March is famous for coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb. In this case the lamb went out and died after been injured in a stampede for the food trough and froze in the great freeze and had its eyes pecked out by crows before the ‘Bring Out Your Dead’ chap collected her. And then there were seven.

As for lions coming in – Radio Scotland Greetings Programme on a Sunday morning has the superb knack of putting on great music to have sex by – I don’t know if this is a deliberate ploy to increase the declining Scottish population. The Observer proclaimed that scientists were working on artificial sperm (what? is there not enough real sperm in the world?) so I am sure The Greetings programme can have a rolling advert for the new product inbetween musical interludes. Knowing that you are all waiting to hear this week’s sex tune – it was Bongo Bong by Manu Chao and I love the way it dances into Je Ne T’Aime Plus on the album.

One of our swimming chums, whose dead father used to sit on her feet when she was in bed until she told him to go away, has been on Past Life Regression therapy. Apparently she used to be a miner who was blown up and a young girl who drowned in a pond whilst stretching for her teddy. I am spending a night in the haunted Jedburgh Jail with her and her sister-in-law as part of a charity “Fright Night’ with the famous Indian medium Derek Pakorah.

The family told me that either the cough goes or I do – so I trailed down to the doctor and was promptly packed off for an x-ray. The BGH is a new efficient hospital and I was efficiently shoved into a cubicle and told to undress (top half only) and to lock the door to protect myself and possessions from the seething masses in the waiting room which I dutifully did. She returned to catch me posing in the full length mirror and I was bundled into a yoga position in front of the machine as the assistant dashes out of the way, presses a button and then says ‘go back to your cubicle your results will be sent to the doctor’. I returned opened the door and on realising that the half naked woman wasn’t my reflection in the full length mirror, apologised and went into the other cubicle door.

March winds doth blow so Kim decides to do an inaugural flight in our new plane in a 20 knot gusting 24 knots wind. The plane performed well, deemed the fastest plane in the club by our instructor, although it was certainly the muddiest after landing on the mud (nee grass) strip on runway 26.

Brandishing our new eight core server to run our website applications we went to install it in our data centre in Edinburgh. This entailed Alasdair and I driving up, filling our ears with the multicoloured earplugs, plugging it in then return via a Steading supper homeward at a rapid pace with an unbalanced tyre (and according to Alasdair an unbalanced driver too). At one point Alasdair leant over and said ‘I want you to know you have been a good Dad, the best Dad, and I want you to know that now so that when we are pulled from the car wreckage your last memory of me isn’t me screaming ‘You Fecking Idiot I told you not to take the corner too fast with an unbalanced tyre’.

Sadly we missed the Moscow ballet performing Swan Lake in the tiny Tait Hall in Kelso and due to coughing I decided not to be mistaken as part of the John Cage performance at the Baltic. Kim had already been to see a play about a cross dressing doctor, Alasdiar went to see ‘The Boyfriend’ as operetta and Stuart is off to the theatre to see The Thirty Nine Steps so I am going to have to push the culture button and step away from the Wii.

Kim’s new imac arrived and an impressive looking machine it is too – running Windows in virtualisation she can know browse around in about 8 different browsers across 4 screens all at lightning speed on the Extreme processor. Setting up took a while not due to any complication but due to the setup requiring you to pose in front of the built in camera for your login photo – that took half an hour at least.

January is a time of skidding from the Christmas festivities through an alcoholic haze of birthdays and so to celebrate the ritual of purification that February is named after it is time to enter Lent. This year Lent starts on February 6th and ends March 23rd. The Christians have weekends off but being stronger than them I am having the whole period off apart from my anniversary on the 7th. No alcohol, sweets or choccies and yes I don’t lose any weight thus proving that all three are not calorific in the least (counter to my risk assessment nurse who concluded I had a death wish when I told her my hobbies and she suggested I cut down on alcohol as it had lots of fat in it!).

To balance religious fervour I shall be doing Ramadan this year (all of September) so no food, drink or sex from sunrise to sunset (in preparation I am already following the ‘how to sleep 6 hours a day or less’ websites).

The bruises have almost healed up after the wedding anniversary. I am not revealing what caused the bruising but it was a splendid day – starting with stroking our new GT450 plane, followed by a delicious vegetarian lunch at David Bann’s in Edinburgh followed by the Aerial Assault at Ratho.

We turned up to the Aerial Assault to find a queue but it turned out these were the staff who then removed all of our valuables, tied my spectacles on and bolted us onto a harness then encouraged us to take that first step into empty space 100 feet above the floor populated with bouldering climbers. Kim went first and when safely scrambling up to the start after the zip slide, and ominous swinging when stuck in the middle, I zipped along too, masquerading as Momentum Man. The girl who was leading Kim onto the Assault said ‘Gosh he is coming fast’ to which Kim replied – ‘that is later tonight it is our anniversary…’. Following Kim on the zip, stuck in the middle and swinging around before clambering up the wooden steps to the start. I thought it would be fairly straightforward as it looked like it was not exposed at all as I made my way along floorboards in the sky clinging to the chains, filled with vegetarian fare and expecting a wee boring toddle.

