Issue 26

On Sunday March 24th, the eleven players who make up an orchestra called Kammerphilharmonie Europa (Chamber Philharmony of Europe) will be giving a concert in Whiting Bay Hall at 3.00pm. The programme is an absolute delight. It includes such well-loved favourites as the Bach Double Violin Concerto, and much else besides. Here is the complete list:

Vivaldi - Concerto for Violin No.4 a minor RV 357 La Stravaganza
Ponchielli - Concerto in F Major, for trumpet and orchestra
J. S. Bach - Double Concerto For Two Violins In D Minor BWV 1043
Borodin - Notturno from String Quartet

Interval

Corelli - Concerto Grosso Op.6 No.4 in D Major
Faure - Pavane Op. 50
Grieg - Holberg Suite Op.40

We are incredibly fortunate to get a large group of such fabulous players, who come from all over Europe and are based in Germany. Their leader, Leonid Tritus, is a world-renowned violinist with strong contacts in Russia, so for one afternoon Arran can feel itself to be part of the great European inheritance of music, with top players coming to Whiting Bay Hall.

Tickets at the door, for the Arran Music Society’s usual unbelievably low price of £8.00.

Please click on the picture above to see the poster for this concert.

A big audience welcomed the five players of Alba Brass to Brodick Hall on February 15th, and enjoyed a marvellously mixed programme of music, ranging from Handel to Gershwin and with much in between.

On trumpet, cornet, French horn, trombone and bass, there was a splendidly varied range of tone, coupled with superb empathy between the players, giving a constantly lively and interesting performance. A highlight for at least visits with Whistlebinkies and his fascinating Chinese group, Harmony. This was a questing, exploratory piece that used every aspect of the trombone’s tonal range, from a pure clarity to ‘tearing calico’ intensity.

The first movement of a composition called Souch, by Martin Green, was rivetingly interesting, moving as it did from reflection and search to a heavy beat that was strangely ominous, then broke up as though in flight. It ended with a silence that was part of the piece, and the audience, holding its breath, did not applaud until the instruments were slowly lowered. A magical performance.

Would-be students and their parents will be glad to know that UCAS, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, provides a free UCAS card for anyone thinking of going to university or college. The card opens the way to a regular supply of useful information about further education options, and what’s more, the holder gets discounts at a wide range of stores, both online and in the high street.

Sixth year school students are not bound by their choices at registration. If they decide they want to go for a different course, they can log this into their UCAS card and it will send them information on their new choice.

UCAS will send applications to universities and colleges until 30 June, so it’s still very worth while to apply for a card.

The public notice board outside the Brodick Post Office has a front that looks out at the parked cars and is always covered with posters, but it also has a back. And some bright person has realised the potential of this, as the picture on the right shows. So if you want any jobs done - even little ones like garden tidying or something mended - why not stick a notice on the back of the Brodick notice board? You never know, it might start a new trend.

Katy Clark MP attended a fuel summit meeting earlier this month, where the price of fuel on islands was discussed with interested parties including the Scotland Office, Treasury Officials, the Office of Fair Trading, MPs and fuel retailers and distributors. The meeting was arranged in response to concerns raised in Parliament by Ms. Clark and other MPs for Scottish islands about the continuing differences in the price of fuel between the mainland and island locations.

Ms Clark said she remains ‘very concerned about the high price of fuel for motorists on Arran’ and pointed out that prices of unleaded petrol on Arran were 16 to 18 pence per litre higher than those in the Three Towns. She said, ‘It is simply not fair for those who live on islands such as Arran to continue being penalised in this way.’ While acknowledging that the 5p per litre discount introduced in March 2012 was a welcome step forward, Ms Clark said it fell ‘well short of what is required.’ She has requested in the House of Commons that the discount be increased and also raised this at the Fuel Summit, where it was not ruled out, but will need to be justified to the European Union when the current pilot comes to an end.

There was some discussion about whether the Office of Fair Trading should be involved. Ms Clark said, ‘I would also be very interested in talking to petrol retailers on Arran to discuss what they think could be done.’

‘Dangerously low’ staffing levels at new coastguard station

Katy Clark has revealed that the Coastguard Station in Belfast now responsible for maritime safety in the West of Scotland is often staffed at an alarmingly low level. In response to her Parliamentary question, the Government was forced to admit that Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre Belfast (MRCC Belfast), which now supervises the Clyde area, was staffed at below risk-assessed levels on 40 shifts in December 2012 and on 43 shifts in January this year.

