The year closes just as Threshers the wine shop closes in Kelso, the last thing to be sold was Israeli dessert wine – so it was the online Wine Society for Christmas Claret and Chablis, together with Alnwick Ales for the Festive Kegs of Yule Fuel and Secret Kingdom. The alcohol supplements included 72% absinthe and some Somerset Cider Brandy which was matured in barrels, surrounded by bibles written in Zulu, from MSC Napoli a plundered shipwreck on the Dorset coast. Hic.

New Audi TT arrives and I can now get Saga insurance which works out remarkably cheap (no meerkat fees to pay I guess). I was awarded a ‘Flying Pig’ at the Microlight Christmas Party – for what I assume is an honour to be compared to Miyazaki Porco Rosso (the crimson pig flying ace) – or for making a complete pigs ear of my circuit at Manchester airport.

I celebrated the winter solstice with a large pan of Wassail and a naked run in the snow around the rowan trees in the blue moonlight (second full moon in the month is a blue moon).

Christmas was shaping up to be a jolly affair – and then the snow fell. It started with the BBC giving a global warming demonstration as the snow fell heavily in the window behind the presenter and ended with a snow blanket coverage on telly with reporters ‘braving’ the snow and what looked like setup slides of cars. To us it meant running very low on hay, frozen water which meant relays of water buckets for Flora trudging through deepening snow. It also meant towing Ali up the Lempitlaw hill as he got stuck and arming ourselves with snow shovels – although David came up trumps with his motorised bucket machine clearing our drive in a couple of minutes – although we were blocking the road at the time as the snow was so high on either side there was nowhere to pull off to! Stephanie’s horse was stuck up the Yetholm valley so we had a good trip out to feed it in a foggy blizzard. I had wanted to visit Antarctica but it had decided to come to see me instead this year – temperatures plummeted to minus 20 and our heating system was put to the test. We froze. Time to look at CHP as a backup and a nice local electricity generator.

A traditional Christmas Day meal with Absinthe Jelly, charades games ending up with the men asleep snoring as the women played Guitar Hero. I gave Kim a pair of wellies which were suddenly a lot more appreciated as the snow kept falling into the New Year. Stephanie bought Kim some gaiters from the guy I sailed with on my Day Skipper course and he enclosed a survival toaster as a gift for me which confused Stephanie somewhat!

Bought Lost Valley of the DInosaurs off ebay as my own version had been depleted of lava, dinosaurs and the swamp monster – great fun – and also bought the old Sherlock Holmes collection in preparation for the new movie – they are wonderful old films.

A snow meerkat graced our front garden and was transformed by melting in the winter sun and more snow falls into an unrecognisable piece of contemporary art. Drinking in a room full of people who believe that horses speak to people was a surreal experience – horse whisperers sound as exploitative as psychics – between that and the homeopathic treatments on sale at the local horse store (with a ‘they really work’ label) one can see 2010 as irrational as every other year. Still scientists now say there is no G Spot so that is one less thing to look for this year.

The snow was still falling into the New Year and was showing no signs of going away. The police advised driving in the Borders as a ‘Life or Death’ situation only – we had run out of beer we figured this was Life or Death so sent Stuart down to Kelso. Our office phones went down (ISDN groan) and BT couldn’t make it to the exchange so we had our calls diverted to Stuart’s mobile – except they accidentally diverted the council gritting service so we ended up calls from lorry drivers wanting to know where we wanted the grit – a lesser person would have auctioned them off to the councils desperate for grit…

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Sea Kayak strapped to top of car and everything necessary inside and setting off in the dark Saturday morning, missing Gutbusters but ready for a paddle in the Forth. A few snow flakes were worryingly falling the night before now replaced with an icy wind. This really didn’t sounds a good idea so I did it.

We all assembled at North Berwick in the wrong car park which necessitated a longer portage of the kayaks down to the edge of the sea. This is the North Sea meets River Forth and both are very chilly. Spectators are wrapped up warm as we clamber into our kayaks in bright dry suit, stuck spraydecks on and hit the surf and in my case the first rock that I could. With my paddle the wrong way round I battled through the surf and out into the swell sitting deploying rudder, which got stuck but fortunately a lady in shining dry suit flipped it for me and got my paddle the right way round. Ok Bass Rock that way – it was a clear navigational point sticking out of the Forth. Around the clashing rocks with surf everywhere tempted one of the braver ladies and she was paddling like furious through it – I was just trying to keep upright in the swell as huge waves crashed over my bow. Then all was calmish and we floated over the waves – it was like cycling over and down small hills as you disappear into the trough looking up at the next one with all the other paddlers disappearing into their own troughs. Great fun.

My folding Feathercraft K1 kayak flexes in the waves and it is a strange sensation and other paddlers would paddle up and ask questions about it. The weather wasn’t as cold as expected and constant paddling kept us warm anyway and we reached the Bass Rock where there is a cave through it – however seals were in pup jut now so it wouldn’t make sense to go breaking up seal families – one popped up in between us and kept a weather eye out on us. The rock was free of gannets at this time of year and you could make out its rocky features – normally covered with birds. it is apparently illegal to step to it so we didn’t. It is named after the Latin name for the gannet (Sula Bassanus) – there are also the island of Sula with a similar gannet colony and the tourist boat tot he Bass Rock is called Sula.

One of the girls was moaning for lunch and Ollie gave her a bounty bar so she would happily make Seacliff (omitting to mention they were out of date). On the way to seacliff the waves were huge and at one point I could look up and see a complete row of 6 other paddlers to my right and above me! I hit the seacliff surf forgetting how to do surf kayaking and was flipped over and walked ashore to be reunited with my kayak. My paddle still in hand as waves would hit me from behind. Lunch was a case of finding a level piece of seaweed and with my wet shoes I managed to do a passable imitation of a fitting lunatic – but still managed to keep my roll in hand as I flumped down onto a seaweed covered rock.

Ollie told us tales of Robson Green and their time when he swam to Holy Island in swimming shorts (on TV soon) where Robson goes into shock and it took 40 minutes to get him back to recognising things. This was after being rescued by the lifeboat in the Tyne – wait till he tries the Scottish rivers…
Brian who hails from Coldstream, down the river from me, and is a painter of seascapes and landscapes, passed around his home made Fruit Leather – a sort of Beef Jerky made with rosehips and honey – delicious to chew on.

Ollie and Brian went in to see if Seacliff harbour was possible – but the waves were high and the entrance was one large foamy surface so it was decided to press on. It was going to be a night trip to Fidra (previously noted on Ollies calendar as Flada with the phrase challenging kayak – which would be since Flada is on the West Coat) and a long trek so we put back in to North Berwick in sunset – it was glorious paddling into the beach with the Berwick Law crowned with sunlight and the water an orange colour. The surf this time didn’t capsize me and I did well to get into the beach upright – apart from running Ollie over – it was kind of him to provide my buffer zone as I careered into the beach.

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It seemed a straight forward plan – visit GoApe in the Lake District to go swinging through the trees. Even better Kim had procured a free Gorilla with every purchase (we weren’t too sure where we were going to keep it though) as long as we visited before the end of November (Gorillas must hibernate after that I guess).

Then the Lake District decided to burst its banks, with 19 bridges down or threatening to collapse GoApe called off as its access roads were now more Venetian than tropical jungle tracks. A week of drying out – the Lake District and not me – and we were assembling at the GoApe hut constructed from sustainable timber to see if a standard harness will fit Mike’s groin – I was proud when my heaving pouch was proving troublesome and he had to get the ‘porn star’ harness with bikini top to make sure I didn’t do the zip line upside down.

With Stuart and Steph keen as mustard to see me fall off with a side bet on Kim – we went through the intensive training checks that we had listened to the safety briefing (don’t fall off seemed to be the gist of it). Ali was spending his time at home babysitting the leaking stove which needed emptied every few hours – it would be typical bad luck to get flooded on the top of a 600 foot hill. So to the start – hook on and clamber up the rope ladder, unhook blue and hook onto the roller, unhook the red and and hook onto the cable and over the roller and edge gently along the tightrope to the zip line start. More hooking and unhooking and weeee down the zip line to land surprisingly on my feet in the bark – this was the first and last time such an elegant landing would be achieved.

Tests done we were now abandoned to our fate (although I suspect we were being closely monitored for insurance reasons). Enter the secret code then hook on and up the longer rope ladder this time. Stuart up, followed quickly by Steph. Followed by me – not so fast and now oscillating on a rope ladder in 3 dimensions whilst Kim is corpsing and giggling below. Quick fart to restore balance and one leg at a time – the other one being caught up in the safety line and I made the top thinking this was a particularly bad idea as that was the first step of a long scary journey through another 4 obstacle courses up in the trees.

The tarzan swing is a particular joy as you end up in a net and have to scrabble up and across the eternal moving ropes to reach a platform. I almost gave up with that one – it was only ridicule that kept me going.

The obstacles got more and more taxing – I passed on the monkey rings one where a girl had already got stuck half way across and went across the greased log instead – half way over the log I was beginning to regret that decision. My porn star harness had also slipped a little which meant hooking and unhooking from the cable relied on me standing on tip toes or balancing on a tight rope to unhook myself which struck me as more dangerous than not being hooked on at all.

Screams came from the trees beyond and longer and higher zip lines revealed themselves. I set off in a stright line which quickly turned into a balletic spiral and ended with me facing back to a waving Kim as I hit the wet and insect friendly bark with my bottom.

We made it all through in a standard pattern of me getting stuck, reverse zip landings and a bosuns chair that was going to see a rescue required if I didn’t have that last fart to propel me to the platform on the tree. Certificates signed pint sunk and it was off to Keswick to catch a glimpse of the stars Prince Chuck turning the lights on whilst Julia Bradbury turns the middle aged men on – neither of which we actually saw.

Sore arms and legs was the result and it was fun. Reading their Health and Safety reports after going is much better than before swinging. Adventure Fun with safety – good combination.

This month’s guest blogger is Kim – she had already written an account and it seemed churlish to redo it – it is, however, edited to remove any embarrassing account involving Mike naturally (or even supernaturally)
Day 1: 9/9/09: East Fortune to Sherburn in Elmet 2hr 40mins

Early start at the airfield – unlocked the gate and entered with Richard close behind us. Packed and fuelled up, and ready for off just after 10am – well almost – as we lined up for our checks, Richard was
rummaging in his map case, and asking on the radio ’so where’s the first stop then?’! He was then advised of a dropped glove, slightly flat tyre and some trim coming adrift from his plane(!), but announced ready for off, so I took the first take-off.

