Lilacs in the Spring.

Well, actually in our sitting room in early May. Note the solid oak table. We had an hour to spare the other day and went in to the furniture shop at Mintlaw to have a browse. Came out with a set of three tables. Well its just a bit too much effort to reach to the floor for me wine glass. This is the smallest of the three.

I had chosen a set of three tables from Dwell. Shaped like minimalistic toadstools. I like to be different. Although I wasnt too happy that they were made from veneer. I was even less happy when I checked the delivery prices. For our post code it was £65. John Lewis its free. Do these people, Dwell, think the roads stop at Glasgow? They have a shop in Glasgow. Stagecoach from then on? So they can Dwell on, they havent got me as a customer.


This wreck lies off the shoreline at Cairnbulg, our nearest village. It went aground on the 18th December 2005. And its still there. Apparently the only way they could remove it is to build a wee road out to it and then crane it out. But all that costs. So it remains.

This is the harbour at Cairnbulg being built. By hand. In the 1920s. I am sorry. But my first reaction is to laugh. My next is to admire the men and boys who actually did it. They look like an extended family having fun on the beach, building a dam, a pond, just messing about! But there is a harbour. Recently the village has obtained funding and begun work to clear out the silt and make it back into a proper harbour, albeit for small pleasure craft. Presumably lobster fishing also.

Just up the coast is Fraserburgh, a proper working harbour. There is a narrow strait up this North East Coast to get to Fraserburgh and there have been quite a few ship wrecks despite it being on all the charts and having warning lights/bouys.

Somehow, in this day and age it is surprising that ships ground as recently as 2005. But then there was the nuclear sub that did just that even more recently, and that was probably more embarrassing!

A few years back we were on a tiny fishing boat which had more technology fitted than most modern homes. Sonar to see the sea bed, the shoals of fish, the pimple on the nose of the octopus, so how come ships still go aground?

I guess the man on the deck was having a wine down. Like me.