Fears were raised before the closure of MRCC Clyde that maritime safety in Western Scottish waters might be compromised by the change to Belfast. Warnings were given at the time that the loss of local knowledge would result in an inadequate service - and it seems now that the concerns were well justified. Katy Clark said, ‘These alarming figures underline the extent to which the closure of MRCC Clyde has compromised maritime safety along the West Coast of Scotland. The Government has repeatedly failed to provide satisfactory answers to genuine safety concerns regarding the closure of the Greenock station.’ She continued, ‘The revelation that MRCC Belfast is now being staffed at dangerously low levels will do nothing to allay people’s fears …I believe it is likely that lives are being put at risk by the closure of MRCC Clyde.’

Ms Clark insists that the Government must act quickly ‘to ensure that safety is not jeopardised further by its reckless and poorly thought out closure programme.’ She was scheduled to question the Secretary of State for Transport on the subject during Transport Questions on Thursday of last week. The answer will be of vital importance to everyone in the Clyde marine area, including Arran.

For more information please contact the office of Katy Clark MP on 0207 219 8667.

Man rescued from the water …

In the early afternoon of Thursday 14th February, one of the crew from the timber barge was reported to have been thrown overboard from his dinghy in Brodick Bay when hit by a gust of strong wind. The man had been going on board the barge to check the tow lines in his rubber dinghy when a sudden gust of wind capsized it and threw him overboard. The Arran lifeboat responded to the call, and found the crewman sitting on top of his upturned dinghy. He was quickly taken on board the lifeboat and his dinghy recovered, and both were returned safely ashore. The lifeboat was back in the Lamlash station in less than an hour. Crawford Duncan, who was helming the lifeboat, with old hand Martin Ferris and new crew member Brian Donlan, said afterwards, ‘It was all in a days work and we were glad to be of service.’

… and stranded cruiser retrieved

Four days later, on February 18th, the lifeboat was again called out, this time to a much larger vessel. The 6.6 metre cabin cruiser Skyemore was drifting with no power, south of Holy Isle, with 4 persons on board. Troon Lifeboat, which was exercising at sea, was also tasked to attend. It was found that the cruiser had lost all power while motoring to Troon, probably because of flat batteries. After discussion it was agreed that Arran lifeboat would tow the vessel to Lamlash where repairs could be carried out. This was done, and Skyemore was put on a visitor mooring at Lamlash. Her grateful crew of four were brought ashore and overnight accommodation was found for them. Arran Lifeboat was made ready for service again by 9.30pm.

Lifeboat crew helps to save sinking boat

by John Kinsman

Tobermory’s lifeboat crew went to the aid of a fishing boat, the Accord on February 11th but did not need to launch the lifeboat. In the Sound of Mull the Accord was found to have a hairline crack in the hull that was letting in water, but with the aid of the onboard pump, the skipper had brought her back to Tobermory Harbour. However, though the fishing vessel’s pump could prevent the level of incoming water from rising, it lacked sufficient power to reduce it. The RNLI crew, though staying on dry land, took their own salvage pump to the scene, and together with a local coastguard rescue team, ensured that the fishing boat could stay afloat and empty of water until the tide went out the skipper could effect repairs.

Picture by RNLI, shows the Accord tied up alongside the Fishermen’s Pier in Tobermory.

Dolor

By Theodore Roethke

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paperweight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

In contrast to the manic dance of My Papa’s Waltz (Voice May 2012) this piece finds the American poet Theodore Roethke (1908-63) in more sombre mood. Side by side the poems reflect the lurches between euphoria and depression to which the poet was prone. Dolor captures perfectly, albeit in pre-digital terms, the awful tedium of office life.

On Sunday March 3rd, at 8.00pm, there will be a free showing of Gasland, the film that has mobilised opinion in the US about the dangers of the fracking industry. Hydraulic fracturing of underground strata in order to release gas (‘fracking’) uses relatively new and inadequately regulated technology, and the emerging details of what this entails are horrifying. The trillions of gallons of water already used contain about 400 billion gallons of toxic additives, and there is no known way to clean up this water and make it drinkable or even usable for agriculture.

In many places, water is already in short supply. The 2011 drought in Texas forced at least one power plant to cut its output, and several others had to pipe in water from new sources. The state power authority warned that several thousand megawatts of electrical capacity might go offline if the drought persisted into 2012. Yet Texas has about 93,000 natural gas fracking wells, and these waste around 70% of the millions of gallons of water they use.

