Blog

  1. A James Pirie Message in a Bottle

     A James Pirie Message in a Bottle

    It’s becoming harder and harder to distinguish fakes from the authentic and with the news that a web site will allow you to create songs in the style of, say Amy Winehouse and Artificial Intelligence that is able to make incredible pictures from fresh air and not a lot else, it’s hard to know what’s real. There was a detectorist in Herefordshire who planted five Crusader coins in a field that would have changed the view of history in that area. He wanted the fame and kudos that the find would have given him, but he was arrested and tried, not guilty was the verdict. So it was great to see a real feel good story of a group of school pupils from Wormit Primary School in Fife who launched message in bottles when those messages were finally found 40 years later.

    The messages were written in wax crayon and the pupils who wrote the messages are now back in touch with each other thanks to the discovery. The finder dried out the messages at home and surprisingly they were still legible. One o

    Read more »
  2. A Mother's Day Gift That Lasts for decades

     A Mother's Day  Gift That Lasts for decades

    Now that Mother’s day is round the corner, it’s on the 10th March this year, have you thought about buying your mum or woman in your life a lovely bunch of blooms, or bouquet of flowers? Well if you want to be a thoughtful giver pause a moment to think where those lovely blooms come from and does it matter? And of course the answer is yes. We don’t live in a climate where you can grow flowers at this time of the year and so they are imported and also often grown in hot houses abroad. Yes we are talking carbon footprint! In the UK the market for cut flowers and ornamental plants is worth £1.3bn, that’s a lot of flowers that are literally here today and gone tomorrow.

    Because of the weather we import 90% of flowers mostly from our friends in the Netherlands who use copious amounts of electricity to heat their greenhouses. But of course elektrickery is currently very expensive in Europe and so many other places like Kenya are now getting into the game, which means more car

    Read more »
  3. Nothing Say True Love like a Folded Piece of Card. Is That Right?

    Can you hear that? Tick, tock, tick tock. It’s the sound of February and the lurching into sight of that modern behemoth St Valentine’s Day. Love it or loathe it you’d better get your skates on because you can bet that your beloved expects something nice on the day. You might get away with a funny card, but as they note in the classic nothing says undying love more clearly than a folded piece of cardboard. Did you know that Saint Valentine is also the patron saint of epilepsy and beekeepers? He was a versatile fellow. And did you know the Orthodox Church celebrates his day for lovers on July 6th, a more appropriate time for romance perhaps than a cold February day, full of wind, cold and dreich? Although I have just seen the most glorious of sunsets, and I hear that the escaped monkey has been recaptured and tranquiliser darted at a bird feeder. He’s re-united with his fellow simians just in time for the mating season.

    Now the world of whisky tasting

    Read more »
  4. A Busman's Holiday

    A Busman's Holiday

    A Busman’s Holiday

    Well you know how it goes, the prospect of a significant birthday and the weather at home isn’t all that, so a birthday abroad is just what the doctor, if not what the bank manager ordered. And being well, in the business of fine glassware why not take a peek at the making of glass across the narrow sea. The first stop on the holiday though was to Rome. There were plenty of glass artefacts on view as it’s well known that only two things pass the test of real time and they are glass and pottery. Roman glass wasn’t quite of the sophistication that we know now, but some of it is very pretty and delicate, with beautiful colours and it probably was made in a day. The highlight for me though was a trip to the Colosseum that ancient entertainment space where as many as half a million went to die for the amusement of the Roman throng. It had sixty lifts and it seems that Emperors didn’t really want gladiators to die, because then they had to compensate the owners, because g

    Read more »
  5. A Celebration of the Life

    A Celebration of the Life

    “You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.”

    In the words of the great Joni Mitchell, “You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone,” and this must apply to our late monarch Queen Elizabeth II. The lasting memory should not be that with Paddington Bear for the Platinum Jubilee, but the steady hand she held on the tiller of monarchy for seventy years. Although the animated bear episode did show that she was always a ‘sport,’ just as when she ‘sky dived’ out of a helicopter to open the 2012 Olympic Games. She ruled in an era of tremendous change and despite her youth when she was made queen, she was just twenty five years old on holiday in Kenya at the Treetops Hotel, she was always a uniting figure.

