Hogmanay -The last Wastart sunset of the year

Grey Granite felt drawn reflectively to the Wastart on this  last afternoon of the year and was fortunate just to catch the sun as it went down behind the ruins of Pitheughie. Today has been grey and mostly overcast  a strong wind has risen (gusting to 36mph) but fortuitously the clouds broke just in time for the sun to blaze through. A good ending to the year, a positive omen for the year ahead.

Only Connect:The Butterfly Isles

Peacock on lady's mantle

Scotch Argus

Grey Granite is currently rejoicing in reading The Butterfly Isles: A Summer in Search of Our Emperors and Admirals by Patrick Barkham, Granta Books 2010. Grey Granite finds it difficult to put this enthralling, lyrical book down and is irked by interruptions to her reading.
This  is new nature writing at its best, describing the author's quest to reconnect with his boyhood passion for butterflies by aiming to see each of Britain's 59 indigenous butterfly species within a single season.

The following passage resonates particularly with Grey Granite's sense of the need to be outside connecting with the natural world in order to maintain mental and spiritual well being: 

'We have to reforge our relationship with natural beauty...To us nature is something we do through the BBC Natural History Unit and a television screen. Our whole relationship is remote and not experiential. We underestimate the importance of beauty and wonder in our lives at our peril....what fascinates me in life is the relationship we have with species. Man and dog. Woman and horse. Man and butterfly.One to one. There is something there. It's ineffable but we know it is there'.

The Third Day of Christmas

Grey Granite and Rufus walked down to the beach, passing through a snowy James Ramsey Park on the way. There is a thaw, roads mainly have  a single clear track but the pavements are impassible on account of the feet of snow cleared from the roads heaped up on them. Already in the park there are catkins forming on the alders and on the willows silky, white catkins are emerging from their sheaths on the young reddish twigs, very encouraging.

We walked down to the bents and reached the beach via Tiger Hill where a family was enjoying sledging. There is still snow down to the high tide mark, by contrast the sand looks very dark. We have been amazed at how little sign there has been of people actually going out and enjoying the snow, even in the early 'deep and crisp and even stage'. In the park and on the South Links there are still huge areas of completely undisturbed snow.

Fiere by Jackie Kay

After a no  newspaper Saturday yesterday, Grey Granite rejoiced in having The Observer to browse over her coffee this morning. (Well worth the perilous icy walk to collect it.) She particulary liked this article and has already taken advantage of Amazon 'one click' to order  a copy of Fiere, Red Rust Road having being one of the most enjoyable and stimulating reads of the year.

 How a Mancunian taxi driver taught me the true meaning of friendship
Poet Jackie Kay reflects on the things that really count as the old year fades away

Last year at Christmas, my 84-year-old dad went to tell his next-door neighbour he would be away for 10 days. He slipped on the ice on his neighbour's path, bruised his hip very badly and never made it down to my house in Manchester. (The moral of that story is don't tell anyone you're going away!) My mum was gutted.

But on Christmas Eve when I phoned, they sounded unexpectedly exhilarated. Sean, next door, had shovelled the snow from their garden path, twice. Barbara, across the road, had brought them a homemade stew. Isabel, down the road, had brought them a bottle of whisky. They were just having a wee nip: "Nothing like it; warms the old heart."


But what had really cheered them was the winter camaraderie, the way the extremes of cold somehow allow people to behave spontaneously, warmly. "You wouldn't believe the amount of people who have rung to find out if we're OK!" my mum announced proudly on the phone, as if the bad weather had suddenly given her a glow of celebrity.


Two years ago on New Year's Day, my friend Ali Smith phoned and sang the whole of "Auld Lang Syne" down the phone. She has a lovely, tuneful voice, quite high. "So gies a haund my trusty fiere/ and here's a haund o' thine;/ And we'll tak a right guid-willie waught/ For auld lang syne." "What a great word fiere is," she said. "You know that it means friend, it's an old Scots word for friend, like jo." I'd known that auld lang syne meant something like "old time's sake" and that a right guid-willie waught was probably a decent measure of whisky, but I'd never stopped at fiere. I looked the word up in my Chambers; there it was, fiere, companion, mate, equal. And, if used as an adjective, it means able, sound. We've called each other fiere every since.


