And it didn’t rain

The Lochcarron Marquee at the Borders Book Festival – the venue for the Borders Writers’ Forum event, Border Voices on Scottish Borders and Beyond

As a writer it’s always good to be able to say that you have read at a book festival so Borders Writers Forum, an organisation that promotes writers and writing in the Scottish Borders, is enormously grateful to Borders Book Festival. For the third year running they have given us a slot at their June festival. Last year the focus was the winners of a competition we ran in aid of the Sick Kids Friends Foundation which raises funds for ‘extras’ (both equipment and items to help patients) for the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh.

This year twelve members were reading brief extracts from out latest anthology of members’ work, Border Voices on Scottish Borders and Beyond, published last November. We also had a table at which members’ books could be purchased.

Borders Book Festival is held in the grounds of Harmony House, Melrose, a building in the care of the National Trust for Scotland

Borders Book Festival, celebrating its tenth year, is a small event compared to the Edinburgh International Book Festival which takes place in August, but its size makes it an intimate event, taking place in an unrivalled setting within the gardens of Harmony House in Melrose. So along with a literary feast, those coming along can enjoy a stroll round the gardens where the rhododendrons are in bloom, with the abbey and Eildon Hills in the background.

We had a first night slot this year, with serious competition from an event with a big name author – Alexander McCall Smith, a well-known and prolific Scottish writer.

Enjoying the evening sun at the Borders Book Festival

We anxiously kept an eye on the weather. For days beforehand rain was forecast, then it changed to cloudy and cold. Thankfully, the evening turned out sunny with a bit of a breeze, but we could live with that. And the good weather meant people lingered, stood around and chatted, sat and drank coffee or glasses of wine, visited the bookshop and enjoyed the atmosphere.

Anxiously we watched as our audience trickled into the tent, at first mainly family and friends of those reading, then faces we didn’t recognise – members of the public. Sighs of relief all round. We had a good audience.

The view from the entrance to the Lochcarron Marquee

The evening went well, we kept to time – we had all been allocated a strict word count and told not to waffle in our introductions or we would over-run. But all went to plan and the audience were appreciative, saying how enjoyable the variety of taster pieces had been, holding their interest.

Lochcarron and Borders Writers’ Forum banners, side by side in the Lochcarron Marquee at the Borders Book Festival

Afterwards we congratulated one another, said how well each other had read, one member saying it was the first time she had used a microphone, another that she had never taken part in such an event before, another promoting her not long published book, all of us appreciating the experience.

Some of our members’ books for sale

Now it’s over, has been a success – and it didn’t rain. Magic!

NIBBLE ON THIS

Reblogged from 360 Celsius:

NIBBLE ON THIS

 

STUDY LINKS PERSONALITY TO NUT PREFERENCE
It may sound a bit nutty but according to research done by scientists from Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, you favourite variety of nut may just reveal your personality.

 

Based on a study on nut preference and personality conducted by Dr. Alan R. Hirsch, founder of the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago in collaboration with Fisher Nuts, more than 1,000 men and women had to select their favourite nut from five unlabelled samples of almonds, walnuts, salted peanuts, cashews and pecans.

Read more… 420 more words

Are you nuts? I can recognise myself in one of these nuts…but not going to say which one. Have a go yourself - you may be surprised. Looks as if we may well be what we eat.

The cube that contains an entire amusement park

Reblogged from 360 Celsius:

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The cube that contains an entire amusement park

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In his latest sculpture project, James Dive of The Glue Society has compacted an entire fun fair – including rides, dodgems and even prizes – into a four metre cube.
The work, entitled Once, is on show at Scultpture by the Sea in Aarhus, Denmark, until July 1. “The project is about the finality of a missed moment,” Dive says.

Read more… 20 more words

I found this strangely moving – upsetting yet poignant and I could see lots of stories within it. It reminds me of all the scenes of destruction shown on our television screens - whether because of floods, tornados or wars, and all the lives affected. After such catastrophes the detritus is swept up, piled somewhere, telling the same stories as this material forged into a cube.

Drawing tales

A white lacy parasol in a Melrose shop window – very appropriate for our belated warm weather.