The trouble is, the privately-owned water companies are happy to sell water to the fracking industry rather than to people who want to drink the stuff or raise crops and animals - because the frackers pay more. preserving our water resources in the public trust for future generations. And the potential clashing of those interests is why these questions have been raised about whether for-profit companies ought to be running public water supplies.

Does this matter to Britain? Well, yes, it does, because the Westminster government has grabbed at fracking as a short-term answer to the looming fuel problem caused by the looming end of the oil era. As people in Lancashire already know, fracking causes earthquakes, which is frightening. But far more alarming is the huge impact that this piratical industry will have on the world’s most essential substance - water.

Wind turbines, it is worth mentioning, use no water at all.

Come and see this screening of Gasland at Corrie Hall, on this Sunday coming, if you are reading the Voice on its first day of issue. No charge - though contributions to the hall’s heating cost will be welcomed.

In complete contrast to the gritty reality of Gasland, the Argentine film call Las Acacias is a touching story of a truck driver, Rubén, who picks up a surprising passenger - or rather, two passengers. Rubén has agreed with his employer to pick up a young Paraguayan woman, Jacinta, and take her to Buenos Aires, together with his load of timber - but he hadn’t expected that Jacinta would bring her five-month-old daughter, Anahí. Protest is useless, and they set off in silence.

Las Acacias, directed by Pablo Giorgelli, will be screened in Corrie Hall on Sunday, March 10th at 8.00pm. It deservedly won the Caméra d’Or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival for its light, though sensitive touch on the way three people, one of them a baby, are going to cope with a two-day journey in a lorry cab from Paraguay to Buenos Aires. When little Anahi needs a feed, Rubén pulls off the road and wonders if he should put this inconvenient young mother and her child on a bus for the rest of the journey. But somehow, he doesn’t … Las Acacias is too delicate a film for any instant romance to be suggested, but it works on a deeper level than that. A road movie that accepts the long tedium of the road, it manages to make the truck into a private place in which feelings, gradually and at first with massive reluctance, start to work their way to the surface. Subtle and fascinating.

Like all Corrie Film Club events, the screening is open to everyone and makes no charge, though small contributions towards covering the cost are warmly welcomed.

Public opinion is a slow-moving animal, but it is, like all mammoth organisms, weighty. And at the moment, it is coming round to an understanding that fish farms are not all they’re cracked up to be. The Sunday Herald headline a couple of weeks ago read, ‘Farmed salmon killed by disease leaps to 8.5 million’ and went on to reveal that new figures from SEPA (the Scottish Environment Protection Agency) show that losses from all salmon farms have reached nearly ten per cent of their production.

The statistics are appalling. What do you do with 13,627 tonnes of dead salmon? The spread of amoebic gill disease has been sweeping through caged fish along the west coast and on the islands, culminating in Shetland, where 2.4 million salmon have died.

Anglers and environmentalists have no hesitation in blaming the intensive production methods used in salmon cages. Hugh Campbell Adamson, chairman of the Salmon and Trout Association in Scotland, said, ‘It is clear from these massive mortality figures that there are major problems.’ He holds that any intensive farming system, whether at sea or on land, is highly prone to disease outbreaks, and said, ‘When a large number of animals or fish are closely confined, the likelihood of endemic disease is greatly increased.’

The association’s aquaculture lawyer, Guy Linley-Adams, is worried about possible infection of wild salmon, with a consequent wipe-out in their numbers as well. He insists that salmon farms must be kept apart from wild fish and said that must only take place in closed containment, ‘where there is a biological separation between farmed and wild fish.’

It is curious that a nation which turned against battery hen farms years ago has not yet realised that penned fish, barely moving within their netted space, are suffering from the same intolerable conditions. Time for buyers to go on strike. Ignore the label on the pack assuring the buyer that the contents are from a ‘sustainable source’. Just don’t eat it.

Meanwhile Ben Lupo, owner of D&L Energy and Hardrock Excavating, is charged with ordering the dumping of thousands of gallons of chemical-laced fracking waste into streams in Youngstown, Ohio.

The Justice Department asserts that on the night of January 31, state investigators acting on a tip-off caught Lupo’s employees dumping oil and gas drilling waste - fluid, mud and oil - into a storm sewer that empties into a tributary of the Mahoning River. The storage tanks hold about 21,000 gallons of chemical-laced waste fluids and mud. A Hardrock Excavating employee told authorities he knew of 20 dumping incidents since November 2012.

