Salted Seagulls

One thing that bothers me about our long wonderful Winter is; what on earth would our forebears have made of it all before the "freezer" reached the Tower of Glen Trollaigh? As we nip into Farmfoods for a few frozen beans from Tansanika or asparagus from Peru we hardly consider what it must have been like to survive the winter with a couple of sheep's legs well smoked in the chimney or a barrel of salted seagulls to gnaw on when the going got tough. This was brought home to me when we recently ran out of stored field potatoes from last year. As we are not due to plant until after April's New Moon, yours truly had to elbow in passed some bumbling pensioners to the Tesco potato section. I absolutely abhor Tesco at the best of times, I simply cannot think of a single thing that redeems them apart from their offering a wide ranging number of Oban school leavers legal bullying for a penny or two above the minimum wage. I positively weep when I see visitors and locals alike with their trolleys groaning, proudly labelled for Islay, Mull or Colonsay presumably saving a centime or two over supporting the Port Askaig Co-op, to say nothing of the Oban Tesco "catch of the day" being Barramundi flown in from Darwin. We must be complete gullible twits to be taken in by this rubbish, particularly here in Argyll which has quite rightly become a centre for first class fish shops and farm shops to say nothing of excellent restaurants, which let me assure you from comments made by our international guests are at the very least world class. I urge all sensible souls to spend that extra tenner a week supporting local produce available in your local store and tell Mr Cohen what we think of him, unfortunately many of us are just too bloody lazy or at worse stupid.

I spotted another piece of irresponsible marketing during a rare visit to a Glasgow B&Q where £19.99 tents were displayed next to £40 chainsaws. We have quite enough trouble with campers chopping down our trees thank you very much, without any overt encouragement. It is worth noting that whilst honest country folk are required to have a chainsaw operating safety certificate and dress up like Darth Vader before pulling the starter cord, your average camping lumberjack is probably completely blotto and certainly semi naked. Doubtless the first "class action" law suite for missing limbs will bring a return of the time honoured security of camping equipment juxtaposed with matches, paraffin and barbecues in a idiot's hyper-market near you.

Since I last scribbled, April the First has come and gone. I find this day difficult as I always have a great desire to pull off the most fantastic wheeze such as closing British air space on some loony pretext and the knowledge that I am also fairly easily duped. However this year's offerings were easy to spot even for me, although the poor Japanese seem to have been universally used as decoys. I received an earnest message from a Mr Motokami searching for any info about the local roots of General MacArthur, claims were made of a photo of the General and his family wearing kilts on Loch Awe side; I know for a fact that the only contact between the General (a single man famously married to the military in more ways than one) and water was his powerful breast stroke in any available direction away from the Philippines before his coca cola supply was interrupted by relatives of Mr Motokami during WW2. Then a message from a Prof Kamimoto, complete with a slightly unnerving photo of the author warning me of a most painful death if I drank water from a plastic bottle stored in my car. The give away was that the good professor had obviously no realistic idea of the chances of water being carried in the Baronial Bodile. Hopefully the news that the Liberal Democrats, those complete wankers, may in some way hold the balance of power in our forth coming election is also an April Fool! Hey ho, Yours aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.