Her son had entered the competition, so a friend asked if I could help judge in her place. The competition had been organised by a local artist with the first prize including tickets for a talk by a well-known children’s book illustrator at the Borders Book Festival which takes place next week in Melrose. The young entrants had been asked to come up with an illustration for the cover of an imaginary book of Scottish folk and fairy tales.

So there we were – a handful of us in Melrose’s bijou library – spreading sheets of paper across an area of the floor to study the entries. A bit like a game of Patience with giant playing cards. Lots of talent was evident with imaginations ranging far and wide to provide suitable images. Some were conventional with towers, princesses, fairies and monsters, while others had a more modern, perhaps more Harry Potter take on the subject.

The Scottish Borders town of Melrose in the sun

My fellow judge and I, with encouragement from others, each selected five of the entries – five prizes had been donated by local shops and the book festival. These were laid on another part of the floor. Then the serious horse-trading began as we whittled the ten down to five and ranked them from first to fifth.

Just as well it was a lovely evening, the day probably being the hottest and sunniest so far this year, so with Melrosians firing up BBQs or pottering in their gardens, the library was luckily not particularly busy. A third section of floor was commandeered as we extracted the five winning entries, then looked over the other two sections to ensure we had made the correct selection and hadn’t overlooked a little gem.

Through the vennel

As the children had all drawn their wee hearts out, it would have been great to give them all prizes, but hopefully they will get a buzz from receiving a certificate and seeing their work exhibited on the library wall. Unfortunately no pictures are available so you will just need to use your imaginations and enjoy those of Melrose.

A display of scarves as colourful and varied as the drawings of the children who entered the competition.

This is the tenth year of the Borders Book Festival. Its compact form has been retained to keep its intimate nature and its unique atmosphere from its situation in the grounds of Harmony House, a beautifully restored Regency town house set within a one-and-a-half hectare walled garden with the Abbey and Eildon hills as backdrop. House and garden are in the care of the National Trust for Scotland.

Vibrant coloured glass and town reflections in the Melrose shop window

Next week I will be taking part in the book festival. Borders Writers’ Forum, an organisation of which I’m a member, has an event when some of those who contributed to its recent anthology Scottish Borders and Beyond will be reading from our work. This is the third time we’ve had a slot at the festival, previously at the weekend, but this year we’re scheduled for the opening evening with stiff competition from big name authors. Fingers crossed we get a good audience and that it stays dry. Rain drumming on canvas can be very off-putting.

At the 2011 Borders Book Festival in Melrose – hopefully it won’t rain this year.

 

 

 

 

 

Only the hardy survive

Maybe a little large for our garden – but something smaller would be good.

Yesterday the sun came out and the countryside was suddenly green. After a spring which seems to have got lost along the way leaving in its stead rain, hail and wind with a cold edge, yesterday was warm, almost hot – at least for Scotland. Overnight, winter clothes were ditched in favour of summer gear.

Last week we noticed a banner advertising a plant sale, so as we have lost lupins and daisies, pinks and Japanese anemones, and goodness knows what else from our long border at the back, yesterday afternoon we headed for the sale. It was being held in the Borders College agricultural campus where plants raised by students on their horticultural courses were being sold off.

Plants for sale – now what should we choose?

We left with a box of assorted plants to fill the gaps left by those that didn’t make it through the cold winter and soggy spring.

Couldn’t resist the colour of these little beauties. Bet the rabbits like them!

We left with a box of assorted plants to fill the gaps left by those that didn’t make it through the cold winter and soggy spring. Plants grown locally have a better survival rate with us than garden centre plants which are often raised in heated greenhouses or poly tunnels in Holland. The village where we stay is about 700 feet above sea level, in a fairly exposed situation and with heavy red soil. So only hardy plants survive. For a number of years we lived at sea level (by the shores of a loch) on the milder (but wetter) west coast and had as a garden a chunk of fairly sheltered hillside with rich peaty soil. Here all kinds of exotic (for us) trees and shrubs grew – magnolias, camellias, crinodendrons, masses of rhododendrons and azaleas, fuchsias…

Where we now stay is beech tree country. Lots of wonderful old trees with twisted and gnarled roots, and beech hedges bordering roads and fields. In winter their old copper leaves add a touch of colour and warmth to grey skies and brown fields. Now their new acid green leaves bring exuberance to the landscape.

