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Karl Williams Photography, Kirkintilloch (2026)

06/05/2026

Before I start on the descriptive bit, a bit of peripheral information to enrich your lives. An apocryphal tale records that, in 1915 or thereabouts, a hundred or so fierce-looking soldiers were seen boarding a train in London bound for Dover, where they were due to be ferried across the English Channel to Calais and thence to the allied front line. One of the officials at the station, curious about the foreign-sounding accents of the soldiers, asked one of them where he was from. "Ross-shire", replied the soldier. "Russia?", queried the official. "Aye, Ross-shire" came the reply. As you might imagine, that bit of info went like a rocket from mouth to mouth and eventually reached the gentlemen of the Fourth Estate, as the Press were known in those days, generating the headline: "SHOCK HORROR PROBE: RUSSIANS IN LONDON!! Reports of snow seen on their boots! More details on pages 2-16, 18-32 and back page." (or something like that, anyway). What the solders were, it transpired, were two companies of the Seaforth Highlanders based in barracks near Inverness.

Anyway, I digress - which, as successions of undergraduate civil engineering students will doubtless testify, is something I'm prone to do from time to time. So, without more ado about nothing in particular, on with the story before I forget what I was supposed to be talking about:

Ross-shire is, by common usage and by virtue of their very different topologies, divided into two parts: Wester Ross and Easter Ross. Wester Ross is mountainous, spectacular and extremely photogenic, whereas Easter Ross .. er .. isn't. It's possible that I'm doing Easter Ross a severe disservice with this description because, with the exception of a brief diversion once to Tesco in Dingwall to get milk, I haven't actually been there. But, for any denizens of Easter Ross who are reading this and are a bit miffed with me, I promise I'll get round to visiting your neck of the woods in due course and will shower your beauty spots with appropriately fulsome praise.

Like many cartographic features involving this sort of thing, nobody is quite sure exactly where the border between the two bits is. Is it, as is sometimes cited, on the west/east watershed running through the county, or is it, as irreverently suggested by your humble servant, where the scenery starts to get uninteresting? As previously, help is at hand with the another Williams-type rule of thumb, namely: the border follows the A835 between Strathpeffer and Ullapool with, when travelling north west, everything on the left being in Wester Ross and everything on the right being in Easter Ross - UNLESS, and it's an important UNLESS, the scenery on the right is mountainous and spectacular, such as Loch Glascarnoch and the Beinn Dearg massif, in which case it's deemed (by me!) to be in Wester Ross.

Wester Ross is further divided by the long narrow gash of Loch Maree running from Poolewe at its north west end to Kinlochewe at its south east end. The area to the north east of the loch is known, with good reason, as "The Great Wilderness" since it's almost totally devoid of human habitation, more mountainous than most comparative areas, and accessible only by long and rough walk-ins from the peripheral main roads. To the south west of Maree is Gairloch, the ever popular Glen Torridon with its tryptych of easily accessible Munros (mountains over 3,000 ft in height) - Beinn Eighe, Liathach and Beinn Alligin - Shieldaig, the Applecross Peninsular and, last but not least, Plockton and Loch Carron.

And so to the image: It's the mighty Liathach (trans: "The Grey One") viewed from Loch Clair on a calm February morning. Can't really think of anything else to say about it because it rather speaks for itself.

21/04/2026

Good afternoon Ladies, Gentlemen and those who haven’t yet decided what they are. For the benefit of those of you in the latter class, it’s “make your mind up” time following the recent decision of the Supreme Court which stated that, in effect, it’s either male or female because there ain’t nothing else: either one or t’other but not both.

As you’ve probably noticed, the world as we know it seems to be in something of an uproar. On the other side of the Pond, the Big Orange One is still failing to appreciate that, if he wants the world to recognise him as “Leader of the Free World”, he’s got to start behaving like a leader and not like a spoilt child who throws his toys out of the pram every time he doesn’t get his own way. All that does is p**s people off and you really don’t want to do that coming up to the middle of your last term if you want one of your shouty, but offensively bad mannered and ignorant, acolytes to take over the Presidency when you depart. All I read in the newspapers at the moment is the progress of the great God Trump rampaging through various parts of the world like a latter day Cecil Rhodes taking over countries against the will of their inhabitants, and turning them into profitable colonies of the great God USA, thereby enabling the extremely grateful natives to become rich beyond their wildest dreams - and, of course, to provide a sizeable profit for Mr T. Just as the British Empire introduced the natives of the Asian subcontinent to such delights as Bread and Butter Pudding, Brown Windsor Soup, Cricket and the English Language, it is undoubtedly the case that the Americans will, in time, introduce the occupants of the new country of “Trumpland” to Bagels, Hot Dogs and Big Macs, and enable them to converse in a new language called “Amercan” in which words such “Defence”, “Centre”,“Aluminium” and “Braces” transmogrify magically into “Defense”, “Center”, “Aluminum” and “Suspenders”. The “Pound Sterling” will, of course, be renamed “The Dollar” after the well-known town in Clackmannanshire, Scotland’s smallest county.