D&L Energy operate the Northstar 1 fracking wastewater injection well that caused a series of earthquakes in 2011 and early 2012, including one quake that measured 4.0 on the Richter scale. Test results released by Ohio regulators show the presence of harmful pollutants, including benzene and toluene, in the watersheds contaminated by the waste.

Ohio has been accepting large volumes of waste from other heavily fracked states, like Pennsylvania, and environmentalists are concerned that the state is becoming a fracking waste ‘dumping ground’ - but not if Ohio residents can help it. They accuse the Ohio Department of Natural Resources of having ‘a long history of ignoring repeated flagrant violations’ and denying evidence of problems.

What America does today, Britain does tomorrow, the saying goes. Not this time, please God.

Stephanie has joined COAST to help in furthering the Arran South Marine Protected Area. She writes here about COAST’s involvement with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, whose ‘Fish Fight’ is doing so much to expose the dire state of our oceans.

A film by the pupils of Arran High School

On Friday 1st February about 70 people attended the Community Theatre to see the première of a film made by a group of fifth and sixth year pupils from the High School, who had been taking part in the film project organised by the Arran Theatre and Arts Trust.

Greymouth is at the heart of New Zealand’s coal mining industry and has also suffered from the worldwide downturn of mining. Its deep mines have been closed and only opencast mines remain. With a population of just over 13,000 it is the largest town on the West Coast of South Island and is the terminus for the Tranz Alpine passenger train route to Christchurch. The train journey to Christchurch is 139 miles and the route crosses Arthur's Pass at an altitude of 2,425ft passes through the Otira Tunnel and alongside the Waimakariri River Gorge. The journey through the Southern Alps is spectacular, but the last hour through the Canterbury Plains quite boring.

We had been told about the earthquake exhibition in the Christchurch Museum and it was extremely well presented, but most interesting was the Red Bus Tour of the central city accompanied by the museum staff. The Christchurch area had its first earthquake in September 2010. It was magnitude 7.1 on the Richter scale, but the epicentre was 25 miles west of the city and although it did £2bn damage no-one was killed. There had been many aftershocks and on February 4th 2011 there were three major ones of 5.5, 5.6 and 6.3 causing further damage to an already devastated city centre. The large aftershocks were very close to the surface and also caused liquefaction of the sandy soil in the Canterbury Plains. Despite the devastation, Christchurch’s spirit has not been dampened and a new retail centre has sprung up built entirely from recycled shipping containers.

After three nights in Christchurch we caught the early morning Coastal Pacific train back to Picton and the ferry to Wellington. Although not as spectacular as the TranzAlpine train, the Coastal Pacific passes along the eastern coastal plain with mountains rising almost vertically just a couple of miles inland.

Wellington houses the Museum of New Zealand (Te Papa Tongarewa) which had a wonderful exhibition of Māori cloaks together with demonstrations of the techniques used to make them. The weather was rather wet as we left the museum, so we ran across the square and spent a very pleasant afternoon at a Sunday matinee in the Circa Theatre. After visiting many of the attractions of Wellington including the Museum of Wellington City & Sea, where there was a very moving account of the 1968 Wahine ferry disaster, it was time for us to leave and catch our flight back to Tauranga. Luckily the weather was clear and we had great views as we flew directly over Mount Ruapehu in Tongariro National Park with Mount Taranaki showing its peak above the clouds to the East.

David Simpkins, who for five years ran the self-sufficiency garden on Holy Isle but now lives on Arran, begins a regular feature for the Voice for Arran Online on how to grow tasty things in your garden.

Making a start in March

It is a joy to grow your own food and bring it straight from the garden to your plate.

With the evenings drawing out, the life is returning to dormant plants and spring is in the air. Taking a shortcut this weekend through the Cuddy Dook that leads down to Lamlash, I saw the first few ramson leaves - great for salads and soups, and free!

Back at home, it’s time get into the garden and tidy up, and think on what you would like or have room to plant - and where to plant. Remember flower borders can also grow vegetables. The blossoms of peas and beans, for instance, can look lovely as well as providing fresh food for the pot.

This month we should perhaps be concentrating on sowing broad beans directly into the bed, and parsnips too. As the soil warms up later this month, it’ll be time to put in potatoes and onion sets or seed, along with spinach and turnips. Brussels sprouts can be container-grown along with celeriac and celery. Leeks should be sown into a seedbed for moving to final position later.

