The other day I was at the retirement presentation for Kincardine and Mearns area manager Bruce Stewart at the council offices in Stonehaven.

The post is a key role in liaising between local communities and Aberdeenshire Council. It can be a tough one as quite often the council cannot – usually for financial reasons – always meet the aspirations of the community. Bruce Stewart, like his predecessor Willie Munro, did their best. When I was a councillor I always found Bruce and Willie to be most supportive. I hope Bruce enjoys his retirement (after more than 35 years with the council) as much as Willie!

I had a chat with the new area manager, Tim Stephen, who I knew from his time with the council’s sports and culture arm Live Life Aberdeenshire. I wish him well.

Now here is something interesting I stumbled across elsewhere on Facebook. A planning application has been lodged for a new junction to connect Badentoy industrial estate with School Brae at Hillside.

One of the supporting documents explains why this is happening now.

“Phase 1 of the Badentoy Industrial Estate / Business Park has been constructed and is fully occupied. A planning condition attached to the original planning consent restricts further development until a new link road has been constructed between the industrial estate / business park and School Brae in the northeast, providing a secondary point of access. The trigger for the link road is 303 arrivals and 292 departures during the AM peak hour. Planning permission for the physical construction of the road is required.”

The transport assessment concludes that “The assessment of the local road network supports the link road proposals and concludes that the study network will continue to operate within capacity with the introduction of the additional committed traffic and the redistributed traffic associated with the link road proposals.”

Anyone who wishes to comment on the application, lodged on behalf of M Bruce and Partners of Ellon, should contact Aberdeenshire Council by Tuesday 2 May 2023. More details here: https://upa.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=dates&keyVal=RT9N3ICAH4T00

A few interesting updates at the monthly meeting of Newtonhill, Muchalls and Cammachmore Community Council last night. What caught my attention in particular was the news that Network Rail has been carrying out a survey of bridges to see what needs to be done to electrify the line to Aberdeen.

According to reports in the Dundee Courier in December last year “Network Rail is planning to electrify the line between Aberdeen and Dunblane to cut carbon emissions. The electric trains will require substantial new infrastructure. Network Rail are planning to demolish scores of bridges over the train line as part of the project.”

The overbridge at Muchalls and the one between Muchalls and Newtonhill would be among those which would need replacing, from what we heard last night.

The provision of electric trains should boost the chances of new stations at Newtonhill and Cove.

Unfortunately the Courier story is behind a paywall, but the Daily Record from October has more details: https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/radical-project-proposed-fully-electrify-28363463?fbclid=IwAR3NmX9FaegiJ2zfhKseN6PZktDtzIq5k_ZC726AmeToSlWnP06gpa6UzzQ

Today we attended the funeral of a long-time friend, Willie Matheson. He died aged 83 on 29 March in Perth, his home for the past few years.

Willie, who came from Ross-shire, was to my mind a Highland gentleman. It was he who introduced me to the world of politics and took me canvassing for the first time – door knocking in the Redmoss area of Aberdeen.

He shared digs with David Steel while at Edinburgh University. A long career took him to Dounreay, to the Macaulay Institute in Aberdeen in 1969, and later to Tayside.

At the service he was described as “a good man”. No doubt about that.

I recently discovered there is an author in the family. My cousin’s son-in-law has published thrillers, and I have just finished reading his first, “Killer Intent”.

I’m usually quite a slow reader of books, but this was a cracker, and literally a page-turner. Every word works for a living and there was none of the waffle that you find in some books.

Tony Kent – and that’s the author’s name – kept me spell-bound throughout.

I met him for the first time a couple of weeks ago at a family event. Another cousin asked if I would be buying a copy. I caused a bit of a chortle when I said no, I’ll be going to the library. Well, I mean, I didn’t know if I’d like it!

I’ll be asking the library service for the next one too.

I’m disappointed and annoyed. I have just posted a letter at the main box in the village. In small type a little notice says that “to improve efficiency” Royal Mail is changing the collection time.

Wait for it …

From 4.30pm to 9am Monday to Friday and from 10.30am to 7am on Saturdays.

Now, I could accept maybe an hour or so earlier, but how does 7 1/2 hours earlier improve efficiency and provide a better service.

Especially with the cost of a first class stamp going above £1 shortly. Not exactly a first class service.

I suspect other communities will be about to experience a similar drop in standards.

With national pay talks teetering on the brink of collapse and management threatening to put Royal Mail into administration, something is deeply amiss with the company.

I seem to mention a lot of deaths these days. Here is another, but this time not local.

We were at the funeral of my uncle, in Cheshire. Eric Mollison was 94, and still active. He had recently bought a new car.

He was the first member of our family – as far as I know – to go to university. Once he graduated, he and his wife left Dundee to work south of the border, and eventually ended up running a company making medicines for animals.

Along the way they had three sons and a daughter, all successful in life, spread across the world. Sadly their daughter died in 2020. Alice was quite some woman. A beauty queen, then the first female officer in the merchant navy, and an accomplished actress.

It was a strange feeling being in a room full of Mollisons. As you will probably realise, we are a rare breed.

Rest in peace Uncle Eric.

More sad news. Former Evening Express editor Dick Williamson has died. He was 86.

It was Dick who offered me a job as a sub editor at the EE back in the 1970s. We moved here from Paisley, and friends who came to visit and liked Newtonhill followed later. So many lives would have been very different if Dick had taken a different decision nearly 50 years ago!

Although my time at the EE didn’t end well (a year-long strike), I am very thankful to him. Rest in peace.

One of our former Liberal councillors has passed away. Anne Tunstall represented our area on the local authority.

Her son Gareth has posted the following on Facebook, including photographs with her husband Michael (also known as Mike), who has a street named after him in their home village of Newtonhill.

Anne Norman Tunstall, Born 30,03,1930, and the Matriarch of the Tunstall family. Passed today, 14 Oct 2022 at 03:25 am in the morning. She has left us to join her husband and be with God. She sends her love and respect to all she knew and met.

They were a lovely welcoming couple and it was a pleasure to be in their company. Anne was a dedicated councillor who had the best interests of the area in her heart.

Here is an interesting advert from the Press and Journal on 14 July 1949, which has popped up on another Facebook group I follow.

It shows that a return fare by train from Newtonhill to Aberdeen was 1s 6d (for those of a younger vintage that is 7 1/2 pence). The Portlethen/Aberdeen return was 1s (i.e. 5p).

One pound in 1949 is equivalent in purchasing power to about £39.28 today. The inflation rate then was 2.89%.

And just for clarity, I don’t remember those days – I wasn’t born.

I wonder how much today’s equivalent would be. Google tells me that from Portlethen an Anytime Day Single to Aberdeen is £4.30 and an Off-Peak Day Return is £5.20. An on-line calculator tells me £5.20 is the equivalent to 13p in 1949, or 2s 7d. So it is more than double the price now.