Selwyn & Ink
The sort of run which fools you into thinking that a marathon is on, that you are ten years younger than you actually are, and that everyone who passes you must be impressed with your running form. As if. This was all possibly the result of listening to Ren as I ran my run – possibly the most extravagantly awesome acoustic guitar track I have ever heard. Bravo!
I’ll post the RCR video in the next couple of days here.
A local group has been walking from the Glendruel Hall this year, and here is the screen capture from a map I have been drafting – derived from the main community map used in signage and on newsletters, plus the various strava, garmin and OS records the walkers have taken each week.
Compilation of all the best tips from a years’-worth of running – over 44 of them!
Over 170 runs (and rising) are recorded at https://instagram.com/runchazzrun.
After a couple of months submerged in the aftermath of Storm Eowyn I have finally emerged to record the following video filled to the brim with news from your very favourite restoration project – and not a few daffodils … or narcissi … or jonquils… – which only serve to remind us that though great trees may fall, the perennials will always bloom to cheer us…
Well, the last fortnight has been …. interesting. And distressing. And exhausting. And unexpected. It all started with Storm Éowyn barrelling in from the west across the Atlantic and hitting us in the morning of 24th January. At about 12.20 the first major tree came down – across the drive. This is the second of the five planted by the Fletchers in c1850 to come down. The idea was that this group of standard exotics, three West Coast Cedars, a Monkey Puzzle (or Chilean Pine) and a Noble Fir would provide a suitable half-avenue to grace the approach to the castle, massing some 100 yards from the last one. With the Monkey Puzzle felled in the mid-noughties, and this loss, we will have to consider how we will fill the gap appropriately.
Ten minutes later a second tall pine, standing beside the site office – my office – fell. And it fell athwart the corner of the building, catching on the roof and pivoting over to lie on its side some two metres off the ground, with root plate suspended on one end, and tip hovering over the Dunans tractor. The door was knocked from its hinges, and the corner depressed be over a foot immediately. Luckily, because the structure is entirely of wood, including found and roof, everything flexed.
At about 1pm, three huge Scots Pines lining the southernmost burn succumbed in an almighty explosion of fractured wood. These healthy trees fell into our paddock, like three or four others over the years. Such a loss!
We also lost a Pussy Willow standing at the gable of the house – luckily it fell away from the building – several Goat Willows down by the board walk, and a lovely old Birch near the picnic platform.
All in three hours.
We watched in frozen horror.
And all of this was not without cost to our infrastructure – at about 1pm, a particularly vicious gust knocked out our electricity supply. Unfortunately our power line crosses Alt A’ Chaol Ghleann some 100 metres north of the castle at a height of upwards of 30 metres in places. This was the line that was knocked out. Not in one place, but at both ends. This meant the poor SSEN workers could not simply re-attach the broken end. No, they had to replace the 150 metre cable in its entirety. Power was eventually restored on Tuesday evening. We were the last in the glen.
By the Saturday everything was calm enough to contemplate clearing some of the damage. With the help of our neighbour, Jim, and his pal Stuart (who I’d played shinty with back in the day), we cleared a path for cars through the destruction. Nearly two weeks later, we are still working and I am not sure we will be cleared before the end of April.
Here are some videos – two taken on the day, a third the next day, and the final one a walk over the grounds to show both progress and the full extent of the damage.
But let this not depress you. On the Wednesday after the Friday, we received our contract from Land and Forest Scotland for the Woodland Creation. We. Are. Go! Which means that we will have the woodland planted by the end of this year, along with soil association verification for our carbon offset scheme. At that point we will raise the funds to effect the first stage of the restoration – FINALLY!
We are delighted to announce we have added the Entrance Hallway to the areas now available in our deluxe title package for Lord or Lady of Dunans Castle…
We hope everyone enjoys the prospect of owning a square foot of the groundfloor of the castle. To gift this title to yourself, or a loved one, please click here.
