Just been up the Moray Coast for a few days enjoying sunshine, looking up some friends and taking it easy.So. Booked B&B at the West Manse in Deskford, near Cullen. The Proprietors, Chris and Peter are interesting, fun, very hospitable and we had a great stay with them.
Peter showed me a book on the history of Orkney Baptists which is fascinating, full of that mixture of pious narrative and specific detail that makes up so much of local church history writing, when the history makes no attempt whatsoever to be impartial. That doesn't make it untrue, it just means you have to remind yourself of the context of the narrator and the narrative. I've come away with a loan of the book - thanks to a generous fellow historian. The book belonged to a 92 year old Orkney Baptist who was baptised in the sea 80 years ago, and who died 6 years ago.
We sat up waiting for the local badger to appear, which he did around 11.15. We talked about quilting, their time in Orkney, the story of the Manse, tapestry, the Disruption, and the fascinating details of the finance ledger of the original Deskford Free Church from 1843 to 1904 - Peter is preparing a paper for the local historical society on the entries to the book. Fascinating - including the amount this new, local and quite small congregation were prepared to contribute annually for the building of New College Edinburgh, the new training centre for Free Church ministers.
I got up early and sat in the conservatory watching the birds feeding - a great spotted woodpecker doing its ususal heid-banger thing, a green woodpecke*r likewise drilling at the peanuts, nervous shy siskins, coal, blue and great tits, and I heard but didn't see the yellow hammer, and all this while reading my holiday book, with a cup of tea, the patio doors open, and wearing sunglasses already in the early sun.
The book is a good reason to go back - but we will anyway; there is unfinished conversation about stuff.
* Just had an email exchange with Pete and he points out, rightly, that a green woodpecker would be way off its usual patch that far North. Which is a puzzle, because it was a woodpecker, and it was green, and they were on separate bird feeding tubes at the same time. So not sure what it was - a juvenile great spotted would be much less distinctive, but not green. I checked it out on my vast two volume Forrester and Andrews set on Scottish Birds. It isn't impossible but would be pretty unlikely, especially in the breeding season, for a green woodpecker to be so far north. So puzzle unsolved - I was awake, it was green, it was a woodpecker, I've seen them before, but it shouldn't have been there. Happy to hear from other twitchers about this.
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