Supermarket dash

Today Ola and I were driven to the nearby town of Alford (you don't pronounce the 'l') for a lunchtime Co-op shop. I felt like the Spanish must have when they arrived in Cuzco! There were so many gleaming fresh fruit and veg, which was like gold to the eyes after days of wrinkled mushrooms and black bananas from the Lumsden Spa shop. I went mad picking up peppers, grapes, kiwi fruits, aubergine (but no horrid root veg obviously!) - so many wonderful colours to tempt the deprived village dweller. And now I'm £20 the poorer - can I really eat all this lot in the week I have left? Hmmm, I'll give it a go...

On the journey we took the opportunity to quiz Ginny (who drove us) about the locality: why are there so many derelict houses? Is it expensive to live here? What's it like in the winter? What's employment like? She probably thought she was on Mastermind! Her answer to the first question was interesting and left me feeling sad for local people. She says that there are so many derelict estate houses because when they go to new owners they kick out the tennants and just leave them to decay (the houses I mean!). She says the owners are often wealthy people in the south east or South Africa (!), or conglomerates, and they would rather have the buildings empty and falling apart than have others on their land. I asked if local people get angry about this and Ginny said that around here "no, no-one seems to care at all". Though she says that in other areas locals are trying to buy back the land. I may be naiive, but I don't understand the point in having an estate that is falling apart with no-one on it to look after it - doesn't the value just decrease? Many of them still have working farms, but the farmhouses are empty so where are people living? It seems to make no sense, unless I'm missing something...which is more than likely. What do these owners want with the land if they aren't living there and they have no tenants? Maybe they plan to turn Scotland into one big golf course - I don't know! But it doesn't look like I'll be moving into a turreted derelict any time soon!!