Please see Clients for details of websites I've written.
SOMETHING OF MYSELF:
I sit in a tiny office overlooking the garden of an old farm cottage in Angus, tapping away at my laptop, surrounded by books - atlases, historic timelines, normal and medical encyclopaedias, diaries, thesauruses, and dictionaries of all sorts.
There are straightforward English dictionaries, an 1811 edition of Johnson's dictionary, dictionaries for English to Latin, German, French, Italian and Spanish - even an Italian-Spanish dictionary - all languages that I speak and have used in my work at various times. There are also books of word and phrase derivations, quotes, slang, "difficult and interesting words"...
I love words.
Indeed, I earn a living from them.
GLAMIS CASTLE BROCHURE 2007:
GLAMIS CASTLE EXHIBITION (a work in progress):
HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH THE QUEEN MOTHER. (sample Glamis Exhibition panel)
The Queen Mother’s life spanned the 20th Century, from her birth in 1900 to her death in 2002. She was born in the reign of Queen Victoria, and lived through those of Kings Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII, her husband King George VI and her daughter Queen Elizabeth II. She survived two World Wars, and was the first member of the Royal Family to fly around the world and to use a helicopter. When she visited the United States with King George VI, he was the first British Sovereign to visit America.
The Queen Mother was born Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, the 9th child and 4th daughter of Lord and Lady Glamis, later 14th Earl and Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne. After her father became Earl, her title was Lady Elizabeth. When she married the Duke of York in 1923, she arrived at Westminster Abbey in a plain coach, symbol of her status as a commoner. As soon as they were married, she became Royal, and the couple left the Abbey in one of the State coaches. Her husband, as 2nd son of the King, had not expected to become King himself; that duty was thrust on him by the Abdication of his older brother, King Edward VIII. Queen Elizabeth supported her husband, a shy man, throughout his reign, including encouraging him to take speech therapy lessons to cure the stammer which had made giving speeches very difficult for him. During World War II the couple travelled up and down the country giving support and encouragement to bombed-out families, factory workers and service personnel; her charm won hearts and raised morale wherever they went.
When King George VI died on 6th February 1952, Queen Elizabeth’s life changed dramatically: her “job” disappeared overnight as her daughter became Queen and she had to move out of Buckingham Palace, into Clarence House. Her new title, The Queen Mother, was quickly shortened by most of Britain to “the Queen Mum”, and she continued her support for many charities and her round of visits to factories, public dinners, Regimental events and Degree Award ceremonies as Chancellor of the Universities of both London and Dundee, until her death in 2002.
FALKIRK WHEEL - 2 versions of the same piece in very different styles:
(version 1) FALKIRK’S FLYING CANAL.
I have no TV and the closest I get to computer games is Sudoku. So when Calum’s parents asked me to look after him for the day while they went hill walking – 11-year-old Calum doesn’t “do” hill-walking – it looked a pretty bleak prospect for both of us. Then a friend suggested taking him to the Falkirk Wheel, the world’s first – and so far, only – canal boat lift, and things perked up a bit.
I’d heard the Wheel was an amazing piece of engineering – I’d even tried to get there once, only to get lost in Falkland. This time the day was blustery and snow-threatened so we wrapped up warm in waterproofs and walking boots, piled the dogs into the car and set off down the motorway.
As it turned out, we found the place with no trouble at all – signs off the motorway are very clear. Taking the Stirling services exit, we passed through the picturesque small town of Denny and soon found ourselves at the Wheel.
“Wow, cool!” said Calum, gazing up at it . A good start.
It is an amazing structure, towering 35 metres (nearly 114 feet) above the basin of the Forth and Clyde, the world’s first sea-to-sea ship canal, raising boats 25 metres (just over 81 feet) to meet the Union Canal.
Its silvery arms, shaped like double-ended Celtic battle-axes, catch the light as they move slowly and elegantly through a circle to carry boats up and down to a linking aqueduct between the two waterways. The boatlifts are called gondolas, but Venice it ain’t – these gondolas can carry four boats each.
What once took a day’s heavy work, opening and closing the gates of a flight of 44 locks, is now achieved in five minutes. With boats loading and unloading, allow a quarter of an hour. You rise, in what the Wheel’s brochure calls “the most memorable yet gentle of white knuckle rides”, above the flat countryside to a long view of the Campsie Fells. On our visit, they were fitfully lit by the winter sun through constantly-moving clouds.
We managed to get front seats in the glass-sided tour boat, its protection welcome on a chilly day. An excellent audio-visual commentary talked us through the massive engineering works required to bring both canals back into full use after their closure in the 1960s.
This was a Millennium project that nearly failed due to lack of finance. Public opinion was so strong that the organisers were forced to find the money, though it delayed the planned opening until 2002. The Wheel is now part of The Millennium Link, once again allowing travel between Glasgow and Edinburgh by boat.
Through the sleet-spattered windows of the boat we could see how the gondola we travelled in docked against the stub-end of the aqueduct in mid-air. The mechanism lost not a drop of water on to the watchers below as the two waterways connected, and in a couple of minutes we were gliding into the Union Canal.
