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…

October is definitely the month of the Gospel of Luke. Two parables in particular – the Parable of the Lost Sheep and the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The Parable of the Lost Coin makes the trinity so I am keeping my coins close to my chest.

First the lost sheep – the sheep have seen that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, or in this case they saw that the Loopy Kale was greener and the breaches were burst – tell tale signs were brown wool under fences and over fences and the slowly munching forms in the Kale. Whilst trying to get them back I managed to let the highland cow out, it is partial to kale too. The farmers patience was wearing thin so it was time to refence the boundaries – contractors arrived and the obvious thing was to move the livestock to a field just 100 metres down the road.

It took 3 minutes to move the horse. It took 5 minutes to move the highland cow (it ran past the gate and had to get chased back). it took 90 minutes, 8 people and 2 sheep dogs to move 17 sheep (and we managed to lose one in the process and at one point had one sheep in my field 2 in the field they were supposed to be, 3 in my garden and the rest were wandering around the farmers garden). The shepherd was picking them up one at a time and carrying them. That seemed to be far more effective than flocking them (why are they called shepherds? when they are really sheep flockers – ah I see now!). The Parable of the Lost Sheep deals with a shepherd loving the one missing sheep more than the 99 others in his flock, a bit of a suspect tale in these times. In any case I managed to figuratively lose the 99 and only had the 1 left in the field – the sentinel sheep.

The fencers were a trifle naive where soay sheep are concerned and left gaps under the fence which we filled in with rocks. I note that the sheep mark their exits with their wool and focus on these areas in the future bending wire.

Returning the sheep to the field was almost a mirror of the problems except they were now in two fields down the road and we had Max the teddy bear carrying dog who went worrying them (or at least causing minor concern). We realised that these sheep are bright when we finally caught one (it took three of us and a good 20 minutes) and it immediately lies down and refuses to walk when a lead is placed around its neck.
They are a complete dead weight and fortunately Steph came along and lifted it and carried it up the road – one down 16 to go. We caughyt another two and managed to drag them up – at this rate it was going to take all week. Ali took charge and eased them out of the gate with our help – they immediately ran, not up the road, but into the Kale field which had fortunately been harvested. Kim opened the gate with Stuart acting as gatekeeper to keep Flora in (we had learned from the previous time). I crept around the pile of freshly uprooted hawthorn (to make way for fencing) wearing my sheepskin jumper and frightening them straight into the field. Gate closed job well done.

The Parable of the Prodigal Son is even more spooky. For those following the Tales of Alasdair the end result is that after being evicted from his ’shagpad’ in ‘The Mill’ as Maxmill Park is known to the inmates and being forced into a 3 star hotel in Hawick he decided that enough was enough and it was time to ‘ditch the bitch’, or was it a case of vice versa, and come home. The parable runs like this, more or less following what happened -

And Jesus said “A certain man had two sons The younger demands his share of his inheritance while his father is still living, and goes off to a distant country where he ‘wastes his substance with riotous living’, and eventually has to take work as a swine herder. There he comes to his senses, and determines to return home and throw himself on his father’s mercy. But when he returns home, his father greets him with open arms, and hardly gives him a chance to express his repentance; he kills a ‘fatted calf’ to celebrate his return. The older brother becomes jealous at the favored treatment of his faithless brother and upset at the lack of reward for his own faithfulness. And he said unto him, ‘Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found’”.

Our fatted calf was slow roast Angus and we let off fireworks and drank lots of Sicilian wine and Stuart gets the TT when I get my R8. Ali was lost and is now found and has much cleaner hands, less fleas and a better diet.

I was amused to see that the gullible homeless department was rated ‘Fair’ in an appraisal (Unfair would be more appropriate in my opinion). However it was good to see that they finally evicted Alasdair and put into motion The Prodigal Son’s return – even though we suggested that at the start. The interesting thing was the stories of Maxmill as a violent place at night, at schizophrenics breaking windows, of Alasdair being advised by a social worker to give up his job at Hume’s and live off income support – fortunately Archie wasn’t having any of that and played his pivotal role in convincing Alasdair that there is no place like home. Leave them alone and they will come home wagging their tails behind them – perhaps the Parable of the Lost Sheep and Prodigal Son are linked closely.

The Mediation Department wasn’t going to actually give us any mediation as we were talking to our son, we offered to stop speaking to him. When he moved back home they parachuted in the dynamic duo of Jordan and James (mediation commandos), who were perfectly nice people and looked suitably shocked as we relayed our tale but we are hoping they can help in the repatriation of Alasdair (remember Iraq – the battle was easy it is the aftermath that is delicate and time consuming). The mediation process seems to make sense from my perspective and it will be interesting to see it working at this stage.

With a dead monkey bike, life and a new school life in Galashiels life is starting to return to normal – my rowing machine arrives soon and Ali and I are set to row to the Outer Hebrides next year (possibly from the Inner Hebrides). Kim and I will have to take him to the bus in Kelso everyday so it looks like swimming every day from now on which will be good practice for the Minch when the rowing boat sinks.

Fired up with all things nautical I have been diving into the wonderful Lighthouse Stevensons book, previously having only read the Bell Rock entry, to read about lighthouses we narrowly missed on the St Kilda expedition. In addition whilst researching how to use a sextant, for when my GPS inevitably fails, I came across astronomical tables which happened to be done by an old client of ours – it is amazing where happenstance appears. Other sites tell the wonderful story of celestial navigation, from pirate eyepatches being used to retain night vision for star spotting to the horoscopes all being based on a 4,000 year old chart which has shifted at least one zodiac value with the effect that I now move off the cusp from Capricorn to the cusp of the water carrier and the fish, which given the nautical theme is hopefully more appropriate than acting the goat. International Talk Like A Pirate Day came and went with some very confused call centre operatives.

The equinox struck whilst we were in Perthshire tolling the entrance of autumn so it had to be autumnal walks up the Birks of Aberfeldy, with magnificent waterfalls and woodland riverside walks around Logiealmond where our chums fed and watered us into submission when I couldn’t even eat breakfast as I would have exploded. The pub next door to them had shut down due to licence difficulties but had magically reopened for my visit and we spent many an hour recounting travellers tales over real ale. Munching stovies in Dunkeld whilst scaring off the riff raff at the surrounding tables with Kim’s foul language recounting my sailing yarns and our drunken arguments – she could have simply sworn in different languages and only offended foreigners.

We had a mass breakout today from the field -Flora lifted the heavy metal gate off the hinges probably with Roo the horse helping and the sheep followed in a mass feed on the neighbouring farmers grass and newly planted rape. At least no-one was running around shouting ‘Rape, Rape’ like an Archers episode. I used my newly learned sailing knots to secure the gate and we tempted them all back into the field by shouting at them a lot and waving my crook.

Having discovered ‘Deep Blue’ at a gay stag party night at the Clachaig Inn last year – we decided to return with friends to see them live again. This time with Steph, Squirrel, Stuart, Al and Alison with Ian, Kim and Mike spoiling the alliteration we marched up in between two of the three sisters of Glencoe to the Lost Valley, a flat piece of land high up and hidden from below – where the Macdonalds hid their cattle from reivers and themselves from the Campbells. In the valley we proceeded to try to get all of us up on top of a boulder, which was a good idea at the time, the more interesting descent tested our ankles with a jump onto stony ground. The Clachaig Inn bar proved a welcome hostelry and we watched the rugby after dinner where Scotland squeaked through helped by our drunken support. The night carried on drunkenly as we bopped to Deep Blue before the Stornoway black pudding, pints of stout and Macsween haggis met in my stomach and I spent part of the night glued to the toilet sounding like a very ill pair of bagpipes.

Next morning it was a wee visit to see the boat I had spent 9 days on, and then to the Neptune’s Staircase (built by Telford in the mid 1800’s) and capable of lifting boats through a series of locks up 60 feet to the Caledonian Canal. We watched as a catamaran and a yacht were passing through one of the locks and through the gate – the view of Ben Nevis from here is stunning too. Hence up to the friendly Treasures Of The Earth Geology museum at Corpach, which was well worth a visit with a vast array of minerals and luminous rocks and fossils and a constant menacing roaring from the dinosaur exhibit. We passed on the 650 quid lump of Brazilian Amethyst and the 140 quid crystal ball and bought some Bismuth and was told that it was used in Rennies along with a touch of arsenic to ease stomach pain.

A visit to Glenfinnan primarily to see the Hogwarts Express viaduct but the view of the tower and hills was very pretty, before returning at high speed to Callander and watched Deep Blue (the first time I had seen them whilst sober) at the Jazz and Blues Festival with a less enthusiastic crowd munching our way through Confectionary Town’s fudge, tablet, belgian chocolate coated bananas and licorice comfits. Callander also has a very niche market shop called The Christmas Shop (do they take the rest of the year off?)

The highlight of Callander was the Toy Museum which took me down a whirl of nostalgia with Magic Robots and Scalextric, and Kim found out that she had a disadvantaged childhood being made to make her own toys (although her slot car racing set is probably worth more than my old one now due to its rarity). There were nazi action men and black dolls as well lots of golliwogs – Political Correctness had been banished from this collection.

The idea was fillet steak, with a discount voucher at the Green Door, and take Stu and Steph to the Opera. The reality was somewhat different. Parking at festival time in Edinburgh is made a trifle more difficult as they remove large streets of parking for parades and security, at one point we were driving up a narrow street with a guy pretending to be Frankenstein walking down towards us – we finally parked at one end of Edinburgh and made our way through a packed Grassmarket and up Victoria street to the Green Door clutching our voucher for a free bottle of wine and 10% off the delicious steaks. It was now an Italian restaurant with no free tables (and that was before we waved a discount voucher at them). So it was back down Victoria Street trying all restaurants until we reached the one that actually had a free table and a friendly waiter in a kilt – Maison Bleu and delicious the food was and nice the decor and wet was the wine and expensive the bill but you can’t put a price on happiness.

It was unusual that the opera was at the Usher Hall, but hey we had seen naked Swedish women performing Tosca in the Leith council chambers one year. It was even more unusual when it turned out to be a concert performance so no acting, no grand and imaginative scenery and the conductor had just had a daughter so didn’t turn up, leaving an enthuasiastic and energetic woman conductor to take charge of the colourful choir. Stravinsky’s ballet suite Orpheus sent Stu to sleep but the icecream arriving woke him up – even that wasn’t real in that the delicious Musselburgh dish revealed a variety of E numbers and no cream. After the interval the heat was hotting up and the Usher Hall had replaced its CO2 rich air conditioner with cardboard fans. Stuart was seriously requiring elbows and knees to wake up now as the singers wailed their way through Oedipus Rex with no special effects of eyes gouged out. Still at least I enjoyed the music from the grand circle and especially the fact that the others didn’t although at least I didn’t take them to a Portsmouth Sinfonia concert (where each player uses an instrument they have never played).

Kim was a judge at the Shell STEP awards, which she always enjoys and at least this year they supplied her with the briefing notes a few days beforehand rather than at the actual awards.

Barbara, celebrating losing her serial cheating disabled lover, let me back to her party, where previously I had demonstrated fertitlity rites with a couple of women under the full moon and in front of the Coldstream clergyman. I enjoyed the waddling ducks in her pond, the pears and figs from her trees and in particular the nude photograph (not of Barbara nor the ducks). Everyone brought their own fare which typically resulted in a wonderous combination of delights – especially in this case with the desserts. We left before the full moon this time, and without the waddling ducks, to give a standing ovation to the Pink Floyd tribute band Shine On and the particularly delicious diamonds backing girls who were doing a passable emulation of the girl at the start of Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected but this time not in silhouette form.

