Saturday morning and I ought to be playing tennis, although, these days, my game is more redolent of Pete Murray than Andy. Instead, I’m sitting in a four-metre caravan watching the rain. If there’s a crack in the sky, it’s a hairline fissure.
I walked the old dog Josh to Perth racecourse, a quarter of a mile away, about the limit of his capability these days. No racing, so I was able to appreciate fully the lush verdant pasture and the odd jumble of buildings making up that quaint and attractive little spot. It’s as if the course had been designed by Mr Pickwick.
There must have been a conference on in the members’ stand. A clutch of brand-new white coaches stood outside and several attractive ladies, who seemed to me to be clad in evening-wear, were eagerly partaking of coffee and croissants.
I visited a town called Coupar Angus yesterday. It was raining, and the place was wreathed in a grey mist. It’s off the tourist trail. No tourist tat – tam-o-shanters complete with ginger wigs, wonky walking-sticks, Jimmy Shand cds or bagpipe music, that sort of thing. A welcome change.
Coupar Angus is a little run-down, which makes it all the more interesting. The Strathmore Hotel, with its little porte-cochere held up by a pair of tree trunks, is derelict, as is one of the fish and chip shops and several other former retail establishments. The town sports a weird catholic church with a quasi art-deco front, a rather striking tolbooth prison from the 18th century and a restrained and attractive sandstone kirk. This has a large old graveyard containing several interesting gravestones. One white marble slab contained the name of an Italian family that must have emigrated to the town in the early 1900s. The most recent interment was 1994. I wondered idly what on earth had brought them from exotic Genoa or Milan to this place.
A main road divides the Town, the shops to the north, the churches to the south. I found the only charity shop behind a peeling front in the main shopping street. There I bought a couple of novels by Charles Dickens, a book about 150 years of murders in the Isle of Man and a cd by George Formby. Riches indeed.
I read the Manx murders book last night. I didn’t know that the Isle of Man had the death penalty till 1993, although the last hanging was 1873. I think it is hilarious that, up to 1993, each time the judge, (he’s called a ‘Deemster’ in Manxland) solemnly says to a murderer: ‘You will be taken from here blah blah and hanged by the neck till dead blah blah’, he finds a letter from the UK Home Secretary on his breakfast tray the next morning saying ‘Dear Deemster, You’d better not hang that chap because I’ve commuted his sentence to one of life imprisonment.’ On the other hand, what would you expect from a country whose national emblem is three revolving tin legs?
At least I have ‘Hard Times’ as one of my two Dickens novels to read today as the rain rattles like a bofors-gun off the caravan roof and water starts to lap around the tyres of the car. The efforts of poor Stephen Blackpool to make sense of a changing world seem rather to echo my own.
I walked the old dog Josh to Perth racecourse, a quarter of a mile away, about the limit of his capability these days. No racing, so I was able to appreciate fully the lush verdant pasture and the odd jumble of buildings making up that quaint and attractive little spot. It’s as if the course had been designed by Mr Pickwick.
There must have been a conference on in the members’ stand. A clutch of brand-new white coaches stood outside and several attractive ladies, who seemed to me to be clad in evening-wear, were eagerly partaking of coffee and croissants.
I visited a town called Coupar Angus yesterday. It was raining, and the place was wreathed in a grey mist. It’s off the tourist trail. No tourist tat – tam-o-shanters complete with ginger wigs, wonky walking-sticks, Jimmy Shand cds or bagpipe music, that sort of thing. A welcome change.
Coupar Angus is a little run-down, which makes it all the more interesting. The Strathmore Hotel, with its little porte-cochere held up by a pair of tree trunks, is derelict, as is one of the fish and chip shops and several other former retail establishments. The town sports a weird catholic church with a quasi art-deco front, a rather striking tolbooth prison from the 18th century and a restrained and attractive sandstone kirk. This has a large old graveyard containing several interesting gravestones. One white marble slab contained the name of an Italian family that must have emigrated to the town in the early 1900s. The most recent interment was 1994. I wondered idly what on earth had brought them from exotic Genoa or Milan to this place.
A main road divides the Town, the shops to the north, the churches to the south. I found the only charity shop behind a peeling front in the main shopping street. There I bought a couple of novels by Charles Dickens, a book about 150 years of murders in the Isle of Man and a cd by George Formby. Riches indeed.
I read the Manx murders book last night. I didn’t know that the Isle of Man had the death penalty till 1993, although the last hanging was 1873. I think it is hilarious that, up to 1993, each time the judge, (he’s called a ‘Deemster’ in Manxland) solemnly says to a murderer: ‘You will be taken from here blah blah and hanged by the neck till dead blah blah’, he finds a letter from the UK Home Secretary on his breakfast tray the next morning saying ‘Dear Deemster, You’d better not hang that chap because I’ve commuted his sentence to one of life imprisonment.’ On the other hand, what would you expect from a country whose national emblem is three revolving tin legs?
At least I have ‘Hard Times’ as one of my two Dickens novels to read today as the rain rattles like a bofors-gun off the caravan roof and water starts to lap around the tyres of the car. The efforts of poor Stephen Blackpool to make sense of a changing world seem rather to echo my own.
