The return of the oyster

Wild oysters, once the gastronomic delight of kings as much as they were the staple diet of paupers, have returned to the Firth of Forth for the first time in almost a century.

The native oyster, ostrea edulis, is thought to have disappeared from the Forth in 1920, but out of the blue, two have made their way on to rocks somewhere on the south shore of Firth near Edinburgh, prompting jigs of delight from environmentalists and the smacking of lips from gourmands.

They were discovered by Liz Ashton, an aquaculturalist, after she heard rumours that they had been sighted around the estuary, even though an extensive marine survey in 1997 found no evidence of oysters. Taking advantage of a very low tide, she went to investigate and after walking for an hour along the shoreline, came across the pair, 100 yards (91 metres) apart.

“I was ecstatic, I jumped up and down and cheered,” she said. “I phoned my supervisor and told her the good news. Then I measured them and took their photographs, and then left them there to let the tide wash over them.”

Dr Ashton’s joy is partly explained by her deep interest in the native oyster. Overfishing has all but wiped the creature out across Europe, but she and a team from the Institute of Aquaculture at Stirling University are working on a project devoted to re-establish oysters in the Firth of Forth.

The two oysters were almost certainly members of a larger bed (or colony) that remained hidden when surveys of the estuary were carried out. If numbers could be increased, the oysters would promote bio-diversity, providing a habitat and food for little crabs and lobsters, and improving water quality, because the animals are “filter feeders”, taking impurities out of the water.

These highly desirable outcomes depended on the behaviour of humans, Dr Ashton said. “We need to try and restore them. I wouldn’t want people going down there and eating them straight away.”

Her warning was timely. Edinburgh’s restaurant trade has been yearning to supply local oysters for generations. “It’s wonderful news and it would be very interesting to compare them with oysters we serve now,” said Tia Millar, co-director of Fisher’s restaurants in Leith and Edinburgh.

Fisher’s is obliged to use West Coast shellfish and its menu includes oysters in their shells and grilled oysters, although Ms Millar’s preferred method — perfect for a Forthside picnic — is to cook oysters on a barbecue and then when the shells pop, eat them “in their delicious nectar”.

Ms Millar is part of a gastronomic tradition in the city. Long before Mr Pickwick was handing out barrels of oysters to his friends in London, Edinburgh was knee-deep in the creatures, its population reportedly eating its way through millions every year.

Edinburgh’s oysters enjoyed world renown but Scots kept the best of the crop for themselves. Adam Smith even founded an oyster club, which counted the philosophers David Hume and Adam Fergusson among its members. James Boswell and Samuel Johnson dined in a reputable laigh shop, or oyster house, near the law courts; in the nearby Cowgate gentlemen could season their fun with side of orders of oysters and porter.

James Hogg, the novelist, was baffled by the sheer quantities consumed: “What desperate breedy beasts eisters must be, for the they tell me that Embro devours a hunder thousand ever day ... That is only about two oysters for every three mouths.”

As the end loomed for the oysters, the Victorians showed no mercy. Local recipes for Oyster Kromeskies and Oyster Custard from the 1890s, used 24 oysters in each serving and no true Musselburgh Pie was complete without a least a dozen to sweeten the taste of the meat.

“There was a lack of effective management,” Dr Ashton said. “We should learn from that.”

* This one was in the paper a month ago, but it's still quite jolly. And the timelag enabled me to get rid of the dreadful error that was in the original.

For these women, the future's Orange

High on Well Road, past the bookmakers, the bowling alley and Chinese takeaway, you can enjoy the best view of Auchinleck's Orange parade as it slowly takes shape outside the community centre.

The flutes of the Patna band have returned from wetting their whistles at the Railway hotel, and are forming in orderly ranks. Braided union flags and lodge banners are held aloft; the marchers have fallen into line.

