It was a glorious morning.
By nine-thirty it was already warm with the promise of the day becoming
even hotter. I try to find somewhere
different to take the dog on our morning sojourns into the East
Lothian countryside, so, on a whim, I settled on Dirleton. It’s a
posh little village in the lee of North Berwick, and you
feel embarrassed going there in a tee-shirt and shorts, no matter how clean
they are. There’s a lovely piece of greensward over the road from the castle
where a dog can chase a tennis ball with impunity. You feel equally embarrassed
taking a little black spaniel to rub noses with all the posh dogs that cost two
thousand pounds each, but it is allegedly a free country.
When tennis was finished, we walked along the dirt track
that leads to the John Muir Way, across a farmer’s field where a couple of
combine-harvesters were collecting the wheat and leaving the chaff to the
sparrows and carrion crows. The light
was as sharp as d’Artagnan’s sword. Two women joggers shuffled past, chattering
to each other. They were middle-class
English. They ignored us. We are easily ignored in a place like Dirleton.
The John Muir way leads through a deciduous woodland where,
on a day like this, dappled sunlight shines through the trees and lights up the
earthen floor. In the wood we met a young, small,
slender woman, just before a clearing which opens out onto Yellowcraig
Country Park.
She was leading a black Labrador. My little spaniel growled at it, as it growls
at all dogs.
“So sorry,” I said. I spend
much of my time apologising for the dog’s behaviour. The woman spoke.
“Don’t
worry, she was being antagonised.’ An Irish brogue, lilting and burbling like a
small stream!
“What a splendid accent,” I said, “Whereabouts in Ireland
are you from?”
“County Waterford,
next to Cork. Been here a dozen years.”
“Never lose that accent” I said, as we parted. “I won’t,” she laughed, “It’s opened up
several doors.”
I didn’t enquire as to what she meant. The only thing I knew
about Waterford was that they made
crystal glasses and goblets there, but someone told me that the antecedents of film
star Tyrone Power were born there. Power died of a heart attack, aged just 44,
in 1958. He made such remarkable films
as “The Mark of Zorro” and “A Yank In The RAF”. Mercifully, I never saw any of
them.
We turned back towards Dirleton, on a narrow footpath beside
a metalled road that leads to the caravan park.
The footpath turns sharply right after a quarter of a mile and takes you
past a weird and wonderful house, set in the middle of farmers’ fields, and of
no particular architectural style. I
suppose ‘cubist’ might describe it. Boxy
and pure white, with some art deco features and a lot of glass, it stands out
amongst the collection of wheat fields and copses that surround it. It must belong to somebody extremely rich,
perhaps a rock singer or an MSP.
We were on the extreme edge of the village, on the road,
when a car came towards us. I hastily
put the lead on the dog. The car pulled
up alongside me and the driver wound down the window. He was an elderly man in rimless glasses and
a snow-white, extremely military, moustache.
He said, crossly, “There is a proper path, you know, behind the hedge. The road's for cars, not dogs.”
He waved airily with his right hand, wound the window back up, and drove on. “Thank
you, Major,” I said to his rear view mirror.
We rested on one of the lovely pine benches upon which the
Council has spent a fortune providing, to satisfy the wealthy. Looking across
at the castle, I thought this must be one of the most picturesque spots in the
whole of Scotland.
This picture of loveliness was spoiled
when an old man came out of one of the million-pound houses that lined the
greensward behind us. He was pulling a sort
of cylinder on wheels behind him, and carrying a kind of lance in his right hand. He paused, twisted a nozzle, and started to
spray weedkiller on the ground near the fence at the edge of his property. Whereas you or I would have been on our
knees, grubbing up weeds with a trowel, this man was using a thousand pounds’ worth
of kit to remove four groundsel, two ragwort and a clump of clover.
“See how the other half lives” I remarked to the dog as we
drifted back to the car and some semblance of normality.