In the third week of September Dunans hosted volunteers from Adventures in Preservation who worked tirelessly to finish the repointing of the curtain wall – a project which we have been working on since 2022 with our jammers!
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if you would like to get involved with our sessions in 2025 please visit the Adventures in Preservation website here.
Finally – finally – the woodland creation scheme has been loaded onto the Scottish Forestry’s Public Register. Saving any major objections, this means that our woodland has passed all the regulatory approvals and is now considered ready to get planted! Confirmation that the consultation has been successful will be given in mid-August, and we will then be able to fence and plant!
This is such a relief as it means that once planted we can apply for and receive verification for our carbon offset project, and this in turn generates the revenue to start significant works on the castle. The timetable for all of this remains somewhat unclear and I will update you here. Suffice to say, I hope we can go to the commercial markets for sale of our carbon offsets in the second quarter of 2025, with works beginning on the castle a little afterwards!
Below are screen captures of our entry on the public register, the case details, and the close-up mapping information which mirrors the wider view in the email header.
I’ve been fooling about with ChatGPT 4.0 for the last couple of days, and it occurred to me to see how creative the AI chatbot can get, so I wrote this prompt”
Write a one-page treatment for a science fiction novel, set in 2053, when astonomers on earth using radio, visual and satellite telescopes spot panet-sized objects entering the solar system. Over the first part of the novel, the governments on earth discuss what they want to do, and start to receive communications from the approaching alien race – christened the bronze men. In the second part of the novel, the 12 planets arrive in orbit around the sun taking position in an earth orbit. Embassies from the 12 planets are then received in New York by the United Nations. All seems peaceful until it becomes apparent that the three furthestmost planets are harvesting the sun. The embassies are rejected by Earth and the planet must decide how to defend the sun from this incursion. The aliens are so technologically advanced that their manipulation of physical space seems magical. All seems lost until a renegade faction of the bronze men contact individuals on earth to begin a resistance to the sun-harvest. Using a cast of characters with names from Shakespeare’s plays Macbeth, Hamlet and the Tempest for the humans, and character names from Beowolf for the aliens, create an intricate plot wherein the initially suspicious humans start to believe in the three alien contacts and utilising the alien technologies begin to resist the alien incursion.
ChatGPT’s answer was as follows:
Title: The Bronze Incursion
In 2053, Earth’s astronomers detect twelve planet-sized objects entering the solar system using radio, visual, and satellite telescopes. Panic and curiosity grip humanity as they try to understand this unprecedented event. World governments come together to discuss how to handle the approaching objects, which they soon learn are inhabited by an alien race called the Bronze Men.
The novel unfolds in two parts. In the first part, Earth receives communications from the Bronze Men, who express their desire for peaceful contact. The world watches with bated breath as the twelve planets take their positions in orbit around the sun, with Earth at the center.
Embassies from each of the twelve planets are received at the United Nations headquarters in New York. Diplomatic relations seem to be going well, until it becomes apparent that the three furthest planets are siphoning energy from the sun. Earth’s leaders reject the Bronze Men’s embassies, and humanity must decide how to defend its life-giving star from the alien incursion.
In the second part of the novel, Earth faces the seemingly insurmountable challenge of outsmarting an alien race with technology so advanced that it appears magical. Hope seems lost until a renegade faction of the Bronze Men contacts select individuals on Earth to form a resistance against the sun-harvesting.
The human characters are named after Shakespearean figures from Macbeth, Hamlet, and The Tempest, while the alien characters bear names from the epic poem Beowulf. These characters find themselves entangled in an intricate plot that tests the limits of trust and cooperation. Suspicion and fear initially permeate the alliance between the renegade Bronze Men and the human resistance, but as the story unfolds, they learn to believe in each other and work together to save the sun.
