A heather coloured mist

A heather coloured mist descended in front of my eyes just now. The speaker on BBCR4's Thought for the Day refered to the Emperor Constantine as having 'failed to subdue the Scots' in 221AD. Imagine the hilarity if someone in such an honoured position (I'm talking about the speaker on Thought for the Day, not the Emperor Constantine) referred to the Vikings discovering 'the USA' in the 7th century AD. George Orwell believed in the importance of words, and how their use (or misuse) can support or insidiously corrode, public discourse. Using the term 'The Scots' in the sense of the realm of Scotland ruled over by one king is anachronistic and misleading if we are talking of any period earlier than the 11th century. Before David I (who had been brought up in the Norman court but was I think at least partly a Scot), there were the tribes and kingdoms (plural) of North Britain, not least the British kingdom of Strathclyde based at Dumbarton Rock. It is a lively matter of debate among historians why a sudden outbreak of Scottishness, an acute desire to be identified as 'Scottish' broke out around the time of William Wallace, and the reason is usually given to be the unfortunate behaviour of Edward I 'Longshanks' and his son Edward II who should have known better.

Our Oct 15 2011 event

Moffat House Hotel - Sat 15 Oct 2011 - 9.30am-6.0pm

Contemporary Identity
- an entertaining exploration of personal and national character

Jeans or genes?

The team at Moffat Book Events have come up with another sparkling day of inquiry and amusement, for the under-fives to the over-50’s. The theme this time is who we are, and how to find out if in doubt. The top lineup on October 15 includes: children’s storytelling, a visit from The Guardian’s Children’s Books Editor Julia Eccleshare, an investigation of your genes by Alistair Moffat author of The Scots - A Genetic Journey and House of Colour’s clothing expert Moira Cox on when (if ever) to wear jeans – and if so, which colour top to put with them.
Programme:
0930 – 1030 Who Am I? Who Are We? Who Are You? Identity through storytelling for children aged 3-12 with Rev. Adam Dillon and Angus Sinclair
1030 – 1100 Coffee
1100 – 1200 Julia Eccleshare, Children's Books Editor, The Guardian recommends her top selections from the latest crop of children’s books
1200 – 1300 Alistair Moffat on The Scots - A Genetic Journey – and beyond
1300 – 1430 Lunch break
1430 - 1530 Presentation of self – how to discover and make the most of your personal identity - Moira Cox , House of Colour expert
1630 - 1800 Moffat Book Events traditional afternoon tea.
Tickets from: DGArts (www.dgarts.co.uk) 01387 253 383 Moffat Books – 5 Well Street, Moffat. DG10 9DP 01683 220 059
For further information contact Marilyn Elliott 07885 444 120 or email info@moffatbookevents.co.uk
See also http://wwwlizmoffatbookevents.blogspot.com/

A sunny day in Moffat

Renowned garden and parks historian Magda Salvesen Schueler inquires from non-hurricane ridden NYC about Moffat's open spaces. I hope she will visit when she is next visiting her sisters in Scotland, one of whom lives in Symington and who I met at Traquair last weekend. My sister was the administrator at the Richard Demarco gallery in Edinburgh in the heady days of 'Strategy Get Arts', and Joseph Beuys, he of the strips of leather and blobs of tallow. Magda's husband John exhibited at the Demarco Gallery, and she inquires wistfully if I know the fate of one of his watercolours my mother bought fifty years ago. My mother doesn't have it, nor does my sister, nor do I. I suggest Magda tries my brother. Talking of siblings, my half sister Caroline was on Woman's Hour yesterday on the programme devoted to women aviators. Caroline is a champion helicopter pilot and has worked as a commercial airline pilot, although now has returned to her first love (and originally her planned career) of medicine. My daughter Abi called in with her husband on her way back from her run on the Fringe (Abi Roberts Takes You Up the Aisle - and, yes, I'm afraid it is a double entendre). They were both full of beans, but looking forward to getting back to Durham to unpack before setting off for more 'gigs' all round the country, and to touch base with her agents in London (one for standup/cabaret; one for voice overs). She does an eerily accurate Celine Dion as well as Marge Simpson and the dog from Scooby Doo. I am twothirds of the way through Olivia Laing's To the River, glad to be reading it slowly. It is beautifully written, in a good way ie not just endless dragon flies and buttercups and showers of rain, but quite a lot of history (battles), social history, literary history (Virginia Woolf) and meditations on love and loss.

From our New York correspondent - Irene: a first hand report

From our New York correspondent: 'I'm afraid I have a very anti-climactic account for you that prompted thoughts of "hurricane? what hurricane?" this morning. S and I woke up to find the weather completely still and even a ray or two of sunshine peeking through the clouds, in stark contrast to reporting on the New York Times which painted a rather different picture of the city still gripped by the storm.

