After my Barra rescue we had to return the trailer to Connel Flying Club in Oban and decided to make a weekend of it by staying in Glencoe, my favourite mountain area. We needed to repair the trailer and one of the microlight club members Ali is a welder so he was the third port of call, after picking up the trailer at East Fortune and then delivering our new Google Mini to our data centre in Edinburgh – where I was locked out and was busy cracking the combination lock when I looked up to see Kim on the other side of the gate – the back entrance was actually open and she walked through…

Ali the welder was near Dollar overlooked by the Ochil hills. Ali not only welds but has some great metal sculptures and a grass runway next to his house. Several blue flashes and general swearing about the metal being zinc treated and the job was done and we were on our way to Oban.

We stopped off at the Green Welly Stop for a venison burger at Tyndrum and to prepare for hill walking they seem to put the toilets a mile away from the cafe. Driving along the road the emergency landing roads that I had spied on my previous flight north were cordoned with ski poles which the wing would probably hit on landing. Connel bridge crosses the Falls of Lora – which were not as impressive as I have seen them but swirled away under the superb metal Connel bridge. Oban airport runways are being resurfaced and the place looks like a building site at the moment but the microlight club is friendly and we delivered the trailer with some thank you wine.

North to glencoe and booked into the Clachaig Inn (which has the welcoming sign ‘No Hawkers or Campbells’), we were too late to walk into the Lost Valley so wandered around the bottom of the hills looking forward to walking the next day. Dinner overlooking the loch and the sunset at
Holly Tree Hotel (named after the Appin Murder and in a converted Kentallen railway station) – there is a lovely pier there and there was a white rope laid out (obviously not done his seaman course and tidied up the rope with knots) – so we rearranged it into the form of a chalk murder investigation body. Kim’s dinner was a small trout, mine arrived being carried by two people – it was the Special Seafood platter – and took over an hour and three plates for the debris of mussel and oyster shells and langoustine.

We returned to the entertainment at the Inn which was an R&B band called Deep Blue – after ordering a pint of real ale which turned out to be cider we
started to recognise the band members playing Guns and Roses – they
were from Kelso and the guitarist was Alasdair’s friend – and what a performer excellent guitar playing along with his tattooed father singing and folk from Heiton and Sprouston near our home. There was something else odd – this was a climbing pub but the folk in the pub wearing leather hats and one in a dress didn’t look like the hunky folk I used to climb hills with – it turned out to be a gay stag night – less Munro bagging and more Munro debagging. Apart from one rough homophobe guy wandering around asking people if they were gay (one curiously saying ‘I used to be gay but I am not any longer’) the evening was entertaining with good music and a set of drunk glaswegian women dancing.

Apparently on retiring for the evening I managed to stub my toe and my
wife assumed that Father Jack had moved in with us as a torrent of
abuse filled the room.

The next day we awoke to rain hitting off the window – the Lost Valley was truly lost in very low cloud and heavy rain. I asked the waitress which country she was from, used to a large influx of eastern europeans – she replied Essex, which to my knowledge isn’t actually a country. The rain was getting worse so we decided to become tourists that morning.

The Glencoe visitors centre is interesting as it uses a vernacular architecture and used a variety of techniques for recycling and renewable energy. The view is stunning from there and the bookshop reveals an ecletic collection – I ended up with a book called ‘How to Shit In The Woods’ (covering defecation in sylvan surroundings in extreme detail) and a book about telepathy experiments on the west coast of Scotland. There was also an exhibition of the Himalayas by the photographer who took the pictures of the Tennant lager can lovelies.

We decided to abandon the Lost Valley walk and head for the indoor Ice Factor at Kinlochleven – the road is picturesque along Loch Leven and Kinlochleven is a lovely spot, on the West Highland Way and the only industry is now tourism with the aluminium industry now a museum (which like the industry was closed on Sunday). The Ice centre there has a large ice wall and 8 and 15 metre climbing walls – as we watched a group of people leaving all with limps we knew this was for us and we started with the climbing wall intending on moving onto the ice wall without realising how absolutely exhausting climbing was on vertical walls. My arms stopped hurting after 12 hours where other parts of my body still ache. Kim and I scrambled up the first wall, falling off to show that we were saved by the rope being held by or instructor (who is a part time fireman
and had just been on helicopter training). I had problems with the Egyptian climbing style that prevents you supporting most of your weight on your arm muscles, and I ended up supporting most of my weight on
my arm muscles which was extremely tiring as the chap said it would be, so gave up halfway up the second wall exhausted – Kim carried on though to do another two walls before thankfully our time ran out. We skipped the ice wall due to severe exhaustion, but totally dedicated to doing a lot more wall climbing before setting off for the nearest climbing rock, and headed back to see if the weather had cleared for the Lost Valley (it hadn’t), visting Glencoe village and the Massacre Monument.

The yellow car game has turned into a violent car journey where driver
or passenger wallops the other if they spot a yellow car – it was a
slapfest when we passed a large queue of JCBs working on the Glencoe
bridge. It is getting a bit too automatic now and I almost walloped an
old lady on a bus in the lake district when a yellow car went past..
We decided to call a truce as I was reading ‘The Short History of
Tractors in Ukranian’ and was developing bruises on my arms…

Back to Tyndrum I got a badger puppet from the Big Green Welly and had
fish and chips at The Real Food Cafe (which is a marvel with Pollock
and chips as good as Anstruther, with beer from Alva and a wall of
recommendations including Radio 4 and Scotland the Best – this is a
must stop on the way North). We stopped off at friends near Perth
almost reversing into their Golf, these are the friends we previously
left during the night walking over their Beechgrove Garden in the dark
so bashing their car and buggering off because they weren’t in would be par for the course. The drive home was filled with cars heading in the opposite direction with miserable looking people returning from kelso races.

Glencoe is one of the magical places on earth.

We got back to find a maggotty dead sheep in the field – one of the soays had died last week – I must have miscounted my daily count or they were doing their prisoner of war bit holding up a dummy sheep.

It was the annual microlight outing to Plockton which as the fates would smile upon us was on the best two flying days of the year (so far). The flight north to Plockton (near Skye) was wonderful, a 10 knot tail wind got me up there in 2 and a half hours over a cloudless Scotland with gorgeous lochs and munros (making navigation difficult as they all look the same). A night out at the Off The Rails converted station restaurant with a live train service arriving outside it, was followed by drinking with the friendly Haven Hotel owners. a Swedish pierced waitress and a skinhead who admitted this was the first time he was going to do breakfast in a hotel (it was nice).

The morning after I was balancing on the new bobbing Plockton pontoon with boats tied up and a bizarre notice saying ‘No Water as we have run out of funds’ and walked to the airfield where the place was crawling with firemen (and a firewoman) who were going to be trained on helicopter protocol (don’t stick your poles vertically when leaving the chopper otherwise you damage them, the expensive rotors and yourself). This delayed my own flight as there were fireman being whirled around down the runway, I took off when they had finished and then realised that I didn’t have a jerry can back rest so promptly landed again and strapped one in. So finally onto Barra – the plan was over Skye (which was entirely cloudless and gorgeous) and with a tailwind over the 18 mile wide Minch to the Outer Hebrides. The views were stunning and I could see the Outer Hebrides archipelego stretched out in the distance and dum-dummed the Fratellis Chelsea Dagger theme just to keep my mind off the sea below.

Barra is a wonderful island with wonderful white beaches and blue water. There is a causeway linking to the isle of Vatersay – where before the 1990 Eu funding fell upon the causeway, farmers used to have to tie their cattle behind a boat and make them swim across the channel to market. Whisky Galore happened and was filmed at Barra with Compton Mackenzie living on the island (and I met the son of the man who dug his grave when the gravedigger didn’t turn up to the funeral). Barra was voted most Scottish place in Scotland and the Most Beautiful Island in Britain and also was reported wrongly to have the highest paid doctor in the UK

Barra airport is unique as it is the only airport in the world that you land on the beach. And that was what I was going to do.

There was a 35 knot headwind, apparently from Hurricane George, which slowed things a lot heading south over North and South Uist and this meant there was severe rotor from the hill lying to the south of the beach runway and it was very difficult maintaining a circuit around the runway – I extended the downwind leg (which was over the sea as the tide had come in) to give me a chance to prepare for final. Landed on the golden sands then headed back to the airport.

I was finding it difficult to move the wing at all as it was being held down by the gusting wind – the tower sent ground staff out to direct me out of the parking bay of the Twin Engined Otter flight and it was during this movement that a strong gust tipped the wing and trike over onto the sand. The bar pushed back into my life jacket and I have bruising on my ribs from that, the life jacket may have cushioned that blow.

Damage to the aircraft was that two propellor blades were torn off, the wing was ripped, hang bracket bent, jesus bolt bent, trike body was damaged and base bar and radiator bent. Pride was also a bit bent. Then came the realisation that I couldn’t fly out and no one else could fly in or ferry in because the weekend had started…the Sabbath was looming.

I was driven by one of the airport guys to the hotel at high speed down these single track roads with him saying, ‘You know I don’t care if I live or die anymore, what will be will be – I do base jumping from cliffs and parachuting’ – which was endlessly encouraging – he had been inoculated against Anthrax in the army (he used to skin badgers on Salisbury Plain).

We went to see the Vatersay Boys play traditional Scottish music in a pub ceilidh in CastleBay (unimaginatively named because there is a Castle in the Bay) which was a drunken night to say the least, with me being rescued by the hotel waitress at 2:30am walking down the wrong road lost on Barra (which has one circular road so it is almost impossible to get lost apart from the road to Vatersay which I had taken for some totally unknown navigational reason).

The hotel cocktail barman, who writes erotic poetry in his spare time and approved of me reading the superb Swithering poetry book, lent me his sea kayak, which I promptly got stuck in seaweed in the area where Whisky Galore happened and was filmed but I couldn’t find any boxes of whisky left, I managed to tip the kayak over on the ferry ramp too so got totally soaked – hence my mobile phone will no longer work and I have lots of receipts washed clean. I then had to walk to the airfield to check the plane, in soaking wet clothes, and took the chance to disrobe and squeeze the seawater out of my clothes when a passing walker was wondering what on earth was happening in the phone box with a semi naked person and a lot of water squooshing out. Between the plane, kayak and ceilidh I was getting very tipsy on Barra.

I was driven around by a taxi driver who fancied himself as a tourist guide – but since he had a tracheotomy that meant removing both hands from the wheel on single track roads, without stopping of course, one to point at the obscure tourist attraction and one to close his gap so he could speak. I met an American politics lecturer from Edinburgh who had visited Alcock and Brown’s crash site in Galway and everyone seems to have their own air crash story.

Kim and I got the plane on the trailer through super human strength as the sun rose over the beach at Barra airfield, then raced for breakfast and the 5 hour ferry (where bagpipers played in the lounge bar for the entire trip to ensure no snoozing)

We drove back and it rained probably because we didn’t have any covers for the trike, and it never stopped raining all the way back from Oban (well it did but we stopped off on the way at the ghastly Loch Lomond Shores with its vibrating rail in the cafe and allowed the rain to catch up). We got to the airfield to find that the trailer had partially collapsed which could have sent the trike off somewhere on the M8 which would have complicated the insurance claim somewhat, however my guardian angel had obviously held it in place.

So air accident investigation reports all filled in and insurance contacted we just need to get it back to the manufacturer to get rebuild for the next adventure…

Although we got back in time to catch the TV programme about men marrying their sex dolls, we had just missed the story about the Boy From Barra – a boy who had been reincarnated in Glasgow had been in Barra in a previous life, yes really stick with this – it was in The Sun rag (I hesitate to call it a newspaper) and in a channel 5 featurette (I hesitate to call these documentaries on Channel 5) and featured a child psychologist who specialises in reincarnation… so it must be true.

Hurricane George also took another victim by blowing adrift my Orkney chum’s yacht, which was eventually rescued by the Stromness lifeboat. We are hoping to create the Hurricane George Victims Support Group (HGVSG) to assist those who have been stricken in their planes and yachts from the terrible backlash of global warming, as foretold by Al Gore when he didn’t have any hope of becoming president. Together we can apply for European disaster funding to help provide vowels for our acronym and bottles of Nyetimber 1998 to help the recuperating airmen and sailors fresh from their fight with George.

Woo Yay September is here, time when my Folio Books subscription is due and I buy second hand versions off abebooks and use the money I save to buy bottles of award winning English sparkling Nyetimber Classic Cuvee 1998.

Reading Michel De Montaigne’s essays which include delights such as Cannabilism, On Smells (A woman smells nice when she smells of nothing) and On Thumbs. Listening to the music of Hildegard von Bingen who wrote lots about masturbation in the 12th century. Watching The Fountainhead file under So Bad Its Good.

And the weekend begins, for me with an hour in the swimming pool clinging closely to the most attractive girl in our gutbusting group, followed by a woman presenting her buttocks to us whilst doing her muscle stretching exercies in the steam room and then an expensive tour of the continental market in the St James fair struggling back with bags of olives, razcherries, french cheeses (their entire september export by the look of my burgeoning cheese board), penis shaped bread with testicular rolls to match the phallic salami. The chocolate and lemon crepes didn’t make it back to the car….
We have old friends coming for lunch so it is a relaxing morning for me listening to Ginastera estancia ballet dances, whilst ploughing through paradise lost, whilst everyone else prepares… Dinner at the Ednam Edenwater was simply superb again, New Zealand Isabel and Margaux complimenting the superb food.

My son Stuart went down to Alton Towers yesterday with 4 of his chums in one of their parents new Discovery driven by a special constable – they went on the top 5 rides and got in for 15 pounds instead of the normal outrageous price, then drove back filled with adrenaline and english ale (not the special constable who was driving I hasten to add)

Gutbusting now includes the ridicule of all clinging to a piece of rope and moving like a crab to the deep end and then pull each other out of the pool – on pulling Kim and I out we were asked – who wants to come first, Kim got in first with I insist on coming first – after that it was impossible to pull anyone out of the pool due to giggling. On the way up to the air show I was muching potato and bean pie for breakfast along with a bacon roll – when Radio 4 announced “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried he shall receive the crown of life” as I threw the debris into the bottom of the car with a Doh!

And so to Leuchars with the red arrows 4,000th performance starting with them landing downwind with one over the audience and ended with a go around from the last arrow – they also timely have a routine called Stingray but no mention of Steve Irwin, although Elgars Nimrod Variations poignantly marked the death of the 12 RAF Kinloss airmen with a lone nimrod in the skies. The Battle of Britain memorial flight was unpatriotically underscored by the American composer Samuel ‘Barbers Adagio for Strings. Only an hour queueing at Anstruther Fish Bar which was superb as ever, but I have mastered the queue now by leaving Kim in line whilst I slip off the colourful Ship Inn next door and get a text message when we are near the front. The long drive home was punctuated by Radio Scotland lapsing into lesbian lust – discussing picking up a woman and counting her piercings at the end of the Proms…

We visited the superb Customs and Excise exhibition at the air show (in a caravan that had been confiscated as part of a drug bust) and came away with Customs and Revenue bags which made for an interesting backpack whilst wandering around the Kelso Sunday market…

It was a day out so we went off Quad Biking, squirrel had been stung by a bee (Where the bee sucks. there suck I) and was on steroids so missed out. We drove quads, dressed in what looking fetchingly like anthrax biosuits, as fast as we could through pylons, around bales, through banked tracks and over obstacles – I only got stuck once in a ditch. Lunched on ostrich at the Craw Inn, after seeing the Hutton Exhibition and headed off to Siccar Point for a spot of nude swimming. Jamie commented that although I had been swimming in his drinking water when sailing, I was now swimming in his sewage. Thankfully there are no sharks there because my leg and hands were ripped on the rocks – wonderfully chilly and refreshing though and swimming up rocky coves was wonderful. We managed to order a Flake mcflurry at macdonalds as Stuart was feeling chilly after swimming and throwing up salt water – but they had run out of icecream in Berwick and we managed to block the drive through whilst they sorted out Macdonalds actually giving you money back.