Using alien technology provided by their Bronze Men allies, the human resistance devises a plan to counter the sun-harvesting and protect Earth’s future. The novel reaches its climax in a gripping, high-stakes battle between the united human-alien forces and the sun-harvesting Bronze Men. Through the power of trust, camaraderie, and shared goals, the resistance faces the seemingly invincible alien threat, ultimately deciding the fate of Earth and its solar system.
The Bronze Incursion is a thrilling, character-driven science fiction novel that explores themes of trust, unity, and the lengths we will go to protect our home. Rich in literary references and complex relationships, the story delves into the nature of fear, friendship, and the power of cooperation in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
At this point I sat up. The title, now that was not what I had in mind: “The Bronze Incursion”. I quite liked it. I read through the treatment, thinking, “Okaaay, so this is generic, its readable but not too original … what is the next step?” Here’s my next prompt within the same chat.
Write a chapter-by-chapter outline of the Bronze Incursion, allocating names to a cast of characters including the individuals on earth who become allies of the renegade bronze men
It came back with this:
Chapter 1: Celestial Intruders
Chapter 2: The Bronze Men
Chapter 3: The Diplomatic Dance
Chapter 4: A Troubling Discovery
Chapter 5: The Renegades
Chapter 6: Building Trust
Chapter 7: The Resistance Rises
Chapter 8: Ingenious Strategies
Chapter 9: The Eve of Battle
Chapter 10: The Battle for the Sun
Chapter 11: Unlikely Heroes
Chapter 12: A New Dawn
Chapter 13: Epilogue: The Legacy of Trust
At this point I am chuckling to myself, thinking, “Yep, it’s written screenplays before”. I mean obviously I wasn’t looking for a screenplay, but the beats are the same, the structure is pretty standard and the last bullet for chap 13 says it all.
But then I had to do the next one to confirm my suspicions …
Write a detailed brief for Chapter 1: Celestial Intruders, including outlines of scenes in which the planet-sized objects are discovered, the main characters are introduced and earth responds to the shattering news that there are aliens and they are en route.
Chapter 1: Celestial Intruders
Scene 1: The Discovery
Scene 2: Introducing the Main Characters
Scene 3: The Shattering News
Scene 4: Emergency Meeting
Scene 5: Mobilizing Earth’s Defenses
Scene 6: The World Awaits
And then finally:
Write Scene 1: The Discovery beginning with a lowly assistant noticing something odd has appeared in the data from the International Space Observatory
Scene 1: The Discovery
Setting: International Space Observatory
[INT. INTERNATIONAL SPACE OBSERVATORY – NIGHT]
The International Space Observatory is buzzing with activity as astronomers and scientists are busy analyzing data and monitoring the night sky. A young, lowly assistant named LUCIUS is hunched over his workstation, reviewing the latest data from the observatory’s telescopes.
LUCIUS (muttering to himself) Hmm, that’s odd…
He leans in closer to his screen, analyzing the unusual pattern. Lucius hesitates for a moment, then decides to call over his supervisor, DR. HAMLET.
LUCIUS (excitedly) Dr. Hamlet, could you please take a look at this? I found something peculiar in the data.
Dr. Hamlet, a middle-aged scientist with an air of authority, approaches Lucius’s workstation, intrigued by the young assistant’s discovery.
DR. HAMLET (curious) What have you found, Lucius?
Lucius points at the screen, where twelve distinct blips are visible on the data graph.
LUCIUS (nervously) I was going through the data from the deep space telescope, and I found these twelve strange objects. They appeared suddenly, and they’re moving towards our solar system at an alarming speed.
Dr. Hamlet’s eyes widen as he examines the data. He immediately recognizes the significance of Lucius’s discovery.
DR. HAMLET (astonished) Incredible! This could be the most significant astronomical event of our time. We must alert the other observatories and confirm our findings.
The room erupts into a frenzy of activity as the scientists scramble to verify the existence of the twelve celestial objects. Dr. Hamlet takes charge, coordinating efforts with other observatories around the world.
