Never mind Glastonbury or T in the Park, it’s Meikle Wartle’s answer to Woodstock – Livestock!

View from the midden with Jock Alexander

It’s been a bacchanalian wikend in the village. It’s nae jist the massed ranks of music fans at Kinross that hiv been enjoying themsels, here in Meikle Wartle we hiv hid oor ain equivalent tae T in the Park, oot on my boggy field aside the Sewage Works. Oh aye, Balado diznae hae a monopoly on mud and insanitary conditions – we’ve hid them in Meikle Wartle for years. Oor festival is all about the music, it’s nae sponsored by a brewery or a multinational corporation (though we hiv hid some interest from the makers of Dettol, efter they noticed the event coincided with an upswing in sales of their antibacterial products fae the Tescos at Huntly). So we had a happy crowd of nigh on 40 toonsers with a pressing need tae recapture their youth, and a similar number of local worthies. Fa needs young lassies in pink wellies and denim hot pants fan ye’ve got Skittery Willie in tackety beets and rolled-up dungers? And fit acts! T in the Park may have hid Emeli Sande, Travis and Kraftwerk, but we hid Sandy Emslie, Tarves and Croft Work. We had Feel Moira operating the burger van, serving a wide variety of meat-equivalent snacks. These were a resounding success, as significantly fewer folk were cowking efterwards than last year. Taking wir lead fae T in the Park, fa charge a verra reasonable £5 tae use their luxury showers area, I hiv been charging only twa pounds mair than that for onybdy that winted tae use my ootside lavvy. Of course, with all that toonsers in their Hunter’s molloching aboot, the hale place ended up looking like a plooed field, which is handy, as it’ll save me having to ploo the field. Cheerio!

Davina Smythe-Barrat, Ordinary Mum

One feels under such pressure these days to holiday in Scotland.  There is the environment to think of, of course (I cannot tell you how much time I have spent over the last year, driving round and round in the Landrover, dropping off leaflets advising people on how to reduce their carbon footprint).  And one so wants to both support the local economy and to provide the children with a valuable glimpse of what a working class person looks like.  But recent attempts at “stay-cationing” have not met with great success.  Last year’s stay in a Mongolian Yurt by Loch Tay came to a soggy end when it rained so hard poor Emmeline was hospitalised with trench-foot.  Our camping break on Arran the year before ended no better, when our Teepee took off while Fidel was trying to erect it in a gale. Ultimately it was designated a hazard to aircraft and got shot down by a couple of Tornados from RAF Leuchars.  So we have decided to ring the changes this time, and to holiday on the continent.  Well, it is important for the children to improve their language skills and to gain some first-hand experience of where the best cheeses and French country wines come from.  So this year, instead of sitting inside a glorified shed in the middle of nowhere, obsessively checking the weather forecast to see if it is going to be at all better tomorrow; we will instead be sitting in a gite in Provence, obsessively checking the weather forecast to make sure that the temperature here is higher than in Aberdeen.

‘Cava’ Kenny Cordiner, the sports writer who goes in studs-up

As my royal readers will know, it takes a lot to shock old Kenny, but something happened in the world of sport this week that has made me sit down and take notice. I’ve never been that big a fan of cycling, I was 15 before my old man, Billy Cordiner, could take the stabilisers off my Chopper, but I’ve been following the Tour de France ever since Britain’s Arjo Wiggins won it last year. But it was another Brit, bicyclist, Mark Cavendish, who hut the headlines last week. The fans cry him ‘Cav’, which is not very different from my own Monica, “Cava”. They also sometimes always cry him “the Manx Missile” – because he comes from from the Brotherhood of Mann. Sadly, he got the ultimate insult from the crowd during the race the other day when someone chucked a bottle of urine over him. He says to the press, he says, “at first I thought it was water, but then I could tell what it was from the taste”, which kind of raises more questions than it answers. I know all too well the dangers presented to us sportsmen from disjointed members of the public. Back when I was playing for Longside I always suspected one of the local farmers was deliberately letting his cattle onto our pitch at night. Many’s the time old Kenny went sliding into a tackle only to get a pat on the back.