Having had problems running at low oil temps lately, I had covered up more of my radiator and oil cooler, and was immediately slightly disturbed to find the temps now running a bit higher than I’d prefer – not in the danger zones, but enough to preoccupy me during the climbout and first 20 mins or so of the flight, till I could see where they were settling down to in the cruise. We switched to microlight frequency, and was further distracted with radio interference that I couldn’t get rid of with the squelch. We could all hear each others’ transmissions, but we had the added pleasure of continual interference as well. All this internal distraction meant that I quickly lost sight of everyone, and was relying on their position reports for reassurance that we were all reasonably close. Cloud was patchy, and we climbed above it spotting landmarks below. Milfield glider field appeared, and we tracked down the A1 towards Newcastle. It was wisely suggested that we regroup at Eshott before entering Newcastle zone as a group, and panic mounted for me as I couldn’t find Eshott, cloud seemed to be thickening, and still couldn’t see the rest of the squadron! After a few tense minutes, I realised I was too far south, and Richard reminded me to find the A1 and follow that to Eshott! A few minutes later and I saw the welcome site of 3 other planes circling above the clouds – relief! We decided to descend below cloud then and continue towards Newcastle, changing to Newcastle approach for transit through the zone. Gordon squawking his transponder, friendly controllers and wonderful views over the river, bridges and the ‘Armadillo concert hall’ glinting in the sunshine. The interference on the radio was less on Newcastle frequency, but I also then discovered a slightly dodgy connection between headset and radio, meaning that if I changed position a certain way, I lost connection. This unfortunately happened just as everyone was being told to change frequency to Teeside, and oblivious to the change I listened to Newcastle getting fainter and fainter…

… still in visual contact, we flew in a fairly tight formation so I was able to copy whatever the others were being instructed to do, but hearing nothing, I turned to microlight frequency as we’d agreed to do – but calling out to anyone else there was met with silence (apart from the interference, of course!)…

… deep breath – ok, I know we have to call Church Fenton MATZ before we get to Sherburn in Elmet to get permission to enter, so I’ll just tune into them and wait till I hear them call… concentrate on where we are as we travelled across North Yorkshire…

As we approached Sherburn, I could hear other planes talking to the MATZ for instructions, but no G-CGAZ! A bit further on, and I was pretty sure I could see Sherburn airfield in the distance! Shit!! OK.. we are within the Matz now, so must have permission… we need to change to Sherburn for joining instructions, so I’ll change there and pray……

… a minute later, the very welcome sound of ‘G-CGAZ formation of 4 microlights inbound to you, requesting airfield information and joining instructions’…… thank christ!  (they had been passed from Teeside to Leeming, then direct to Sherburn, so no wonder I hadn’t heard them!). I’d spent some considerable time studying the airfield plates and google satellite view of the airfield the night before, so was finally happy to be able to hear joining instructions and knew what we were meant to be doing. The formation spread out into
what was to become our familiar landing configuration of one long line, and we all announced turning finals – microlight 1, microlight 2, microlight 3 and finally G-EB, microlight 4 final for 25….. lovely long tarmac runway, long taxi to the parking area.. and finally engines off! 2 hrs 40 mins I made it on my clock…

Elated but still a bit rattled, I set to looking at my various problems… put the oil covers down a bit, looked at where I could reposition my headset connection so it wasn’t being caught up with me moving about, and Mike looked at the GPS to see that the backlight hadn’t been set up, which explained why I could hardly see it. We decided to save our sandwiches for the delights of ‘meal with chips’ from the Sherburn cafe! The lady serving seemed to be having a worse day than I was, as all her staff had called in sick, but she managed to produce some good, comfortingly stodgy fare and mugs of tea, for a very reasonable price, and I began to relax a bit with the familiar Yorkshire accents around (I was born in Leeds!).  We got the maps out to discuss the next leg – relief at no zones to transit, but slight concern that we’d be on microlight frequency/interference for the whole leg! No option of changing seats with Mike, as he hadn’t flown enough recently to take a passenger, so I was going to have to do this all… gird your loins, gal, and another deep breath!

Had to make a business phone call so retreated to the ladies to do that… ‘if I sound as if I’m in a toilet, its because I am!’… came out to find everyone getting ready to push planes into the fuelling bay to top up with mogas – one of the reasons we had picked Sherburn as a stop. Richard decided to go the other way round the one-way fuel bay (!), but otherwise fuelling was straightforward – 37 litres thank you (not quite the 15l/hour I was expecting fully laden with Mike plus camping gear!)… and the lovely Yorkshire folk pretended it was 40l to give me a free landing!

We were thinking about going into Westonzoyland microlight field for our next stop, and Graeme called for PPR. He was a bit surprised to be given the third degree about their complicated ‘no fly’ area procedures, and couldn’t answer in sufficient detail (this is Graeme?!) so we were refused entry!! Not much hope for anyone else then…..! So we went to plan B and called Dunkeswell.. this trip was starting to sound quite familiar now….!!

Sherburn in Elmet to Dunkeswell – 2 hr 40mins

The next leg had, in addition to the radio interference, the joys of having to turn the map round mid-flight, and trying to read it sideways…. however temperatures were behaving now, gps was more visible, and we stayed in visual contact with each other for the whole way. I found the route harder to navigate, with not that many distinctive landmarks – all the large Yorkshire towns looked fairly similar! We passed over Calton Moor, where Graeme had delivered Gordon and Jill’s last plane to its new owners earlier in the year, finally sighting Wolverhampton airfield ‘Hal’penny Green’ which was our turn point for due south. The weather was improving all the way, less cloud, and excitement mounted as I spotted landmarks that I’d seen when I came this way as Graeme’s passenger in 2007. I started to enjoy things more – managed to turn the map and we came past the hills above Great Malvern, seeing the mighty Severn glinting in the sunshine. Slight false spot of Bath – well, I remembered it appeared
as we came over a shelf of hills.. but the town I spotted was significantly smaller than Bath – and we soon came across the real thing – no mistake! Spotted the racecourse, and started to descend to 1500 feet to avoid Bristol airspace. Graeme commented on the strange feeling of flying towards the 2000ft Wells Mast at 1500 ft…. With the tailwind we were soon past the mast and able to climb a bit now that we were out of the airspace area…  and before long recognised Dunkeswell, where we had stopped off also in 2007. Runway 05, I knew the approach this time and we landed in our formation, perfectly one after the other… this was fun! We didn’t hear Richard calling, but he landed in behind us, and then told us he hadn’t got Dunkeswell programmed into his radio, and by the time we’d all announced we were changing, we’d changed before he could ask us to repeat the frequency! Tracked all the way up the long runway, parked and had a quick cup of tea before deciding where to head for the night. No contest for me… it had to be Bodmin again! To top the day off with a nice familiar flight, knowing where we were going and enjoying being able to show Mike where we’d been before.. we called Bodmin and were told that the radio would be unmanned, make blind calls, and there would be folk in the bar drinking beer when we arrived! Deja vu indeed!

Dunkeswell to Bodmin, 55 mins

Take off provided some amusement, as we taxied round to the runway intersection to do our checks, we all heard Richard’s voice saying ’strange.. that’s all very strange’……  Then the controller at Dunkeswell tried to cut in saying ‘you have your PTT switch stuck on!’..but of course Richard couldn’t hear him, because.. he had his PTT switch stuck on! Gordon and Jill tried to mime to him what was wrong, and eventually he turned his engine off, took his helmet off, just in time for Jill’s roar of ‘YOUR PTT SWITCH IS STUCK ON!!’ to transmit right through Richard’s headset and into ours … how can such a small person have such a loud voice?!!

Replay of 2007 again – magnificent flight over Cornwall, seeing the peninsula narrowing, water glinting in the lowering sunlight, Dartmoor looking moody with long shadows.. then landing again in formation for 03 in light winds. One thing with this formation landing, and these larger airfields – I found myself doing long, gradual final approaches rather than our shorter, steeper ones to give the planes in front plenty time to clear – airliner landings!

We all parked and efficiently set to unpacking the planes and setting up the tents, before joining the locals in the bar, and calling a taxi for the Blisland Inn (the best pub in England). Much more relaxed now, familiar territory, enjoying the beer and the feeling that I’d actually DONE it!

The Inn was lively – we didn’t think we’d get a table, but as we tried to squeeze ourselves round a small table, the people in the table we’d sat at in 2007 (!) got up to leave and gave us that… how good could this day get? There was a pub quiz going on, and I got a bit carried away when the announcer asked ‘who fell asleep in the teapot?’ and shouted out ‘the dormouse!’… ooops! Too much beer and confidence I think!

We had Beast burgers, and a chap in the next table started to chat to Jill as we more subtly whispered quiz answers to him. We only realised how friendly he was getting when he demanded some of her chips, without sauce if you please…..

We were glad we hadn’t participated in the pub quiz as one of the prizes was a large potted plant and we would really be stuck to pack that into the space remaining in the planes!

Great evening – taxi back to the airfield, access to the clubhouse to wash with hot water and nightcap with Graeme’s whisky, and snuggled into tents. It was colder than in 2007, but that suited me as it was nice to burrow into a warm sleeping bag. The wind picked up during the night, and we listened anxiously for creaking from the planes, but the ‘fighter pilot’ tie down method that Gordon had shown us stood fast – the planes were rigid, even though our tents were flapping and getting a good buffeting!

Day 2 – Bodmin to Lands End 55mins

Although we woke at 7am, by the time we got the bbq going, sausages and eggs cooked, then 4 planes refuelled (55l this time), Richard’s tyre pumped up, called Lands End for PPR and a wonderful lady gave us clear and detailed instructions for calling Culdrose MATZ first for some protection from all the military traffic – pre-flight checks revealed both Richard and I were getting low on oil, and no one had brought any! Having only done short flights for the last year, it hadn’t occurred to me that I might actually USE oil on a longer flight – ooops! Some more calls to find out the Cornish equivalent of what we get up north, and friendly Bodmin controller supplied us with top ups.

Finally off after 11am, as we took off 3 jets zoomed underneath us… gosh – calling Culdrose was good advice! Flew over the Eden Project, then St Austell, down to Mevagissey, and spotted the Lost Gardens of Heligan – not as impressive from the air as I’d hoped, as a lot of it is within trees! Tracked across to St Ives, and Gordon called Culdrose MATZ, armed with his transponder. Clipped female controller came back with ’station calling Culdrose, you are unreadable!’…!! Rubbish! We all heard him perfectly clearly… after
trying again, we all fell silent for a bit wondering what to do. Eventually Graeme took the initiative and tried calling them, and they heard him fine – asked him if he was transponder equipped, and he took a bit of a breath and said ‘yes’.. hoping that Gordon was hearing him! He read back the transponder setting, and Gordon thankfully tuned in as they then seemed quite happy. The ventriloquist act continued, with Graeme speaking and Gordon obeying! Finally passed onto Lands End, to be informed that the wind was 16kt down runway 07. I didn’t find the airfield easy to spot, and lost my bearings slightly as the peninsula narrowed, so when I finally did spot it it took a few moments to work out which runway we were using, but managed to follow the landing formation, and took the breathtaking long final out over the turquoise sea and white surf towards the strip!

We parked up and donned high vis jackets (Jill lent Richard her’s, and we only had one between us, so the unjacketed people had to be ‘escorted’ to the buildings!).. lots of photos in front of ‘Lands End Airport’ sign, then into the Control room to pay landing fees, causing much interest as we all produced Scottish £10 notes with different graphics on them!  We
queued up at the cafe to order Cornish Pasties and sandwiches, and as everyone else moved outside to sit in the sun, Richard and I were treated to the appearance of a stereotypical Cornish ‘Wrecker’ chap (straight out of ‘Poldark’!) coming out of the kitchen – twinkly eyes, wild hair and beard, missing teeth!  We raised simultaneous eyebrows, and turned away giggling to join the others! The pasties were wonderful, and we finished off with Clotted Devon Cream Ice creams… and planned the next leg.