The sheep provided some entertainment by one getting her horns stuck in the fence and bleating musically until Stuart and I trooped over to see why she was bleating. She had managed to get her head through to munch the grass (is always greener) through the fence but forgot about the horns and couldn’t get back. It took a minute or two to calm her down and work out the topological solution and she was off with Kim singing ‘Horn Free’ from the fence.

The rain is still pouring down, our field has large puddles and the muddy patch is now in danger of swallowing a small herd. Talking of animals, and perhaps the rain is to blame, Flora the highland cow is in love with Roo the racehorse and moo’s endlessly when Roo leaves to go for a ride or a bit of showjumping, otherwise she lies at Roo’s feet gazing lovingly up at him. Roo showed that he should be better named Buck-a-roo as he bucks and kicks when his food arrives, probably in a preventative manner to stop the sheep having any. The sheep don’t seem to be in love with anyone but themselves, although our dog and cat are in love and greet each other with a passionate embrace each morning.

The rain meant no flying so we stopped in all day Saturday to watch the entire first season of Dexter as I did a worldwide hunt for fresh Samphire to go with our fish – apart from frozen and pickled samphire I wasn’t having much luck. Even the obvious samphireshop.co.uk only sold sausages online (I guess sausageshop.co.uk had already gone). There was a superb radio programme on first thing about the hijacking of an airliner on the ground at Karachi from a survivor. The pilots bailed out forcing the plane to remain on the ground and the British chap figured the Americans would be the first to be shot but hadn’t counted on the bravery of a stewardess who discarded white american passports as she knew they would be executed. Unfortunately this left the Brit in the front of the execution queue and he was forced to the front of the plane and had to kneel down with a gun at his head for 6 hours of questioning and general terrorism. If he had been fatter and not covered with a beard he reckoned he would have been shot – so before I step on another plane it looks like weight loss is going to have to take place or beard growing at least.

Sunday morning opens with that dream period of listening to BBC Scotland’s church service with a hymn that was the bastard child of The Brady Bunch and something from Disney’s Beauty and The Beast – we reckoned the teapot was singing, the candelabra was conducting and the piano was playing itself. The best part of the early morning church service is the sermon – this time it was the all time favourite The Parable of the Talents (no this isn’t a middle eastern version of Britain’s Got Talent), but sounded somewhat like Conservative party rhetoric as the tale is told of a master giving (or lending) his servants talents (about a thousand dollars apparently). The first trades his 5 and gets a 100% return, the second trades his 2 and gets a 100% return whereas the third buries his single talent. The master returns to reward those who had traded up and took the single and I assume mud covered talent from the third and gave it to the richest servant, throwing the talentless one out to gnash his teeth.

After the Sunday swim we were press-ganged into volunteering at the Kelso Triathalon, Kim and I spend Sunday afternoon in the rain with a stopwatch and sodden paper attempting to work out as runners passed the almost invisible finish line breathless and grimacing or scowling, which was their tattoo and which was their race number written in pen on a random body part. We took shelter under the Herbalife tent (the logo looked like cannabis so I can understand why their products were so popular) with the chap who services the fire extinguishers from our airfield and a thin Aberdeenshire chappie who munched the Herbalife chocolate bars continually and knows one of our microlighting chums – what a small world it is sheltering under a tent waiting for another scowl from a tri-athelete. There were a couple of accidents to liven up the event, one in which two cyclists were too busy getting on and off their pedals that they collided and the girl had to be taken by ambulance to the local hospital which, in this new improved NHS, simply suggests they go to the main hospital. We thawed out with any remaining gutbusters and polished off various Chinese foodstuffs and cider and wine (not in the same glass but it wouldn’t have made any difference).

My animals are now working together – Flora uses her horn to unclip the electric fence and the sheep throw themselves at it to knock it down then they all (cow, horse and sheep) eat the grass that has grown around it before making escape up the wall to rape locust like any foliage around. It took a good hour with our log man to unravel the electric fence with Flora listening patiently to our plans to reerect it and with Roo following me around and rubbing his head on my shoulder to slow down fence erection.

Stuart and Steph returned from an action packed trip to Sicily, crashing the hired car and romping up to a crater of Mount Etna, mud bathing on Vulcano and a night in the Yotel at Gatwick. Sicily sounds a fabulous place to visit with great wine and pleasant towns and Greek temples.

I spotted it in the Scotsman along with lots of other nostalgia loving adults if the queue at the Pleasance for Trumptonshire Tales with Brian Cant was anything to go by. A delicious lunch first at David Bann’s extraordinary vegetarian restaurant with a yummy espresso cocktail, then an hour an a half of pure joy as Brian Cant and Phil Jupitus give a talk show, performance and showings from Camberwick Green, including Windy Millar drinking cider to excess, Trumpton and Chigley.

Paused to pick up a map of Sicily for Stuart, gazed in awe at the naked woman wearing a billboard reading ‘Locked Out Of The Art College’ then it was battling Edinburgh traffic to visit the splendid Richard Long exhibtion at the Modern Art Gallery. With River Forth mud splattered on walls. photos of previous walks and nature sculptures, and an impressive amount of granite in rectangles and circles and crosses we ambled gently through the exhibit, before emerging to the landform in green which looks remarkably like TellyTubby Land (as a mother and her kids had noticed) – so from Trumptonshire to Tellytubbyland all in one afternoon.

To complete the childish experience we visited Debbie who has given birth to the wonderful Dulcie and wet the baby’s head with a nice bottle of bubbly, toured Simon’s impressive new Latvian wood office. Dropped into the Allanton Inn, unsurprisingly at Allanton, but no space for dinner, however, in true Windy Miller fashion I polished off a pint of cloudy cider and picked up a leaflet on the food we weren’t having before falling asleep in the car on the way back, missing the Coldstream Civic week highlights.

The weekend panned out with gutbusting being delayed due to Dez enjoying a long lie in, followed by a clifftop walk at St Abbs – originally the plan was to walk to Fast Castle but our second car pickup fell through. It was bracing with great geological formations and we escaped the rain which typically arrived when we planned to fly. We returned via hte Indian in Jedburgh which following hte morning trend of noone turning up – all the Indian staff were outside as the boss had not turned up. We had a welcome pint in the Spreadeagle Hotel and sniffed around the NightJar which was also closed before toddling down the high street to see the Indians had managed to be let in to allow us to enjoy their tempting fare.

Sunday was the Curling Club car treasure hunt and in child mode again we romped around the Borders with a set of obscure and ambiguous clues. Apart from missing out filling in 10 points of questions (which we did rather well in when they let us do it) 5 of us in the All Road managed to navigate and find each of the tasks and returned to win the welcoming prize of a bottle of wine for each of us, although we came close to divorce at one point. We stayed up to drink the prize and watch the meteors (of which there was somewhat less than the advertised 100 meteors per hour). Not too sure what all the wine has done for my blood cholesterol tests but the phlebotomist took her sample the next day.

End of July so it must be time for air and agricultural shows and lo and behold there they were.

The East Fortune Air Show and the Border Union Agricultural Show clashed on the Saturday – so it was a choice of the Red Arrows or the Lurcher and Pigeon race. Kim chose the former, I chose the latter – but who was going to spend the least money?

Kim armed with a disabled friend and some stand passes got into the East Fortune Air Show totally free and enjoyed the air display (albeit not being able to hear the commentary as the penalty of having a stand pass was to stand on a stand nowhere near the PA speakers. It also rained.

Mike faced an immediate problem – a 10 pound per person entry fee and an unshaven Stuart and tall Steph no longer looking like 3 pound entry fee children. This was solved by clambering through the woods at the back of the showground and jumping over the mud to make our way through the horseboxes and gain entry free of charge. We did have to pay a 2 pound parking fee though – so Kim was winning on the cheap show day (although technically she only saved 20 odd quid on a ticket and parking whereas we saved 30 quid on tickets and only paid 2 pounds on parking so I might be winning after all).

We won on the entertainment though with a racing pigeon and a lurcher – a cross between a greyhound, outlawed by King Canute under penalty of death (the tide thing must have really pissed him off to do that), and other things including a bearded collie. The race across the car circled main ring at Springwood Park took under 10 seconds and saw the lurcher grab the fake hare well before the low flying pigeon battled to its yellow van in a headwind.

Otherwise the parade of the ancient farming equipment, live stock and fluffystock (cuddly pigs, sheep and cows to win if you throw the oversized ball into the tiny mouth of the milk churn) didn’t float my boat. No real ale in the beer tent and an absence of anything remotely exciting to eat finally led me to the overcrowded labyrinth that was the Food Fayre, where everything was more buy than try and there was the disturbing image of Gary’s Chocolate Orgy surrounded by children. Still it was nice seeing folk that I still can’t recognise and the Hook a Pikachu girl was more attractive than the Pikachus. Stu and Steph decided to test out Centripetal force on the fairground ride as I tried in vain to find something interesting.

I ended up on a pub crawl in Yetholm (there are two pubs, one per village but it did require a walk between them) with friends who had come hill walking and we watched the aircraft flying over from Sunderland Air Show en route to the East Fortune one. One of hte chap’s works on the weapons radar systems for the Eurofighter which we all agreed was a splendid plane.

We went to the Sunderland Show the next day which had the attraction of being seen from a beach and cliffs and was free. The show was two days but it couldn’t compete with the lurcher and pigeon on the first day so we gave it our full attention on the second. Lunched at Marsden Grotto, although the cliff walk was closed so we were stuffed into the tiny and slow moving lift with a bunch of Koreans who were possibly trying to decipher my ‘I am looking for a Japanese girlfriend’ T shirt Japanese symbols. We parked at Whitburn rifle range and enjoyed a Chocolate Covered Marshmallow and Fudge kebab (less of a Chocolate Orgy and more of a quick grope) which was the difference between the far away parking space and the closer one.

HMS Albion sat in the sea with its landing craft zooming around and lots of boats around – this was looking less like an air show and more of a boat one. But then an F16 screamed from out of Sunderland harbour and the game was afoot. Catalana Seaplane flew down the beach followed by a constant set of aircraft and helicopters culminating in the Red Arrows who performed with a glorious rainbow over the sea. The tannoy announced that the Blade Babes, dressed in hot pants and little else were available for volleyball matches – apparently they weren’t at the more refined East Fortune Air Show the day before. The Eurofighter put on an impressive performance and I was sure that I wouldn’t stand much of a chance dog fighting with it in my microlight.

With Sunderland folk in bikini’s and swimming in the sea as the planes roared overhead – it was quite a surreal experience and one definitely worth repeating. The rain poured down at one point and most of the beach emptied into our bus shelter – if only there had been a Guinness Book of Records chap there.

Kim decided to put on her own air show and is acting as navigator and radio operator on a flight down south (Scilly Isles would be an appropriate destination). So I had to do the single man shopping at night amongst all the other singles with meals for one and small orange juices, and on waking to the radio this morning hit the unsnooze button to keep me awake to get some dick telling me to fall asleep again with relaxing music to help – it was Kim’s Paul McKenna relaxation CD (must remember to take that out otherwise early morning flights are going to be missed). I woke again at 10 to nine.

The round Britain team did well – they got fantastic weather and were in Bodmin airfield camping for the night on the first day, along the south coast to the Isle of Wight and up to Wales over thousands of scouts at Stonehenge to Caernarvon Airfield the next night, returning byt he next evening after flying up Crosby Beach and over the statues (not recommended for emergency landings). She returned after 1,300 miles with 6 photos, one being a cat (not the Beast of Bodmin). Fortunately they did not visit Surrey where a foot and mouth outbreak is now causing panic across Britain – otherwise landing in a field of drooling cattle then visiting fields all over the country could have caused a puzzling spead of the disease.

