Famine to Flood to Famine (to Feast?)

Many thanks to everyone who responded to a previous blog entry, offering food and shopping services while I was snowed in at the castle. As I mentioned in the article, I was surviving on the weirder items in my food store cupboards that had been abandoned due to fear. As it turned out, in some cases, the fear was justified.  :-)

Anyhow, my builders did get through in their 4x4, and eventually brought me some normal rations of milk, butter and bread. And today, I have just done my first proper "stock-up" shop in case I am snowed-in again e.g. buying cans, 10 cartons of UHT and extra bread for the freezer. And while one cannot claim a genuine famine, one can cannot emphasise enough the agony of a cup or tea of coffee without milk in it. :-)

With the latest heavy storms, 4 restored bedrooms were destroyed by water ingress and will need to be redecorated. I have not been brave enough to look in all the water-damaged rooms yet, as this is the equivalent of half of a normal house being destroyed, This would be a tragedy for most people but such incidents are the norm here. 

Water also started pouring into the unrestored room where I sleep. An internal drain pipe had already been leaking into this room for a number of months and has just been fixed-up. This time the problem was not the pipe, but the storm blowing rain sideways through the gaps between the stonework. I had one sleepless night listening to "drips". The second night I moved to a second bedroom. The third night the rain started dripping into the second bedroom, and that was again sleepless. The fourth night, the drips in the second bedroom had largely stopped.

Water also started pouring into my office and onto my head, I had to move my office elsewhere. This was not before the rain destroyed my media drive, where I had begun to build up a film collection again. The previous media drive holding my large film collection was stolen in the burglary! Prior to this, I had been sensibly using a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device with duplication but this broke and has not been within accessible range to fix.

Anyhow, tonight it is Burn's Night i.e. January 25th. Why have you not received your invitation to the Balintore Burns Night that I hold every year? Well, this year it has been banned by Angus Council, who have forbidden anyone from coming to the castle - including my friends.  I cannot think of anything more insane. The Great Hall has just been restored and should be being used for this most Scottish of celebrations. The Victorians would have no comprehension of the logic, and quite rightly so, for there is no logic but instead document-evidenced malice that would in turn offend Victorian morals.

So we are back in "famine" territory. Rest assured, if the Council ever ends the ban, the celebrations will be a high-octane embodiment of the phrase "from famine to feast".

Driving back from the food shop today, at every passing place on the single track road running along the bottom of Glen Quharity, I took a photograph of the Carity Burn in spate. The Carity Burn is the one that runs past Balintore Castle.

The glen normally floods for a day or so due to the snow melt. However, the persistent current flooding is due purely to the recent devastating storms. The burn is normally a thin ribbon at the bottom of the glen, and is barely visible from the road. If temperatures drop below zero, it will get very interesting.

Happy Burns Night!

Berlin Woolwork

Osbert Lancaster, the illustrious and witty commentator on the history of British interior décor, has much to say on the Early Victorian period, including:

The mantelpiece is transformed into a parade ground for the perpetual marshalling of rows of Bristol glass candlesticks, Sévres vases, Bohemian lustres around the glass-protected focal point of a massively allegorical clock. For the better display of whole cavalry divisions of plunging bronze equestrians, Covent Gardens of wax fruit, bales of Berlin woolwork, the drawing-room, the library and the boudoir are forced to accommodate innumerable cupboards, consoles and occasional tables. 

This paragraph prompted both Internet searching and a castle audit. Without any advance plan, I had already acquired a Bohemian lustre, 4 (fake!) bronze equestrians, wax fruit and some Berlin woolwork.

The pair of small tapestry pictures of dogs and their owners that I had bought in a second-hand shop in Oxford many years ago turned out to be Berlin woolwork. It was one of those instances that one feels one should buy something to prop-up an independent second-hand establishment because one enjoys having them around. I wouldn't have bought the tapestries off eBay or at auction, but they were charming, decorative and cheap. :-)

Berlin woolwork (~ 1804-1875) is a form of tapestry with a particular pixellated look. The subjects are often biblical and canvases frequently feature pets and children - the type of romantic whimsy beloved of the bourgeois Victorian. One particular characteristic is that faces can be executed in double density stiches - just as painters realise the face in greater detail than the background in portraits. The resulting tapestry fabric was often used in upholstery. This was sometimes beaded, and having a dense rectangular grid of beads makes for a very hardwearing surface indeed. I have a small stool covered in beaded Berlin woolwork, which is on loan to some friends.