The wind was going to be against us – the rest of the country was light winds, but the Cornish peninsula was 20-30mph easterlies – directly against us the whole way back!  We decided on Eaglescott, a small airfield just into Devon, and planned the tour along the North Cornish Coast.

Lands End to Eaglescott – 2hr 10mins

As we radioed in for taxi instructions, we were greeted by the wonderful voice of the lovely lady we had spoken to on the phone from Bodmin. We all agreed she was the BEST controller we had ever come across! She gave us detailed, clear taxi-ing instructions, explaining in good detail, but still professionally handling the stream of incoming and outgoing traffic around us. She apologised for having to hold us before we could take off, explaining why, and when we asked if we could track over Lands End itself before heading North, again gave us clear and detailed instructions, and ‘when you’ve seen what you want to see, if you’d like to follow the final approach path for 07 again while heading North, that would suit us very well just now’….  it was a delight to listen to her directing everyone, but being so friendly – someone saying ’sorry about my radio quality last time – I think it gets a bit tired like me’… ‘oh yes, your radio is much clearer now, G-xx, we were just commenting about it in the tower here’!!

We finally took off one after the other, flew over Lands End, then back north, seeing the remnants of many tin mines on the far North tip of coastline. This leg was just glorious, despite the headwind. We had time to admire the coastline, many airfields, deserted beaches, St Ives, Newquay, Padstow, Boscastle, Tintagel castle, Bude… Richard had suggested tuning into Newquay frequency as we passed, so which we were glad we did – its a busy airspace there! Finally we turned back to microlight frequency, and we discovered that the power lead to my GPS was causing the interference – I pulled it out and relied on batteries, and blissful silence! The terrain was just full of flat, grazing fields, so there were no worries about emergency landings, and I’d also managed to find a spot for my headset connection which didn’t get jogged about. By now we had perfected our formation – Gordon and Graeme would take off first, and hold back till Richard and I had caught up, then we would format in either a diamond, arrow or rhombus – the idea being that we were all slightly off centre from each other so that we could all see each other. It worked well, and I felt so proud to be part of the ‘microlight formation of 4′ that we announced to everyone! Graeme looked back at one point and commented on the glorious sight of the wonderful coastline, and all our planes in perfect formation behind him!

We decided to give seeing Clovely a miss, although it would have been lovely to see it was quite a detour from the direct track to Eaglescott and we were in a strong headwind. Again, I found Eaglescott
difficult to spot – in fact didn’t really see it till Graeme announced he was overhead and descending deadside! A little grass strip, with a clubhouse, and Richard plugged his phone in to charge up while he made a couple of calls. The lady there then asked Richard to please unplug his phone – the whole building was powered by a single windmill, and that just provided enough power for the radio today!! Richard then felt slightly guilty that he was depriving the entire airfield of power…! We got tea, paid landing fees, and then started the discussion about where we could get to for the night. The headwind was quite punishing, and fuel consumption was going to be an issue – specially for us. Our initial hope of making Welshpool was definitely not going to happen – with only 2 hours of light left, we mused on a few options round Bath/Bristol, but then finally decided to get back to Dunkeswell, as we could be guaranteed fuel there, it would take us about an hour, and it was a bit further towards home. We called for permission to camp – no problem, and we could get fuel that night, so we could have an early start tomorrow for the long haul home.  Sorted!

Eaglescott to Dunkeswell : 50 mins.

Another peaceful, evening flight – formation landings, and pulled up to park at our camping spot. Unpacked, then took the planes round to the fuel bowser – and Graeme’s plane wouldn’t start! Mike pushed him to the bowser, while we taxied over, and we all fuelled up and returned back to the campsite. Gordon suggested turning his prop backwards to ‘reset the starter’, and thankfully that seemed to work – obviously something going on with the starter, but as Graeme said, as long as it starts tomorrow a couple more times, we’re ok and he can get it sorted when he gets back!

Richard and I went into pay for our fuel, and another ’stereotypical Somerset character’ passed through the room causing more exchanged looks between us and giggles! As we were standing, Richard asked ’so why is Mike not flying?’ I explained his situation, and Richard said ‘well why don’t you fly as my passenger tomorrow and let him have a chance to fly?’!  Since we had the same headset system, we realised that could work, and he then warmed to his suggestion and started to tempt me with promises of Elgar over the Malvern Hills, and Fawlty Towers episodes from his new iPod installation into his plane! We came out to to make the offer to Mike, who adopted ’startled rabbit’ look – not quite the reaction Richard had been expecting! However he thought a bit more about it, and decided to give it a go – I was easy either way – I was now loving doing the flying, but also liking the prospect of being Richard’s passenger for a change and listening to Fawlty Towers and enjoying the views!

We asked the airfield what the village pub was like for food, and they said ‘to be honest, the food is probably better here, and the restaurant is open till 9pm’. We were keen to sample another English Pub experience, and reckoned that if the food didn’t look up to much, we could at least come back and use the restaurant here… so set off down the hill to the local pub. It looked promising from the outside, but was very quiet, apart from an ill looking cat perched on a bar stool, and yet another ’stereotypical local’ perched at the end of the bar. Jill immediately started quizzing the barman about the cat, suggesting thyroid tests, and the ‘local’ butted in saying he’d stick a boot at it if it were his cat…. Jill retorted that she’d ’stick her boot where the sun didn’t shine in his direction’… and that rather set the tone for the pub! The beer was lovely, but the atmosphere was restricted to our table, and we decided to go back up to the restaurant at the airfield for food.

On reaching the airfield, the restaurant looked suspiciously quiet, and we found that the staff had all gone home because no one seemed to be eating tonight! Oh dear! We still had some sausages and eggs, and a bbq, but no bread – so asked the barman, Mick,  if we could buy some rolls or bread or something? He said ‘wait a moment’, disappeared for a couple of minutes, then came back and said ‘I can do you sausages and chips if you like?’!! By this time the beer had taken its toll… sausage and chips would be wonderful!! can we help? ‘I might call on you…’ in the event another bar customer who was a chef went round to help him, and then the offer of eggs with it? yes please! What a star was Mick – some people are just so warm hearted and helpful! We had a lovely jolly evening in the bar, then retreated to all squeeze into Graeme’s tent to polish off the bottle of wine that appeared out of Gordon and Jill’s seemingly bottomless panniers – they produced all the home comforts from that plane, including a wind up lantern to light the tent! We tried to spread out the charts to plan tomorrow’s route, but were getting wine spillages mixed up with the MATZ zones, so eventually called it a night and retreated to our tents!

Morning – 7am start and lit the bbq right away… we all promptly got up and started packing up, then found the parachute club toilet and shower block – if only we’d seen that last night, Jill and I sighed! No point in showering now as we were heading home..

… I asked Mike again if he was sure he wanted to do this leg – it was going to be a long one – aiming for Barton, Low level corridor etc… but he seemed to be up for it, and when Richard offered to trade his fuel cans and rucksack for ‘woman’, we packed them into our passenger seat and I moved my cushion to Richard’s plane. We agreed that Wolverhampton could be a stop off before the corridor if required.

We ate our sausages, without bread but pooled Richard’s croissants, various muesli bars etc and cups of tea for breakfast. Then were amazingly ready for off.. just after 9am!

Day 3 Dunkeswell to Barton – 3hrs 35 mins.

Richard led out for a change – but his call to ‘Dunkerly’ radio wasn’t responded to – he had programmed the name in as Dunkerly and was reading off his radio! Finally someone responded (did they remember him from last time?!), and we taxied to the holding point for checks, waited for an incoming plane, then we were lining up and off!

The formation was more spread out this time, with Mike on the far left and seeming to disappear further left… we suggested he track right a bit to rejoin us, and were a bit surprised when he then shot across in front of us, not quite seeing where we were! He seemed to be bouncing around left and right, up and down like a demented bumble bee… and having difficulty seeing us… and Graeme called with some trepidation that we were descending to 1500 for Bristol zone..  if Mike wasn’t seeing us, he could plow into us! We proceeded with some reservation.. Mike calling that he still couldn’t really see any of us… I caught sight of him above us at one point but we’re not quite sure what altitude he went through Bristol zone!

After that, we seemed to split into 2s… Richard and Graeme sticking together, and I could see 2 specs over to my left which I think were Gordon in front, and Mike behind him and above. As we passed Wells and then Bath, Richard set up the inflight entertainment(!), and we listened to a couple of Fawlty Towers episodes – a great way to pass a slow journey, although I hadn’t realised that he’d disengaged the radio completely to damp down the interference! It was nice to do the lookout but be the ’second pair of eyes’ rather than the first… we were in formation with Graeme, and I could occasionally see the others in the distance. Mike mistook the Bath racecourse for a microlight
airfield and thought that the microlight he was following might actually be nothing to do with our formation which concerned him a tad – but a radio call reporting Bath Racecourse from Gordon clarified and reassured him he was still part of the team and not chasing someone else entirely.

After enjoying ‘Mrs Richards’, and ‘the Builders’ episodes, Richard called back on the radio asking if we’d missed anything! ‘Not much!’ replied Graeme….

We approached Crewe, which signified that the Low Level Corridor was approaching, and we stayed at the back as the formation drew closer to traverse the corridor. We could see what I assumed was Mike weaving about a bit, but we were fairly far behind and busy looking out for landmarks and traffic, so didn’t really think too much about it. We agreed that it was probably good we weren’t going in first to Barton – the combination of the long flight, unfamiliarity (Richard hadn’t done Barton, or ‘Barnton’ as he kept calling it(!) before), low level flying at 1200 ft, and busy airport – we were happy to leave it to Gordon and Graeme to lead the way!

The Manchester low level corridor is well named – under 1250 feet with Manchester below and with possible busy VFR traffic heading in either direction. Mike was clinging to Gordon’s tail trying to avoid its wake turbulence and getting lift off the unforgiving concrete of Manchester with uninviting tall chimneys vomiting clouds of steam. It is best described like a WW2 movie of low level strafing runs through enemy cities – all we needed was Dambuster music. This was also the timely point when Mike’s radio played up so he was only catching snippets of the ATC communication.

We spotted the airfield, Gordon called in that the microlight formation of 4 were approaching and we were instructed to join overhead at 2000ft for runway 27 Left, right hand circuit (! – there are 2 runway 27s.. one Left and one Right!)…  another plane appeared in the circuit as well, and was advised of our presence, then kindly said he’d extend his downwind to let us through. Our circuit was smaller than his, and he announced he could see 3 micros in front of him. ‘he hasn’t seen us!’  I said to Richard, and we decided to stay behind and come in after the fixed wing. As we were downwind, we suddenly spotted Mike, above us but in the downwind leg, doing a 180 turn and trying to exit the circuit to avoid running into the lead aircraft in what he described as being in a Quidditch match!

‘What on earth is he doing?’ and the controllers were asking the same thing – he was lurching about all over the place, and the controller asked ‘G-EB is that you going the wrong way round the circuit?’…. ‘er yes, I’m a bit confused about the airfield layout and getting too close to the plane in front…. ‘… We were now behind the fixed wing, but we were now the third microlight, so announced that we were now 3rd, hoping that Mike would realise he was behind us now. It was a fairly frantic final, flying over the motorway flyover, wondering where Mike was and aware he was very close behind coming out of the sun… but we landed, cleared and saw Mike coming in closely behind – the wind was very light, and he was lucky to avoid our wake!