[INT. INTERNATIONAL SPACE OBSERVATORY – LATER]
The confirmation comes quickly. The twelve planet-sized objects are indeed approaching the solar system. As the news spreads throughout the observatory, the atmosphere becomes electric with anticipation and anxiety.
DR. HAMLET (addressing the room) Ladies and gentlemen, we stand on the brink of a monumental discovery. Our lives, and the lives of everyone on Earth, will never be the same. We have a responsibility to ensure the safety of our planet and to share our knowledge with the world. Now is the time to act.
The scene ends with a shot of the observatory’s massive telescope, pointed at the distant stars, as the team prepares to investigate the celestial intruders further. The camera slowly pans upwards, revealing the vastness of space and the unknown that lies ahead.
So, its obviously all very sketchy, badly written, and definitely generic, but in these responses to the four prompts – which I purposefully made relatively undetailed in the cases of the ones subsequent to the first – I see an awful lot of potential. For example, I did not make any comment about tone, style or characterisation. Nor did I look at any underlying themes or agendas. My thinking is that I should rewrite the prompts to cater for some of these ideas as well as including using obscure names for the characters, with vowels changed – Mic Both anyone?
Lastly, I *know* its all a bit meta, a bit SF, using a computer to write a SF novel. Perhaps I should choose in the style of Philip K Dick in the next run, and see what that produces? Really, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
What do you think? Should I continue prompting ChatGPT to create a more detailed less generic story called “The Bronze Incursion” or is the game a bogey?
Obviously I am asserting my rights as author for the above – afterall I wrote the prompts 😉
If you do not live in a temperate, coastal location with high rainfall, you may not know about the midge. You see, the midge is a wee blood-thirsty beastie which rises in late May and spends the next three to four months feeding on any piece of exposed flesh available to it.*
*Please note: Midges occasionally drive their victims to using bad language, and this post is no exception.
The midge bite is small but persistent, itching out of all proportion to the size of the mandibles which cause it. Or at least this is the case for the first three years of exposure – which is no use to visitors of course, but explains why West Coasters born-and-bred barely bat an eyelid under the onslaught of these multitudinous airborne pests. Because, while the bites are an incessant irritant after the fact, the initial onslaught can be truly excruciating.
Imagine an early summer evening, when the light is limpid and louche, falling toward a gentle, welcoming darkness – soft in the virtually tactile way that only the ocean ward coast of Scotland can produce.
Imagine that you are coming home to your newly finished, glorified garden shed after a weekend away with friends. It’s just the two of you, content to come home after a long journey full of conversation, insight and laughter.
You turn your battered soft top Vitara into the drive and allow gravity to take you down to the bridge. You want to keep the car’s progress slow because the unfinished drive rocks the short-wheelbase of the four-by-four such that your already sore backs will be further jarred (the Vitara was never a comfortable ride), and you note as you cross the bridge that the castle is looking particularly pretty, the tops of the chimneys are caught in the last light of the setting sun, and the foot of the ruin seems to accentuate this by being sunk in a deeper, darker shadow than you’d expect. Both of you glance at the stand of tall trees across the ravine from the castle to see if they account for the visual contrast, but nothing unusual strikes you.
The slight rise to the last corner wakes the bassets who immediately become animated with home fever. You glance at one another and smile, anticipating much low-slung and hilarious scooting around by the doe-eyed duo as they reacquaint their patch with them. The drive levels out, and you slip quietly down the avenue of, on one side, overgrown Leylandii and on the other five gargantuan exotics – led by what has come to be known as the ‘Harry Potter’ tree – although I am sure it looks nothing like the Whomping Willow. It’s nearly fully dark under the trees and you put on the headlights. They meet a thick veil of insects which move in mildly hypnotic wave delineating the full beam of the lights to their utmost extent 200 yards away to the foot of the castle. You glance at one another not quite understanding (a) how such insect-life could have arisen in the 72 hours you have been away and (b) amazement at the fecundity of nature even in these hills where the ground is notoriously poor, water-logged and inimical to anything other than pine, rhododendron and rashes.
