This is Alasdair Baxter's
Personal Homepage
Alasdair Baxter
Fàilte mhath is thig a' steach.
Welcome, and do come in.
I'm very pleased that you managed to come round for a visit. I'm sure you'll stay for a cup of tea - or perhaps something a little bit stronger. I'm very sorry it will have to be the Virtual Tea because we haven't got any of the real stuff in at the moment. It's the same wi' the dram I'm afraid. At the moment, it's very difficult to send it through the cyberspace (whatever that is) but wi' a' this "new technology", anything could happen.. Anyway, it's a lot cheaper you know. We always look after the pennies north of the border - and especially in Aberdeen. Well, you see, I'm a Scotsman born and bred - and a graduate of the Granite City.
Aye, you'll no' remember back in 1969 when it was a very, very cold winter. The Aberdeen Corporation Transport Department prided themselves in how well they could run their fleet of buses at minimum cost. Well, the severe frost caught them unawares and the radiators of the buses froze solid. It was a terrible, terrible situation. Ah well, they were being very careful with the money, you see. They never bought any anti-freeze for the buses.
I suppose I'd better tell you a little about myself. I come from the Highlands of Scotland, a little village called Glencoe. As you can see from these pictures, it is a very attractive place.
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As you can imagine, the main industry of the area is tourism and the surrounding mountains are a magnet for mountaineers from all parts of the United Kingdom and beyond. Nearly all the private homes in the district offer bed and breakfast accommodation during the summer months from Easter till the end of September. Other sources of employment are forestry, the local authority and several small businesses. Fort William (15 miles and population about 6,000) is a seat of local government and quite a number of Glencoe people commute to the Fort William area for work. |  |
If you would like some further information about Glencoe and the
surrounding district of Lochaber, click here.
If you would like to have a look at my CV, click here
If you would like to have a look at my hobbies and interests, click here
If you would like to send me an e-mail at home, click
here.
Chi mi na Mòr Bheanna
If you would like to see the lyric of this song, click here.
OUR LANGUAGE
My native language is not English but Scots Gaelic. I learned English as a second language at about the age of 4 or 5 years. Gaelic is not a dialect of English but a totally separate language with a vocabulary and a grammatical structure radically different. Scots Gaelic is one of 6 Celtic languages, the others being Irish Gaelic, Manx Gaelic, Welsh, Breton and Cornish. The Celtic languages are divided into two groups P-Celtic and Q-Celtic. The P-Celtic group comprises Welsh, Breton and Cornish while the Q-Celtic group consists of Irish, Scots Gaelic and Manx. The difference between the Gaelics of Ireland and Scotland is probably similar to the difference between broad "Geordie" and broad Cockney while the difference between Scots Gaelic and Welsh is more like that between German and English. If you would like to know more about the Gaelic languages, the Gaelic College on the Isle of Skye, called Sabhal Mòr Ostaig (Ostaig's Big Barn) is always at hand to help. The college is part of the University of the Highlands and Islands project and they can be contacted on their excellent web page at <http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk>.
The two pictures of Glencoe are here courtesy of
the Lochaber and District Tourist Board.
The horizontal green lines are by courtesy of the Southwell Diocese
of the Church of England.
This page was last updated on Friday, 3rd July 1998 at 01:02 hours.