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 Dundee Courier newspaper.
Archive for 2011
Harping on
Saturday, December 31st, 2011
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. (more…)
North-East Legacy – The Scottish Banner
Saturday, December 31st, 2011
A SLIM volume of poetry with a faded dust jacket and dedicated to a friend by the poet , a small watercolour painting signed with just the artist’s initials ‘VJ’, and a single sheet of writing paper with a poem written in an unsteady hand will come under the auctioneer’s hammer in the next few weeks. (more…)
Cold dis-comfort
Saturday, December 24th, 2011
CHILBLAINS USED to be a common winter complaint, but you hardly hear them mentioned these days. (more…)
Local links
Saturday, December 17th, 2011
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. (more…)
The old ones are best
Saturday, December 10th, 2011
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. (more…)
Swept under the carpet
Saturday, December 3rd, 2011
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. (more…)
WHITSON FAMILY TARTAN TRADITION – The Scottish Banner
Wednesday, November 30th, 2011
If the family tradition is to be believed the surname Whitson in Scotland is of Viking origin. The story as it was written down by my great-uncle Sir Thomas Whitson, who was Lord Provost of Edinburgh from 1929-1932, was that three Viking brothers sailed from Norway to Scotland in their longboats, landing at Footdee (locally Fittie), at the mouth of the River Dee at Aberdeen where it meets the North Sea. (more…)
Shut that door
Saturday, November 26th, 2011
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. (more…)
Horse power vs donkey power
Saturday, November 19th, 2011
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. (more…)
Militarily speaking
Saturday, November 12th, 2011
THE BLACK Isle is one of those off-the-main-track parts of Scotland that I reproach people for racing past in their haste to get somewhere else. The name reflects the rich, fertile land of the peninsula whose shores are washed by the waters of the Cromarty Firth on the north and the Moray Firth to the south. (more…)