With Harry Potter’s last book safely delivered and nursing a hangover from a night with Ian and Jenny, it was time to head north and west to see Ali’s chum Ben and his dad’s band ‘Deep Blue’ at the Clachaig Inn, Glencoe. Avoiding the disaster that is the Forth Road bridge at weekends, we routed Dalkeith (admiring the Harrow Inn exterior of sandstone, cream and green), via Stirling, lunching at Tyndrum at the fabby Good Food Place for haddock and beer. We also spotted a hotel at Tyndrum in identical colours to the Harrow Inn at Dalkeith (perhaps they shared the same decorator/architect).

Through Rannoch Moor to the Rannoch Rowan, a heritage tree and alone by the side of the road, further on there was evidence of mass deforestation with a van full of folk picking up dead wood. Glencoe has a viewpoint now, last time we visited it was under construction and causing large delays – now you can park and stop to see the three rivers and the waterfall pool amid the busloads of german tourists. Glencoe village has a folk museum with a busty attendant in a low cut dress – Kim saw lots of the exhibits and I seemed to have missed lots but now have her chest burned on my retina. Those I saw included pictures of Hagrid’s Hut, as the Harry Potter movies were filmed around Glencoe, a Kidnapped and Massacre setting with mannequins in olde dress rivalled with the fertility goddess (no not the attendant) and the tales of slate mining where Ballachulish roofed the world.

Booked into the Scorrybreac Guest House where we had the last room (a twin with an ensuite bathroom which was outside the bedroom and down the hall), but it came with a friendly and helpful chap who gave us advice on eating and walking to the pub. Read more of Harry Potter (more deaths…) then we wandered for 45 minutes down to the Clachaig for dinner and lots of real ale. We were tabled in between table 10 and table 12 together with another table, so in Harry Potter mode it was possibly Table 11 and 3/4. It certainly confused the waitresses. Meal over a quick dander to work up an appetite for pints we saw the Hard Rock Challenge 2007 (since last time were at the Clachaig it was a gay stag party I had to take a second look at the name).

It was standing room only in the Boots Bar with Deep Blue tuning up (being a lover of contemporary music I tend to prefer that bit to the actual performance). So it was huddling round a barrel with regular trips to the toilet and bar, ogling the glaswegian slappers in mini-kilts, and amazed at how many dogs there were in the bar (hidden under chairs everywhere and on knees). Deep Blue did another tremendous performance – warming up the bar and dragging a, probably planted, woman up who turned out to be a wonderful singer. In any case the audience loved it, with Ben on lead guitar bashing out Gun’s and Roses and older favourites. We then had to stagger back after working my way through the entire wide range of real ales and back again, in pitch dark with a head torch. I spent the night doing bladder emptying trips to the ensuite bathroom (down the corridor if you recall) naked.

Breakfast time in Guest houses is always a case of working out who is gay and who is having an affair over the creamy porridge. I didn’t finish my porridge and the cheery chap was not taking it away – you’re not getting your main course till you finish your porridge sort of stance. With yet another hangover the plan was to head south via the picturesque road to Oban. Kim had a friend on the Isle of Seil (or Seil Island depending on who you talk to) so we decided to take the road optimistically labelled ‘Bridge over the Atlantic’ after Knipoch – all road signs are now being dual signed in Gaelic for no good reason and this causes road delays and also a diversion of funding from the awful pot holed highland roads to brand new road signs.

The Bridge, designed by Thomas Telford, is a high arched bridge to let larger boats through the narrow tidal channel (hence the Atlantic) filled with coach parties queueing up for the tiny village gift shop.
Over the bridge is the white ‘Tigh an Truish’ Inn or House of the Trousers named when the kilt was forbidden during the Jacobite rebellion (kilted soldiers changed into trews before hitting the bright lights of the mainland and before returning home changed back into their kilts).

Met a couple at a viewpoint who had met a photographer who eschewed the landscape for close ups of the water where he was going to spend all day until the lighting and water was perfect. Me, I just snapped and headed straight to the Oyster Bar where the taster tray awaited. Corryvreckan and Old Tosser disappeared too quickly followed by some others with oysters and a crab pasty. Kim enquired about her friend Janet, and we were then greeted by Ali’s school guidance teacher who recognised her voice. We were also told where her friend was (at the Willowburn Hotel on the way off the island).

Ellenabeich is also home to the somewhat incredible Highland Arts Exhibition – the brainchild of C J Taylor (poet, artist, entrepreneur) with an exhibition of his art and listings of his poems which read like McGonaggall on Mescaline. His paintings look drug induced too – which is not necessarily a bad thing. The serendipitous feel of browsing around a shop that has a model of a stegosaurus above a gently fairy on a rock next to a jewellery holder wearing suspenders – is often too much for the mind to grasp, and this is conjoined by staff wandering around offering free coffee, tablet, shortbread and everything to actually make ‘Welcome Host’ seem a real term. Browsing through the purple sheepskins and the badger fountain it was just too difficult to resist buying something – so I ended up with a book of poetry and shortbread to munch if we got stranded on the Bridge over the Atlantic by grounding the TT. In fact I would be tempted to say that a visit to Seil would be a worthwhile diversion JUST to see this place – unlike the John O’Groats Shop O’Tack which is just awful – this has a ’so bizarre, it is so good’ feel to it – and the friendliness doesn’t go amiss either and the scottish music and tartan carpets, tartan curtains, tartan products and tartan trews lends a Lynchian feel to the whole thing. It even has a stuffed seal with a friendly welcoming smile and a free car park with friendly ‘Please do not park here coaches, park here thank you’ signs.

We finally popped into Kim’s friend and she wasn’t there, but her parents were who we meet last at Kim’s father’s funeral. So back over the Atlantic and southward to the stone circle mecca of Kilmartin. Stone circling has really been taken seriously finally by the tourist industry and there are signs, car parks and a museum (funded apparently by a chap who bared all on a moist evening and was paid per midge bite).
Templewood and the Great X are magnificent and the whole area has a stench of magic in the air – very peaceful and flat (being a valley) with ancient trees. Further south more stones and the old Scot capital of Dunadd, surrounded by The Great Moss, which necessitated a clamber up to the top of the only hill in the valley and a squint at the carving of a boar on a rock. The views are spectacular over the flat flat plains with mountains in the distance. Our feet were getting fairly tired by now and we popped back into the car for a slow and windy drive up Loch Awe, tried to get accommodation at the Kings House Hotel near Rob Roy’s grave but there was no room at the inn so we headed to The wonderful Lade Inn at Kilmahog for more microbrewery ale and wonderful food. Then the long road home whilst I read Harry Potter by maplight and Kim avoided Muggles and spotted even more hotels in the Harrow Inn colour scheme.

Back to Max the big friendly golden retriever we are dog sitting for a week, with his dog plushies including teddy bear, with chewed ear (back from Bear Hospital) after a contra taunt with Max’s jaw, and banana with a face. Cara has turned extra friendly as jealousy creeps in and Professor Moriarty, our black cat, has left home.

And back to the wonderfully sleazy tale from Coldstream of the 60 something guy who was telling a Portugeuse woman that he was from the Secret Police and sending her emails translated using babelfish telling her that she had to do everything that he said or her family would suffer, and if she left Scotland her train or plane would be under terrorist attack. This escalated into meetings in a Secret Place (Oxenrigg where the hens run free) where she had to perform sexual acts upon him. Only in the Scottish Borders.

And back to the rain and the complete TV series of ‘The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe’ from my childhood with the timeless and wonderful music (English edition only the French one was dreary), great film production, inept pirates, humorous racial stereotyping with a capital R and as far as I can tell sticks fairly close to Defoe’s book, based on the tale of Alexander Selkirk from Largo in Fife. Selkirk liked dancing with cats and goats and was thrown off his ship for being ghastly, rather than the more romantic ship sinking scenario. The Island is off the coast of Chile and is named after the fictional character rather than the chap who actually got stranded there.

And back to find that our cleaning lady Alison had a near death experience. Her neighbour’s house caught fire and no-one was sure if anyone was in, in particular the youngest boy, so Alison in the heat of the moment strode up to the back door (with smoke gushing out everywhere), felt the handle was roasting so used a towel off the washing line to wrap it and tried to open the door. Fortunately it was jammed. The intense 1000 degrees heat inside (no visible flames as there would be little or no oxygen inside now) cracked a double glazed window and Alison stepped back and decided against rescue. If she had opened the door it would have exploded, the fireman explained that she would have been badly burned and blown over the fence from the explosion. The little boy turned out to be out playing after all and no-one was hurt, although the family are now homeless with no accommodation in Kelso (filled by our errant son).

From Fire to Water and the film Evan Almighty, about building an ark, releases in Britain coinciding with most of England being several feet deep in water, flooded power stations in danger of closing down and a clean water crisis with England reflecting scenes of third world aid in the flood waters. Smugly typing this from the top of a 600 foot hill the unseen effect is going to be in inflated insurance premiums after a 3 billion pound payout. Ten percent of new homes built on flood plains in the last 3 years with home owners losing their gamble.

Twas doon by the inch o’ Abbots
Oor Johnny walked one day
When he saw a sicht that troubled him
Far more that he could say
A fanatic muslim b@stard
Wiz doin what he’d planned
And intae Glesca’s departure hall
A Cherokee he’d rammed.
A big Glaswegian polis
Came forward tae assist
He thocht a wumman driver?
Or at least someone half-pissed
But to his shock nae drunken Jock
Emerged to grasp his hand
But a flamin Arab loony
Frae Al Qaeda’s band

The mad Islamist nut-case
Had set hissel on fire
And swung oot at the polis
GBH his clear desire
Now that’s no richt wur Johnny cried
And sallied tae the fray
A left hook and a heid butt
Required tae save the day.

Now listen up Bin Laden
Yir sort’s nae wanted here
For imported English radicals
Us Scoatsman huv nae fear
Oor hame grown Glesca Asians
Will have nae bluidy truck
So tak yer worldwide jihad
An get yersel tae F***

–

Some nice Muslim boys were planning a big picnic for their chums on the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond, went down to the hardware store and packed their 4×4 with enough propane and fuel and humous for their journey up the east coast of the Loch to watch the West Highland Way ramblers struggle in the rain. Their new sat nav was installed as they weren’t too sure where they were heading in this wilderness and off they set from Glasgow Green. Mohammad at the wheel was a wee bit nervous, he had only just passed his test and had borrowed daddy’s car but he was really intimated as the posh English voice barked at him from the wee machine on the dashboard. Right, left, merge at next exit – he was all in a whirl. It didn’t look very loch like but Achmed, his buddy, was busy trying to place where they were on his AA map book and was on the Birkenhead page and knew that that was wrong. The first thing Achmed knew was when the AA book, on the Lake district page now, flew forward when they crashed through the doors of Glasgow Airport with the lady barking reverse, then forward, reverse, then forward like some demented harpie and Mohammad obeying her to the letter. The AA book dissolved into flames, along with the box of houmous and as the boys were trying to get out they found themselves being attacked by a policeman, wrestled to the ground and nutted by some chap in a high visibility vest who didn’t appear to speak English at all. The lady was shouting now ‘ALA ALA ALA ALA’ as her speaker warped in the heat. Mohammad awoke in hospital, sore all over and was being spoonfed what he thought was dry porridge. The nurse explained it was haggis and neeps. After the 4th day of being spoon fed he asked if he could have some weetabix but was refused so he asked the matron why he could only get haggis and neeps. She said he had to have that because it was the Burns ward.

