Renewed energy.

They say nature abhors a vacuum. (Someone said!) It found me vacuous and has provided two projects that I actually feel enthusiasm for. That and an uplift in High Street sales has chirped me up no end.

I had an interesting conversation with a Yorkshire bookseller yesterday about the onward march of Toad the Terrible. The sentence: "He needs diddlin'. Diddlin' from a great height," both amused and confused me. 'To diddle' in my part of the world means to cheat someone out of their money. Well, that might be good too, (although hard when he is penniless) but it seems in Yorkshire it means to jiggle up and down (on the end of a rope.) The toad is to be found amongst the ranks of pleasant looking chaps in the 'Friends over 50' dating matches looking surly and sinister, though I suppose he was going for craggy. There really is no way that round moon face could ever look craggy. The shiny pate has plenty of room for the required government health warning to be stamped on it. There is general hopefulness that the police will catch up with him for traffic offences (how appropriate!)

'Poop Poop!'

In the meantime I have to try to clean a trio of books on Le Corbusier covered in hessian. They must have looked very chic at the time of publication but the coarse grain picks up the dust dreadfully and is hard to clean. With these three came another book on Italian Architecture of the 50's ('Italian Architecture of Today') which proudly shows reinforced concrete multi-story blocks of the most unpleasing aspect. Our current Bonnie Prince Charles would writhe to see them so praised for their clean geometric lines. I wonder if they are still highly regarded. from what I've seen of these excrescences all over Europe they don't mellow with age in the least. It was a terrible time for architecture. There is a 1950's blockhouse at the extreme East End of Forres High Street which was built to house the library and community centre. Unfortunates who get married in Forres in the registry office have to enter this soulless and unforgiving structure to do so. To have added this to a High Street lined predominately with stone buildings pre-1914, the oldest being 18th century, makes one doubt the very existence of soul. The house I live in is one of the few that still have crow step gables (at the rear only) and is dated 1798 (Somewhere. I've never found it, but the previous owner assured me the date is there under the pebble-dash) and the building is mentioned for its crows steps in "The District of Moray: An Architectural Guide." ) It isn't as old as Florries the Florist which weighs in at 1748 a few doors up.

I have grown moderately fond of Forres over the years. Born in the south of England where buildings of warm pink brick are the norm and small towns like Saffron Walden and Lavenham are ravishingly pretty, it has taken me time to become accustomed to the grey stone, dourly utilitarian linear developments of many Scottish towns who appear to have little or no heart to them. Lossiemouth is an example; a long wide chilly road full of rather featureless buildings in the ubiquitous grey stone. The only truly pretty town I can think of at this end of the universe is Cromarty on the Black Isle which is little more than a fishing village, houses huddled together for shelter, now often painted white, with little cobbled lanes between them, nice gardens full of flowers and shrubs, home once to the famous geologist Hugh Miller.

My first impressions of Forres 25 years ago (good grief!) wasn't heartwarming, but I was anti town at the time having lived for too long in cities, first London then Brussels. I was craving countryside, clean air and the smell of the sea. Asked then if I would like to live where I am now the answer would have been an irritable 'NO.' It has changed a lot over those 25 years - or maybe I have put flesh on the bones. The buildings have acquired associations with people and events that have caused it to live for me. I can almost call it home.