At the close of one year and the beginning of the next, the turning of the tables, I always find myself feeling especially contemplative. This year, I've been thinking about friendship; good friends are lifesavers. They make everything seem possible and difficult times bearable. Once, I remember being glad to see the back of a particular year and desperate to get on to the good, clear path of a new one. That year, it was my friends who were my saving grace: companions on the dusty road, the "sound" friends are in it for the duration. There's something glorious and nourishing about a lifelong friend.


The other day, I was in a taxi coming back from Manchester Piccadilly. The taxi driver said: "Is that a Glasgow accent I hear?" "It is," I said. "You've got a good ear." "I used to go to Glasgow a lot. I met a friend of mine there. We were both 16 and in the junior boxing championship. We fought each other in the final and after that – friends for life. We're 63 now. He's just had a stroke. Where are your family from?" he asked me. "My father was from Nigeria..." "I was going to say Nigeria," he said, looking at me keenly in the rear-view mirror. "I looked at your face and I thought: Nigeria.


"Let me tell you a story. When I was about 19, in the 60s, my brother and I were on our way home when we came across this black guy, black as that taxi in front of us, who'd been badly beaten up. It was a freezing winter. He'd have died of hypothermia if we hadn't come across him. We dragged him home and he stayed with us for years. My mam just swept him under her arm, gave him a clip in the ear, and he became part of our family. Connie was a student doctor from Nigeria. Well, I'm from a big Irish family; to my mother, a doctor in the house was like having a priest.


"My family knew what prejudice was. Someone once said to me, 'Do you Irish keep pigs in your house?' When I told my dad, who never read a book in his life, he said, 'People will say many things, but we know who we are.' I said to him, 'Where did you get that from?' 'I made it up myself,' the old man said. He was a bit of the homespun philosopher was my father. Connie became a lifelong friend too. We went out to visit his family in Nigeria just after Biafra. Oh the things I saw then. I wouldn't want to repeat.


"Have you been to Nigeria?" he asked me. I told him I'd been twice, that I'd not grown up with my birth father, and that when I'd found him, he'd spent the best part of two hours dancing around me, that he saw me as his past sin who needed to be cleansed. I told him that I grew up with my mum and dad in Scotland.


"Ah," the taxi driver said, "any man can be a father, but not every man can be a dad. That one you grew up with, he's the real dad."


And then we arrived at my terraced house and I shook hands with Charlie, as he turned out to be called, and got out of the black taxi into the freezing cold air, warmed and cheered by the whole encounter.


Last year around this time, I'd been worrying about what my mum and dad would make of Red Dust Road, the memoir I'd just finished writing about tracing my birth parents. In the new year, I went to visit them and by this time they'd read the proof. My dad pointed at a bit that said he was threatened by me finding my Nigerian father and said: "Why would I be threatened? I wasn't when you found your birth mother and she's in this country and he's all the way in Nigeria." And my mum chipped in: "Because he's another father, John." And my dad said: "Well, can you put in, 'My dad disputes this'."


Now, the snow is thick outside my house again and the year has come round quicker than it seemed it was going to in June. Only when you get the winter boots out, the scarves, gloves and hats, does it suddenly seem no time at all since last year when my dad fell and they didn't have their Christmas here. This year I'm keeping everything crossed that by the time you read this they'll be here. Every Christmas with 80-plus parents feels like a blessing; I'm grateful to have them still here. They are great lovers of coincidence. When they get here, I'll tell them about the taxi driver. And my mum will say something like: "Isn't that odd! Do you see what paths our lives cross?" And I'll nod.




Red Dust Road is published by Picador; Fiere, a new collection of poems by Jackie Kay, will be published on 7 January

When icicles hang by the wall

Winter

When icicles hang by the wall

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,

And Tom bears logs into the hall,

And milk comes frozen home in pail;

When blood is nipt, and ways be foul,

Then nightly sings the staring owl

Tu-whoo!

Tu-whit! tu-whoo! A merry note!

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all around the wind doth blow,

And coughing drowns the parson's saw,

And birds sit brooding in the snow,

And Marian's nose looks red and raw;

When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl—

Then nightly sings the staring owl

Tu-whoo!

Tu-whit! tu-whoo! A merry note!

