Grant Richards Ltd, 1916, 304 p.

The book is a memoir of the Great War experiences of the author, famous for creating the character of Old Bill in his cartoons for the magazine The Bystander and later collected in various Fragments from France booklets, from late 1914 till he is wounded during the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915.

In this early stage of the war the trenches were rudimentary to say the least, with men waist deep in water, and what dugouts there were also sodden. Not far behind the front line a few farm buildings not yet destroyed by shellfire gave some cover from the Germans provided no movement whatever could be seen in them.

Bairnsfather was in charge of a machine gun company but seems to have had a lot of time to be able to wander about just behind the line exploring the local area. I assume his sergeant looked after things in his absences. His company was also rotated in and out of the line on a regular basis.

He describes these early days of the war as “delightfully precarious and primitive. Amateurish trenches and rough and ready life,” which he says to his mind gave the war what it sadly needed – a touch of romance. Later, though, “much of the romance had left the trenches.” He says he “wouldn’t have missed that time for anything” and claims “our soldiers” even though living “in a vast bog without being able to utilize modern contrivances for making the fight against adverse circumstances anything like an equal contest” wouldn’t have either.

It was during this time he began his artistic career, drawing on the farmhouse walls and making sketches for fellow officers and then deciding to sending off his first cartoon to The Bystander. The book has some of the author’s sketches scattered throughout and also photographic plates of cartoons which appeared in The Bystander bound in and counting towards the pagination.

As an insight into how a British officer felt in that first year of the war this is probably as good as it gets.

Sensitivity warning: contains the word “gollywog.”

Pedant’s corner:- focussed (focused,) “form part of a slack heap” (since these were now ruined farm walls the author may have meant ‘part of a slag heap’, but no matter,) “gulley”, two lines later followed by “gully”.

The Picardy Symbol Stone stands in the middle of a field a couple of miles or so north of Insch in Aberdeenshire. It seems to mark a burial site.

Information Board:-

Tomnaverie Stone Circle is a recumbent stone circle in Aberdeenshire. It was one of the sites we visited when we were up north last summer.

Circle from north approach path:-

Altar stone from west:-

Information board:-

Stone circle from east:-

Stones:-

Altar stone with Lochnagar in the distance. It is likely that the altar stone was deliberately aligned with the mountain:-

Beside the stone circle and on the left of the north approach path is what shows above ground of a nuclear bunker. The ancient and (relatively) modern almost side by side:-

Culsh Earth House is a souterrain near Tarland in Aberdeenshire.

It lies beside the road on the B 9119 and it would be easy to miss it. It’s just a passage leading underground and no-one now knows what its purpose was but it might have been for storage.

Entrance unlit:-

Lit with flash:-

End of (short) passageway:-

I only discovered yesterday that Tom Nairn, the Scottish historian who came up with the memorable phrase that “Scotland will be free when the last minister is strangled by the last copy of the Sunday Post,” has died.

He is most famous for his critique of the British state which he dubbed Ukania for its monarchical resemblance to a Ruritanian archetype, anatomised in his book The Break-Up of Britain.

An advocate of Scottish independence, his Republicanism and Marxism, though neither Trotsykist nor Stalinist – his sojourn in Italy led him to lean towards Gramsci – probably did not help his career.

Thomas Cunningham (Tom) Nairn: 2/6/1932 – 21/1/2023. So it goes.

The interior of Cuween Hill Chambered Cairn is reasonably spacious with plenty of room to stand up and various side chambers. The first of these photos was taken with the good lady’s camera phone:-

End wall with chamber entrance:-

Roof:-

Cuween Hill Chambered Cairn, Orkney, lies on Cuween Hill, south of Finstown on a path off the Old Finstown Road.

There’s a small car park – about two cars worth – but then there’s a bit of a climb (though not far) to the cairn.

Cairn:-

Information board:-

Entrance. The access is restricted. You have to crawl or stoop very low to get through the passage though once inside you can stand up very easily:-

Entrance from inside:-

Stepping into the main buidling at Kirbuster Farm Museum is indeed like stepping into the past. It was inhabited up to the 1960s and opened as a museum in 1986 – the last unrestored ‘firehoose’ in Northen Europe.

We had wondered whether to visit this museum but it turned out to be extremely interesting. The guide was a lovely, chatty woman. We were the only people visiting at the time so she may have been lonely.

Main bedroom:-

Sitting room:-

The harmonium in the sitting room reminded me of the one in my great uncle’s house (he was a piano/music teacher and church organist):-

Wall mounted alarm clock:-

Box-bed in kitchen:-

Cruisie lamp:-

There was another building which contained loads of old farm equipment. Some of their uses were a bit mysterious:-

On the way back to Stromness from Birsay we took a slight detour and passed Kirbuster Farm Museum. It being latish we saved a visit for a day or so later.

It’s one of the few attractions on Orkney’s mainland that isn’t a neolithic ruin. It’s a now disused farm in which two brothers had lived out their lives without modernising the place to 20^th century standards.

The first thing you come across is an old kiln:-

Further on is the farm building:-

To the side is a path to the garden leading through this lovely swan necked arch:-

The garden is sheltered and so can harbour trees; a rare sight on Orkney:-

At the bottom of the garden is a burn going under a bridge whcih carries the main road past the farm:-

Cairn’s entrance ladder:-

Entrance from inside. You can see it’s quite restricted. The woman in the picture was our travelling companion:-

There is some graffiti on the walls.

Interior side wall (i):-

Interior side wall (ii):-

Close up on graffiti:-

Original entrance from inside:-

Chambers:-

The side of Wideford Hill where the chamber sits overlooks an inlet of the NorthSea/Atlantic called the Bay of Firth. The settlement of Finstown lies to the far left of the Firth, beyond the islands as seen in this photo stitch:-