the witches’ cave in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth.
Late summer and early autumn is the season for jams and jellies made from the wild rasps and brambles and other hedgerow glories that I pick for her.
January is home-made marmalade season.
Right now I am bracing myself for the Christmas season – I’m talking mince pies.
The mincemeat was made some weeks ago and I was roped in to help with the stirring. It was bottled and left to mature, if that’s the right expression.
Now there will be no escape from the clatter of the electric mixer, rolling out pastry, cutting mince pie cases and the welcoming, warm aroma of the mince pies, fresh out of the oven and comfortingly packed with cholesterol, filling the kitchen.
The Doyenne berates me for being overweight but she forever puts temptation in my way. You can understand how there’s only a slim chance of my generous shadow ever shrinking.
Hamish didn’t realise what a bonanza the mince pie factory could be.
He’s forever under the Doyenne’s feet when she’s cooking, hoping for something to fall on the floor, which he snaps up.
But some seasonal ingredients were an undreamed-of feast.
What he doesn’t know is it only comes round once a year.
By the time you read this the Doyenne will have baked at least the first eight dozen mince pies which don’t go to me and the faithful hound. Oh no. Most are given as presents. Husband and dog come well down the list.
My father was more gourmand than gourmet. His Christmas grace was “Better belly rive than guid meat spile”. In other words, better that your stomach should burst than good food go to waste.
Probably non-PC these days – so many things are that never used to be – but when you know that his Orcadian mother would lay on six-course lunches it rather set the pace for him.
And I suppose these things cascade down the generations. We were invited to join friends for lunch who had taken a holiday cottage on a farm near Arbroath. It’s flat
country round there and I mentioned how ideal it had been for the many Second World War small, specialised airfields that sprang up to meet the needs of war.
The farm neighbours what in the Second World War had been HMS Condor. It’s RM Condor now – a Royal Marine base and home also to 7 (Sphinx) Battery Royal Artillery, part of 29 Commando Regiment RA, which our host had commanded a puckle years back.
We had met at one of the splendid parties that the military do so well.
Royal Naval Air Station, RNAS Arbroath (HMS Condor) started life as a Fleet Air Arm (FAA) training school but is now RM Condor and home to 45 Commando Royal Marines.
I try to avoid saying never when it comes to nature, but I hae my doots that they ever saw a condor, which is a large, South American vulture, cruising above the fields around Colliston to escape the worst of winter in its homeland Andes Mountains.
The FAA identified their airfields with the names of many of our native birds.
RNAS East Haven at Hatton Farm, just south of Arbroath, was commissioned as HMS Peewit, a reference to the flocks of the birds that overwintered there.
It was a training unit for naval aviators and the outline of an aircraft carrier deck was painted on the tarmac. Good for practice, but it wouldn’t have pitched and rolled like the real thing on a stormy sea.
Strathmore’s long, flat plain, stretching from Stonehaven to Perth, was ideal for the sites of many other Second World War airfields. There was Edzell airfield which got a second lease of life when the US Navy established a communications base there in the 1950s.
From Fordoun in the north, there were airfields at Stracathro, Kinnell, Tealing, Methven, Findo Gask and doubtless several other places that I’ve forgotten.
Flying training, blind approach training, wireless training, target towing, training
Polish squadrons – most aspects of military flying were undertaken at one or other of these establishments.
I mustn’t forget Montrose airfield. It’s on the coastal plain and is notable because it was the first operational military airfield in the United Kingdom, established in 1913.
And Balado, outside Kinross, was host to the T in the Park music festival from 19972014 when safety concerns were expressed about the Forties Pipeline running directly underneath the former airfield.
FAA identified airfields with the names of many of our native birds