I am in the middle of a housing scheme in Ayrshire. This is not the beautiful coastal strip with its luxury golf courses and prosperous commuter towns, but the eastern side of the county, where the mining jobs have long gone from tough and insular communities. For some who live here it is only a dim sense of their Protestant roots that keeps them going.

It is in communities like this in East Ayrshire, Lanarkshire and West Lothian that the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland draws its strength. That's why the residents of Well Road are out in their front gardens in their tracksuits and vests, grinning at each other and waiting for the fun to begin. But there is a curious difference to this march.

True, there are the bands, with their gaudy uniforms and their absurdly militant names, such as the Drongan Young Conquerors. But those trussed-up men with their bowler hats and sashes, who for generations have held up towncentre traffic all across Scotland, are nowhere to be seen. Instead, it's women who catch the eye.

Draped in a blue sash and at the head of the parade march is Helyne MacLean, the mouse-like grand mistress of the women's wing of the Orange Order of Scotland.

Behind her, dressed in their Sunday hats, are ladies from all over the country, who are spending their bank holiday Saturday celebrating the inauguration of a new women's lodge in the village.

At the centre of the parade come the Auchinleck ladies, dressed in regulation orange and brown, proudly strutting along. These are the Sisters of Peden, Orange Lodge No205. To outsiders they look militant and uncompromising; to their supporters on the streets, they are proud defenders of the faith. Staunch or scary, I've come to meet them and to find what makes them tick.

There is a clue to the Orange mindset in the very name of the new lodge, which, like so many others, invokes the memory of a bloody and unblinking Protestant fanatic, long forgotten by the rest of the human race.

Alexander Peden was a Calvinist firebrand who defied the King's soldiers during the Killing Times of the 17th century. Peden was variously imprisoned on the Bass Rock, sentenced to transportation and forced to hide in the shadow of persecution, spending the last months of his life in a cold, dank cave. Surely a bitter and bloody chapter in Scottish history, a story you'd never wish to linger over? Not a bit of it.

After the march has ended, MacLean, nibbling on a piece of Dundee cake in the community centre, confides pleasantly: "The ladies themselves chose the name."

Auchinleck has many surprises. Out on the streets, it's easy to imagine a flash point is approaching as the parade begins to climb towards the village's Catholic church. The crowd, though, remains in good humour, laughing and joking with the scrawny ribbon of spectators spread out along the route.

High on the verge, Eddie McGilvray, the keeper of chapel hall, waves as one of the marchers shouts a greeting. "It's just something they do," he says with a smile and a shrug. "We stand shoulder to shoulder with them when we're watching the Talbot."

McGilvray is talking about Auchinleck Talbot, the village's football team. Just a week before, in a striking display of community solidarity, more than half the population of 7,500 - Catholic and Protestant, men and women - turned out to watch them win the Scottish Junior cup.

For all its modest scale, this parade effectively sounds one of the opening shots of the marching season. This summer there will be 186 marches in Glasgow alone, to celebrate a victory of Protestant forces over the deposed Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.

Depending on where you stand, these marches are either the nearest Scotland has to Mardi Gras or the physical manifestation of a scar on the national psyche. So why would women want to get involved? For the ladies of the order the answer is simple: their passionate belief in a Protestant Britain is unshakeable and they have every right to express themselves. "The way the country's going, it makes you value it even more," says MacLean. "I'd fight for it even more. But people just haven't got the values I was brought up on - the commitment to their church and country."

Back at the community centre, the lodge banners and union flags are arranged around a photograph of the Queen. The ladies have arranged their hats and coats tidily on chairs, and ensconced themselves in an annex where a buffet has been laid out.

These women have much to unite them. Few are in the first flush of youth and most have been members of the Orange Order for years. Nearly everyone has a parent or grandparent who was a member of a lodge. Margaret Stirkie is the worthy mistress of the Auchinleck lodge; her husband is its worthy master. Janice Frew joined the Sisters of Peden today, "but she was brought up with the lodge" and her husband is another leading Orangeman in the village.