Under glass, tomatoes, peppers and various kinds of chilli can be started off in seed trays for potting up later, and children can be encouraged to grow things if you get them to plant quick-growing radishes. French Breakfast and White Icicle are two tasty varieties, both of them very easy to grow.

And it’s still not too late to prune those fruit trees, but remember the words of Marx: ‘Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.’. So, if you are going to get busy with the secateurs, do it now, before the trees start coming into bud.

It is a joy to grow your own food and bring it straight from the garden to your plate.

Research by Stephanie King at the University of St. Andrews has shown that Bottlenose dolphins actually call one another by name, using ‘signature’ whistles to identify themselves and connect with other dolphins. These whistles can be heard up to 12.4 miles away, and Ms King observed that dolphins copy the ‘signature’ whistles of other dolphins when separated from them. In close relationships such as a mother to her calf or mate, the whistles maintain social bonds, just as human language is used.

Scientists have been hesitant to call these sounds a language, but Lori Marino, an evolutionary neurobiologist and cetacean specialist at Emory University, says the structure of the sounds made by dolphins has an organisational complexity that is very like the grammar and syntax of human languages. She point to the intelligence of dolphins and the fact that they process information and make decisions quickly, and says the fluidity of movement in a dolphin group suggests a highly developed level of social cohesion. All this has been known before, but the realisation that the small cetaceans have names for each other is causing some scientists to say that dolphins should be considered as ‘non-human persons’. A group in Helsinski, Finland is drafting a Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans.

Read more: here.

The same site reveals that 900 dolphins were killed in the Solomon Islands on New Year’s Day 2013. The Earth Island Institute, a Berkeley-based conservation group, has been trying to stop the annual dolphin slaughter, but the Islands supply live dolphins to aquariums in China and Dubai for up to $150,000 each. When a payment of $400,000 to stop the hunt failed to materialise, the dolphins were killed.

Read more: here.

Arran Visual Arts will be holding its Easter exhibition from Saturday 30th March to the following Thursday, 4th April, in the Community Theatre, Arran High School. It will be open from 10.30am to 5.00pm every day except the final one, when show will close at 4.00 to allow people to collect exhibits and purchases. It’s one of Arran’s biggest art events, comprising paintings, sculpture, ceramics, textiles and furniture - the perfect browsing opportunity if looking for a present or something beautiful for your home.

Most cats won’t eat anything that’s been around for more than an hour or two, which means that a second or third offering from a tin is often rejected. Hence the huge growth in individual sachets, which promise less waste. But how much is in them? Felix sachets weigh 100g, I discover, but some of the Whiskas ones are lighter, weighing only 85g. This is a cunning move, because 85g is not quite enough to satisfy a cat, so the owner gets mewed at for more food rather soon. If people feed their felines three sachets a day instead of two (or even four instead of three when the weather is cold and the cats are telling you they are starving), the extra cost is considerable. But just think of the profit to the manufacturer!

Years ago, we used to feed our cats on meat scraps, offal and cheap fish, but all these things have vanished and we are at the mercy of the pet-food business. Unless we all start farming guinea pigs.

When the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the dissident poet Liu Xiaobo in 2010, the Chinese government was furious. A spokesman for its foreign ministry described Liu as a ‘convicted criminal sentenced to jail by Chinese justice authorities for violation of Chinese law’ and said that giving him the prize was an act of ‘blasphemy against the peace prize.’

Norway was the natural focus of Chinese indignation, as it has administered the Peace Prize ever since Alfred Nobel, the Swedish dynamite millionaire, founded it. So China cancelled all imports of Norwegian salmon. Norway wasn’t bothered. It owns enough fish farms in Scotland to keep the China trade supplied -the only thing needed was an independent-sounding deal between China and the Nobel-free Scottish government.

Juliette Walsh

Roots of Arran is holding a Sunday blitz of Rhody clearance at mid-day on March 3rd, coupled with building a den for the kids. If you’d like to come, meet at the view point car park between Brodick and Lamlash at 12.00. You will need to wear boots and bring waterproofs and a packed lunch - and if possible, please bring work gloves and secateurs. Dogs should be kept on a lead. Children are welcome, but must be accompanied by a responsible adult.

www.rootsofarrancommunitywoodland.org.uk

Savoury Cornish Mince Pie.