Imagine that despite your wonder at this sudden irruption of natural phenomena into your life at Dunans, you allow your car to coast at approximately 2 metres per second down the drive and into the gravelled embrasure on which the red shed stands. The quality of the light improves and you see that the entire foliage delimited quadrangle is thick with a floating mass of insect-life fluctuating to an altitude of about 8 feet. It is at this stage, when you slow the car to the point that it will roll at, maybe, half-a-metre a second to its place before the shed, that two things become apparent. First, the canopy of the soft-topped car, which covers boot, rear seat and ceiling above really isn’t airtight, and second that driving so slowly means that this wondrous, slowly and softly dynamic layer of insect-life is in fact able to find admission into our coolly comfortable capsule of car air.
The time between the slowing and the screaming was perhaps all of 5 seconds.
When the red mist of midge rage descends rational thought becomes absolutely impossible.
The bastards bite.
The bastards get into your ears.
Into your nose.
Up your nose.
Into your eyes.
The creases at the corners of your eyes.
You scream. You run. You swear. You slam doors.
You open doors to let the dogs in.
You remember your baggage. You remember the shopping. The milk which needs the fridge.
You swear. Find a balaclava. Run out to the car. Get the shopping bags.
The milk bag splits. The cartons spill over the drive.
You swear. You cry.
You pray to God that the Balaclava is working. It isn’t. You throw it off.
You scrabble for the milk.
You weep.
You run in.
Throw milk at your wife.
Return outside for the bags.
You are hollering like Rambo. And choking on midges.
And still running.
Doors slam more.
There’s the tinkling of glass.
You run in. Slam the door.
Drop the bags.
Look at your wife who is scrabbling at one of the windows.
The windows.
They are covered in midges.
Billions of them.
We can’t see out.
And some of them, some of these bastards are on the bastarding inside.
An hour later we find ourselves sitting in the dark, in close proximity to two floor standing fans and one desktop fan in the centre of the red shed. We are trying really, really hard not to scratch ourselves. I am trying not to weep. My lovely wife is holding her head her hands, her jaw set. I can see she is calculating our next move. I cannot hold my head because my hands are covered in a mixture of silicone sealant and midges. I have a cut across one of my hands where the scissors slipped as I cut organza fabric, and at my feet are several thousand unused staples, an industrial staple gun and all the plasters we own. We know we have to venture into the bedroom to fight the midge invasion, and we also know that because of the variable level of the foundations, there is a big (bastarding) gap between wall and window bottom in that room. We look at one another and ask simultaneously, “What the hell have we done?”
That first year, in the hut with single-glazed windows of approximate fit, without airlock (AKA porch) for the shaking out of insect-life from hair, clothes and dog, without any through-breeze onsite of any kind, the midges were sanity-threatening awful. If I have subsequently called the castle a glorified mouse-breeding box, then the rash-filled paddock next to the red shed, with its sundry hollows, its deeply scored quad bike tracks, the miscellaneous divots and other depressions, all causing the retention of water to the point walking in it required waders, was similarly termed the midge-breeding box. We identified this area as the main problem and that was where we focussed our attention, to begin with.
To wage a successful war against the midge one needs to remember two things: first, this is a long-term campaign and second, there are no short-term solutions. You’ll also need to remember two further things: first, as alluded to in our very first swarming encounter, midges cannot withstanding a breeze of more than one point five metres per second, they are literally blown away, and second, they are crepuscular.