Unfortunately, however, it’s clear that we’re in much the same situation on our side of the pond as “The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” has been taken over by a fiscally and economically illiterate bunch of yahoos called “The Labour Party” under the mediocre leadership of a mediocre ex-lawyer and mediocre son of a (possibly) mediocre toolmaker called Sir Two-Tier-Kier Starmer and a Cabinet comprising such luminaries as Rachel From-Accounts, the economically illiterate ex-manager of the Complaints Department of the local bank in Neasden, Spammy-Jammy Lammy, the leader of the Six-Form Geography Society of North Tottenham Comprehensive School, currently engaged in the onerous task of transferring the Chagos Island Dependency to Mauritius, a small island in the Indian Ocean approximately 1,300 miles away from The Chagos Islands, and Edward Millipede, the Secretary of State for Inefficient Energy Production at Huge Cost and Effort. It’s very possible that much of the effort of typing this paragraph will be wasted as it’s eminently possible that the current Prime Minister will, much to the chagrin of the Leader of the Opposition and the Sketch Writers of the Daily Telegraph, shortly be leaving his post owing to his ³current abysmal performance in, well, pretty much everything including answering questions put to him in the course of Prime Minister’s Question Time. You will, of course, be regularly updated by your humble correspondent in this regard.

It’s biccie time, or even Piccie time for the purists, and today’s piccie is of “Quinag”, an impressive lump in Sutherland, Scotland’s most northerly county. The name Quinag is, I’m told, an anglicisation of the Gaelic name “Chuinneag” - a milk pail - which apparently reflects its distinctive shape. No, I can’t see it either, even with my reading specs on, but there you go! It’s made of billion year old Torridonian Sandstone - same stuff as Suilven is made of - resting on a substrata of several billion year old Lewisian Gneiss. Nice, eh! For considerably more info than I can provide without bullsh*tting to the absolute maximum, you are cordially invited to have a squint at the incredible work of Chris Puddephatt (.co.uk) who has spent years and years clambering over every Crook and Nanny of the mountain! Enjoy!

02/04/2026

The “April Fool” joke has been a tradition in western countries since the 14th century, I’m reliably informed by the font of all knowledge: Wikipedia. Today, as it happens, is “All Fool’s Day” - to use the correct term - the day on which the jokes are played on unsuspecting targets. Back in the 14th century, a year or two before your humble correspondent was born, the jokes were somewhat infantile in nature, such as fixing a note on the victim’s back which invites all and sundry to give a swift kick to his backside. [Editor’s note: It is generally accepted that those of the female persuasion were, according to the PMW in her best poe-faced style, unlikely to have the requisite degree of immaturity to appreciate the level of humour necessary to laugh at such japes, hence the use throughout of the male possessive pronoun.] Customs have changed since the 14th century, however, and the nature of humour has changed from “performative” to “cerebral”.

In particular, the custom of bogus articles and advertisements appearing in newspapers and advertisements on April 1st is increasingly common. Indeed, it has been known for bogus television programmes to make the odd appearance from time to time. The first example of such, to my memory at least, appeared on the Panorama “news and current affairs” programme on BBC Television back in 1957 when the BBC was worth watching. The programme in question came from Switzerland and was about the annual harvest of the spaghetti crop from the trees on which it was grown. Panorama cameraman Charles de Jaeger dreamed up the story after remembering how teachers at his school in Austria teased his classmates for being so stupid that if they were told that spaghetti grew on trees, they would believe it. The editor of Panorama, Michael Peacock, bought into it, gave de Jaeger a budget of £100 and sent him off to the chosen location(s) to do his best. The report was made more believable through its voice-over by the revered broadcaster Richard Dimbleby. Peacock said Dimbleby knew they were using his authority to make the joke work, and that he - Dimbleby - loved the idea and went at it eagerly.