Spent all weekend on the RYA Seamanship course so I am now a Salty Seaman, even though it was in unsalted Edinburgh’s drinking water reservoir. However, I can now apparently control a boat without a rudder or daggerboard using my weight and the jib sail (if ploughing into the beach can be described as control), and pick up a man overboard (without running him over or pullinghis head off as I did the first few times). Was sailing a catamaran (had to capsize that and get it back again which was a challenge) and an expensive Laser 2000 which was a swift little craft. I am sore all over – although that might have been from helping place a large concrete block in a hole for a mooring post (not only do we have to do the course we have to build part of the place too). All great fun and I got the chance to show that Freezing the Balls off Brass Monkeys was apocryphal.

The elderly neighbour went off to Cuba on a Saga tour ‘to die’, although she came back thus robbing me of the chance to fly out and reclaim her remains on a 10 day tour of the island. However she did bring me back a pair of maracas as compensation.

Berry Of The Month – the Goji berry otherwise known as the Wolfberry has reached Kelso at last – yummy and healthy too apparently.

Name of the month has to be Etruscan King Lucius Tarquinius Superbus who poorly negotiated the Sybelline Books from the Cumaean Sybil (three books for the price of nine).

Poem of the month

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Yeats

The top ten Sexual Positions to give Women orgasms (whatever they are) garnered from the interweb

1. Woman on Top
2. Reverse Cowgirl
3. Rear Entry
4. Modified Missionary
5. The Butterfly
6. Coital Alignment Technique
7. Standing Facing Each Other
8. Standing Rear Entry
9. Sitting Lotus Position
10. Spooning

to be enjoyed whilst listening to Jack Jones warbling Wives and Lovers with the superb lyrics, a cautionary tale to any wife -

Hey! Little Girl
Comb your hair, fix your makeup
Soon he will open the door
Don’t think because there’s a ring on your finger
You needn’t try anymore

For wives should always be lovers too
Run to his arms the moment he comes home to you
I’m warning you…

Day after day
There are girls at the office
And men will always be men
Don’t send him off with your hair still in curlers
You may not see him again

For wives should always be lovers too
Run to his arms the moment he comes home to you
He’s almost here…

Hey! Little girl
Better wear something pretty
Something you’d wear to go to the city and
Dim all the lights, pour the wine, start the music
Time to get ready for love
Time to get ready
Time to get ready for love

For the CAA who skulk around blogs looking for descriptions of illegal activities – the following description is entirely fictional as an example for other pilots of what could happen [really]

The plan was to fly down the Lake District to meet my son who was cycling down (a challenging 160 mile each way cycle ride with his chum), I would take Mrs Forrester my folding brompton bike which fits in the passenger seat of the plane so we could meet somewhere in the area. That was the plan.

The plane was full of fuel, Mrs Forrester was in the back and Mike’s gear was in the back, along with Mrs Forresters heavy handcuffs, and Mike. We didn’t bother weighing as it was patently overweight (Mike was certainly). It was a cross wind take off, bar in and rolling down the runway – revs over 6K half way down pushed bar forward – no response (oh fuck). Abort point not reached yet – push bar ahead again and sweep into the air groaning past the abort point skew round with the cross wind and push into the air.

It was fairly turbulent and I could see over the Lammermuirs there was a lot of cloud and there was blue sky. The blue sky was tempting – that meant no turbulence and a gentle flight with a good tailwind. To get to the blue sky required a climb into cloud that was moving northwards, fast. To clear the cloud I banked left and continued climbing over the wave of cloud crashing down like a tidal wave. Once over I was in heaven – an antarctic landscape with occasional holes with only cirrus tens of thousands of feet above and a tail wind – I was hurtling southward at 85mph. Here was the cloud cuckoo land of Aristophanes Birds and it was a mirage.

Windows in the cloud allowed navigation, GPS confirmed and timing and compass provided more navigational data. Then the windows disappeared. They disappeared totally. There were no windows – apart from the last one which was now disappearing with a 25 knot tailwind meant that I had assumed there was no way I was going to reach it. On the ground doing the figures and realising that the clouds were not actually moving north but it was a relative movement to the aircraft I would have made the last window, but I didn’t.

What followed was a frantic chasing of windows which turned out to be mirages in the luminous clouds. I was according to the GPS north of Penrith (the airfield I wanted was getting closer – so close but so far away under an unknown amount of cloud. I was also running out of map as I didn’t need any map south of the lake district. This was a serious situation and I started to desperately look for windows. There was one – in a cauldron of cloud.

I descended into the cauldron – clouds on all sides like a snowy mountain – but again it was no window just a grey patch of cloud. I climbed out of the cauldron in a spiral climb back to the antarctic landscape, which now had also added in climbing cumulus – I was at 7,000 feet and may be pushed higher – this was getting desperate as I even if I turned back I might not escape the climbing cumulus and the 10K ceiling is there for a reason (oxygen starvation above 10K).

Then a window – definitely, there were green fields and a road – and it was near Penrith – spiral dive through the hole descending fast. Made it through, hooray, and then noticed the Television aerial I had missed by a few hundred yards. I was also headed North so turned, avoiding the aerial to see the hills which were touching the clouds base – so if the hole had been over there I would have done a controlled flight into terrain (which on reflection might have been under the first cauldron I tried to descend into). My promise to myself was never to do this again.

The way south to Bedlands Gate follows the M6 and a line of aviation unfriendly pylons to arrive at a grass strip which has a tree at the start of the runway which I managed to miss. I landed and then took off again when I hit the bump on the runway and landed again (fortuntaly they don’t charge per bounce) – just as well it is a 450 metre runway.

Hangering the plane I managed to jam my finger in a trailer, and then when the friendly chaps asked where I was off to, I revealed Mrs Forrester and my plan to cycle her to Kendal. There were puzzled looks and the question – have you heard of Shap Fell? Who the fuck put a 1400 foot summit on my cycle route from Shap to Kendal. When I reached Kendal I was completely knackered and leaning Mrs Forrester up against walls and hiding to allow anyone to steal her. But this plan had a flaw – there was no one in Kendal – the place had been hit by a neutron bomb – the streets were deserted. I booked into the Rainbow Tavern, where the barman apparently wants to run tourist flights around the Lake District, and went on what I thought would be a short pub crawl sampling some real ale of England.

First there weren’t that many pubs with real ale, although those that had excellent ales. Secondly at nine o’clock all the people in Kendal returned dressed to the nines and ready to party. Discos started in pubs and young ladies in rara skirts and older ladies in more tasteful cocktail dresses were knocking back the vodkas and red bull. Folks of all shape, size and degree of tattoing were now dancing everywhere in a erotic melee. They they all moved to the next pub – I managed to elucidate the intended map from a lady from a hens night – they were all local as well (this wasn’t incomers partying like a stag/hen night – this was a local melee and apparently was a weekly thing)

The end point once the pubs had emptied the purses and wallets of the good people of Kendal, was the 5 story night club Passions. This where they let their hair down. I left falling down the stairs at 3am to find my way in the dark around the back of the inn where the rear gate had been set up to only look locked. After faling over various dark objects cunningly hidden in the dark I managed to make it to my room, behind a dark door that was in a dark wall.

Kendal is a strange place, a christian science bookshop and a quilting exhibition and wainrights cast off possessions including his pipe in a museum and a totally hot generation of partying girls. What a strange combination – perhaps there is more to christian science than I first thought.

To celebrate my hangover I cycled to Windemere the next day, noticing that Kendal had returned to its Lovecraftian empty state. I followed the cycle track which promptly took me out of the way, so on my search to avoid yet another hill and looking for the 6 minute train – I ended up on a bus to Ambleside. Mrs Forrester tucked in the baggage shelf because although bikes aren’t allowed on a bus (she is a folding bike which the friendly drivers were amused at).

Grasmere was a short cycle from Ambleside (which is full of bookshops) and is a busy road so I took to the pavement. That was a mistake. The first accident was hurtling down a hill to be hit by an overhanging branch which walkers will easily duck under, the second was the bush of nettles and large thorns which met with my bare left leg enthusiasticlly. Grasemere was a lovely place filled with unlovely tourists. The Rowan Tree cafe had the attraction of a riverside terrace, spinach and mushroom pasties and a metal drainpipe I could handcuff Mrs Forrester too.
William Wordsworths grave is there jidden with the rest of the Wordsworths and another William to test the poetry lovers, and a daffodil free daffodil garden. It did have the attraction of a bus stop to Keswick.

Alasdair was lost in the lakes, Kim and Stuart and Cara were now climbing Haystacks and out of mobile coverage – the Forsyths had migrated to Cumbria and were all uncontactable. Keswick is full of hill walking shops, pizza and fish and chips and a cornish pasty shop, and a lot of street entertains – pushing the definition of the word entertainment. I stopped to eat my pasty and folded Mrs Forrester so she stands – which people seemed to misrepresent as the start of a street entertainment – standing around to see if I was going to do more (or perhaps they were amazed that I could drop so much pasty filling down my T shirt).

There is a wonderful and magic stone circle outside Keswick – normally these attractions are deserted, but folk who visit Keswick are obviously put off with the quality of street theatre and all flock up to the stone circle. To add to the magical experience of people clambering over the stones and whooping for no good reason, there is an ice cream van with a particularly noisy generator. And I had to cycle/walk up a very steep hill to enjoy this and the views of the hills in cloud.

Kim and Stuart (and an exhausted Cara) drove me to Penrith, which is definitely not a party town. The George Hotel bar had some attractive girls discussing their friends veneral disease and the dilemma of the Aids test – it was concluded that it was better not to know. I left then to try and find a pub with real ale – an hour later I had tracked one down. Alasdair was by now at the other end of the lake district so we had avoided meeting (waving whilst cycling past each other) the reason I had flown down.

I had again wrongly assumed that since Penrith was north that everything south was downhill. In this topsy turvy world it was all uphill to the airfield, and I even took wrong turns to add to the miles. I stopped for a breath of air after the Clifton hill to enjoy the stench of sewage – it was a lovely churchyard there but I didn’t stop long as I can only hold my breath for a couple of minutes.

The sight of low cloud meant there was no flying over the lakes – the lakeland hills were higher than the clouds and there was a brisk northern wind. So northbound in low cloud to see a cessna on my left heading north and fighting turbulence saw two military transport aircraft cross my path after carlisle. The low cloud meant traversing the southern uplands lower than I would have liked, with an eye to landing fields in the event of engine failure.

Surprisingly the transit through the valley of death as I had thought it – was smooth and I was delighted to see blue skies ahead and the eildons. That was when the turbulence started – thrown across the sky, up, down, wing drops it was continuous, past Hawick and I reached the Lammermuirs and then it got worse with oscillations and unexpected fast descents and ascents. I managed to get above the fast moving cumulus clouds and things calmed down, until I got nearer the airfield and it started again. Unbelievably the wind was down the main runway so managed to miss the black wrapped hay bales at the entrance to the runway and could relax at last.

Lammas, not to be confused with Llamas, is a time to bake men shaped bread, and gingerbread men arrive at this time of year. It is also a Finnish word meaning sheep and this is the month that sheep will be caught and taken to the big pastureland in the sky (the butchers).

On the bits of religion that Sunday school forgot to mention we have – Holy Body Parts. Since Christ is supposed to have disappeared entirely through the first alien abduction known as the ascension, the only articles left to venerate are the bits he left behind previously including his foreskin, milk teeth and umbilical cord. At least there isn’t a holy Camel Toe much studied in The Weather Man in between Nicholas Cage being hit by fast food. In the dangerous book for boys one of the less dangerous things is the listing of the ten commandments – I had quite forgetten that on the Sabbath your cattle are not supposed to work either – not sure how that effects Flora and there is no mention of Soay sheep so they can go back on the treadmill 24/7.

Summer recess of parliament is normally a slow news period but this month sees an escalation of the Lebanon/Israeli ‘its not really a war yet’, the Pure Songs Initiative is cleaning up Rangers football fans chants and Tommy ‘hairy body’ Sheridan is packing them in the aisles with his self defence and it is surely no coincidence at BBC Scotland that the words ‘and former prostitutes’ drift over the images of MSPs as they march into court. Drugs in sport rears its ugly head with the Tour De France winner being banned for having too much testerone (11 times normal) and in contrast it is the 25th anniversary of the Penlee lifeboat diaster – where real bravery in the face of death to save others makes me think we should start sticking cheating sportsman in the stocks and throw rotten fruit at them, sometimes the old ways are the best…

Ali and Malcolm next door have decided to cut our hedges up to the height they can reach and left them half way with a fringe which is reminiscent of a ned (chav for the southern readers) so we have named them Nedges.

I decided to take my son sailing, this was to let him try a new sport but I hadn’t counted on his observational skills in witnessing the chaos that is mike in a boat. I was doing the RYA2 up at Whiteadder Reservoir, and it was straight into a Pico and off to practice – well everyone else was doing that I managed to get the mainsheet wrapped around the tiller and hence managed to lock both rudder and sail and went into a descending circle with ever increasing speed and angle of hull before capsizing. So capsize practice first thing in the morning in a chilly reservoir with no wet suit – what a rude awakening. This was followed during the navigate around a triangle of buoys, by trailing one of the buoys with my rudder and confusing everyone else as to the course, I was eventually chased by the rescue boat who recovered the errant buoy. The other joy of the pico is that the boom whacks you on the head if you do anything wrong – however I managed to wrap the mainsheet around my sandals (and my neck) and was busy untangling myself when the boom was flying back and forward – I managed to lie in the bottom of the boat untangling whilst the pico sailed into the beach. Kim flew over in the microlight buzzing the clubhouse but we were safely in trhe cold showers by then. Ali spotted all the mistakes and reported (with animated gestures) to Kim, who was at this time collapsed on the floor in stiches.

We got onto larger boats the next day (the Wayfarer) which required a crew of two so an Aberdonian housewife won the lottery to crew with me – we rigged and set up with, yes you guessed this one already, the mainsheet wrapped around the tiller rendering the boat completely uncontrollable. Fortunately the Wayfarer boom doesn’t act as a Pit and Pendulum blade, so the shreaking housewife and I managed to have time to unravel and gain control. After that we were model sailors apart from saying ‘All Aboard’ when I should have been saying ‘Ready About’ and when told to lay alongside the rescue boat we managed to aim for (on instructors advice) the outboard motor and hit it (not on instructors advice). Oh well after tying a few knots and being lectured on racing (where the strategy seems to be to sink your opponet where you get a time penalty but are still in the race) I walked off with my RYA2 certificate and a licence to hire and capsize.

No one else noticed outside Scotland but Tommy Sheridan’s spirited defence against the News of the World was an entertaining aside for all us. The headline writers were working overtime – my favourite when he dismissed his legal counsel was ‘Tommy drops his briefs’. He won and was awarded 200K (which one assumes as a good socialist he will be distributing amongst the poor) and is now standing as head of the Scottish Socialist Party – whose MSPs all testified against him (and may be being done on perjury charges and are counter suing him letting the entertainment run and run).

Following my flight to the Lake District we enjoyed a night at the Edinburgh International Festival with a delicious vegetarian meal and espresso cocktails at David Bann and a quick run up the hill afterwards to the glass fronted Edinburgh Festival Theatre to enjoy two short operas by Kurt Weill. The first directly linking to my flight was about Lindergh’s flight across the ocean, stunningly visual with a cockpit suspended across a row of clocks, a map of the route and projected seas and fog (the fog brought back many memories). Following the interval drinks (I can make it from the front of the circle to the interval bar to be in the first 2 people now with only hurling a few fur coated ladies out of the way) was ‘The Seven Deadly Sins’, an opera about me I thought. It was a perfect mix of music, contemporary dance and writhing semi naked bodies.

I heard a knock on the door and the sound of salsa music drowning out my Radio 3 orchestral piece so crept downstairs to investigate to find a dancing electricity meter reader in our hallway writhing around, fortunately clothed, and entering our meter numbers. This might be the way forward for keeping your staff fit and cheering up customers by having tangoing gas men, polkaing postmen and waltzing milkmen – then again, perhaps not.

One of our fellow djembe drummers sadly and unexpectedly died of Anthrax posioning, two of the drummers are on 60 days medication as they had visited his house, which is now a biohazard area with up to 20 people in the area being sought”. So cue the Badger, Badger, Badger, Anthrax” song.
Public Health got in touch with a survey and seemed a might concerned, as are others, with my dry cough.

The launch of the heritage website consisted of drinking wine in aimable company,
with impromptu depressing poetry readings from a local poet with a captive audience of myself and a blonde harpist.

