WHILE old Camperdown was preoccupied with ploughing and sowing winter

wheat last Wednesday, I took the opportunity of making a flying visit to

Edinburgh in the Bentley Mulsanne Turbo to put in an appearance at the

Christmas private view taking place at Andrew and Sarah Whitfield's

Calton Gallery.

Goodness knows, Camperdown and I have enough oil paintings on our

walls already, but with Christmas in mind, one can't really go wrong

with an extra Horatio McCulloch or Gemmell Hutchison. And, do you know,

absolutely everybody has commented that the elegantly top-hatted woman

on horseback who features on the Calton Gallery's Christmas invitation

card is the spit image of me on Smudge, my hunter! Amazing really, since

the artist died 70 years ago! I wonder if it was modelled on my

grandmother?

In the strictest confidence, I have always rather admired Sarah

Whitfield whom I have known since she was a jolly young thing in

Northumberland. In those days everybody, at one stage or another, was

invited to Sarah's mother's villa in Minorca, next door to the one owned

by Richard Branson's parents. Although I never stayed there myself,

Henrietta, my sister, and I once dropped in for cocktails while on a

Mediterranean sailing trip in the early seventies. As you know, unlike

Henrietta, I don't much go in for these Mediterranean jaunts, and for me

it was a blessed relief to weigh anchor in Mahon Bay beneath Mrs

Davidson's house. To this day I can still recall Sarah's advice on

guarding one's honour against the advances of Moorish sailors. If only

Henrietta had listened!

And when Sarah first moved to live in Edinburgh, I distinctly remember

her announcing to me at a dinner party that she was going to open an

employment agency. My initial response was whatever for? But then she

did, and made a huge success of it. One does so approve of girls who get

on and do something with their lives. If only Fiona, my daughter, would

follow Sarah's example.

Later, when Andrew Whitfield, whose nickname is ''Tank'', had left his

regiment and he and Sarah were married, they turned their lovely

Georgian house in Edinburgh's Royal Terrace into a fine art gallery, and

one has always adored their periodic private view parties since

everybody seems to turn up at them sooner or later.

It does seem such a good idea, doesn't it? I mean, throwing parties

and getting people to buy things and thus subsidising the cost of the

champagne! Mind you, I'm not at all sure how I would personally feel

about constantly changing the paintings on one's walls. I suppose the

consolation is that one never gets bored with them, but since the

majority of our pictures are Camperdown ancestors, I don't imagine

anybody would want to buy them in the first place. And besides, our

Titian and the majority of our Van Dykes and Raeburns are out on loan

anyway.

THROUGH my unimpeachable south-west of Scotland grapevine, I hear that

Jamie Hunter Blair is to allow Blairquhan, his lovely, home near

Straiton, in Ayrshire, to be used for a Christmas sale next Thursday.

The organisers are those pretty girls Annette Hammond-Chambers and

Caroline Gordon-Duff, under their collective name of CHUFFS, and what

they do is to get together a collection of their more talented chums who

all make little things, and then they set up a series of stalls and

invite everybody they know to come along and do their Christmas

shopping.

To make things even more praiseworthy, they charge an entrance fee

which they then donate, with a percentage of the overall takings, to a

charity such as the Malcolm Sargent Cancer Fund for Children.

A few weeks ago the same team held a two-day sale at Arniston in West

Lothian, Althea Dundas-Bekker's breathtaking William Adam mansion, which

she has worked so hard to restore, and I gather it was a smashing

success. To make things even more fun, Annette and Caroline enlisted

big, cuddly Sandy Irvine Robertson to set up a wine tasting in the

evening which was guaranteed to be a hoot since he is so wonderfully

individual and entertaining. Alas, Camperdown and I were having an

argument about slurry spreading at the time, so we ended up staying at

home.

Blairquhan, although a bit of a marathon from here, has to be a must,

and I have suggested to Camperdown that on the way past we should look

in on Fiona, our daughter, in Glasgow, to see how she's getting along.

Such a pity her university term ends on the 17th, otherwise one would

have been able to make certain she came straight home for the holidays.

Last year we managed to pack her off for a fortnight's ski-ing with some

suitable friends to Val d'Isere. This year she says she wants to go

mountain-biking in Nepal. Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous!