Welcome to the Twenty First Edition of Our Newsletter
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Edition 21 Monday 7th September 2020 Welcome to the Twenty First Edition of our Newsletter This is our third fortnightly edition of our newsletter and it will be the final fortnightly issue. I am sorry to say you will have to wait another month for the next edition which will be the October one and then monthly thereafter. This will give all members plenty of time to send me any articles for publication. A favourite poem, a short story, a recipe, gardening tips, craft ideas, interesting photos, jokes – the list is endless, so please have a think about what you can submit and let’s make the October issue a bumper one. Please send any contributions to Karen: [email protected] 1 Music in Our Time Music Inspired By Autumn by Alan Malloy From September 1st we are now into meteorological Autumn which Mother Nature also seems to reflect, with shorter, cooler days and falling leaves. So how could I not choose music to reflect this season? On drilling down into this, there are a significant number of songs which try to capture the essence of this time of year. I hope you like these less well-known pieces. ‘Autumn’ from Folk Songs of the Four Seasons (Ralph Vaughan Williams) This is a jolly tune and one I’m sure you’ll know. VW wrote these songs in 1950, as a commission from the Women’s Institute. They were first performed in the Albert Hall with a choir of 3,000 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO2U3L3Lcwo ‘Autumn’ from The Seasons (Alexander Glazunov) This piece has a more mellow feel. The music was written for a ballet entitled ‘The Four Seasons’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dum-2EKDBtY 2 ‘Autumn Almanac’ (The Kinks) Released in 1967, written by Ray (now Sir Ray) Davies, this song was inspired by Davies’ observation of a hunch-backed gardener in Muswell Hill, North London. Critics have rightly praised this song as ‘an absolute classic’. I agree, hope you do too. As a gardener, I empathise with the lyrics of the song! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3VDATV6dmY ‘Forever Autumn’ (Moody Blues) Written by Jeff Wayne in 1978 and sung by Justin Hayward, Wayne included this song in his musical version of The War of the Worlds. The scenery in this video is stunning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al-ESH-XfQc 3 1 1 8 It’s a good year for the heather by Rhoda Malloy Next month, Alan and I will have lived in the Highlands for six years. Up to now, we have never seen as many hills, mountains and moors so abundantly covered and transformed by heather as we have this year. Vistas normally various shades of green and brown have recently been brought alive by the purples and pinks of this hardy plant’s blooms. Their adornment of the landscape has taken it’s beauty to another level. As summer has gently turned into autumn, our walks with Hector have been enhanced by the blossoming of the heather and its accompanying honey-like fragrance. Heather belongs to the Ericaceae family of plants that includes other familiar species such as rhododendron and blaeberry. The most common heather in Scotland is called ‘Calluna vulgaris’. The word ‘Calluna’ derives from the Greek word ‘kallunein’ which means to sweep, to cleanse or to beautify, depending upon the context. This harks back to the plant’s traditional use as a twiggy, sweeping material for brooms. 4 Tails of a Bearded Collie (Xemxi and the stranger’s dropped phone) By Anne Fenech Later in life, Xemxi (having recovered from the injuries caused during the eclipse) used to walk across fields to get to the coach road in order to head for the local stately home where her human Dad worked. She only did this on days when her human Mum (an academic) was working at home. This walk was undertaken twice a day, once to accompany him to work and back and again in the evening to herd him safely home. One evening, the weather had been fairly filthy and so the coach road was more mud than flint. The two humans were muffled up in their water proofs discussing their day’s experiences. Xemxi was bouncing along, her nose leading the entire family home to her supper. Just at the point where we usually turned off the coach road to cross the two fields towards the back gate of our cottage, Xemxi started to woof excitedly. It was her habit to woof at new things and at things which were in her way. For example if she woofed at a closed door it was inevitably opened for her. We wandered up and found that the anomaly being woofed at was a mobile phone. It lay in the mud looking very sorry for itself. A few seconds later however it came to life. It lit up and started to vibrate and ring, so we answered it. On the other end was a relieved sounding person who explained that they had lost the phone earlier that day, but had no idea where they had dropped it. We agreed to take it home, and gave our address to the phone’s owner to collect it later. He duly turned up after we had had our supper bearing a box of treats for the finder of his phone. We never saw him again, but I was very pleased that he arrived with a gift for Xemxi. After all it was her who had spotted it and alerted us to the presence of something wrong on her walk home; a phone that she was not used to seeing. 5 Stravaigin in Romania Part 2 by Catherine Vass Our usual holiday plan involves using booking.com to pre book the first few nights and the last night in a country then we use the app to book as we go looking for unusual places to stay. We look for a good breakfast, comfortable bed and a shower. We have met many interesting local people and stayed in many unusual establishments in Nova Scotia, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Austria, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Estonia, Croatia, Slovenia and Romania over the past five year. We remember with great affection a 6ft tall Moslem waiter in Bad Gastein clad in lederhosen. He was unfailingly cheerful and told everyone to call me “Mo”. Another character was the patron of a hotel on the Isle de La Barthelasse close to Avignon. The hotel restaurant served spectacular French cuisine. His wife supervised and spent all evening running everywhere in the highest stiletto heels I have ever seen. The patron spent the evening going backwards and forwards to the enormous wine fridge in the corner getting more and more morose. After leaving the shores of the Danube we made our way through the Bicaz Gorge which separates the Transylvanian Alps from the Carpathians. It is awe inspiring and we choose a hunting lodge for our nightly lodgings. There were bear skins everywhere, lots of gloomy wood panelling and the sheets had camouflage and bears printed on them. It was comfortable and a bit like staying in a cave. The landlady has restaurants in the city of Cluj. Her food was local and delicious. We walked up behind the lodge through a proper Romanian meadow with lots of wild flowers which smelt beautiful in the evening air. We came across stables with horses grazing the mountain. One the way down we met two young men on their way up to water the horses. They asked the usual “are you English?” We gave the usual reply, “No Scottish”. They immediately started laughing and said we know Scotland, Perth and Dundee. They were both graduates, multilingual and had spent time in the fruit fields of Angus. They were running an odd establishment “The Teen Ranch” which we passed on our way up to the lodge. They said it was a holiday camp for city families with teenage family who came to experience the great outdoors. 6 Stravaigin in Romania Part 2 by Catherine Vass continued…. Our next stay was in the ancient car free walled town of Sighishoara, the birthplace of Vlad Tepes (the impaler), one of his titles was Count Dracula, the inspiration for Dracula. We learnt that the Romanians did not realise the tourist potential of the Bram Stoker story till the ‘80s when tourists started arriving clutching the book to look for his birthplace. We visited the mythical home of Dracula, Bran Castle. It is a cosy wee castle, not at all horrific. There is a big tourism presence, stalls with souvenirs and cafes. The souvenirs are mostly high quality, locally made. We bought some beautiful hand pained hen and goose eggs. The patterns look Ottoman and middle eastern. We stayed in a boutique hotel in a 16th Century building. Our room looked out on to the church spire. The chef produced very sophisticated food. We were now on our journey back to the airport. We stayed one night in a new pension in the foothills of the mountains. The young owner was gradually developing it as he raised the cash. He showed us an enormous suitcase which he said was all the paperwork he needed to proceed. We ate freshly grilled buttered trout and wild strawberries with a Romanian couple, the owners and their toddler son. All you could see on looking south was densely wooded hills rising like waves. We were told that there is a huge Austrian wood pulp factory nearby and illegal logging is becoming a huge problem.