Duncan Harley

  I think it was Robert Graves who once said that if you live by the pen, you can live almost anywhere. Graves of course came from a privileged background. He ended up in Majorca and famously said that if you take up that pen, you’d better have something to say.  Well, Graves had probably never visited Cruden Bay. And why would he. It’s a tiny settlement in Aberdeenshire formerly known as Port Errol. Dracula author Bram Stoker spent his holidays in the village and, if we are to believe the modern-day histories, a golf hotel on the dunes hosted the likes of Winston Churchill and mustard tycoon Jeremiah Colman. Even William Burrell put in an appearance at Cruden Bay and if you look up the history on the likes of Wikipedia, you’ll likely find that the place can boast a few dozen more celebrities to its name. Enter Mike Shepherd. He lives in Cruden Bay and he writes books. I have to confess an interest here. Mike and I have a history. We both pen books about Scotland. Mike h...

One of the joys of living in Inverurie a couple of decades ago was the proliferation of local businesses, both small and large, all willing in varying degrees to take that extra step to help the customer spend their money wisely. An aunties family ran an ironmonger in the square and, despite competition from Watsons across the road managed to deliver a decent range of goods and maintain a loyal customer base before abandoning ironmongery in favour of fancy goods and ornaments a few years ago. Mitchells Dairy, in what is now a punk pub, was still delivering milk and feeding shopworkers and shoppers in a lunchtime cafe. And even the banks somehow managed, in a pre-internet age, to cater for local needs. If you knew the lady behind the counter, you were a sure cert’ for a loan. Nowadays the town is going the way of Aberdeen with big brand betting shops, letting agencies and charity outlets littering the High Street. And there are retail parks full of overpriced Nationals offering stuff ...

  Fraserburgh born punk rocker Steve Fairnie (1951-1993) is perhaps best remembered locally as the frontman of the post-punk band Writz. But of course, his main claim to fame was his partnership with singer songwriter Bev Sage. Together they took the 1980s charts by storm with a remake of Frederick Hollander’s 1930s hit ‘Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt’ – better known perhaps as ‘Falling in Love Again (Can't Help It)’. Both Billie Holiday and the Beatles recorded cover versions of the song, but somehow the Sage/Fairnie Techno Twins version stands out. Of course, fame does not come ‘cheep’ and in what was most probably a PR stunt, he made the front pages when he mesmerised a chicken in a Cornwall café in front of a gaggle of journalists. It was summer 1983 and obviously a short news day. He and Bev had been out dining in a local café when inexplicably in walked a feathered hen. The rest is history. The lad from Fraserburgh was about to release a new single titled ...

Slains Castle sits on the very edge of the Buchan coastline and is a widely misunderstood edifice and a confusion of associations with Dracula do little to explain the history of the place. This new book by Mike Shepherd and Dacre Stoker is a gamechanger. Readers of Mike’s previous books and followers of Dacre Stoker’s work - which includes Dracul, a Dracula prequel written in collaboration with J.D. Barker of Fourth Monkey fame - will already be aware of the Cruden Bay Dracula links. But few however, will be aware of the true history of that Slains Castle we all love to associate with the Gothic Horror genre. An extraordinary set of stories lie within these pages. Churchill visited as did Johnson and Boswell. The cutting off of the heads of dead Danes, an epic story of religious strife and a shambolic plan to surrender Scotland to the Spanish Crown inhabit this book. And the ‘tussle’ for the souls of the living takes centre stage. There are tales of a French conspiracy to Anglicis...

Long Shadows - Mike Shepherd Reviews - Aberdeen Voice

  Archaeologists from Highland Council are appealing for information following the disappearance of a local historical monument known as the Fodderletter Lum. A familiar landmark to travellers on the Granton-on-Spey to Tomintoul road, the historic structure is just one of a set of freestanding stone chimneys once used by council road crews as night shelters. Easily mistaken for the gable ends of old cottar houses, the structures date from the early Twentieth Century and are, according to Highland Council Chief Archaeologist Henry Carter, irreplaceable. “We only have five of these structures in the Highland Council area and the loss of even one represents a cultural tragedy for the region and indeed the whole of Scotland.” Henry and his team are hoping that the monument has not already been broken up and sold on to illegal dry stone dykers.   “During lockdown and with garden centres and builders’ yards mainly closed, we have seen a spate of such thefts” he stated. Seemingly a...