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

W Shakespeare

The temperature in Fraserburgh last night fell to -13c and rose just enough for there to be a slight, drippy thaw in the sunshine. It occurs to Grey Granite that there must be a whole generation of children who have never really seen icicles. During the last few days spectacular examples have started to appear hanging from eaves and walls.This one is poised just above our front door and is about 18 inches long.

Winter solstice

The shortest day of the year and Grey Granite can't help feeling, that, despite the 14" of snow in the garden, the year has turned and things will gradually improve. This optimism is probably because light levels are so important to her.

'Saftly, saftly lichts

 the mornin star.The black

abys will nae oot it'

George Bruce

Still more snow

So far this month there has been a thick covering of snow on the ground on all but two days. During the two days of the brief thaw there were wreaths and mounds of snow waiting, as they say, for more. More snow has arrived with a vengeance causing travel chaos across the UK and mainland Europe.

Mormond Hill under a blanket in snow and swathed in mist

Even the Fraserburgh roof tops look magical

The snow has now reached a depth of about 12 inches

During the last few days an unprecedented amount of snow has fallen. Grey Granite is very grateful that she has nothing more pressing to do than to walk Rufus and to admire the relatively traffic free calm. However, we are very concerned about the plight of birds and other wildlife. Reports in the press today suggest that the robin may become an endangered species if the cold persists. This morning we saw a tiny mouse eating sunflower seeds from the kitchen window bird feeder, we don't grudge him his lunch.

Christmas Reads

Grey Granite thinks the possibilities for interesting walks will be limited this Christmas and following Dr Anne's example has planned her reading list.It is a great regret that The weekend Scotsman, The Guardian and The Observer will not be published for 2 weeks  -Bah humbug!

Grey Granite habitually reads an novel, often as an ebook, a nonfiction title and poetry concurrently. She also listens to an audio book during walks to the shops without Rufus. 
At present she is browsing Edward Thomas and re reading Jessie Kesson. She must finish Richard Dawkins: The Ancestors Tale then will move on to:

Patrick Barkham, The Butterfly Isles: A Summer in Search of Our Emperors and Admirals


Jenny Diski, What I Don't Know About Animals

Juliet Gardiner The Blitz: The British Under Attack

Carol Anne Duffy,  The Feminist Gospels

Donald Paterson, Homecomings

James Robertson, And the Land Lay Still (widely regarded by contributors to The Scotsman's round up of best books of the year)

Current Audio books are Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles to be followed by Dawn French, A Tiny Bit Marvellous 

Thaw - Edward Thomas

The thaw has set in and the landscape has again been transformed, this morning by half thawed snow and flooded fields. The monochromatic view from the Formartine Buchan Way to Mormond Hill over fields frozen with half frozen water still signaled Winter. However, the thawing landscape by Philorth Woods this morning brought to mind 'Thaw'  by Edward Thomas.  Perhaps, given that we are still over  a week away from the shortest day and more cold weather forecast for next week, this is optimism in the extreme.

Thaw

Over the land freckled with snow half thawed

The speculating rooks at their nests cawed

And saw from the elm-tops, delicate as flower of grass

What we could not see, Winter pass.

Edward Thomas

Serendipitously this article by David Constantine appeared in  today's  Guardian and resonated with Grey Granite who, like the author, has known and loved the poems and essays of Edward Thomas for over 40 years.

My hero: Edward Thomas

'Thomas has been a kind and implacable friend to me'





I began reading Edward Thomas in a cold winter 40 years ago. I found the blue hardback Collected Poems secondhand on Durham market, and by the fire in our strange habitation under the castle mound, nobody else at home, I read him at once, entire, knowing ever more certainly, poem by poem, that I loved him, he would be with me for life, I would learn from him.


Like other Romantics, Thomas got his poems most characteristically by walking. He was a man who walked away solitary into the wind and the rain when anxiety and the black melancholy were upon him; or who might tramp by your side, mile after mile, companionable, and never say a word; or be with you, as he was with Robert Frost, talking, listening, pausing at a gate, a gap, a stile, and so in the rhythm of a long walk and in the attentive to and fro of a conversation you would come nearer and nearer, both of you, to some important understanding.