We joined the others in the fuel queue, and a Barton official came up to us ‘is that you that mucked the circuit up?’..’no.. it was him!’.. we pointed to Mike as he drew up to the fuel point.

Words were had… we were all just relieved to be down in one piece… and it dawned on me that this had been a more stressful leg for Mike than we had ever anticipated…. and it had all come to a point in the Barton circuit. Human Factors indeed….

His fuel was almost out (3 hrs 35, but he’d burned 58l, and that was solo!)… so he’d been worried about that in the final stages, he found flying in formation really hard (we’d all had 2 days practice at it by now!) – we realised after that his thick soled MBT shoes meant he couldn’t feel his foot throttle very well, and was continually trying to slow down but on full revs so having to weave back and forward trying to keep behind but coming uncomfortably close to Gordon’s plane…  this was magnified on the low level bit which was stressful enough, his altimeter was possibly not set correctly, his headset connection cut out as we approached Barton and he didn’t hear the joining nstructions properly… so he didn’t really know what he was doing, and above all that had in his head that Barton, being a large airport in Manchester, would be tarmac rather than grass… so wasn’t expecting to be overhead when he was…..and abandoned the circuit when he found he wasn’t spaced out enough from the rest of us…

… A lot of lessons to learn. In retrospect putting in at Halfpenny Green, Wolverhampton, for fuel and a low level corridor, Barton circuit and formation briefing would have been sensible. In retrospect we should have persuaded Mike to do the final leg home to a familiar airfield rather than this leg (but he wanted to do something ‘new’!)… he hadn’t flown since May, and not much before that.. and although had been planning to try to fit in 3 landings during the trip, so that he could fly with me in the back, we really hadn’t had any opportunity to do that… so he had resigned himself to not flying, and then suddenly an opportunity arose….

Sandwiches for lunch (no chips – we were chipped out!), and planned the next leg (with a wilting Mike exchanging Richard’s fuel cans and rucksack back for ‘woman’ saw me flying again) over the Lake District if it was nice… we’d speak to Warton Military zone as we were passing close to them, and we knew they are friendly from previous experiences.

Barton to East Fortune 2hr 45mins

A lovely leg… back in familiar formation and Warton kept their tornados below us (yes, we saw them!), over Morecombe bay, and then the mountains of the Lake District came into view! We stayed at about 5,000 feet, but Gordon went below the broken cloud and skirted around the mountains – I was following him directly above, so was able to tell him in tourguide Barbie style which mountains he was looking at..! the scenery didn’t disappoint, and Graeme and I were able to reminisce about our trip a couple of months ago when we flew my son Stuart and his 4 geology student friends around the hills they were mapping down there. It was a glorious tour, and we tracked north after Blencathra towards the west side of Carlisle.. all picking different heights to catch the best speed. The headwind had died down considerably by now, and we stayed in formation all the way back to East Fortune. It was only when we had landed that I think we realised how incredibly lucky we’d been with the weather – we really hadn’t had to even think about it, apart from the headwind on the way home… but to get 3 days of clear skies and flyable winds after the summer we have had… Wow!

August started on a Saturday, which means that no other month this year starts on a Saturday (unless this was a leap year, which it ain’t – February in a leap year starts on the same day of a week as August). So the Saturday saw us up bright and early for Gutbusting as usual, involving being shouted at for not exercising fast enough, then it was off to Glasgow Science Centre to gaze at their closed Tower (what an indictment of Science and Engineering prowess that they can’t open it) and wait in the cafe for the Imax showing as being a museum outside London it costs over 8 quid per person to go around it.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince in 3D – that was the attraction – the reason to drive for a couple of hours to the Science Centre to see it. What we got was a huge IMAX screen and ten minutes (yes count them), ten minutes of 3D – half of which was an advert for a 3D Christmas Carol and the movie titles – the huge screen seemed to lessen the resolution too so overall not great. The destruction of the London Millennium bridge in 3D was decent – but I felt the rest of the 3D made the characters look like flat stick figures, which was interesting in itself. The Animated advert was the most impressive 3D experience – 3D and animation is such a great combination.

Dining out after the cinema meant losing our way in Glasgow and ending up on the M8 motorway back to Edinburgh, the thought of negotiating the tram works was not on – so we ended up in South Queensferry for an Indian, where Stuart and I robbed of our science experience in Glasgow were experimenting with the oil filled lights and proved that you couldn’t set the restaurant on fire with them – everyone else was edging closer to the fire exit.

Down the Tweed was the call on Sunday – everyone assembled in the Kelso Town Square as requested – a veritable visual feast of wet suits and brightly coloured boats – it turned out that Bob was actually somewhere else with our canoes. After half an hour we sent a scout out who reported on Bob’s position and we assembled at the bank of the Tweed and prepared for launch. Stuart and Steph in one open canoe and me in the other, kneeling and armed with kayak paddle and single canoe paddle and two lengths of scaffolding for punting. The river was higher than normal and the fish were jumping. We set off waving at the folk on the new Kelso bridge and hoping they weren’t going to gob at us (my tilly hat was worn as gob protector).

A sequence of weirs, one is the triple weir at Banf Mill where a breaking wave broke over my bow and soaked me. Stu and Steph double team powered through the weirs and kept going – I caught up with them only to find the wind was pushing us further downstream and lost all the others. We pulled in and decided to lunch only to find a panting Lizzie paddling down on her own looking for us. She paddled a bit further upstream so she could get out and stretch her legs and on trying to join her found myself even further downstream than Stu-Steph. So it wasn’t entirely a social lunch stop with me grabbing hold of reeds at one point of the river, Stu-Steph wedged into the bank, Lizzie striding around munching her sandwich and all the rest up at the weir wondering where on earth we had all disappeared to.

Finally we all reassembled and pushed by wind one chap decided to erect a sail made out of his jumper and a paddle and was making decent headway down the river powered by wind. I was completely at the stern with the bow out of the water using that as a sail, which was a decent idea until the wind changed as we turned a corner and I found myself blown onto rocks, turned around and heading backward down the weir and then into a set of trees (many branches of which were in my canoe when I beached). We saw a whooping swan along with some Bewick swans, lots of ducks particularly wearing a surprised expression as I hit the lee banks, one tiger moth flew over us and a couple of walkers waved at us from the shore. The weather was fine and the Kelso to Coldstream stretch took its toll on me – I went to bed early and snored all the way through till morning.

Comparison websites – whilst in the process of battling through the interfaces of moneysupermarket, comparethemarket et al we came across a few blogs which enlightened us to the fact that it is the insurance companies themselves who own the comparison sites and so their comparisons are between differing brands of the same insurance group (i.e. comparethemarket == Budget). As cunning as a meerkat.

Although I had an aviation RT licence for the radio for my plane, I didn’t have one for my handheld VHF waterproof marine radio for sailing and kayaking and the aviation licence didn’t cover it so it was time to go on a course in a North Berwick church. I parked in North Berwick and a woman parked beside me and then started to go on about the parking problem in North Berwick – as far as the eye could see were empty places in a car park a short distance from the High Street so I wasn’t too sure what the problem was.

The VHF instructor had just returned from Antarctica and there were three others on the course – a diver who had been off St Abbs the previous day; a geologist from British Geological Survey, just back from Antarctica too, and who was going on a purporse built ship to map a white ribbon of unsurveyed land off the British coast; and a taxi driver from Kelso who had bought a boat suffering from osmosis and wanted to learn to sail so he could winter it in the med.

The radios were all wired together and we bartered cockscrews for Golf November Tango (G’n'T) and we learned nuggets of information such as that all calls are made first on the distress channel 16 – what! – then changed to another channel to free up the distress channel. Fortunately with digital radios it is possible to make a call to a ship without going through the distress channel first. In addition Maydays come down to pressing a button and all your details including position from onboard GPS are sent out digitally – provided you haven’t sunk more than 35 nautical miles from the nearest station. The EPIRB rescue beacon used to operate on the aviation distress frequency of 121 decimal 5 MegaHertz – and that used to narrow down your location to 500 square miles of ocean! Now GPS gives it in metres… thankfully.

Lunch was in the North Berwick Fry fish and chip restaurant which had a flast screen telly with subtitles talking about breast enlargement as 40 Indian women were chatting about finding a husband.

We all sat our test in different rooms each with stained glass looking down upon us and over coffee we were all told we had passed and went through the questions we got way wrong!

I had dinner arranged later so had some time to kill so went for ice cream in Gullane and picked up some lovely cake from the German bakery there, drove along the coast to Edinburgh then down to meet Gordon making a greenhouse with Mike, who carves erotic phalluses (according to the local newspaper – he calls them mushrooms)

Because we stayed in Edinburgh I took the chance to get sailing gloves and a fog horn (testing it at 0530 every morning at the moment) from Port Edgar Chandelry and wandered around the modern art galleries (John Bellany’s paintings of Scottish fishing ports and Damian Hirst’s formaldehyded ewe) behind two hand holding men, I assumed they were an exhibit, when I stumbled across the Dean Cemetery – as there was a granite pyramid peeking over the cemetry wall just where I had parked my car.

The pyramid was only one of the delights in the graveyard though – exxotic monuments with birds standing on rams heads on top of winged lions, sleeping lions with owls watching over them and a monunment to John Irving from the Franklin Expedition (where they turned cannibal) with carved depiction of Erebus and Terror the two ships lost with all hands in the search for the North West Passage (where is Global Warning when you really need it). Delightful place to wander around on a very sunny day.

I got back home to find that I had scored 90% in my first celestial navigation exam so was very chuffed and celebrated with a chilled beer.

News stories tend to drift across us in a ‘who cares’ sort of way – the Berlin Wall didn’t because it was such a seachange that it was obviously going to change the world and it was great to see attractive women dancing on the wall. What is happening in Iran just now, in the blue corner is the recently ‘re-elected’ incumbent government and in the green corner is the opposition who seriously believe the election was rigged, is more buttock clenching because things are being fought for – this is freedom wrought from real oppression – Berlin kind of wanted freedom anyway with the guards deliberately missing escaping east Berliners – these bastards don’t. Eight dead and countless injured from beatings with horrific pictures and video of the police doing the beatings with sticks – and the press confined to their hotels with no information coming out.

Or so the bastards thought.

Twitter unbelievably comes to the fore – simple under 140 character messages become resistance encryptions to release real stories about what is going on which every new agency is listening to. The US foreign office has even asked Twitter’s ISP to delay its outage for essential maintenance to allow this communication to continue. This is almost a World War II type of operation with a 21st century spin – cyber warfare is real.

There are real people risking real lives in Iran twittering information to a global audience (I see 1200 messages waiting in a minute on twitter on #iranelection” – this is a 21st century phenomenon – like the documentary ‘Death in Yugoslavia’ this is a media driven war or a cyberwar over a protest on a suspect election.