  Scotland’s history is littered with tales of headless heroes. Macbeth, Mary Queen of Scots and even the Marquis of Montrose were separated from their heads at various points. But of course, to be remembered as a headless hero, you don’t necessarily need to suffer the indignity of an actual decapitation. You just need a string of pearls, a wealthy duchess and a Polaroid camera. Remember them? Ethel Margaret Campbell Whigham (1912-1993) was a wealthy socialite who came from money and married into the aristocracy. Her dad, George Hay Whigham, was big in the global vinegar business and Ethel was privately educated in New York before venturing onto the international headlines. An early affair with a youthful David Niven led to a concealed pregnancy and rumours of dalliances with Cary Grant and J. Paul Getty soon followed. In 1933 age just twenty-one she married Charles Sweeny, a wealthy golfer, and was immortalised in song in the Cole Porter musical Anything Goes. The Sweeny marriage ...

  The final words uttered by Mary Queen of Scots on the day of her execution on 8 February 1587 went something along the lines of "I forgive you and all the world with all my heart for I hope this death will make an end to all my troubles." After which the executioner severed her head and held it up for all to see. Well, not quite. It took maybe three blows plus some pretty gory last-minute sawing with the blade of the axe before the royal head was finally held up for all to see. Then of course, the clumsy man dropped it and was left with her bloodied wig in his upraised hand. You might be forgiven for thinking that that might have been quite enough drama for one day, but there was even more to come. Mary had always had a thing about tiny dogs and it appears that terriers were her favourite breed although some accounts tell of spaniels. Whatever. Accounts differ widely, but some say that as the executioner lifted up the queen's dress to remove her garters as a souvenir – ...

  You’ve maybe never heard of Dudley Watkins (1907-1969). An Englishman, he studied at Nottingham School of Art for a bit before taking up a position at Boots the Chemist in around 1922. Glasgow School of Art soon beckoned and by 1925 he was working as an illustrator for Dundee publisher DC Thomson. DC Thomson were, and arguably still are, intent on portraying an early 20th century music hall image of Scotland which defies the test of time and maybe does Scotland an injustice. The Broons and Desperate Dan inhabit the genre and of course there is Oor Wullie who, eighty years on, still sits on his bucket and sports a shocking haircut. For his part, Dudley made a decent career as an illustrator although in the early days he supplemented his meagre salary by teaching at Dundee School of Art. Most of the DC Thomson illustrators worked anonymously and never even got a by-line. But Watkins eventually broke the mould and was permitted to add his signature to his work. Alongside Desperat...

  A facet of Scottish culture is the capacity to self-deprecate. In fact, Music Hall performers often depended on it. Chic Murray’s infamous “My father was from Aberdeen, and a more generous man you couldn't wish to meet. I have still a gold watch that belonged to him and it’s my most treasured possession. He sold it to me on his deathbed you know” is a prime example and there are plenty more still going the rounds. Now, Harry Gordon (1893-1957) is maybe the best-known performer to have trodden the Aberdeen stage. He was known as the Laird of Inversnecky, a fictional Scottish town he used in his comic routines, and to this day there is a beachfront café – The Inversnecky Café, named in his honour. His first public appearance was probably at age 12 at Gilcomston Parish Church where he performed panto as Princess Chrysanthemum. A brief career in insurance and three years serving in the First World War followed although his war service involved entertaining troops rather than shooti...