At the heart of writing, it is always a matter of truth or lies, and anyone in that vocation wants companions, living and dead, who, when you glance their way inquiringly, will warn you by a look if you are edging away from the truth into the many ways of telling lies. Thomas has been one such kind and implacable friend to me. Having his own true tone of voice, he acts like a tuning fork in the ceaseless effort to hit and hold your own.


The dead move and change as the living do. You may think you know them through and through but then, after a lapse of time (in which you have aged), they startle you again. Just the other day, out of context, on a card, not in a book, these lines filled me with a new rush of gratitude: "A house that shall love me as I love it, / Well-hedged, and honoured by a few ash trees / That linnets, greenfinches, and goldfinches / Shall often visit and make love in and flit . . ."




David Constantine won the BBC National Short Story award this week.

In the great silence of snow

Last night the temperature fell to -7c but this morning the sun shone and the snow covered fields were exceptionally beautiful glistening and sparkling. Extraordinary how few people venture out to enjoy them. Rufus and Grey Granite walked down towards Merryhillock and were privileged to be able to watch a pair of roe deer in the middle of a completely unblemished snow field. First we saw the buck, reddish with a creamy white scud standing stock still, he was shortly joined by a doe, they stood together for a short while before running in a wide arc across the field, sending up  a fine dust of powdery snow as they went - eventually disappearing in a patch of gorse and scrub. What a life affirming sense of being engaged with the world comes from being able to watch wild animals and birds going about their lives oblivious to one's presence.

This sighting sent Grey Granite back to browse one of her favourite poets, Edward Thomas, for the sake of:

Snow

In the gloom of whiteness,

In the great silence of snow

A child was sighing

and bitterly saying: 'Oh,

They have killed a white bird up there on her nest,

The down is fluttering from her breast!'

and still it fell through that dusky brightness

On the child crying for the bird of the snow.

and this

Out in the Dark

Out in the dark over the snow

The fallow fawns invisible go

With the fallow doe;

And the winds blow

Fast as the stars are slow.

Stealthily the dark haunts round

And, when the lamp goes, without sound

At a swifter bound

Than the swiftest hound,

Arrives, and all else is drowned;

And star and I and wild and deer,

Are in the dark together, - near,

Yet far, - and fear

Drums on my ear

In that sage company drear.

How weak and little is the light,

All the universe of sight,

Love and delight,

Before the might,

If you love it not, of night.

Snowy walk

Grey Granite and Rufus have become completely scunnert with restricted urban walks and decided to venture further afield. Despite the depth of snow, 9 -10 inches in places, it was relatively easy going. Rufus, however, got very excited and at times behaved badly wanting to chase any thing that moved, including Grey Granite's feet and passing traffic.

 Mormond Hill from the top of Boothby Road.

The footpath down towards Tesco had been cleared, the snow is soft and grainy,  like Kendal Mint cake, the sparse traffic was moving very slowly and we had  a pleasant walk down to the Bents



The bents were almost deserted apart from forlornly crying curlews



Tiger Hill
Given that all the Fraserburgh schools are closed to most pupils we had anticipated hoards of children sledging. Strichen Road park was as deserted as the beach and in 4 hours of walking we saw only one snowman.

We had the beach almost entirely to ourselves. There were wagtails, a few oyster catchers, scavenging crows and a few seagulls flying overhead. Rufus enjoyed chasing foam and other fairlies, Grey Granite rejoiced in being outside in such beautiful surroundings and peaceful solitude.

The intrepid Rufus, who always gets excited as we approach the beach, led the way impatiently.

Still it snows

According to today's Press and Journal this is the worst Winter for 40 years, the Forth Bridge was closed for the first time ever yesterday, more than half Scotland's school were also closed. Grey Granite is very relieved no longer  to have to make the dreaded, dammed if you do, damned if you don't, school closure decision



We have had daily snow falls for over a week now, the accumulated snow in the garden is almost  a foot deep



Rufus is bemused by the snow, his toys disappear, it is deeper than his legs and sticks to his beard. Undaunted, he bounds through the snow and occasionally dashing about in ever decreasing circles snapping at falling flakes as if they were flies. 

