Duncan Harley

Despite her advanced age, Lucy is not a difficult cat. Easy enough to look after and supremely affectionate,  she mainly sleeps in the shed nowadays. Natasha, a local cat walker, sees to her when I am away and in the big scheme of things Lucy seems reasonably happy with her lot. Until last year, she over-summered in a Chinese neighbour’s garden. Replete with Rose Bay Willow Herb the cat space suited her until after council warnings and dark nods from the folk on the street, said Chinese trampled the fireweed down and now dry damp clothes above Lucy’s summer-laden-cat-space. I, and most folk in the street were bemused when, alongside trampling the Fireweed and the Dandelions, the neighbours stripped the Holly and the Rhododendron bushes of greenery. Perhaps they are frightened of Pandas. They left the Fuchsia bush and the Leylandii intact however, but I have no idea why since we do not speak because of the weeds and in fact that they are off my Christmas card list due ...

We had a wee gander round Gight yesterday. The temperature hit the mid 20s and the boots trudged some six miles around a circuit known locally as the Braes of Gight. And braes they certainly are. Both Janice and I struggled to complete the circuit. Plunging variously down some 300ft to the River Ythan and back up again makes this not a walk for the faint-hearted and, as folks more used to the more gentle gradients of abandoned railway tracks and the like, it fairly took our breath away. Of course, the essence of this walk is the association with Byron. Not that I am an avid reader of his work; but I am drawn to the man on the back of that epithet ‘Mad, bad and dangerous to know.” With somewhat uninspiring opening lines such as “O Thou! who rollest in yon azure field”, “When energising objects men pursue” and “We do not curse thee, Waterloo!” it’s a wonder that anyone reads Byron nowadays unless forced by academic requirements or perhaps an overenthusiastic zeal for the days ...