–
O John of Smeaton
When will we see your like again
That fought and panned in
two al qaeda men
And stood against him
Osama’s army
And sent him homeward
Tae think again

The airport’s bare now
And cherokee’s lie burnt and still
O’er land that is saved now
Which brave sir smeato held
And stood against him
Osama’s army
And sent him homeward
Tae think again

Those days are passed now
And in the past they must remain
But we can still rise now
And be the nation again
That stood against him
Osama’s army
And sent him homeward
Tae think again

–

Welcome To Glasgow; We kick the F*** oot o terrorists — maryhill graffiti

John Smeaton (Baggage Handler) Quotes

“What’s the score? I’ve got to get this sorted -
He was throwing punches like a prize fighter. So I ran to help the police and I took a flying kick at him – this is Glasgow, we’ll set about you.”

“The man then egressed the vehicle”

“You’re nae hitting the Polis mate, there’s nae chance.”

“Glasgow doesn’t accept this. That’s just Glasgow; we’ll set about ye.”

“If any more extremists are still wanting to rise up and start trouble, know this: We’ll rise right back up against you. New York, Madrid, London, Paisley – we’re all in this together and make no mistake, none of us will hold back from putting the boot in.”

“Nobody gets between 10,000 Weegies and a £99 week in Ibiza booked on Thursday night through Barrhead Travel”

“I was havin’ a fag, I heard a commotion…”

There isn’t a route 66 through Scotland but there is an interesting set of road trails which combined with the TT’s back seat filled with the Heritage Trees of Scotland book, Julian Cope’s stone circle book, the Good Beer Guide, Best of Scotland and two OS maps (North and South Scotland) with a mysterious gap between them – Kim and I set off after gutbusting on the Saturday morning with a rough itinerary and an intention of getting back home Monday night.

First stop was Cairnpapple, north of Bathgate, where a lady originally from Hawick sold us tickets and some chocolate fudge and left us to wander around the 5,000 year old stones and tomb and enjoy the fabulous views of the entire Pentland range, over to Arran, up to Ben Lawers and across the Forth to the Isle of May, Fife and East Lothian. Kim, newly started on her SSRI anti depressants, was listening to a radio article on how hard it is to get off anti-depressants, although at least she was telling jokes so they seem to be working.

Through Linlithgow (fictional birthplace of Scottie in Star Trek) where the ‘Black Bitch’ pub is (albeit named after a dog which is the town’s coat of arms, a greyfriars bobby type of tale, and not the landlady). Onward to the unmissable Pineapple building with huge lawns filled with running dogs and shouting owners, and over the Kincardine Bridge (new railway bridge being constructed alongside the road bridge with a worrying gap in the middle) to Clackmannan, named after a stone, the Clack, worshipped as the Celtic sea god Manann – mounted on a pillar is looks like a giant phallus. I had never thought I would be a tourist in Clackmannan photographing a giant phallus representing a sea god when we were lots of miles inland. It hadn’t started to rain yet so it looked like we had no excuse but to walk up Dollar Glen and see the waterfalls and the Castle Campbell (which I kept calling Glen Campbell) known as Castle Gloom with the burns of Care and Sorrow around it – Kim cruelly suggested this would be a great place for her unmedicated depressive sister’s wedding as we watched limousines filled with strapless dressed wedding guests waiting to whirl under the green men. Dollar is from Dolor meaning Grief so perhaps her sister should move there after all.

Racing to Aberfoyle for ice cream and a dander up Doun Hill where the Fairy Tree grows festooned with wishes, coins pressed into the bark and statues of fairies around the base. There are lots of other trees around the summit of the wee hill similarly decked out. With something, or someone, buzzing around my head we ran back to the car, before we were forced to take the ‘Thomas The Rhymer’ side trip to Fairyland for a few years, getting back just as the rain pelted down – it stopped two days later. Over the Dukes Pass with the views obscured by low cloud and to Loch Katrine with drenched tourists waiting for the Sir Walter Scott steamer. Brig of Turk has the Bicycle Tree, where the legend has it that a chap leaned his bike against the tree, went off to war and was killed and the tree and bike become one. The local tale is that the local blacksmith used it as a dump and the tree grew around the metal refuse. In any case it is an interesting sight, and a bugger to find a single tree in a wood when you have NO directions but are trying to work it out from an old photograph.

Up to the Falls of Dochart at Killin and over the steep and winding Ben Lawers road to the lovely, long and legendary Glen Lyon. Down the Glen is the most picturesque village in Scotland, Fortingall, where the church hosts the oldest living thing in Europe (or the world depending on who you read) – the Fortingall Yew (sadly depleted by tourists carving large chunks off its trunk for drinking vessels). We were too late for the Crannog Centre but we passed through Aberfeldy to see the Obelisk bridge and Black Watch status (with an electrical cable going up the highlander’s kilt for some reason). Pushing the itinerary to the limit at 7:30pm we got to the Meikleour Beech Hedge – the highest in the world and most magnificent. There was no room or dinner table with local beer at the Meikleour Inn, due to the Game Fair – so we headed north but found the Braemar road closed due to a fatal motorcycle accident so stopped off for the night at The Bridge of Cally – along with 26 Rolls Royce and Bentley owners and a gun dog trainer.

The Rolls Royce owners were all well turned out for breakfast, gentle souls who were too afraid to ask when the milk, grapefruit and orange juice ran out, but suggested shooting the terrorists (or possibly all Muslims it was difficult to tell) who rammed Glasgow Airport with a 4×4 filled with propane. There were also a pair who could be your atypical lottery winner dressed in T-shirt but the only one lovingly wiping the torrential rain off his car.

Northwards to a snow free Glenshee Ski Centre and thus to Royal Deeside, an ancient forest and traditional place fit for the Royals. Licking our Braemar icecreams we wandered around the tourist packed centre, passed Balmoral, with No Stopping signs which Kim suggested because Charles was a poor shot, since Lizzie wasn’t in residence we decided to pass the opportunity of tea with the queen and headed to Ballater – a town where every store seems to be By Royal Appointment, some to the Queen Mother who must be accumulating bread in her tomb. An ancient bus in the Bluebird garage had Tarland on its destination sign – and curiously enough that was where we were heading to see the recumbent stone circle at Tomnaverie (with passing places on the pedestrian walkway) and the Twin Trees of Finzean – two separate fir trees joined by a single branch growing between them.
Driving back we passed through unlikley named town of Kincardine O’Neil

We wanted to drive along the Cockbridge to Tomintoul road, which appears regularly on Radio Scotland traffic report as closed, and we could see why – steep ascents and descents and a high exposed mountain road with the Lecht Ski centre in the centre. We came across the village of Lost and at Bellabeg there was an moated motte – the Doune of Invernochty which was used as a radio bunker in the war – it was wet, steep and boggy and there was a ‘danger chemical spraying in progress’ sign but we marched on and got soaked. There was an avenue of lime trees planted in remembrance of 42 radio operators who died in the war, and a memorial sundial.

Duffton to Keith railway is a private concern but we couldn’t find any information on it (it was missing off the tourist boards and there was just an answering machine) – so we drove up to Fochabers and the ghastly Baxter food village to queue for some tinned Baxter’s Haggis broth.
That refuelled us to face the Moray coast and starting at Spey Bay we traversed each of the fishing towns all with welcoming marketing tags such as ‘Aye Afloat’, ‘Home of Cullen Skink’ and the baffling ‘Welcome Knockers’ at Portknockie. Buckie, formerly Buckpool, filled in its harbour to make a play park and we walked the Speyside way by passing through the Start marker and turning round and passing through the Stop marker (on the rear of the Start one), I needed a beer after that. Portsoy had a festival on with old boats in the harbour, folk singers and a drunken woman rolling on the street in a large puddle being laughed at by her friends. We walked along the cliffs to see the open air sea pool and the Serpentine rocks.

Gardenstown and Crovie cling to cliffs with a steep winding road down to the harbour and Pennan is where the film Local Hero was filmed, albeit not in the welcoming inn where the landlady was coping with calls after her assistant put an advert in the paper saying – ‘Own car? Good stamina? call Linda’. The phone box was also not the one in the village, and the beach scenes were filmed in Arisaig – but in any case it is a picturesque village and harbour.

Fraserburgh, which should be twinned with ‘Belfast during the troubles’, was a bit depressing so we headed southwards to Peterhead (a bus passed with a direction indicator of HM Prison), through Aberdeen to Marycoulter, near the unrelated Petercoulter) and the Old Mill Inn, which was friendly, comfortable and the food was good. After some real ale and a bottle of claret I was ready to ignore Kim’s snoring and watch the dreadful Concert for Diana, where the princes were doing a good job of making Gordon Brown sound eloquent. Sort of Dead Aid, except there didn’t seem to be an obvious charitable recipient. Pretty soon I joined Kim in a symphony of snoring on our creaking and squeaking bed.

The plan was to swim at Stonehaven’s open air heated pool, but they covered up the ‘we open at 10am’ with a ‘we open at 1pm’ sign. We spotted a sign to the Highland Boundary Fault which we were wandering around as I took pictures of empty clothes poles in the mist, when I was accosted by a lady with a large boxer dog who seemed to think I was a paedophile photographing her caravan site. When she could see that I was more interested in her breasts she seemed to be a bit more friendlier and showed us where you could see the boundary fault if it wasn’t completely fog bound. The original plan after swimming was to visit my mother. however with the pool closed we called her and she was out. I remembered she gets her hair done on Monday so got my son to call up all the hairdressers in Arbroath to see if Muriel was there. The first one said it was impossible as it turned out to be a gentleman’s barber but after he skipped all the ones who close on a Monday – he finally got her.

We visited the sculptured stones at Aberlemno – pictish stones covered in carvings of people, angels and symbols. Fabulous and difficult to find on the OS map we have as the stones are marked on the wrong road just before the mysterious missing part of Scotland between the two maps. Once we got the church though it was easy detective work to find the others.

Lunched at the Old Brewhouse with Arbroath Smokies, with a cannonball that was apparently fired through the wall by a French pirate and some chap capitalising on its value grabbed it with his shirt, burning his shirt, hands and on dropping it broke his foot. Following the tradition of injuries a window pelmet swung down narrowly missing another diners head. Arbroath harbour is now a marina, none of that pesky fishing stuff in the inner harbour, with a seafood restaurant and startling shopping mall which will look great as an architectural model and less great after the seagulls have deposited all over it. A quick walk up the cliffs to read the Danger signs then it was off on the inlaws trail to see Kim’s mother crossing the Tay Bridge (which is tolled as it is free to get into Dundee but you have to pay to get out).

Balmerino Abbey is a splendid ruin but more splendid is the Spanish Sweet Chestnut Tree – a huge sprawling mass of tree with branches held up with metal scaffolding and its innards filled with concrete. Walked down to the silvery Tay before setting off homebound and tired and splashing through flooded roads through Fife and the Borders – the rain stopped when we got to Kelso.

So what have I learned over the long and tiring weekend -

Glasgow Terminal has very strong doors;
Tully means hill and there are lots of places starting with Tully or Pit which means village or Pictish place;
You can intimidate Rolls Royce owners easily, especially if you are carrying a copy of the Koran;
Don’t get blind drunk in Portsoy with friends like that;
Never write any book exposing the truth about faeries unless you want to disappear;
Space Kitchens continually cold call in breach of TPS and even call phone boxes (I am looking forward to the designer visiting our local red telephone box to measure it up).