So to the Innerleithen Folk Festival with an cringingly appalling first act, some kids singing about Soggy Socks and the brilliant Malinky – even the name is good, but the music was superb. Helped along with a bar the music just got better.

The Kelso Triathalon meant that to avoid going in it we had to help out at the side of the pool. The only person who would sit near me after hearing of the anthrax story was a GP and even she was a bit unsure. We counted and acted as timekeepers for a lane in the swimming part which meant we got soaked when they tumble turned, so the strategy of getting an inside job in the uncertain weather failed miserably. Relaxed the rest of the day in the company of d’Indy orchestral poems and trios.

The Scottish Borders Bright New Futures Parents and Carers guide proudly declares it is produced by the Kelso Locality Integration Team, although they don’t print its acronym. Which reminds me that The War Against Terror is also an acronym.

I am busy post processing a film called ‘Teen Mum’, yes it is a documentary on teenage pregnancies done by a government funded project we are part of up here with films on youth activities. Google videos is having to put it to their obscene panel to watch the entire film to make sure it will not offend anyone out there – wow what a job! All the other movies went up without any problem so the title is obviously causing concern…

Then my son opens the morning mail and out pops packets of vibrating condoms – he had filled in a survey on caio for Durex and has ‘won’ the aforesaid sexual assistants along with the incentive of getting 20 quid if he reports back on how they/he performed. I have agreed to assist in this but he doesn’t want to see the feedback…. now he is busy texting old girlfriends to see if they want to assist in this research.

Cows have regional accents, now does this mean that Flora the Highland cow has a highland accent ala Hamish Macbeth or a Scottish Borders one? I am surprised she doesn’t baaa since her only companions are soay sheep.

Our annual croquet match is a time for excess in drink, in food and in cheating. The weather was great with clouds all around except for a patch of blue above our garden, which reinforced the tale I told that I had hacked into the weather satellites to guarantee sun for our game.

We feasted off barbecued fillets and sirloins of Angus, our last slaughtered highland bullock, who was simply delicious, followed by enough creamy and sugary sweets to keep the middle eastern guest sweet tooth, and his dentist, happy. The wine and beer was flowing to eliminate the croquet competition along with dandelion and burdock for the drivers and our cleaning ladies vodka for the children (which we only found out about once they started vomiting over each other).

A varied set of guests including a lady who had been investigated by MI5 at the age of 13, was involved in the theft of the stone of destiny and recently had MI5 tailing her in Selkirk when she told BBC Scotland that the current government should all be assassinated; a nude model for lesbian artists in Berwick, an Israeli with his shisha pipe and dessert tobacco and guitarist sons; a friend of Mr Nice the most successful drug trafficker who used to smuggle drugs in rock bands speakers; our old lady neighbour who told us that she used to be a stripper in Marseille and our staff who were remarkably well behaved (and lost to me at croquet).

Croquet was a chance to kick balls into position when the opposition weren’t looking, but after been spotted on a video in previous years all eyes were on Mike for most of the match. Mike and Uri teamed up and swept the opposition off the pitch including an unlikely two hoops in one shot by me which sealed the match. I am not sure the prize of yet another glass of wine was sensible as I decided it would be a good idea to pretend to be a horse to get teenage girls to ride on me and I curled up and fell asleep whilst watching Spinal Tap in the evening, which was just as well as everyone else was cleaning up teenage vomit.

Pluto is no longer a planet, something that Holst knew ages ago (his Planets Suite doesn’t include Pluto, possibly because it hadn’t been discovered then).

The Fortean Times carries an article about Stoat packs, 50 to 80 of the darling creatures attacking wayward travellers through the country, carrying their dead away and wrapping themselves biting and clawing around peoples legs. The image alone is one to shudder whilst walking through fields – cattle are not the only dangerous thing in the countryside and size is no indicator of danger.

The joy of reading Paradise Lost with William Blakes pictures (no it is not a graphic novel) is enhanced by a book on the dualism of Milton and the symbiosis of his poetry.

We had a packed itinerary already when our first stop (The Tebay motorway services for breakfast) added on Bollocks to Alton Towers (BTAT) book with the weird and wonderful sights of Britain including the Tebay service station.

First stop was the beach at Crosby, Liverpool for the Anthony Gormley statues – there are hundreds of statues on the beach (and out to sea with waves washing over their heads) in what looks like a Doctor Who episode, and then the first BTAT item the wonderful Port Sunlight built by Lord Lever for his workers and a village reminiscent of The Avengers or a Prisoner episode with small white vans running around doing gardening in a gorgeous architectural gem. It has a great art gallery with Farquarson sheep, the Scapegoat and Norman Parkinson photos, and there were flower pot figures in many gardens, for a flower pot festival, which added to the Avengers episode feel.

Southbound I took the M6 toll road thinking this would speed things up (we were navigating using a 5 year old atlas with pages missing we found in the car) when we found out that we were heading in the wrong direction (whilst being told by our son that our other car’s fan had exploded and taken the radiator out with it). Whilst passing at speed past Bristol I spotted the SS Great Britain sign so careered across the motorway and ended up in a huge traffic jam – we saw the outside of the boat that the next door farmer’s mother’s brother had raised from the Falkland Islands and sailed back to Bristol (Brunel’s iron clad ship looked most impressive) and under the wonderful Clifton Suspension Bridge another Brunel triumph.

The start of our North Devon and Cornwall route was in the Somerset town of Minehead with Devon Cream Icecream on the beach, a look at the Yarn Market in the picturesque Dunster

The Coastal road there has great views with precipitous drops over cliffs and 1 in 4 roads (the tough gradients being as you are turning corners) leading through gorgeous thatched cottage villages all offering cream teas, through the coastal harbour of Lynmouth.

Dinner was at the BTAT recommended The Pack Of Cards Inn, which was built in 1690 because the owner won a lot of money at gambling so wanted to give something back – he did he built an inn based on a pack of cards (with 4 floors representing the suits, 13 rooms for the number of cards in a suit, 52 windows and stairs and built on an area measuring 52 feet square for the number of cards in a pack. The unusual shape is that of a house built of cards. The meals are ordered and you are given a playing card – then surreally a waitress comes out shouting ‘King Of Spades’ and you get people asking ‘When is My Jack of Hearts coming out?’ – we were the four of diamonds and it was delicious. Incidentally the Inn is in the town of Combe Martin which boasts the longest main street in Britain (if not the world, at 2 miles in its crooked length.

There is a Tarka Trail around here, based on the classic childrens book Tarka the otter, which is an interesting thing to base a trail on – it is a bit like having ‘Bambi’s mum was killed here’ trail since the tale of Tarka is one of relentless, cruel and bloody otter hunts. Perhaps people leap out on walkers and bash them over the head.

We watched the sunset over Ifracombe
before staying the night at the Royal and Fortescue hotel in Barnstaple where I was dreaming of Kim in a blue and white dress (possibly inspired from the Norman Parkinson photographs in the Port Sunlight gallery). And thus ended day one.

Setting off very early the next morning to the delightful village of Clovelly hanging off the hills around the picturesque harbour. The advantage of visiting at 7am is that there is no-one to charge you for parking or an entrance fee, there are no crowds and you get to see the working folk using sledges to transport beer barrels down the steep cobbles.

The highlight of the trip was a visit to Barometer World, where a jury of leeches in jars predict the weather, where Admiral Fitzroy is correctly revered as the creator of synoptic (pressure) charts by placing not leeches but barometers around the coast of Britain, he was captain of the Beagle – the all important Darwin voyage, and set up the Met Office – saving so many lives, with telegraphing weather forecasts, before taking his own by cutting his throat with a razor in his bath. We bought a barometer and marvelled at the Shark Liver Oil jar predicting the wind direction with its sediment shapes, correctly as it turned out a few hours later. Another BTAT success, although we had to pass on the British Cycling Museum as we didn’t have my cycling son, and we missed the National Bee Centre with its entertaining Bee Video due to a lapse in Kim’s otherwise great navigation (mistaking a similarly spelt town).

At Bideford I almost hit a car on the roundabout whilst trying to go over the medieval bridge, one of several near misses, but then misses are a bonus really.

Boscastle is the site hit by major flooding, which wasn’t predicated at all by the wonderful Witchcraft Museum, filled with black mirrors and crystal balls. We enjoyed cornish pasties and superb cream teas underneath a flood water mark (above our heads).

Tintagel is a ghastly tourist hellhole so we drove down to it initially mistaking the large hotel for the pitiful ruins of the castle before ‘As I was going to’ St Ives (with I must add only one wife) and the wonderful Tate gallery there (home to the Wallis naive art and the St Ives based abstract artist breakaway group – the Penwith Society), the lovely Harbour, surfers on the beach, a shower of rain enabling a quick rescue by the Lifeboat Inn.

Escaping people for a while it was a case of remote stone circling (and in the case of the Doughnut Stone Men-An-Tol is was very circular with a hole in the middle you had to go through for good luck (I just made it). Lanyon Quoit looks ready to fall down (it did in the past) and is now the same height as Kim but we sheltered from the driving rain under it for a short while before moving onto the tourism junket that is Lands End (yes we can confirm it is possibly worse than John O’Groats at the other end of the country) where the rain was really bad now (fortunately being around 6pm everything was shut and soaking cyclists celebrated by turning around and cycling off somewhere else.

There was however a very good model village of a mining town at Lands End giving us a good idea of how the mines operated. We left the begging seagulls in the rain to travel through Penzance and saw St Michaels Mount straining through the rain and mist looking magical. We decided to spend the night at the lovely Portleven harbour since light was fading fast, first trying the olde smugglers The Ship Inn which had no rooms, the Anchor Cottage (which Kim asked a bemused householder if they had any rooms – it was no longer a B & B) and finally settled into the Harbour Inn and worked my way through the produce of the St Austell Brewery (which used to have a swastika [in the correct orientation as designed by Hitler] on their bottle tops which had to be grinded off during the war). Marvelling that anyone could produce a show called Fools On Horses we slumped on the metal bed and set the alarm for an early wander along the sea wall. After all day three was beckoning and there was still a lot to do.

The Lizard is the most southernmost part of Britain and in contrast with Lands End is a frightfully nice spot. There is a cliff walk, a welcome marked absence of amusement arcades and multimedia offerings, just a rundown lifeboat station, collapsed sea cave and one of the loveliest places I have seen in the geologically interesting Kynance Cove with its serpentine rock and sandy cove (and cream teas at the cafe where a woman surrounded by gulls was emptying a bucket of slops out).

Cornwall is a telecommunications historical triumph – Marconi performed his first experiments here to radio the Americas, submarine cables were laid and come in at Lands End and Goonhilly Down has a huge Satellite array of the largest Satellite dishes in the world. The dishes are protected by fences, poisonous vipers and high tariff tours. A few miles away from this communications centre we tried to phone home and couldn’t get a signal.

We had meticulously researched this trip by watching the first series of Poldark so it was fitting to visit the Poldark Tin Mine (although the candlelit ghost tours at night sounded fun). Falmouth has the Pendennis castle which we ate more Cornish ice cream outside whilst watching the boats on Falmouth bay looking over to St Mawes and a similar castle. Truro was a lovely city with an excellent cathedral – I walked down the aisle to the strains of the organ wearing my ‘I am Looking For a Japanese Girlfriend’ in Japanese T shirt and received a smile from a Japanese tourist.

We thought we would be the only folk in Cornwall NOT visiting the Eden Project and opted instead for the Lost Gardens Of Heligan which were superb and the weather cleared beautifully to give us sunshine in the jungle with a cooling breeze through the Japanese banana leaves.

St Austell looked to be a dreary town but outside was the delightful port of Charlestown – we almost missed the turn off and I swung the car into a garage to turn only to have Kim screaming CHAINS in the middle of the manoeuvre and I narrowly avoided hitting the large chain guarding the entrance. There was a tall ship in at Charlestown which lent an air of charm to the port.

Never far from stones to visit we reached the three circles of the Hurlers with the Bodmin Moor Stones in the distance – we hadn’t realised how far in the distance until after about half an hour striding across the moor they were still in the distance. Another half an hour rewarded us with Mike falling into a barbed wire fence and impaling his hand (perhaps Masai Barefoot Technology and scrambing is not a sensible mix) as well as clambering around The Cheesewring. The Quoit of Trethevy is collapsed and looks like it will fall over killing someone at any moment so I let Kim check it out first by taking photographs of her beside the shakey walls. It is in the back garden of some houses and is exciting to get to down single track roads with no passing places and high hedges making the experience one of traversing a labyrinth.

We tried to get accommodation at the Ship Inn in Looe, however there was no room at the Inn and we enjoyed a drive around the restricted narrow streets running over tourists and squeezing through very narrow gates. So it was off to Polperro and a night in the eastern european staffed hotel, dinner in the delicious Cottage Restaurant with the owner keeping us all up to date with the World Cup whilst we dined (the French head butt was described eloquently whilst we supped our Pouilley Fume and munched on our Cornish scallops. I took to the pubs to revel in the atmosphere of rowdy English fans berating a drunk Italian supporter, bitten by a whistling parrot in the Noughts and Crosses pub and spent a late evening sampling ales with a scuba diving instructor, who had given up his computer business to dive, and a morose cornish pastie maker who was seeing his trade decline with the unfortunate combination of cheap flights and weightwatchers.

The Day Four Plan was going to be travelling all the way home via Brighton and the M1 but we rather got scuppered with fog – an early foggy walk around Polperro watching a suspect smuggler on his mobile phone saying ‘We can do that when there is no-one around’ was followed by a foggier walk around Plymouth Hoe with statues of Drake, lighthouses and an eerie ferris wheel appearing out of the fog as we walked around the place where Drake finished his bowls before finishing the Spanish Armada, discovering California and circumnavigating the globe (which must have been easier than finding the Golden Hinde in Plymouth harbour in the fog).

We travelled along hte edge of Dartmoor, home to the Hound Of The Baskervilles and an early version of geocaching called letterstamping – this has the rather charming notion of leterstampers identifying each other by marching up and asking ‘Are You a travelling stamp?’. Given the visibility this was unlikely to happen to us.

The World Of Marbles is an incredibly busy place – it is a shop with ensuite glass blowers on tea breaks, giant marbles cut from an enormous travelling marble maker (15 million marbles made on it) and hypnotic motion machines with marbles flying around like squirrels on speed and pool balls setting off bells and swirling down centrifuges. For those who claim I have lost my marbles I would like to point out that I have a box of 50 different sized ones now.

Past the Buckfast Abbey home of the alcoholic and teenage wannabe alkies tipple to ‘A La Ronde’ – a bonkers 16 sided house, possible designed by a 17 year old and decorated in shells by two spinster cousins with too much time on their hands. The shell gallery is remarkable, but inaccessible due to damage so there is a high quality video camera attached to a remote control unit – you can spin it round and zoom in on the wonderful shell pictures. The Parminter spinsters left the house to a gadget obsessed reverend who installed huge pipes as a radiator, a dumb waiter lift and a speaking tube system, replacing the fire risk thatch with slates and a gas lighting system. The spinsters were very talented and way ahead of their times working with a wide variety of crafts in feathers, shells and paper to produce a unique entity.

All that was left was a visit to a farm shop to stock up on pasties and clotted cream, a long long drive back to Liverpool to find the underground maze of Williamson tunnels, built for an unknown reason, were closed on a Monday, returned via Tebay to fill up with Cumbrian fare and back home to find the house suspiciously totally clean and the boys working through Stuarts complementary Virgin wine case and playing Monopoly.

Thermidor meaning warm, is the eleventh month in the bonkers French Republican calendar (July 19th-August 17th) – but warm it certainly is here, uncomfortably warm – I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with the asteroid that is going to have a near miss (bit like England penalty shots). We are at Aphelion and don’t we know it (phew wot a scorcher).

We were supposed to be in Cornwall but with my son falling off his bike we decided to bring Cornwall to us – in the shape of Cornish Yarg, pasties, delicious brie, cider and west country cheesecakes, Cornish icecream, clotted cream and Devon drinks. Only thing missing is the crowds.

A day out (pretending to be touring Cornwall) for Stuart and I to Warkworth saw us paddling on its great beach, rowing on the Coquet racing with a housewife in her boat, saw a dead badger and eighteen honda sport cars (from some rally or other), parked the wrong way up a one way street, and saw loads of England flags still flying proud.