The Irananian secret service are seeking out the Iranian twitterers so everyone is setting their twitter position to Teheran and their time to GMT +3.5 to protect them. And they are blocking proxy servers allowing them to twitter in the first place so tens of thousands of people, like me, are opening up Iranian IP addresses to allow oppressed protesters the chance to speak to the world.

Without twitter I wouldnt have seen the shocking Boston Globe photographs and not had a sense of how important this world event was and how horrific it can turn into. This is such an electronic warfare with photoshopped pictures of government rallies with figures duplicated to make it look large! Fake sites are asking for name/address/mobile and email address of supporters are set up to gather list of supporters to silence them. Cyber attacks (DDOS) on the Iranian government websites are soaking up Iranian bandwidth for the supporters as well as the government.

Long live freedom, having read Persepolis recently it was so depressing to see the first few chapters recreated in the news – hopefully the 21st century technology will change the later chapters. Obama did point out that the opposition policies are not far removed from the current government, although Holocaust denial doesn’t seem to be amongst them.

Green marks the colour of the revolution – people colour their twitter icons green, Iranian football playes wear green bracelets and people got excited when the BBC’s page went green (it does that depending on one of 4 colours – ironically it means Comedy on the BBC site).

What will happen if it is found out that the current government have been democratically elected after all (assuming the recount takes place and is shown in their favour) where will democracy supporters stand then?

The guardian reports -
Readers: Please keep in mind that Twitter is not reliable and that the Guardian is for the most part unable to verify the authenticity of these feeds. We are doing our best to maintain our standard, stringent journalistic practices, but since the Iranian government has banned foreign journalists from covering the protests, it is difficult.

Live tweeting

Our Orkney flight was cancelled due to weather, low cloud, so we all decided to go hill walking in Assynt and I would build my kayak up and paddle to the Summer Isles.

B&B in Ullapool and welcoming pints to celebrate not being killed by the deer running across the dusk painted roads, we parted the next day – Kim and Co off to clamber up Ben Dearg and me to Achiltibuie.

Achiltibuie has a nice grassy green near the pier and near the beach and opposite the summer isles. I parked there, got the backpack out and started to lay out the component parts. Building the K1 is rather like assembling a tent except there is also a lot of leverage involved. The aluminium struts shake free and assemble together – plastic sheets are used to hold everything in place and the skin fits over. So far so good.

The other parts of the skeleton are then added in and leveraged into place using a couple of the other component parts acting as a lever. That is when the sweat starts to flow – even in Assynt. People pass and wave and stop to ask what you are doing too but don;t offer to help, possibly seeing the sweat puts them off. Bird watchers were also keeping a close eye on the mad fellow with the red thing slowly assembling.

It is quite satisfying once the whole thing is assembled and starts to look like a kayak, the rudder, cockpit edges, seasock and easy access lids all get done and I now have something to take on a maiden voyage. My 4 piece paddle assembled I climbed into my dry suit forgetting that my son normally zips me up. I manage to gesticulate to a bird watcher and he comes along to help, but is worried that it doesn’t seem to be zipping up right and looks like it will burst, so I de-drysuit and am standing there in a pair of knickers fiddling with the zip. We have it working and he helps zip me up, saying he will dine out on this tonight.

I lift the kayak to the beach and stand deep in the water with the boat checking for leaks. It seems stable, and the tide is going in the right direction bringing me back into shore if anything goes wrong so I brave it. Bringing it back into the shallows I clamber in and push off.

It has a nice feel as you can feel the waves under you – it is quite high in the water as it is designed for long expeditions and weighed down with more than just Mike. This made paddling more difficult and the rudder wasn’t working quite well due to my assembly of the pedals. I did however make it across to the first island and back (I had intended on the classic circumnavigation of the summer islands through the arch) – since I was on my own I wanted to turn back as soon as I didn’t feel comfortable – although it was slightly choppy it wasn’t anything to worry about and the K1 was performing well.

When I got back close to the beach I decided to do some capsize and self rescue practice – that was when I decided it was actually more difficult to get back into the K1 – even with my rope acting as a ladder to clamber in – especially with it being high in the water with me out of it and the rudder got in the way of clambering in the back as I found out on first attempt.

It was getting late so I clambered back to the grass, disassembled (not without a few swear words) and packed it up – that still left the de-drysuiting again and fortunately a passing women unzipped me (in full sight of her husband at all times) and I drove back via the Summer Isles Hotel for a great view and almost got caught speeding on the way back to Ullapool on that fabulous road.

We dined in Scotland’s only Motel (well only one in Ullappol anyway) which is also holding a beer festival later in the year. Yummy beer and seafood and it was back to the B&B across a football field and bridge (which I promptly tripped coming off it and fell headlong only to recover by running as fast as I could to keep upright, which amused everyone else who was wondering what on earth was happening).

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After Gordon Browns course on Skye and the Berwickshire Canoe Club pool sessions in Kelso and Ollie Jay’s adventure around Lindisfarne – I was desperate for more opportunities and found the Berwick Kayak Club based in Eyemouth.

With Ali learning to drive this was a good chance for both of us to go along to the training sessions in the Eyemouth Army Cadet Centre, with Ali driving and a great excuse to eat fish and chips. The cadet centre gave Bob a chance to lecture us on techniques and navigation (which was a great reminder as I was doing Day Skipper navigation at the time), to roll around on a swiss ball holding a broom and to watch canoeing videos in the red light of the heat lamps (not too sure what they thought we were doing with our women kayakers as the red lights went out there was the oohs and aaahs of the exercising.

The fun really started with Bob’s river trips – first from Norham down the Tweed to East Ord, where we were waltzing down the river in small kayaks until Bob pointed out that we can lower our skegs. Kim flew over us that day and took a piccie at 2,000 feet showing how invisible we were on the river in blue boats and even me with my bright yellow dry suit was hidden under my blue tilly hat. We had swans taking off over us and overall a wonderful time on the river. On stopping for lunch I almost ended up going down the fast water part but frantic thrashing of the paddle and being hauled in by the others saved the day. I had of course also forgotten to bring any lunch – Ali was getting used to the chaos that is a day out with Mike.

Moving on it was over the weir time – first Coldstream where we launched down the river bank under the water and bobbed up – that was when someone noticed that I was heading down the river with the back of my dry suit wide open – the ladies in an open canoe helpfully zipped me up. The weir saw Lizzie overturn and float down the river, Ali was next over the weir followed by a franticly thrashing of paddles the Yellow M was over and still upright. A gentle paddle downstream and then it was Milne Graden weir where everyone managed to get over fine and I got stuck on it, Bob came under and pulled me over his boat – we were a water circus act. Paddling down towards Norham we saw the damage caused by floods with trees jammed up against an island from them being swept down from the Till. At Norham Bridge a Kingfisher flew in front of us.

A trip down the Till from Ford bridge (which I almost hit) to Etal (where I almost went over the weir backwards) on a gorgeous day was delightful in an open canoe – over the weir at Heatherslaw and we were all still upright to punting down the river with a 6 foot kevlar pole in my bright yellow dry suit waving to the tourists on the Heatherslaw Railway. going over the weirs standing up balancing was fun and the while canoe experience was a lot of fun and relaxing although ard work with the wind pushing me sideways into trees. Flood damage could be seen with a hay bale up a tree.

My sailing meant I missed a lot of the other outings – however I made the rescue training in Eyemouth Harbour – where Ali found out his wetsuit didn’t really protect him from the cold. The doc was practising his low brace which failed and he ended up having to be rescued by our close knit team of trainees.

Berwick pool session with Ollie saw Helen from the river trips practicing rolling. She was allocated to rescue me as I went over and waited and waited – and had to bale out. Helen was a whitewater gal and wasn’t used to a sea kayaking and found herself stuck in the corner with its longer tail, desperately trying to turn it to rescue me. That was a good session although the pool didn’t turn on the wave machine which would have been fun in a kayak.

Finally my Feathercraft K1 arrived – a folding kayak from Canada via the Knoydart dealer in Cumbria. The low pound made it more painful than if I had just gone for it a year ago but hey Sybil, my crystal ball, didn’t point this out. Kim assembled it for me as I was busy with a project and noting all the problems in assembly. She was exhausted after 2 hours but had a complete kayak built – which we then had to disassemble as we were taking it up to Assynt that afternoon. The story continues there…

We awoke surrounded by yachts all numbered with guys peeing off the back of their boats and the smell of bcaon drifting across the water. We headed off looking forward to our sail back and had some wind and tacked through a narrow gap between two islands to a snall bay with turqiouse water and a stone marked with ‘No Water for cats leave here’ and various bits of graffiti on other rocks.

We snorkelled around the bay which was very cold and returned to lie in the sun over lunch emptying our provisions finally with mustard on bread and the never ending Croatian version of Parma Ham.

The sail back to Kremik Marina was abandoned with absolutely no wind so it was a long motor back, more emptying of the holding tanks and a final parking into our bay. Clean up the boat, leave the skipper to tidy up the paper work as we abandoned ship for the nearest bar. It wasn;t going to be an option to hang around the marina with the HSBC flotilla (not too sure if they had actaully left the marina as they seemed to be in the same position with G&Ts when we left) so we grabbed a bus to Primosten for a night on the town

A weeks sailing had taken its toll and we all slumbed in front of our lasagnes in a harbour front bar, back to the Hungarian waitress foa beer and then a walk along the shore before we almost al fell asleep so headed back to the boat for an early rise to fly back.

The morning of leaving consisted of making ourselves presentable to get on a plane so it was standing in a queue for the loo with a line of cabins farting and plopping in some bizarre musical sequence as shaving and showering continued in parallel.

Presentable we were on the bus back to the airport chatting with sailors telling tales of tall ship races and why Turkey was cheaper to sail in. We had to remove our batteries from checked baggage (they keep changing the rules!) and I managed to get through security with my swiss knife card due to enormous confusion with our metal hiped skipper and Andy’s leg baggage and metal leg.

With guilt I managed to get a jar of bath salts to take back to the wife, although she did have a few days in the Lake District walking with her mum arranged as recipricol recompense for 7 days sailing in Croatia…

Gatwick have decided to sole the DVT problem by having one toilet at one the end of the airport’s cathedral to duty free – you follow the sign, clamber up the stairs or join the queue for the single lift, wander through all the restaurants for what seems like a hike before finding it. I should have brought my gps along with me.

The New Year begins in earnest.

A walk around Bowmont forest to discover the ’story cache’ and add in a chapter to a slowly growing novel, then a trip around and into the bowels of the magical and dangerous Cessford Castle. Our keg of Yule Fuel (absolutely delicious) was empty shortly followed by an empty keg of Farne Island (yummee) from Hadrian and Border Breweries. So looks like a drier start to 2009.

Dragging myself free from the chores of returning stuff that was delivered but didn’t work during the hols, off wine and out of date produce I thought it was time to reflect on the holiday purchases.
Overall the internet delivered very well (well ok the post office and couriers did the delivery) and saved trudging through crowds.

We are always encouraged to shop local so we took the chance to purchase some olive oils as gifts and some high gravity ales from the Teviot Smokery (all of which were out of date) and some boots from Hendersons of Kelso who then charged the full 17.5% vat (when it is currently 15%) and then only took 2% off when challenged by my eagle eyed student son as it was ‘easier to calculate and anyway no-one else has asked about it’! Stuff your local shopping it’s online from now on! I wonder if this is what the government wanted when reducing the VAT rate – total confusion in the consumer and profiteering by retailers. And don’t get me started about the appalling ’service’ in local restaurants – still it saves tipping.

