In the week when the Toon has joined the ranks of Retail Week's 20 best shopping destinations in the UK, a new book celebrating Aberdeen's Union Street came out. The Farmer was at last week's launch with all those who care for their city and some who just fancied a free glass of wine on a cold October night.

It is good that Diane Morgan, who has researched the Toon, street-by-street and village by absorbed village, in excellent historical books, has got round to a whole volume on Union Street.

The Granite Mile, as she has called the book, is more than just that. For it is a whole street of magnificent Georgian buildings, and it does stretch the mile from the Castlegate to Holburn Junction.

The building of Union Street at the turn of the eighteenth into nineteenth centuries made modern Aberdeen. It had been a medieval town whose narrow and winding streets followed the contours of the hilly ground and the burns that ran through it.

Then a straight line was drawn from the Castlegate, the old Town's centre, one mile due west out into the countryside.

Rivers and valleys had to be bridged for the street was also to be level. The first half of it is a gigantic viaduct which took the street over the Den Burn, the canal and above what had been the roofs of the Medieval city. It was no wonder that the cost escalated from £30,000 to more than double that.

But when it was finished the circuit judge, Lord Medwyn, was able to say that, whereas Aberdeen had been a city without an entrance, it was now an entrance without a city.

And that entrance had enterprise, not to say lawlessness, to thank for the extent of its magnificence. The intention had always been that Aberdeen's new street would be wide and the original plans show a thoroughfare of 60 feet across, a huge distance in the days of horse-drawn carriages and shank's ponies.

The dimensions were duly pegged out. Then someone went out under cover of darkness and the lack of street lights, and added 10 feet to Union Street's width. It just wouldn't have happened if all had been done by the book. It would have required an amendment to the Act of Parliament. But it certainly enhanced the street.

Aberdonians love that story and now they can believe it without reservation, for it has the backing of the street's biographer, although Morgan thinks the romantic story of subterfuge by night is just that.

She thinks the provost just sent word to get on with it and never mind parliamentary approval.

Now then, commentators are starting to say the credit crunch may have peaked. I hope so although that will mean many among the legions of bankers, brokers, agents and financial advisers will escape the full wrath to which they are entitled.

I would not like the adviser who advised my old school pal out of at least 80% of his retirement fundie to escape with a shirt on his back.

My friend has no knowledge of finance except how to earn and how to set some aside in insurance policies for his old age. His pension pot was £250,000. But Alex made the mistake of letting this financial adviser invest it for him. He wanted a fixed rate of interest to make sure his money was safe.

So, the adviser put it all into one bank. That was a horrendous blunder because there is a government scheme of compensation if banks can't pay but they only compensate you up to £30,000. Alex's money should at least have been spread around eight banks in which it would all have been covered.

But worse than that, the one bank was in Iceland. When that bank closed its doors Alex wasn't entitled to any British compensation. The British government has, out of the goodness of all our hearts, it seems, decided to compensate British clients of Icelandic banks to the tune of £50,000, so Alex won't starve.

At a time when the Farmer should be sorting out his papers in order to leave an orderly state of affairs when he finally departs for the Kirkyard, he has instead been trying, a generation late, to sort out his father's papers.

As he toils among the boxes, he thinks it unfortunate that John Allan wrote so much, joined so many societies and generated so many bills and accounts.

But every now and then a gem of our farming history emerges, like his story of the kitchie deem at Cairnadailly, a good farm north of Ellon made famous by the colourful characters who have farmed it over the years.

This anecdote is more about Dr Fowler than about Cairnadailly. The Ellon doctor was a fine example of a country practitioner; a clever man at his trade - and with his wit. He had been called to Cairnadailly by the farmer's wife to attend their servant maid who had taken to her bed.

After he had examined her the doctor said: "I canna find onything wrang wi you."

The girl said: "There's naething wrang wi me. It's jist that Cairnadailly hasna paid me for a month, so I've taen tae my bed."

The doctor considered that innovative form "industrial action", for a few seconds. Then he said: "Move over, lass. Mak room for me. Cairnadailly hasna paid me for 11 years."

The Granite Mile is published by Black and White Publishing.