Lush Green

A little rain over a day or two has at last allowed the fishing rods to be rigged and visits made to the lonely pools of the Alt Trollaigh. The rigging of the rods should be standard practice at your local optician, or what ever grand title they give themselves these days to confuse us; certainly the difference year to year in one's ability to thread a fine nylon leader through the eye of a fancy fishing fly is very obvious or perhaps its down to the sun's angle!
A damper June has brought clouds of midges and everyone is forever searching the horizon for even the faintest of breezes or a blink of warm sun to chase the blighters away; fortunately there is usually relief during the day but evenings can be tedious; however with Wimbledon Fortnight in full swing we have been indoors in the evening watching play, right up to the new 11.00pm limit thanks to the centre court's convertible roof.
When I mentioned our conquest of the Jubilee Corbett last month I forgot to reveal that the climb that would take a youngster 2 or 3 hours took dearest Dottie and I almost 7 hours! In the spirit of the Royal Jubilee we were carrying a rather heavy bottle of Prosecco to crack open on the summit in general celebration. The decision was taken half way up to drink half the bottle to lighten the load and on reflection this might also have slowed the pace on the second half of the ascent.
It is difficult to tear oneself away from the beauty of Glen Trollaigh at this time of year when everything is so lush and green. The long seeded grasses are also handy for hiding the odd corner of the policies where a little ground maintenance has been neglected to say nothing of the seeds supporting lots and lots of birdlife. With a fairly constant amount of work to clip the rolling lawns, other tasks are still troubling my conscience; gutters broken by last winter's snow have still to be fixed, roof leaks remain untreated in dry weather and exterior paint work peels accusingly on some weathered window frames, at least in this case the paint has been chosen and is ready; time however just seems to fly by.
Many of you will, I hope, have seen something of the unfolding farce surrounding Argyll and Bute Council and one of their school children. Encouraged to produce an English project the young pupil launched a blog "neverseconds" where she published details of her daily school lunch provided by the said A&B C; she also had connected the blog to fundraising for a local charity "Mary's Meals". A huge following developed and over £100,000 was raised in a matter of days; why were we surprised to find that A&B C tried to gag the blogger eventually stooping low enough to confiscate her camera? The tragedy is that we have allowed ourselves be bullied into letting our lives be run by such numbingly incompetent arses.
Yours aye, Archie, The Baron Trollaigh.