  Despite the Wolf of Badenoch association, Elgin is a grand town full of rich history. Both Oswald Mosely and London born writer Daniel Defoe visited, though at different times. Defoe thought highly of Elgin. In the journal of his 1724 tour of Great Britain, he writes: “In this rich country is the city, or town rather, of Elgin; I say city, because in antient time the monks claim'd it for a city; and the cathedral shews, by its ruins, that it was a place of great magnificence!” As for Mosley, he was heckled by a crowd of anti-fascists and run out of town. In more recent years The Beatles (billed as the Love Me Do Boys) began their 1963 Scottish tour in the town. They shared a bill with The Alex Sutherland Sextet at the Two Red Shoes Ballroom on 3 January during a blizzard. They were not well known and admission was six shillings in old money. Takings were disappointing – perhaps as low as £42, according to Elgin music historian David Dills. In fact, one local tale has a skint P...

  Radio journalist Lord Haw Haw – better known as William Joyce, was captured by the British Army in May 1945 and hanged for treason in January 1946 . Debate continues to this day as to his citizenship and his fast tracking to execution in an English jail remains legally questionable. But of course, Scotland had its very own Lord McHaw Haw in the form of Donald Alexander Grant from Alness in Easter Ross who over the course of two years, broadcast his own flavour of “Germany Calling” under the guise of Radio Caledonia. The station’s message was basically “What are the Scots doing fighting England’s war. The Germans are our friends” and, despite a claim that the broadcasts were from somewhere in Scotland, the station was actually based in Charlottenburg in far off Germany. Seemingly few in his native Caledonia listened to his tartan propaganda and by 1942 Radio Caledonia had been taken off the air by the German propaganda ministry. Following the fall of the Third Reich, Grant surr...

Fraserburgh is quite a place. There’s a busy harbour and alongside connections with Scottish Samurai Blake Glover and the London fashion scene in the form of Bill Gibb, the town is the birthplace of a chicken hypnotist. Steve Fairnie (1951-1993) is perhaps best remembered locally as the frontman of the post-punk band Writz. But of course, his main claim to fame was his partnership with singer songwriter Bev Sage. Together they took the 1980’s charts by storm with a remake of Frederick Hollander’s 1930’s hit ‘Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt’ – better known perhaps as ‘Falling in Love Again (Can't Help It)’. Both Billie Holiday and the Beatles recorded cover versions of the song, but somehow the Sage/Fairnie Techno Twins version stands out. Of course, fame does not come ‘cheep’ and in what was most probably a PR stunt, he made the front pages when he mesmerised a chicken in a Cornwall cafe. It was summer 1983 and obviously a short news day. He and Bev had been out din...

  The Mearns town of Stonehaven rightly points to connections with BBC founding director John Reith (1889 -1971) and pneumatic tyre inventor Robert William Thomson (1822 – 1873), but as far as I know there is no wee blue plaque recalling the towns links with Canadian communism. Tom McEwan was born in the seaside town in 1891. Orphaned young he was taken in age nine by an aunt in Catterline until as a teenager he moved to Aberdeen to work on the railways. Marriage and children followed and in 1912 he emigrated to Manitoba where he worked for a while as blacksmith before joining the Socialist Party of Canada. By 1929 Tom had become the party’s industrial director and a few years later he was lobbying the Canadian government for employment insurance for unemployed workers – an outcome rejected by the prime minister of the day who vowed “Never will I or any government of which I am a part, put a premium on idleness or put our people on the dole!” Needless to say, Tom’s links with Mo...

  The news that UK flower growers are suffering from a lack of foreign pickers this year reminded me of Scotland’s contribution to the re-establishing of the Dutch bulb growing industry post WW2. Devastated by five years of war and a vicious fascist policy designed to starve the rebellious Dutch into submission, folk in Holland were literally forced to eat whatever they could get their hands on. And that included flower bulbs. Screen actress Audrey Hepburn often talked about this in interviews and recalled how desperate folk – including her teenage self, would try to make bread using both tulip and daffodil bulbs, often with disastrous results. The Dutch population literally ate the seed-stock and had to look abroad post-war to nurserymen in the UK to restart the ailing industry. Commercial bulb growing in Scotland probably goes back a couple of hundred years and there are records indicating that Angus was by the 1880’s the daffodil capital of Scotia. Some 100 hectares in and aro...

