Showing posts with label Doocot. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Doocot. Show all posts

Tuesday 8 September 2015

Back to Normal



How nice to see the museum back to normal, short staffed, awkward questions, disappointed visitors, no-one making my tea, only one sale, heavy boxes to lift, my chocolate robbed, and having to look through 800 wedding photographs.
Not a child in sight, how quiet and tidy the place appears once it has been tidied up!  I did spend some time cleaning paint of one or two tables, the result of arts and crafts last week, that was required as the tables will be used for tea and biscuits by some group or other.  Otherwise I spent my time looking for photos and answers to a man's query.  Sadly there are no photographs of his street, little information and less to go on.  It just shows that we need to take pictures of our locale and place them where they are required, the local museum, for further investigation in years to come.  That is a hint by the way...
Tomorrow and Thursday I will spend time there again.  Where are all the volunteers these days?  At least in the morning I will make use of the bike, a massage may be needed later if anyone is around. Well if that's your attitude....


Once upon a time such as these were kept in 'Doocots' for use as meat during the long winters.  Where I was raised the 'Big Hoose' at the back on whose land our estate was built in the early fifties possessed one not far from us.  As kids we regarded it as some sort of witches house or a place to find rats.  In fact it was just an empty shell slowly disintegrating.  It still stands but I reckon it has now been roped off by H&S for safety.  I think these boys taking the sun early the other morning would not be as healthy as birds feeding on the one time fields of northern Edinburgh.  

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Saturday 15 January 2011

Saturday Recommendation!

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I have just discovered a grand blog called the 'Braw Doocot!'  I recommend this to any Scot with artistic leanings. The authors taste covers architecture, grand houses, Railway posters, one of the best stolen and posted above, sculpture and I suspect a great deal more besides. I enjoyed my little trawl through this and think you will also. James Playfair's 'Egyptian Room' is a fantasy indeed!  'Doocot' by the way refers to the place pigeons were kept in days of yore to supplement the winter food supply. 'Doo's' being the Scots term for pigeons, as in 'Rock Dove's' I suspect. I notice also that there has been no post since April, maybe he will return soon, he is probably just blocked in by snow or the tram works!

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