Still a high spot was playing with the sea scooters in Kelso Swimming Pool – holding a spinning propellor in front as you career through the pool underwater and getting deeper, missing the other 4 folk doing this too – our synchronised sea scooters swimming entry for the 2012 olympics needs a tad of a touch up I fear. My own scooter either ran out of battery power or its motor burned out dragging my bulk out of the deep end before my lungs exploded.

It is important to realise that at this time of year there are fundamental reasons that Christmas exists – and after listening to all superb 10 hours of ‘A Man Born to Be King’ by Dorothy L Sayers (yes it was a crime after all and a bit of mystery too) my interest was piqued to see what else this great man was teaching the world and lo I came across this Christmas message for everyone from Jesus (Luke 14:26)

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.

So Goodwill to all men and women but not to the family or yourself – makes sense to me – although I guess the Roman leaders needed psychiatric treatment themselves

And from a great writer from this year – M.I.A.
No-one on the corner has swagga like us

Merry Winter Solstice

Life with Alasdair had never been smooth, it was now going to hit a rough patch again. We knew he was going to be involved in a motorbike accident as he had so many near misses and when the phone rang our hearts were in our mouth.

On the weekend before his first day at school he decided to run out in front of his friend Russel’s motorbike who was unable to stop and hit his leg. The first we knew was when one of his friends kindly called and let us know he was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Piecing together the tale a good samaritan with first aid had stopped anyone moving him and had someone call an ambulance. So it was a motorbike accident just not his motorbike!

We raced to the hospital to find we had beaten the ambulance and met the police who were waiting too. Alasdair arrived on a trolley with paramedics and was rushed into A&E – we waited wondering why A&E wasn’t the heaving mass of drunken bloody corpses we had seen on telly, but the poilice did mention it was too early yet for the flood of blood.

We were called in to see Alasdair with the nurses taking readings – his blood pressure was low so they couldn’t give him painkillers yet. it was going to be a waiting game for the surgeon was busy but doctors were keeping an eye on him and he was well attended with pretty nurses, although he seemed to be focused on his pain… then he was whipped off to xray. Kim took the friend home that came along in the ambulance with him and I hung around to cheer him up.

Mr Phillips, the surgeon arrived, assessed him looked at the X-Rays and said ‘ we really need his leg straightened as there could be damage hidden in the last x-ray’. I was asked if I wanted to leave but I said I would help – with no pain killers I held him down and fed him gas and air mix which gave him something to bite on as the professionals at the other end straightened the leg. It was over relatively quickly but it probably lasted a long time for Alasdair. I asked what the plan was and was told quite honestly that he was trying ot save the leg – that brought the whole experience into focus.

His blood pressure had returned to normal, a breathalyser was taken and was shown to be normal, so he could finally get morphine – he was happy.

He was whipped off to X-ray again, Kim returned, then it was a waiting game as he was whipped immediately into surgery. We were led to a visitor room at the end of a ward that he would be hopefully brought to and given some coffee. I read Tarzan of the Apes on my iphone whilst Kim was working her way through the magazine section, anything but to think of what would happen if things did not work out.

A horrible noise echoed down the corridor and the nurse came in and said ‘that is your son making that noise’ – he was snoring away. They put him in a single room due to the noise. We went in to find his leg all scaffolded with what is known as External Fixation (or Xfix if you are being cool). He had a shattered tibia and a broken fibia – his leg was hanging on muscle and now the Xfix was holding it together.

We said our goodbyes and returned home to sleep. Walking out of the hospital it was like a scene from Night of the Living Dead – with zombies staggering towards the A&E door with blood pouring from heads and arms. The Borders clubs were emptying.

The next months were really a combination of hospital runs, demands for food and learning all about broken legs. Alasdair was now in a shared ward with a guy who had bought a bike and leapt on it and fell off it (the bike is now on ebay), a guy with a swallow beard who was an almost permanent resident and Big Brother obsessive (bad news about a shared ward is shared telly).

The school were very understanding – not getting Alasdair into school must have seemed like a bonus – and allocated an excellent tutor for when he got back home. In hospital a team of pretty schoolgirls would troop in with work and he diligently worked away in between popping pain killers (a drug you get 5 years for being in possession with) and getting temperature and blood pressure taken.

One day the WRVS lady came along with her trolley of books and asked him if he wanted a book. He said not unless you have any physics text books in there. She asked if he was stuck on a problem and he said yes have you got anything on electromagnetism? She walked over and read his question and his attempted solution and pointed out where he had gone wrong (mixing up his positive and negatives in his equation). He was gobsmacked – WRVS ladies often have problemsin counting out the correct change and here was one solving his higher physics issue…

Infection was high on everyones concerns and he did get a hospital acquired infection – the Xfix is basically an open wound. Even though everyone washed their hands on entry and exit stuff happens (or doesn’t depending on your point of view). He kept in touch by texting but was told not to use his mobile in the ward so a quick google of the health board website policy on mobile phones sorted that one out – there does seem to be a LOT of confusion. Although he did think that he wasn’t supposed to use it as a sign beside his bed read ‘turn O2 off when not in use’ (O2 being oxygen and not what he supposed was the telecoms operator – this confused him more as he was on Vodafone).

So he was finally discharged, picked up another infection at home and antibiotics for a week, was discharged back home. Two infections and you’re out so saith the surgeon – not wishing to take more risks he was whipped in again and Xfix removed (sadly the titanium architectural triumph gets reused rather than hung from our ceiling to remind him not to run in front of motorbikes again) and he had a leg length plaster cast. This was on for a couple of months and when the smell was getting too much was sawn off and a below the knee cast is now on.

His mobility in a cast is remarkable and he managed his crutches very well stabbing it into my back whenever he needed anything. Now he doesn’t use crutches but took them along to the Stereophonics concert so the family could get into the Disabled section at the front (although this did prevent them from getting up and dancing).

I don’t think we could praise the surgeon that saved his leg high enough, the professional staff at A&E, the paramedics – all are there when you need them and Alasdair needed them all badly.

Welcome to Scotland – just bring a bike.

The refinery at Grangemouth has a 2 day strike and absolute chaos breaks out – panic buying causes rationing of fuel and on going out for dinner now we have to phone ahead to a garage to ensure they have diesel. We are only allowed to buy it in 10 pound increments in Kelso and 20 pound increments in Coldstream and almost got banned by accidentally putting in 20 pounds and 17 pence with the pounds whirling past faster than a drunken dervish. I am mystified as to what people are doing with all the fuel and do they not normally fill up their tanks – a minimum fuel fillup rather than maximum would be better strategy for queuing and probably for fuel efficiency.

To add insult to injury we are now treated as fuel lepers when we turn up with jerry cans to fuel the microlight and we are fast running out of fuel in our store. The Scottish Government are now shipping in fuel from abroad and the economy is losing 50 million per day as pipelines are closing down because someone suddenly noticed that Grangemouth is the single source of energy supply for pumping oil in from the rigs.

I flew our new microlight for the first time after my check flight. Naturally down to my home – 30 minutes from East Fortune to Lempitlaw at 90mph skimming past the landscape over the clouds. It rained so I didn’t tarry to buzz the neighbours but zoomed back northward to land at high speed with no wind to slow me down. The scenario went like this in the clubhouse – one woman watching her hubby landing perfectly and extolling his virtues to the assembled crowd of tea drinkers when Kim excitedly saw her hubbie enter the circuit in their gleaming new plane, come careering into finals far too high and diving at high speed missing the grass runway, ballooning several times, wavering through overcontrolling to finally drop out of the sky and bounce several times on the runway before careering to a stop using the brakes before the fence. I decided to try that one again and managed to demonstrate some great overcontrolling but had less of a bounce – so am going to have some remedial landing lessons as they will be cheaper than a new plane.

Spring has sprung, the grass has been nibbled bare by the sheep and the snow is falling. Welcome to Scotland. My Spring toilet book is the Bodleian Library tome about the Invasion of Britain by Hitler – it is a fascinating read in the ’see yourself as others see you’ genre where the Germans marvelled at our roads but poopooed everything else. To balance this I of course have the Commando 12 action comics together at last with a sprinkling of Achtungs, Gott Himmels and take that you Nazi swine.

This time of year is one where I indulge my passion for technical books and fill my desk with Ajax, Model-View-Controller Patterns, LINQ and C#/F# tomes all held up by a strong lime green man bookend, which doesn’t impress people at all that I am a learned man. What does impress people is my new 30 inch Mac Monitor though cos it is just gorgeous – finally I can see my photos at a grand scale and spot all the defects and where I have been going wrong for all these years (purchase a gitzo tripod with a really right stuff ballhead immediately young man). My working world is now a blur of Microsoft research tools and beta versions running on Apple equipment – the best of all possible worlds? Microsoft have finally bought up all the bright people in the world that don’t work at Google and some great work is coming out – finally the world of computer science is coming into its own with fast hardware capable of doing interesting things. My Mac Pro has 8 cores with 18G RAM and 2 x 300G fast disks running several VMWare virtual machines to slow it down. This machine is faster than I am, which is probably just as well.

Another new toy is my GPS attachment to my camera which now automatically maps photos I take to a Flickr map. This will be great for aerial photography with our first test flight over East Lothian showing up camera shake and general crapness (turn the autofocus off for godsake) when wobbling around in turbulence. The new plane was great though (Mainair GT450) handling the winds well and accomodating my zoom lens in the back.
GPS is ruling our lives with a new one attached to the plane, one in my Meade MySky controlling my telescope, Mariella in the car and one on my camera – and the weather has been so poor we haven’t even gone geocaching this year… although some people have visited our Geocache at Lempitlaw, lazily driving down to it.

Stuart went Spainward on a Geology field trip in the north (although he didn’t get to do the Caminito Del Rey in the south, which looks awesome although my imbalance would probably see me plunging, screaming… He returned via Terminal 5 stuck for four hours but managed to force their way into the BA Executive Lounge to sit sipping cocktails under the horse lamps.

Alasdair had a near death experience closer to home on his motorbike when travelling to Galashiels a car overtook him, lost control hitting a corner turned over a few time and bounced back towards him. He missed the car by inches but stopped and almost got run over by one of his teachers who romped onto school, whilst Ali went to see if anyone was injured.

New googles can only mean that Mike is going to do the crawl again – avoid Kelso Swimming Pool at all cost as the masked avenger gasps for breath and forgets his stroke hitting the lane markers and takes in a mouthful of chlorinated water instead of air.

Still armed with a superb cold reading book and GPS driven camera I am off to a ghostly ‘Fright night’ with poledancing Sally and her sister in law to sit huddling in the dark whilst Derek Acorah (mystic or mad you choose) speaks to the dead Fraudulent Medium Act and fears the dark shadow of the trading standards wraithes.

Now on twitter I am destined to get no work done at all – if you are of a like mind click on the twitter link above. There are ten times more access to twitter through an API interface rather than people typing things so it is destined to be as big as rickrolling.

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.

