Hoots & Havers with James Irvine Robertson March 2005
THE HOUSE WE LIVE IN has a dodgy slate or two. One slithers down the roof of a lean-to whenever the wind becomes particularly boisterous and I stand on top of the wheelie bin and stuff it back in place. But there’s another near the peak of the building that sometimes escapes from its rightful position and this one is not so easy to tackle.
Believing that all things are possible in this marvellous universe of ours, I normally avoid looking at it for a week or two and hope that it will climb out of the gutter and return to its proper slot. But this has never yet happened.
I’m quite happy to swing from my finger tips from gutters and scramble about on roofs, particularly with a whisky or two on board, but over the years others have told me that this is foolish behaviour and an insightful sage recently informed me that I was not as young and supple as I used to be. This has inserted a doubt in my mind. Now those lurches in my vitals when my foot slips are no longer merely stimulating, but feel like a prelude to a pretty manky demise on the lawn. This is both boring and potentially expensive. |
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The high slate has just done another slither. If I give up on providence, the simplest way to solve the problem involves waiting till the wife’s not looking, standing on the loo seat at the top of the house and out through a velux window. And it’s all done in a couple of minutes. But although there’s a lovely view of the hills it’s jolly high up there, the roof slope is steep and I’m bound to give myself a windy moment.
The alternative to hire someone with ladders of the requisite length, with the requisite insurance and the requisite number of assistants to hold things, give encouragement, discuss the plan of approach, order tea etc. I’d also have to endure the lecture about nail sickness and how the entire roof really needs doing and if I commission the expert to the tune of several thousand pounds to redo the whole thing, then the cost of replacing the single slate will be discounted against the whole.
At the moment I’m swithering. I’m quite keen on tying that pretty length of blue rope I picked up on the beach last year round the bog and my waist and going for it. But the roof’s wet at the moment. And a miracle is still possible. We’ll see.
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I was reading about young McLeod of Unish the other day. After a McLeod was bundled off Eigg for mistreating a woman, his clan landed and suffocated all 395 inhabitants of the island in the cave where they were hiding.
In retaliation the Macdonalds burned the McLeods in their church at Trumpan on Sunday morning before they were cut down to a man by a sally from Dunvegan. Then there was a battle. A Macdonald hacked off young Unish’s legs at the knees but he valiantly continued to fight on his stumps. Too much of clan history lurches between Monty Python and atrocity to make comfortable reading.
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Combine the investment being put into Taymouth and the educational establishment in Aberfeldy and divide by the inhabitants of the strath and you get something like £30,000 a head. That’s lots, and it’s bound to have an impact on life round here. All our young will be better behaved and educated. Richer tourists with excellent face lifts will pad round the town in their sensible shoes.
This will surely accelerate the trend to the bourgeoisification of the strath. More than one family that I can think of has already flown the area because it had become too suburban for them, and anyone who has lived here more than a few years will know that the nature of the district is changing as more and more people, comfortably off people, build houses and come to live here. I recall talking to one local councillor who had a dream of a ribbon of housing all along the strath between Kenmore and Logierait.
I hope it doesn’t come to that. However there’s not a lot to be done about it. I did try to look on the bright side by looking up one of those web house price guides to see how stinky rich all those who are householders round here have become. But I didn’t care enough to follow it through.
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The school clock which chimes out over the west end of Aberfeldy is wrong at the moment. It’s about 33 minutes slow and has been for several weeks. If it kept its wrongness to itself, it wouldn’t matter too much since you’d need to look at the dial to know. But it dongs loudly away in its own time and forces its inaccuracy into its listeners’ consciousness.
It’s an electric clock and I am no electrician. But in my experience such a device is likely to have a switch or a fuse. It cannot be that hard to switch it off and then turn it back on when the time is right. Such an action would not overburden the staff.
So, if some kind soul within the establishment would do the deed it would remove a source of irritation from me, and probably a few hundred others.
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