Duncan Harley

There’s a splendidly spectacular circular hiking route around Gight over at Methlick. Known locally as the Braes of Gight, braes they certainly are. Plunging variously down some 300ft to the River Ythan and back up again this is not a walk for the faint hearted and for those more used to the gentle gradients of abandoned railway tracks the walk will fairly take your breath away. Of course, the essence of this trail is its association with the romantic poet, Lord Byron. Byron's mother was of course Catherine Gordon of Gight. ‘Mad bad and dangerous to know’, the poet and adventurer and 6 th Baron Byron died in April 1824 aged just 36 years. In a nod to the burial fate of the poet come artist come visionary William Blake (1757-1827), Byron was denied a final resting place amongst his literary equals at Westminster Abbey. Instead he lies buried alongside the 14 th century church of Mary Magdalene’s in Hucknall. Few, outside Aberdeenshire realise that he grew up in Aberdeen’s Br...

Recently rebuilt following a disastrous fire, the timber-clad railway station at Ballater was at one time frequented by the Royal family in the days when the journey north to Balmoral involved rail travel. When the Deeside line closed to passengers in 1966 the building found new use as shop units and even incorporated a Tourist Information Centre and a restaurant. A part of the building was turned into a museum and visitors could, if they were lucky, meet up with a tartan-clad mannequin dressed up as Queen Victoria’s loyal ghillie John Brown on the station platform. A second mannequin, representing an ageing Victoria in black mourning dress, could be seen glowering in the private Royal Apartments of the station building. Those Royal apartments naturally featured a Royal Thunder-box complete with an ornately decorated porcelain pan, replete with Acanthus leaves and brightly painted woodland flowers. The loo was of course off limits to ordinary travellers. In more recen...

The Kit Kat Klub meets Ridley Scott's  Hovis Bicycle Boy halfway up the cobbled hill in this tale of a down-on-its-uppers footwear factory revived in the nick of time by a troupe of handsome men in dresses. Based on the original 2005 Deane and Firth film and with an impressive musical score courtesy of Cyndi Lauper, Kinky Boots apparantly reflects true events and t his feelgood tale of crotch-length shoes should please folk of all genders intent on a good night out.   Following a death in the family, Charlie Price finds himself in command of a bunch of singing mill-workers and inherits the failing family shoe-business. What to do for the best, he wonders. Enter stage left lovely drag queen Lola. A seedy nightclub and a troupe of ‘Land of Lola’ drag-dancers later, Charlie has his Damascus moment. Seemingly the world of drag is replete with unreliable footwear. Yep, I kid you not and what’s not to like? Make them red and make them sturdy is the mantra. Some suitable pro...

The play 'Doorways in Drumorty' was first aired in 2010 and is loosely based on the writings of a Strichen lass by the name of Lorna Moon who made it big in Hollywood. Alongside her one published novel Dark Star , Lorna – born Helen Nora Wilson Low – escaped her native Buchan age 24 in around 1910. Broken relationships and abandoned offspring followed before the talented, and by now re-badged, Lorna Moon took up with the son of Hollywood mogul Cecil B. DeMille and forged a successful career as a scriptwriter.  Her short stories, first published in Century Magazine , feature a clutch of thinly disguised Buchan folk and pull few punches. Titles such as ‘The Sinning of Jessie MacLean’ and ‘Feckless Maggie Ann’ did not endear her to the locals and, in true Lewis Grassic Gibbon tradition, legend insists that her books were shunned by the local library service. Penned by author/playwright Mike Gibb the play explores the curtain twitching mentality of small-town Buchan. Que...

