On that language point, grammatically Black Isle Engish is as my contemporary and good friend Marion who hails from Culbokie and studied Ross and Cromarty for her PhD says to her students. She still has a broad accent herself and given she has English folk with public school plums in their mouths I imagine she derives immense pleasure from telling them.
Nick, you mean Conon Bridge. Conan is the one who goes around with a big sword slaying people.
My family originate from Knock na Snaird which is in in the parish of Dallas in Moray (Morayshire some say but my grandparents only ever spoke of Elginshire). I have never lived there having been born near where my father was stationed in England before he went to Cologne a few days after my birth and I thus growing up there from seven weeks to roughly seven and a half years of age, after which my family joined the London diaspora of Highlanders. Anyway, not so far away, it only takes 45 minutes to Inverness from Dallas and no time to the Glen Ord distillery which, I believe, is the only one left on the Black Isle.
The archaeology of most houses of age is fascinating, ours originates from about 1750 and whilst trying to find a source of damp in our cellar floor found a small arched opening and then traced a gravelly depression toward the outer wall and another little arch but blocked underneath. I can only guess a spring used to flow through the cellar and following the line and depth of our well back am pretty certain. There is also a big clay line stone 'reservoir' that I have slowly been demolishing for wall building that they obvious filled from that spring for a water supply. Like your window, I wish I really knew but even the people who so;d to us after 60 odd years here and live nearby have no idea, did not even bother about finding out where the damp came from.
Interesting comments Brian, I went into great depth designing my own bio-climatique house, did all the plans but there was a hic-up over the plot being too close to a road and so the planning permission wasn't granted (the distance has since been reduced and the land is buildable again but we'd already bought where we are now by the time they sorted out their error - the council had already granted a CU!!!). It never ceases to amaze me how badly most modern houses are actually designed bearing in mind climatic influences. I'm sure Nick has something to say on this too. Yes it doesn't matter too much for people north of the Loire "divide" but once you get right down south, proper planning makes a hell of a difference to comfortable living and lower bills. a puit canadien/provençal can illiminate the need for air conditioning for example. We have all the necessary building products to build housesthat no longer need heating systems or airconditioning, yet my BIL who works for Gedimat won't buy it and spent 20k on the latest heat pump when he had his place built a couple of years ago and he still has to shut his blinds in the afternoon to stop the house over heating when if he'd listene to me and had suffcient overhangs, pergola or other shade generating object, he could have kept the south facing bay windows, the heat provided for free in the winter and kept the blinds up in summer and enjoyed the view...! But hey ho, he's in the trade, what do I know about it. When I mentioned the new 50cm monomur self insullating blocks from Germany that out perform anything on the French market I might aswell have been talking chinese for all he understood - it's not what we use here so it doesn't exist/can't be any good. A salesman at Point P actually told me that I'd have to insulate the monomur blocks anyway so why not go for parpaing in the first place...!
Fascinating how many of our lives all intersect.
Being up north the heat/air conditioning problem is not quite so problematic
Ah the first love of my life was from Conan Bridge.
This window was put in about 30 - 40 years ago, replacing a door. There used to be a bar in the corner of the house and looking at the floor you can see the swing of the door gouged out in the tiles. I only know the rough time scale of the window as Simon opposite, 60ish, remembers dancing in what is now my dining room.
As to dialects they are indeed fascinating - am up north and another neighbour Didier says that when they go down south on holiday the family have difficulty in understanding the accent and in turn being understood. I empathise completely as my parents were and the rest of my family have broad country aberdonian accents whereas I grew up on the Black Isle ( not many miles from the Muir of Ord Nick) where allegedly the purest form of English is spoken.
I bet, I even saw plastic double glazed versions at the place we got our replacement windows from and on reflection I bet you are right and given all these modern houses have them facing south in those big rooms that are in effect the height of both storeys of the rest of the house I wonder how much they put up the air cooling bill? Our friend down the road with a new (four year old) traditional Périgordine style house with normal double glazed windows usually cools to sub-arctic temperatures when it is really hot and is always moaning about how expensive it is. One of those round things must up the ante scarily.
no, the modern ones have "usually" been given a little thought so they don't need them but can be a nightmare if placed on an east and especially west facing wall with no protection, especially the fairly large ones - best way to turn a house into an oven in the south in summer :-O
Definitely have not seen shutters on the modern ones either.
Wowee, dialects are fun. Only the zinc oeuil de boeuf exist at all hereabouts and in relatively modern houses (pre 1950s at a guess) and are mostly referred to as roue de charrette or even char. Ovalie is a nice one too.
come to think of it I've never seen shutters on an oeuil de boeuf either! fine on a north facing wall, south facing when there's a decent roof overhang but east and especially west facing and no shutters would cause serious over heating problems in these parts which is probably why they don't exist. except for the fancy judas type ones you see on some new builds...
Well with a surname like Ord as in Muir of and Glen - I can't be a million miles off now can I? It's lovely feeling wanted. but back to Elizabeth and her shutters.
The only thing about an Oeuil de boeuf Andrew is: would you normally expect to find them with shutters on, that's why I was slightly hesitant. We had a glazed one beside the main door that the locals referred to as a "Judas". I suppose so you can see who's coming up your path with supposedly ill intentions. (Farmers spraying weedkiller for example).
But Nick you must be aware that the counties of Cumberland, Durham, Northumberland and Westmorland were part of Scotland with a border from roughly Camforth to roughly Middlesbrough until early medieval times which with Scots blood anyway makes 'ye ane o' us'!
Ah, I forgot to add a little architectural vocab, nice one that Nick, I haven't heard it used for a while and in this part of France, even though they're common in the Tarn, it's not used much, people tend to refer to them as troux as they're just there to air the grenier!
Me too, hate waste. I do however have a a lot of Scottish blood coursing through my veins and had the misfortune of being born in Hartlepool. So although the heart is in Scotland, I was born south of the border.
If your window is a smallish oval window, it can also be referred to as an oeuil de boeuf.
I'd have done just the same and no I'm not a scot, I hate wasting things too ;-)
ovale - yes it exists, I live in the land of "ovalie" - rugby country ;-)
No comparison Nick, as a Scot who has had roughly 18 years of my life in Germany where they actually have a proverb that translates 'as mean as a Scot' (so geizig wie einen Schotten) I can tell you that we simply a nation of people who simply do not waste and are almost by second nature hard working. I think Calvinism via Knox (curse the thought) from the Geneva period penetrated the entire Scots nation and we have never yet recovered. Each time I see Knox's statue in Geneva I shake a fist at it!
Thus I read Elizabeth's words contextually as philosopically Scots and am sure she will agree.
Angela Merkel would be proud of your austerity measures. Love the story. Isn't it always the case when you are thinking "yes, this one is in the bag" - whoomph something kicks your ladder away.
Is called resistentialism - a bit like existentialism - except it means when inanimate objects set out to ruin your day.
You deserve that glass of wine.