Midsummer’s Eve (Summer Solstice and the pagan Litha) and what have we got – massive lightning storm that knocked out our telephone exchange (again – do BT use paper to build them?), huge hailstone storm and lashings of rain causing field flooding and a small river to rage down the Lempitlaw road. Sometimes I am glad I live at the top of a hill. The new lambs are learning to swim and I am searching for a boat.

We had a call from an old business colleague for afternoon tea and Kim had one set of direction and I had the other. It was only when we got near the place that we found out that Kim’s directions said turn off the A697 and mine were something to do with stone eagles. So there was a vast tract of countryside to explore and we were now 5 minutes late. Of course I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that it was eagles so we stopped everywhere with a stone statue – first a pigeon, then a cockerel and now two dogs (what is with this place and bloody animal statues). No joy but in torrential rain a couple of folk helpfully directed us and sure enough we came across the stone eagles at last – except he didn’t live at Eagle Hall (no we didn’t have a note of the address to use google maps either as both of us assumed the other knew it). There was noone about so we stopped at a house with stone arches this time and sure enough we had to go to the house with the stone cat (apparently if I had reached the scarey stone eagles I had gone too far). Incidentally he had a stone eagle in the back garden and a wonderful hidden room behind a mirror and a home made scone eating dog.

Read one of the Jules Verne Scottish Novels, Underground City or The Black Indies, all set in a coal mine under Loch Katrine. He was understandably in love with Scotland and the book reads like a Travelogue. From Arthurs Seat, in Edinburgh, he also sees The Green Ray, which was the topic of his next Scottish novel, set to music by Gavin Bryars in our century.

The Ringing of the Balls – out of seven lambs four were male, so with 1 shepherd and 2 apprentices leaping around a field chasing all seven lambs until the 4 males were thrust inverted inbetween thighs and a small rubber ring placed over the testicles and down over the nodules and sprung into place to ensure Maurice’s ram dominance. Just have to catch a few of the older ones for the slaughterhouse now.

Morris Dancing in Wooler – I saw it in a ‘whats on’ guide and convinced Kim this would be a splendid night out, so we turned up early to avoid the crowds and get a parking place. The high street was empty. We dined at the bizarre Italian restaurant (or restarant as they spell it) and staggered out after a large grappa to the still empty high street. We wandered around a bit then Kim spotted a poster in the Post Office window with morris dancers pictured and the address of Main Street. Dagnabbit, that was it- we were on the wrong street – we were on High Street. So we wandered around more finding nothing and listening out for the sound of bells and waving hankerchiefs. Nothing. We asked an elderly Wooler gentleman where Main Street was – doesn’t exist. We said where the Morris Dancers are. He looked at us if we were mad, there are no Morris Dancers around here. We went back to the post office to check if the poster really existed or if we had slipped into an English version of Brigadoon. It was there along with a couple of locals also looking for the Morris Dancers and who told us that Main Street meant High Street. We weren’t going mad, or at least we were in good company. The rain was starting and sure enough the Morris Dancers appeared in the ‘Pay and Display’ car park – of course the clue was in the word Display. An enthusiastic chap with less enthusiastic women, all dressed in ribbon, shaking red hankies, waving sticks and blocking the car park entrance whilst a small band played on with even less enthusiastic spectators (but the dogs were all excited barking away).

‘The Secret Commonwealth, An essay on the nature and actions of the subterranean (and for the most part) invisible people heretofore going under the name of Elves, Fauns and Fairies’ by Robert Kirk, currently imprisoned in the Fairy Tree on top of Doun Hill near Aberfoyle, is a book written in the 17th century with a fascinating set of supernatural experiences in Scotland. Fairies have a fascinating history where they were less than diminutive but attractive lady pilots, ala Conan Doyle and the case of the Cottingley Fairies, and more of the Niebulungenlied mining dwarf look with Rheingold soundtrack.

Literature loves fairies, Shakespeare and Spenser, Arthurian Legends through Walter Scott and Kipling to Jonathan Strange. Frightfully British (and especially Celtic) stuff and yet they seem to have such a bad press these days and poets don’t exactly help -

The Stolen Child
by W.B. Yeats

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping than you can understand.

—

Fairy Land
by Edgar Allan Poe

Dim vales–and shadowy floods-
And cloudy-looking woods,
Whose forms we can’t discover
For the tears that drip all over!
Huge moons there wax and wane-
Again–again–again-
Every moment of the night
Forever changing places-
And they put out the star-light
With the breath from their pale faces.
About twelve by the moon-dial,
One more filmy than the rest
(A kind which, upon trial,
They have found to be the best)
Comes down–still down–and down,
With its centre on the crown

Of a mountain’s eminence,
While its wide circumference
In easy drapery falls
Over hamlets, over halls,
Wherever they may be-
O’er the strange woods–o’er the sea-
Over spirits on the wing-
Over every drowsy thing-
And buries them up quite
In a labyrinth of light-
And then, how deep!–O, deep!
Is the passion of their sleep.
In the morning they arise,
And their moony covering
Is soaring in the skies,
With the tempests as they toss,
Like–almost anything-
Or a yellow Albatross.
They use that moon no more
For the same end as before-
Videlicet, a tent-
Which I think extravagant:
Its atomies, however,
Into a shower dissever,
Of which those butterflies
Of Earth, who seek the skies,
And so come down again,
(Never-contented things!)
Have brought a specimen
Upon their quivering wings.

I was lent a super old book, Marchmont and the Humes of Polwarth, on the history of Polwarth and it included this gem of a ghost story. I haven’t worked out where the fords are to give them a wide berth but I have a sneaking suspicion that we fly over them every time we come down to the Borders.

“THE FOUL FORDS” OR THE LONGFORMACUS FARRIER

About 1820 there lived a Farrier of the name of Keane in the village of Longformacus in Lammermoor. He was a rough, passionate man, much addicted to swearing. For many years he was farrier to the Eagle or Spottiswood troop of Yeomanry. One day he went to Greenlaw to attend the funeral of his sister, intending to be home early in the afternoon. His wife and family were surprised when he did not appear as they expected and they sat up watching for him. About two o’clock in the morning a heavy weight was heard to fall against the door of the house, and on opening it to see what was the matter, old Keane was discovered lying in a fainting fit on the threshold. He was put to bed and means used for his recovery, but when he came out of the fit he was raving mad and talked of such frightful things that his family were quite terrified. He continued till next day in the same state, but at length his senses returned and he desired to see the minister alone.

After a long conversation with him he called all his family round his bed, and required from each of his children and his wife a solemn promise that they would none of them ever pass over a particular spot in the moor between Longformacus and Greenlaw, known by the name of ‘The Foul Fords’ (it is the ford over a little water-course just east of Castle Shields). He assigned no reason to them for this demand, but the promise was given and he spoke no more, and died that evening.

About ten years after his death, his eldest son Henry Keane had to go to Greenlaw on business, and in the afternoon he prepared to return home. The last person who saw him as he was leaving the town was the blacksmith of Spottiswood, John Michie. He tried to persuade Michie to accompany him home, which he refused to do as it would take him several miles out of his way. Keane begged him most earnestly to go with him as he said he must pass the Foul Fords that night, and he would rather go through hell-fire than do so. Michie asked him why he said he must pass the Foul Fords, as by going a few yards on either side of them he might avoid them entirely. He persisted that he must pass them and Michie at last left him, a good deal surprised that he should talk of going over the Foul Fords when every one knew that he and his whole family were bound, by a promise to their dead father, never to go by the place.

Next morning a labouring man from Castle Shields, by name Adam Redpath, was going to his work (digging sheep-drains on the moor), when on the Foul Fords he met Henry Keane lying stone dead and with no mark of violence on his body. His hat, coat, waistcoat, shoes and stockings were lying at about 100 yards distance from him on the Greenlaw side of the Fords, and while his flannel drawers were off and lying with the rest of his clothes, his trousers were on. Mr. Ord, the minister of Longformacus, told one or two persons what John Keane (the father) had said to him on his deathbed, and by degrees the story got abroad. It was this. Keane said that he was returning home slowly after his sister’s funeral, looking on the ground, when he was suddenly roused by hearing the tramping of horses, and on looking up he saw a large troop of riders coming towards him two and two. What was his horror when he saw that one of the two foremost was the sister whom he had that day seen buried at Greenlaw! On looking further he saw many relations and friends long before dead; but when the two last horses came up to him he saw that one was mounted by a dark man whose face he had never seen before. He led the other horse, which, though saddled and bridled, was riderless, and on this horse the whole company wanted to compel Keane to get. He struggled violently, he said, for some time, and at last got off by promising that one of his family should go instead of him.

There still lives at Longformacus his remaining son Robert; he has the same horror of the Foul Fords that his brother had, and will not speak, nor allow any one to speak to him on the subject.

Three or four years ago a herdsman of the name of Burton was found dead within a short distance of the spot, without any apparent cause for his death.

Stuart and I went on a manhunt for Ali most of the day. This came to a head after Kim had visited Sarah’s mum to fill her in on the situation with no holds barred – Ali is now entirely unwelcome at their home.

Highlights have included screaming at him (as prospective buyers were at the cottage up the road)
that we would call the police as he ran down the road; driving at top speed down the Lempitlaw Road and chasing him through a field; stalking him through another field and wood then realising that we were both wearing bright white T shirts so put in an emergency call to Kim for dark jackets, an OS map and binoculars.

Armed professionally we waited for him hidden above a railway bridge as the Kelso new bridge was the only likely spot for him to cross. However, Stuart and I were feeling a bit peckish so went to the Cobbles Inn (that was apparently the time he managed to slip through our net) for a spot of lunch.

We then drove around town searching for him at all the spots where Stuart used to skive off school. At one point dressed in sweaty white T shirts and me a few pints down and wearing sunglasses – went into the local sports shop and asked if they sold any Baseball Bats. I don’t know if they called the police but they were looking particularly edgy but were offering us a bow and arrow instead which I wasn’t too sure about.

We then looked particularly dodgy outside the back of the school gate (being the only ones not smoking) and spotting a friend of Stuart mounting the pavement whilst driving erratically.

We worked out that he would be meeting Sarah so worked which was her bus stop and in the meantime went into the local country store and as I was asking for Rings for my Lambs (she looked suspiciously at me as if I wasn’t the sort of person to be a shepherd) – Stuart was loitering around the till area. Now we were really looking dodgy. No rings and no baseball bats – we were seriously disadvantaged in a fight.

We separated to form a pincer movement from where Sarah’s bus was going to debus and Ali was right in the middle. We then remonstrated physically with him to get him in the car (whilst various people are watching) then take him to a field and rough him up a little (as other people are walking their dogs along the old railway line). He ran off to Sarah’s and I was on the phone to Kim who was on the phone to Karen who had been told that Stuart and I were coming with baseball bats (amazing how news travels). Sarah’s stepdad was being awoken (he is on a night shift) with the words ‘there is going to be trouble’.

Stuart and I cut him off at the pass and stood there like gunfighters in the middle of a housing estate, in the middle of the junction to Sarah’s house. Ali arrived and we had a standoff – we weren’t letting him past us and he wasn’t going to go home. With various choice phrases including ‘I will break your f**king leg and drag you home’ and you come with us now or go to hospital, not noticing the old man cutting his hedges in one garden and the woman washing her windows at the other house. Stuart and I conscious that it would now be us being arrested – walked away saying ’see you in hospital then’ and drove back to see if Sarah’s stepdad had beaten him up yet. Ali was sitting crying at the curb – he said he hadn’t gone up and he wanted to come home. I bundled him in the back of the car and waved to the old chap standing watching in his garden.