Above all, what defines the women is their backs-to-the-wall attitude, in the face of what they see as attacks on their way of life - by politicians, by politically correct bureaucrats, by the media and by their own churches. It is difficult to meet them without thinking they are out of step with the modern world.

When MacLean joined the Church of Scotland at the age of 13, the spirit of tolerant ecumenicism, she says with regret, was already reaching the church. "That was the 1960s," she recalls, "when people were very much taking charge of their own lives. Even then I felt there was a need, that the churches weren't entirely for the people. I felt then that the Orange Order was a kind of extension of church membership." She joined the order three years later, in 1969.

Within the church of Scotland things have got far worse since the Swinging Sixties for those of an Orange disposition. Last month it was mooted at the Kirk's general assembly that same-sex partnerships might be blessed by ministers. That is anathema here.

"I don't agree with a lot of the trends the church has gone towards," says MacLean. "People in churches are the keepers of the..." she seems to stop herself saying "faith", aware perhaps that it makes her sound almost too committed.

Instead she goes on: "There are some always asking, 'What are you going to do about this?' The answer is, 'What are you going to do about it.'" MacLean is not for turning. She is staunch, in the language of the lodge.

The Grand Lodge of Scotland is firmly on its back foot. It's peak membership of 80,000 was reached in the 1960s; now it numbers 50,000, around a third of whom are women.

First came devolution, a body blow to the unionist cause. Next up was Jack McConnell's crusade against sectarianism. Last month, the Order joined with the Irish republican group, Cairde na hEireann, to sign a declaration that aims to eradicate the boorish chants that often accompany such parades.

But that gesture does not hide the resentment felt among the women tucking into tea and cake about McConnell's determination to put sectarianism "in the dustbin of history". For it is clear to these ladies that the first minister has them - and the organisation they love - in his sights.

"The Orange Order is a celebration," says Margaret Blakely, who has come from Irvine for this little tea. "In Ireland, sectarianism went alongside terrorism - and that's totally wrong."

"If somebody can actually give us the meaning of sectarianism, what Jack McConnell means by the word, it might help," says MacLean. "People don't know what the Orange Order is about, so they say we're sectarian. But what is that? This is our culture, and we feel it's being eroded. If we were any other religion ..." she lets the sentence trail off in exasperation. The women sitting opposite me feel they live in an all-inclusive, liberal society, which embraces the freedom of expression for all religions. Except their own.

"It's like the rest of society is ashamed of the Orange Order," somebody says. "I think they are," agrees MacLean. "You might see a religious parade abroad and think it was interesting, and you would have tremendous respect for these people.

It seems that people don't have any respect for our faith. Tolerance is accepting people for what they are and not for changing them to what you want them to be."

The women's lodge was established 97 years ago, when democratic and socialist principles were taking hold. Yet despite their numbers - women account for 164 of its 432 lodges - they remain discriminated against, with no voting rights at any important level in the organisation.

"It's something we want to change," says MacLean. "We're striving, and I think it will come. There's still a lot of what we call dinosaurs in there, but we really do have a good working relationship with the men. We are an organisation that believes in democracy. We are getting there." But in an organisation that has steadfast as its watchword, don't expect change any day soon.

At least on a local level the women believe they can make a difference. There's talk of increased involvement in Auchinleck's community council, and a determination to continue fundraising for good causes.

It will seem ironic to some that this fiery brand of Protestantism should now be putting its energies into helping others, but the irony

is lost on Walker. "It's about tolerance, isn't it?" she says. "It's about freedom of civil and religious liberty. And if we believe that for ourselves, we have to believe it for other folk."

That's how it is for the ladies of the Orange Order. They have feelings; they can be cheerful and generous with their time. But they are blinkered, and fanatical about their cause. And it's impossible to ignore another irony: the very tolerance they now crave could well sound the death knell for an organisation that, for centuries, has thrived only because of its rigid resistance to progress.

