Hoots & Havers - November 06

‘There is nothing to relieve the desolate monotony of the landscape - without tree or even bush, without any symptom of civilisation. The mountains are too tame to raise in the mind ideas of the grand or the terrible – even the bleating of the sheep, or the crowing of the moorcock borne in the breeze along the barren waste does by breaking the silence but render the melancholy of this vast solitude the more felt.’

That’s 1839, going over the Drumochter pass in a horse-drawn buggy on the route of the A9. Today we’re shut in our cars with the radio playing, or our ears filled with engine noise. Even if we stopped for a picnic, as did those earlier travellers, the hills would echo with the roar of toiling lorry diesels. The disappearance of silence must make a huge difference to the way we perceive our landscape.

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I read of a bachelor a week or two ago who wanted a family, but he felt himself too busy to find and woo and woman. So he checked the web for a lady selling eggs, bought a clutch, found another lady willing to incubate them, masturbated into a suitable receptacle and handed things on to a medic of the appropriate kind who presented him with twins, boys, nine months later.

On quite a few levels this does not strike me as having been a very good idea, and perhaps one of the least important is the difficulty future generations may face when they try to disentangle the who-did-what-with-whom of their ancestry. At the moment millions are at it and they call it genealogy. This is the only generation that can do it because the web has provided the window that makes it possible. Our children will find the work done by their silver-surfing forebears and you can’t make the discoveries twice.

The way technology is moving the day may come when it’s very important to know one’s ancestry. The genetic isolation of societies such as Iceland and the Amish people in the US allow medical researchers understandings of human diseases and it’s not much of a jump to conceive of a time when knowledge of one’s own family’s history could have health implications. But it won’t be much use if one can trace it no further than to a pipette in a seedy laboratory.

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For the past few weeks there’s been a scratchy debate taking place on the Comment website about noise, drink and general debauchery in public places on weekend evenings in Aberfeldy. It began with moans about stag and hen nights, but the arrival of chilly autumn nights has taken this off the agenda until next summer.

Now it’s down to ill-behaved youth, resentful if expected to rely on their own imagination and resources for amusement. But that’s the nature of the beast. Some of the young are always ill behaved. Living, as we, do, near the school, it soon became apparent that there was no point in shooting the more obnoxious, litter-strewing brats, because their successors would be just as bad and just as aggrieved if they were expected to clear up their own mess.

Apparently the young of Dunkeld have the custom of travelling to Aberfeldy or Pitlochry of a weekend evening and, when there, seek out their local contemporaries to beat the blazes out of them. It warms the heart to hear that at least some of the ancient traditions of Highland Perthshire still exist.

I used to do the Roots programme on Heartland FM and one of the first folk I interviewed was an old boy from Moulin. I recall that he was into bowls, but his name now escapes me although I remember how the years fell away when he discussed his membership of the Moulin Canaries. He didn’t know how this gang of young thugs to which he belonged was given its name, but how he loved the fights they used to have on a Saturday night with their rivals, the Pitlochry Tweeds.

The latter were so-called because there was a large sign in those days at the entrance to the town to that effect. The Canaries would descend the hill and meet the Tweeds by one of the town burns. Bottles, stones, clubs were all permissible. My guest’s rheumy eyes misted with nostalgic tears at the memory.

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‘Uncovered meat’, were the words the Australian Imam chose to describe unveiled women. A bit sexist, I thought, but I knew where he was coming from. I am often troubled by the lewd glances of passing damsels when their eyes fall upon my countenance and are struck by its manly beauty. So it is only fair if, for the sake of modesty, or even for religious reasons which are nobody’s business but my own, that I wear a veil.

I have looked for one on the web and examined the Littlewoods catalogue but I cannot find a section called Veils for Men. They do hoodies, but that’s not quite comprehensive enough. It may be that there’s an opportunity here for an entrepreneur. Meantime it looks as though my modesty would best be preserved under a balaclava, black, and similar to those worn by the IRA in the olden days. I would hope for the odd riot to protect my right to wear it and expect banks, old ladies and the police to show no signs of prejudice at my appearance.

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There seems to be a consensus that global warming is under way. But there is no consensus about its cause, course, or consequence. It all depends upon which expert you choose to believe. The politicians like the Doomsday scenario as it gives them an excuse for more taxes but, as with Iraq, BSE, Foot & Mouth etc, when politicians make decisions based on expert opinion, it’s usually wrong.

As the graph, which is a consensus of a dozen different records including ice cores, sediment cores, pollen data and instruments shows, global temperature varies; it always has done.

Some days round here one could have woken up to a mile-thick glacier outside one’s bedroom window. Other mornings it would be those hippos cavorting in the steamy swamps. My own preference inclines towards the hippo scenario. I may not live to see the day when the old Viking meadows of medieval Greenland are once more under cultivation, or Chateau Menzies is the preferred tipple in the Square of Aberfeldy. But the fact that our summers are sunnier, and warmer and our winters virtually free of snow compared to those of my youth, is utterly wonderful and an almost unalloyed delight. I miss skating on frozen lochs, but I wouldn’t give up a single degree of cosiness to have it back.

See also: http://www.jamesirvinerobertson.co.uk