Duncan Harley

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...