snow has fallen snow on snow

Rufus enjoying the snow on day one, it is now up to his oxters

Snow has been falling in Fraserburgh since last Thursday and about 10 inches have accumulated. Rufus bounds through it like  a small deer, pausing from time to time to dig Grey Granite's feet out. To his  great consternation  his favourite green ball sank  without trace under the snow when Grey Granite threw it for him yesterday. This is a great loss.Walks are shortened and restricted to Fraserburgh which neither he nor Grey Granite particularly enjoy but there is far too much snow for Grey Granite to take to the road in the car. Side roads in particular resemble sledge runs. Since the arrival of the snow there have been great squadrons of geese - skein upon skein flying in noisily. 'The lang, lang skeins of beating wings come fleeing frae the north'. Increased numbers of wild birds are drawn to the feeders in the garden: starlings, chaffinches, dunnocks, blue and great tits and a solitary robin. On our last decent walk through Philorth woods, when there was just a covering of snow and the atmosphere  in the silent woods was magical, crows were huddled on the telegraph wires like notes on a stave. Grey Granite cannot help wondering how many of the birds will survive if , as predicted, this cold spell continues for another couple of weeks.

Whooper Swans

This morning as we walked  from Monthooly Dookit up the Knoggan Brae and back round by Coburty, we were accompanied by constant small flights of whooper swans trumpeting as they flew over the howe and transforming a driech morning. There were groups of about 7 to 10 swans flying low, not appearing to be moving in any particular direction, some flew towards Aberdour House, others towards Peathill. I have never seen so many swans in flight, all were astonishingly beautiful and the effect was quite magical and dreamlike, especially in this the bleakest and most familiar patch of Buchan.

The Neep Fields by The Sea

 

This morning we walked from the Monthooly dookit, through showers of sleet and winds gusting to 50 mph,  along the back road to New Aberdour, turning back just short of the Mains of enjoyable walk with splendid views across Aberdour Bay where several large boats were sheltering. The wind was side on and We were surprised to see that a small patch of neeps growing at the side of a field was golden with large quantities of corn marigolds. The 'gules' still flowering amongst the neep shaws, in sharp contrast to the generally

Aberdour road. Despite the mainly foul weather, this was an

once we were wet it didn't much matter except for the stinging of the worst of the sleet.Looking down towards Dundarg Castle we could see gulls and cormorants on the sandstone rocks to the East of the ruins. There were curlews crying in the parks.

dull browns faded greens of the parks, seemed to be of another season and reminded me of Violet Jacob's poem;

'Ye'd wonder foo the seasons rin

This side o'Tweed and Tyne;

The hairst's awa;October month

Cam' in a whilie syne,

But the stooks are oot in Scotland yet,

There's green upon the tree

An' oh! what grand's the smell ye'll get

Frae the neep fields by the sea'

Autumn Walk




We are told that 'what the sea takes it keeps, what  it gets it gives back' . The sea must have carried this pine tree a considerable distance before washing it up at the Broch.

  This morning we had the beach almost to ourselves and walked along it to the Waters of Philorth where we cut across the boardwalk, followed the track up to the main road before turning left to take us to the mains of Cairnbulg Road. This road is actually a pleasant, gradually ascending  lane with grass growing in the middle and a superb  panoramic view over towards Mormond Hill and round towards Windyheads and Troup. - a tapestry of shifting shadow and light as showers moved across it, to be photographed on a clearer day.






Rufus insisted on trying to climb on to the old road bridge over the Water of Philorth whilst Grey Granite was photographing Cairnbulg Castle. In doing so he succeeded in flushing out three hen peasants.



Cairnbulg Castle, glimpsed through the trees at Philorth Bridge

Our object for this walk was to find and photograph the carved stone we had seen previously in the dyke near Mains of Cairnbulg. The weather forecast had led us to expect a bright day with good light for photography. Since the carving is indistinct we needed this. Alas,  the morning gradually dulled and by the time we were walking up the brae by Mains of Cairbulg it was raining heavily.


We found the granite stone, apparently a milestone, in the bank near 'Islamor'. 


We turned right at the road junction, before descending  past Invernorth House and Ashburn to join the Line. There was a wren in the hedge near Ashburn and a small flock of finches feasting on the knapweed heads by the bridge at the Line.The sun broke through the clouds as we recrossed  the Water of Philorth catching the plumage  of a flock of curlew feeding in Wet Fold. The sun highlighted  the sheen on the silver velvet of the embryonic catkins which are already  forming on grey willows along the embankments. There are also signs of catkins on the alders and silver birches along the Line and large green buds on the sycamores. Spring is already in sight,putting in mind a line  from Edward Thomas:
'Now I know that Spring will come again, ....however late I've patience'.