The patterns were generally distributed by German publishers, although the name comes from the German worsted wool used. 

Fast forward to October of last year and I spotted a massive tapestry for sale on eBay featuring a Victorian Scottish hunting scene. It was somewhere in Norfolk, so I decided not to bid on it due to the difficulty of pick-up. However, the item drew me back: the scale and subject matter were perfect for the castle - so I put on a 99p bid assuming that while I would not win the item at least I had had a "go".

Anyhow, you guessed it! I won the item and some friends who live just 50 miles away kindly went on a day trip to collect it. In turn, I collected the item from them at Christmas, and only removed it from my little van on Sunday with the help of a friend. The item is not heavy but awkwardly large. The tapestry is now leaning against an item of furniture in the Great Hall.

99p eBay tapestry in Great Hall

I apologised for the 99p bargain to the seller Hollie, but let her know it would take pride of place in the castle and that I suspected it was Berlin woolwork. She sent a very gracious reply:

This is an item from my late Mother's home and my siblings and I just wanted it to go somewhere that it would be appreciated. We cannot think of a better place for it. I wish we knew more about the piece, what I can tell you is that it was made by a friend of the family around 1940 but the frame is older; it's made from wood from a Rectory dating back to the 1800s.

I had initially thought the item could date from around the date of the castle (1860), but Hollie's provenance says it was made in the 20th Century but presumably to a much older design. A look at the untidy back of the canvas, and the good condition of the item probably support the later date. It is possible that the tapestry was made by an older lady who got the pattern as a child in the Victorian era. The amount of work in such a large piece is considerable.

You can still buy Berlin woolwork patterns here, a very similar example is shown in the next image. Note the same Scottish theme and the treatment of the dog in four shades of brown.

Berlin woolwork pattern - available online

I particularly love this Berlin woolwork image of Sir Walter Scott: again the same romantic Scottish theme with the omnipresent dog. You can see the face is done in double-precision stitching, but for some weird reason this is done in groups of 4 replicated stitches, so the benefit of the higher resolution is lost. If Sir Walter had lived in the digital age, he surely would have penned an article in the Scotsman entitled "My Physiognomological Upscale Fail". :-) 

reference Berlin woolwork

Berlin woolwork is quite out of fashion, but I have become quite the convert. It reflects the themes, leisure time activities and aesthetic of the Victorian period and is to be celebrated and cherished.
 

Falling Back on an Olive!

olive pâté and heat-liquified olive oil

One of the disadvantages of being snowed in at the castle, as at present, is being unable to shop for food. Unfortunately, just before being snowed in I was away for 2 weeks on festive season jaunts (Norfolk and Orkney), so I deliberately did not shop for food for a considerable time beforehand and indeed actively munched-down my supplies so there would be nothing left to go off over the Christmas period.

I wouldn't say I have no food, but increasingly all I have left are the weird and wonderful things that one has in one's store cupboard but never uses. I ran out of butter for my morning toast - disaster! A day or so of dry toast, made me improvise. I had an un-opened jar of black olive pâté - how would that substitute?

The first mouthful was horrible, the pâté has a strong bitter olive taste, and I fell into despair. However, I now love it! The salty quality makes its a little like Marmite. It's obviously much more expensive than butter, but it would be particularly great on canapés where you need a strong flavour hit as the item itself is small. 

I normally make scone-based pizzas for food emergencies, but in the absence of butter, I found some frozen puff pastry in the freezer which can double as a pizza base.

Unfortunately, due to the cold the olive oil for frying the onions had solidified in its bottle, and I could not get it out. I normally immerse the bottle of olive oil in hot water, but all the taps in the kitchen were frozen so there was no water available. Aha, I will pop the bottle of olive oil in the oven very briefly. It was very brief, but as you can see the bottle still melted.

Anyhow, it is somewhat ironic that being snowed-in in the north of Europe has forced me to adopt a Mediterranean diet. :-) It is such a relief to know that one can fall back on an olive.

It snowed heavily all morning today, so it was the peak snow accumulation for the season so far. However, this afternon the snow turned to rain. It becomes cold again around Thursday, so there will be a race between a complete thaw and the currently slushy snow freezing over. I am sure you know which I would prefer.

In the meanwhile, Red Cross parachute drops of bread, butter, olive oil, and instant coffee would be much appreciated.