In early March 1961, the US nuclear submarine tender USS Proteus arrived at the newly built Polaris base at Dunoon in the Holy Loch. It stayed there for a few years and a succession of American tenders came and went until finally in 1992 the US Navy left for warmer waters. The holiday town was then plunged into a period of economic decline and, not to put too fine a point on it, mourned the departure of the US submarines despite the fact that their very presence put the whole of central Scotland at risk of nuclear annihilation. The local economy suffered bigtime as a result of the withdrawal and many local businesses went to the wall. Even the local sex trade suffered a big hit. But at least Dunoon was still on the map. The Cold War concept of Mutually Assured Destruction – MAD for short, had triumphed and aside from the economic downturn, no one had died – well almost. During exercises in November 1970 a fire erupted on the USS Canopus killing several crewmembers and four years late...

  There’s a family gravestone at Doune Churchyard at Macduff recording the passing of Campbell Cowie. He was a close pal of the artist and author Peter Anson and was only 18 when he died all those years ago in 1941. Anson had met the lad while living in a harbourside cottage in the fisher town and the troubled teenager soon moved in. In his writings, Anson records a shared interest in fisher customs such as avoiding meeting the local minister before setting out to sea and putting both shoes on before tying up either of your shoelaces. I think there was something about avoiding white rabbits as well, but I’ll maybe need to check up on that superstition. The cottage at that time was a sort of community centre for locals and also an early hub for what was to become the Apostleship of the Sea – in short, a religious house catering for the spiritual needs of seafarers. Alongside the open door for sailors, local loons used to drop in for a game of cards, a cup of tea, a chat and maybe a...

This week marks twenty-five years since an armed man walked into a Scottish school and murdered a classroom of five-year-olds along with their primary school teacher. A total of seventeen people died and several others were injured during the rampage. The story is well known so I won’t go into it here except to say that the Dunblane atrocity prompted a tightening of gun control legislation in Scotland. The law was changed to prohibit the ownership of guns without good cause. A generation of local children were of course lost but at least steps were taken to minimise the risk of it ever happening again. The healing process led to the establishment of a memorial garden on the site of the murders and three local churches feature stain-glass windows dedicated to the lost children. My personal favourite however is the remembrance stone within Dunblane Cathedral. It’s a simple looking piece of sculpture in the form of a standing stone and maybe two metres tall but it maybe has a message abou...

Aberdeen architect Dr William Kelly (1861-1944) worked on literally hundreds of projects during his long and eventful life and for five years following the Great War, served as Aberdeen Corporation’s very first Director of Housing.  Alongside a portfolio of projects including alterations to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary and Aberdeen Lunatic Asylum, he found time to design the Battle of Harlaw Monument at Inverurie and the Gordon Highlander Monument in Duthie Park. But despite the illustrious career, the man is nowadays best remembered for his cats. The Union Bridge over Aberdeen’s Denburn Valley was completed in 1805 and was, and maybe still is, the longest single-span granite-built bridge in the entire world. By the early 20th century, the bridge needed upgrading and was widened to incorporate pavements plus a balustrade, topped by a line of decorative caste-iron leopards. Kelly’s cats were born! In the 1960s, the bridge was again ‘improved’ and some of Dr Kelly’s cats ended up as exh...

The Piper Alpha Memorial In Aberdeen Today - 6 July 2020, marks the 32nd anniversary of the Piper Alpha disaster in which 167 offshore workers lost their lives when a North Sea oil and gas platform caught fire 120 miles  northeast of Aberdeen.  Truly cataclysmic in scale, the tragedy marked a turning point in the oil and gas industry's sometimes cavalier attitude to health and safety. Lord Cullen, in his two-year inquiry into the tragedy, concluded that both engineering failings and a lack of basic safety protocol had led directly to the deaths. The Piper Alpha platform was said to be ageing, rusting and unstable and much was made of the claims by survivors that safety alarms were routinely ignored. In the light of the Cullen Report, health and safety law underwent major changes in the UK. Offshore survival training became mandatory and protective clothing compulsory. On top of that, offshore rigs nowadays are required by law to have quick escape routes to...

