Island Culture with Garlic

What fun to find a surprising new spree! Dearest Dottie and I crossed the sea to spend a day or two at a new island book festival; and a grand time was had by all to say nothing of learning about all sorts of writers and poets we had never heard of; though in honesty we perhaps should have done some basic homework. The only low point was a bum numbing whisky tasting and musical evening which went on for 3 hours when 1 would have been more than sufficient. All but one of the writers were Edinburgh or at least East Coast based and perhaps could be described as a little middle class when more Glasgow earthiness would have stopped a few grey heads from nodding and added spice. There may have been some social soirées, if so we were obviously not on the guest list, however plenty of glass clinking with chums from outwith the cultural set was achieved and some good exercise taken as there were several alternative offerings. We particularly enjoyed a "foraging" course which took us out into the hedgerows to collect lots of leaves and flowers and when returned to base we were shown what to do with them; a favourite being wild garlic and walnut pesto. The festival organisers pulled off an astonishing coup by producing Captain Haddock from the Tintin stories; I am certain it was he although several festival goers counter claimed that he was in fact a noble lord with a slightly dodgy history. Our climax was to rise at 04.00 hours on the 1st May and light Beltane beacons on half a dozen local hilltops; it was a spectacular dawn on a clear, cold and windy morning; although the event was a little subdued as a previous attempt had set fire to almost the whole bally island upsetting the natives or a least certainly those holding to the more traditional Methodist beliefs!

I believe that 70 odd percent of you did not bother to vote in last week's local elections, shame on you; and even more shame on the media pundits who then shouted from the roof tops that the results in some way reflected national issues. The whole point my dears is that they were LOCAL elections fought on LOCAL issues; and I am very pleased to say that we have ended up with a promising team who seem prepared to listen to the problems of the North Argyll glens. The first thing is to strip the power from the ubiquitous Argyll & Bute Council Executive Committee who have been running a mini state for their own benefit for a number of years, which wouldn't be so bad if they were not so hopelessly incompetent. I have to temper my comments on these buffoons as my legal chaps say the the A&BC EC are currently spending £350,000 of our taxes monitoring the blogs and FB pages of their employees and citizens, and love nothing better than sending threatening letters to anyone who is audacious enough to question their decisions; if I get one I will be publishing it! Come on spend your time and our taxes on improving public services; particularly to impoverished Barons.!Yours aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.