Category Archives: Scotland

Dinnae Fash (see below)

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Jack gets in on time for a change – –

What a bourach (see below) we’ve just gone through –

Wendy and I try to be as self sufficient as possible and that includes doing our best to fix technology when it goes wrong.

But the last couple of weeks have been a test –

First of all our dishwasher started to leave everything less than clean, so it was time to dismantle the birling (see below) arms and clean them. In the process of re-assembling them we noticed a wee tube thing in the front corner that we’d never examined the last time. When we lifted up the cover over it we found it was really manky (see below). Of course we broke a few small clips trying to remember how the arms came off and on!

Then the dryer suddenly stopped working in mid program and nothing would make it work. Since we rarely use it we gave it away to a friend for spares. So now we have more cupboard space.

The waste disposal unit in the sink began making nasty noises so I decided to take it out and examine it. These things are a hooer o a wecht (see below). I checked it out and it took both of us with much testing of the marriage vows to get it re-installed – and it still made the nasty noises. So we bought a new one – –

The ice maker in the freezer stopped dispensing ice so we took the tray out and found a bag of bread twisted round the turny roon screwy thing (see below). We had to cut the bag into pieces to get it disentangled and were sure we’d buggered (see below) it. But no – once we’d checked everything else out it began making ice and dispensing!

Now the weird thing is –

For most of my life I’ve never had any of these things so I wonder why I felt the only one we could get rid of was the dryer? Who needs an ice maker or a waste disposal, or even a dishwasher? But we made the bread from the bag into French toast and it was no bad (see below).

Bourach – a lovely Scots gaelic word meaning a terrible mess.

Birling – a lovely lowland Scots word meaning turning fairly fast.

Manky – a more modern Scots word meaning horribly dirty and smelly.

Hooer o a wecht – Scots again – rather heavy.

Turny roon screwy thing – do I need to explain this?

Buggered – – –

No bad – almost good – the highest compliment a Scot is willing to pay.

Dinnae fash – another good and useful Scots phrase – keep calm and carry on.

Lang Syne isnae sae Lang

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Jack gets over the line in time with his Wednesday guest post –

There is such a thing as time travel – and part of the journey involves sound waves captured on coated fragile plastic tape.

Every time I’ve moved house within Scotland, then to England and finally to the US, a treasured box of open reel tapes has gone with me. Only rarely over the years have I had a compatible tape recorder to play them or the time to sit and listen to them. But a good friend recently provided the means and Covid 19 provided the time.

Most of the tapes are big nine inch reels but there are some smaller ones and a good few cassettes as well. The biggest problem is that some have lost their labels or ended up in the wrong box. Just to make things even more complicated the tapes were recorded in mono on either the right or left channel in both directions, so each tape has two full mono tracks in one direction and another two in the other direction!

That’s why this has been a voyage of discovery and a discovery of forgotten delights.

Many of the recordings are of live performances either by me and Barbara Dickson from the 1960s or my band ‘Heritage’ in the 1970s and the quality is very variable. Sometimes the problems are to do with the circumstances of the original recording and sometimes with deterioration of the tape over time.

It’s the ability to actually picture the place and the people around me that is most amazing. One of the surprises was a recording of the very first public performance of ‘Heritage’ in a small village hall. Another was a recording I made of the great Irish band ‘Planxty’ at Inverness folk festival when for only that tour Paul Brady replaced Christy Moore. They never made a commercial recording with that line-up!

Of course this all makes extra work for my good friend and excellent audio engineer Dirk who turns my radio shows into easier listening. I use a Roxio suite to capture the tapes as digital files to my computer, then upload them to Dropbox and copy in Dirk. That’s when he gets to work and we then agree what is of potential radio quality. The historical importance of the recordings is usually uppermost in my mind and some of the earliest ones have already gone to the Library of Congress and the Scottish National Library.

So, although this is an enjoyable journey back in time for me I’m also aware that I’m preserving history and that may be the most important thing in the end – – –