At first glance Mike Shepherd’s new book might well appear to be a detailed instruction manual on how to reach beyond the greasy pole and become a super-achiever. And, there is certainly a glut of content here to sign-post the ambitious. Tales of Olympians, top scientists, infamous and not so infamous politicians, ground breaking engineers and innovative business leaders – over achievers the lot of them, inhabit the pages. But, as Mike points out early on in his introduction, the ambitious amongst us will undoubtedly gain insight here but the tales within might actually deter us from ever trying to get there in the first place. Described as gossipy by the author, this is certainly no dry academic tome and throughout the 300 or so pages of discussion there are dozens of entertaining and often supremely bizarre tales involving the unexpected aspects of human behaviour exhibited by the gifted few. Mathematician John von Neuman – who worked on the Manhattan Project, could memorise ...

This lockdown situation has involved lots of changes. Social distancing, millions furloughed or working from home and more millions immersed in some bizarre governmental inspired Churchillian rhetoric dating from the 1940’s. Hopefully this time around we shall not be fighting in France. Bright lights on the horizon such as Sturgeon suggest that there may be an opportunity here to re-purpose and re-focus and I hope she is both correct in this assumption and correctly listened to. Anyway, not only am I in lockdown, but as of last week I am in something termed shielded lockdown. What does this mean? Well, I am part of an alien group who should avoid all human contact whatsoever just in case. Not that I currently have the virus, although I suspect I may have already had it some weeks ago, but just that I may get it – but nobody knows. Hence the enhanced shielding. Plusses? An offer of a weekly food parcel and priority access to supermarket delivery slots. I may take the powers tha...

Boris got tough virus-wise on March 23, thirty days ago according to the Sun and same thirty days ago according to the Guardian. So that’s alright then. Thirty days to get used to lockdown and thirty days to find stuff to occupy the long days. No problem, I’ll write another book I thought. At maybe 2k words each day it should take at most forty days plus maybe another 10 days of formatting. Then add maybe ten editing days and ten more for subbing and more subbing. Trick with subbing of course is to spot grammar as well as spelling mistakes. Trick two – read it all backwards out loud from back to front. That’ll sort out the men from the buoys! Plus of course punctuation. Ok, make that eighty or so days. Or maybe 90 when you include proofing for accuracy, dates, timelines – we are talking non-fiction local history here! And, of course, the placing of images, creation of a cover plus some back-page. I could go on. Oh, and I need a willing graphic artist for that cover. The cover s...

I get sent the odd album along with a modicum of books to review. The books are easy. Dip in, test the flavour, form an opinion, make some comments and pen a few words. Over the years of course, I have reviewed everything from dire travelogues about Aberdonian suspension bridges – yes there are such things – to a quite splendid Dracula prequel with pretty much everything in between. And what a privilege. You never know what the postman will bring next though . A month or so ago, prior to all this virus stuff, I received a block-stream of music from Corrie @ Hanna Innes Communications. The likes of Hamish Napier was foremost amongst the mix alongside a recording of Time to Fly by David Foley and Jack Smedley. Hamish (review @: Aberdeen Voice.com ) I was a bit busy at the time and only got as far as Hamish. Today though, I had a wee listen to David and Jack. Glad I did. Alongside a welcome acoustic vibe, the album reeks of craftsmanship and reflects what the duo refer to...

I n March 2020 Aberdeen Performing Arts switched off the lights in its three iconic venues: His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen Music Hall and the Lemon Tree amid the COVID-19 outbreak. Shows were cancelled and staff put on furlough. Lockdown was about to strike and the theatre doors slammed shut on 17 th  March ironically on the very eve of a week long run of A Monster Calls. You couldn’t really make it up. Cancellations of Buddy Holly, Once and Billionaire Boy swiftly followed and a Scottish Opera run of The Gondoliers described in glowing terms as "Sunny, funny and with more ‘tra la la las’ per square inch than any other opera in the canon" was swiftly consigned to the bottom of the Grand Canal. But, as they say, the show must go on and today Aberdeen Performing Arts has announced a set of stay-at-home projects and initiatives designed to keep the North-east connected and engaged in arts and culture during this strange pandemic era. Titled We’re here for you, the...