Book 1 - Time Travel

Time Travel

I was told little about my mother’s early life and knew too much of her decline. Peggy, my mum, is the young girl in the picture, held in the protective arm of her grandmother.

Book 1 - Into the Light

Into The Light

I have some green credentials having been closely associated with the installation of the wind turbine at Allendale Golf Club, but the truth is, I am more Jeremy Clarkson than James Lovelock, more Ghia than Gaia.

Book 1 - At Speed

At Speed

It is not difficult to imagine a Lola T70 Mk III let loose on Northumberland tarmac, threading the needle’s eye at 180 mph, a Chevrolet V-8 thundering towards the northern light.

Book 1 - In Steam

In Steam

This picture from August 1950 shows a small station providing an essential service to the local community; a well-populated platform, some passengers, not customers, with suitcases and the ubiquitous milk churns

The G H Robin picture of Killin Station is reproduced by courtesy of the Mitchell Library, Glasgow City Council

Loch Eriboll

No less than thirty-three U-Boats would surrender in these waters. Above and beneath the waves it was a fetid world of sweat, noise, marine oil and torrid temperatures.

This image is reproduced with the permission of Durness.org: The Past and Present of Durness

Reiss Links

The original Hades Bunker. 1904 Golf Illustrated:
"A player who forgets that extrication is the first duty in a bunker and attempts the heroic is likely to regret his rashness".

This image reproduced with the permission of The Wick Society Johnston Collection

Cullen Links

An image of the original small golf house, pre-dating extension to eighteen holes and the replacement clubhouse, opened in 1908. This is archetypal Edwardian.

This image reproduced with the permission of Cullen Golf Club

Allendale

Quite by chance and, as if to prove the interdependence of golf and rail, the two gentlemen in the foreground of this image are carrying golf clubs.

This image reproduced with the permission of John Alsop.

Going Home – Cullen

This is an image of the original small golf house, pre-dating extension to eighteen holes and the replacement clubhouse opened in 1908. It is archetypal Edwardian. Men are behatted, mostly in straw boaters, ladies are demure and, a group of bare-footed children loiter optimistically, one carrying a golf bag of equal stature. A pre-1914 image of hope and innocence. Another photograph hanging in the clubhouse shows Ramsey MacDonald making an introductory speech at a Cullen golf competition at the end of July 1937. “The charm of golf was that the night before one was fully persuaded that next morning one would improve. It did not matter whether one did or not. Where there was too much perfection and certainty there was too much mechanism. If there were good golf in Elysian field, he thought Socrates would refuse to play with them if they used ten irons.” He was but a few months from finding out.

This image reproduced with the permission of Cullen Golf Club.