My first impressions of the Scottish Parliament was that it reminded me of Hitler’s Bunker with embellishment and with Arabic and Urdu guidebooks (which I guess Hitler didn’t provide). We didn’t visit the part with the roof falling down. Still it held a reception given by the President of Lithuania, Valdas Adamkus, to open the photographic exhibition of the brilliant Sutkus – along with a Lithuanian version of the Reverend skating on Duddingston Loch (it is John Paul Sartre in Lithuania in the snow).

Our Cornwall tour ended up as a west of England tour taking in beaches of Liverpool, Port Sunlight, Bristol and the complete South West of England before heading back up the M6 on a 1,600 mile long weekend. It is verbosely documented here. When we returned Alasdair’s face was almost healed and the surgeon he saw reckoned he always had a squint nose and that he had been very lucky.

The temperature started to make people irritable so we retired to the swimming pool – where the irritable folk had headed too. From one end of the pool came the refrain ‘Out of my way you F****G BITCH’ and the surprise that it came from the white haired gent addressing a shocked little old lady – not that little old ladies can be overlooked. We went down to find the pool had its lanes all cordoned off with signs for clockwise and anti-clockwise because of ‘World War Three’ breaking out in the pool (bit of an inappropriate phrase since Israel and Lebonese Hezbollah are busy throwing missiles at each other) – I asked one old little lady, in jest whilst performing my widdershins breaststroke, if she was responsible for this and got a filthy look – then found out that she was actually one of the gang of three that had an enormous blow up in the pool the other day accused of bullying and lane grabbing.

Hot hot hot – the hottest day of the year for a century and folk rushing to see An Inconvenient Truth with Al Gore or filling the local swimming pool. Too hot to do anything but lie in the sun with wine and read a book on Angels or go to a sweaty Guns and Roses concert – I chose the former, Kim the latter.

It might be the heat, but flushed with my success on exploring myspace I joined flirtomatic, whilst my wife was moshing it with geriatric Guns and Roses. At least I wasn’t going to be approached by paedophiles on flirtomatic (its 18’s only), a 2 year Java development that promises supersnogs and foxes who hunt. How could I resist. I reckoned I wouldn’t get far without a photo, especially since my attempts to send photos of myself to flirtomatic resulted in various knockbacks – perhaps I was too ugly to join – I tried a variety of different versions including a silhouette and a picture of my dog and cow – still no joy. Eventually a picture of me drunk was accepted and since a drunken old man seems to be what the flirtomatic babes are after I had messages upon messages. Before resigning in search of a richer life, I had offers of sex from Northern Irish 19 year old babes which seemed a lot more promising than myspace (where pictures of my eldest son’s friends mother in her underwear was the high spot, although I do have Lily Allen as a myspace friend which is cool as she rocks and sends me personal romantic emails saying ‘buy my new album’ or ’see me in concert’ – I don’t understand people who say this is just a marketing ploy), approaches from indian djs, a self harming born again christian, randy shopkeepers, an eskimo in Alaska, a half breed cherokee widow, a young russian bride, a foxy chick writing erotic literature asking me to edit it, philosophers of all kinds, a psychologist (probably looking for research material), nigerian 419 scam artists and newcastle grannies – yes all life is here, and its hot. I don’t know why people come to me for advice I know I would be the last person to ask for advice – but they do, the best so far was some lass whose boyfriend had a smelly penis which rendered fellatio unpleasant – not too sure why she was asking me perhaps my smelly penis reputation is widespread. Encouraged by my success I set up two other free accounts so I now had Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (no-one spotted this) and Sister Hyde (my female lesbian persona) – Mr Hyde would say nasty things, Dr Jekyll would be sweetness and light – yes you guessed it Mr Hyde was Mr popular, although Sister Hyde was doing very well as a lesbian magnet (I was the masturbatory fantasy of a lesbian schoolteacher, new york secretary and a lesbian on an oil rig who I introduced to each other before letting my feminie side go back to her husband in a tearjerking farewell). And at the same time the news broke that intelligent men are unfaithful – citing Einstein and Bertrand Russell (who masterfully delegated difficult mathematics to his chum and then slipped into his wife’s bed), history doesn’t report if either of the geniuses penises were whiffy.

From infideltiy to paradise – not a big step I hear you say. But Paradise the word comes from the Babylonians and means field of pigs – probably because paradise was an easy hunting ground fenced off with the livestock in it. I hope you are not reading this on a boat though as the word ‘pee aye gee’ should never be spoken aloud as it is frightful bad luck. Paradise to the muslim is huri which can be translated as nymph or white raisen (I think I would be pushing their translators to sort out which it is as there is a pig of a difference).

Looking for something to do with a large block of sodium and a private water supply – perfect match

At a loose end, and sporitng my new Rohan shorts, I was looking at a trip to Alnwick but read the humourous website instead, Alasdair had cycled to Berwick and reported that it was fog bound thus the seaside was out so we ended up at the Percy Arms Hotel for dinner after roaming around Chillingham Castle grounds and the folly of Hurlstone Tower outside Wooler.

The Sunday was clear and hot so we headed for the coast, Kelso square was littered with broken glass, rubbish and gardeners clearing their flower beds after the Civic Week parades. We lunched at the Cross Inn at Paxton where Kangaroo was on the menu (a cross between steak and venison with neither of their taste – perhaps a dark chocolate sauce would enliven it).

Driving down the Northumberland coast the Bomb Squad with all sirens and lights going raced past us on the way to Berwick – we were glad that we were heading in the opposite direction. We stopped off at Budle Bay to watch Kitesurfers trying to kill each other – it is a lovely spot that. Craster is a decaying harbour village with the fatal attraction of Dunstanburgh Castle on the cliffs, it reminds me of the village in Dagon so we left before it got dark. We watched as a helicopter circled and then rescued someone from the seas, before we headed to the seedy delights of Seahouses and delicious Jumbo haddock and chips.

My dentist has moved from Wooler to her base in Belford which is only another 9 miles through delightful countryside narrowly missing lots of cyclists, so the annual inspection took place in Belford. I sat in a queue consisting of two boys and a chap in shorts – when a blood curdling scream rang out from the door marked Dentist. The boys looked concerned and mumbled ‘is that mum?’ whilst the chap in shorts mumbled to the receptionist that she suffers from stress and has a sore jaw. Another scream rang out and eventually emerged the screamee clutching her jaw and nodding when asked did she have a tooth pulled out. The dentist appeared smiling took one look at me and said “you are next once I have cleaned up the room”. Reception certainly didn’t even smile when I confidently said that I had been trained in interrogation techniques but I was a sucker for the gentle touch.

It is so hot here that the front door has warped and the wooden gates can’t be closed – we are rather hoping for rain as are the yellow fields and croquet lawn.

The East Fortune air show was on and included impressive displays from the Scot Airways Dornier passenger plane doing a loop, a russian stunt plane that was simply awesome tumbling out the sky and then back in control and the Angel of Death – the Eurofighter Typhoon had to be seen to be believed – cutting a square through the sky showing off its turning circle and then a vertical climb through the clouds to exit – amazing noise and power and the best fighter aircraft in the world. We also saw an awesome display of falconry from the folks at Braco with a dog/hawk controlled attack on a rubber duck.

The month ends with welcome rain (mainly when we were walking back from the airshow) and a cold breeze to make air conditioning redundant until the August heatwave hits. Thermidor was well named.

Astronomically we have had the 1% crescent moon with earthshine, saturn in the Beehives and we are approaching the longest day on the 21st June. Midsummers Night Eve or Litha Summer Solstice is the official start, rather than the middle, of summer – so we are hoping the 28kt winds go somewhere else). Pagans rush down to Stonehenge to worship the wrong solstice (it was designed for the winter one but running around stones naked in winter takes a bit more dedication).

See this site in glorious colours as a sitegraph

Taking advantage of an estate supplier closing down sale (he makes most of his money off chauffeur and butler suits for high staff turnover posh folk in London – instead of the hunting-fishing-shooting crowd) I was equipped with a Guatanamo Bay orange boiler suit (in case the Tango man job ever comes up), a high visibilty vest for landing at Carlisle airport (they insist on pilots wearing them) and a green hard hat (for protection when developing software and for when Kim throws a frozen chicken at me again).

I have adopted a pet Lime called Emily, named after my invisible daughter, who the kids are trying to liberate into a margarita at any given opportunity. I also managed to get wife, son wrapped in a duvet and a neighbour all chatting in the kitchen whilst standing on one leg – if only I had placed a bet with someone before that.

I had forgotten the amount of fun one could have on a pub crawl in Kelso – first there was a London bus in the square totally out of place, then the KOSB (Kings Own Scottish Borderers) were marching in their tartan troos followed by a disparate band of hangers on of all ages. The pubs were then filled with the aforementioned KOSB soldiers free to drink with no desert sand blowing into the beer. There then followed an amazing sequence of an increasingly drunker blonde wearing KOSB uniform parts and then disappearing into the graveyard with individual soldiers. The buggered blonde then dissolved in a flood of tears, squonking outside the pub in a moving performance but possibly because she had simply run out of soldiers.

I was now a KSOB groupie and saw them in Berwick playing (their instruments and not blondes), following my sunny pier walk and the Berwick walls walk (perhaps a little unwise balancing on MBTs on a slippy undulating grass surface whilst taking photographs of a precipitous drop in a strong wind). It was always nice visiting the Baltic gallery and the treat this time was a video of David Beckham snoring, a man tap dancing with a duck on his head and lots of photos of famous folk crying. There was also a tunnel filled with TVs with different channels showing and a rickety surface which was particularly good with MBTs on and the piece de resistance was a slide at the end which I threw myself down (or perhaps I tripped) and ended up at high speed leaving the end of the slide and careering across the floor. On seeing this one lady decided to go back through the tunnel rather than follow me.

I followed my tour of North Northumberland with a trip through South Shields and the lighthouse there which was surrounded by hairy bikers having a rock concert and then on to delightful Durham (which is of course not in Northumberland) to listen to choirboys singing in the cloisters in the 5:30 service and returned via the torturous but beautiful Northumberland coastal route munching burning hot Seahouse haddock and chips whilst negotiating bends. From Berwick to Durham there was a plague of Engerland flags and I was glad to see the Angel of the North free of it. My tour finished and I unloaded my rucksack which consisted of the Lonely planet guide to Scotland, a GPS with flat batteries and a raincoat – none of which I used but had to carry the bloody thing around everywhere for some reason.

I flew over the Northumberland coastal route down to Amble on the Sunday the view over Holy Island to Bamburgh with low tide and the sands all exposed was brilliant. Typically my camera was back in the car.

Blood letting time again – this time I was allowed to give blood, after a false hurdle with my blood test for Haemoglobin/Iron treading Copper Sulphate solution like a true Gutbuster. They take less than a pint and in exchange there is orange juice and as many chocolate biscuits as you can handle before the volunteers stop filling up the plates. If I go again I get a badge which I can only assume is a ‘Fuck Me I am a blood donor’ badge, since folk who wear it have had blood tests and have answered the I haven’t slept with anyone for money (my question about bartering was treated with derision), been an intravenous blood donor or been buggered question in the rhesus negative. Whilst lying being drained fantasising about the pretty blonde nurse (helps the blood flow apparently) the only thing to listen to was Radio Borders (they should just put on a Numbers Station which might be more lucid, and the yelping of the girl in the next bed as someone missed her vein.

We went out to the Border Hotel for dinner, where Stuart for some reason best known to himself pocketed a packet of Mayonnaise – it was obviously the ‘Lucky Mayonnaise’ because the 18th century hotel sadly burnt down the next morning – its delightful thatched roof now sadly missed.

The Elie Chain Walk (from Earlsferry beach around the coastal cliffs at Kinscraig Point is a great way to spend an afternoon – it has to be done at ebbing tide in case you get caught by the tide (we reached there after a tour of the Fife coastal route in high wind just after high tide). There are chains stretched over difficult parts of the cliffs both horizontally (more difficult as you sway outward over a drop) and vertically – both climbing and descending.
The chains date back to 1920 but were thankfully renewed recently, the rocks date back millions of years and are magnificent – we couldn’t see much of a view southward as it was very misty but all other points of the compass were just great. We rewarded ourselves with the obligatory hour long queue at the Anstruther fish shop where I spent the time reading Basho Haiku before tucking into delicious haddock and chips.

With the weather stabilising it was off flying down to the Eildon hills, avoiding the RAF tornado that flew through our airfield circuit on the way back to Leuchars, and a downwind landing at Midlem airfield to pick up Adrian to do some aerial photography – Adrian was laden with three cameras around his neck which was doing a good job of strangling him inflight. The evening was relatively still although the hills around Peebles were throwing us around a bit the most dangerous part of the day was driving to the airfield (lost the back end of the TT on a bend to find another car at the side having done the same) and driving back (a sheep running around Soutra and a car swerving onto my side of the road to miss a rabbit!)

Alasdair’s school bus driver is a stage hypnotist which might explain the better behaviour on the bus.

A weekend at Harrietfield near Perth meant good food, fine wine and malt whisky, drunken fireworks for the queens birthday, a rolls royce, drinkies with a london opera producer and supporting the use of terrorism against wind farms, a woman feeling everyones hands to check their temperature before devouring all the brie. We also discovered ‘Stuartisms’ – expressions used by my son to reveal he doesn’t really know everything after all.

Lammermuir Langoustines – he thought Langoustines were lamb
Clitoral Damage – the movie is Collateral Damage
CarbonDated Water – for Carbonated Water
Its 6 of one and 2 dozen of the other – showing a misunderstanding of predecimal terms
It’s an ovulating road to Wooler – undulating, please
I finally got hold of a Shortwave/SSB PLL Synthesized Receiver (world time radio) so along with enjoying Radio 3 during the day (listening to Hammer’s The Abominable Snowman theme music after Holsts Saturn to see the Summer Solstice in) and radio stations from Brazil, China, North Korea and Antarctica, Number Stations and the police in the evenings – actually only kidding about the police because in the UK it is ILLEGAL to LISTEN to broadcasts that you are not licenced for.

Of course the initial 3 point business plan (in the style of the underwear gnomes of South Park) was to

merge together random shortwave broadcasts into a musical offering
???
Profit!
But then a host of Stockhausens have done it already. And so to bed with bluetooth blinking headphones, a wife with ear plugs and Late Junction, which must be a major reason for buying a radio, and certainly not the Radio 3 mashup with ‘Blue Peter on acid’ childrens show ‘Making Tracks’ which played (for kids) ‘Whip and Spur’ and fast fingering brass Romanians to an audience of middle class children forced from their xbox to playing the piano and sitting in front of a radio for proper entertainment. And then they redeem themselves by playing Stockhausen’s Helicopter Quartet – each player in a different helicopter – I am not sure where else one could hear that.

Kim’s Xmas pressie (a flight from Edinburgh Flying Club in a Piper) had to wait until end of June due to the appalling weather conditions (and the Flying Club fuel bowser breaking down). She taxied along the beach (the yellow line on the taxiway) and took off in between a couple of passenger jets for a trip around Falkirk, Stirling, the Forth Bridges and meandering Forth. Not the adrenaline rush one gets from flexwing microlighting but it was nice and warm for the passengers.

A day trip to Carlisle which was fortunately no longer flooded, but it was raining continually lending an air of threat, led to a trip to Mayburgh Henge and King Arthur’s Table, Long Meg and her 69 lovers (christianised as daughters) and little meg an the delightful Cumbiran countryside. To start the day off well a car hit us from behind whilst waiting at a roundabout near Carlisle, perhaps that Curse of Carlisle is true after all. North West England is of course filled with smoke filled pubs and England flags littering otherwise delightful villages.

And to the end the month I was planning a reconaissance trip to Cornwall and the Lesbian/Gay capital of the UK (Brighton, whose nudist beaches I might give a miss). However to end this month of madness my son Alasdair decided to clean some grass off his bikes front wheel (whilst riding at speed) and fell off (at speed). The doctors reckon on a compressed fracture of the face bone along with the more obvious scrapes and scars – he was lucky not to lose an eye. He wasn’t wearing a cycle helmet and whilst out to get the dentist to work out if his teeth are going to fall out or not yet, he, off his own bat, visited his old primary school to shock them into wearing cycle helmets.

