What Borders?If you go here Yes BBC Scotland-local news, you might expect to find something going on in the Borders? Borders? Where's they? Put 'Borders' or to be dangerously specific 'Scottish Borders' into the regional search engine on that page, what do you get? Nothing-sorry can't find you.Yes, if you look closely at the choice of regions there is South Scotland. So something sometimes happens in South Scotland-but the Borders, shown separately in the dinky wee map- is a news free region. 'Happy is the country which has no history' somebody once said. So to have no news is surely blissfully happy. Or justpig ignorant.(the image, for the benefit of BBC Scotland, is of the Borders. As you can see its all downhill from...
LAID BACK IN DUNSA bloggee helping with a bit of complicated DIY or in our case GAFTDI popped out to the local branch of a Borders wide hardware shop to get screws for the curtain rail in the small house in Duns.Door locked but a small message : OUT FOR A MO BACK IN A JIFFY (Signed Joe)A visiting Eastern European with a PH.D in English Literature might find this a bit puzzling. How many Mos in a minute? How many Jiffies in an hour? (Do Time Travellers carry Jiffy Bags? Discuss)But it is a part of slow moving Borders life. Manana? Insh'allah Bukra? No we have no such sense of urgency in these parts.And if he is there in a Jiffy?Come back in a couple of...
Waiting on SelkirkThe Borders Digital Roadshow hit Duns on Saturday as part of a public education programme preparing the masses for the analogue switch off in much of the Borders between 6 and 20 November. Here as in many other aspects of Life the Merse leads the UK-only a small bit of Cumbria has irrevocably moved into the Digital Age ahead of the Borders. Huttonian is up with the game with his spanking new flat screen HD ready, Olympics prepared, Credit crunch beating, Digital enhanced TV apparatus. That's the sitting room sorted. But in the kitchen a small,squat, uncool heavy analogue TV set lurks, unconverted and unrepentant at its increasingly cliff hanging existence. Come 6 November, D Day, a blank screen and irritating hum. But I wonder. The digital area maps are fuzzy at the...
Sodden Flodden In all the excitement of sorting out the small house in Duns Huttonian completely missed the annual foray to Flodden Field- a central part of Coldstream Civic Week. This years oration was given by our former MSP Euan Robson in filthy wet conditions and you can read all about it hereIn response to enormous popular demand I reproduce an annual tribute to Flodden:FLOGGING A DEAD FLODDENOnce more they are at it .Repeatedly, annually.(Since 1513, probably)Reivers, Reivers’ Lasses,Coldstreamers, ‘Wynsome Maides’.Battlefield orations by real liveGenerals. In full plumage.Sods carried in triumph.English sods to a Scottish town.Tattered, ragged Saltires unfurledAncient oaths retaken.For what?To commemoratea glorious victory?No!A disastrous defeat cutting downthe Flower of...
Freecycling Down Hill Huttonian is intrigued by the latest 'wants' ad in Berwickshire Freecycle:HI everybody i am looking for a standard greenhouse, and large whisky bottles for keeping loose change in please read this and i would bemuch appreciated to anyone who can help.I am not sure how many people could offer a 'standard' greenhouse whatever that is-Standard Kew, room for 400 Routemasters? Standard Berwickshire Laird with seating for 200? Bog Standard bendy Metal with cheap glass? -but worth a punt I suppose. The large whisky bottle is also intriguing. How much loose change will readily fit down the neck? My 40oz (nearly empty, since you ask) Glenfiddich will just take 5p pieces-20p nope, pound coins no way. . I suppose you could fold up some of those fairly rare Scottish One Pound...
SOMETHING ELSE IN LIEU?This months Big Story is:Eyemouth and Coldstream to get town attendantsTowns top of the list to have public toilets refurbished«"Unattended toilets can give a very bad impression to visitors"John Byford, SBCBy Janice GillieCOLDSTREAM and Eyemouth are top of the list to have their public toilets refurbished and also to get a town attendant each, responsible for cleaning the toilets and other general duties around the town.Across the Borders there are currently seven public toilets that are manned and charging 30p but income over the past year has fallen to £67,371, equating to 11,000 less visits and the cost of providing attendants is £180,000. Last week ScottishBorders Councillors agreed to abolish charges at the toilets in Hawick, Jedburgh, Peebles, Melrose,...
death on the grouse moorsis a headline in the electronic Berwickshire recording yet another wild life murder in an area, sadly, notorious for such incidents. The story coninues:Red kite dies days after shootingSICKENING: Superintendent Mike Flynn of the SSPCA with the dead red kite."This is a very bad news day for the Borders"By Kenny Paterson ANOTHER crime against wildlife in Berwickshire has occured after the sickening death of a rare bird of prey.An injured red kite was discovered lying on an upland grouse moor in the county last Monday by a doctor and his children out walking.The juvenile female was taken to a wildlife vet where x-rays showed she had a shotgun wound on her wing and also her backside.The red kite, which was in good breeding condition, appeared to be making good...
