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

By Patrick Vickery

One day "now will be years ago" (D.Owens), time rolls by and as you get older the past vividly reminds you of the speed at which the future becomes the present.

And now for a chewy chicken tale with a hint of Barney Rubble, over-sized croquet mallets and Vivaldi. And why not?

I am told that there is a chicken in Ross-shire called after me, or the Gaelic equivalent anyway: Padraig. I'm honoured, for it's not everyday that someone calls a chicken after you. I promised the responsible party that I would reciprocate in kind next time we got a goat. The choice of pet names, of course, is always interesting. We have a dog called Molly, the same name as my mother-in-law which can result in some confusion when she comes to stay, and some years ago one of the children suggested Gobbolino as the name for a new puppy, a character from a mythical tale first published in 1943 by Ursula Williams (still in print, ask your kids). On the face of it a fine if not unusual name. But then the prospect of shouting the shortened version of Gobb or Gobbi in a public place negated against this particular choice, though possibly the Gaelic equivalent, whatever that might be, might be more socially acceptable.

We were at a Gaelic evening of song and dance not long ago at Bogbain Farm actually, which is just outside Inverness (to the left of the A9 as you head south), and the most innovative of the musicians that evening (though not singing in Gaelic) was a singer-songwriter called Dean Owens from Leith who strummed a fine tune. One of his lyrics "now will be years ago" struck me as a phrase I would have loved to have penned myself.

He took the occasional swig from a hip flask between songs (could have been Highland Spring water for all I know) and still his voice retained clarity throughout, which is not something that can be said for some of today's songs that tend to replace the first sound with a ‘ch' more often than not. "There's nothing I'd rather chew (do) than be with chew (you)" and so on and so forth. Is that a hearing thing, I wonder, something to chew with my age or just a lyrical phase that musicians of today go through? Have a listen yourself, Moray Firth Radio, Tich McChewey, see what you think.

It's certainly an innovative idea.

I listen more to the chewy kind of music myself rather than the classical, but there is a large garden I frequent on a regular basis where a certain notable of the district furnishes me with filter coffee and a blast of Vivaldi or Haydn through the conservatory window as I tend to his heather beds and shrubberies. It was here, actually, just a week or so ago that he loaned me an antiquated wooden Mell or Mallet for bashing in posts (to support his sweet peas) which was at least four times the size of a modern one and, indeed, possibly something that Fred Flintstone or Barney Rubble would use to play croquet if they decided to have a bash at that sort of thing. Can you visualize it?

On this antiquated theme, having recently hit fifty (not cricket runs or croquet strikes but years), referring to modern day music as chewy and with hair sprouting from my ears like the best organic veg (don't bother to visualize that) I have become a serious contender for antiquity status myself and, Good Lord, I do believe I am turning into my Grand-Father which, of course, is how it should be.