Cornwall can wait until next month (instead Stuart and I lunched at the Black Bull in Wooler [not so far to drive] where he beat me at pool again, although my several pints of ‘Secret Kingdom’ worked in his favour. We licked our Stormin’ Norman Mr Whippies around the Wooler Graveyard spotting the earliest graves (1771 was the winner) and admiring the stained glass in that church.
–

June Poem – Horatius by Lord Macaulay

June Book – Hydra and the Bananas of Leonard Cohen [great for reading in the sun whilst munching the wonder food - a banana] and a gateway book to lead onto Basho Haiku and Angels. Hydra is both my favourite Greek island and a moon around Pluto.

June Short Story – Borges, Labyrinth,Orbis Tertius difficult to even describe this one just a complete joy to read and unravel using the wikipedia guide afterwards (they missed out Hume who is my philosopher of the month) – although Wikipedia can stand ashamed at having an entry for the nonexistant land of Aqbar for quite a long time.

The weather has improved and some local flying around East Fortune was had – over the SeaCliff harbour and Tantallon Castle. Then back to land on the runway – overhead join at 1500 feet and descend – well foot off throttle but it ain’t descending – stuck throttle – I am destined to be at the height of the Empire State Building until I either turn the engine off or the fuel runs out.

Radioed in to let them know I might be some time and started to kick parts of the throttle and jiggle the hand throttle just in case – unbelieveably something cleared and I managed to land expecting at least someone to come out and meet me glad that I had landed – but no my moment of triumph and adventure had been overshadowed…

One of the club members took off from St Boswells Green veered over the A68, took out a floodlight and crashed into the side of the Buccleuch Arms Hotel (now to be known as the Buccleuch Fractured Arms and Broken Ribs Hotel). With the A68 partially covered by broken bits of microlight and the wing, the emergency services rushed in along with reporters and photographers (it made the Scottish Sun). The news spread quickly and everyone I know assumed it was me…

We spent Sunday wandering around a radar station near Tantallon Castle where Oly was going to take Stuart around the Motor Cross track. Well that was the plan which went aft agly – as someone had driven the car into a kerb bending one of the wheels – quick pit stop and then someone else drove the car into a kerb and bent the other wheel – having run out of wheels we gave up and explored SeaCliff Harbour and the beach.

Second lamb of this year enters this world to be rejected by its mother, during the process of trying to catch the mother we managed to injure the next door neighbour as he fell over a pile of logs trying to grab it, and then one of the other ewes ran into a fence and ran off with blood streaming from its face (through binoculars, which was the closest we could could near it, it looked like something from a wildlife programme – its face covered with blood on one side and dripping from its mouth). It was difficult to tell whether it was Malcolm’s blood or the ewes blood that was lying around the field.

I was caught cuddling the lamb at any opportunity and gave it a tour of the office. By the time the vet arrived to check out the bleeding sheep (it was fine and still uncatchable) we were bottle feeding the black lamb with lambs milk from the vet. It required feeding every two hours so the night shift was being allocated when the kids arrived home – so we had the chance to catch the ewe.

So with injured neighbour still keen to help, Kim (who jogs 5K), Ali (who cycles and played rugby) in his school uniform and Stuart dressed as a pirate (it was his last day at school) I strode into the field rocking and rolling in my MBTs – a man with a mission – to catch the ewe, if only we could remember which one it was. None of this was easy – we ran the flock around the field several times, Ali doing some splendid rugby tackles and Stuart waving his cutlass with one sheep leaping into his arms at one point, and finally Malcolm caught the correct ewe by standing in our septic tank soakaway swamp and trapping it as it struggled to escape through a barbed wire fence.

We dragged the ewe by her horns (handly things those) and got abandoned lamb and ewe together in a pen – Ali had previous experience in this with the local farm – so he upended the ewe exposing her teats and started to get some milk for the lamb to drink. This was all going splendidly until things took a turn for the worse.

We were watching to make sure that the ewe wasn’t going to turn against the lamb when the lamb suddenly started to fit uncontrollably – it then stopped. Ali was the first one in the pen and lifted it up and its head fell to the side and Kim started to do a resuscitation technique (she does watch ER) but to no avail. The poor thing was dead (possibly gunged up with milk which was coming out in a coagulated stream from a nostril or it was all too much for it over the day). A shallow grave was the sad end to the day. Whether the ewe had rejected the lamb because it wasn’t right (she hadn’t eaten the placenta) or because she was too young and just didn’t know what it was is difficult to say – if only we could talk to the animals…

And now fresh twins – to the only ewe with no horns – one black and one soay sheep coloured – both looking well and the ewe is attending to them. One of the ewes was playing nursemaid to the twins and then produced one of her own – the black lamb liked her as nursemaid so much that he seems to have switched alliegance and is suckling off her.

The archaeological walk around Hownam rings was led by a bird watcher from the council museum department as the council archaeologist had perhaps found some more Anthrax whilst digging in the Borders (last time it was at Soutra Aisle). The walk was marked as strenuous and they weren’t kidding as we galloped up the hills to The Street (not the Coronation one) and Hownam rings iron age fort. A lunch in blackbrough hill fort high over the cheviot valleys and a steep descent, avoiding the trail bikers dismantling gates wired shut to possibly discourage trail bikers, past HeatherHope reservoir and the long trudge back to Hownam. Every so often we would stop whilst everyone listened carefully to a bird and one person rustled, clattered and clicked his camera obscuring the bird song – yes it was the lesser spotted Mike.

This site is now running on a 4 processor (16 core) 8G RAM Sun Niagara server running under Solaris 10 and Drupal 4.7 with a MySQL backend and a 100M feed in our racks near Edinburgh Airport. Overkill, moi?

Berwick Sex Slaves shock horror! All based on books about the quasi-medieval planet of Gor with 25,000 followers – you can’t make this stuff up.

As a fitting end to relent (no alcohol for 40 days for no good reason whatsoever) there is an article about how beer every day is good for you and I have joined the Scotch Malt Whisky Society

On the week that Curious George, an animation about a chimpanzee and the man in the yellow hat, opens in cinemas, Nature publishes a paper about Man regularly having sex with chimpanzees 5.4 million years ago.

May Story – Experiment

May Song – Pulp “My Body May Die”

May Poem

She Tells Her Love While Half Asleep
Robert Graves

She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half words whispered low;
As earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.

Lent is still keeping me off chocolate, cakes and biscuits and then I read that the forty days don’t include Sunday – yes those on Lent are let off Sundays to return to their evil ways – next time I do this (and that will probably be Ramadan) I must read the instructions fully and spot the get out clauses!

I have in my hand a piece of paper, waving it at my son and shouting ‘hey bugger lugs why do I have a speeding ticket here for the All Road?’, the car he drives all the time. He started to mention it must have been Smailholm and tried to back track out of it, when on grabbing the paper read the title of ‘installation instructions for an APC Power Distribution Unit’ whilst his father jeered April Fool. I managed to avoid the swinging fist and foot.

There is a senses quiz which I pretty much flunked (9/20) showing what many people already knew that I am lacking in sense, common or otherwise.

In what sounds like an April Fool, a devil rabbit is terrorising a Northumberland village by eating vegetables. Hired guns are stalking it, the Magnificent Two, although they may get more than the 20p per head reqard for shooting rabbits in Shetland.

Mawlid an-Nabi falls on April 11th and celebrates the birth of Muhammad. April is a terribly religious month for all faiths and America is a terribly religious place – which reminds me of the John Snow map drawing in London which showed that cholera cases were grouped around wells with infected water – perhaps there is something in the water around these heavily grouped religious areas.

Stop Press – Sex is good for you, really good for you, finally something I like is good for me.

I could have sworn that seconds before a large pigeon flew suicidally into my TT left headlamp there was whispered in the wind ‘In the name of Allah, most merciful, most compassionate’. At least it wasn’t a giant rabbit.

We were at a 21 year old birthday Masked Ball in Kelso which was filled with nubile 21 year old girls in short dresses which with a free bar and pig in a roll came close to a perfect evening. My unusual Voodoo mask was noticed particularly since 7 other people chose the unique design, some masks were splendid but the people who chose the full face mask quickly discovered that this made looking cool and eating or drinking a mutually exclusive experience.

Kim’s flying lesson at Edinburgh Airport in a Cessna 172 was cancelled with the instructor saying – I have been up once today and I am not going up again in that turbulence. So we got a tour of the Air Traffic Control tower with fabulous views of Edinburgh, and visited the standing stones at Newbridge under the flight path.

Lent came to an end and the Easter eggs were broken out during the sunday showing of Life Of Brian. It turns out that if you are a catholic then Lent ends even earlier which is a sneaky way of converting people desperate for chocolate eggs.

What I took to be an April Fools prank, turns out to be an all year
round money making scheme – it is the Kabbalah red string. A piece of red string worn on the wrist by Madonna and Hollywood celebrities and anyone else willing to part with $26 for the book and piece of red string – the Kabbalah water is extra.

Lambs, lambs, lambs – cuddles, cuddles – does it get any better than this – apart from eating them (well we don’t until they are at least 28 months). Flora decided with all this contention on her grass to open a hole in the fence and graze in the field – the grass is always greener over the fence. I was amazed that the escapologist sheep weren’t also escaping – they must be hefted now to that field.

My sister, husband and kids came up for a drunken evening of drumming, guitars and pretending to be werewolves. This however was followed by eldest son driving through a hedge coming back from his friends, in a 3 week old audi quattro given to us as the garage couldn’t get our cars suspension repair back in time – they might speed up our future repairs… Stuart is now pointing out all the holes in hedges at junctions showing that his was not a unique experience.

After the joy of having bats circling around my head wondering what chirping noise was coming out of my bat detector – it was sad to discover one of the wee chaps lying on the doorstep – possibly as a present from Professor Moriarty our black cat. Since they are a protected species I am not sure if he gets thrown into jail for this one.

BT are installing our broadband line into the house – this involves replacing lots of telephone poles, upgrading the exchange, upgrading the carrier lines and in the process knocking off my office broadband and our ISDN lines. Still the engineers on the ground seem to be way more customer focused than the middle management dinosaurs – I have an account manger who won’t return calls or emails, whatever happened to ‘Its Good To Talk’?

Sun Microsystems have launched a Try and Buy scheme on their new Niagara servers. Since my memories of Niagara consist of Marilyn Monroe soaked through by the falls in a fetching yellow raincoat I had great hopes of this new server (the T2000) which has just arrived. I like the Sun Opteron servers which we use for database and web servers but we are looking for a server to replace our ageing SGi Octane and Sun Netra servers.

Easy to unpack – although nowhere is a large red warning saying have a look at the website before you unpack this. The website is stuffed full of information which everyone will read once they have a problem in getting the server up and running. Although I still like to have a 10 page guide to get me up and running with an IP connection.

I can confirm that a drenched Marilyn Monroe in raincoat isn’t in the box.

So machine turned on and blinking lights (amber and green) – dual power supply and 4 network ports, serial port to get the serial console up to allow me to get the network management console up (telnet access which means I don’t freeze my ass off in the racks – although trying to find a telnet that works these days is more difficult as all the machines use ssh and telnet ports are blocked).

Get a system console on my terminal and watch it rebooting with my ‘poweron’ command -
takes ages to reboot – don’t know yet if this is a good thing (maybe if it spends more time at the start it won’t crash…) ok it continues

Lots of languages but no Arabic – now I can’t show off with my new found Arabic lessons (what is the Arabic for ‘Configuring network interface addresses’?)

The ANSI terminal emulator on my ssh shell really doesn;t like the setup – can’t see if I change the setup but blindly struggling through. So DNS was a bit of a struggle as it had decided at some point to call the machine arabicarabic instead of just arabic. Still at least it set the time and date correctly (hey I like the small things).

It tells me it is a Sun Fire T200, (one of its zeros is missing – this is far too The Man With Two Brains)

Reboots and has Java Enterprise System preloaded (nice). I do have to type installer – nodisplay though (ok it is preloaded and no preinstalled) – still have to select language (the old enemies German, Japanese and Korean/Chinese) are there but no Arabic – gee don’t they have most of the oil?

OK I haven’t a clue what to install so just go for them all (apache and tomcat would be good) there are enterprise portal servers and everyth8ing – it works out the dependencies and seems to take away some stuff. Now it wants to remove bundled products – is this a good deal? Sun ONE Application Server and Message Queue Platform are being binned – such a short acquaintance.

Choosing defaults – where can I go wrong…. Configure later – that sounds good lets go!
Wow it only needs 547M for oodles of stuff – almost an ANSI screenful – glad I chose to install everything.

The machine has 8G of RAM and 8 cores and there are 2 disks 72G in size c3t0d0 and c3t1d0 (the second disk doesn’t appear to be mounted), 4 1G network ports.

It has crypto acceleration for SSL enabled by default.
/usr/sfw/bin/openssl speed rsa1024 rsa2048 -engine pkcs11 -multi 32 is suggested for benchmarking so I get

sign verify sign/s verify/s
rsa 1024 bits 0.0002s 0.0001s 6312.7 16061.9
rsa 2048 bits 0.0008s 0.0001s 1261.0 8838.4

I ran the same thing on my mini-mac
sign verify sign/s verify/s
rsa 1024 bits 0.007917s 0.000405s 126.3 2466.5
rsa 2048 bits 0.047819s 0.001231s 20.9 812.4

And on my Alienware Opteron 246
sign verify sign/s verify/s
rsa 1024 bits 0.003793s 0.000156s 263.6 6403.0
rsa 2048 bits 0.019552s 0.000592s 51.1 1690.4

Also run it on an aging SGi Octane
sign verify sign/s verify/s
rsa 1024 bits 0.0367s 0.0021s 27.3 474.0
rsa 2048 bits 0.2454s 0.0076s 4.1 131.4

and a cobalt qube (before sun bought them over)
sign verify sign/s verify/s
rsa 1024 bits 0.0344s 0.0019s 29.0 538.4
rsa 2048 bits 0.2224s 0.0068s 4.5 147.8

Big speed for the Niagara machine (unsurprisingly) – if you need to do a LOT of SSL this is the baby for it.

Formatted the second disk with write cache enabled and created my home directory on it.
Loaded Ruby On Rails and tried to compile it – no compiler – however the surprise is that gcc is installed already

Installed Mono which is a package available for sunos8 (it does say there may be a sunos 10 verison in the future and that it should work)

Configuration is this (from the Sun site)
T20-108A-08GA2C
Sun Fire T2000 Server, 8 * Core 1.0 GHz UltraSPARC T1 processor,8 GB DDR2 memory (16 * 512 MB DIMMs), 2 * 73 GB 2.5-inch 10000 RPM SAS disk drives, 1 DVD-ROM/CD-RW slimline drive, 2 * (N+1) PSUs, 4 * 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports, 1 * Serial port, 3 * PCI-E slots, 2 * PCI-X slots, Solaris 10 and Java Enterprise System software pre-installed

which on the Sun site is priced at 8.4K UKP plus VAT of course

Mono installed, ran out of space but then sorted out the second disk with the partition command in the format command and newfs’d it. Way yoo – 68G to play with.

Ruby on Rails compilation – Niagara versus mini mac [configure and compilation]
The Sun seemed much slower (kinda expected it to rattle through compilations) and then broke when ar wasn’t found (used gar manually). The mac compiled it all through ready for installation ( I have found MacOSX and open source software to be friends). Finally coaxed the sun to compile ruby – now I have a direct comparison with the mac for benchmarking!

Mono installed ok and I ran our IMS on it – however it needed ODBC access and then I found out how much ODBC drivers were for Solaris! 2.5K for an ODBC driver that I paid 50 dollars for on a Mac.

So far it kicks ass in terms of SSL but I am not seeing it vastly faster in day to day use.
Compiling postgresql takes ages – there is a solaris 10 optimised postgresql coming out which is interesting.

The First of March (rabbits, rabbits) coincides with Lent so I decided to support that old minority religion, Christianity – who still think that God made Man in his own image instead of the other way around, and abstain from sugary products over the next 40 days. Ok this will probably get refined (arf arf) over a couple of days but in essence I am avoiding sweets (chocolate, chews and ice cream) and biscuits and cakes (but not fruit pie and bananas and definitely not probiotic prune yoghurt).

