Scotland: National Rural Network
Connecting Rural Scotland - Promoting Rural Growth

I was asked if the articles I write for the National Rural Network are true accounts of actual events by someone who had trouble imagining that anyone in their right mind could stem the flow of water from a ruptured radiator pipe by plugging it with a cheese and tomato sandwich (Rural Ramblings 4: Surviving DIY. May 2007). The answer, of course, is yes. Real life is full of 'cheese and tomato sandwich plugging' people like me. 

Moving on to 2009, the apples are falling from the trees, fires are being lit in hearths across Scotland and with the dark nights drawing in it's time to commit oneself to fireside evenings at home and to take up new hobbies. I tried Country Dancing some years ago (Black Isle, nice folk, lovely dance teacher) only my feet weren't made for dancing so for my part I am concentrating on something a bit different this year by teaching the dog to wink.

To be honest it's been an on-going process over a number of years that's involved an extraordinary amount of cheese, but now that the darker evenings have arrived there will be more time to devote to the dog's educational activities. Education is a complicated business, is it not, and in particular understanding the waffle spoken by educationalists these days that no one else - and sometimes not even other educationalists - can decipher. Perhaps more cheese in our schools would help, speaking metaphorically of course: Crowdie, Caboc, Drunileish, something tasty like that. What an innovative idea! Anyway, the dog is doing well, winking on demand and the increase in slobber that goes with this winking/anticipation of cheese thing isn't too much of a problem at the moment. Time will tell. Slobber, of course, has a nasty habit of blending with the furniture if you're not careful so it pays to be on the ball if winking lessons are on the curriculum.

Coincidentally I came across another dog that winks and does so when appropriate: an elderly sausage dog. I was chatting to a farmer about the weather (they know about the weather, farmers) when he pointed shrewdly to a conical glass container protruding from the ground that had been used to take accurate readings of daily rainfall over the last twenty years, at which point the sausage dog took a drink from it, winked (how amazing is that?), then waddled off in the direction of an old bone. After this the conversation moved seamlessly on to discuss other scientific measurements that presumably a thirsty sausage dog could not tamper with (barometer and temperature readings) until I could contain my laughter no more and emitted the sort of noise that you wish you could contain but are physically unable to do so. Inexcusable, that, but the notion of scientific statistics being called into question by an elderly sausage dog with winking capabilities rendered me with no self-restraint whatsoever.

The last time this happened may have been at country dancing classes, I'm not sure, although I do recall being at Mike's Fish and Chip shop in Aberdeen (the 'chippy' by Pittodrie Stadium) and receiving a series of indecipherable phone calls that I put down to some 'old wifey' persistently phoning the wrong number on a bad line. I said this to my daughter during the third and final phone call as we awaited our fish supper. Shortly after this my daughter received a phone call from my wife to say that she'd been trying to phone me and had been referred to as 'some old wifey' by someone who sounded very much like me! Well, Good Lord, what do you say to that, eh?  I laughed of course, emitting the sort of noise that caused a bit of a stir amongst those queuing for battered sausage, cheesy chips and red pudding.  My wife, by the way, had a good chuckle as well, although possibly in a more restrained manner than me.

The moral of the story? Who knows, but there must be one in there somewhere?

Rural Ramblings archive

Photograph courtesy of Dasha Gaian on flickr.com. Original photo.