Scoop Taylor Re-union new date.

The Scoop Taylor shindig will now not take place in August 2011. The new date is probably going to be Saturday 18th June at the Duke Of Gordon Hotel to co-incide with the Kingussie Bikeathon being held that weekend.

Watch this blog for confirmation.

Scoop on Radio Scotland

Jumbo has re-connected with Karen Mckenzie (from Rothiemurchus) on Facebook. Karen and I went to school together and have not met or spoken for..well a long long time!  so its brilliant to be back in touch.

Karen co-presents the show 'MacAuly and Co' on BBC Radio Scotland, she loves the Scoop Archive and has invited me on the show for a wee chat with her and Fred on Wednesday 29th December 2010 at 11.30 am approx, I hope you can tune in!.

You can pick the show up on Sky as well as your radio and I believe BBC i player will have it also.

Here are links to the BBC webpage and also to Freds own webpage.

BBC show.

Fred MacAuly

The Scoop Taylor re-union will be happening on Friday August 5th 2011 at the Duke Of Gordon Hotel in Kingussie so please make a date for your diaries. The first Scoop Taylor book will be launched on that day also, so its very exciting for me. 2011 is going to be a busy year!!.

later!!

Jumbo.

Scoop Taylor Archive Book, Volume 1.

Finally getting my teeth into this book after a difficult but very productive summer. I had hoped to get the book out by christmas but being distracted by my own photographic works and being troubled with my health ( I've had M.E. over 20 years ) it might not happen this year. There are so many pictures and bits of text to pull together its proving harder than I thought. However its coming together now and I think it will be a good book.
I have started my own publishing company called 'Jumbo Editions'...yes very inspirational name ha ha!! This is something I've wanted to do for many years and its quite a complicated game but I'm determined to make it happen so happen it will!.
Below is my chosen 'Jumbo Editions' logo appropriately a photo taken by dad in 1973 at the summit of 
Cairngorm.

 

Arrival

Margaret says.. 


One cold, cold frosty morning in January, many moons ago, I was woken with a loud bang on the door and a commotion in the lobby at 22.
Traipsing down the stairs on the cold linoeleum, I saw dad talking to Dr Ramsay our GP.
The great news was Lil had delivered her 6th child in Aberdeen Maternity and low and behold it was the first son John!!!!
I remember standing shivering in the lobby, no central heating ,solid cold lino floors with the odd rug here and there.One coal fire for the whole house which was in the sitting room ,and this had gone out overnight, dad didnt have time to re light it,to get it warm for us bairns to come down to. I had been farmed out that week to Uncle Willies and Auntie Beths in Buckpool as mum was taken into Aberdeen Maternity early,Auntie Jess stayed at 22 to look after the rest of us.For no rhyme or reason I was sent back to 22 ( well there may have been a reason but i can't remember it) I just remember walking back up Yuill Aenue on the Saturday.
Dad then said to me get dressed and take the bike over to Buckpool and tell Uncle Ernie and Auntie Vi the good news.That was the first I knew about you John !!!!!!!

Another story from Margaret

In our time of being comfy or well off or whatever you called it,dad decided to get a local Jock Thain to come and tame our unruly garden at 22, Dad was never a gardener or handy man or anything to with DIY.
So Jock came and tamed the garden and planted lots and lots of vegetables.He tended the garden most weeks and we lived off the spoils.
On Sundays whilst we were all at Church /Sunday School,mum was at home with the baby of the time and getting Sunday dinner ready for us all.
We would all walk to the North Kirk, berets on at a jaunty angle ,Clarks school shoes shone like the silvery moon because dad had polished them that very morning,shiny shoes were a badge of your decent upbringing, and dad in his best pin stripe suit,we were really part of the business mans community ,here at the kirk we had our own pew on the right handside half way down the isle. Werent we posh ??? Mid way thro the morning service the youngsters we be chaperoned off to Sunday school ,which was held in the church hall at the back of the church.This heralded 11 am, and by 11.30 am it was all over,father collected us and off we trooped back up High Street, left into Well road and right into Yuill Avenue.The comfort that I get from that mental picture is one of indescribable pleasure, we were so happy, so content,and wanted for nothing, not even our parents love,because at this time in our life we got it in abundance. OK they never told us they loved us , but their actions spoke a thousand words and there was I cocooned in their arms. I didnt give a shit, but I also didn't know what was ahead of us.

