Sneaky Blinders


It’s really interesting to take an in depth think about links and friends on FB. Most folk are completely above board, completely honest and of course completely and utterly respectful. Why would they not be and what motive, if indeed they have one, would they have for being otherwise.
Mind you, there are what I think of as the ‘users’. You probably know a few. Post a comment and, like it or not, before long they start promoting a product on the back of it. When you ‘like’ their site or their page you become aware of some underlying issue or other. It might be entrapment, in which case those intent on capitalising on your comment will no doubt pounce on the opportunity. Or, it might be simply a case of being remiss. I don’t really know; and perhaps I am being completely unfair. After all, we all need to put food on the dinner table don’t we.
A very few FB friends, or indeed FB pages are guilty of the offence – so please, please don’t get too paranoid. I had a cull a few months ago and cut out most of the dross. Ahead of the book release a week or so ago, I cut out a few more of the piggy-backers, just in case.
Meantime, I am looking forward to the second print of the tome. And of course, Burns Night looms large.
Here is a wee Burns snippet from the book:

“Burns needed no letter of introduction upon arrival in Stonehaven, however, since his family had farmed at Clochanhill in Dunnottar Parish. During the short visit, he met up with his Mearns relatives before proceeding south to Laurencekirk and then Montrose.
“Near Stonehive (Stonehaven),” Burns writes in his diary of the trip, “the coast is a good deal romantic. Met my relations. Robert Burns, a writer ... one of those who love fun, a gill, and a punning joke, and have not a bad heart, his wife a sweet, hospitable body, without any affectation of what is called town-breeding.”
Today, a civic garden alongside the River Cowie at Stonehaven commemorates the town’s Burns connection. The centrepiece of the garden is a sandstone bust of the bard in classic pose and sculpted by local monumental mason ‘Ghosty Bob’.”

Unashamedly and unexpectedly perhaps, there is more about Scotland’s national bard in my new tome: The A-Z of Curious Aberdeenshire

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