If there is a Crimewatch episode on kelso featuring two chaps in white T-shirts brandishing baseball bats – please don’t shop us!

The Fortean Times had a letter about the lost village of Polwarth near Duns, so at the weekend I decided to have a look and go around the other churchyards and places of interest in Berwickshire.

Started off at Greenlaw with its wonderful Town Hall, sadly crumbling and disused, and its church which used to be a jail. It started to rain but the church was locked (most of the churches I visited were locked, so much for encouraging tourism, dry visitors or even worship).

Polwarth was at the end of of a country road marked by a large ROAD CLOSED sign across it. Since I could squeeze past in the Audi TT I headed on. No one was keeping me from a mystery. I reached the church with its stone step stile, and on clambering over as soon as I was in the churchyard I heard singing. It went on for a wee while then stopped. I expected it was something in the church, but the church was all locked and through the windows I could see it was empty. The church has a bell inside for frightening away evil spirits. At the end of the graveyard is a small gate with steps leading nowhere and with a large tree, which creaked and had the sound of creatures running up and down it, although I could see nothing.

The Fortean Times story mentioned that the villagers disappeared and that one was found with her legs in water in a trance saying that fairies had tricked her and she couldn’t move until others came to rescue her. Incest and poor drainage seemed to be other possibilities for the disappearance of the village, which had been famous for its wedding dances around the thorn trees and its fiddlers without whom a wedding could not take place. I stepped over the ‘fairy gate’ and down the steps. Under the tree I could feel my hackles rise and I decided to not join the ranks of the disappeared and become Mike the Rhymer and so I stepped back over the fairy gate into the churchyard. It started to rain and I hurried back over the stile and left Pagan Polwarth in a hurry.

Near there is the ‘Foul Fords’ which is a classic ghost story of men walking between Longformacus and Greenlaw across the moors and always ending up dead – after seeing the dead arise on horseback. The foulness could atest to a hallucogenic gas but who can tell – these are all from very old books which can only be opened 2/3rds through to stop the binding being destroyed. The moors do look pretty spooky though.

Passed through Gavinton, a planned village with a huge church for a village and a gravestone with a stone pigeon, then onto Allanton for lunch. I was the only customer in the friendly Allanton Inn and they kindly got their chef to delay his own lunch to cook me a delicious chicken dish washed down with a refreshing pint of ale. They mentioned that everyone was at the rally, which I took to be the annual Jim Clark Rally, but that they had a dining room full of paramedics that evening. Thinking nothing of the fact that they close most of the Berwickshire roads for it – I set off to my next appointment at Edrom.

Edrom was closed, not just the church – the rally was going through it and to reach the church I had to run across a live rally course lined with paramedics looking for work before their dinner at the Allanton Inn. The church was of course closed, but has a delightful arch and some ornate gravestones.

I popped into Duns where their was a land rover parked with a tyre advertising ‘25 years of muck spreader hire’. I decided from my map to visit Fogo and this was where I managed to merge into a road which was part of the rally and found myself in between two fast moving rally cars, just had to put my foot down as there was no way off the single track road. This went on for a few miles until we reached a timing gate, which I roared through as the rally cars turned in and I managed to turn off at Fogo to visit its church. The rain was pelting down now and I was so grateful that Fogo Church was actually open. The church has stairs outside leading the gentry up to balconies so they can pray above the riff-raff.

Returning to Kelso I stopped off at Ednam church, which was naturally closed, a place of music with Abide By Me and Rule Britannia written there, and outside Ednam and Kelso is a large obelisk commemorating James Thompson. the poet whose work ‘The Seasons’ Handel set to music. There is a great view across the Kelso racecourse to the Eildons from there.

After a Sunday swim and fish purchase from the market, Stuart and I headed off to the Crook Inn at Tweedsmuir (a starred entry in the Good Beer Guide). After an hour and a half drive, with Stuart bleating for food around Stobo Castle, we arrived to find that the delightful Art Deco pub has been closed down. We tried Broughton which has a brewery but no pub and reached Biggar which has the runner up fish and chip restaurant in the Seafish awards, Anstruther having won it. A delicious meal with interesting wall posters telling you how good fish and chips are nutritionally and the toilet has a poster telling you how to wash your hands.

We left for some culture – a geology exhibition in Peebles (fairy stones) was closed (are these the same people who run the churches?), so we visited Villeneuve Wines instead as a treat, and after a white chocolate ice cream in Innerleithen we reached St Ronans Well (so named only because Walter Scott renamed the less poetic ‘Doo Well’ to it) and found the well was closed for restoration by the Beechgrove Garden. We supped the free water and enjoyed the exhibition with drawings of St Ronan tripping up the devil and a 1918 tank (war not water) in Innerleithen high street.

Returning to Kelso the rally was still going and they were roaring out of the square. Alasdair went head over heels (this time not in love) after hitting a pothole on his bike and came back covered in bandages.

Kim’s father finally returned from Madeira and after a post mortem the funeral could proceed as no one was getting arrested and he wasn’t required as exhibit A. The funeral was at the crematorium in Dundee and since I was as welcome as a condom seller at a Catholic Mass we spent the night at our friends in Perthshire (he is high up in Scottish Water which explains why he only has bottled water in the house, as well as an excellent cellar). His kids think I am somewhat bizarre, perceptive little blighters, so I tend to play to that and was wearing my particularly brash Hawaiian shirt. It was when Kim asked ‘what shirt did you pack for the funeral?’ that it became clear that this was the only shirt I had with me, so in an unexpected fit of respect we popped into Perth on the morning of the funeral with a stinking hangover (remember that excellent cellar).

Thus with dark shirt but with a rebellious bright red and white striped tie from Next and what looks like a stab vest in case things turned out less than perfect with the family, we raced along the roadworks and heavy traffic (using google maps on the mobile to find that the crematorium is near something called Playtime so if we were late as usual at least we could blame Google). Whistling ‘I’m getting buried in the morning’ we entered the crematorium car park to find complete chaos as everyone is vying for the remaining parking space.

I managed to be both respectful and annoying by pinching the front pew place where the overtly Christian Auntie Betty was angling – but I can still move when I need to. The coffin had come from Madeira and was ornate and splendid I crossed myself in the traditional ’spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch’ motion without thinking, however, the coffin was also incompatible with the funeral bearers who struggled to get it onto the runners and almost dropped it at one point. Dull hymns, irrelevant bible readings from what we thought was a gay minister and a splendid rendition of the irreligious ‘I vow for thee my country’ played at far too slow a pace and with mourners singing out of frequency and amplitude – I wish I had recorded it. There was a tribute mumbled to the half deaf congregation and then the coffin disappeared down below into the flames (not too sure about the symbolism of that) and in my prime position I also had to lead the mourners out through the door – which must have pleased the family no end.

Kim had dressed in a lovely pink top whose buttons were secured with extra thread, after an earlier incident, to handle the stress from her heaving breasts, she still had a queue of mourning men staring at her chest saying ‘My, how you have grown since I saw you last’. People generally just stared at my tie and said – ‘ah so you are Mike I have heard all about you’ before skulking away before I wrapped them in my adamantine chains. Kim’s sister managed to spill the entire contents of a glass of red wine over her new best friend Alistair’s jacket and the sterile golf restaurant (it was less of a wake, more of a fast asleep affair) seemed to prefer not serving Kim with the meal she had chosen that obviously their chef was going to have – but not reckoning on her peristence he dined on something else that evening.

We met the interesting, and well hidden, percentage of Kim’s family – an archaeologist from Skipton who seemed amazed that I had heard of the Skipton Building Society and who was heading down to Great Orme after my recommendation of the Bronze Age mines; The captain of a ship moored off the Brazilian coast which does a dyno-rod operation for the oil industry and who loved geology, sailing and hill walking in the Lake District; Kim also had an Auntie who went to the dark side and married an Uncle from the Bahamas, they were in Italy and so popped in for the weekend – both focused entirely on fitness and travelling which they combine by organising the Olympics, and dissuading us from visiting them with tales of how the Bahamas have wells and cess pits, which unfortunately mix at times depending on the water table, and the worsening hurricanes which leave them with a variety of pets who are blown in to their ruined gardens.

We also met a structural engineer, and asked what he thought of the Forth bridge. He replied that it was fine and would last for years, to our relief after all the scaremongering in the newspapers. When Kim added ‘what about the lorries though?’ he suddenly frowned and said ‘Oh you mean the road one, oh no that one is fucked!’ He seemed to like the tunnel idea though. Today the SNP have said they will be dropping the bridge tolls in a shrewd move that might mean that the bridge won’t be there by the time the legislation goes through to remove the tolls, I wonder if tunnel tolls are included.

We spent the evening relaxing back in Perthshire exchanging funeral tales, drinking wine, listening to our favourite funeral music (some of it on Kim’s phone) and blowing up balloons.

It is a real pity that you only really meet extended families at weddings, christenings and funerals – there should be another excuse that doesn’t require a church.

May started with Kim away to be with her mother and problems with Alasdair reaching a head, causing me to see the doctor and get my blood pressure checked – it was through the roof with my LDL (affectionately called Lidl’s) and HDL (affectionately called Sainsbury’s) balance not being good. Alasdair was told that perhaps spending a year with granny (any granny) would be a good idea. That seemed to get him back into some sense of normality and he went off for a weekend to granny.

I drove him up with the overall plan of going kayaking on Loch Lomond. Things didn’t start out well with bank holiday traffic and a tractor on the Borders roads, and got worse with an hours delay stuck in a queue to get over the Forth Road Bridge (which was naturally down to single lane north specially for the bank holiday). We stopped off at Kathellan for some lunch then reached granny’s place (albeit with no granny or psycho sister to greet us) whereupon I took my trusty google map printout and headed to Loch Lomond. Things went really downhill here, I am not sure where it went wrong but went wrong it did. I eventually reached Arrochar at the top of Loch Lomond at 6pm and decided to try to find accommodation (yes on a bank holiday with no bookings) and got the last room in the Village Inn at Arrochar.

A couple of pints of real ale and a fillet steak and wine and I was all ready to party whereupon who should be in the bar but a lesbian hen night so we ended up squeezing into cabs and going god knows where with the dire warning from the barman – ‘there will be a stabbing tonight with this lot’ – fortunately there wasn’t although I did wake up the next morning without my credit card (it was handed in as I had dropped it in the bar).

Luss is where ‘Take The High Road’ is filmed and is a lovely little village perched on Loch Lomond, with an impressive church and great views. There is a cycle path all the way up the loch which looks like fun and at Firkin Point there is a great view North and South.

I found the Berwickshire Kayak Club, who don’t kayak in Berwickshire and are based in Roxburghshire. They had been kayaking the day before but it was too windy today. I pointed out that I wasn’t a tent kind of guy and more a hotel kind of guy and there seemed to be some agreement there since the night before had been windy and wet and miserable. I drove up to Rowardennan with spectacular views on the West Highland Way and wandered around until I was nearly blown over and decided there was no place like home.

Kim put Ali on a train at Leuchars and I picked him off the Berwick train (which he made at Waverley with seconds to spare), filled him up with Chicken Lemon as I Tandooried, and drove back to beat the sunset before the vampires came out – seeing some chap emerge like a zombie from a field carrying a gun – we drove a bit faster at that point.

