An Alphabet Soup for the Curious


It’s been an interesting day. After visiting a grave at Old Deer, we found ourselves with a very flat tyre. Normally this is not a problem of course, you simply jack up the car and get on with the business of sorting it all out. However, on this occasion, following the jacking up and the mandatory loosening of several wheel-studs, the car fell off the jack and grounded. I swear it was not my fault. Yes, I leant on the bloody thing and yes, I gasped in anticipation of imminent re-hospitalisation as it rolled backward towards me. But, in the big scheme of things, it was nothing to do with me really. If the driver, not me I can assure you, had applied the hand-brake none of this would have ever happened. Fortunately, I survived the encounter unscathed aside from a sense of survivor’s guilt. Should I have done something to prevent the catastrophe? Should I have taken the blame? Nah. And double nah.
What to do? Thoughts of asking Green-flag to the rescue were quickly put aside and an octogenarian relative of Janice came to the rescue, jack in hand. Family values to the fore. Jacks to the right of them, jacks to the left of them etcetera. All good despite the blowing sleet. Graveyards can be cold places.
So too the big news. That would be about the new book.
The A-Z of Curious Aberdeenshire is selling well and is into a second edition.
Described by reviewer Mike Shepherd in Aberdeen Voice as ‘An alphabet soup for the curious.’ It’s well on the way to a third re-print. All good etc!
And – and I love these leading ‘ands’ I now have a fresh contract with The History Press to pen a sequel.
Not an A-Z of course, but a chronological popular history of Aberdeenshire. Who would have thought! I tempted to track down Tacitus for an interview.
A splendid sort of day really apart from that flat tyre.
Oh, and I have solved the mystery of the Harlow Monument’s missing plaques but you will have to wait until publication of the new book to find out more about the mystery. It should be out in hardback in April 2019
All good really.
Location: Aberdeen, UK

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