Ingredients

1lb lean minced beef
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, peeled finely chopped
2 ripe tomatoes, skins removed and finely chopped
3 tablespoons tomato puree
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley
salt and pepper
12ozs short crust pastry
1 egg, lightly beaten

Method

Heat the oil in a large pan.
Fry the onion for about 5 minutes without browning.
Add the mince meat and fry for a further 6 minutes until the meat is just cooked.
Add the tomatoes, tomato puree and parsley
Season with salt and pepper.
Put a lid on the pan and simmer gently for 45 minutes, checking that the mixture does not stick.
Roll out the pastry and use to line your chosen pie dish, making sure to reserve enough pastry for the lid.
Place the filling onto the pastry and spread it out evenly, leaving a good margin of pastry all around the pie dish.
Roll out the reserved pastry to make a lid.
Dampen the edges of the pastry with the filling on it with a little milk.
Place the lid on top of meat filling.
Press around the edges with a fork.
Make a slit with a sharp knife in the middle of the pie.
Brush the top of the pie with beaten egg.
Bake at 220°C. for about 15 minutes.
Reduce the temperature to 180°C.and bake for another 20 minutes.
The pie is ready when the filling is fully cooked and the pastry golden brown.

Linda Hartley, who runs Arran’s cat rescue service for the national Cats Protection League, sends us the first of a series of stories about cats who have come her way.

You get all sorts of phone calls in this job. ‘Can you take a semi feral cat that is pregnant?’

Hesitation is impossible - yes, of course we could. We have a large cat house which has three pens, so Mum and kittens would have warmth and space. Really, there is no such thing as a semi feral cat. They are either feral or domestic, and the in-betweens are usually unfortunates that have known human contact but been lost or abandoned. A truly feral cat won’t come near a human being. The new cat didn’t look very pregnant, possibly because she’d been living wild and was half-starved. When I opened the basket she shot out and scrambled up the wire netting of the pen then fell on the floor. My heart leapt for fear of what this might do to her unborn kittens, but she seemed unperturbed. Two mornings later, I found her in the cat bed with six kittens, seeming calm and settled, just getting on with feeding her hungry brood. But her milk supply was perhaps not great. When I came home that day from work one of the kittens was lying at the back of the basket. I thought it was dead, but felt a flicker of movement in its chest. I nursed it with hot water bottle and it sucked at kitten milk through a dropper, but I knew that 99% of kittens like this do not make it. But I was determined to give it go, so I set the alarm clock for two hours hence when I went to bed, kitten in a warm box close at hand. It took some more milk when I woke, but sadly, it died later that night. One of the others died as well, but the remaining four survived, and found homes.

A young lad picked the kitten in the picture because he thought she was very funny. She climbed up the curtains and caused such mayhem that the family bought her a seven-foot-high climbing frame! And she named herself with her constant calls of, ‘Me! Me! Me!’ So what could she be called but Mimi? I posted a picture of her on Facebook and was amazed that we had several hundred viewings! We’re grateful to everyone who posted comments - it all helps to spread the word that we are here, trying to do our best for cats who fall on troubled times.

Linda Hartley

Last Monday, Sally Campbell was in London for the march in support of more Marine Conservation Zones. Over 2000 people gathered opposite the Houses of Parliament, and by happy accident Sally met Katie Thomson among them, who was in London to give a talk on her Bolivia experiences with the co-leader of the Glasgow University field work. Her smiling face, pictured by Sally on Westminster Bridge, is well known on Arran, as she is the year placement student with COAST. Sally also sends us the photo of human fish walking on the march.

Jan Inglis sends us another delicious and unusual recipe

Roasted parsnip and parmesan soup

Serves 6

Ingredients

1lb parsnips cut into lengths
2oz parmesan cheese, grated
2 tablesp. olive oil
½ oz butter
1 onion, medium, finely chopped
1 tablesp. flour
3 pints approx. chicken stock
4 tablesp. double cream
black pepper as wished

Method

Pre-heat oven to 200°c.
Simmer parsnips for 3 mins.
Drain well and toss in half the parmesan cheese.
Heat olive oil in roasting tin for 3-4 mins.
Arrange parsnips in tin, add butter.
Bake for 45 minutes, basting frequently.
Drain excess oil into saucepan.
Sauté the chopped onion in this oil until soft, without colouring.
Stir in flour, cook for 1 min.
Add stock, stirring constantly and bring to boil.
Add parsnips and simmer covered for 10 mins.
Purée soup with remaining parmesan in liquidiser.
Stir in cream and season.