During the next two weeks, alongside Kinky Boots, there are a couple of must see's in and around Aberdeen. Kinky Boots of course arrives at HMT for a two-week run on Tuesday 23 rd April. Described as “A joyous story of Brit grit to high-heeled hit” it should at the very least be a hoot. The blurb/fluff reads something like ‘Charlie Price is struggling to live up to his father’s expectations and continue the family business of Price & Son. With the shoe factory’s future hanging in the balance, help arrives in the unlikely but spectacular form of Lola - a fabulous performer in need of some sturdy new stilettos.’ So, what’s not to like. On a more local level, we have both Lost at Sea and Doorways in Drumorty to look forward to. Doorways dwells on the extraordinary tale of a Strichen lass by the name of Lorna Moon who made it big in Hollywood script-writing circles. Penned by author/playwright Mike Gibb the play explores a curtain twitching normality last seen in...

Known locally as ‘The Mannie’, Oldmeldrum’s  Sailor Boy Statue  is a well-travelled life-size stone sculpture of a mariner clad in period costume, which nowadays lies proudly outside the Meldrum Arms Hotel on South Road.  Rumours abound regarding his provenance. Few know his true origins and some even claim that Spanish gold lies buried beneath his feet. Originally, he held a clay pipe in one hand and a small anchor in the other. Clad in the style of a 19th-century French sailor, he is sculpted from Portland Stone - the same material that Whitehall’s Cenotaph is made from. Mysteriously and many years ago  The Mannie  is said to have been purchased by Alford’s Postie Lawson - inventor of the steam-powered Craigievar Express - at a local farm sale for just five shillings. A factoid confirmed by Grampian Transport Museum who state that the statue stood outside Lawson’s house, at Craigievar until 1938, when it was relocated to Oldmeldrum. If the Portland...

A young aviator from Inverurie was killed in combat over Arnaville on August 30 1918 age just 21. A Lieutenant in the 55 th  Squadron of the Royal Air Force, he lies buried in a small village churchyard near where he fell to earth. An on-line tribute records that “Thomas Laing from Inverurie, Aberdeenshire, joined the Royal Flying Corps as a bomber pilot. In April 1918 he went to train at the Royal Air Force (RAF) station in Narborough, Leicestershire, where he learnt how to fly his two-seat biplane day bomber. He wrote to his parents every 4 to 5 days, describing the thrill of flying at high altitudes and finally qualifying as a pilot. On 14 August 1918 Laing went on his first flight behind enemy lines, bombing ground targets in Germany. 16 days later he was shot down and killed” After his death, Laing’s mother received a letter from his girlfriend. It ends “I keep on remembering little things he said and did. I just loved everything about him”. Along with the offi...

I have to confess that I have a vested interest in this book. Some time ago, it may have been in early 2018, a fellow author by the name of Dave Hamilton got in touch to say that he was penning a book and had stumbled across an image of mine on a photo-sharing platform. And could he use it please. Which image? Was my response. ‘The one about Covesea’ was Dave’s reply and I was hooked, lined and sinkered. By which I mean that I was intrigued.  I knew that the image was fine, a few kind folks had already admired it after all. But, to date at least, it had failed to make print publication. As it turned out, Dave was in fact penning a tome about more than just Covesea. The blurb about his book reads something like ‘Wild Ruins B.C. and reveals the extraordinary tale of Britain's human story before Christianity, from the first human footprints of 800,000 years ago, to ancient axe factories, rock art, stone circles, mountain burials, sunset hill forts, lost villages and temp...

Outwardly this is a reassuringly familiar story. Rain Man the play presents as a stage remake of the familiar Hollywood blockbuster and as such is a fairly easy watch. Many of the old lines are present and thirty odd years on they still raise a wry smile or two, but only just. Times have moved on after all and Morrow and Bass’s take on autism has been somewhat dwarfed by the likes of Curious Incident and TV drama such as Autism Every Day. In any case, Rain Man’s Raymond is in a segment of the autistic spectrum not inhabited by many. As a savant, he is blessed – if that indeed is the correct term – with extraordinary abilities which set him apart from most. Card counting is one of his skills and brother Charlie Babbitt – Chris Fountain, quickly exploits this ability to ‘win a shitload of money’ from a Vegas casino. Raymond can also read and memorise two books simultaneously and recall every word. He can memorise entire telephone directories and the list goes on. The downside i...