A picture is worth a thousand words

Well I think the picture above just about says it all! It was taken at an on Tuesday where pupils from Coldingham and Eyemouth Primary schools, got together with Eyemouth Fisherman's Choir and Mission Crew; a small ensemble from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and composer, Howard Moody, to share music inspired by St Abb's Head. This was the culmination of the first 6 months of the Trust's pARTicipate project at St Abbs (mentioned several times before in this blog). The event wasn't a performance as such, rather a sharing of the music with each other and a few selected folk who had been involved in the project, and, of course, some proud parents!

There were two sharing events, one at Eyemouth Primary School and one in St Abbs Visitor Centre. Both were excellent, but the latter, being in a much more intimate venue with great acoustics, was particularly moving. Luckily there were media students there from Stevenson's College in Edinburgh filming the occasion, with a view to putting a piece about it on the web to allow others to share the enjoyment too.

This project will now go into hibernation for a while, well for most of us, whilst Howard beavers away composing his big St Abbs Suite (a working title only) that will be performed at the SCO's South of Scotland tour next May. The world premiere will be in Duns - watch this space for more details. Below are a couple more pictures for your delectation!

My kind of engineering...

I have really posted this for my fellow Rangers here at St Abbs to prove that I am not the only one who believes that these two particular items are essentials in any Ranger's tool kit. I only have one criticism of the above flow chart - it doesn't include baler twine and silicon sealant!

Looking at things from a different angle

I have been away to Pitlochry for a Trust Staff Conference for a couple of days. We have a two such meetings each year, where the Property Managers who look after the Trust's diverse portfolio of 129 properties have a chance to get together with Trust Managers from a range of other disciplines and review the last season and plan ahead for the future.

Its always really inspiring and refreshing to meet up, to share experiences (both good and bad) and knowledge, and just to be reminded as to the enormous breadth of specialist skills that Trust staff possess between them.

On returning to St Abb's today, I went up to chat to a fencing contractor who is replacing a fence line on our land up behind the Rangers' Office, at a place called Blackpotts. The fields that we own here have minimal nature conservation value in their own right, but are an integral part of the grazing management of the delicate, flower rich grasslands of St Abb's Head. This is because they provided alternative grazing for the stock that we use to graze the Head, and enable us to be able to ask our grazing tenant to move the sheep from the Head to Blackpotts at very short notice. I don't have a reason to go up to Blackpotts very often, and every time I do go up there I am struck by the fantastic view you get from there (see picture above), and today it seemed somewhat symbolic of the importance of looking at things from a different angle.