To Chirnside at 8.45. The Early Bird getteth the Quality Press*I got my Grudian all right but only a pile of Scottish Edition Daily Mails:Sorry no English Daily Mail today said my favourite (only) newsagent. No demand for themBut last Saturday you had four?Yes, said the guy behind me, them b****** have moved on.Moved on? One family from the south? English Daily Mail for him, one for her, third for Granny and the fourth for his sandwiches at work.Chirnside, slightly depleted, population wiseandEthnically cleansed, again. * Daily Mail possibly excepted?(The Image is presumably from a non Mail...
Lets Hear it for the rabbitThe silly season is surely open us when that organ of record, the Berwickshire News has, as its lead story : NINE DAYS STUCK DOWN A RABBIT HOLE BUT TERRIER BROOK IS NONE THE WORSE FOR HER ORDEAL Yippee.The front page also carries a large photo of the 'mongrel terrier' being comforted by her owner and son from whom Brook escaped chasing rabbits and then spent 9 days in a burrow before being dug out. Bringing the affair 'to a perfect conclusion'The lesson apparently is -if you lose a pet never give up hope, miracles can happen.Another lesson could be learning how to discourage your best friend, especially if intellectually challenged, from chasing inoffensive wild life. Perhaps they believed that mongrels are especially intelligent and would only go places from...
Back to the BordersIt is good to be back in the Borders proper-Dumfries has the air of being in deepest Alba athough barely 30 miles from England-and to find that we are moving along with the usual rites of Spring -selection of the Greenlaw Maid, the Duns Reiver and Reiver's Lass, Wynsome Mayde etc etc-we will have a really good view of these rituals from the Small House in Duns. And we know that the Silly Season is approaching fast when the Berwickshire has room in its letters column for another effusion from the Regent of Scotland :#SIR, - What was in Ian Smith’s article in both the Berwickshire News and Berwick Advertiser recently, headed respectively ‘Lords dismiss Berwick moving into Scotland’ and ‘Lords minister dismisses Berwick move to Scotland’ calls for this response...
THE RING (RE)CYCLEThere are a number of areas where the Borders are vastly superior to Norn Iron-golf not being one of them I hasten to add-but top of Huttonian's list is recycling. The Borders was late into the act-we here had Blue (recycling) and Brown (Garden Waste) when the Reivers were in short pants but now compared to the highly restrictive regime in Norn Iron the Borders are a recyclers paradise in comparisonWe have huge Blue wheelie bins: Newspapers fine; Magazines ok but no envelopes. They have gum and Gum is CONTAMINATION. And no, means no. The environmental hygienists, aka Refuse Collectors, akawell Bin Men (Persons) are instructed to scrutinise contents of said bins and if they find CONTAMINATION-envelopes,pizza boxes, hard back books, plastic wrapping,, yoghurt pots, plastic...
Not All Rubbish, ApparentlyThe Environmental Hygienists aka the Bin Men are becoming more picky with regard to what they remove from the 'kerbside' on their weekly swoop on rural communities. Although you can recycle (at last) most non food things including the ubiquitous plastic bag (as long as it is not a black bin bag) the pre removal inspection has seemingly become more searching. Last week, at the bottom of Kirk Lane which services 5 houses and the village hall several bags were not removed and tossed contemptuously aside-fair enough within the letter of the law they were black bin bags and should have been inside the appropriate wheelie bin receptacle but you might have thought it would not have been too much trouble to flick them into No1 Lorry with the rest of the non recyclables....
Slurry with the whinge on top. The zephr is from the north-so is odour of pigs. Well actually slurry. AS those deathless lyrics in a great (Western) Borders Musical had it:When we hit that road, hell fer leather, Cats and dogs'll dance in the heather, Birds and frogs'll sing all together and the toads will hop! The wind'll whistle as we rattle along, The cows'll moo in the clover, Whiteadder ripple out a whispered song, And whisper it over and over: “Will that smell go on for ever go on forever and never stop?Surely it won’t never stop? In that shiny, little surrey with the fringe on the top! “I can see the stars gettin' blurry, 'cos my eyes are watering, my eyes are smartingMy runny nose is really hartin’Mud on the Road, Mud on the wheelsLife in the country is down at...