Mike hits 50 – yes one third of my life over already and looking forward to my midlife crisis when I am 75. Medical science and Mike have kept step with each other and no-one is surprised more than my doctors as to age so far. They keep sending me risk assessment appointments, as if the anthrax drum incident, russian mafia thug attack, car, plane and train crashes were not enough to show that risk aversion and Mike tread separate paths through this life.

To celebrate and to snatch my last hours of my pilots licence before it expires I flew to Dundee Airport. Graeme and Kim on one plane and Mike and his petrol tank in another with an aide-memoire of RT speak written on the bar mitts I flew over the Forth at a somewhat chilly altitude of 6,000 feet before encountering Leuchars air traffic control. Requesting ‘MATZ Penetration’ as if asking a two dollar hooker if she did happy hours, I flew over the new runways to descend (strangely you don’t get to ask for MATZ Withdrawl but are passed unceremonously onto Dundee Approach as if your performance didn’t warrant a shared cigarette).

Dundee Airport on a Sunday was only missing the tumbleweed rolling over the runway. However naturally I was the one that had to hold over the Tay Road Bridge as a jet approaches over the city and lands showering onlookers with aviation fuel fumes as it roars into reverse thrusts. I had a less impressive entrance (stop tittering at the back) and in the strong wind floated over the Tay Rail Bridge and fields of footballers and touched down smoothly. Backtracked to where Kim and Graeme tied me down with a concrete block and we made our exit through the flying club and into the silent empty terminal. Silent and empty except for security who insisted that we go through a security check – that was when I realised that I had a large yachting knife (to cut me free from wreckage) which would have alerted even the sleepiest security officer. Fortunately they only wanted one person to go through to pay the landing fees and they perhaps didn’t fancy body searching myself so Graeme volunteered for the body search when his life jacket buckles set off the metal detector.

Lunched at the Richard Murphy Contemporary Arts Centre (splendid building and lunch) then flew back in a gale to join the circuit facing in the wrong direction and landed safely if somewhat abruptly at East Fortune. The Club had the candles on and I blew out the five candles 10 times to give everyone a piece of saliva on the well named Chocolatey cake (more chocolate than cake at Thorntons)

Birthday dinner at the stylish Dakota near the Forth Road Bridge started with drinks – the waiter came with a pint of stout and a champage cocktail and looked confused when we said that it was Kim that was drinking the stout and Mike the cocktail as he put them down at the wrong person. Chilled Oysters and Steak Tartare washed down with various overpriced wines and Kim retired to test the toilets.
The snooty waitress sidled up and asked if my wife would like a dessert. I replied ‘two things’, one I cannot speak for the lady so please wait for her return, and secondly she is not my wife, but my new mistress. She was less snooty after that and gave Kim what she can only describe as pitying looks. My toilet was a bit more adventurous as I was still wearing my thermal underwear so had to stand at the urinal with my trousers around my knees unpeeling the layers…

Now I am of pensionable age (yes really) I managed to prise some information from Equitable Life as to my options and what a remarkably complex tale it is too. One imagines that pensions are a good tax avoiding scheme until you come to actually enjoy the fruits of the avoidance.
Twenty Five percent max is returned as tax free stash to be frittered away in an attempt to reduce the remaining period of living when they pay you some pittance from a annuity based on more people will die leaving money for the survivors like some grim lottery. One suggestion was to emigrate to Australia where pensions are taxed differently and given I am typing this in a blizzard that option is tempting. Annuities are also based on location longevity (I must rent a place in downtown Glasgow) and general health issues (obesity and smoking are suddenly things to have and do) as it is all down to the probability of death. Have these people not seen my driving and travelling stories?

Talking of mid life crisis obviously the motorbike is in the garage and the CBT training websites being pored over. Watch this space.

It turns out that most of Lempitlaw were born in January so the annual birthday bash is growing in number with a consolidated dinner.
There was no burns supper this year at the Curling Club but we went along to come 4th bottom in the pub quiz where my insistence that my answers were correct remained constant whereas my accuracy diminished with each pint of Worthington’s Pale Ale. I almost got the ‘which is the largest inhabited castle in Scotland?’ question wrong which would have been a mite embarrassing since it is the local Floors Castle.
Lempitlaw itself is being remodelled with new passing places ironically causing delays as the lorries building them block the roads, and the steading being turned into housing for families who want to move to the country yet have no gardens.

I reread the Neil Gaiman Sandman series of graphic novels which tend to spawn off interests in other things and for some reason I am embroiled in the Elizabethan era (segueing into Henry the Eight too with the fascinating disease ‘English Sweate’ and his wives) with books and movies on magicians and spymasters and the great Queen herself. Fascinating period.

My new variofocal glasses were picked up from Berwick allowing lunch and a visit to the talking toilet. For 20p for 15 minutes maximum (emergency button in case of constipation) you enter a tardis and get soothingly talked to whilst on the steel loo and find out with all this technology it has still run out of toilet paper.

The call came to ‘rescue’ my mother from her ‘irritating’ grandchildren (what, all of them?) and in particular England (what, all of it?) whom she had grown tired of in spite of spending years telling us how wonderful it was, whilst not reading Samuel Johnson. This was not a Christmas request it was a demand. Not being one to simply drive somewhere and back, Stuart was enrolled as co-driver and Mariella our Satellite navigator. Stuart naturally also added to the itinerary by suggesting France to get some wine. Channel Tunnel – no problems with 53 trains a day. We were set.

4:30am and 3 alarms went off (Ali’s phone with Ali, my iphone and Kim’s hypnosis/relaxation CD). So the entire house was now awake apart from Stuart who was supposed to be going with me. Roused with an operatic awakening he struggled to the car and double checking we went through Change of Underwear – check, sat nav – check, passport – oops Stuart had left it somewhere we couldn’t get it at 5am – France was off the itinerary.

First stop was urinating off Flamborough Head. Quick drive down past 4 wind turbines surrounded with massive oil and gas processing plants with security protected fences and warnings. Mariella asked me to turn right which I did straight in front of another car which beeped for quite a while as we tore off down the road – ah it wasn’t a mini roundabout after all… towards Spurn Point or Spurn Head in the Middle of the Humber estuary. Twitchers giving us dirty looks as we careered along a single track broken and sand track to reach the spit in the Humber. Stuart decided to take over the driving after a couple of dodgy skids and the suspension complaining about the speed we hit the sleeping policemen (speed bumps for the younger readers). That meant that he had to drive over the Humber Bridge in high winds which must have taken a bit of concentration as he shut up all the way over apart form midway where nervously he said ‘it is only our forward momentum that is keeping us on this bridge’.

Next stop was Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem in Nottingham (city motto – it is 8 times safer to park in an NCP car park than on our streets) the oldest tourist trap (nee pub) in England under Nottingham Castle. It was where the crusaders stopped on their way to raping and pillaging and I can see why crusades took so long as there was a 55 minute wait for lunch. Olde Trip ale slipped down my throat and Stuart got us through some dodgy looking Nottingham folk (possibly sired from Robin Hood and his gang of thugs) to drive us straight onto a massive 20 mile tailback on the M1.

We decided by now that the Margate Shell Grotto and Dover and Brighton was out of the itinerary and it was straight to Staines via High Wycombe and Heathrow and a busy M25. I directed Stuart straight to the Crooked Billet roundabout which is a superb puzzle of multiple roundabouts and roads controlled by traffic light filters merging with about 5 major roads. Mariella kept wanting us to go where it was impossible to and we followed other cars who were probably controlled by the same sat nav software through a maze of Staines suburbia to make another attempt on the Crooked Billet. This time almost correct and ended up outside Debbie and Simon’s to a warm welcome from the ‘irritants’ who whisked Stuart off to play with all their Xmas games leaving me with the drinks cabinet and the puzzle of how to fit mum and her plasma telly and stand and all of her clothes into the back of the car. It was just as well we hadn’t gone to France to stock up on booze.

It was either the telly or mum – mum won and the telly got sent by courier. Simon had just finished telling us proudly about his ex-SAS chum assigned to protecting Benazir Bhutto from assassination when the news got turned on announcing her assassination. The ‘irritants’ were as lovely as ever, for small children and Fenella recalled perfectly my recipe for turning small girls into webcubs – ‘my uncle is a werewolf’ is a reasonable epitaph.

We stocked the car with as much as would fit in and dashed off escaping Staines in a car with no number plate (dirt had made it entirely invisible so even the warning sign at Oxford services threatening that all reg numbers are captured on CCTV didn’t concern us) and arriving at Oxford for a wander through the wonderful streets to the Radcliffe Camera. Mum, Stuart and I squeezed up a spiral staircase in a medieval tower to see the dreaming spires in a high wind and to check out mum’s cardiovascular system before racing off to Cheshire along the m5 toll road (where the road signs read ‘toll prices changing soon’) and to the Salt Museum at Nantwich (it was actually at Northwich though thanks to a misreading of the Far from the Sodding Crowd entry). We unwisely introduced granny to the Yellow Car game – where you hit the driver or passenger when a yellow car is spotted driving in the opposite direction – people who buy yellow cars must be going through their life thinking that Britain is full of people in cars hitting each other. Mum hit me even when there were no yellow cars but it is nice to get your years of aggression worked out through violence, so it was the least I could do to bruise easily and wince

Torrential rain cleaned our number plate so we kept to speed limits all the way to Tebay for chocolate and coffees before sailing back to the Borders.

We entertained mum with visits to neighbours, feeding livestock (and barrowing the deadstock – in this case a lamb) and for New Year we had a murder mystery (I was Major Windbag and we even had split personalities with 2 people playing some characters which was confusing once drink started to flow). The New Year started by being thrillingly snowed in.

Mum threatened with hard work and a snow shovel decided it was time to go so it was a frantic attempt to find accommodation around Arbroath (some didn’t answer, some did but sounded neanderathal (do you work on reception? yarr … well perhaps you shouldn’t), and some had mobile phones that went to a woman who had bought the hotels mobile phone. We drove north via the Anstruther fish bar, with the sea was coming over the wall and there was a cold wind so we walked back filled with haddock and chips munching some nice ice cream. We delivered her to a hotel run by Indians in Broughty Ferry, unoriginally called ‘The Hotel’, with the bed headboard being a leopard skin and her bed chair covered with some hairy skin. We escaped via St Andrews to launch ourselves upon our chums the Bunnies and demolish their champagne, play Wii (I still don’t have one myself) and wander around the surprisingly empty Saturday night streets.

Weather in January has deteriorated to the point that we have hurricane winds and the threat of a Sting Jet. Our tables ended up in the pond and recycling cycled around the garden.

Our new plane is all built and ready and our old plane is up for sale.

Tis the season to be jolly, unless you are a sheep or the recipient of my annual newsletter.

November the 10th is the traditional slaughter time, but we typically skidded past that. Foot and mouth licences were not required now but we needed to tag the sheep. That exercise consisted of first getting the sheep in the front field with Steph on a horse scaring them, an electric fence to discourage them and the rest of us chasing them through the gate. Second stage was chasing the sheep around a log pile with Kim hiding and leaping out and grabbing one or two of them at a time. Mike would then run around with a tag gun and ear tag them. The sheep got wise to this and butted Kim from behind and kicked her in the groin for good measure. We finally had them all tagged and separated them out ready for collection in a horse box.

