A piping history worthy of a wider readership

Book Review 1: Piping Traditions of the Inner Isles of the West Coast of Scotland, by Bridget Mackenzie (Birlinn, 2012) paperback £25.00

Book review 2: When Piping was Strong, by Joshua Dickson (2006, Birlinn) ...

Of tormented genius

THIS IS THE scenario, friends. I am alone in a room with an attractive, bubbly woman, young – in her early twenties, I guess. I am the centre of her attention. She comes close to me, ...

Leonardo and the value of real art

DEAR READERS, a Happy New Year to all, and I would like to begin this year with a complaint I received whilst I was away during the festive period. Namely a sense of outrage regarding the cost ...

Christmas in uniform

WHILST MOST OF US cosied up with family and friends this Christmas time, exchanging presents and sharing the Christmas dinner in, as we can normally expect, relaxed and pleasant company, we should take a moment ...

Merry Christmas from the Nanny State

COUNCILS the length and breadth of Britain are always bleating on that they have little money to provide the services the public expect. Budgets are routinely cut they say, most of them citing poverty as ...

Number crunching? Count me out!

MATHEMATICS, they say, is an exact science. With that claim I cannot argue, although I must confess, to me it is more of an exact mystery. I am, to the precise skill of numerical calculation ...

Royal Icing your Christmas Cake!

ROYAL ICING

NOW that your marzipan has dried nicely it's time to make your Royal Icing and decorate the cake.

Ingredients

1lb of sifted icing ...

A pain-free toothy tale

RECENTLY, one rainy afternoon, the younger members of our family were having great fun in trying to decide who was who in some newly-unearthed very old family photographs. One striking feature they all remarked upon ...

What's in a name?

WHILE OUT shopping with my wife at our local supermarket the other day, I abandoned her among the baked beans and sidled quietly off to the whisky display, to find out what was on offer. I ...

How to Marzipan your Christmas Cake

THE MARZIPAN

So, your cake has been stored and fed with brandy over the last few weeks (see my previous recipe here). Now it's time to marzipan your cake. (If you ...

Saint or sinner?

LAUNCHING just in time for Christmas comes a new hangover cure called ‘YourSaint’, and at £35 pounds a bottle it’s no cheap cure. It comes in bottle or shot form and if taken ...

The code breakers – and code talkers

THE YEAR was 1974 and Captain F.W.Winterbotham was a happy man. After three decades of silence, the secrecy over the wartime activities of the Bletchley Park code breakers was relaxed when the intelligence services of the ...