One of the advantages of being snowed in at the castle is the opportunity for tobogganing, and I rushed out this morning to sledge down the snowed-over  drive. A pair of red shell sledges have been around since last winter, behind the bins, left by some guests. However, during my absence over the Christmas holiday, they have disappeared. These are the first sledges I have ever owned, and at the very moment they should have come into their own, they have gone missing.

Return to Balintore Under Snow

I got back to Balintore Castle from Orkney on Tuesday of this week. When I arrived there was less than one inch of snow lying around the castle, but it snowed heavily for the rest of the day and now I am snowed in. My builders reckon I could just about get down the drive in my little van, but I would never get back up again. This is "functionally" snowed in.

Gregor says the snow has followed me down from Orkney, where I was snowed-in several days ago, and that just about sums the situation up.

It is bitterly cold at the moment, and there is just one tap in the building that is still running. I am hoping that the big thaw will come soon, though without the usual accompanying leaks.

It's the first proper snow of the winter season, which makes the surrounding countryside look absolutely beautiful. I took these photos around lunchtime today, when there was some sun to lift the mood. At the same time, I could hear shots from today's shoot ricocheting round the glen. They seemed to be coming from the direction of the castle's old boating pond. My advice, if you are a duck, is to duck! :-)

Orkney Vignettes

As the Isles of Orkney are surrounded by the North Sea, their climate is much moderated by large bodies of water. In consequence, I was looking forward to a seasonal holiday break on the Isle of Westray, well away from the deep winter chill of Angus. 

Whoops! Snow has now descended upon the whole of Orkney closing roads, schools and hotels; and cancelling flights and ferries, This morning I helped dig my host's car out of a snowdrift. He arrived back at his house last night, having walked from his abandoned vehicle, looking very much the worse for exposure. The additional challenge is the ever present wind on Orkney, which has no problem gathering snow into heavy drifts.

momentary sunshine and persistent snow on Westray

Ironically, checking the CCTV at Balintore Castle, there has only been light snow which has been melting in the bright sunshine.

I have been discussing the various options with my host (Mark) and my fellow guest (Liza). One is to escape Westray this evening while it is still possible(?) as there is an amber weather warning for tonight from the UK Met Office. Alternatively, we could aim to leave tomorrow evening as planned, but run the risk of being stuck on the island.

The outdoor exposure from the wind is pretty intense. I managed a 5 minute walk on a beach a few days ago before a severe ice-cream headache set-in. Then a couple of days ago, I managed a 10 minute beach walk. On the return leg against the wind it was almost impossible to make any progress and at times it was all I could do to remain in the same spot. I had wisely tested walking into the wind before setting off, but even then I regretted the ambition of my outward leg.

I spotted some bright red sea anemones in the rock pools. In Prestwick where I grew up the sea anemones were a rather dull purple brown. so discovering these brightly coloured marine invertebrates was a thrill. I believe that these are called "Beadlet Anemones" due to a ring of blue spots round the top of the column which I did not see in person and cannot be made out from Liza's low resolution image.

Westray rockpool with anemone

The bedrock on the beach is fractured at exactly 120 degrees. This jumps out to the mathematically minded. Does anyone have an explanation? Perhaps this is similar to the hexagonal columns of the Giants Causeway, which reputedly is due to lava shrinking in an energy efficient manner.

Westray beach bedrock: 120 degree fracturing

Liza and myself had a day on the main isle of Orkney (confusingly called the mainland) en route to the outer isle of Westray. Most tourist attractions were closed, but the magnificent St. Magnus Cathedral in the capital of Kirkwall was still open, and a fantastic guide came up to us to volunteer some of the building's stories. She pointed out the column that St. Magnus (1080-1117) was built into. A Victorian bishop cleared out all the burials in the floor of the cathedral on hygiene ground. The bones were discovered in a wooden box in the column in 1919. These are now in the Kirkwall Museum, and while the skeleton is not complete, for such a large number of intact bones to survive from 1117 is remarkable.

St. Magnus's hidey-hole

She also pointed out a 12th Century sheila na gig in an otherwise plain column capital, surrounded by more ornate capitals. I won't go into nature of a sheila na gig, but "graphic" would cover it. :-)

St. Magnus Cathedral: sheila na gig

Liza picked up a leaflet on the St. Magnus Trail at the cathedral, and given the lack of open attractions, a road trip connecting St. Magnus sites on the mainland was just the ticket. It worked out really well as we saw parts of the island (away from the famous neolithic sites) that you would never normally go to. All of the stop-off points on the trail were churches, and the vast majority of these were either locked up as a result of being "surplus to requirements" or now converted to private homes. However, many auxiliary serendipitous attractions were en route. 

