The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
New ales range to boost funds for bird hide
An artisan beer maker has brewed up a fundraising bid to help a fireravaged bird hide rise from the ashes.
A limited range of Phoenix-branded ales have been produced by the Loch Leven Brewery in Kinrossshire to raise cash for a new observational shelter.
NatureScot launched a £35,000 appeal earlier this month after its awardwinning Mill Hide was destroyed in a fire.
Two youths, aged 14 and 16, have been reported to the Children’s Panel over February’s blaze on Loch Leven’s banks.
Brewery director Thomas Moffat hopes his limited edition products will boost coffers, while raising awareness of the nature body’s campaign.
The project received an unexpected boost from Rebus writer Ian Rankin.
Mr Moffat said interest in the beers took off after a retweet from the Fife author at the weekend.
“Like everyone else, we were shocked at the news of the terrible fire,” Mr Moffat said. “It just made sense that we should do something to help out.
“The name Phoenix came to me and it seemed perfect, because it was a bird rising from a fire.”
Mr Moffat said: “So far we’ve had a great response. We thought we’d be able to raise a bit of cash selling these beers to local people.
“But when Ian Rankin retweeted us, we started getting orders from all over the country.”
Mr Moffat said: “We really wanted to raise funds for the new bird hide but we also wanted to keep it in people’s minds and raise awareness, so the campaign didn’t fall off the radar.”
Half of all sales will go to NatureScot he said.
“Community spirit is everything in times like this,” said Mr Moffat.
“We are delighted to be
in a situation where we as a brewery and a local business can help support NatureScot as they try to rebuild this much-loved local building on Loch Leven.”
NatureScot’s Loch Leven reserve manager Neil Mitchell said: “We’re really pleased that Loch Leven Brewery is supporting the Mill Hide rebuild project with profits from these limited edition Phoenix beers.
“After being so gutted by this popular hide’s destruction, it’s wonderful to see the amazing response from the community and we hope to re-build as soon as possible.”
Supporters have already raised more than £14,000 for the new hide. To get involved visit mypark.scot/projects/ rebuild-the-mill-hide
It has been extraordinary to watch over the past few days the almost unanimous condemnation of London’s police force from across the political spectrum. Extraordinary not because the Met didn’t deserve the criticism – there is no arguing that their response to a peaceful vigil on Clapham Common on Saturday night was heavy-handed and wholly inappropriate, given that the event was to mark the murder of a young woman and highlight female vulnerability to male violence.
The now infamous pictures of several men in uniform pinning a woman to the ground will be one that rightly haunts the force for years to come.
There was immediate outrage from politicians and commentators on the left and right, a rare consensus among folk who agree on little else.
But what so many of those who jumped on the bandwagon seemed to forget was that they supported the policies that gave rise to the ugly scenes.
It was politicians who removed people’s democratic right to protest as part of Covid legislation that banned mass gatherings.
The vigil for Sarah Everard would probably not have been broken up so forcibly if the government had not used the pandemic to turn the country into what at times – last Saturday, for example – resembles a police state.
In the Commons, draconian rules curbing civil liberties were passed with allparty backing, with the Labour opposition more exercised about restrictions not being strict enough than they were about denying basic freedoms.
Yet Sir Keir Starmer this week blamed the police, saying their behaviour was “deeply disturbing” and “not the way to police this protest”.
And the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan – a champion of harsher, longer lockdowns for the capital – declared the scenes “unacceptable”.
Meanwhile, Home Secretary Priti Patel described the footage at the Clapham Common bandstand as “upsetting” and the prime minister found it all “very distressing”. What did they expect?
As Lord Blair, former Met commissioner, said in a letter to the Times, politicians “bear responsibility for the often contradictory and frequently changed Covid restrictions, which they passed into law and then expected police to enforce – or maybe not to enforce”.
The Met insisted officers were doing just that, enforcing coronavirus regulations. “Hundreds of people were packed tightly together, posing a very real risk of easily
transmitting Covid-19,” Commissioner Helen Ball.
Never mind that there is little Covid transmission outside – the pandemic didn’t spread on packed beaches last summer, according to Edinburgh University’s Professor Mark Woolhouse, and if there had been a surge following the Black Lives Matter demonstration last June, we would have heard about it.
It is not the police’s job to make up Covid laws but they must implement them, however unreasonable they are.
The same is true for Scotland, where ministers and their advisers have gone even further down the authoritarian road. Because we are under the rule of nationalists, this has resulted in xenophobia and the focus has been on closing borders.
While some lockdown measures may have been proportional in the early days without treatments or vaccines, the extension of government writ into every aspect of our lives can never be justified.
Yet there have been more cheerleaders, said
Assistant
of all political persuasions, for repression than there have been for liberation. Can people not see that a direct consequence of an overbearing, unchecked state is an overbearing, unchecked police force?
