Southern Belle

THE BOOK SHELF The Night Before Morning

By Alistair Moffat

What happens when one of Scotland’s fnest narrative historians is locked down on his Borders farm without access to the people, places or archives he would usually be seeking out for his books? He starts making it up, that’s what, and Alistair Moffat’s turn to fction has produced a fantastic, fascinating, page-turner of a frst novel, The Night Before Morning.

From the striking cover image, you can tell that this is going to be a book in the same vein as Robert Harris’ Fatherland or Philip K Dick’s The Man in the High Castle: a classic Edinburgh view, looking along Princes Street from Calton Hill, is chillingly altered. In the foreground, the monument to Enlightenment economist and mathematician Duguld Stewart is topped by a swastika, planes fy over Edinburgh Castle in formation. In Moffat’s fctional world, Britain has fallen under Nazi control. This is a powerful and provocative set-up, and it is enthralling to travel into this counterfactual, speculative scenario alongside Moffat’s protagonist David Erskine.

The action begins in 1944. Erskine, a young soldier, lands on the Normandy beaches on D-Day and progresses through France and Belgium. He’s in Holland when he witnesses the seismic event that changes the course of world history. After a daring escape from a POW camp, he becomes a fugitive in Scotland, determined to fght back and thwart the Nazis on his home soil. This resistance plot begins in the Borderlands, where David enlists the help of his fancée Katie. The university town of St Andrews is harbouring a secret research laboratory and the pair end up in a helter-skelter race across Scotland. It’s reminiscent of that other Border novelist John Buchan, full of his spirit of adventure and feats of derring-do. The stakes are high, and you will be gripped.

Moffat’s descriptions of the landscape and the indomitable people who aid David and Katie on their mission are written from the heart, by an author who knows the ground on which his characters tread. Plenty of whisky is consumed along the way. You can tell that Moffat’s imagination roamed free during lockdown, over his beloved Border hills all the way to the peninsula of Rhu by Arisaig in the West Highlands. This thrilling novel is the result. We hope that more will follow.

The Night Before Morning by Alistair Moffat is published by Birlinn (£8.99, paperback) www.birlinn.co.uk

Southern Belle

Belated Birthday and Belated Heads Up

Well, we finally did it! Seventeen months after my 60th Birthday, on the day of lockdown and after four attempts, we managed the birthday lunch, organised by my lovely neighbours. Lunch in a local restaurant followed by an impromptu BBQ on our new lock down patio or “terraaace” as we like to call it.

What do you do when twelve people drop in for dinner? You raid the freezer, which is nearly empty and BBQ pheasant, venison, wild boar and salmon, making you look like the poshest house in the village. Dig up some of the tatties from the garden and courgettes, the crop that just keeps giving. Throw in a collection of wine, whisky and port from around the village and a frozen pavlova, held off from a previous donation from one of the guests (which made her night) and the perfect birthday is the result.

Despite not being able to dance without a mask on, tour guiding is looking more likely so I decide to get a jump on my vaccine certificate, ready to go. Nightmare!!! Belated heads up for anyone doing this. You should have kept your vaccine letter from your first vaccination (binned immediately) as that’s where your user name is and the date of your first vaccine, which you need to allow you to register. Who knew?! After an hour of trying to find out how to get the information, I had the genius idea to check our village facebook page, as that was how we found out that there was “an administrative error” which meant I was invited to go for my first vaccination the day after the appointment. Scroll back to Feb and there it is! Sorted.

From a household of three, two letters arrived late, one second vaccination organised after no letter and four phone calls and this week a letter to say that you still haven’t had your first vaccination when the happened weeks ago the second one is due next week!!!

Hey Ho…roll on travel for anyone vaccinated and anyone who isn’t…just get it done!.