The standout for me was the 16th Century "Earl's Palace" at Birsay. As we headed to Birsay church, another ruined structure appeared on the horizon. I immediately knew it was my type of building, and as we walked around there was no doubt as to the quality of this unexpected structure. I was hit by a very strong feeling that this building should be restored for people to see in all its original magnificence. The contrast between the scale of the hamlet of Birsay (no more than 10 houses) and the scale of the palace spoke to me that the past is often a very a different country.

Birsay Earl's Palace

Birsay Church

Birsay Earl's Palace - keep clicking for panorama 

The round church at Orphir, based on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, was Liza's standout. I liked the Earl's Bu there, which is the remains of a 12th Century drinking hall.

Orphir Circular Church

Earl's Bu at Orphir

I was surprised that there were a lot of Johnston's (the exact spelling of my surname!) in the associated graveyard. In fact, I even found myself sitting on the fence.

Johnston gravestone at Orphir

sitting on the fence at Birsay

I liked the cruciform church at Dounby from 1947. I had seen nothing like this before stylistically but someone had had a go! :-) 

Dounby Church

In the middle of nowhere we ran into the "Orkney Antique Centre". It was exactly like how an old-fashioned antique shop should be. Liza and I chatted to the owner Alec and he asked us to spread the word, so I took a picture for the blog.  There were no other customers, so I bought a couple of repro swords for £40.  Balintore has been in a weapon deficit ever since the burglary which emptied the castle of all implements of warfare.

Orkney Antique Centre

The Broch of Gurness was my first ever broch. This unexpected encounter with the past has been a longstanding and outstanding tickbox of mine. It feels like a neolithic site, but in fact brochs extended into the Christian era being built from 400BC to 100AD. And indeed this site was reckoned to have been occupied for roughly this 500 year period.

Broch of Gurness

Liza and I were looking for the broch for ages. The fact that it did not appear in the landscape despite the fact we were close was rather concerning - how ruinous and unimpressive was this going to be? In the end we were delighted to find a substantial structure, with an evocative interior. You could still feel that this would have made a comfortable and safe home for a community.

And to finish: a photo from the deck of the ferry at the end of the day going from the mainland to Westray!

Westray ferry by moonlight

Happy Christmas 2025

The "family update" Chistmas letter is, according to reknown and soi-disant etiquette expert William Hanson, not read and by inference, not to be sent.

So how can I persuade you to continue reading this Christmas blog entry? Well, I can promise no reference to family members whatsoever, whether over-achieving or not. Instead, I can promise you egriegous and engaging tales, exposing a villainy that would not be out of place in a seasonal pantomime. Such is the drama, that I am now determined to write the book version. Pre-order for Christmas 2026! :-)

And yes, I do make a point of reading family update letters, and not just out of considerations of etiquette. :-)

2025 has been the year of the most contrasting highs and lows for the restoration.

Early in the year, I reached out to Historic Environment Scotland (HES) for assistance in dealing with Angus Coucil, who were behaving really badly and had stopped all restoration works. The Council had not answered any of the complaints I had sent them - which they are obliged to do.

Anyhow, the reply came back from HES that there was nothing they could do, saying that people assume that as a national body they can trump a regional body, but in fact they are both "public service organisations" at the "same" level. HES said the best way forward was to create some positive publicity for the restoration project, so dutifully this is what I set out to do. We discussed an "open day" for the opening of the Great Hall, which was nearing completion.

Five weeks before the date of the planned event, I invited the CEO of Angus Council along as part of a bridge-building exercise and to verify that the event was acceptible. I also went for broke and invited all 29 of the councillors. I was emailed by one of the councillors to say that an IT system administrator for the Council, had contacted her to say that she had an email from me held in their quarantine system, so she got in touch to find out what was happening. So whether Angus Council regard me as "mad" or "bad" is uncertain, but they have definitely classified me as "dangerous to know". I have still to find out whether my emails to all the concillors were quarantined, but the evidence does suggest blanket censoring.

Lovely articles appeared in the Glasgow Herald and in the Dundee Courier, about the restoration and the open day event. A journalist friend said I could not have got any better publicity.

A week before the event, and notably a day after the Courier article, a certain Council officer banned the open day, and then banned the evening banquet to which I has invited 40 guests. The guests were lovely friends and neighbours who had supported the restoration over the years. I was devastated.