So now it is back to a diet of plant stanols, red wine (2 glasses to raise HDL levels), potassium rich bananas (to neutralise sodium in the body and lower blood pressure by 10% in a week), exercise plans and a low salt high fresh fruit lifestyle change. And to ensure instant weight loss – a haircut. The hairdresser wielding her number 2 shaver started shearing me and then came the unexpected exchange between Hairdresser (hd) and myself (mf)

hd>Are You Stuarts Dad?
mf>Yes are you Steph’s aunt?
hd>Yes!
mf>So did you used to be a man?
hd>No I have always been a woman?
mf>Right so that is the other aunt.

I realised that this interrogation with someone wielding her razor was probably not a good strategy.

And lo the lamb of Maurice spewed forth again – another set of twins, both well. And now 5 lambs are regularly escaping to the next field traversing the horse jumps to munch on the grass there – they have been self selected for the abattoirs. Mysteriously Flora the highland cow is also escaping through a gate that is closed with a spring latch – so either she is very smart and strong (she can be) – or someone is letting her out. The last arrival (Number 6) was a wee black lamb called Sambo McGoohan, and what a cutie she is and like her namesake has tried to escape already.

The noise of whirling helicopter blades led Ali and I out the back window and saw an impressive display of low level Chinook flying

Torrential rain meant we had to spend Saturday driving across to the west (normally much wetter than our sunbaked east coast) to find the Lake District basking in sunshine. Clambered up Catbells and fell down a muddy track on the descent so ate my delicious lamb pie in the Mill Inn looking like a tramp. Still all this effort has seen my blood pressure reduce dramatically, although Ali produces the odd spike with his insistence on ignoring his advisors entirely and pursuing his ‘Romeo and Juliet as directed by David Lynch’ affair.

An allegorical tale of a man who wanted to be Peter Pan but was really
the crocodile.

“Never smile at a crocodile
No, you can’t get friendly with a crocodile
Don’t be taken in by his welcome grin
He’s imagining how well you’d fit within his skin”

Innocent lyrics from a song from Peter Pan which seem so much less
innocent now after Roger, and seem so very appropriate.

A long time ago, in a land not so far away called Puffinland, was a
family of puffins, mummy puffin, daddy puffin, and the two boy
puffins. Being happy puffins they loved exploring, they loved
swimming, they loved mountains and cliffs, they loved their burrows
and they loved flying and sitting around chatting to other puffins
until the wind dropped. They wanted so much to be able to fly
further than their little swoops around their burrows and they had so
much to learn but so much fun to have.

Roger was a crocodile who liked puffins, Roger was a special crocodile
as he could fly too and could fly further than the puffin family, and
he pretended to be a jolly puffin. Roger helped all the puffins in
Puffinland, he would do lots of helpful things and he especially liked
helping puffin families who had little puffin boys. He was so helpful that he
didn’t seem like a crocodile at all, he would visit their burrow and
tell puffin tales and grew more and more like a puffin himself.

Roger could take one puffin boy flying whilst mummy or daddy could
take the other flying so a puffin squadron was formed and Roger led
the puffins out over the water and far from home. Crocodiles are not
known to be friendly to puffins so mummy and daddy puffin were
suspicious that he might not be a puffin at all and laid lots of little
traps which Roger skilfully avoided, so they thought that perhaps he was a puffin after all.

That was until the day that the older puffin boy was attacked by a flock of neds
whilst out on the fish, he was taken to hospital and Roger picked him up
and took him to another puffin’s house instead of back to his puffin
family or letting mummy and daddy puffin know.

Roger was also giving generous gifts to the puffin boys including safes
to keep their precious things in, out of prying puffin parent
eyes (although being techno-puffins a dash of dusting powder and a UV
light together with a lock pick set soon sorted that one out).

Mummy and daddy puffin started to see Roger in a new light,
perhaps he was really a crocodile and they needed to speak to PC Andy
at Puffin Protection about him. PC Andy had met crocodiles before
and strongly suggested that they speak sternly to Roger,
and that the puffin boys were kept away from his predatory jaws.

Things seemed to cool off and the puffin family went on fishing and
flying with less reliance on Roger, but then sadly once Christmas the
youngest puffin fell ill and was using his Puffin Phone to call his
puffin chicks lots and lots, and when trying to make him better it was
clear that Roger was still giving his crocodile gifts to youngest puffin.

Mr Rat at the river bank was easily fooled to reveal that Roger was
giving lots of sardines to one of the puffin boys from his own river
bank branch – so much fish that mummy and daddy puffin were amazed that a
crocodile could get so much fish, when he constantly professed to not
being able to keep sardines at all. Wise old DSI Badger listened to the
puffins and screwed up his nose – ’something stinks around here and it
isn’t fish’. It was clear that Roger was fibbing and his crocodile
tears were no longer going to work.

Puffin Phones have long memories and one moonlit night when the young
puffin was snoring, his puffin phone revealed lots of messages from
Roger asking if mummy and daddy were away so he could bring sardines.
PC Andy at Puffin Protection was contacted again and this time young puffin
was told that Roger was really a crocodile and that although
he was a smart little puffin this was because he was well groomed.
Young puffin told tales of crates of beer brought by Roger to his young
puffin friends and watching a movie of naked puffin chicks in the
crocodile cave.

DSI Badger was right – this was more than the stench of sardines in the morning.

Roger was told, in no uncertain terms, that the puffin family knew him
to be a creepy crocodile and he slithered away and everyone lived happily
ever after in Puffinland. We hope, but always remember

“Never smile at a crocodile
Never dip your hat and stop to talk awhile
Never run, walk away, say good-night, not good-day
Clear the aisle but never smile at Mister Crocodile”

Kim flew to Bute with an unreliable radio, we acted as ground crew driving past the red sheep on the green pyramids on the M8, past the lonely cranes at Greenock and the cobwebbed oil fired power station at InverKip (used only once and that was during the miners strike) to the wonderful railway station at Wemyss Bay. Fifty quid extracted for car and passengers we had a smooth sail to Rothesay where the top attractions were standing on the Highland Boundary Fault and a visit to the world famous Victorian Toilets on the pier (a tiled paradise and urinals that it seems a pity to despoil with urine tracks).

Kim landed late on the air ambulance strip in the South of the island and we all dashed off to the pub for lunch and an impromptu viewing of the stomach of Richard Murphy (OBE) whilst Stuart and I went searching in vain for a petrol station (it turns out the only one is in Rothesay and closes at 3pm). Kim flew off laden down with lunch, starting her engine with me inches away from the propellor in another aborted murder attempt on me, and we ground crew retired to see standing stones and a wander around Rothesay before returning on the ferry and the long road home.

Easter is a good time to look up differing theories of Christ, including that he didn’t exist at all. This is also the time where articles appear in the paper about the true meaning of Easter i.e. Christ and resurrection instead of eggs and bunnies – rather missing the point since the pagan Ostera predates Chritianity and that the egg and other fertility symbols are the true meaning of Easter.

With our new EcoKettle and solar powered garden lights we are confident the world is safe in our hands – still no need to turn the field into biofuel production yet after reading this article

Ali is still on manic medicine and obsessed with his girlfriend and romping up huge phone bills – the Ditch-The-Bitch strategy simply not working. Of course this has also been complicated with a very difficult situation with a family friend. He will be repeating 5th year at school now due to his obsession and illness.

Stuart and I had a trip to the Netherton fish ladder, and the Star Inn but that doesn’t open until 7:30pm so we missed that and instead went into Rothbury for half a chicken and chips each and a giggle at the posters in the local eco shop. We also saw 5 fire engines racing through Rothbury on their way to a large grass or forest fire.

I had to race to get the final showing at the Baltic gallery as it ended on Sunday and it was well worth it – lovely sunny Sunday and the quayside was heaving with breasts. The exhibitions were startling – Brian Eno music with images that evolve from and into each other in an ambient setting; Vik Muniz portraits made with blood (Marilyn Monroe), chocolate (Marlon Brando), diamonds (Marlene Dietrich), magazines (Seu Jorge) and caviar (Dracula) – then my mobile phone went off as everyone was silently gazing in awe at the photos – I tried to turn it off and had problems and someone came over – I felt awful apologizing and he said – ‘Who is That? Great Music’ – ‘Imogen Heap’ I barbled out and he smiled ‘Cool’. In the Joseph Havel exhibition the guy making sure we didn’t steal the sculptures said ‘Does the T Shirt Work’ – I had my Japanese ‘I am looking for a japanese girlfriend’ T shirt (in japanese symbols). He used to live in Japan.

Visited the awesome Penshaw Monument with a friendly local telling all about the history of the area and anecdotes of the Nissan second hand wind turbines from Germany which caught on fire, landscaped gardens from the mining industry and Lord Lampton involved in a scandal with prostitutes mirroring Profomo – the National Trust should hire that man. Then onto Seaham where coal was dug under the sea and the beach used to be black, up to Whitley Bay and Tynemouth but not onto St Mary’s Island as the causeway was under water. A walk along the quayside at Blyth with its wind turbines at the edge of the sea and the talking visitor boards (not reading the information but providing background voices from people who worked in the salt and fishing industries).

Looking for Silly String I happened upon sites referencing its use in Iraq to detect tripwires. I wonder what other weapons of mess destruction are out there (silly string can stain clothes).

After Edinburgh, Newcastle, Stirling and Glasgow had cancelled their firework shows I was pushed out before midnight into the howling gale with a metal box full of explosives and a wheelbarrow full of manure. With my climbing head torch and a flame thrower lighter I did a passing impersonation of a demented dalek. The wind was so bad that the lighter couldn’t light the fuses so we used our creme brulee blowtorch to set off the roman candles, sparkling rainbows and rockets. The latter made considerable progress against the 70 knot wind but on exploding the display tended to drift downwind. I was amazed that neither the neighbour’s bush nor the manure exploded, and especially the metal box full of fireworks placed downwind and surrounded by sparks and bits of firework that couldn’t make it against the prevailing wind. Coincidentally a nearby barn burnt down a few days later, roasting 4,500 chickens.

A refreshing trudge up Humbleton Hill, near Wooler, resulted in great views of the Wolf Moon and muddy trousers when I slipped down with my camera tumbling down ahead of me. There were signs saying “no dogs” with a qualifing date “until 2010″ (whatever happens then is anyone’s guess) followed by signs saying your non-existant dog has to be on a lead together with a dog stile to let that pesky non-existant dog through – and people think that the countryside rules are confusing… since our springer spaniel cannot read she ignored them but we kept her on a lead in case she snuck off for a reading lesson.

Flu, of the non-avian variety, swept across the South of Scotland and naturally paid a visit to us. What a welcome start to the year, but at least gave me a chance to catch up on my reading (frozen water trade and the fascinating book of Eels being highlights)

Fantastic exhibition of Douglas Gordon superhumanatural work in Edinburgh, including his 24 hour Psycho (the Hitchcock movie slowed down to play over 24 hours), followed by a delicious feast at The Green Door – fillet steak followed by Chocolate Fondant certainly filled the gap. A pint at Bennetts Bar and a nostalgic drive around the places we lived in Edinburgh before getting hopelessly lost in some housing estate that has been built since then…

Burns Suppers tend to bracket Robert Burns birthday by weeks (sometimes skidding into March) and their popularity can be demonstrated by the Kelso Curling Club Burns Supper at the Ice Rink (yes, I managed to get Burns and Ice in the same sentence). The combination of bagpipes, haggis, lots of whisky, ritualistic dismembering of a haggis, readings of Burns poetry and singing of his songs, a lecture on his visit to the Borders and an 18 minute recital of Tam O’Shanter from memory was interspersed with jovial speeches at the expense of members of the club. Curling is a sort of extreme Bowling and is even an olympic sport rivalling synchronised swimming for sports the Greeks never thought their Gods would do.

