A breath of fresh air from Scotland

Welcome to "Man with two dogs" - the family website for dog owners and dog walkers.

This is my countryside diary which appears each Saturday in the Courier & Advertiser newspaper.

Dog’s life

January 21st, 2012
Weekly

NEVER WORK with children and animals – don’t tell me about it! …read on »

If you want to get ahead get a horn

January 14th, 2012
Weekly

IMPERIAL HEAD – a term possibly more readily associated with heads of state or empires, but last weekend the Doyenne and I saw at least one. …read on »

Cough mixture

January 7th, 2012
Weekly

OLD SOLDIERS can sometimes only surrender to overwhelming force. The gales brought down a number of venerable beech trees round the house – and a rather rarer Scotch pine has measured its length too. Beeches have a normal lifespan of about 150-200 years and as the woods round here were planted around the end of the eighteenth century it’s no great surprise that there were casualties. …read on »

Harping on

December 31st, 2011
Weekly

THE STOOL of Repentance glowers balefully from the corner of the room. My protestations that it would have been ungracious to refuse the offers of seconds of our daughter-in-law’s delicious Christmas dinner – with just a splash of wine to help it down – fell on deaf ears. I fear that, even now, the Doyenne still doesn’t understand me. …read on »

Cold dis-comfort

December 24th, 2011
Weekly

CHILBLAINS USED to be a common winter complaint, but you hardly hear them mentioned these days. …read on »

Local links

December 17th, 2011
Weekly

LAST SATURDAY the name of Peter Anson popped out at me from the centre pages of the Daily Telegraph. It was unexpected because he died in 1975 but he had strong connections with the east coast of Scotland and Montrose. Beneath a reserved exterior was an unconventional character and I wish I could have met him more than the two times I did. …read on »

The old ones are best

December 10th, 2011
Weekly

ROE DEER have drifted back deep into the shelter of the woods. Old laurel and rhododendron bushes provide shelter from the snow which fell on Tuesday evening, and the dogs and I disturb them when we’re out on the morning walk. …read on »

Swept under the carpet

December 3rd, 2011
Weekly

LIFTING CARPETS can be revealing. A reader, lifting her old living room carpet to lay a new one, came across some pages of The Courier and Advertiser of Saturday August 27, 1994 which had been used for underlay. 1994 isn’t so very long ago – unless, of course, you weren’t even born then – but the old paper has provided fascinating reading. …read on »

Shut that door

November 26th, 2011
Weekly

SMOKE RISING vertically from the chimney pots, not so much as a whisper of breeze to twitch the topmost branches of the tallest trees or shiver the fragile grasses in the hedgerows, and white duvets of mist hanging in the field bottoms. I wish I was talking about a fairytale morning with a frosty nip in the air and a warming sun burning off the mist. …read on »

Horse power vs donkey power

November 19th, 2011
Weekly

MY TAUTOLOGY blunder – the Vale of Strathmore – may have run its course. I got a call from a retired farmer at the head of Glenesk who told me that he grew up calling it the Howe of Strathmore, much as we refer to the Howe of the Mearns. …read on »

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