I had dreamed about a celebration event on opening up the Great Hall for decades, though as a realist, I realised it might not happen in my lifetime. You can imagine how I felt dismissing all the volunteers, sending out cancellations of the 550 free tickets, and sending out cancellations of the banquet invites. Architectural experts from all round the country has taken time off work, to speak at the opening event.

On the day of the cancelled event, the Council sent in a police raid to ensure that nothing was taking place. The police entered the building without my permission, and I collapsed with the shock. Sometime afterwards, I got a letter from Angus Council's legal department saying the open day event had taken place with members of the public attending, despite the fact I had promised that it would be cancelled. You're damned if you do; you're damned if you don't. I don't know how you are meant to respond to this madness?

A few days after the date of the open day, the Council imposed a ban on anyone entering the building, not even my friends are allowed to come in. So at present, I am the only person rattling about in this huge building, and I am missing my friends like crazy. It is a veritable travesty of how the castle is intended to function. Now the Great Hall is restored I woud have organised some festive seasonal events. Angus Council really is the Council than cancelled Christmas.

Some lovely friends in Norfolk have invited me for Christmas so I won't be spending it on my own at the castle, but I did initially have to turn them down as the Council shenanigans would not allow me to get away in time. In the end, I cut the Norfolk trip right down to a few days, to make it possible.

Christmas cards at the castle

It was lovely in any case to put up my Christmas cards in the Great Hall: the first time I've really had a place at the castle to put up my cards. I notice that some of my friends, with their own restoration projects, have produced their own cards. I am missing a trick. I have pictured Reveseby Abbey (the Hollis family) and Brough House (friend of Balintore, Mark!).

Revesby Abbey Christmas card

Brough House Christmas card

Given the massive onslaught of Angus Council at the moment, we have largely just been doing finishing-off stuff. I have been particularly pleased with the recent work on the linen cupboard in the basement. This has been restored for a long time, but we just chucked things on the floor as a storage space - hardly satisfactory. Gregor and Gavin have now waxed the floor with a tinted wax-oil and built bespoke items of furniture to fit the space - critical for small rooms. The plan is to use these units to store bulk quantities of vintage and antique crockery and cutlery etc. that I have obtained second-hand in order to feed the multitude on high days and holy days. I hope that one day the Council will see sense, and that these can be used.

the linen cupboard with bespoke furniture

The unit on the left is made from the pulpit of Lochee Parish Church in Dundee (eBay £100) and a antique bookcase (£10). I have installed an initial 80 or so plates just for the sake of morale. I have not checked the exact numbers yet, but I suspect I have a matching service for 200+. That would be some banquet!

plates in the left hand unit in the linen cupboard

The unit on the right is made from the same pulpit, a pew from the same church and the worktop of a school science bench. You can see the filled bunsen burner holes. The worktop was the last remaining one of a set of Iroko ones I purchased. We didn't want to cut it up, and when I measured the wall-space in the linen cupboard, I realised the worktop could be installed whole so it was time to use up that asset! Believe it or not, the doors are 4 inches thick!

Anyhow, I hope you all have a great Christmas and I wish you all best wishes for 2026!

Tiling on up!

Gavin has done an amazing job tiling a mini kitchen in a servants' room in the basement of the castle. He finished today, using a remaindered job lot of terracotta tiles that I located on eBay.

tiling completed

Hopefully the brick-like quality of the tiles engenders a period servant-vibe. Historic interiors can be decimated, in my opinion, by inserting modernist kitchen units. What is certain is that in 15 years time the modernist kitchen units will no longer look modernist, and will need ripping out. The ethos at Balintore is "restore once, restore properly".

I had a hard job persuading Gavin that the tiles should go above the bottom of the kitchen units, then above the top of the kitchen units, then to the top of the window frame. :-) I reckoned that taking the tiles to the ceiling would be too over-powering and interfere with any coving, but framing a cuboidal volume in which the kitchen sits, acts to zone and then characterise the space. Fortunately, when Gavin called me in at each decision point, it was pretty clear which way to go.

Gavin initially wanted to stop here

before the tiling began

Gaving suggested using some teracotta tiles when tiling a shower in the adjacent room to tie together the look, and I very much agreed with this. However, the bone-coloued crackle-glaze tiles which are also going to be used are a completely different size, and we worried about the clash. Gavin left a trial layout sitting on the worktop this afternoon, with teracotta bands dividing areas of bone tiles. What do you reckon? 

potential mixed-tile layout for shower

Surprisingly enough, because the zones are very different colours, I don't think the different tile sizes matter!