At the time, 7 million of the 15.8 million homes (about 44%) in Britain had television receivers. Pasta was not an everyday food in 1950s Britain, and it was known mainly from tinned spaghetti in tomato sauce and considered by many to be an exotic delicacy. An estimated eight million people watched the programme on 1 April 1957, and hundreds phoned in the following day to question the authenticity of the story or ask for more information about spaghetti cultivation and how they could grow their own spaghetti trees; the BBC told them to "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best".

Today, the Daily Telegraph did its bit for this year’s April Fool’s Day by announcing the launch, by Energy Secretary Millipede, of a campaign discouraging the use of kettles by tea and coffee lovers to make their daily cuppas. Mr Millipede noted that, since boiling kettles for the 200 million cups of tea and coffee we get through each day accounts for up to 2% of the nation’s entire electricity use, a change to iced tea or cold coffee, and a possible outright ban on hot beverages, would help him reach his net zero targets. Accompanying the article was a survey of readers to determine the willingness of Telegraph readers to boil their kettles less to help combat the energy crisis. Whilst 92% of the 16,000 readers participating responded to the survey with a “NO” vote, a staggering 8% responded with a “YES” vote - suggesting that 8% of the readers of the “Daily Telegraph” were either too stupid to realise that this was an April Fool joke or were actually closet lefties, greens or liberals who had temporarily migrated from “The Guardian” with the intention of making trouble. For what it’s worth, my guess is that they were old farts like me who’d either misplaced their specs, or whose fingers were too shaky to accurately hit the right button! (Don’t mock - it’ll eventually happen to you one day!)

Ben Loyal, Sutherland.

18/03/2026

The scene is the kitchen of the Shakespeare household in Stratford upon Avon:

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more .. er .. more …

Mistress Hathaway? Pay attention, Woman! We haven’t got all bloody day! Here am I, trying to compose a bloody sonnet with a view to becoming the most renowned poet and playwright of all time and there you are doing the bloody washing and .. waddya mean: what’s a sonnet? .. ffs, woman, a sonnet is a ..er.. let me see.. ah yes .. it is, and I quote from memory: a fourteen line poem written in iambic pentameter, employing one of several rhyme themes and adhering to a tightly structured thematic organisation. Everybody knows that, you be-skirted female muppet! Sometimes words fail me! So, with your gracious, but appallingly uneducated, permission, let us resume:

”.. Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May ..”

See, it’s not hard if you put your mind to it. I’ve even paid you a compliment by referring to you as “temperate”. So, that’s it for the time being so, while I attempt to relax and regain my poetic composure, you get on with preparing what, these days, passes for lunch.

Meanwhile, the present snippet of news is that I actually managed to managed to walk a little bit along the banks of the Forth and Clyde Canal at Auchinstarry at the behest of, and with the help of, my best mate David Mould. This was the first time I actually managed some meaningful exercise other than pottering about in the garden. David and I have been photographing the canal together for some years now but he knows it far better than I do. In fact, I have never been further east down the canal than Twechar. In return for my efforts, the east wind started to blow a hooley into my face and, to make matters worse, it started to rain. There wasn’t a chance in hell of me taking the camera out of the bag, much less actually taking a photograph with it. Even the crows ran for cover it was that fierce!

Whilst on the subject of crows, both Mouldy and I have tame crows which befriended us a few years back. Dave’s crow is called “Colin” and I, being the more inventive of the two of us, have called mine “Corvid 19” in memory of the recent pandemic which frightened the life out of that proportion of the population without functioning brain cells - which appeared to be about 90% of the political classes and, of course, a similar proportion of the police force. As many of you have become aware, both of these crows have made the odd appearance in our images. I have a feeling that I’ve probably mentioned before that, if human beings had the same brain power as that of crows, the Battle of Agincourt would have been fought with machine guns instead of bows and arrows. Now that’s a thought to occupy your minds!

The piccie is of Beinn Chabhair, just south of Crianlarich. I loved the resemblance to the classical "crags and stags" paintings of the Victorian era.

09/03/2026

Good afternoon Ladies, Gentlemen and those who aren’t quite sure. I trust all is well with you.