On your own boat you can travel all the way from here to Glasgow – though you have to operate the rest of the locks by hand! As a visitor, after a few hundred yards of water, including a tunnel under the Antonine Wall – the furthest-north point for the ancient Romans – you turn round and head back down to the basin at the foot of the Wheel. The downward turn was as gentle as the upward, in spite of the wind. Even I, normally seasick standing at the edge of a dock, didn’t feel the slightest bit queasy.
Once disembarked we investigated the shop, which is well-stocked with books and boat-inspired knick-knacks. Next to it, the restaurant can provide everything from a cup of coffee to a full meal. 11-year-old Calum was impressed – it caters well for children, with kids’ menu, soft drinks, high chairs and the rest. It can get noisy, with its tiled floor and floor-to-ceiling windows – but it has a fantastic view of the canal basin and the operation of the Wheel.
Stomachs satisfied, we collected the dogs from the car and went for a walk along the canal bank. We spotted grebes, moorhens and goldeneye as well as mallard. There are apparently over 30 aquatic plant species, 15 types of mollusc, 33 different types of water flea and even freshwater sponges growing in the canal, but it was too cold to investigate closely. Walking briskly along the bank we passed a football match in full swing at the Camelon ground, and further on a pub beckoned. Rows of narrow boats for hire were moored on this stretch, waiting for summer visitors.
Back in the café, we warmed up with coffee and hot chocolate for the drive home. As a satisfied Calum said, “It was the best day out ever!”
As for me, one of these days I’m going to hire one of those boats and do the whole trip – and as a “boater” not a “tourist” you don’t pay anything to use the Wheel. Incredible value for a unique experience!
(Version 2) SCOTLAND FROM FORTH TO CLYDE – BY BOAT.
One of Scotland’s best-kept secrets is that you can travel from Glasgow to Edinburgh by boat, without venturing out to sea. The world’s first coast-to-coast canal and Scotland’s oldest, the Forth and Clyde Canal, was completed in Scotland in 1790; it runs for 61 km, providing a link between Glasgow and the North and Baltic Seas via the Firth of Forth at Grangemouth. The link onwards to Edinburgh, the Union Canal, was built in 1822 and is one of the world’s few contour canals – all on one level, without locks, throughout its 51 km route.
Both canals fell into disuse in the 1960s, due to lack of maintenance and, finally, roads being built across them. A Millennium project to reconnect the two uncovered 32 obstructions, while most of the locks, bridges and aqueducts needed repairs. Some parts of the canals had been built over and needed to be re-routed; in Glasgow, three buried locks were unearthed and restored, and eight new ones had to be built at Falkirk.
However, there remained the problem of a missing flight of 44 locks at Camelon, near Falkirk, connecting the two canals. They had been built over and, having originally taken a hard days’ work to negotiate, it was thought more practical to build a new stretch of canal and by-pass them. But how to raise the boats the 25 metres from one canal to the other? It was decided to make this a Scottish Millennium project. The eventual answer was the Falkirk Wheel – Scotland’s flying canal, the world’s first boat-lift of its type and a fine piece of working sculpture into the bargain.
At one point the project was threatened with cancellation; it was only continued after a public petition with over 30,000 signatures persuaded planners that it should go ahead. The required £84.5 million took so long to find that the timetable for reconstruction had to be reduced from five years to three to meet the deadline. Even so, it was not opened until May 2002. 700 modern-day “navvies” helped reconstruct the route, a Scheduled Ancient Monument.
Now anyone can travel it by boat. Tourists ride up and down the Wheel in glazed boats with terrific views of the surrounding countryside, protected from the weather and with an excellent audio-visual explanation of how the whole thing works. It’s all run by computer, the two gondolas (water-filled arms) balance each other whether they contain boats or not, and the entire mechanism uses power equivalent to just 8 boiling kettles – extraordinary when you consider that each gondola weighs 250 tonnes.
Boaters can use the boatlift (the first of its kind in the world) free of charge and once more travel from Glasgow to Edinburgh – nowadays a much less strenuous journey, though there are still manual locks to be operated in the Forth and Clyde Canal to remind you what hard work the life of a professional bargee used to be.
Along the way there are opportunities to spot birds (mallard, goldeneye, great crested grebes, moorhens and others) and plants (over 30 aquatic varieties make their home on the canal). There are also, apparently, 15 species of mollusc, 33 different types of water flea, freshwater sponges – and even red-eared terrapins, thought to be pets dumped in the water when their owners got tired of them. Those closer to the ground can see several varieties of fresh-water fish, beetles, amphibians and invertebrates and, if you can stay still long enough, otters, water voles (“Ratty” in The Wind In The Willows), mink and roe deer may be spied, as well as nesting mute swans in spring. During reconstruction, rare and delicate plants were protected by covering them with the dozens of supermarket trolleys found dumped in the canal – a unique example of recycling, turning vandalism to good use!
Even on a cold March day, still very much winter with snow-laden clouds patterning the Campsie Fells in the distance, I saw several species of bird. I didn’t stop to investigate the smaller beasties, being too busy trying to keep myself and the dogs warm by walking briskly along. But I could picture crowds of people here on a warm summer’s day and all the hire boats, now moored up, pottering up and down between the two great cities of Scotland, giving visitors a whole new view of the country.
If there was ever a “road less travelled” in Scotland, this must be it – Scotland’s re-discovered route from coast-to-coast.