With the marching, talking and the fruitcake taken care of, the ladies of the Orange Order collect their hats and coats, and head home. The Sisters of Peden need to get ready for their celebration dance. But how long can the party continue for the Orange Order?

This piece was written in 2006. The picture is of a parade in Northern Ireland, not Ayrshire.

It's Bathgate not Broadway

It's early morning in Bathgate’s main street, and there is an unaccustomed buzz of excitement. The small queue outside WH Smith disappeared as soon as the shop opened, yet half-an-hour later there is still a steady stream of people struggling upstairs to its music department to purchase their copy of I Dreamed a Dream, the debut album by Susan Boyle.

For those who have been holidaying on the dark side of the Moon, Boyle is the last word in local-girl-made-good stories, transformed from pub singer into “SuBo”, the Diva, in the space of just seven months. Her album is already the biggest pre-ordered CD in the history of the online retailer, Amazon, and she is the bookies’ favourite to be Christmas No. 1 on both sides of the Atlantic.

Under the circumstances, it’s a shame that the Bathgate store has only 70 copies of the CD, because it is destined to be sold out by noon, says Winnie Campbell, the manager. “It’s normally absolutely dead in here before 11 o’clock,” said Mrs Campbell, smiling in wonder. “This morning we just can’t get anything else done.”

Such is the magic of reality TV. A year ago, no one in Bathgate would have looked twice at Boyle, 48, whose only real work had been with the local Catholic church in her home village of Blackburn, three miles away.

Then, in April, she went to audition for Britain’s Got Talent, the ITV show, changing buses six times before she reached the studio at the SECC in Glasgow. She was a sensation, and within 48 hours, her sweet soaring voice, and her awkward manner had made her famous all over the world.

Nowadays her extraordinary story is so familiar, it seems only natural that on Saturday, she should be jetted off to New York to sing outside the Rockefeller Centre, on American’s leading network breakfast programme, The Today Show.

Bathgate is as far from the Rockefeller Centre as it is possible to imagine. Every other retailer is a pound shop. British Leyland shut up shop in the town long ago and there has not been a substantial employer here since 2003, when Motorola pulled out, laying off 3,000 people. It can seem a bleak and broken place and for the locals, Boyle’s success and her resilience burn even brighter.

“The town has been dying a death — Susan has done a great thing,” says Thomas Burns, whose wife, Liz, is clutching the couple’s treasured CD. She agrees: “It’s nice that people get to hear about the place.” That they have. Within days of her first TV appearance, paparazzi were following SuBo as she bussed into Bathgate to visit Stein’s the butchers, or meet her friends at the Balbairdie Hotel. So many reporters sat on her garden fence, outside her drab house in Blackburn, that the fence fell over and had to be replaced by the council.

James Murphy, 77, a former miner, has bought eight copies of the album, to give to friends and family. He has more reason than most to invest his hard-earned pension in the music — he organised concerts for Boyle 30 years ago, when she was a teenager.

“The first time she won a competition, she gave the prize money away,” remembers Mr Murphy. “It was at the Happy Valley pub in Blackburn and she won £300. She said: ‘I don’t do money — what would I need it for?’.”

Mr Murphy, a singer himself, toured with Susan around the clubs and pubs of West Lothian. Was it a proving ground for Broadway? Mr Murphy has no doubt that Susan will hold her own in New York. “She’ll do well as long as no one takes a loan of her — some people can latch on and bleed you dry,” says Mr Murphy. “But I’m not too worried for her. Susan’s no dolly bird and in America, they love that rags to riches thing. Last week she went to M&Co to get her outfit. She’ll never change.”

By now, its 10am, at the Balbairdie Hotel and the sound of Cry Me A River, the album’s third track, is seeping through the window. The landlady, Lorraine Campbell, 47, has been a friend to Susan since childhood, and her hotel is a refuge for the singer.