You can walk a swarm off – they literally cannot keep up. If you spot several Scots in a field having an agricultural chat, they’ll not be leaning on a five-bar gate (mostly because three of the five are rotten and the top is so patched with scraps of kindling that its actually quite uncomfortable to lean against) they’ll be walking in an ever-increasing spiral. Obviously, you’ll not want a decreasing spiral because the Pygmy flies will then end of concentrating in the correct space. Also, these voluble West Coast farmers, because, believe me, they can be very voluble, will avoid their livestock. Livestock generally have their own domestic swarm, a colony of midges, who for the summer describe a cloud or halo around their chosen beast.
Now concerning the crepuscular element of the equation (while ensuring we reference the Fire Sermon as the only reason I had any notion as to what this poly-syllabic term meant before the advent of midges into my life) the reasons midges are dusk and dawn-favouring are two-fold, first, the lack of sun. They, like moles, mice and marmots do not like direct sunlight. Well, mice might, but they prefer cover from marauding predators than full sunlit exposure. Not having researched the subject, I am not sure why midges don’t like sunlight, but (vast) experience shows this to be the case. Second, at dusk and dawn, any air movement generally falls away. There may of course be a third reason. Midges feed on blood. Any blood. They are not fussy. Human, deer, coo, sheep, dog, cat. At dawn and dusk these creatures are not wont to rush about madly, they slow, they prepare for the onset of night or begin the process of waking. The midge prey are therefore not moving at more than 1.5 metres per second, and therefore are available.
How is it you may ask that such tiny creatures can find their prey with such alacrity? Midges are attracted initially to the carbon dioxide their prey emits, then by movement, colour and odour. Finally, once a midge finds prey it emits a pheromone which attracts other midges.
It may be the pheromone which finally persuaded us that midge magnets weren’t for us. Either that, or the thought of using a can of gas every couple of months to produce a constant stream of carbon dioxide to clear a quarter acre of ground. While we awaited the effect of the changes we began soon after that tortured evening of the soul, we invested in a midge magnet. Now, quite apart from my inability to
(a) remember to check the gas canister on a regular basis
(b) empty the nets of midges as they neared full
(c ) light the magnet (once I’d managed to remember to check the canister, see that it’d been empty for some time – given the deliquescence of midges in midge-net – get to Strachur to replace the canister, order a canister because I was the only person using that particular type, forget to remember to return the following week once the gas co. had delivered said preferred type, remember a further week later to get the last canister of the preferred type given that four other households “ …. were giving these midge magnet thingies a try”).
No, midge magnets weren’t the solution, not at Dunans, not with our infestation, not with my record of replenishment and maintenance. There is a far flung corner of a shed where several hundred-pounds-worth of kit moulders paying tribute to our commitment to rid ourselves of midges and also, to our eventual success.
Note to those who visit midge-infested areas only infrequently: Do not – I repeat – do not sit around a midge magnet. It’s a magnet. Midges, seeking the carbon dioxide exhaled by animals are attracted to it – as if its a …magnet. By sitting there you’re creating a HUGE target for midges, even those outside the quarter acre of midge-free atmosphere. It’ll not be pretty. You’ll spill your beer, knock the prosecco for six, throw down your burgers in panic, trample small children – all the time swearing, “Bloody-bastarding-thing doesn’t bastarding work. You said they worked! Only reason I agreed to come here. Right, I have had enough Mildred, WE ARE LEAVING!” You will then jump into your seven year-Old Volvo and never return, even to retrieve the youngest’s purple unicorn pillow called Tilly, which a week later a family wanting respite from a midge infested patch of grounds near a castle not 20 miles away, finds in the porch, hanging rather forlornly on a coat-hook.
Over three or four years following, we reduced the incidence of midge deluges markedly, such that now, it is only of passing interest when we have a bad day. My paltry efforts, along with mighty shifts by folk like VBF, Chris, Stuart, Min and Tino, have led to policies in which it is possible to picnic, or to barbecue, in comparative comfort with only an occasional surfeit of airborne bitery. We do still dress our open windows in organza, practice a lights-out policy during late-May, June and July, as well as utilise floor and desk-mounted fans day and night.