
A LIFE on the ocean wave has all the appeal of a tropical island when the sea is flat calm and it’s so hot you don’t need to wear even a jumper. That’s what Montrose Bay was like when I went out with Captain John West, Senior Pilot at Montrose Port Authority. I joined him as he piloted a ship into port, and I looked forward to seeing Montrose from a different perspective. (…read on »)

DUNDEE PIGEONS are cheeky birds, I’ve decided. I was sitting at a city centre terrace cafe, drinking my coffee and reading a popular daily broadsheet, when a city pigeon alighted on the balustrade. It had its eye on the leftover bit of a chocolate brownie which lay on a plate, three tables away. (…read on »)

IT’S STRANGE what sometimes triggers off these Saturday pieces. This week it was the phrase, “the sma’ licht”, which appears in a Violet Jacob short story called ‘The Yellow Dog’, written very much in the Angus vernacular. Despite being born into one of the great ‘county’ families of her time, she had a familiarity with the daily, domestic language of country folk. (…read on »)

BOTH DOGS slept blissfully through the cracks of thunder and flashes of lightning that awoke me at a thoroughly indecent hour. (…read on »)

‘FISH SCALES in the blood’, well describes Bob Ritchie, son and grandson of salmon netsmen, and himself still carrying on this traditional occupation. (…read on »)