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

Recently the polytunnel collapsed under the weight of the snow, the washing machine caught fire, the brakes on the car failed and a cupboard mysteriously detached itself from the kitchen wall with shattering effect. We've replaced or repaired all of them except for the kitchen cupboard, so we headed to Inverness to buy a new one from the kitchen cupboard place. Now there's a burger van in the car park that dispenses coffee. Most convenient.

I left home at seven-thirty in the morning and headed for Inverness Airport. My first flight of 2010 took me to the south of England. A hire car was pre-booked. I drove the twenty miles to the hospital with minus six on the temperature gauge and little evidence of road gritting. Consequentially I kept my speed to a minimum much to the annoyance of the traffic behind. Better an annoyingly slow driver than a dead one, eh? Although those behind may not have thought so. Excessive intolerance is a disturbingly human trait.

Over the past few years I have shared a vol-au-vent with an ex First Minister of Scotland and a few other high powered and extremely pleasant folk at a meal where I discussed important matters of the moment such as ‘Do you want that last tattie?' or ‘Are we getting any pudding?'. I've had my hands down the drains at one of my regular ‘hands down the drains' places in Ross-shire (cleaning them of course, not for any sense of pleasure) during which I have chatted with many passing folk and rambled incoherently on to anyone who cared to listen about gardening, football and goats.

Christmas is fast approaching. I hope you have a good one. I once toyed with the idea of growing Christmas trees on a small scale, you know, a small scale business venture really, only I never got round to it in the end. Maybe when I retire? There’s money in Christmas trees.

I remember Mr Hayter well; he was about seventy, rolled his own cigarettes, was never seen in public without a soft brimmed hat and rode a bicycle that was at least as old as himself. He did the garden weekly - Tuesdays if I recall - covering the five miles from 'his' to 'ours' on his bicycle with an Old Holborn dangling from his mouth and his trouser legs tied with twine, a sort of do-it-yourself bicycle clip notion.

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. 

By Patrick Vickery

On occasion we sell plants at Dornoch Market, you know, and may expand this enterprise further in the future. Indeed, we had a stall at Tain Vintage Car Rally last month (cracking event, good weather and well organised as always by that "man in a kilt" and friends) where a good blether was had by all.