Come wind, come weather

The westerlies have returned.
The trade winds started to blow again last week, in mid June, and brought with them the torrential rain, our own mini-monsoon, that ruins so many sport events and outdoor gatherings planned with no thought of the weather cycle.
It happens with remarkable regularity, year in year out, but, cocooned as we are from the elements, we are hardly aware of it.
The buffeting winds and squally rain did not deter a group of archaeologists on a dig on one of the mounds that are scattered over the high moor above the village. The moor is where an outstretched limb of the Lammermuirs eventually descends to dip its toe in the North Sea at St Abbs and is as exposed a spot as one can find. Living there must be like living on the deck of a ship.
Folk did live there and still do.

The dig team assisted by "locals"

The dig was on a “settlement” that had just been de-scheduled from the list of ancient monuments probably to save the expense have to fence it off and it would appear to have been an exercise in checking to make absolutely certain there was nothing of significance on the site before leaving it to the depredations of the rabbits and the sheep.

Not much of interest, an external ditch, not really defensive, probably just to keep livestock out: a few spots where there was evidence of levelling out bumps in the bed-rock or of infilling depressions, to make a level floor; a water cistern cut into the rock. Not much, just folk making themselves a little more comfortable. An Iron Age farmhouse, probably occupied by people of the Brythonic tribe the Romans called the Votadini. A farmhouse then, just a hundred yards from the current farm house, a good place to live, high and dry above the marshy, wooded valley bottoms, a place with wonderful views of the coastline, a stream close at hand and the ability to exploit every resource from the fish in the sea to the game on the moor with the fertile ground to farm between the two, it would have been occupied for generations.

The modern farmhouse, on the right, is only a few yards away after 200o years


The only significant find was a huge post hole, one of four that would have supported the centre of the circular roof. It was extremely large and deep and the reason for all the effort to embed it so deeply in the bedrock floor was there for all to see or, rather, feel. It would have needed a firm setting to withstand the wind and keep the roof from blowing into the North Sea.

Those Iron Age people would have been only too aware of the return of the westerlies.

Bunker shots

What with all the furore surrounding the D-Day commemoration reminding us how Tom Hanks won the war and a repeat showing of Churchill’s Secret Army on Channel 4, I thought I’d go and check out the secret wartime bunker hidden about a couple of miles outside the village. I heard about it from a pair of local worthies who stravage about the countryside even more than I do. They discovered it some years back dug out the entrance, got in and photographed the interior but kept it very quiet. I was given a rough idea where to look, so off I went.

The Main Entrance

Apparently in 1940 or so when a Nazi invasion was on the cards, a group of volunteers from the Home Guard were picked for training in sabotage, demolition, and survival. In the event of a German landing they were to leave their families, disappear and go underground, literally
Bunkers or “operational bases” were hidden in woods. I suppose, our village being close to the East Coast main line and the A1 with all it bridges, it would have been an obvious spot. Equipped with guns, explosives and supplies, these men would have formed the basis for a resistance movement ….or a suicide squad.
Needless to say they were never called upon and, in latter part of the war, were disbanded. Having been sworn to secrecy and signed the Official Secrets Act, they never divulged the details of the scheme and most of them, if not all, are long gone.
In these days of off- the-record briefings, smear campaigns, leaked documents, lost c.d.’s, and stolen lap-tops, their honest, loyal, honourable integrity seems touching.
They were told not to say anything so they didn’t
Would they have been so quick to volunteer if they had known what a collection of freeloaders, shysters and opportunists, now represent the democracy they were so keen to protect?

The Escape Hatch

The bunker is still intact, fifteen feet below ground, nearly seventy years after its construction from corrugated iron and brick. All there, entrance, escape hatch, blast wall, a tribute to the workmanship and quality of materials used even in wartime. How many of today’s housing estates will be standing above ground in seventy years?

The Interior (courtesy of the original finders)

Altogether, a fun day out. There is an Adopt- a-Monument scheme for preserving old buildings. I wonder if we could preserve it as a historic monument. We could alert the government to its survival. After all, they probably still own it. If not, someone could claim a second home allowance for it.. It is certainly an attractive spot and I’m sure there are those in the spotlight at the moment that might just welcome just such a tranquil hideaway.

The view from the bunker

Rhymer's Reel

The Eildons

Fed up with the limitations imposed on my wanderings by a game leg and frustrated by erstwhile climbing companions gleefully reporting” there’s still snow on Ben Wyvis”, I decided to test myself on our own mini-mountains, the Eildon hills. The remains of an ancient volcano, Trimontium of the invading Romans, and oppidum of the native Selgovae, the Eildons stand out from the surrounding country and would, I thought, be a fair trial.