Kelso Races beckon and instead of throwing my money away I am using a combination of mathematics and physics to ensure my place in the Kelso list of people who are banned from on track betting. I wonder what my tic-tac name will be waved out as – on second thoughts I have a pretty good idea.

So the betting will phase out using Benfords Law, the Sporting Post, my crystal ball (Sybil), and mapping quantum states to waveforms (did that make any sense?) – so with my money on Schrödinger’s cat, provided it hasn’t been chewing on some wildfowl infested with avian flu (move over Typhoid Mary we now have H5N1 Moggy). I shall report back on what I am spending my winnings on (race cancelled due to frozen and snow covered ground).

The last remaining Nazi Enigma cyphers are being worked on – including my Ferrari laptop. Pointless but a bit of history – after all one might be a submariner shopping list.

Fuel costs, between electricity and fuel for the plane and cars, is starting to get ridiculous so I was jumping with joy to find out that the japanese have extracted gasoline from cow dung – Flora could be powering us in the future as well as fertilising her fields.

It is not often I am impressed by DIY (this is one areas in which I seriously outsource) however, I saw Pascal’s hand carved djembe drum which he is covering with the skin of a road kill badger (he told me had hankerings to be a taxidermist in his youth – I might sit on the other side of the drumming room from now on). Not sure how it will compare to my goatskin – it will be interesting to see how dead badger responds to my slap, bass and tones.

Books of this month include ‘In Cold Blood’ Capotes brilliant retelling of the awful murder of the Clutter family, and Eisners ‘Contract with God’ (the birth of the graphic novel telling of immigrant life in 30s New York). Of course I will deny reading Aldous Huxley Doors of Perception, which I understand, if I had read it, has a description of his trip on Mescaline, also described on an unaired Panorama television programme. Telepopmusik supply me with backing music for drumming and I sing along to Frou Frou.

Dark corner of the internet found whilst looking for something else in google award of this month goes to Chastity – and no I am not going to tell you what I was looking for to get there!

As well as learning Arabic I am becoming more and more enthralled with Islamic architecture, history and art. An exhibition of Muslim inventions is now repainting the image that is prevalent in the media.

Saw a stoat running along our guttering at the back of the house, that may explain the mysterious barking of our dog over the past few weeks, looks like it emerged from our roof. Light brown with a white and black tail it rippled along the guttering and then pounced on our log store roof and disappeared.

My doctor committed suicide by leaping off the cliffs near Burnmouth – a tragic death of a fine man, the only man who has had his fingers up my bottom (for the purposes of clarification that was a prostate check).

The vernal equinox strikes so Spring has Sprung – geocaching the Roxburgh/Camelot cache was a bit of a failure as eldest son gave us the wrong coordinates. However, we dined in style at the Edenwater House in Ednam – a boutique hotel for gourmands with the correct balance of elegance, fine fare and excellent wines at a decent price.

And now it appears that naked photos of us art objects are on sale in Newcastle pubs – finally my body gets the mass distribution it deserves.

ADSL finally installed in the office – naturally it took BT a week and several visits (including not having the keys to the exchange) – I am certain that the middle management of BT own shares in their competitors. Naturally the upload speed is not good and BT don’t have a performance check for uploading – only for downloading.

Mastercard Anti Fraud team queried me buying something sensible like telecomms equipment instead of the usual pattern of werewolf mask, graphic novels and a bell rock lighthouse figure from ebay – so they had to authenticate me. I suspect they have Mescaline leakage in their water as the queries included my age at my next birthday (hey that one is more difficult to work out these days) and the name of the road that leads to the road I live on (that is bizarre since I live in the middle of nowhere).

The Trinity Cottage driveway claims another victim – first Mike hits the gate, then Stuart reverses into the house, Kim reverses into the wall and now a delivery man reverses into our coal bunker (which I had previously crashed into with a skateboard) and smashing his rear light. Just Alasdair to go now.

Signed up to have a cast made of my penis – then I can make plaster cocks to send out as Xmas pressies. To find out more I ended up on Kate’s myspace site so signed onto myspace and now have a page. Google pages is in beta, no surprise there, and I have a page there too.

Penguins snow writing here

My purple Ukulele has arrived and where else to visit but a Japanese Ukulele tutorial site where I can start learning Twinkle Twinkle little Star.

The Sixth Year prom is that phase where child turns into adult – they all looked splendid in kilts and dresses (the girls) but before disappearing to the debauchery of the after-prom party the child like qualities came out as many had forgotten shoes, couldn’t get changed out of kilts etc. Still it sounds as if they are somewhat adult after the after-prom party…. great way to end a month anyway

Opening to the strains of Karl Jenkins Requiem, you know the one – the only requiem where the Dies Irae is based on a hip-hop rhythm (although Mozarts classic Requiem sadly remains unfinished, it was always going to be very unlikely that the final movement was based on a hip-hop rhythm) – this month promises much.

Bigfoot stabilized video in an animated gif shows bigfoot looking more and more like an extra from a monster movie.

First flight of the year was over the Borders stalking Stuart’s various girlfriends houses. The visibility was poor being hit by an anticyclonic gloom – high pressure area which normally brings good weather but in this case kept fog and clouds down in an inversion layer.

Stuart was on the Knockhill skid pan and we got a shot at being thrown around and using the clutch to control the skid. After that it was time for beer and watching the Scots beat the French at rugby (they keep winning when I watch them so I should do it more often) albeit it nailbiting in the last 10 minutes.

Squirrel appeared on The Weakest Link, victimising the one legged old lady and was ejected by an Irish doctor who didn’t take kindly to her trying to vote him off in the first round. She didn’t know the surname of Britains greatest engineer Isambard Kingdom – which is of course Brunel (you mean there is more than one?) – although worringly she knew the correct name of a Sugababes single.

Taking the chance to learn Arabic which will let me decrypt the CIA Reward page – although the CIA for kids is worth a wander around. Kim is meanwhile locked into Sudoku puzzles for reasons which escape me.

The sold out Goldfrapp concert at the Usher Hall in Edinburgh tortured its audience with an appalling head wobbling student support band, backed by some wanky art student videos (hidden by the bands shadows most of the time and which thankfully crashed at one point) for an excrutiating hour before the sultry vixen burst on stage to give a colourful performance (albeit with flesh not being one of the colours as the GoldFrapplettes were not on display). Great concert none the less.

I decided to organise my self this year by outsourcing as much as possible in that Web 2 way – so my photos are on Flickr, my mail at Gmail and now my calendar is at CalendarHub – although I have kept my calendar private to make my assassins lives more difficult.

Chinas First Emperor has the Great Wall of China built, constructed the terracota army at Xian and believed that the island of the Immortals was protected by giant fish (since whales are mammals it was possibly giant haddock that swam around the island) and he went off with a giant crossbow to deal with them – perhaps his mercury diet had something to do with this.

An evening out skittling at the ice rink in Kelso – two wooden alleys with heavy ball which are projected at lethal speeds down the alley with children running for their lives and then returning cautiously to pick up the skittles. The notice said ten people per team for maximum enjoyment and it was right, the beer helped with the enjoyment but not with the accuracy nor my gout.

The last two times in 20 years I watched Scotland play rugby against England they won, and now I settle down with beer and cheer and they win the Calcutta Cup at Murrayfield with a superb display against the Troll army – perhaps they should just get me a private box for their games to ensure success!

A microlighting gal, who used to fly from East Fortune, is counting black rhinos in Zimbabwe – this is starting to get a much easier job due to the appalling rate of profitable poaching. Viagra has displaced the world requirement for powdered rhino horn and tiger penis, but arabs are still demanding rhino horns for daggers. Zoos or dehorning look to be the desperate solution to species survival – on the bright side they don’t suffer from Avian Flu destined to wipe out 50% of african protein from their diet – one can only hope they don’t start eating black rhino. Please don’t confuse this with the yoga nasal cleansing rhino horn.

After various outages and glitches with leased lines and PRi lines BT started February with a scorcher – complete outage (which their automatic monitoring equipment caught as an alarm and their snoozing engineers ignored). Our clients noticed within 45 milliseconds and were on the phone to us.

After trying various reporting numbers (which seem to have changed since we reported last – as in last week) I finally got hold of my account manager who gave me another number (which was the wrong one too but thankfully the guy on that line had been woken up and gave me the correct ISP Repair line – wooppee I could finally speak to a person about a major outage. Especially since the last outage saw an engineer finally coming down to the remote exchange without the likely parts and was just going off his shift so they had to send someone else in from 40 miles away who would definitely have the correct part – I reckoned that he must have walked as the line wasn’t actually repaired until the morning.

He gave me the fault number and said that that number came from a test which verified there was a fault – so it could be quickly dealt with – great I thought. Hours later this wasn’t so great – each hourly keep-the-sucker-up-to-date-with-our-lies BT phone call, which started with optimism, was starting to grind me down – well we haven’t allocated an engineer to the job yet (this is 4 hours into the fault) and they have some medieval set of procedures (probably based on some Masonic ritual) which more or less guaranteed that whatever language or tone I was using wasn’t going to see this job escalated.

Five hours in – no engineer – surely they are not actually training one from scratch or have they outsourced this to India too – although the neandrathal I spoke to on the last BT call (well they gave up calling me on the hour every hour as promised) was a triumph of genetic engineering, in case you wondered what happened to the Silverfin drug – its in a British Telecom worker.

The engineer arrived and within 5 minutes had the line working which he then took down for testing (lets make sure it works this time test) 7 hours into the fault and we had Internet access again. BT called back and in an unguarded moment admitted that they had botched up the job before.

I used to say that the reason that we paid well over the odds for our telecoms was that it was reliable (natch) and that if there was a problem then this was repaired very quickly as local engineers were on the scene quickly. Now we are ripping our leased lines out and using bonded DSL to speak to our colocation site with dire threats to local exchange users about the exchange being monitored for PSP file transfers and movie downloads, and advising them that the only safe way to surf is with images off, to maximise my contention rate.

And the earth hath revolveth one more time (this time with a leap second) and we are launched into a chilly January with a few resolutions and goals for 2006 – the plans so far include -

* Goldfrapp Concert in Edinburgh
* Three axis training from Edinburgh Flying Club
* Microlight To Orkney
* See ‘The Second Mrs Kong’ Opera
* Keep chickens (inspired by Mike, the headless chicken)
* Power rocking on Masai Barefoot Technology shoes

Finished “The Best Commando Novels” (AARGHHH! Himmel! Donner und Blitzen!) so all prepared if we have to go to war, and after looking open mouthed at the Christmas light display listened to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra (the love child of Klaus Nomi, ELO/ELP). A New Year present comes in the figure of Ken Stott playing Rebus at last and us being ever grateful that our children weren’t the ones in the attempted murder incident on Hogmanay in Kelso, alledgedly involving the neds that attacked Stuart last year (what goes around comes around).

Radio Scotland kicked the year off with programmes on the real Whisky Galore story and the bizarre tale of Mary O’Rourke who had a career pretending to be a choirboy.

Meteors (the Quadrantids) streaked across the sky on the crystal clear evening of the 3rd January, none of which we managed to photograph but we stood in awe.

Composer of the month is Gavin Bryars whose haunting piece ‘Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet’ contains a sampling of a London tramp singing the religious song. Japanese group of the month is Pizzicato Five and the Arctic Monkeys – great music to develop software by.

The garden has the male Robin, the gals all partying in Spain for the winter, and the blackbird (as well the ubiquitous crow and raven)

January photos are a bit stark but then it is dark a lot of the time.

Birthday time so dinner at Ship Inn, Lower Newton By The Sea and picked up my photos from the Spencer Tunick naked day at the Baltic. Kim has a Lucid dream so I am not too sure what they put in the salad.

Birthday dinner (celebrations never stop) at the Caddyman with Jugged Hare which is almost guaranteed to bring gout to temperence members. And so predictably gout strikes – even on my cherry (to lower uric acid levels in the blood) and banana (to dissolve uric acid crystals) diet – all was thwarted by munching borlotti beans which have a high level of purine (too much of a good thing…). How do you peel your banana? Hint – the monkeys, the professional banana consumer, pinch the non-stem end and peel back – which on practical trials is more effective than peeling from the stem end.

Watched Syriana – the most cynical american movie of the year so far – I have spent years trying to look like George Clooney and now he is trying to look like me.

January wends its weary way to Burns night, another excuse to tipple through the Xmas whisky gifts, haggis dinner and the classic poem Holy Willie’s Prayer

Australia Day (also known as Invasion Day or Survivors Day after the Brits effect on the Aboriginal population) was celebrated by Stuart by getting a request for ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport’ played on Radio Forth. Australia was described as Britains largest open air prison with the horrific transportation of criminals and the destitute helping make Australia what it is today.

We have a mole and he lives in a hole – he seems to have outlived our molecatcher so we have our contract killer ‘SureKill’ gunning for him and look forward to seeing him dangling from a fence in the near future.

Computer systems and networking exhibited a domino effect this month – first routing issues in Glasgow; then our firewall decided to treat our main router as a threat and denied our main internet feed access; our sun server decided to die
and refuse to speak to its console in english – it took hours to work out how to fix the disks and reboot it in what looks like Klingon; BT equipment at our leased line exchange gave up the ghost intermittently (i.e. whenever clients tried to do something but looked ok whenever BT looked at it); BT dial up lines decided to pretend to be engaged. Perhaps this is the start of a Year 2006 problem? I am not too sure if there is any equipment left to go wro….

Countries I have visited so far – all of the Northern Hemisphere

Time to make a proper start on that southern hemisphere!

Bah Humbug!

Company luncheon consisted of delicious fare at Cringletie House and games in the bar – playing ‘Whose In The Bag’ with Alison’s “Not a Dog Not a Man” = Catwoman and Heather’s King Kong impersonation were highlights before we were asked to leave.

Home made Egg Nogs (raw eggs, brandy, cherries) at the Winter Solstice standing in the dark under the stars under the rowan tree in our cold and frosty garden. There must be warmer celebrations.

Christmas – the time where Christians celebrate the virgin birth, ignoring the fact that this was a common pagan tradition to claim a virgin birth to their heroes (Plato was even granted this honour by his biographer), and the early gospels kinda miss this major event entirely (oops). One celebration which I think should be revived is that on January 1st, 8 days after the virgin birth, Jesus was circumcised – I am surprised that this brutal tradition is not highlit more in the Christian calendar which seems to have been hijacked by the Scots Hogmanay

Christmas gifts this year included a picture of a goat with an Oxfam logo, the original been given to some African village taking away the pleasure of slaughter from us, an empty box of beer from the kids and a book showing horrific aircraft crashes read whilst sipping Chateau Tesco champers.

Boxing Day is traditionally spent nursing the hangover from the Christmas Day feast so it is surprising to find that this is the Feast Day of Saint Stephen (the same indeed from the Good King Wencelas carol) and also the day when one is supposed to be out hunting wrens.

To prepare for next year we are off to make our wands – you can choose your Birth Tree where you can tear your wand from.

And so to Hogmanay – fortified with wasabi coated peanuts and prune juice

With the Santa Run on the 11th of December, Kim and I are in training which involves running up around the Lempitlaw track and in our new shoes with our springer spaniel toddling on behind.

The training run goes – Jailhouse to cattle grid, down hill to pond, over sheep gate to geocache tree, passing the barn that I almost hit when landing, over to where our ISDN telecom lines lie in a puddle and up the rapidly disintegrating hill to the ‘marked for demolition’ steading and back down the road past the gawping horse strokers and our house back to the jailhouse and some welcome beverages.

The Borders town of Selkirk runs an annual festival to celebrate Walter Scott’s influence on the town and what I initially thought would be a dull affair turned out to be entertaining with holding owls, having a silhouette made by an artist cutting my profile with scissors, djembe drumming to frighten the horses and Kim’s mother asking who the strange woman was in the corner of the music tent – err, that is the politician David Steel in a wig. Fuelled with a combination of stovies, haggis, whisky, cucumber gin, roasted chestnuts and gluvine we wandered through the carol singers, fiddle players and the Souters all dressed up in Victorian garb.

I am in training for the djembe drumming concert and an official photographer came along to take photos of the group and to hear the chanting that has been frightening the Smailholm residents.