“Susan is a very independent lady,” says Ms Campbell. “She went and found success on her own terms and she deals with it on her own terms. There’s always been a purity about Susan: she not after the fame or the money. She just wants to be accepted.”

That's from the Scottish edition of the Times. There's also a splash about Trump, and a something in the national edition about the Fringe.

"He was a monster in a human skin"

“I see James Rennie as somebody who I thought I knew, but actually I didn’t know that person at all. That person is someone I once spent a lot of time with, a face I know and recognise because we shared experiences together. But he was actually an outrageous and disgusting monster. He had a job and a suit and went to work and bought Ikea sofas and shopped in Sainsbury’s, all the usual stuff. But it was just a façade. That’s how I rationalise it. I never saw this as a betrayal. I think, ‘You weren’t my friend at all. You just pretended to be to suit your own ends.’ He was just a skin and a shell. Underneath, that person was not in any shape or form a person I knew. He is an inhuman and amoral monster.”

That's the father of a child abused by James Rennie, who, with Neil Strachan, was given a life sentence for his central role in a criminal conspiracy to abuse children. Their network of contacts reached out all over the world through the internet, and the information obtained by police in Scotland will ultimately lead to hundreds of convictions in Britain, Europe and America. Read about it here:

Times front page.

Rennie profile.

How the internet normalised child abuse.

Dark sky at night, astronomers' delight

At the end of a garden path, in a home-made observatory overlooking Wee Glenamour Loch, there’s an air of expectancy among a gaggle of astronomers who have gathered. Not because it’s a good night for star-gazing. It’s not: the skies are leaden and the rain is rising in stair-rods. But here on the edge of the Galloway Forest Park, locals are preparing to celebrate its recognition as a Dark-Sky Park, an award unique in Europe, that will rank this lonely corner of South West Scotland alongside just two other areas in the world.

Next month, the International Dark-Sky Association – based in Tucson, Arizona - will convene to ratify the report of its inspectors in Britain. Final tests, which begin tonight in the shrouded hills of Glen Trool, are almost certain to confirm a first batch of readings that registered parts of the vast and lonely forest at Bortle 2 on the international darkness scale. For the uninitiated, Bortle 2 is as dark as it gets on dry land, anywhere in the world; only in the middle of the ocean, where light pollution is entirely absent, could you experience the profound blackness of Bortle 1.

“There will be a little bit of pride. I will be able to say: ‘I live in the dark-sky park’ and I’ll push it for all its worth,” says Dr Robin Bellerby, 69, a former headmaster, and chairman of the Wigtownshire Astronomical Society. “All teachers are missionaries. This can be a solitary hobby , but we like to interest people to join with us and turn their heads up.”

Barring perhaps Cape Wrath, the most remote point of mainland Britain, nothing compares to Galloway for astronomers. Far from large towns and cities – Glasgow and Edinburgh are over the hills and more than two hours away to the north – and with the atmosphere cleansed by frequent rain, the quality of darkness is exceptional.

You don’t need rocket science to explain why the forest park is special says Steve Owens, the UK national co-ordinator of the International Year of Astronomy, and one of tonight’s three inspectors. It’s simple: high quality darkness depends on an absence of light. Light pollution from sodium lamps in the city “is a terrible spoiler for astronomers," he says. “On the clearest night in London, you might be able to pick out only 200 stars.” In Galloway Forest Park some 7,000 fill the sky. Weather permitting.

Sheltered by a stand of pines near the small town of Newton Stewart, Dr Bellerby and his friends feel the benefit. The observatory sits on the edge 320 square miles of parkland in which there are just 414 “points of light”, or houses. When the Forestry Commission contacted the householders asking for their assistance in the dark-sky campaign, all but three agreed to douse unnecessary lights and keep buildings dark.