Melrose Abbey

Setting off from the site of the Eildon Tree where True Thomas the Rhymer met the Queen of Faerie, I trekked up North Eildon with much grunts and muttered expletives. It took a long time but it was worth it. On a clear day, such as it was, I could see as far as the moor above our village away on the coast and had a great view of Melrose Abbey where that other Border wizard, Michael Scott, lies buried.


Rhymer's Tower

Thomas the Rhymer was a real 13th century man. His keep still stands in Ercildoune (Earlston) and his name appears on documents of the time. He is credited with some of the earliest recorded Scots poetry. His poem-play, Sir Tristem ,was resurrected by Sir Walter Scott who also took the great landscape artist Turner to Rhymers Glen by the Huntley Burn. Turner’s watercolour of the glen is in the National Gallery.
Ralph Vaughan Williams was so intrigued by the tale that he started to compose an opera about Thomas. Sadly, it was never finished.

Thomas, apparently met the the queen of Elfland while resting under the Eildon tree, she took him away and he was not seen for either three or seven years depending on which version you read. He was given the gift of prophecy but cursed with only being able to speak the truth. An Orphean figure,his prophecies were widely consulted for hundreds of years down to at least the eighteenth century. Only being able to speak the truth might indeed be a curse but also quite a handy reputation to have once word got around that everything you said was gospel.

Our current politicians would give all their expenses for such an accolade. Many of them seem to have been “away with the fairies” when it came to filling in claim forms
Thomas probably worked as a spy, maybe even a double agent, in the days when borders were fluid and kings and families battled for overlordship as the Canmore dynasty came to an end. Quite handy then to disappear and claim to have been abducted by the fairy folk

In some versions, Thomas fell asleep by the Huntley Burn and woke to meet the fairy folk. The folk that go to sleep there nowadays awake to find bits of themselves missing. It is the site of our District General Hospital.

Midddle and West Eildon from North Eildon

After getting to the top of the North Eildon I could see the path up the next one but discretion being the better part and all that, I made my reluctant way back to the car., Still, a good day out and, on return, thank goodness for hot baths, ibuprofen and whisky.

Patriot Games

The restoration of the thirteenth century Priory that dominates the centre of our village proceeds apace. A Cinderella amongst the great Border abbeys, it has been neglected for decades. Thanks to the efforts of local interest groups, support has been garnered from every conceivable source even including a visit from rock megastar, bassist, metal detector enthusiast and gentleman, Rolling Stone, Bill Wyman.

It all started after the local council started laying waste to the area with strimmers and chainsaws. My involvement came by chance as I rushed to protect three gean trees I had planted; one for each daughter in what was the wild area surrounding the ruins. That led to committees and meetings as I felt obliged, in my mind, to give useful advice or stick my nose in as others may have seen it.

The ruins are now being stabilised. The ancient grave slabs, including the enigmatic “Templar” crosses, are being professionally restored and interesting finds being unearthed. A wheel-head cross and an inscribed stone are probably from an even earlier establishment, closer in time to St Aebba herself. A Northumbrian princess, allegedly fleeing an arranged dynastic marriage, she was an Dark Age example of what is now called “girl power”. It is also a reminder how random are national boundaries.
This was once part of an Anglian, from whence “English”, kingdom. Aebba’s brother, Oswald, having already annexed Mercia, the area south to the Humber, marched north to the Forth and defeated the Scots. Aebba’s other brother, Oswui, consolidated the kingdom. Her nephew Ecgfrith laid siege as far north as Dunottar. Had it not been for the victory of the Picts at Nechtan’s Mere, Scotland and England might never have evolved into separate nations with arguably different characters. We might well have become part of the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria and be now worrying about Newcastle United’s imminent relegation from the Premier League. Way-ay, the lads
I tell myself this as part of an auto-conditioning process. In the event of Scotland not qualifying for the next World Cup, I will have to cheer on England, especially with four English grandchildren. I will have to shout encouragement to Rooney (sounds Irish): Rio Ferdinand (sounds Spanish enough to have sailed with the Armada): Gerrard (un morceau de sang normande, peut-etre ) and their Italian coach.
Nations are mere constructs and we should not get too hung up on them.
Mind you, if by the longest of shots, Scotland do qualify then I might sing a different song.
“ 0’ Flower of ….”