 

Lay Morals and slugs

'It is perhaps a more fortunate destiny to have a taste for collecting shells than to be born a millionaire. Although neither is to be despised, it is always better policy to learn an interest than to make a thousand pounds; for the money will soon be spent, or perhaps you may feel no joy in spending it; but the interest remains imperishable and ever new.'


from Lay Morals, by Robert Louis Stevenson 1850-1894.

Grey Granite found the above quotation on the Conchological Society of Great Britain & Ireland
whilst trying (unsuccessfully) to identify this interesting slug, found on the Line this morning and records it as an endorsement of the immeasurable pleasure to be derived from cultivating ones  interests. (However anorakish and futile they may seem to be to the uninitiated)

The slug has been identified by the Conchological Society

as the Great Grey or Leopard Slug (Limax maximus) and is of sufficient interest to be recorded in the national data base of slug distribution.

Whooper Swans at Strathbeg

From the Tower Pool Hide at Strathbeg this afternoon we were able to watch thousands of whooper swans (wintering here from Iceland) and lapwings, smaller numbers of shellduck, mallards and greenshanks on the water. Several herons stalked the pools. Two  huge skeins of pink footed geese arrived noisily just as we approached the hide and settled in a field on the far side of the water. The whole area was as busy as an avian airport: there were constant arrivals and departures of plangently trumpeting swans. The lapwings grew restless and wheeled and tumbled in the air, the low afternoon sun catching their wings.

A small skein of geese approaching  Strathbeg from the North

In the wildlife garden near the visitor centre we saw a large flock of tree sparrows, one of the reserve's 'star species'. Alas, there was no sign, on the apples hung out for their delectation, of the waxwings we particularly wanted to see. It appears that almost the whole  contingent of migrants to Scotland is feasting on berries in Portsoy.

Linda Norgrove;The Guardian, 30.10.2010

Grey Granite finds the dignified stoicism of Linda Norgrove's parents to be highly refreshing in the culture of, emoting, sensationalism and blame in which we live.

Linda Norgrove's parents refuse to blame US for death

Parents give US credit for admitting kidnapped aid worker was probably killed by grenade thrown during Afghanistan rescue







Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 October 2010 09.59 BST Article history


John and Lorna Norgrove talk about their daughter Linda Link to this video The parents of Linda Norgrove, the aid worker killed during a failed rescue attempt in Afghanistan, said today that her kidnap was their worst nightmare but they did not blame US forces for her death.






In their first full interview since she died, John and Lorna Norgrove said it was "very creditable" for the US to admit their daughter was probably killed by a grenade thrown by a US navy Seal as they tried to free her in a remote mountain village in eastern Afghanistan.






"The rescue attempt it would appear to us was so close to being a total success and at the end there was what appears to have been a human error," John said.






Initially there were conflicting accounts about her death, with strong suggestions from western sources that she was killed by her militant Islamist kidnappers, possibly with a suicide vest, to thwart the rescue mission on 8 October.






But General David Petraeus, the commander of Nato and US forces in Afghanistan, revealed in an early morning phone call to David Cameron that she was probably killed when a Seal threw a fragmentation grenade close to where she was lying.






Video footage of the raid showed that Linda, 36, had been fatally wounded as she lay on the ground to shelter after escaping from her captors during the chaos of the battle with the elite US special forces unit Seal Team Six.






Speaking three days after her daughter was buried a few miles from their home, Lorna said the family refused to enter the blame game. "Linda is dead; there is nothing we can do to change that."






John revealed that the couple had warned Linda of their fears that she might be kidnapped, a possibility that was their worst nightmare. But he said she was committed to her work in Afghanistan, was experienced and knew how to evaluate risk.






They would never know whether Linda would have survived if the rescue had not been attempted. "We don't think anybody is ever going to have a really clear picture, taking into account both sides; whether it was better to mount a rescue attempt or to carry on negotiating for a ransom with extremely dangerous and militant criminals.






"We do think that it is very creditable of the Americans to own up that there has been a mistake when they could so easily have covered the whole thing up [but] we have obviously got to wait for the outcome from the report which the British and American military are making."