     It was so long ago that Winston Churchill was Prime Minister and many years older than the new monarch.  She had been the quiet favourite of the public since she had put on uniform to serve in the ATS in the Second World War and then married Philip of Greece in Westmin

    Read more »
  6. A Favourite Little Train, Snow and Sales

    A Favourite Little Train, Snow and Sales

    Taking the Piste

    Now I’m not a skier, I was brought up in the suburbs of the city where only the posh people went skiing and I didn’t know any posh people. I get the attraction of the sport, the clear skies and air, the rapid descents and the après ski, but it’s always been a little bit iffy taking up the sport in Scotland. I’ve just now been looking at the snow forecast for the Cairngorms and it looks positive. The freeze and thaw cycles are creating a good base on most runs above 700 metres they say, but below 700 metres you won’t find much snow. There have been recent snow showers which haven’t helped a lot, but there has been some drifting above 800 metres. They warn skiers “Hard snow conditions off the pistes – take care!” All very interesting, but I’m a train man, not a flinger o myself down mountains.

    And the lovely little train that is the Cairngorms mountain railway is running again for the for the first time in four years. It won’t be providing a service just yet, as

    Read more »
  7. A Guide to the Day and to Our Memorable Items

    A Guide to the Day and to Our Memorable Items

    YOUR GUIDE TO THE CORONATION

    AND YOUR GUIDE TO YOUR JAMES PIRIE CORONATION MEMORABILIA

     

    Available for immediate despatch. Choose Express Delivery at checkout

     

    Now I don’t know about you but I doubt I’ll be up at 6 a.m. for the start of the proceedings and as you can tell from writing this I’m not one of those hardy souls already camped out on the Mall in London to get the best perch for the Coronation day. But if you want an early start then it all kicks off with a formal procession from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey. And radio coverage will date from that o’clock. But the main event the big procession from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey will signal the start of the coronation ceremonies at 10.20 a.m., sharp! After the procession with Horse Guards, Beefeaters and soldiery aplenty and loads of the pomp and ceremony the new monarch, King Ch

    Read more »
  8. A Haggis for All Seasoning

    A Haggis for All Seasoning

    Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o' the pudding-race!

    Today is the anniversary of the birth of Scotland’s National Bard, whose work is celebrated around the world. And on Burns Night it is traditional to entertain friends  and read out the great man ‘s work and address the pudding. And he great chieftain o’the pudding race is the haggis, but have you ever tried to make it? Well here is a simple method, but be warned it’s quite a flog.  It may be easier to pop down the butcher and try one of his and at the end of the recipe  there is a link to some lovely tumblers for the essential whisky for the toast to the pudding. It may be a bit late for this year, but you can put that in your Letts or Collins diary for 2024, they are both made in Scotland. I buy onefor the wife every September direct from the factory.

    To Make the Haggis you need the following

    • A sheep's stomach or cow equivalent, go and ask your butcher. He or s
    Read more »
  9. A Present for the Future

    A Present for the Future

    It’s a funny thing how you meet someone these days, but whether you’ve been together for 50 years or 5 weeks it’s important not to ignore Valentine’s Day. People always ask how I met the missus ten years ago now, but I always say it was how I asked her to marry me that was the important bit.

    You have to show a bit of savvy. It was second time round for both of us and so I wanted to demonstrate I was a least a bit on her wavelength so I sat up into the wee small hours one night and composed a crossword. It was a terrible crossword, but she’s always done them, learned about them from her mother and I figured the way to her heart was 6 down and 14 across.  You see inside the clues some of the answers were asking her to marry me. And of course it was 22 down and “I do.” And that's her holding the heart!

    And because we get a bit wound up in our own world and lots of us are still working from home, so we see the object of our love a bit too often you have to fight against

    Read more »
  10. A Recipe for Success - Coffee Makers and Prize Winning Haggis

    A Recipe for Success - Coffee Makers and Prize Winning Haggis

    I’m in shock at the moment, I was cleaning the missus’s pride and joy, her DeLonghi  Magnifica coffee making machine, and  it managed to get mangled it in a way the manufacturers might has said was inventive. So I’ll be forming an orderly queue at the telephone for when they open on this grey Monday morning. They pick them up and take them back to the repair shop for fixing, no roving engineers for them,  I sincerely hope it can be fixed in my case that it isn’t for embalming and that the poor thing can be nursed back to full coffee making health. It’s the problem with modern technology that when it goes wrong it goes catastrophically wrong at a stratospheric price.  I expect you know that sinking feeling when something expensive has hit the bumpers and leaves you with that sinking feeling last felt by the Titanic. Oh deary me!

    In my dismal state of reflection at the coffee maker I imagine the dismay of haggis makers in the nation when a haggis, made by a Sout

    Read more »
Posts loader