12 September 2010 09:46

New post using one of my sister Margarets comments.

1960's early ish. saw us move to Killin with the Coop butcher,dad had been a peripatetic butcher for last 12 months.So at long last after the bankruptcy and the possiblitiy of going to Canada YES we nearly went C/O P&O dad working his and his family passage as master butcher on board.Not sure what went wrong & why we didnt go, and I guess we will never find out now, unless it was dad's diabetes holding him back.Whilst we waited for a permanent posting for dad, he sent through his wages evey week to mum in Yuill Avenue along side a real Red Cross parcel,fresh butcher meat,??? sausage, mince,stewing steak.Most times it arrived the next day so mum could cook it all and sort of preserve it for the coming week,enough to feed all of our hungry faces ,I remember on two occassions in the hight of the summer (in Buckie ???? ) the parcel arrived and had turned sour and you could smell it as far away as Well Road,so it had to be buried in the garden as deep as possibly.So no meat dinners that week.
Dad then got his permanent postion with the Co-Op in Killin,this is where I fisrt came accross dad's flair and ambition to be a news reporter,journalist, author or anyone or all three.I think he may have neglected some of manegerial skills at this stage to pursue his dream.
he would freelance for the PA Perthshire advertiser,The Courier (Dundee )and even the Scottish Nationals if they would print his story or use his photo.
The Hydro were just starting to build the dams in tayside and dad got in with an employee who took him into Glen Lyon to see what was going on and how the develepoments were progressing.He gained many stories from this source and of course his foray into black and white photography with his box brownie.Many were published.
After this dad took us up to Glen Lyon regularly.
Last year 2009 I went to climb the Ptarmigan Ridge at the back of Killin beside Ben Lawyers and before i did that I sat on the same dam wall as dad and I did all those years ago.
Do you know I was like a fairy on that climb, i think Jim was there in spirit.Cheers dad x

Scoop Taylor Blog.

What the hell is a blog? 

Well I don't really know or much care but its got 'log' in the name and we all know what a log is don't we? (no not a stick for the fire or an ancient irreplaceable bit of Caledonian forest floated down the glorious Spey umpteen generations ago to fill the coffers of the English landowners to quench Britains and Europes thirst for cheap Scots Pine.... IKEA stylee...whoops rant over, sorry thats Jock Russel's influence god bless him)

No think Captains Log, think diary, think thoughts written down, updates, flashbacks, news, updates etc. Thats a (b)log, that what I think anyway.

Well why not put these reminiscences on the Scoop Taylor Archive on Facebook? 

Well FB restrict the numbers of words that can be used on a post and if you want to tell a story then FB is very limited,....simples!! so read on fellow Badenochites.

I was round at my sister Brendas place tonight, ( Cockfosters/Hadley Wood North London). Giz Gilligan was there, Giz's mum my sister Sandra was there, Nick, Brendas other half was there and we were talking about Scoop.

Well we realise we never really understood the old man, never really appreciated him or clicked what was driving him to do what he did, as I was trying unsuccessfully to nod off for the night I thought I'll get up and crystallize some thoughts, or at least try to before its too late. (who really knows or truthfully tries to know their parents? I'm 52 and have just started to try)

Simple fact was he seemed to know that everything happening around him in his community was a one time thing, unique, irreplaceable, fragile and very very quickly gone. What happened on a snowy Monday was different to the following Friday's thaw. People like the weather, are fickle are they not?.