It did rain quite heavily and there were some strong gusts last night but our sleep wasn't interrupted and our preparations (stocking up on food and water, buying plastic sheeting, filling up the bath tub with water per Mayor Bloomberg's recommendation) were all for nought in the end. It seems there was some flooding as the result of 'storm surges' in low-lying coastal areas such as downtown Manhattan and parts of Long Island, but nothing very severe. The city certainly took it very seriously as did more residents. All public transportation was shutdown yesterday at noon and is still not running today. Supermarkets were thronged with shoppers (lines zigzagged through the aisles, bread was in very short supply) and flashlights and batteries were near impossible to find.

We haven't been for a walk yet so it could be there is more damage that we can see from our windows but at the moment it seems a case of the media reporting on an alternative New York reality'. (report ends)

Here in Moffat a dry day is forecast, and I must make an appointment for a routine check up with my dentist. Ah. The utter, utter bliss of the quiet life. Oh! And my elder daughter Abi and her husband are coming across from Durham for tea.

A snake called Weenie -

Harry went to collect his 6th birthday present from a pet shop in Carlisle yesterday. Weenie (to rhyme with 'Irene') is a corn snake about 30cm long and has warm light and dry accommodation rivaling any in Moffat, plus a bark effect log to hide under and matching water bowl.. I am sorry to say that he/she (too young to tell) eats baby mice. But there you go. That's nature. Get over it. Meanwhile, across the other side of the Atlantic, for once the expected anti-climax - that Hurricane Irene had changed course and petered out over the ocean - looks as though it hasn't happened. The trajectory is straight over New York city and then Boston. The friend who had booked himself into a motel a safer distance from his house on the Hudson river just across from NYC arrived to discover that contrary to the promise made when he booked, there is no emergency generator. Whenever I read about people moving to a safe(r) place, I am reminded of the hapless couple who emigrated to the Falkland islands for fear of a nuclear war in Europe - just before the Argentines invaded. Also, the English doctor on my sailing holiday this summer who had moved to Christchurch, New Zealand to get away from it all, just before the earthquake which destroyed the city, including his flat. A propos watery things: I am really, really relishing To The River by Olivia Laing, subtitled A Journey Beneath the Surface which has drawn me in with its mixture of nature description and her moods, and literary references. Very well done indeed. The bad news is that my boiler has broken down, so I have no hot water. The good news is that Andrea Reive has identified a speaker for our April 2012 Moffat Book Event: Michael Wickenden - the gardener at Cally Gardens, Gatehouse of Fleet. An approach is to be made at a planned visit there en route to or back from the Wigtown Book Festival on Wed Sept 28. Anyone interested?

A distant hurricane

Hurricane Irene is advancing on New York, and, on Facebook, friends in that neck of the woods are reporting plans to get out of her way. One, who lives on the Hudson River just west of NYC, is heading north to a motel 'for a couple of days'. Nature, eh? For a moment, an opportunity to pause and consider the colossal forces which can suddenly threaten a home, a book collection, the warm bed and dry clothes. I was astonished to see that beautifully printed blue and white signs have appeared on the streets of New York, showing people which way to go to evacuate the low lying areas. For an event that happens once in a lifetime they have printed signs! What superb organisation! I spare a thought, too, for a child who has already in her short life known the terror of 9/11 - she and her Mum were on their way to her nursery when the first plane struck - and now, living in the lower west side will probably be setting off again with her mother to safety elsewhere in the city. Not everyone knows that the oddly curving Broadway which runs the length of Manhattan island follows the track of an existing Indian trail, a survival from when the first white settlers arrived. Back in Moffat, the Beef Tub was the subject of this morning's BBCR4 Open Country programme. I approve of planting trees. I love trees. Trees are a Good Thing. Why, then, the need to justify planting them as the 'recreation' of a landscape which ( correct me if I'm wrong) ceased to exist because of climate change 5,000 years ago? The birches that once grew on these hills fell and became peat because the climate became cooler and wetter. That's it.

A Challenge to my Readers

For once, I appeal to my readers for ideas, however whacky,for uses of two perfectly sound buildings set in an incomparable landscape in the southern uplands of Scotand but now so near to wind turbines that you can hear them turning. The noise is like a heavy truck rumbling up the road. Right outside. The noise is such that no one in their right mind would go there and pay good money to rehearse a string quartet, lie on a rubber mat doing yoga, try to read a book or sit on the (newly extended) deck gazing at the landscape. Unless they were deaf already. Those of you of a critical turn of mind may be muttering: what did she expect? They're turbines, for God's sake. Well, I really didn't think it would be so loud. I had stood under turbines (smaller, admittedly) in Ardrossan as preparation - in fact, I was taken by the developers before signing the contract to experience for myself what the effect of the turning blades was. Maybe I fooled myself into thinking that the prevailing wind would carry any sound away (the house and barn face southwest, where the wind usually comes from, and the turbines are behind the house). Anyway, I was wrong and the naysayers were right. It's really, really noisy. So: suggestions please.