Having browsed through the latest news in the Daily Telegraph this morning, the item that grabbed my eye was something about a ruckus between Messrs Trump and Starmer about the latter’s approach to “getting on board” with the fight with Iran. Apparently, Mr T thinks Mr S’s response was “woefully inadequate” largely because it was held up by “lawyerly prevarications and internal Labour politics”. Apparently, our PM and his legal eagles have not quite grasped the fact that there is no such thing as “International Law” per se. There are agreements between individual countries concerning the conduct of conflicts between those countries, and there are those which involve supranational organisations like the International Criminal Court, but there is no heavenly Supreme Court to adjudicate on such. Even if there was, many countries (USA, China, Russia, India, Israel, Iran, Pakistan,Saudi Arabia, Turkey and North Korea) don’t consider themselves to be bound by such. A quick perusal of the nature of those countries suggests to cynics like my good self a fairly obvious reason for their non-membership. That aside, the people that Mr Starmer mixes with (e.g. the government’s Attorney General) are the top supporters of the “pretend” international law because the cases involved generate big bucks for them. If you disbelieve that, remember the old adage which asks what the difference is between a Lawyer and a Turbot: one is a slimy bottom feeder and the other is a fish. I theng yew! Unfortunately Mr T, having got that off his chest, lost control of his mouth (a frequent occurrence when attempting to bully a weaker opponent into submission) and launched into a scathing attack which denigrated the British armed forces’ performance in Afghanistan, suggesting a certain reluctance on their part to close with the enemy. That suggestion “went down like a lead parachute” as the price paid in blood by many, many soldiers, demonstrated. He may have cause to regret that outburst, since it displayed a little more of the bully-boy character of the self-styled “Leader of the Free World” than might have been advisable for him.

The PMW, with her usual perspicacity, suggests that it might benefit me to stop reading the newspapers and to concentrate on learning to work the infernal machine in which I’ve just invested just short of £2 grand in an attempt to bring myself up to date with my processing. I’m gradually getting to grips with it but you chaps and chapettes will have to be the judges of that. Be gentle with me, please …

01/03/2026

Hmmm? What? Yes, that’s right: it’s me, your humble correspondent, logging in after an absurdly long absence. No, I’m not dead, even though there are those who might very well think I am, or who might think my demise is, at the least, somewhat overdue.

So what have I been doing since I last appeared on your screens? Not a great deal, I’m afraid, other than pester my ever-patient long-standing pal, David Mould, for help in getting to grips with my latest expensive toy: an iMac 24˝ M4. Whilst I’ve always been computer-literate, my 77-year-old brain isn’t quite as agile as it used to be - particularly when its required to deal with more than one piece of information at a time. I asked my eldest son, a Psychologist, what he thought the problem was and the helpful reply was “you’re just old, live with it”. “Hmmm”, I thought, “ .. I can see why you’re paid the big bucks, sunshine …”. So - back to the spiel before I forget what I’m supposed to be doing:

One of the biggest problems I faced with the new machine is the incessant need to invent, and remember passwords of such complexity that they would baffle bloody Einstein: e.g. “A minimum of 10 characters with at least 3, but no more than 5, lower-case letters, and at least 3, but no more than 5 upper case letters, and no symbols.” What feckin’ world do these geeks live in? And why, FFS, do I need a password to get access to the bloody machine?. Who the bloody hell do they think will break into the house to steal my computer? We live in a bloody cul-de-sac with a hundred feckin’ eyes (including dogs, cats, and magpies) watching any potential burglar, five 1000-watt street lights and, to cap it all, an ex copper living two doors away. Have the bloody Great Train Robbers or T.C Campbell (look it up on Google under “Glasgow Gangster”) moved in without anyone noticing? As if it wasn’t difficult enough to think of a password, the only way to remember it is to write it down somewhere and then remember where I hid the piece of paper without the PMW moving it to somewhere else (the “somewhere else” inevitably being somewhere that she couldn’t remember either?) Jeezoh, as if it wasn’t bad enough to have to put up with a bloody Labour government who, after only 6 months in power, is within £35 of bankrupting the feckin’ country. Mind you, it won’t be long now. Up until a couple of days ago, all the polls were pointing towards Mr Farage and the Reform Party as the successors to Starmer and his crew but the surprise winner of the recent by-election was the Green Party under the leadership of a clown born as David Paulden but now rejoicing in the name of Zack Polanski. Says it all I think. I suppose he and his acolytes will require us all to be Vegans living on Tofu (which, btw, is a type of food rather than a recently-discovered planet - but now that I think about it ….). I won’t get over-excited over this because clowns like him have tended to appear at by-elections since the dawn of time. Remember Screaming Lord Sutch? For the benefit of my friends across the pond, this was a particularly British thing which foreigners tend not to understand. It’s a bit like irony (which they’ve never understood, how ever patiently you try to explain it).

Karl Williams Photography

06/05/2026

21/04/2026

02/04/2026

18/03/2026

09/03/2026

01/03/2026

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