Now, and notwithstanding the overreach of police in Clapham, our best hope for a return to normal is when the police can’t or won’t do the government’s bidding.
Police Scotland refused to carry out border checks “simply to enforce coronavirus regulations” when Nicola Sturgeon introduced separate quarantine laws last month. Her unilateral ploy to eliminate Covid in Scotland died a death.
In England, the chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, Ken Marsh, reportedly said in the week before the Clapham Common incident that the lockdown rules were no longer manageable: “Police don’t want to police this. We’ve had enough of this.”
This much is obvious if you venture out. There is little or no police presence on trains between Scotland and England. City
parks have never been busier, and Ubers do a roaring trade transporting people to each other’s homes.
In the wake of Glasgow police’s softly, softly approach with Rangers fans, Sturgeon is threatening to ban football matches if there is a repeat at this weekend’s fixture with Celtic.
But government crackdowns are meaningless without the strong arm of the law. Following the Clapham Common backlash, any still zealous copper will think twice before policing Covid “offences”.
Police don’t want to police this. We’ve had enough of this
Sir, – The time for change in our political system is now essential, both in the United Kingdom and Scotland.
We require good, honest and forward-thinking people who are going to work for the
benefit of society. Party loyalty, spin and false truths have no place in our countries.
The continued failures in child poverty, education, public safety, drug deaths and poor provision of mental health care have all been brushed over and not enough good honest policies have come forward.
Poor leadership has created a vacuum in society – we deserve better from Westminster and Holyrood.
The seeds must be sown for improvement and make the future a place where people feel safe and protected from the evils of society.
Politicians of vision are required, we cannot continue as we are.
David Barrowman. Donaldson Avenue, Forfar.
A while ago, we printed reminiscences of living in Townhill, near Dunfermline, in the 1920s and ’30s, written by Robert Wilson, one of the Townhill haulage family firm. Here, we print some more memories: “There was little entertainment at that time with the exception of the Band of Hope or the Magic Lantern in the store hall, Jock McDonald doing his best to keep order and the youngsters doing our utmost to skip in using the penny entry fee to buy a poke of chips and lathering with sauce and vinegar.
“The fastest way to get around in those days was by gird or, if you could pick up an old bike at the coup, you could get around on this, provided you could pedal it through the bar and handle it without tyres on the wheels. It was dangerous, however, if the wheels skidded on the tram lines.
“If you did skin your knees, it was a good excuse to go to the clinic in Inglis Street and instead of getting a tramcar up to Townhill, you would go round to Liptons and get a penny bag of broken biscuits with another three or four boys demanding to share them.
“All mothers were in a good mood as the Co-op dividend day drew near. Times were hard and borrowing quite common – a cup of sugar, half-loaf, a couple of eggs, a penny for the gas. Clothes ropes and stretchers were well guarded or they might disappear overnight.
“Fences were mainly built with apple barrel struts or anything you could get your hands on. Hen huts and kennels were built with wood from egg boxes which could be purchased cheaply from the egg shop.
“They had to be hauled up the braes on a two-wheeled barrow or a sack barrow borrowed quietly from Jimmie Lumsden’s lorry. The egg boxes often contained half a dozen eggs amongst the straw. If you got these, and threepence for going, you felt like a millionaire.”
If you’re shooting in the standard mode, you may find your images aren’t picking up the vibrancy and beauty that you can see with your own eyes. This is where the modes on your camera will help as they will enhance the colours that you want to see.
Setting your camera to landscape mode when capturing the season will boost the bold colours.
The best time to take photographs is during the “golden hour” – the time around sunrise and sunset when the light has that golden glow. If you position your subject in front of the light source, this time of day is perfect for capturing striking silhouettes of animals, wildlife and buildings.
Clouds are beneficial as they help to diffuse the light, making it softer and removing harsh shadows – ensuring your photos capture the very essence of spring without appearing too bright.
Although spring is symbolic for flowers blooming, the season also marks the start of firsts for many other elements of nature
‘Greenie poles’
“Looking at the photograph in Saturday’s Craigie,” says a Monikie reader, “there’s something that I had completely forgotten about – ‘greenie poles’ with a central bar to hang an extra low-level line on.
“I remember we would do exactly what the lad in the photograph is doing, climbing on to that central bar.
“Were these only fitted with prefabs?”
Holding a candle
“The trouble with class reunions is that old flames have become even older,” wrote American columnist Doug Larson.
Daisy is speechless for a moment or two. The thought of her dad, of Rob, doing something similar, is so far beyond her imagination that it’s hard to understand why any father would contemplate doing it to a child, unless in desperate circumstances.
“Why?” she says again. “I mean, what’s in it for him?”