The beech tree at the foot of our garden – its leaves have just come out and look wonderfully fresh and exuberant.

At the end of our garden grows a large beech tree, planted by someone eons ago when our garden was a field. Another, with copper leaves, dominates another part of the garden. Although not trees suited to most gardens, we could never cut them down so just work around them, and some ground-cover flowering plant has happily established itself beneath the spread of their branches where grass fails to grow.

The coppery colour of the leaves of this beech are rich and glorious.

The Scots Pine comes into the same category. It’s a tree of fields not gardens, but I love its foliage, the lopsided appearance – they are susceptible to losing branches – and their patterned bark like bolts of locally woven tweed.

Along the boundary at the back we have hawthorns and rowans – got to keep the witches away! Amongst the non-native trees our willow leaved pear has thrived, providing a contrast in leaf shape and colour. Some bamboo that initially did reasonably well didn’t make it through the winter before last, but its canes are still standing. Yet more contrast comes from a cherry with purple foliage but disappointingly small pink flowers. Pheasant berry, brought from the west coast, thrives, and can be heavy with sprays of wine-coloured, bell-like flowers – though can be decimated by the winter weather. However it usually regenerates or we discover a seedling to plant.

This cherry’s leaves are more spectacular than its flowers – much longer lasting too.

A Kilmarnock willow – a small (about four feet high) willow that delights us with its weeping habit, was planted in one of the beds, but has now been moved by husband to a position on its own. I wonder if in its new position it will survive the ravages of marauding hares in winter.

The bluebells are up and thinking of flowering in our country garden.

Although this is a place of beauty, it is also a place where not only the weather but also the wildlife makes growing things difficult and where only the hardy survives.

Red tulips, almost over but still providing wonderful colour. They haven’t lasted long this year – didn’t like the torrential rain and hail – who can blame them!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tower houses and faeries

Recently I received a circular about a writing residency in the Ettrick and Yarrow valleys. An isolated location that would provide peace for writing along with opportunities to explore, meet the locals and run writing workshops. All overseen, no doubt, by the presence of James Hogg, the poet and novelist known as the Ettrick Shepherd.

One of the inscriptions on James Hogg’s statue at St Mary’s Loch. It comes from Hogg’s work The Queen’s Wake.

Born in the latter part of the eighteenth century, Hogg was mainly self-educated, having attended school only until he was seven. He worked firstly as a cowherd, then as a shepherd, writing as he worked, with a three year spell in Edinburgh between 1810 and 1813 as a man of letters, before returning to the Borders.

Statue of James Hogg at St Mary’s Loch in the Scottish Borders

Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner is the work for which he is best known. The supernatural imbues much of his writing, learnt from his mother who taught him folk tales and songs of kings, knights and supernatural beings. On his death Hogg was buried in Ettrick churchyard alongside his grandfather who is said to have been the last man to converse with fairies.

Looking towards Tibbie Shiels Inn and St Mary’s Loch. Tibbie, a friend of Hogg, was unimpressed by his writing. ‘He wrote a deal o’trash but was a gey sensible man for a’ that”. Hogg’s friend and contemporary, Sir Walter Scott, also visited the inn, as did Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Carlyle and Gladstone.

We were reminded of how long it had been since we visited the valleys, so last Monday, the May Day holiday, we decided to head in that direction.

Like much of the Scottish Borders, the past is still present in Ettrick and Yarrow valleys, most obviously in the numerous tower houses that still stand, sentinels in the area’s rolling landscape. Some are ruins, others recently restored, while over the centuries others were incorporated into grander buildings.

Tower houses were built with safety in mind as fortified houses, in accordance with a 1535 act of the old pre-Union Scottish Parliament, requiring large landholders in the Borderlands to build Barmkins (defensive structures) of stone and lime, sixty square feet in area (just over five and a half square metres) and with walls one Ell thick and six Ells high. (An Ell was just over three feet, almost a metre.) These were “for the resett and defense of him, his tennents, and his gudis in troublous tyme”. (To provide a retreat in times of trouble for the landowner, his family, tenants and goods, which would have included animals accommodated at ground floor level.)