The chant is Djolé (Jolé, Yolé) and is a mask-dance from the Temine-people from Sierra Leone. The mask is presenting a female although it is carried by a male during the dance (so far the drumming and chanting are the only thing we are doing in front of an audience)

Laila i ko korobeh, korobeh, korobeh, mami watonay,
aya,
sico leleleko aya
sico la i ko, sico la i ko,
wa wango sico la i ko, wa wango sico la i ko
(repeat until audience leave)

As a relief from drumming and training there was the Gutbuster Christmas Party with a vindictive inflatable parrot – the following is an eyewitness account by Kim

rather than go out for a meal, we all took something to eat and drink down to the swimming pool, and jim closed the doors and put the inflatable
island and water polo nets up in the pool… so it was grown up fun
night in the pool!!

The ‘island’ is a huge inflatable obstacle course
2/3 of the length of the pool, and you have to try and negotiate the
forest, get round the 12ft parrot, over the 10 foot crab, through
smuggler’s cave, and up a huge slope at the end and slide down the other
side. Well, dignity went out the window, particularly as it was
liberally hosed down to make it as slippy as possible – took me about an
hour to get it sussed, and each obstacle was a milestone – past the
forest, past the parrot, quite a few goes to get over the crab (I ended
up going under it!), and each time you get hurled off into the water and
have to start again! I couldn’t think why I was panting so much, but it
was absolutely exhausting, and you have to cling on with your toes,
knees, stomach, fingernails -everything! Finally me and another girl got
to the slope at the end.. I could hardly reach the handles, but with
much encouragement from the blokes, finally scrambled up and plunged off….

I kept seeing mike swimming back to the start, and once I’d ‘done it’,
finally registered the fact that after about 20 goes, he still hadn’t
got past the parrot!! so when everyone had finally done it, we all
rallied round (including the non-swimmers spectating in the cafe) to
urge him on…. tension was high, excitement was high, mike was
positively purple with effort.. but YES, he finally did it!! well,
almost… one chap gallantly tried to push him up from behind up the
final slope, and when that didn’t work, gamely climbed to the top and
held out a helping hand… they pulled and pulled, others pushed and
pushed from behind, and then the whole island ripped from its moorings
and toppled upside down! it was hilarious.. we could hardly stop choking
with laughing! so he was deemed to have passed and got a big cheer when
we went to get food and drink!

This was followed by a violent game of water polo and enough cheese and wine to undo all the good exercise. We were still aching the next day as the balancing act found muscles that walking, jogging and drumming hadn’t reached.

December entertainment continued with a ball at Kelso where coincidence brought the person who organised the Millenium Bridge naked romp next to myself over dinner to reminice over the swaying motion. The idea of pretending to be an American suddenly started to look bad when I was grabbed by Betsy for ‘bonding’, ended up stroking a lovely reflexologists hairy purse (reflexology apparently is a side effect of neural transfer between the parts of the brain controlling the foot and the genitals) before being bundled in the boot of the car and fed strawberry vodka to stop me drumming.

And so the Santa Run arrived – 1500 folk dressed in their Santa outfits jogging around Princes Street was a sight to behold – the warm ups included Santa conga lines. The countdown 3,2,1 was followed by a slow shuffle as all the santas were trying to squeeze through a narrow gate – and then the pace quickened to a slow walk and finally we broke into a jog before running into the line of Santa Pipers (a na a na). Twice around the park and running especially hard when the cameras were pointing at us, we retired with our medals to the German Christmas market for mulled wine and a spin on the melting ice rink which was masquerading as a paddling pool, along with an underwhelming spin on the big wheel for views over Edinburgh – including the festive sight of inebrieted Santas in most Edinburgh pubs imbibing in the Sprit of Christmas.

The best offer I had all year was in the Kelso fish and chip shop, returning from djembe drumming practice, where two extremely merry gals one Spanish and one Polish were offering ‘triangle sex’ – the children took this story with the typical pinch of salt with the incredulity that I had prioritised gluttony ahead of lust.

Our djembe drumming concert evening came, conflicting with the last episode of Space Cadets so it was surprising that Smailholm Village Hall was packed to the gunnels to see us on stage pounding away and singing. We started with ‘Gunga Din’, followed by ‘David Bellamy’ and then the finale was ‘Angelina Jolie’ – although I think I managed to play a bit of each at the wrong time – people even got up to dance as we drummed and the event raised money for African villages, probably to buy weapons. On returning Stuart had brought his friend home for a beer so I joined them – the story of the lovely reflexologist, especially stroking her hairy purse and the link between feet and genitals, came out and I waxed lyrically about her and her healing hands when it turned out that Stuarts chum knew her – and how do you know this lovely creature I asked – ‘She’s My Mum’. The world is far too small.

To celebrate Samhein (All Hallows Eve or Halloween) we had a set of Russian hackers using a zombie machine in Oslo to attack our poor mail server, used primarily for email for cattle tagging, using a buffer overflow technique to stuff code on it to attack other places (Stanford University alerted us to this when we were trying to work out what was wrong with the machine in question). So it was ‘Hackers Hackers’ rather then the traditional ‘Rabbits Rabbits’ for the start of the month.

And so to November a time of darkness, fireworks and remembrance – on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month there are 2 minutes of silence (inflated from the miserly 1 minute pre 1945 but still not symbolically 11 minutes).

Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

Ironically in a poem beginning with ‘Remember Remember’ the following lines have been forgotten -

A penny loaf to feed the Pope.
A farthing o’ cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down.
A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar.
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head.
Then we’ll say ol’ Pope is dead.
Hip hip hoorah!
Hip hip hoorah!

November began with an airshow over the jailhouse, 2 Hawks, with Heather’s brother in one Hawk, and a Tornado put on an impromptu air display for us – screaming over the edge of the garden at low height with lights blazing and then straight up to 15,000 feet with barrel rolls. Made us non-aerobatic microlighters feel very jealous and all to the musical accompaniment of ‘In A Summers Place’, once heard never forgotten, on an ipod shuffle.

After another two hours pounding with Geraldine, my djembe instructoress, I have added the djembe to my Xmas wishlist and signed up for the advanced pounding course so I will appear in a Christmas concert if I can remember the rhythms, in which I am sorely tempted to black up – after the Arbroath ‘Black and White Minstrels’ were forced to ‘white up’ and call themselves simply Minstrels. An alternative is to ‘blue up’ (The Blue and White Minstrels would surely only offend Smurfs).

Link of the month is about War Elephants where one can learn how to stop being trampled by them strategies including stepping aside to let them through, incendiary pigs ( setting fire to pigs as their squealing frighten the War Elephants) and using the deadly combination of female elephants on heat with a large hidden trench.

Revenge of the seat belt – strapped in the back of a Nissan Micra, full of Steak and Black Pudding Pie after lunch, I found that the car didn’t want to let me go and after several increasingly desperate attempts to push and prod anything that was likely to release me I eventually climbed inelegantly out of a seat belt to freedom. Escapology might not be for me.

Bought a Stick Of Sprouts from Kelso Sunday Market, its spirals follow the Fibonnacci Series. After devouring the sprouts the stick thrown the the cow who ran around with it like a dog with a stick.

In preparation for the Santa 1.5 click Run in Edinburgh on December 11th, Kim and I started jogging around the track. We started out by counting trees and once we ran out of them we added on telegraph posts – Kim’s training is going well – Mikes came to a grinding halt after running in boots on a concrete track resulted in a knee injury and the inevitable gout attack in the joint.

Remember, remember the 18th Of September for that is the patron saint of pilots – Saint Francis of Cupertino
followed by International Talk Like A Pirate Day – that didn’t go to well this year as it coincided with Mike Visiting the Dentist Day.

was entirely ignorant about Bulgaria apart from reading about it in the ‘Crap Holidays’ section of the Observer on the day I was leaving. The web revealed that it has the unhappiest people in the world, so it was our job to cheer them up a bit, and Bulgaria has a cuisine which has only two cheeses named unimaginatively after their colour – yellow and white, so no Bulgarian Stinking Bishop. I had no idea of the land that geographically (and in terms of judicial corruption) lies under Romania, which we visited for the last solar eclipse visible from Europe. We almost visited Bulgaria accidentally during that trip, which we were deported from for videoing a military installation, but turned back at the intimidating border – they may have had advanced warning of what we were like.

Bulgaria is a pre-accession state for the EU (well delayed for a year once we visited) which like Lithuania, where I was attacked and returned with typhoid, has Scottish trade missionaries which would provide us with intelligence, hopefully without being deported. Bulgaria also boasts vast exports of its wines (second only to France) and an impressive and lengthy history (although they did make the mistake of not being on our side during the war). They nod their head for No and shake for Yes, although confusingly well travelled Bulgarians do the reverse to fit in with international conventions.

I decided to spend the night at the airport rather than risk sleeping through the Prince CD that normally wakes me up for early flights at 3:30am. I stayed at the sterile Hilton Hotel which seemed to be run entirely by the Indian branch of Hilton International (one wonders if the Scots were all in the Calcutta branch). It had the side entertainment of a bed that leans which provided hours of fun in waking up as I almost fell off when rolling over in my sleep and the strange experience of imagining that I had an Indian call me up with my alarm call only to find out it was 1am (I finally got woken up by the real automated call at the correct time).

Espressoing through Prague airport, only to be ejected from my seat and stuffed into a lonely corner with only clouds as company, they obviously didn’t enjoy my company as Bulgaria was more or less cloud free for our entire visit (25 degrees of temperature and six degrees of separation as it turns out with the remarkable coincidences in the inter connectivity with us missionaries).

The ambassadors reception at his residence was outside thanks to the wonderful weather on the vine strewn terrace, and then it was ‘Under The Linden Tree’ to listen to Bulgarian music and eat anything that was not Avian Flu compatible which included Mashed Nettles and Pike on a Tile (although the pike was replaced by ‘Troot’ on a strong recommendation from the gypsy waiter).

The next day was an endurance walk through soviet architecture, Russian churches, moved on by a guard from resting on their National monument and a delightful stroll through an autumnal park to an obelisk with russian figures posed in dramatic scenes. The icon museum was filled with priceless objects ripe for plucking with minimal security – all one would require was a good screwdriver, a very large coat and absolutely no ethics and the prizes of Eisenstein films could be hanging on my wall.

We all met for dinner at what the guide books describe as the best restaurant in Sofia in the room labelled VIP suite, whilst the others had gone on the embassy minibus (described as on its last legs by the girl at the embassy) for a 5 hour journey to an area that had been devastated in a flood last month and for a press attack asking what they were going to do about the area.

Cocktails in the world famous Buddha bar with live fish in bowls on the glass tables and watching mermaids dancing in a night club at someones wedding and so to bed.

Next morning I wanted to see more of Bulgaria so jumped on a Russian train through the autumn coated hills to Plovdiv in Thrace, home to Orpheus, who got the return ticket to Hell, and Spartacus – I was terribly disappointed that no-one asks for your name when travelling by train as I would have surely answered ‘I am Spartacus’. I did have to learn the Cyrillic alphabet, as invented by Cyril the monk, which is somewhat confusing with familar letters representing entirely different characters (i.e. c is s, y is u, backward n is i) – mikeforsyth.com becomes микефорсътх.цом

Plovdiv was built upon seven hills, one hill was demolished by the Soviets, and captured by Alexander the Great’s dad who promptly renamed it Philipopolis. It has a magnificent amphitheatre discovered after a landslide. I climbed one of the seven hills over the angle twisting random cobbles to reach the roman fort.
Plovdiv is an absolute joy, beautiful houses, cobbled streets and the museum of Bulgarian Wine where the fine Mavrud, a Thracian red wine, was quaffed.

Returning on the train was more challenging as Plovdiv station planners in their rush for digital information boards omitted to actually provide English speaking guards or numbered platforms to back them up. There was also the amazing linguistic barrier between the word ‘beer’ pronounced in ever desperately random frequencies and increasing volume (which always increases understanding) and the attractive waitress expecting ‘beera’ as the only solution.

Dinner was at a tourist restaurant in the mountains which had the added delight of a theatrical dancing on coals scene. Since I knew (well sort of hoped) that I wouldn’t get burnt when prancing across the coals after their performance, I kicked off the shoes and socks and went firewalking with my trousers rolled up as one doesn’t really want to have ‘fiery breeks’.

The evening panned out with drinks in a piano bar (with my private lift to the night club from my room), dramatic music signalled the start of a live lesbian sex show (a very vulgar bulgar) at the Kama Sutra night club but this was relatively dull compared to some very acrobatic inverted pole-dancing which certainly put my efforts in Lithuania into perspective. A piano bar with Beatles songs around 4am sung by a jolly clientele denied the rumour that Bulgaria was the unhappiest country in the world and was a perfect end to the day, well technically at 4am pretty much the start of the next day as breakfast followed only a few hours later.

The final day was spent wandering around the speed chess players in the park, Bulgaria being the Grand Master and the trophy proudly displayed in the hotel, buying a crystal ball in a nazi ephemera flea market and admiring the chicken paintings hidden behind closed shops possibly in an attempt to prevent the spread of H5N1.

Not forgetting the traditional Czech Beer and Chips with mayonnaise in Wenceslas Square watching the sunset over the silhouetted buildings in Prague whilst cutting CDROMs of everyones photographs – a nice stop over in between flights. Unpacking at home we unearthed the treasures of brochures and hotel shampoos and the unusual complementary banana flavoured condom branded with Grand Hotel Sofia.

Sunday normally consists of swim, steam, market and breakfast but today we squeezed in a blood donation after the market – or rather we tried to squeeze in a blood donation. I was feeling somewhat virtuous – “what are you doing today?” said the blonde pool attendant – “I am giving blood”, you could see her looking in awe at my new halo.

I hadn’t given blood in so long that the computer records no longer existed in a transferable medium – so I was a new blood donor and scrutinised carefully. I managed to stumble quickly over the prostitutes, dangerous hobbies and injecting drugs questions (I thought that not at the same time covered them) and slowed down too much at the “have you returned from foreign parts with a fever?” – wow they make these forms so difficult to lie on almost as bad as the US immigration one “have you ever committed genocide?”.

Mentioning ‘typhoid’ in passing to the nurse was a bad idea – the nurse visibly moved her chair back as I quickly recovered with “but all the tests were clean – looked like some sort of fever from Lithuania”. Too late – she had already donned her biosuit and was prodding me with a long stick with a disclosure signature they could now double check my medical records and see if they could ban me for life. She quickly pointed out the exit, otherwise known as the walk of shame – as you walk away from the interview the long line of pious blood donors were all thinking – is he banned for prostitution or intravenous drug use?

Still I sat in the cafe munching my way through the chocolate biscuits, whilst my keep fit instructor came in, smiled and then collapsed to the floor and was quickly hidden behind a screen with nurses saying reassuring things such as – “if you feel pins and needles in your feet kick the box away”, and “you are looking a much better colour now” – as a fan was starting to put her into fast freeze and brought an icy pallor to her.

I was waiting for Kim for ages, judging by the empty biscuit plate, pondering the fact that they didn’t have a lycanthropy question (although werewolfism may be transferred through saliva) or a vampirism query (HIV might be that though) and wondering how much blood they had taken from her – she appeared looking like a voodoo doll. It appeared they had in fact not taken any blood from her – although not for the want of trying. Kim ‘the stone’ has veins which don’t give up blood easily – they could have guessed when her birthplace is marked as Yorkshire. Three nurses and four attempts later they gave up and she toddled down the walk of shame with sore arms.

So it was now up to Stuart to redeem the Forsyth blood giving record, which he did although having to be fanned down by one nurse and having his feet raised by another as he feined fainting – some people have all the luck.

October – the eight month of the Roman calendar, the tenth of our Gregorian calendar, started with great disappointment. On the trail of an abandonded lead mine near Edin Hall Broch and armed with walkie talkies, rope and torches we ended up being torn to pieces on brambles, ripping my trousers on a barbed wire fence and falling into a burn. Following that we couldn’t find the geocache under a viaduct at loanhead – after having worked out the coordinates from various gravestones in the Loanhead cemetry, got lost on the trail to Roslin Glen, couldn’t get into Rosslyn Chapel with the filming for the Da Vinci Code ongoing, and finally found that Roslin Glen was closed at 5pm as we were fighting lack of diesel and daylight.