It is probably helps that, according to legend at least, astronomy is a secret passion for many locals. A couple of years ago, sensors in the roads, that count vehicles, registered a surprisingly high volume of traffic travelling into the forest park in the darkest hours of night. The local constabulary, alerted to possible foul play, descended on a car park by the inky blackness of Clatteringshaws Loch. They found not drug dealers, sheep rustlers or even Stan Collymore and friends; just a group of guys with cagoules and thermos flasks, their telescopes trained on the Crab Nebula

But not tonight, as the rain clatters on the observatory roof. “Won’t see anything, I’m afraid,” says Dr Bellerby, with the cheery demeanour of a man who, for once, is looking forward to a good eight hours sleep.

Last Wednesday, “a lovely night”, he had wiled away the evening totting up the man-made objects he could see above his head: two American military satellites; two pieces of Russian rocket; the international space station – “that’s bloody large” - and a communications contraption. All this in the silent sky above the unsuspecting farmers of Newton Stewart? “Yes, yes,” says Dr Bellerby contentedly. “Two hours after dark you’ll probably see 30 satellites. A deck chair’s super. Just lie there and slowly track them.”

But the real joys come with the Heavenly delights: the Milky way sprawling east to west across the hills; Jupiter, with its moons clearly visible in the southern skies. Or, with the right alignment of sun spots, a stunning display of the Northern Lights. “I never saw it for a couple of years,” said Dr Bellerby. “Then a neighbour rang me. He said, ‘You know how you were complaining about never seeing the Aurora? Get into your garden now.’ And there it was, in all its glory, from west to east and following the coast north. Absolutely extraordinary.”

The final decision of the International Dark Sky Association will be taken on 16 or 17 November. Should Galloway make the grade, the announcement will coincide with the Leonid meteor shower, an annual celestial firework show which promises to be more spectacular this year than it has been for a century. “As if in celebration,” says Dr Bellerby, eyeing the sky expectantly.

I didn't think this article would make the paper. It did, puffed on the front. A shortened version is currently (ie as I post this) the most read article at the timesonline website, Dark Place. Don't these people realise you only get the unexpurgated version on Wade's World?

Photo by James Glossop, who, in the words of Barry Manilow, made it through the rain.

Herta who?

“It is a great regret that the Anglo-Saxon world is so rich in itself but so insulated to the outer world,” says Per Wästberg, chair of the Nobel literature committee. "Only detective stories cross borders. Nothing that is truly well-written and original counts. There are exceptions, but the poor British are often so astounded when it comes to a Nobel winner. They say, ‘Who is that? We haven’t heard of him.’ ”

Behind the scenes at the Nobel Prize for Literature, in the Weekend Review section of today's Times. Inside the Nobel.

Comrades. Does anyone read this stuff? Indeed they do - there's already a link to the "fascinating" original from The Literary Salon.

Scrub my skin with women .. .

Adrian Mitchell's theatricality was famously captured on film, when he read To Whom it May Concern, his stirring anti-Vietnam poem, at the Royal Albert Hall in 1965. He is pictured striding away through a rapturous audience of 7,500 after his final rhetorical flourish: “So scrub my skin with women / Chain my tongue with whisky / Stuff my nose with garlic / Coat my eyes with butter / Fill my ears with silver / Stick my legs in plaster /Tell me lies about Vietnam.”

“He was so nervous before that show,” said Mitchell's wife, Celia Hewitt, an actress, who had been unable to attend the reading because she was on stage at Stratford East. “He had been to buy himself a blue suit from Carnaby Street, which he wore. But nobody expected so many people to turn up and the steps of the Royal Albert Hall were strewn with flowers. I arrived late and saw Alan Sillitoe coming out. I said: ‘Was he any good?’ Alan told me: ‘He was the star.’”

More of this story here. The bit at the top is a rather tenuous Scottish link; the rest is quite jolly. Mitchell.

And whether you've read Mitchell's stuff or not, you'll love this. He's reading at the Royal Albert Hall. The guy on acid is Allen Ginsberg. All I see is flames.