That was when I saw Kim clutching onto a swaying log 100 feet off the floor. Sweating buckets (remember those bouldering climbers below) and stretching to make the next handhold. The first step was to a vertical log with handles on it. Although harnessed you sort of forget about the harness as it is there to catch you so you really are making a step in empty space to stretch to that first handhold. Our anniversary waltz was across swinging logs and clutching chains, sweating profusely whilst clambering over nets and clinging to vertical nets before zipping back. That was exhausting said Kim as she was deharnessing – I replied ‘Wait till tonight’ which grossed out most of the staff. With a short romantic look at tents in the shop and wondering why the ‘Buggy Sign’ wasn’t working we retired to the most romantic hotel in Europe.

I had searched for ‘the most romantic spot in Europe’ and unbelievably but conveniently this was in Edinburgh. The Library Suite in the Witchery is a splendid spot with a deep bath for two in a secret book lined bathroom, chilled champagne and delicious chocolates. It is advertised as Danni Minogue’s Den of Lust and a splendid place it is too. The guestbook had a great entry about a former student who had this as his student flat (slightly less decoration and a lot lower fuel bill) and one with two homosexuals on their honeymoon who had consummated their bonding in the bath. It came with a February discount – yes romance and counting the pennies do not need to be divorced – which we more than spent on a delicious dinner in the Secret Garden restaurant. Kim was now full of alcohol and after a bracing walk on the castle esplanade collapsed on the bed snoring. Breakfast was a treat with a hamper in the room at our breakfast table allowing us to count our bruises over porridge, hot croissants and orange juice.

Still studying pensions we finally decided to invest in dying Americans. The scheme is simple – in America life insurance is for life and when they find out that life is slipping away they want to enjoy the fleeting hours by cashing in – the scheme purchases such policies and cashes them in on death nicely turning around a profit paying into our pensions. It was the ghoulish aspect that attracted me and if it all works out we shall be enjoying life to the full again as well as exploring the Southern Hemisphere (albeit still roughing it).

We went to see the Kite Runner with our separated friend and when the scene where the Taliban start stoning an adulterous woman, I leant over and suggested she should be grateful her husband is a christian (possibly the only time to be grateful for that). Splendid book, splendid film, splendid landscapes (albeit filmed in China).

We finally sold our old plane (Mainair Blade in perfect condition after having being rebuilt as new after my ‘incidents’) and after months of interest from Nigerian scammers we finally had a race between Geordies with a plane still to sell and a Selkirk chap who had been let down on his sale. The Selkirk chap won by flashing his cheque and we disappeared sharpish to John Lewis to look at expensive horse hair filled mattresses and Siberian Goose Feather duvets.

We parked in an NCP Carpark and on return Kim took the ticket which she paid for, she couldn’t get a receipt from the machine, and on bundling us all into the car, stuck the ticket in the gap above the radio. It promptly slipped down into the innards of the car. We were now at the exit barrier and she pressed the Press for Assistance button. We then got an Indian call centre operative who going through the ticklist (got receipt?, no your machine didn’t give me one; how much you pay? too much) said that they would send someone down (what from India?).

After a decent interval of blocking the only exit Kim parked and I pressed the Press for Assistance button as we had shopping to do and we couldn’t wait for the Indian to get a flight. So now I get a non-Indian albeit I am guessing a non-Caucasian London chap who asks the same ticklist but then opens the barrier (except Kim can’t drive through it as she has parked) and closes it twice. So I get back in the car she drives to the exit and she presses the Press for Assistance button. The same non-Indian non-Caucasian chap now thinks this is someone else wanting to escape from the same car park. Kim says that was her husband before but there is no pulling the wool over NCP employees. He demands to speak to the fine gentleman he spoke to before – the aforesaid fine gentleman is now hollering from the passenger seat through Kim and to the tiny microphone – the guy gives up and the barrier lifts and Kim takes her chance before the barrier closes. On the next car park Kim drives in through the outdoor before realising that the ticket machine is on the other side of the barrier.

Helping Alasdair with his physics revision and reducing my effort in this I came across the wizard wheeze of getting him to lecture me each evening on a physics topic. This has worked out reasonably well and I can almost sit the Higher myself now and am watching documentaries on the Eels lead singer investigating the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics which his father proposed. There is even a Purification of quantum state suitable for February. For English we are all enjoying the poems of Carol Ann Duffy so I am hoping we do well in English too.

February is a leap year this year and our kids ex-nanny decided to take advantage of this and proposed to her love whilst he was washing his hair in the bath, unable to run away with shampoo in his eyes although I am sure her holding the 2kw electric fire above the bath clinched the deal.

The lunar eclipse saw me wandering around at 3am in my dressing gown trying to work out where the moon had disappeared to (above many layers of cloud). I have now invested in a Mesade MySky which tells me where things are even when there are clouds so at least I can tell that the red light is the eclipse and not the lights of Kelso.

We had the wizard wheeze of letting the sheep eat our grass at home. The grass is certainly greener than their overgrazed field – but they must be going through purification too and turned their noses up and marched back to their field bleating about starvation. There is no pleasing some sheep.