The waiting game

I nearly waited too long for Godot. My cyber-alert system had been primed to let me know when Becket’s enigmatic piece was coming to Edinburgh but it had obviously decided that I was denying its existence by creating its memory and decided to be “of itself” and ignore my instructions. P erhaps it had been reading over my shoulder when I googled Becket.
Telephoning the theatre, I got what was, if not the last seat in the house, the next but one. I was seated in the top right hand corner of what is politely referred to as the Upper Circle but is generally known as “the gods”. I haven't sat so high up for years. It reminded me of school trips to pantomimes of yesteryear when gangs of nine and ten year olds were bussed up to Edinburgh for a Christmas treat and sat in jostling, unruly rows like so many pigeons on window sills, peering down from the giddy heights as Jimmy Logan or Stanley Baxter went through their routines.
Ah, the austerity of the fifties, when will we see the likes again? Gey soon, it would seem if the financial pundits are to be believed.
I hadn’t seen WFG for about thirty years and I had forgotten, or never realised, how funny it is. I suppose asides about prostatism, senior moments, incipient senility and daytime somnolence didn’t have the same relevance for me thirty years ago.
A superb production. McKellen, Stewart, Callow and Pickup were as good as all the revues said they were, The set, the lighting, even a very passable Merlot in the Upper Circle bar, all contributed to a tremendous experience. Yet after the buzz, the enjoyment of the theatrical experience, there was a bleakness that grabbed you unawares. We are all waiting for…for what ?

The swallows are back. I have seen my first of the year. 24th of April. Always the same, within 48 hours, every year! I have been waiting for them to arrive. We are always waiting for something but at least the swallows never disappoint.

Artful Dodging

I took myself up to Edinburgh to see the “Turner in Italy” exhibition at what used to be the Royal Scottish Academy, now part of the "National Gallery Complex". Auld Reekie is really in a mess. In preparation for the new tram system, the streets have been dug up into a system of trenches to rival the Western Front. Peering down into them you could see exposed the network of pipes and cables and conduits that keep the city functioning – telephone, electricity, water, gas. It reminded me of times spent in the dissecting rooms tracing the paths of the brachial artery or the lateral cutaneous nerve of thigh on formalin-bronzed cadavers in what was, in my case, a rather vain attempt to commit the complexity of the human anatomy to memory.

But the Turners were worth all the crossing and re-crossing of streets and finding a way through the maze of health-and-safety mesh fencing ( hard hats must be worn).

The earlier pictures were great but the later ones of Venice, of the Santa Maria del Salute rising ghostly in the miasma off the canals, were astonishing.

A step round the back took me to the National Gallery proper to pay homage to Velazquez’ “An Old Woman Cooking Eggs” that has been away, starring in the BBC series "The Baroque", and is now back where it belongs. It also gave me a chance to feel the warm glow of ownership as I contemplated the acres of naked flesh that are the Titians, proudly purchased on our behalf, by the government of Scotland. They have spent money on less worthy causes.
All those dimply bums, love-handles and cellulite would certainly merit a stern lecture from the practice nurse on the perils of BMI’s over 25 and the danger to the skin of over-exposure to ultraviolet.
Waving my free pass, I clambered aboard the bus to trundle round the countryside back to the village, my I-pod suitably charged to while away the couple of hours it takes to reach the sticks.
Despite all the twinges and niggles and general falling apart, getting older can be quite enjoyable at times.

seven of one

A sunny spring day and where better to be than The Greenyards for the Melrose Sevens or the Melrose Sports as the old men would call the tournament, harking back to when seven-a-side rugby was only part of the day’s events alongside kicking competitions, sprints and races. Now, this, the oldest sevens tournament in the world, the begetter of all others up to and including the Sevens World Cup, is great social event with fancy dress, Easter bonnets, a carnival atmosphere and literally, gallons of hospitality. It is still the Blue Riband event though, the one tournament every great player wants to win or at least play in. Waisale Serevi, probably the greatest exponent of the short game and playmaker of world champions Fiji was there for the swan song of his career and was reportedly happy just to have been involved despite his side being well beaten in the first round. My old home side suffered the same fate.
Sevens is a game for sheer blistering speed. There is no place to hide with only half the number of players on a full sized rugby pitch. Miss a tackle or throw a stray pass and like as not the other side are in under the posts. Seven and a half minutes doesn’t sound like much but it is a long time to keep running especially on a warm spring afternoon, then turn round and do it again and, if you win, you do it again and again, all afternoon. My only sevens medal came from a wet, dank afternoon on a muddy pitch in a junior tournament. The next week, on a sunny day and a dry pitch, my lack of pace was exposed, we went out in the first round and I was dropped.
I’ve always enjoyed sevens as a spectator sport having watched the great club sevens of the past when the perfect combination of backs and forwards were playing for one team at just the right time. Melrose themselves, Hawick, Kelso, Gala and the great visiting sides London Scottish, Loughborough the composite sides like the Barbarians, French Barbarians Irish Wolfhounds, Co-optomists and the overseas visitors, Randwick, Bay of Plenty, Stellenbosch, Narwaka have all had their day in the sun. Despite Melrose’s brave effort in getting to the final, I can’t see a Border side winning the sevens again such is the power, pace and pool of talent of teams like this year’s winners - University of Johannesburg.
A ten-a -side match between the finalists of the veteran’s tournament held the previous day took place between the semi-finals and the finals of the main event.
I felt the dead hand of Time on my shoulder when I heard the son of someone I was at school with described as a veteran!
Oh dear.