The Nobel Prize for Literature is awarded (I thought I should remind you lest recent events have deluded you into thinking otherwise) to a writer in the field of literature who has produced “the most outstanding work in an ideal direction”.
This is what happens when a particular part of the country – let’s call it Perthshire for argument’s sake – allows one precedent after another to be established.
It is satisfying to know the special relationship still hangs together so well after all these years, especially given the increasingly tricky vagaries of our 21st century world.
The Insh Marshes, a little after dawn. Freezing fog, the back road in the lee of the northern corries of the Cairngorms tending towards skittishness.
Say for the sake of argument you are an extra-terrestrial from a galaxy far, far away, you just dropped in for a few days of space tourism on planet Earth last week, you wanted to know a little bit about the place, and so you picked up a copy of The Courier (why wouldn’t you?) each day.
The swifts have gone, yet I’m smiling.
Does the name Scott Pruitt mean anything to you yet? If it doesn’t it soon will, because there is a fair chance he is about to kill off the planet.
I have never really got Balquhidder Glen out of my system. I lived there for a few years and we seemed — still seem — to have an awareness of each other.
The irresistible force that is Dundee’s penchant for constantly realigning its own built environment has always been countered by two of the most immovable objects on Earth.
So the moral of the story is this: be careful what you wish for.