To save space, tower houses had narrow turnpike (spiral) stairs within the thickness of the walls. Usually these were ascended in a clockwise direction, with the defender descending the stairs having his unguarded left side protected by the wall, while his attacker’s side was exposed and his sword arm was restrained in its movement by the outer wall. However the Ker family were reputedly left-handed, so built their stairs to rise ‘widdershins’ or counter-clockwise. Widdershins was contrary to the direction of the sun, which played an important role in many older religions, so to go in such a direction was to court bad luck, and worse. Many superstitions make reference to this. Hogg would have been well aware of these.

Aikwood Tower in the Ettrick Valley

Driving up the quiet road through the Ettrick Valley from the town of Selkirk, Aikwood Tower was the first we passed. Aikwood appears in Hogg’s writing, including his legend about Michael Scott, the Border Wizard, who was reputed to live here.

After lying uninhabited for a century, former Member of the UK parliament, David Steel (now Lord Steel of Aikwood) and his wife Judy restored the tower as a home, taking up residence in 1992. Aikwood is now under the ownership of their son and offers luxurious accommodation for holidays and special celebrations.

Kirkhope Tower, on a misty May Day, sitting high in the hills between Ettrick and Yarrow valleys

Seen from the road that twists high across the hills between Ettrick and Yarrow is Kirkhope Tower which dates from the same period. It was restored in 1996 by an architect, becoming a private home.

On the road back to Selkirk we passed another tower house, this time unrestored, although with definite potential – though fitness would be necessary for the regular trek up and down the turnpike stairs.

Tower house ripe for restoration in the Yarrow valley.

 

 

 

 

 

Enthroned on wood

Seat in the wildlife garden at Harestanes

‘You can sit on it if you like,’ said the woman behind the shop counter. Sitting on it wasn’t in my mind, but I did want to photograph it.

We had driven to Harestanes Countryside Visitors Centre, near Ancrum to have a wander around. Barely had we parked when we discovered a friend parked alongside us. So off to the café for a blether, a cup of coffee and slice of carrot and passionfruit cake.

It was when we were leaving that I noticed the chair, though chair is hardly an appropriate word. Throne is how it is described. And that is when I was told I could sit on it.

Papal Throne made by Tim Stead for the visit of Pope John Paul 11 to Edinburgh in 1982

The throne was part of a small exhibition, in an adjoining gallery, of the work of Tim Stead, an extremely gifted and highly-respected artist-craftsman, who died in 2000 at the age of 48. Tim lived and worked in the Scottish Borders where his love affair with Scottish hardwoods drove him to produce distinctive furniture that will long be cherished.

Information on the Papal Throne at the exhibition at Harestanes Visitors Centre in the Scottish Borders

As well as the throne, the exhibition includes keynote pieces which highlight his love of burr elm which he often inlaid with slivers of other wood or pencil-line patterns in metal that flowed with the grain.

The throne is a stunning piece, commissioned for the visit of Pope John Paul II to Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium in 1982. Made of oak, inlaid with designs in other woods, it has a soaring back and short legs.

Inlay on the back of the throne

After his death Tim’s workshop was kept going as The Workshop of Tim Stead by his widow, Maggy, and a small team of skilled craftsmen who were apprenticed with him. This year the Workshop, from which came so many sculptural items made from locally sourced hardwoods, will close.

Chair from The Workshop of Tim Stead

Table from The Workshop of Tim Stead – notice the inlay

Although sad the distinctive furniture will no longer be made, I can treasure one of the axe heads Tim made to raise money for projects close to his heart including the Borders Community Woodland.

One of the many wooden axeheads made by Tim and sold to raise money for the planting of more trees in the Borders.

Our axe head, bought many years ago, is signed by Tim, dated 13^th February 1986 and is made of his beloved burr elm.

Another of Harestane’s attractions

The visitors centre exhibition space, café and shop are housed in former estate buildings with a character of their own.

In the window of Buy Design

Alongside is a design and crafts shop which displays locally made furniture, wooden items and crafts, and a number of craft workshops – a tile maker, a potter, a jeweler and a maker of beautiful leather handbags.

More crafts made items in wood and fabric

Fascinating pink box in the window of Buy Design