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 ...

We decided to have a wander round Battlehill at Huntly over the weekend. Fortunately, we chose the Saturday full of sunshine and not the Sunday full of wet-stuff. We set off in bright sunshine for a bit then encountered a cold breeze from the north before circling into shelter and more strong sunshine on the lee side of the wood. It’s changed a bit since our last visit. The treeline around the summit has been re-planted and a series of archaeological digs have revealed some good evidence of habitation in past years. Post holes from bronze-age huts, some flint arrowheads and some ancient pottery have been uncovered and a fresh dig is planned for August 2018. Perhaps some bones of those slain in battle will come to light since seemingly the wood is named after a skirmish during the wars of Scottish Independence. However not much information is available on-line or indeed locally. At first, I wondered if the clash-of-arms might have been as a result of the bloody end-game of The Bat...

James Gordon Bennett Senior is often associated with euphemism’s such as “cor blimey!” and “would you believe it!”. He was educated in the village of Newmill near Keith in rural Scotland-shire and, in later life was widely feared and indeed hated by many. Described by one reputed enemy as "an obscene foreign vagabond, a pestilential scoundrel, ass, rogue, habitual liar, loathsome and leprous slanderer and libeller" he specialised in “kiss and tell” stories. It seems that in 1836 for example, he offered a reward to any woman prepared to “set a trap for a Presbyterian parson and catch one of them in flagrante delicto.” Familiar rhetoric perhaps? Well, given the ‘Slime Ball vs Mob Boss’ headlines in this weeks papers and the ‘kiss and tell’ antics of Stormy Daniels, all is not well in the land of Trump. Tomorrow seemingly, Jim Comey’s ‘kiss and tell’ tale of a deeply disturbing presidency is due for publication – hence the proliferation of major-domo articles exposing the...

Amazon makes little sense really. Until yesterday at noon, I had a seller account. I could list surplus books, excess photographic equipment and even old worn-out walking sticks. Today none of that is possible and Amazon is demanding a resounding £26 per month for my custom. You must be Joe King is my response since, not only is the single-breasted lady intent on depriving me of a pound or two, but she is seemingly intent on completely confusing me. It’s the same with the selling of my latest book. Well, my only book if truth be told. Yesterday, Amazon were flogging my tome at a massive 31% discount. That’s not good really since my author’s royalties are based on the gross sales price. So, if a copy of my book sells at the full £12.99 recommended purchase price, I make about a pound. For a discounted price, I make much less. I am guessing that both my publishers, god bless them, and Amazon make much more dosh than poor old me. But that is, of course, the fate of the prolific autho...

One of the greatest pleasures of writing about the North-east involves the discovery of the strange and unexpected. I mean, who would have thought that the devil had a wife and that – while she was wandering around the village of Midmar frightening the locals – he lobbed a giant boulder at her. He missed his spouse by a mile of course and the rock now sits in the policies of nearby Tillycairn Castle at Cluny. Seemingly, and this is according to no less a source than Victorian writer Alex Inkson McConnachie, ‘the credulous may yet see the mark of the Devil’s hand upon it’. To top the Devil’s unlikely feat, Scottish super-hero and revolutionary William Wallace seemingly chucked a 20-ton rock all the way from Mither Tap to Oldmeldrum, a distance of some six miles. Seemingly his aim was good, but the missile, known as Wallace’s Putting Stone, overshot his intended target and now sits just north of the Hill of Barra. There are many more tales such as this in my A-Z of Curious Aberdeens...

Alongside the fear of having committed unwitting criminality as regards the penning of prose, one of a writer’s greatest fears is that the slaved-over book will never sell. Yes, we all know about James Joyce who penned the book we all aspire to understand, is now dead but graces every coffee table in the land. ‘Is that a good read then?’, ‘Oh yes, I particularly like his comments on Bono. Mind you I feel sorry for the Irish.’ Then there is that splendid Harry Potter franchise and of course the tales of the heroic David Toulmin who was first published some 25 years before his unpleasant death. In the big scheme of things however, literary fame comes in small doses and as in the case of famous artists, often arrives late in life or even afterwards. I was however pleased to read a fine piece in yesterdays Sunday Post about Dundee bard Michel Marra. The Post is not my favourite tabloid and nor is it a paper I buy every week. But, as has often been the case recently, I half expected a...

Well, that’s the so-called author questionnaire filled out ahead of the proposed next book. I can’t tell you what it is about just yet since I’d have to kill you if I let the proverbial cat out of the bag, but it should be a cracker. Well, I would say that wouldn’t I. What is the author questionnaire I hear you ask. Well, it’s a sort of collection of proposals intended to draw out ideas for both the substance of the tome and reassure the publisher that the author has at least a semblance of sanity and some idea of what they are proposing to write. I recall early days promoting a few web sites on Google. The rules were a bit draconian and unless you actually paid the internet giant some readies – in which case they generally left you to simply get on with it – website marketeers were in constant danger of breaking unknown rules leading to outright bans or in most cases demotion from the safety of the early algorithms. In short, break the Google-law and absolutely no-one, even the...

It’s been quite a heady week review-wise. On top of the – now four – feedback reviews of the new book on the Amazon platform several local and not so local newspapers have been brave enough to expose my curious writings to a wider audience. First of all, The Scotsman published a wide-ranging piece titled ‘7 gems from Aberdeenshire’s past’. Penned by Alison Campsie, whom I have never knowingly met – honest Injun’s – the article begins with the history of Aberdeenshire Alligators and concludes with a tale about Aberdeenshire toilets - I kid you not. And the full feature can be found on the Scotsman website at: https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/7-gems-from-aberdeenshire-s-curious-past-1- On the previous Friday a good friend had contacted me to say that I had finally made it into the Evening Express. Now, to put this in context, I have been trying to get the local Aberdeenshire papers to take my articles and theatre reviews for ages but without much success. On this occasion however,...

I am often amazed at human kindness. One of the scariest moments I have recently experienced was when I had to press a small green button in front of a bank-teller on Mid-Street in Keith. Keith, I hear you say. For the uninitiated, it’s a town in Moray just over the border from Aberdeenshire. Known as the friendly town – and I can vouch for that accolade – the inhabitants are in the habit of saying hello at every opportunity. Even if they don’t know you from Adam, an upbeat ‘hello and how are you today?’ followed by a reassuring pause to discus the weather usually interrupts any High Street jaunt. A selection of traditional shops, including a butcher who, alongside selling the traditional range of animal body-parts also sells local-history books completes the picture. But I digress. That scary moment involved the purchasing of a house and the button in question would, given the press of a single digit, send untold thousands of hard-earned pounds into the ether of the banking in...

Alongside the penning of books – and yes, there is yet another on the way – I have aspired to be a feature writer on occasion. As an avid reader of the weekend papers I have long admired the Observer Magazine’s ‘A Brush with Greatness’ column. Typical topics are ‘The day Van Morrison remembered me’, ‘The day Keith Richard joined us at the Test Match’ and ‘Back in my early 20s, I was a camera assistant for a photographer named Jeff Riedel.’ All good and all really interesting. I got to thinking that I too must have brushed against some greatness. I have briefly met some Royals, but not intimately, and can claim to have chatted with Russel Grant in the basement of an Aberdeen hotel. Then there was that day when Margaret Thatcher’s limo almost ran me off the road on a return trip from the Isle of Skye. Which to use? Then it hit me: I had met the Dalai Lama – or at least, I thought that I had met him. For reasons which completely escape me, the Observer Magazine have never used the pi...