We all carried half a dozen individually into the horse box early in the morning and then Kim and I drove over to Galashiels – the abbatoir is the perfect set for an Eastern European horror film, unsignposted (other than a sign saying Keep Out). We closed off one gate and Mike entered the horse box which shoogled around with bumping and running around before emerging with a struggling horned devil and passed it to a bemused slaughter man. This ritual continued until two got out at the same time and one made a bid for escape, fortunately stymied by another slaughterman passing. We waved goodbye and Kim bizarrely said ‘Do look after them’. It turned out that 2 were condemned (i.e. lost) and we got four of them back in a tesco size shopping crate from the butcher at Freelands Foods who did a splendid job in presenting them all labelled and looking very tasty indeed.

Ali’s school parents night at the Galashiels Academy was a well organised affair and we met with his enthusiastic teachers (most of whom seemed to be leaving since Ali joined). He had a Miss English for maths and a Spanish English teacher with a most gorgeous accent. Kim met an old friend and we headed off to see the Golden Compass (Northern Lights without catholics) and munch revels during the armed polar bear attacks. Dinner at the Indian opposite turned out to be filled with Galashiels Academy teachers celebrating another parents night over with few fatalities. Ali was passed a note with various Maths equations and his maths teacher shouted over ‘Alasdair you have 5 minutes to get them correct’, which cheered him up no end.

The Microlight Christmas Dinner was a jolly affair and I did not end up on the roll of dishonour since he had not flown enough to have too many incidents or crashes. However, sadly, Ian Trench was announced as having lost his battle with bone cancer and there was a toast to a good flying companion. His memory remains every time we look at the club webcam as he organised the cameras. His funeral was a sad affair but fitting for a pilot had a flying swan stained glass motif above the coffin. I spent a couple of chilly and hazy hour long flights around East Lothian to add up Mike’s minimum hours and arranged our new plane G-CWEB a Mainair GT450 allowing us to travel long distances in comfort (over the channel sounds exciting for starters).

Scott’s Selkirk is a jolly annual treat with a market and mulled wine and the majority of Selkirk dressed in victorian outfits and Mike escapes to the fabulous book store and into the fabulous deli/cafe where people dressed as french prisoners made us all sing ‘La Marseillaise’. We were so impressed with the County Hotel bar and lunch that we chose it for the Calligrafix Christmas luncheon (lucky them) where we were mostly well behaved and ended up at Squirrels to swallow the 3 for the price of 2 carry outs before heading back home armed with fish suppers.

Iphone hits Britain and, deftly ignoring Stuart’s abuse and misplaced ridicule, Mike purchases one. And what a splendid machine it is too – cracked of course and with additional programs such as Internet Radio, Video and running a web server and some software to crack WEP passwords I just need to have it working on my vodafone contract since O2 seem to have forgotten the Borders for service. It is not without its problems (Windows x64 and itunes are not friends at all but I can now watch the Queens Christmas message (on youtube) whilst at the Christmas table. I also keep a log of quality of orgasms with the lunar cycles to see if there is a correlation.

Rowing has turned into a manic drive to do 100 kilometres before Christmas Eve and the final days saw 8 kilometres per day (1 in the morning, 2 at lunch and 5 in the evening) being standard. Lots of sweat is also standard. And the reward? I get to print out my own certificate and heat transfer design – woo yay!

Christmas shopping in Carlisle consisted of me getting my eyes tested and photographed (no glacuoma and diabetes today) and horribly expensive Vision Express rimless varifocals ordered. Kim was constantly called and forced to march to chose frames, the rechoose them because the lens wouldn’t fit the first ones. I also saw a couple arguing in the street ‘where the f*ck were you last night’,'i left the pub early’,'lying bitch’… before making my way around a very confusing, but spectacular museum and art galleries (paintings of a himalayan mountain from all sides and a mermaid called Helen were high points). Carlisle christmas lights were lovely and there were singing santas, accordian playing santas and carol singers in santa outfits (in case we forgot about the real message of Christmas) and four lingerie shops with Anne Summers appearing as number 69 on the town plan. The Marks and Spencer shop there has a plaque noting that Bonnie Prince Charlie was there – first Twiggy and now the hero of shortbread tins is claimed by the company. A pub was selling ‘Orgasms’ – baileys and Ameretto, but I had already added an orgasm to my log and this was unlikely to be as good really.

Sheila up the road decided to go missing. Kate called saying that she was worried as Sheilas lights were not on, so Kim and her crept up with a spare key, crept up with a torch to her bedroom and prodded the pile of clothes (which fortunately was not sheila), then proceeded to sweep the place (still in torchlight) before realising that they could turn the lights on. Next possibility was that Sheila had collapsed in the garden so a torchlight sweep was performed there before Kim returned to announce ‘Sheila has vanished’. I obviously suspected aliens immediately, but then suggested that they could try her mobile again – again – they hadn’t done it the first time. Kim called, Sheila answered – ‘I am in the Royal Infirmary’. The story leaked out about kidney tests, please feed the cat and keep a place at the Christmas table for me. We are still unsure how many people are going to be dining at our Christmas table – some children may, some children may not, mothers may or may not, neighbours may or may not. We might have to get an inflatable turkey this year.

We even had one copy of our rush to press Christmas Newsletter returned as offensive (normally people just shred it or throw it on the fire). ‘Never mind the quality feel the width’ felt that the entry on sheep had more lines than the one on Kim’s father – not realising that Kim’s father entry had been heavily edited down as it would have been much more offensive if it had been sent in my original version. I would like to point out that it was only one father and it was 6 sheep. We were also accused to airing Ali’s problems (I seem to remember they were more our problems than Ali’s who was having a jolly fine and fully financed time) to all and sundry. Since there is a selected subset of ‘all’ who receive the annual newsletter they must consider themselves sundry (I will add a link to an online version for ‘all’ as I had forgotten about them).

Wildlife have been a focus recently – Ali called to say that he had watched a piece of grass move and then up popped a mole looked around and then headed back down after seeing Ali. We have a house robin. It flew in and we all spent ages trying to let it out. It was then waiting on the wall for the next time the door opened – and it does this each time – sitting on the wheelbarrow of logs and diving in when we let the dog out – flies around, poohs on my computer screen and then after deftly missing the electric fly killer flies outside (or upstairs to annoy the cat).
Flying sheep were also seen as Flora got the new ram with her horns and threw him out of her food area.

And so to Christmas Day – lots of great presents, especially the ones labelled “To the Family from Mike’. They are thrilled to play with the sextant and Kim is especially pleased with the ‘How to Fly a Plane’ book. Alasdair managed to deliver gentlemen tailoring to me with shirt, tie, socks and a jumper and Stuart gave me one of my own books from amazon which he intercepted in the post (three stars for working to a budget there).

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November – well I do remember the Fifth, but can barely remember if these events happened in October or the start of November as it is all blurring into one. November is a strange month where Americans wear a beard, Australians a moustache and we burn effigies and let off fireworks – I think we win on the fun stakes.

Ali joins Galashiels Academy on a Wednesday, comes back with new girlfriend on a Friday.
Plus c’est la meme chose, plus ça change [The more things change, the more things stay the same].

I joined blipfoto.com – find me at http://www.blipfoto.com/mikeforsyth – where we put up a picture per day (it must be shot on that day). My idea of photographing my poo each morning didn’t go down well with anyone so I have resorted to fluffier imagery.

We had a Firework party with Kim, Ali and Danni building an impressive bonfire (or binfire as it contained all the stuff we were getting rid of) and Danni was let loose with an axe on wardrobes and the broken chaise longue. Stuarts fireworks were professional with him darting around lighting them in sequences known only to him – we will need to add in music next time to drown out the Oooooos and Aaaaaaahs.

My ferrari laptop went over the banister a couple of months back and after a few heated exchanges with our useless insurance company I now have a settlement and am waiting to see which macbook pro to invest in, now that Leopard is here.

The Concept2 rowing machine arrived on a 3 month hire and we have to train to do the 46.3 kilometers to cross the Minch – currently doing one kilometre in a tad close to 5 minutes (although Ali can do it in 4 minutes), I did another 2 in 15 minutes so we still have a long way to go and some shorts padding to buy. We are reckoning on going out with the tide to row constantly for 6 hours between us to cross the Minch before the tide turns. Well that is the planning so far. The rowing machine has been very popular so far though.

Fly by night – Kim and I test flew the Quik GT450 but due to various delays I took off after sunset on a cloudy day to land (legally) on a dark dark runway lit by the GT450 landing light. We ordered the GT450 immediately but rangled over the colours so Kim went to the factory to be persuaded that the colours I chose were correct (although she also worked out that the pod colour and leading edge wing colour should match). Yellow to highlight the G-CWEB so people can shoot us out of the air easier.

Nov 10th is the traditional sacrifice date for sheep – this was before one had to deal with the British Cattle Movement Service (yes they also do the computer system for tagging sheep). Piers the tagger came up with our 20 tags and a pair of pliers… In the meantime Maurice our stud soay was found dead in the field, possibly a MooDunnit as Flora looked like she was whistling and looking in the opposite direction or the other chief suspect was the competitor uncastrated ram who seems to have turned into a bit of a bruiser. Because he wasn’t tagged thanks to the inefficiencies of the BCMS he was now ‘fallen stock’ and a lorry filled with cattle corpses arrived in the style of ‘Bring Out Your Dead’ Python sketch and flung Maurice’s corpse in the back. The crows had already robbed him of an eye but he was still smiling even in death.

We had the first clear out in a decade and filled a skip which arrived quickly but we are seeing no signs of it disappearing at all. Perhaps they spotted the large amount of batteries and CRT monitors in it under the dead plants. The jailhouse garage is now split into a workshop for Ali’s monkey bike and a stable area for Steph’s horses – so we have the delightful aroma of engine oil mashed up with horse poo.

To prepare for the sheeps exodus to the Galashiels slaughterhouse we purchased a new freezer. On opening the old fridge/freezer we found that the very old meat that was languishing there when its power wasn’t working properly was now crawling with maggots and was now a biohazard. Unfortunately John Lewis expect the fridge to be emptied before picking it up so Kim and Ali sprayed their masks with perfume, wore overalls and headed out to bin the stuff. I hid under the bed covers until it was all over and they came in retching to report on the successful but galling operation.

Viking Compasses were apparently off by 45 degrees hence Westray was called that because their compass reading said it was the most westerly of the Orkney Islands (when in fact it isn’t) – but then the Vikings did do some tremendous feats of navigation (and marketing in calling Greenland that even though it isn’t).

Ali returned from Maxmill with a new vocabulary and the searching question of why certain words were offensive so it was nice to find a table of offensive words in the Guardian.

Squirrel took her dog Bray for a wee walk up the hills and threw a toy over a fence for Bray to fetch, which she didn’t. This resulted in squirrel climbing over the barbed wire fence and becoming entangled and stuck – in the middle of nowhere with no assistance. She ended up tearing her coat and trousers and her leg and, with bleeding hand and blood all over her face, returned home to look for her tetanus jab dates. Unfortunately noone was there to film all this for youtube. I suspect any toys thrown in the future will have a line attached to recover them…