Yes of course he was a journalist, of course he looked for news but why so hungrily? There was shoddy money in it, our council house and a mini-clubman with a broken heater attest to that.

Who in their right mind wants to drive through the middle of a Drumochter blizzard to take pictures when you could be in front of a cosy Milton Park coal fire watching the Alexander Brothers, The Corries or Celtic or Rangers on a grainy black and white TV gubbing who-ever on Scotsports whilst tucking into a steak pie or buttery and bacon?

Well the answer I realise now is simple. 

Dad was a butcher for the greater part of his life and he really really (badly) wanted to be a writer and photographer..not a butcher. Thats pretty much it in a nutshell.

Now if you've been a butcher since aged thirteen, forced to leave school to work in the family shop, denied your vocation or calling, it can set up a thirst, a hunger, an ambition, well he had the hunger in spades, and I reckon he had the hump with his past and thats why he was prepared to pile out of the house on a dark freezing cold night to go and check out an event. Mostly it wasn't national news, it wasn't big news and the vast majority of it was not particularly sexy as they say today. But dad was actually living his dream as a photographer and journalist and to him it was all big news, it was all sexy and his appetite for any event no matter how insignificant was considerable, his commitment was total, almost obsessional.

When he finally chucked it in as the co-op butcher in Kingussie (actually sacked for apparently being insubordinate to a jobsworth from lower down the High Street who he held in little regard), he was thus set on the road to his ambition.

We left the tied house in Kingussie and thankfully got a house in Milton Park Aviemore. To make ends meet he worked part-time as a butcher in the Aviemore Centre below the Pinewood Bar and Restaurant and also started trying hard to sell stories to the press the rest of the week.

He didn't go out to work at the Pinewood one morning and I said worriedly to my mum ' Is dad no well again?' (he was diabetic and prone to diabetic comas which was not a pleasant sight) and she said 'no he's fine, he's a journalist full-time from today whatever that means, god help us all'.

Sharp intake of breath from 14 year old Jumbo......next post soon.

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Jumbo.

Scoop Taylor Reunion August 2011

There is definite interest in this event taking place and almost 100 people have said there is a strong chance they will attend and its still 12 months away!

Personally I am quite excited by all this.

Apparently there are two people on the Scoop page who have not met for 50 years!!! and have made a date for August 2011 at the reunion as a result of re-connecting on the Scoop pages. Blimey the power of photographs, dad would have been totally blown away.

I have made a provisional booking with the Duke Of Gordon in Kingussie for the upstairs ballroom which can hold up to 150 people. It looks from the feedback I've had that there is a fair chance we can fill it.

The Duke Of Gordon has a lot of resonance with me as we stopped there when we came from Buckie to check Kingussie out when dad got the butchers job. I remember having a packet of crisps and putting a few into the concrete lions mouths outside the Duke. When we finally arrived in Kingussie to live some months later I belted over the Gynack bridge to see if my crisps were still there!! (nope gone much disappointment)

Kingsford House above the co-op butchers and bakers then became our home and very happy it was too. I got obsessed with shinty, the Spey and the amazing countryside which was so different from the east coast landscape around Buckie.

I Wandered for hours up the Gynack to the golf course and even further to the loch at the back of the course and to the Spey in the other direction of which more memories will I'm sure return, watch this space.
Jumbo.

View toward Newtonmore over the Gynack Bridge from the front bedroom at Kingsford House.

Kingussie petrol station opposite the Duke.

Kingussie Festival

Mairi Filshie outside the school. I distinctly remember Mairi coming into Donnie Macdonalds maths class excitedly telling me ' Jumbo your dad just took pictures of me outside!' Man I had my first ever crush on Mairi and was too much of a wimp to do anything about it, shit bugger damn, I thought I'd be young forever!!!

Marcus White outside the Duke.

Robbie "DOO'

what a great photo!!