Today's interview was released to mark the launch of a new charity the couple has set up in their daughter's memory, the Linda Norgrove Foundation, which will champion education projects for Afghan women and children. The couple have donated $100,000 (£63,000) from their own and Linda's savings to launch the fund.






It is expected to pay for university places for women and support girls' schools, with guidance and support from the US aid company Development Alternatives Incorporated (DAI) that Linda was working for when she was kidnapped on 26 September.






Lorna said Linda's death "has changed our lives completely and we feel we need to move forward and do something to help continue her work, her humanitarian work, and to this end we are setting up a charity".






The couple, who run a croft on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland, said they had tried to dissuade Linda – an accomplished and highly qualified aid worker with experience in Peru, Uganda and Afghanistan itself – from returning to Afghanistan with DAI.






"But there was no way as a parent I would stop her doing that. I knew that she had grown to love Afghanistan and love the people, and I knew that that's where her heart was," Lorna said. "She wanted to do humanitarian work there and I think that was what was so important to her and what she felt she had to do."






John said they had been apprehensive when she first went to Afghanistan for the UN in 2005. "At the time I said to her that our worst nightmare was that she might be kidnapped, but at the end we had to accept that she had been adventurous. She had done risky things before.






"After a while we accustomed ourselves to the fact that the risk was there and came to the conclusion that she was very capable at judging the risks and minimising them and she was far better at doing that on the ground in Afghanistan than we were at home on the croft in Scotland."






He said they heard of her kidnapping after climbing a nearby mountain on "a beautiful Sunday". They came home "to be met by the police who told us that Linda had been kidnapped. And from then on it was an absolute emotional rollercoaster.






"It's very difficult to explain to anybody who has not been through it but it felt like sometimes when you are busy and talking to people the pain almost seemed to go away and then it would just come in floods of emotion."






He said he pulled through that period "by imagining the elation of meeting up with Linda when she returned home in Stornoway airport and just imagining how that would be. So it came as an absolute nightmare to us two weeks later to have a visit from the police at 3 o'clock in the morning one day to say that she had been killed in a rescue attempt."






• Donations to the foundation can be made online at the www.lindanorgrovefoundation.org.uk website or by cheque to the Linda Norgrove Foundation, 3 Mangersta, Uig, Isle of Lewis, HS2 9EY.

Walk round the Pits of Hell

This morning was the first time that Rufus has walked on Rosehearty beach, the sand is remarkably white and is often littered with cowrie shells. Grey Granite remembers collecting these lucky shells, called John o' Groats, for their supposed place of origin, when  she was a very small child.  There were many waders , including  ubiquitous oyster catchers, along the shoreline.

As we turned up by Mains of Pittullie, the sun broke through the clouds. The bright blue flowers are monkshood.



Pitulie Castle, memorably described by Charles McKean as being in, 'the delectable flatlands round Fraserburgh and as, 'sitting like a stranded battleship in the midst of fields within sight of Pitsligo Castle'. This small but pretensiously ornate chateau was built by the Frasers of Philorth from 1596.

Trees at Peathill, almost all the sycamores and ash trees are now bare the alders seem to retain their leaves longest.  There were rooks circling and cawing above the wood as we passed

The ruins of the auld kirk at Peathill, built by Lord Pitsligo (1632) in response to a ranting sermon by an Aberdour minister about the 'three Pits of Hell - Pitsligo, Pittullie and Pitendrum' The birdcage bellcote was carved by Dutch masons and erected firstly in the courtyard of Pitsligo Castle so that the dying Lord Pitsligo could see it from his deathbed.



Bare autumnal trees but the new green shoots of recently sown grain are already forming a mantle of green over the fields. The cycle of constant regeneration of life continues as on Darwin's tangled bank.



Pitsligo Castle, a gradually decaying treasure, the square tower on the right is the original part of the castle and dates from 1424

One of the Burgh of Rosehearty boundary stones, Grey Granite is irked by the recent sanctioned vandalism, which in the misguided interests of clarity, resulted in the clumsy daubing of black paint on each of the stones.

Ivy flowering on the manse dyke at Peathill and elder (bourtree) berries opposite the castle, both plants have magical powers to ward off evil.

We returned to our starting point down the Cassa Brae returning the Fraserburgh through Pittendrum.