IN direst January, the lovelorn laird from the west threw in the towel and fled south.
Prowling the streets of Ullapool with a salmon landing net and a bouquet of wilting chrysanthemums hadn’t landed our friend a lady to share the lonely bothy where he and his mum hang out. The average age of the three Tinder respondents in his Highland orbit is 83 and none is rich.
For a man still in his early forties, to shack up with any of them would have been reckless, so it was swipe left and head for London. He called me from there with an update. Thanks to a new dating app, affairs had got rather zingy. He had met a nice Tajik NHS bowel specialist from Uzbekistan.
His medic worked night shifts in emergency admissions, which absolved the laird from having a full-time day job if they were actually to see each other. The pillow talk was electrifying: an eye-watering encyclopaedia of the objects Londoners get stuck inside their nether regions. It must have provided a Tajik with a fundamental insight into contemporary Britain.
Life was a bowl of cherries until the laird got a Monday morning text dismissing him, without coffee. In retrospect, he thinks the very understated sense of urgency that he, like the average West Highlander, customarily displays may not have matched the more driven ambitions of a career surgeon. She was more clinical, was how he saw it.
Denne historien er fra April 03, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra April 03, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds