I’ve posted about Glenrothes before, so, briefly, for the benefit of people coming at the blog for the first time, it’s a Scottish New Town (b. 1948) which I grew up in, never expected to return to, and from which I’m only now, 30 years since that return, planning my escape from.

I have mixed feelings about the place – I’ll defend it to the death from any outsider who dares to criticise it, and yet it frustrates me that it’s never quite become post-war utopia my parents’ visionary generation  had in mind.

Anyway, 71 years on, and 50 or so from its period of greatest expansion, one of its strengths is its greenery. The best time to capture that, of course, is May – June in Scotland – once the rain and snow of winter and early spring have receded, and the disappointing smirr that welcomes the kids to their summer holidays in July hasn’t got started yet.

However, the Redoubtable Mrs F also likes to take pictures of stuff in the frost. The weather’s been dipping in and out of sub-zero most of this late autumn/early winter, so, starting in our garden, and then heading out into the area around our house, she’s been taking some belters.

Here are just a few of them:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good, huh?

That was to be the end of this story. Then, yesterday, we went up to see my brother and sister-in-law in Birnam, and crossed the Highland Line with the photo underneath. Incidentally, I didn’t notice till yesterday a plaque by the Inchewan Burn there which says it marked the traditional boundary between the Gaelic-speaking Highlands and the Scots-speaking Lowlands.

That was probably a couple of hundred years ago right enough.

 

 

 

 

P.S. I’ve uploaded a seasonal track from one of my previous albums recently – downloadable free until the shortest day!