We returned the next day and parked in Roslin and walked through Roslin Glen, which was a wonderful walk along the river (although there were signs saying that the riverwalk was closed). Cara threw herself off a particularly steep section but managed to scabble safely onto a ledge and scramble back to the path (fortunately as we had no idea how we were going to get her). Wallace’s cave was inaccessible high up on a rocky face on the other side of a deep and fast moving river, but there were lovely views of Hawthornden Castle high up on a cliff. We bagged two caches enroute but still couldn’t find the viaduct cache, even though we were all dangling from parts of the viaduct.

October 3rd saw the annular eclipse (only 52% of which we could see from Scotland). If we had been in Spain we would have the seen the entire thing (we missed it in Shetland last time thanks to Scottish cloud cover) and the side effect of the circular sunbeams

Tested out our Kelly Kettle and origami picnic set in the garden all set for the assault on the Three Brethern and ice cream shop in Innerleithen. It has to be said that the trial went much better than trying to light it on top of the Three Brethern in a howling gale – with no Zippo lighter we gave up and tramped to Traquair across the windswept Southern Upland Way limping to the ‘Evil Dead’ like Minchmuir Bothy built by the Airborne Initiative ‘Chancers’. It was disappointing that we didn’t find any WayMerks but there are other sections of the Way to explore.

We had left Stuart at the Tibbie Tamson geocache because he wanted to head back to the car park as he was going to drive to Traquair to pick us up – he did however get crashed into by a car full of rugby players in Selkirk. He met us by driving up some of the Southern Upland way at Traquair and watched Donnie Darko on my new PSP whilst we struggled down to meet him to inspect the damage. Our car had a bumper scratch but the Fiat was badly damaged and could not be driven away.

And then the rain fell – ‘And Lo the Lord hath flushed out the sinners from Hawick’. There are cars floating down the misnamed high street of Hawick and through shop windows – ironically the Home Improvement Centre was wrecked as its wall collapsed under the force of the Teviot. A months worth of rain in 24 hours – the fishermen are happy, our pond is full and our stream is in spate but, being on top of a hill, if we get flooded I suspect there will be more people in far serious difficulties.

Hotel Five November One (H5N1) – Avian Flu has now surrounded my next destination – Bulgaria. The advice seems to be that I should not visit poultry farms nor bring back live poultry and definitely not go around slaughtering and defeathering them, nor should I eat dishes made with fresh duck blood (need to consult the Bulgaria/English dictionary for that phrase).

Solved Petals Around The Rose and am now a Potentate of the Rose. Started learning to play the Djembe drum at the Village Hall in Smailholm, met an african person in the small village (we don’t have many africans in Smailholm) so wound down the window and said ‘This is a long shot but do you know where the African Drumming Wokshop is?’. Great fun and my palms are still tingling. Smailholm also boasts the Hundy Mundy folly and a new natural burial site.

The new Wallace and Gromit film – the Curse of the WereRabbit has a side effect – quoting the Head Cheesemonger of Teddington Cheese – “As I’m sure you are aware, the demand for Stinking Bishop is phenomenal at the moment” – however I managed to secure some and it is simply delicious with a cup of espresso, whilst lusting after my new love The Seqair Falco – designed 1955 and called the Ferrari of the air and to go with it the Fortis Pilot watch – Xmas is coming…

Autumn has arrived with the Autumnal Equinox (Mabon) with more geocaching this month – although not late in the evening as it has disappeared as the nights are fair drawing in.

Kim and I were giving a talk over at Paisley at the Parkland Country Club, which was notable for having the campylobacter dangerous bug in its swimming pool and now the swimming pool had burnt down (how does that happen then?) – it required 6 teams with 30 fire fighters and 5 fire engines to get the swimming pool under control, leaving half the area in smoke damage. This was the perfect venue to lecture lawyers about the dangers of online marketing by having their web site linked off of Scotland Against Criminal Lawyers with people thinking there was no Smoke Without a Fire.

We took the chance to geocache before the talk and ended up walking around the Stanley Reservoir Dam in the middle of a housing estate around FoxBar with the picturesque Stanley Castle. The puzzle there was beyond us so we headed to the second geocache of the day outside a nuclear bunker opposite the wonderful Luma Tower at Cardonald Park, sandwiched between the A8 and the M8 with a modern decorative stone circle in the middle of a roundabout.

Our more recent geocaches included going to St Cuthberts Cave which is a splendid magical place surrounded by forest. The cave itself is scratched deep with 19th century grafitti and is where St Cuthberts follwers carried his decaying body to stop the Vikings stealing it. We climbed to the top of the hill for a marvellous view over Lindisfarne (Holy Island) and Bamburgh Castle before our springer spaniel sprung down a scramble, spraining her southpaw.

A geocacher jogged from Kelso to Lempitlaw dropped in a travel bug to our geocache and jogged back again and we had someone lazily drive to it before going off to get some 4×4 brochures after trying to get back up the hill.

I bought an Origami Picnic set, made with plastic and not paper – lighter than titanium and folds with press studs – easily washed and only a tenner – all set for the more remote geocaching exploits now.

Lunch at the Black Bull in Lauder – delicious waitresses and food was followed by a surprise birthday party for Anne Holmes-Smith at the Border Hotel in their hidden dining room. The surprise was more for us as we hadn’t expected even more food!

Visited Tweed Horizons with Jamie, our vacation student who was going back to Edinburgh Uni. Tweed Horizons is the Marie Celeste of the Borders, empty corridors and offices where was once a milling throng – wandering around with the ever helpful ‘Brian the janitor’ to see the places I used to wander around when working there.

Rerigged plane to discover all the flaws – now fixed and a test flight by Kim (with a theatrical easing back on the throttle to make us all think there was engine failure on climb out – and then I flew Kim over East Lothian – talk about back seat pilot…. nag nag nag – sometimes Mainair should think about an ejector seat that drops them out the bottom… still the plane was all set for the competition day where Kim snatched 2nd prize and I dropped balloons far too close to the judge to score any points.

My picture of the Month is Rossetti Lamenting the Death of His Wombat

I just got in frae the Isle of Skye … as the song goes

We drove up to Flodigarry, beside Flora Macdonalds cottage, where we dined, with Kim throwing up after a bad scallop, and left for The Storr. This was an ‘unfolding landscape’ experience, which consisted of groups of 25 people with head torches and wooden sticks, which I naturally twirled around my fingers and it fell onto the next persons head. We then marched in single file along a forest path for a Blair Witch Experience – Gaelic chanting and ghostly figures following us through the dimly lit forest and we struggled upwards seeing the Old Man Of Storr against a starry unusually clear sky. The glaswegian girl behind us shouted as I videoed the artistic imagery – “it just looks like a big cock”. We watched contemporary dance at the top and listened to some girl wailing endlessly whilst we stood in the pitch dark with the cold cold wind whirling around us at 2 in the morning. We got back to the Flodigarry around 3 and fell up the stairs to bed.

The next day we were on a mission – to find the Fairy Pools under the Cuillins of Skye. We were walking along the road when the mountain rescue team and ambulance arrived – there was a helicopter taking someone off the hills. They took one look at me striding towards the Cuillins – wearing a light T-Shirt, shorts and sandals and carrying a pair of swimming trunks – from their faces they made a mental note to rescue me later. We found the pools which are magical – ice cold blue water cutting natural arches and a waterfall cascading down into the pools. Stuart and I stripped off and with a shout of ‘We don’t wish to offend’ made our way in naked – the first dip was fun but very cold – after paddling for a while we decided to go in again – especially since we now had an audience of attractive women looking down at us. One of them met us walking back and used the cliche – ‘I didn’t recognise you with your clothes on’. We felt brilliant after that – our bodies revitalised and glowing.

Skye was also full of graveyards, where we found the Macleod that started the Wee Free church and chambered cairns at Vetten (in a bog). Our other mission was sent by Sybil – to visit Elgol, which is down a single track road under Blaven ridge with an impressively steep road down to the harbour. There were fabulous views of Rhum, Muck and Egg floating on silver clouds over the sea. We dined in ‘Off The Rails’ – a restaurant in a converted station but with the delight of having a real passenger train arrive and drop off and pick up passengers whilst you dine on fabulous seafood.

It was the last day so we geocached in Plockton (being the first to find this one even though several had tried!) and after derigging the plane it was off to Applecross – to find the geocache there and to drop off the Mike travel bug (although he was really wanting to go to Paris I felt that overlooking Skye was much classier). On coming down the highest road in Scotland to the bottom to see a cyclist making his way up – he was set for a gruelling ride – I wasn’t too sure if Mrs Forester and I could do that.

I ended up in the Plockton Inn bar with a New Zealand waitress, Finnish faith healer and author of Hawaiian books, an American bagpipe competitor and the only local – a waitress with ‘Plockton Inn Seafood Restaurant’ printed on her left chest, who had someone in that evening asking if they did anything other than seafood in their seafood restaurant. A previous night the bar was filled with student veterinarians discussing the most disgusting things they had done with animals, and an attractive tattooed blonde who evicts people in Aberdeen. Plockton is not without its characters – Hamish Macbeth was well set here.

The Microlight fly-in to Plockton started with me sitting on the runway at East Fortune in a howling gale with Kim on the radio reading out wind speeds with gaps (the gaps were when the wind speed would put me off flying…)

I took off with my bike in the back, an untested exhaust weld, new spark plugs , a full fuel tank and a radio that stopped working as soon as I was over the choppy Forth. A light plane and a tornado jet flew under me at speed as I ambled along in a 20 knot headwind (perhaps I should have cycled) as I tracked towards Crieff for a flight over the lochs to Oban.

I was flying over Loch Earn under cloud and under the mountains where I was receiving a damn good thrashing from the rotor off the munros so chose to go over Loch Voil over the clouds which left me freezing at 8,000 feet before descending over Cruachan Dam and over the still waters painted by sunset to a circuit OVER Connel bridge and a cross wind landing slapped onto the runway.

Two microlight club members at Connel helped me into their hanger, I booked a room over my mobile, assembled my bike and cycled in the wrong direction into a quarry, and then back over Connel Bridge to the ‘Wide Mouthed Frog’ at Dunstaffagne Marina. I had two offers of lifts but after having spent a lot of money on a folding bike, haraunged my son to get it all ready and then flew the damn thing with a pedal stuck in my shoulder for the past 3 hours, it would have been churlish to not get on the thing.

The Polish hotel receptionist refused to believe I had a booking, although there had been some chap called Mr Forester who booked a twin room on a mobile phone from Connel airfield only half an hour ago. Mrs Frog came to the rescue and I was soon in my twin room with my wife ‘Mrs Forester’, my newly christened bike who preferred to watch a programme on Female Orgasms (whatever they are) on the hotel telly than be handcuffed outside to a drainpipe in the rain.

The next day was pouring down so I cycled to Oban and on the steep hill careered down with the wet brakes not stopping me and ended up down a one way street the wrong way and through a chaotic mountain bike course of pedestrians and roadworks to emerge breathless on the pier.

The weather improved so it was time to jump into a taxi with Mrs Forester bundled in the boot back to the Frog and cycled over the Connel bridge to see the Falls Of Lora, an impressive tidal phenomena which looks like a maelstrom under the bridge. At the airfield a float plane had already been around 7 lochs and took off for more – its undercarriage retracting leaving its floats for the water. A couple of autogyros where also taking off with one of them being the UK expert in autogyros, apparently because the other 9 had died.

Refueled and eyeing the low cloud with trepidation I started a take off roll to abort quickly as Bert landed straight in front of me. Once clear I took off and headed under cloud over Mull through a gap in between stoney mountain s and cloud to get thrown about in all directions and emerge a religious man over the sea. It was stunningly beautiful at two thousand feet underneath with sandy beaches and blue water – when another microlight was on a head on collision route with me – he descended and I banked to starboard – that certainly woke us all up. I was travelling at 90 miles per hour so we missed each other with seconds to spare. Three near misses (two with other microlights and one with a mountain) I reassured myself that nothing else could go wrong.

Crossed the hydro electric cables and got hit with rotor off a mountain and enjoyed the aerobatic feeling of being all over the sky – that settled down and with Plockton runway just over a ridge I started to feel confident that it was all over. The I hit the ridge – sinking air was driving me towards the ridge at speed (I was still travelling around 90mph straight towards the ridge) I managed to fly over it with wing drops and a lot of praying – unable to change the altimeter for landing I managed to do some down wind checks whilst hurtling down over the sea to the runway – aimed straight for the numbers, rounded out and then got hit by rotor coming off the trees at the end of hte runway – ballooned off the runway, cross wind took me towards the beach and not the nice runway – struggled with all this feet off the surface and planted it down in front of a crowd of microlighters… who I then joined to watch anyone else trying to land in the same conditions…

Our only other flight was with Kim who flew me over the sea to Skye (which was magically without cloud) and we derigged to get the machine back to East Fortune – although we did get stopped by the police outside Edinburgh with Stuart driving – they noticed that our rear number plate had fallen off (although Kim had written in the registration to legally cover us!)

The big plan was to get dropped off at one end of the Pentlands whilst Kim took the microlight up for a test flight with its newly welded exhaust. The Pentlands are fine hills just outside Edinburgh surrounding the picturesque Glencorse Reservoir – however, from Soutra, we couldn’t see them at all as they were dressed in cloud.

Aborting the big idea we visited the open day at Soutra (Dun Law) windfarm and got to stand inside a wind turbine which was not too exciting since they consist of a ladder leading upward and a large control panel. I tried to climb the ladder but was told in no uncertain terms that it was too dangerous. There were tethered birds of prey (obviously they don’t want them sliced up by the blades) and the bizarre juxtaposition of a demonstration of joinery run by WoodSchool, who told us they were upping sticks and sadly moving out of the Borders, and a couple of clowns on stilts waving windmills.

Southward to Melrose for a cup of chocolate at Plaisir du Chocolat in Melrose – well we would if their chocolate machine hadn’t decided to breakdown on the morning of their opening – but we munched happily on Laphroaig chocolate before heading off to clamber over a padlocked gate to make our way over the Leaderfoot Viaduct. They were talking of doing bungy jumping from there (which would be a rather fast 2 second trip before bouncing over the Tweed anglers). From there we could see the roman fort and a splendid view of the Eildons which was an option to climb as it was cloud free – however I decided that it was time to mount Ruberslaw (1392ft) because it had a poem written about it, and it was slightly higher than the Eildons.

When Ruberslaw puts on his cap
and the Dunion on her hood
Then a’ the wives o’ Teviotdale
Ken there will be a flood.

It seems to be quite common to write poetry about hills, Samuel Taylor Coleridge has a set of Hill Walking Poems including the splendidly named ‘ Lines Composed While Climbing the Left Ascent of Brockley Coomb, Somersetshire May 1795′ – they don’t write them like that anymore.

Lines composed while climbing the left ascent of Brockley Coomb, May 1795

With many a pause and oft reverted eye
I climb the Coomb’s ascent: sweet songsters near
Warble in shade their wild-wood melody:
Far off the unvarying Cuckoo soothes my ear.
Up scour the startling stragglers of the flock
That on green plots o’er precipices browse:
From the deep fissures of the naked rock
The Yew-tree bursts! Beneath its dark green boughs
(’Mid which the May-thorn blends its blossoms white)
Where broad smooth stones jut out in mossy seats,
I rest:—and now have gained the topmost site.
Ah! what a luxury of landscape meets
My gaze! Proud towers, and Cots more dear to me,
Elm-shadowed Fields, and prospect-bounding Sea.
Deep sighs my lonely heart: I drop the tear:
Enchanting spot! O were my Sara here.

Sunday was as bad weatherwise so I sat checking through which munros I had conquered almost exactly twenty years ago to make up the list that I still had to do before my dotage, whilst munching my way through ‘Aunt Bessies Tidgy Toads’ and watching endless episodes of the excellent series ‘The Survivors’ as the wind howled outside. The Pentlands will wait for another clearer weekend and some rhyming couplets.

The Scottish Emigrant’s Farewell by Alexander Hume

Fareweel, fareweel, my native hame,
Thy lanely glens and heath-clad mountains!
Fareweel thy fields o’ storied fame,
Thy leafy shaws and sparkling fountains.
Nae mair I’ll climb the Pentlands steep,
Nor wander by the Esk’s clear river;
I seek a hame far o’er the deep-
My native land, fareweel for ever!