A visit to a client in Edinburgh is always a good excuse for lunch and a visit to the modern art galleries. Lunch in an art gallery would, you would think, be safe, and it was, until the cappachino arrived, whereupon I dipped my newly dry-cleaned jacket sleeve in the gloopy chocolate floating on the creamy top, transferring the aforesaid chocolate goop to my trousers, shirt, watch, and other parts of the now not so dry-clean jacket. Then a young mother hit me with a baby high chair in passing. The Dean gallery had Ian Fleming, no not the James Bond dude, with his controversial ‘Christ in trousers’ – although one would have thought that Christ with no trousers would have been more controversial. The main gallery had an ‘Off The Walls’ exhibition, where unsurprisingly none of the exhibits were on the walls. A psychedelic floor, giant egg slicer, crumpled piece of paper in the corner, bleached leaves hanging in glass jars from the ceiling, a room filled with 286 cardboard architectural models of Edinburgh churches listed in the Yellow Pages. The video taken from a parcel shelf of a car whilst waiting at traffic lights, of the car drivers behind – picking his nose, talking expressively on mobiles, cleaning her teeth and girning were a joy to behold.

Curling Club Pub Quiz should have been a walkover to us graduates, but we came 5th, albeit the aged population did have a better go at the 30’s photos and questions and one senses that the team who got the Marie Celeste and Zeppelin first flight pre 1900’s question correct, were actually there. The young blonde waitress was a joy to order from, which might explain the large number of empty bottles surrounding our table… it was also bizarre to see so many wheelchair bound players there – I said earlier that curling looked like extreme bowling but I hadn’t realised it was that dangerous. A good night was had by all and we can thankful that we didn’t win the Lambrusco.

My birthday was fuelled by champagne, a nice rioja and stilton crusted fillet steak at the Cross Inn, whilst enjoying the tale of our neighbour driving through brightly lit diversion signs on the A7 to avoid the delay and driving in the dark up a closed road and through the diversion sign at the other end in her small car. My birthday haircut was a Number 2, the gal asked if I wanted it all over, but I reassured her it was only my head that needed done – she should win salesgirl of the year though in that after shearing me down to very little hair she then sold me a large bottle of RedKen shampoo for my hair… I always find it difficult to say no to pretty blondes though. Birthday kayaking meant donning a spraydeck like a skirt and attaching oneself to the kayak, capsize it and see how many of us reach the surface. Along with stabilising the kayak using the paddle in a monkey pose and whirling on the spot whilst taking out any swimmers who were stupid enough to be near us.

My ‘fitball’ arrived and I was exhausted enough opening the packaging then pumping it up, in fact so exhausted that I let Kim pump up the rest of the ball to regulation height (marked on hte wall along with the kids height marks). Sitting on it is a moving experience and the exercises had me jettisoned on the floor in quick time. I thought it would be unpack ball and get fit – but no, I have to achieve ‘torso stabilization’ first by contracting my anatomical girdle musculature (the transversus abdominis internal/external obliques and the deep spinal muscles) – woo yay!

It is interesting to compare the UK post-apocalyptic tale Survivors, where Brits form communities, inter trade outwith their country and (in parallel with Verne’s Mysterious Island) start civilisation again through rudimentary technologies and science, with the US post-apocalyptic tale Jericho, where Yanks sit in a bar or attend teen parties and let a MyGyver figure rescue them from the crisises that come day to day in between their marital dischord and dodging radioactive rain showers.

Geology revision for Alasdair called upon some home made play dough and all of our hands coloured blue and red with food colouring. With a bicarbonate of soda and vinegar volcano erupting and Stuart playing God, fun was had by all.

Mythbusters confirmed the myth that the pirate eye-patch was actually used to adjust one eye to the dark for celestial navigation or moving constantly from light exterior to bright interior. There was a 25 minute difference between the exposed eye and the covered eye using an opthamologist testing the eyes. Nice trick I can try for astronomy this year. Avast!

Buying Christmas presents online was always going to be risky unless they were ordered well in advance – so not learning from last year I was left printing out pictures of what wasn’t delivered in time and stuffing them into envelopes.

Kim’s present was touch and go and relied upon a chap wandering around the beaches of Whitby looking for small ammonites for my gift of 180 million year old fossilised monkey puzzle tree – a set of whitby jet earrings.

Our Christmas party consisted of an educational trip down a mine at the Newtongrange Mining Museum and lunch on a barge down the Forth/Clyde Union Canal, which was most jolly eating and drinking at a relaxed pace watching the cartoon animals on the bank (for the children’s Santa special), stopped off on a high aqueduct, discussing farting in a cupped hand to throw it at people that annoy you and ended with a rush of double liqueurs to make sure we risked falling in the water getting off the barge.

So with a case of Lebanese Chateau Musar wine procured from Villeneuve Wines we enter the Christmas spirit. Cara did her annual present robbing clearing out any edible ones and the kids manged to return with a 40 pound Noble Fir tree that guarantees that we can’t all fit in the large sitting room at the same time.

Carols from Kings for Christmas on the radio and the god awful Star Wars Christmas on the CD player as Christmas Eve swings into action with friends dropping in and the livestock fed (they love brussel sprout peelings)

Christmas presents included a geiger counter – I appear not to be radioactive, a portable sun dial, juggling breasts and an LCD picture frame.

Supper with the neighbour was a chance to meet a trapeze artiste doing a degree in Circus arts.

My Christmas Newsletter so alarmed friends that even those who hadn’t contacted me for years rushed around or emailed me. We dropped down to Consett to see an old friend, whose drawers I used to urinate into at university. As revenge he took me for a long walk through dark muddy woodland in my MBT’s but compensated by introducing me to marvellous pubs where yet again I managed to accidentally order cider instead of real ale, but then worked my way through the remaining marvellous ales – English pubs have much to commend them. Their identical twin daughters demonstrated worse behaviour than our children which was pretty impressive given our kids history, culminating with them throwing a log at the others head which went through a picture window.

December, the final month of the Gregorian calendar year, known in South Africa as the month of the Mimosa Thorn Tree, whilst pagans in the North move from Litha to Yule, crossing the Winter Solstice. And of course the time of year when religious folk forget about the pagan festival that they steamrolled over with Christmas – but then if there is a reason to agree with Dawkins that religion is such a bad thing the Magdalene Laundries are a fine example.

Scott’s Of Selkirk is a local Borders festival where most of the inhabitants of Selkirk dress up in victorian costumes and offer free mulled wine and mince pies whilst you browse their goods. It is bizarre seeming the juxtapoisiton of an electronic cash machine and a queue of Victorians waiting to use it. By lunchtime I was ready to sing in the choir…. but instead fuelled on sherry I bought books on Myths, Suicide and Castration (Freud). We had coffee at the Selkirk Deli sharing a table with an 86 year old lady who told us she was looking for a man, possibly in the new Tesco, and her friend in a wimple sold us a Scocha CD (her husband is the English chap masquarading as a Scot in a leather kilt) and answered her mobile phone in Victorian garb which buzzed from her matching muffler. Had a tour of Squirrel’s loft and on returning to the Gutbusting casino night, where my strategy of card counting was offset by the dealers shuffling, I picked up a bottle of wine and spiced Westphalia chicken at the BP garage on the A68, which is pretending to be a wine shop (reinforcing Lothian and Borders Police Don’t Drink and Drive policy) with Petit-Chablis and decent clarets. Discovered that one of our fellow GutBusters uses the school bus driver/hypnotist to stop smoking.

December will be Soay’s Choice – where we pick the sheep to be dragged to the abattoir in Galashiels (who recently had a highland bull escaping down the street almost killing an old man). November is normally slaughter month but things are a bit late this year thanks to the warmer weather.

My dog and wife and fallen out – when Kim sits down the dog leaves the room and when she leaves the room Cara returns.

December is very blood thirsty as I wade through movies (Nosferatu, Vampyr, Blacula, Dracula) and books including Dracula’s Guest the unpublished first chapter of Dracula, Carmilla, Dr Polidori’s Vampyr based on Byron’s fragment.

All I want for Christmas is my front tooth – finally my dentist fitted my bridge (in between taking other teeth out from women playing musical chairs in the waiting room). We lunched at the Blue Bell Hotel (which was challenging with half my mouth frozen) and on walking to the car spied a chap in black with a black top hat walking down the middle of the main street in Belford followed by a hearse – it was a most errie and bizarre sight, no following cars, no-one else around.

As flattered as I was that Schmap had chosen my photographs of St Mary’s Church, Whitby, for their tourist guide – I was surprised to see such sloppy research that they used it to represent St Mary’s Church in York (which unless global warming has really changed things is nowhere near the sea shown in the photographs).

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In a microlight (Quicktime VR shot)
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Robert Ashley’s Automatic Writing wins the prize for ‘Least Festive’ music – being about Tourette’s syndrome and sexual abuse (not at the same time).

–

Deck the halls with boughs of holly,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Tis the season to be jolly,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Don we now our gay apparel,
Fa la la, la la la, la la la.
Troll the ancient Yule tide carol,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.

See the blazing Yule before us,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Strike the harp and join the chorus.
Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Follow me in merry measure,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
While I tell of Yule tide treasure,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Fast away the old year passes,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Hail the new, ye lads and lasses,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Sing we joyous, all together,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Heedless of the wind and weather,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.

We set off for the Lake District early one moonlit morning, through the flooded Eden roads (fields looking like paddy fields with rows of trees poking out of the waters where the River Eden had burst its banks), to the Keswick Climbing Wall. After a breakfast of real cornish pasties, where Kim asked if we could have the buy 2 get 2 free offer (we had to point out that it was buy 10 get 2 free – kim must be thinking in binary) we bypassed the Cumberland pencil museum and found the high wall.

We learnt to tie our rope knots and belay then it came for me to abseil down whilst alasdair belayed – I dropped letting go of the wall and rope and Ali received the largest wedgie he had ever had – he was also tied to a barrel to counteract my weight and his lightness. The climbing instructor just asked Ali – How are your Man Bits? All great fun but we had to go, changing into our funeral garb for the funeral of a friend. There was almost more funerals as Kim hit a patch of deep water across the road, squealed but fortunately the audi patents paid off with computer controlled 4 wheel drive keeping us on the road.

The Jesus church at Troutbeck is set in a most gorgeous valley at the head of Kirkstone Pass, and the church itself is stunning with oak beams and a fantastic stained glass window. A wren was flying around in the church adding a sense of magic to the occasion, along with the dead fox that we parked beside. Music by Catriona McKay played by the celtic band from Kelso High School, was a haunting celtic refrain which with the surroundings made for a phenomenal experience. We threw our soil or scattered petals in the grave and in the rain made our way back to the car when the most gorgeous rainbow appeared apparently terminating in the graveyard and arcing to the town where luncheon was served.

Hymns sung included the pagan fertility carol – The Holly and the Ivy albeit with Christian words tagged on clumsily, and the rather bizarre All Things Bright and Beautiful with the ‘Purple Headed Mountains’ from Martin Shaw’s 17th Century ‘Royal Oak’. At least the Lord’s Prayer was the original one without this ‘Time Of Trial’ nonsense.

We returned over the Kirkstone Pass with very little fuel, not a great place to breakdown, and saw an overflowing lake (overflowing onto the road). We passed through Hawick high street to see the Christmas lights – which are second hand from Monte Carlo.