“What’s in it for him is that he thinks I’ll have to go back to Glasgow and take over running the shop. He sees this as my bolthole. My sanctuary. Which it is, of course. He thinks I make excuses to be here all the time, working on my fancy bits of furniture. Upcycling. You should have heard the way he spat that word out!”
Coercive control
Maybe he does make excuses to be here all the time. The thought had certainly crossed her mind, although she can’t say that to him now.
“Can he do it?” she asks instead.
“Of course he can do it.”
“But what about your mother?” “Well, yes. Her name is on the deeds right enough.”
“I thought the house was in her family originally.”
“It was. But she added his name when they got married. She once told me she wanted to share everything with him, and he was painting over here back then.” “So it’s in both their names?”
He looks exasperated, as though she’s being obtuse. “Yes, of course. She would have a say in it. As his wife. But you know, Mum tends to do as she’s told. And if he wants to sell, that’s what he’ll do.”
“Does she? Do as she’s told, I mean?” This is more or less what Mrs Cameron said too. But Fiona hadn’t struck her as being particularly meek.
“Oh, Daisy, you don’t know the half of it. Years of living with my dad.” He shakes his head. “What do they call it now? Coercive control? Gaslighting.”
“Surely not!”
“It’s hard to prove. Impossible really. It’s so well hidden and he’s so bloody charming in public. Or he can be, when it suits him.”
She remembers Mrs Cameron talking about a “vortex of negativity’. She had thought her overly dramatic, but perhaps not.
She hesitates, drinks some more of the whisky, almost whispers, “Is he violent?”
He shakes his head again but seems unperturbed by the question.
“No. That’s not the way he operates. It’s all words, all to do with control. He’s a very strong character and a very attractive character, Daisy, and when you pair that with the kind of success he’s had, everyone thinking how wonderful he is, telling mum how lucky she is... God, he’s the most selfish individual I’ve ever known.
“It took us years and years to understand it. How afraid she’d become of crossing him. As though the sky might fall if she challenged him. I don’t know what she was like before she met him, but people have told me everything was different.”
Attractive men
It strikes her again that she has met people like that in the past, people who seem able to exert an unreasonable pressure. Often deeply attractive men. It’s how they do it. One or two of her friends have been involved with men like this and she has seen how they work, finding fault, quarrelling with friends and family, gradually detaching their partner from their circle of support, and all for their own good. Allegedly.
“I think it was here that we first noticed it, though. Me and Catty, I mean. We used to get off the ferry and come here for the whole summer. The three of us.
“I always remember, the first thing we did, after we’d opened the door and put the bags inside, we’d go straight down to the beach. We’d be running about, making sure everything was as it should be: the rocks, the dunes.
“One year there’d been a terrible spring gale and a high tide and the sea had eaten into the sand hills. As though a giant had taken big bites out of it. And the salt had burned all the young leaves in the garden. We hated that. We liked everything to be the same.”
“I used to feel like that whenever I went to stay with my gran in Ayr. I hated it if she’d redecorated, or moved furniture around.”
“Anyway, Mum would be sitting on a rock and just breathing. We didn’t notice so much when we were little kids, but when we hit our teens we did. I remember Catty saying to me, ‘Isn’t she different? Isn’t Mum different on Garve?’ And she was.
“All the tension just drained out of her. It was as though she could be herself here. Until there was the occasional short visit from Dad, and then she’d change again. He was forever telling her she was doing things wrong: her driving, the garden, the cooking, the way things were here in the house, the fact that we’d go down to the beach in our pyjamas if we wanted to.
“The only saving grace was that he never stayed. He’d go and we’d all breathe a sigh of relief and get back to the way we were.”
“Is that why she doesn’t come here much now? He doesn’t want her to?”
“That’s about it. When we were kids, he wanted the peace and quiet, so he was quite happy for her to bring us here. Now he needs her in the shop and for making sure the house runs the way he likes it. So she doesn’t come. She always says she can’t get away. But she could. Annabel could manage the shop perfectly well. Even Catty comes here sometimes, with the kids.” “So he wants you to run the shop?” “He wants me there. I think even he realises it’s getting a bit too much for my mum. They’re not getting any younger, and he doesn’t want to do it full-time, or even part-time, but he doesn’t want to let it go either. He could, you know. He could sell up. Just paint.”
“But wouldn’t you miss the income from it? I mean you, yourself.”
“I’d manage. You trade online, don’t you? I have a big fat book of contacts now. I could do some buying and selling, but concentrate on the restoration side of it. It’s Dad who likes having a shop window for his pictures. But I think, most of all, he likes us to be there, under his thumb.
“He’s like Hector, only without the good nature. He gets uneasy when he doesn’t know where we all are and what we’re doing.”
Now he needs her in the shop and for making sure the house runs the way he likes it. So she doesn’t come
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.