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Hoots & Havers - February 07

A fact of which I rarely boast is that I am a Son of the Rock. It’s not something of which I was really aware for much of my life until someone pointed it out. It’s like being a cockney, except instead of being born in London, it means you first saw the light of day in Stirling. It doesn’t mean you have to pop out in the shadow of the castle rock, which in my case was true, but just means Stirling as a whole.

King David made the town a royal borough in the 12th century but this ancient honour was recently considered inadequate and, despite the fact it has no cathedral, it became a city in 2002. They are now erecting faux ancient signs proclaiming this status as part of its street furniture.

However the reason this subject came to mind is because of what is written on the road signs as you enter the place ‘Living – Breathing – Stirling’.  One cannot but despair. Has the world come to this? When our taxes pay some prat or prats to spew forth the woolly mush that fills the interior of their skulls and render it solid on a signpost? The phrase is offensively meaningless. And one fears it had to be approved by a committee of the Council. It may have been passed because one of those strange standing orders permitted no more than a single idiot councillor to vote to approve it, the sort of rule that stops Ken Lyall voting on local planning matters in Perth.

The discerning citizen may also need to suppress a shudder at poor old Perth being labelled ‘The Perfect Centre’. Gobbledegook again. To define perfect in these circumstances would require a PhD, followed by master’s degree to decide to what it was central. And what is such a claim supposed to trigger in the mind of the reader?

Ceud Mile Failte, it says on the signs as you enter Pitlochry. At least that means something – if you are the one in ten of the visiting tourists who will understand the Gaelic phrase, or the one in fifty who can pronounce it. And when was Gaelic last the language of choice in Pitlochry? I should think more residents there understand Polish today.

Aberfeldy declares itself Scotland’s First Fair Trade Town. At a guess the Fair Trade spend here is .05p in the £ which would not really seem worth shouting about. But by being thus signed it promotes Fair Trade rather than Aberfeldy and that’s fine.

Much more exciting is the sign as you come into the town by Crieff Road. There’s wrought-iron erection, which, if you have 20:20 vision, you might be able to read from a stationary horse but certainly not from a passing car. ‘S Dluth Tric Bat Abairpheallidh’ it reads, and there’s a heart along with a silhouette of a bloke in a boat wearing a flat cap. And that translates as ‘Swift and Often goes the Boat of Aberfeldy’.

At least it may have done until that sassenach swine Wade built the new bridge the other day and made the frequently speeding vessel redundant.

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I knew it must be a very fleeting claim to fame when I read about it last month. One Emiliano Mercado del Toro of Puerto Rico had been recognised as the world’s oldest woman. And last week there was a report that the world’s oldest person, Emma Faust Tillman, has died in the US aged 114. Presumably she had a few days to enjoy her position of seniority after Emiliano had gone to her eternal reward.

Aizumi Shigechiyo was a very old Japanese gentleman who died some 20 years ago. What interested me was that his hair had begun to turn black from having been white and he was said to be growing a new tooth. It seemed if you managed to top the age curve at 120-odd you began to grow young again, but he croaked before this interesting phenomenon could be properly explored.

I did admire one old bloke, the American blues singer Eubie Blake. He claimed to have hit his centenary but it seems he may have been exaggerating a bit. I caught a snatch of a radio interview with him on some significant birthday. ‘To what do you attribute your great age?’ he was asked. A short pause and then a mellow drawl ‘One hundred cigarettes a day and nothing but fried foods.’

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I was talking to someone the other day who works on the Hebridean Princess, the refurbished ferry that plies the Western Isles for the benefit of well-heeled tourists. The Queen took it over for a week last year to celebrate her birthday and filled it with her kinsfolk.

The crew are used to handling the mega-rich who can be somewhat demanding and difficult to handle. But apparently they had never come across anything like this lot. They were downright creepy by being, without exception, delightful - unfailingly appreciative, courteous and friendly.

One of them – possibly Camilla - was said by the media to have stumped off the vessel in a huff about something, but this was complete nonsense invented by the tabloids desperate for a story. Everything went to plan. Tipping staff on the vessel is discouraged. This was circumvented by a cheque for £5000 to be split amongst them.

* * * *

There seems to be some kind of a stushie going on over Schiehallion. Irvine Butterfield, who is great and good on such matters, and John Allen, who used to be secretary of the Schiehallion group for the JWT, are accusing the John Muir Trust of something dire or dirish.

I happen to believe that the mountain is the most iconic, historic and important chunk of real estate in Highland Perthshire. So I read both articles with great interest – twice. I was not much clearer on what the beef was about when I had done so. Sheep and fences featured in Irvine’s and they were bad, it said.

John Allen questioned whether the JWT ‘is following its original visionary intent at East Schiehallion to expand its influence about the value of wild land to man, or is it making pragmatic but restrictive decisions to resolve problems of the moment, and use Schiehallion as a PR exercise for its wider ambitions elsewhere?’

That’s too clever for me altogether. It’s a shame that the problem cannot be explained so that the uninitiated can grasp its importance more easily.