Duncan Harley

Agricultural prosperity in Aberdeenshire owes much to the improvements in communication and transport brought about both by the Aberdeenshire Canal in the early 19th Century and the arrival of the railways in around 1850. For the first time, key agricultural inputs such as guano and the euphemistically named ‘night soil’ or inner city dung collected from population centres could be ploughed into the land. Movement of goods was key. And i n 1793 a survey was commissioned to map a route for a proposed Don and Urie-side Canal. The original thought had been to follow the courses of the rivers Don and Urie to link Insch and Monymusk with Inverurie and Aberdeen Harbour. There was even a suggestion that the water-network might include the settlements of Aboyne and Banchory. However, due to cost implications, a less ambitious route linking Inverurie to Aberdeen roughly along the line of the River Don was adopted. Officially opened in June 1805, the waterway featured 17 canal locks. Ther...

The snagging list for the next book pounds on. Off for an edit, the new tome – to the best of my knowledge – has but three embarrassing bloopers. Not so last night’s blog about Dracul, which had just the two. Fortunately, both Dacre Stoker and J.D. Barker were forgiving and, following a wee hint, suitable amendments were made to the inaccurate portions of the piece. That’s the essence of the blogging problem really. Bloggers generally have no editor. You write, publish and generally wing it. Unless readers take umbrage, or better still make suggestions, the blogosphere relies on feedback and hopefully kind words. I don’t as yet have a cover image for the new book, but here – in the hope of some pre-publication appreciation – is an extract … “In his circa AD 98 biography of his father-in-law Agricola, Tacitus records amongst other things the victory of the Roman general Agricola’s armies over the Barbarian hordes of Caledonia. Much has been made of the fact that, although...

That’s the new school building at the foot of my garden finally taking shape. I blogged the destruction of the hallowed sports ground some months ago and the digging up of the turf finally ended when the steel-erectors moved in a few weeks ago. From grass to mud the project took around 16 weeks and from mud to steel a further 6 weeks has elapsed although it will be a year or so until the splendid complex is finally completed. Hopefully some royal or other will arrive to open the place as that would be fitting probably. Prince Charles would be nice, or maybe if the project is delayed for a bit, or goes over budget, then maybe Prince Louis might unveil the inevitable shiny plaque. As an aside, despite the forward planning and the public consultations, I suspect that the solar panels on the structure's roof face somewhat to the North instead of facing the more conventional South, where – given that we inhabit the Northern Hemisphere, they might just receive the most sunl...

Seemingly the march of the robots is upon us. Not only can the digital servants cut the lawn and provide endless fun for the family pet as it – the robot and not the dog – bruises around the living-room sucking up dust, but the NHS is seemingly considering employing artificial intelligence to carry out everyday tasks around the average ward. Called Carebots, the plastic nurses will no doubt race around the wards emptying bedpans and deliverooing pizza’s thus freeing up valuable clinical resources. According to Former health minister Lord Darzi, a leading surgeon, nearly a third of care staff tasks could be handed over to robots in a bid to save £13bn a year. Indeed, the Telegraph goes so far as to suggest that he is calling for ‘Full automation’ of health and social services. All well and good then from the man whom the London Journal of Primary Care says is ‘ a great believer in bottom-up’ . Indeed, one can almost smell the robotic nurse advising the patient in bed four t...

There’s a forecast for rain tonight, but I doubt if it will come to much, and the Chinese folk next-door have been chucking rubbish into my front garden. Lucy of course is mainly oblivious and is tucked up in the shed. It has a black-felted roof and is splendidly warm despite the fairly obvious clutter. At some rotund age or ever she is quite entitled. “Do you know how old I am” she purrs as the vitamin-enhanced cat-soup goes down.  As I say, she can do more or less as she wants in her dotage. My son says she is 22. I disagree and suspect a year older. The railway station cat at Aberdeen lived to 26, but Lucy probably doesn’t really care about such niceties. Last week, and despite her age, she took lumps out of a local tom, and I don’t blame her. I may yet set her on the Chinese next door – that is, if one is allowed to even say such things nowadays. They, the Orientals, are probably very very very fine folk. But chucking stuff into a neighbour’s patch kind of makes a moc...

It's BBQ time and a neighbour has not only roasted a few cows but has now started on the fish. Not ordinary fish you understand. These smell very much like kippers and Janice has been forced to take the washing in because of the backyard odour. Not that there's anything wrong with kippers you understand. Sublime and full of good fishy  protein and splendidly sumptuous maritime fat the health benefits are well publicised but the smell lingers for days and I really don't relish sharing a drink or two with fellow hacks in the theatre bar tomorrow wearing a kipper-strewn shirt. It's the same with bread. A quite splendid piece by Felicity Lawrence graces page 34 of today's Observer. After highlighting the fashionable obesity crisis, she bashes the 45p supermarket white-loaf. Again, I am not against the white loaf - how after all can you achieve decent toast except by the use of thick-sliced white bread. In my youth we relished the plain-loaf. A factory produced ...

The blogosphere is a funny old world really. An article in today’s Guardian set off a train of thought about a long dead pal. Nigel was his name if you must know, and he picked up road kill on a whim to feed his many cats. There were at one point thirteen of the feline buggers living and shitting in his living space and the sheer cost of Felix must have strained his resources to the hilt. Hence the feeding of rabbits, pheasants and the occasional flattened fox to his co-habitants. He lived in a series of variously run-down country cottages of the type commonly available in those splendidly hippie days that were the 70’s, then the 80’s and perhaps the early 90’s. His last place was a well-used caravan over at Monymusk at the back of an old mill. The kind landowner had agreed on a peppercorn rent on the basis that the mill and its adjoining miller’s house would be his for a few decades, providing he agreed to renovate it to a habitable standard. Well, Nigel was no easy tenant. An...