WI launches crusade for licensed brothels is a head line in The Times On-line-reflecting the Thunderers tabloid approach to most stories. It opens:They are better known for making jam, selling cakes and stripping off to make calendars for charity. Now the Women’s Institute has started a campaign to license brothels to protect women who work as prostitutes. The village of Holybourne in Hampshire is the unlikely birthplace of this crusade. Members of the WI branch there were deeply moved by the events last December when five street prostitutes were murdered in Ipswich. The branch made licensing brothels the subject of its motion for debate at the autumn meeting of the Hampshire WI Federation, which has 6,000 members. The motion received almost unanimous backing and Hampshire WI will now...
RAIL RAGESThe relentless John Lamont, the Tory MSP for these parts, not content with converting the former LibDem MSP, Eaun Robson's informative 'Mound Notes' in the Berwickshire into a party political puff, has now climbed onto 'reopen Reston Station' Bandwagon, or should that be cattle truck. Apparently the re-opening of this ancient pre-Beeching halt will be a 'huge boost to the economy' and to the Eastern Borders 'infrastructure'. The sort of argument that RAGES regularly trots out with very little factual justification. How the pleasuring of 5 commuters from Reston and three more from the next hamlet will be such a huge boost to the GDP of Reston and environs has never been quantified and the thought that industry will rush to the area to take advantage of workers not having to...
Grey Mare's Tail Waterfall Originally uploaded by old_greywolf2000 Its not the Mournes, not even Norn Iron but the Grey Mare's Tail waterfall, owned by the National Trust, is one of the most spectacular sights in the Borders (just in) and is off the Moffat Selkirk road below St Mary's Loch. You don't have to be a wild goat to get up the path to enjoy the view.But it would helpGoats can always get to parts of the mountainside denied to humans-and in their case it probably helps that they can't...
FOR SALMON READ COD THROUGHOUT?Borders sign returns amid complaints says the headline in to day's Berwickshire And the stirring story runs:Dismay at use of GaelicWELCOME: The new sign on the Scotland/England border at Lamberton with its welcome in Gaelic. Picture by Michael Reilly.y"It is cod Highlandism"Quote By : Councillor Michael CookBy Kenny Paterson THE 'Welcome to Scotland' sign has finally returned to the A1 Lamberton crossing - but authorities now face fresh complaints about what language Scotland's pleasantries have been given in.East Berwickshire Councillor Michael Cook has described his 'dismay' that the new sign, finally replaced after the last one fell off its brackets five months ago, has a Gaelic translation on it.While he was pleased a sign of sorts was back in place,...
The SNP who did miserably in these parts of the Borders are now having a bit of a post election moan. Their cri de coeur is in this weeks Berwickshire To wit: - I am very disappointed that the motion proposed by Councillor Donald Moffat and which represents the SNP’s manifesto commitment to end the current cabinet structure within Scottish Borders Council has not been reported to date in the press.This was a substantive motion which I believe would have delivered a more democratic style of government to the people of the Borders and would have encouraged a wider debating forum across the political spectrum.No-one would have been left out and all members of the electorate would be represented in the council chamber.There is a growing feeling amongst opposition groups that we are being...
Developers Hit BackA bloggee obviously incensed by comments re appropriate development in these columns has e-mailed as followsI was recently reading your blog, and I thought..this guy and his cronies wants Berwickshire preserved as an idyllic, financially unsustainable, child free, social deprived, geriatric enclave! .The children and young adults in the area can't wait to escape to a real life amongst a living population elsewhere. No doubt they'll return when their own children reach the "tempting years" to keep them out of harms way amidst the bright city lights; inadvertently driving them, through boredom, to underage illegalities and geriatric tauntings and, in due course, away to the city. Meanwhile their parents will stagnate to maintain the pool of social services and health...
Why Are We Waiting?The curious case of the dog that did not bark in the nighttime is reminiscent of a great silence, or lack of activity, emanating from the mediumheidyins of the Berwickshire area committee. If you are interested enough to go to http://eplanning1.scotborders.gov.uk/WAM/showCaseFile.do?appType=planning&appNumber=06/01476/OUT and look at the planning application for six houses at Fishwick, the traffic black spot of, er, Fishwick and environs. You will note that the application has been pending for several months and there are no recent documents on the file. One wonders why. The Community Council, as can be seen from the dossier is a bit dubious about the enterprise and has challenged the need for a new road cutting out a 'dangerous 'corner and the rush of traffic...
