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 Hoots & Havers - January 2007

FOR ABOUT FIVE YEARS I was part owner of a bottle of wine named Brian. It was French, red and I would guess had cost originally some £3.99 because Brian was not a very good wine but well-traveled because it went to and fro from our house to that of a friend every time we entertained each other. I have forgotten which of us eventually drank the thing.

This memory came up because I read that fashionable folk in the US now go in for re-gifting. This is no more than re-cycling unwanted presents and, at this time of year, some of us may have quite a few. Of course all those that I received – even those with wicks - were utterly delightful, useful, highly decorative, just what I always wanted and all will become heirlooms that will be passed on to my awe-struck descendants. But I have noted that quite a few other people have received gifts that can only be described as useless crap and it’s this class of object that can and should be recycled.

Beware, however, of the sell-by date. This year I was disturbed to receive a bottle of whisky with a sell-by date. Granted it was whisky and therefore the problem was academic, but my freedom to re-gift the stuff would have been severely restricted. It just doesn’t do to present people with things that are six months out of date. So bear this in mind when you are shopping. There are some profoundly disgusting comestibles on offer at fancy prices in fancy packaging that are meant to be admired rather than consumed, but anything that can be eaten, drunk or smeared on bodily surfaces will probably carry a sell-by date which will run out by next Christmas.

The smart retailer or manufacturer can surmount this problem. I received a bijou posy of chocolates, purporting to be hand-crafted by finger-sucking, black-eyed damsels in a Highland glen, but a closer inspection revealed them to be produced by immigrant Bulgars on an industrial estate in Uddingston. The package was a tough, clear plastic and, with care, it was possible to peel off the label giving the sell-by date. I know if you make such things you want them used so that you can sell more and the inclination must be to weld the label tight to the package, but sales are bound to suffer. I mean how often do you receive something like this and are inspired to rush out to buy one yourself? You don’t. So ensure the sell by date is only lightly affixed, or illegible. Then your product may sell by the shedload and become a must-have item in the growing and highly competitive re-gifting market.

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I’m told that ‘Financial Close’ on the PPP school development is delayed at the moment because they’re having a scrap about money. Before that the problem was that somebody failed to clear the demolition of the original Victorian bit of Breadalbane Academy with the appropriate bureaucrats.

 I believe the delay preceding that one was down to some problem with a bit of land in Kinross. The next one will be down to somebody complaining that the tendering was not competitive in the first place. Or because there’s a change of administration and the incomers don’t like PFIs. Or that some bright spark has realised that this particular PFI is too small to be convincing.

I sympathise. This whole contract has been long drawn out and opaque with officials in Perth and in Edinburgh squealing like goosed virgins when the methodology is questioned. Perhaps their hearts are not in it.

Even at the best of times PFIs seem nothing more than a con trick that dumps the cost of something today on the next generation, the political equivalent of borrowing from a loan shark.

The SNP says it will end PFI deals and the polls indicate an SNP victory in the May elections for the Scottish Parliament. They may do quite well in the Council elections as well.

So what happens if Financial Close does not occur before the elections? All candidates must make it very clear how they will ensure a decent replacement for Breadalbane Academy – and soon.

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I believe folk are casting round for suitable stretch of Europe, probably Eastern Europe, with which we can ‘twin’.  We’re a bioregion, you see, and by linking with ‘a similarly-scaled mountain community in Europe’ we can learn from each other. We’re also a discrete entity and this, according to the dictionary, means ‘something that can be perceived individually and not as connected to, or part of something else.’

I can easily go along with that. Quite apart from being united by the bumpy landscape, there’s the history. These days we call it Highland Perthshire but that’s a very feeble...mm...discreteness to what it once was. It used to be the Regality of Atholl, which went as far as Dunkeld, and His Grace could chop of our heads.

Before that it was much more important, stretching more than half way down Loch Tay and one of the seven Celtic earldoms where the descendants of King Duncan, filleted by MacBeth, held sway. And of course Alba was divided into seven provinces split amongst the seven sons of Cruithne, ancestor of the Picts.

And according to the Book of Deer (right), the earliest written Gaelic, this was a kingdom, Athfhlota, some twelve hundred years ago at a time when England was not England but Wessex, Mercia, Kent, Northumbria etc. And how discrete is that?