The Death of Klinghoffer is an opera by the minimalist composer John Adams about the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro. It is condemned as “beyond contempt” by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre – it is difficult to get better reviews than that.

The Edinburgh International Festival contained a gem of a show in a Scottish Opera production at the glass fronted Edinburgh Festival Theatre – I went to the premiere. On the day the Gaza strip is fully evacuated and shortly to be returned to Palestine this was a timely event and following 911 and 77 I was jolly glad that no-one took 238 as a significant figure.

The story is simple but cruel – Palestinean terrorists take over a cruise ship from Alexandria and kill a wheelchair bound Jewish passenger – life goes on, callously apart from one – the opera probes the individual sentiments and on repeat viewing mines the deeper feelings. This is music, history and performance in perfect harmony – if only that were possible more often.

With a minimalist set (no digitally reconstructed Titanic set here – we are looking at back projected water on a few portholes and wooden decking – minimalist but giving focus to the excellent performances – CGI would add little to a real human tragedy, and we know it is not going to end well with the title being a big clue.

The attractive lady a few seats away from me was plucked from her seat by a middle eastern, gun toting terrorist and kicked down the stairs into a door and onto the stage – asking her out for an interval drink looked highly unlikely now. This happened simultaneously throughout parts of the audience and on stage they started to sing – either the audience were particularly gifted singers or these people were plants. It also shows a confluence of dress between opera goers and cruise ship passengers.

The cast were uniformally excellent, the gal in the peacock feathers and tight green uniform and magnificent thighs was particularly excellent, the music was minimally excellent – although not to many peoples taste if they were spoon fed Mozart, accounting for the less cramped conditions one normally gets at an opera performance. Perhaps packed performances are due to the unemployed and equity members 50% discount on dress circle prices (there wasn’t a terrorist discount listed).

With a green bathrobe clad obese woman spreading chocolate over her face, terrorists running around the stage in a wheelchair pointing automatic weapons in our general direction, a dancing girl revealing title boards and a home video of the cast lunching – this was a truly Festival event. It just needs something banned to make it historically Festival.

With the major expense looking like the wheelchair for the title character it was, on reflection, incredible to see what Scottish Opera had achieved here.

In fact I enjoyed the opera so much that when I motored back to the Borders before my TT turned into a pumpkin, I watched the channel 4 production on dvd which I had recorded ages ago but never got around to watching – television removes the immediacy of theatre and staged opera (although toilet breaks are easier) – but it is still an excellent documentary approach with a less minimalist set (it is filmed on a ship and has more splashes when the wheelchair corpse is dumped unceremoniously overboard) the music and words are still powerful and show this artform to be a true 21st century medium. The actual death was far more graphic in the film version but the death may only have been visible to the unemployed and equity members in the dress circle centre. I understood more with the filmic version but that could have been repeated viewing syndrome – there is also the web of course Klinghoffer extending that media – just waiting for the video podcast onto a PSP at the next performance.

I haven’t enjoyed John Adams so much since I forced the family to watch ‘Nixon in China’ at Christmas.

Mini Moto – a miniature motorcycle – after refusing to let my son get a mini moto (after a continual torrent of requests and pleading) his friend Ben brought one up – so we muscled in and all had a go. They are classed as ‘toys’ so screaming along the Lempitlaw road uninsured and playing tag with farm vehicles only a couple of inches off the ground (whilst looking totally ridiculous) was fun for a few minutes but when we found out it couldn’t take off the interest waned.

Humbie Church is a delightful spot (near but not in Humbie and down a long twisty forest road) with a churchyard beside a lovely stream and set in woodland. Not often visited and a delicious treat.

Flew over the Whitadder Reservoir where I had sailed previously and around East Lothian – on landing we found out that the exhaust had a large hole in it and was being held together by the springs (designed to hold it together in case a hole appears – hey sometimes this redundancy and safety first really works – otherwise I might have been sailing again in the Whiteadder). With the Gifford Flower Festival in full bloom the Gobin Ha’ was full so we retired to an enjoyable meal at the Tweeddale Arms Hotel.

Triathalon – Kim and I were roped into being timekeepers for the Kelso Sprint Triathalon – beats actually competing in it. I had the timer and Kim wrote down the numbers and the time I would scream out as runners fell over the finish line – my new nickname is ‘Big Clock’ being the official timekeeper of the accredited triathalon.

Ancrum Graveyard – home of the grave of the brother of Beatrix Potter – well the real attraction is the place, the stone bridge, the delightful bell tower on the ruined church and some awesome gravestones.

Philip Law and its unnamed brother (Michael Law?) are the impressive standalone hills seen from Carter Bar. The attraction of the clamber up the steep slopes is the view – it is stunning – 360 degrees of open country with little in the way of evidence of development after prehistoric times. The sun shined, the wind blew – the hills were great fun – and to top it all there is a stone circle on the way back in a young forest.

And relax over a plate of spinach in Indian spices at Jedburgh and read about pharology – the art of bagging lighthouses (or unbagging in the case of the Inchkeith lighthouse keeper who spent his shifts naked).

Time to put on the sailor suit – makes a change from the birthday suit – the council have invested 200K in the Whiteadder reservoir sailing club and built a wooden swiss chalet style clubhouse (better than the old portacabin) with a small flotilla of dinghies (Laser Picos and Wayfarers). Excellent resource and with two instructors they run 2 day courses through the Royal Yacht Association syllabus for 25 quid a day including rescue and a cup of tea.

The day started with a rush for the extra large wet suits, which I lost, so ended up wearing a fetching red anorak and my swimming trunks – Jamie was thrilled to find out that I had been shivering my timbers around his drinking water – I certainly wouldn’t like to have Seamen in my mains tank.

It was more reservoiring than dinghing – I even managed to fall in the water before getting onto the dinghy, managed to fall off the dinghy and at one point whilst gybing managed to capsize it entirely – righting it by swinging from the dagger board only to capsize it again by climbing in the wrong side.

Unfortunately whilst we were all off capsizing, tacking, gybing and shouting ‘Starboard’ like demented pirates, someone had rifled through our clothes pinching wallets and the instructors cash box. One of the dinghiers was a policeman from Galashiels who lost his warrant card and had to explain this to his chief constable. Being poor I didn’t have anything to lose and my underwear was protecting my bag and packed lunch.

The second day was spent on the rules of the sea, mainly breaking them. The wind was waving around the bottom of Admiral Beaufort’s scale blowing around dead calm so our race looked like something from a slowed down movie – I was using my rudder to paddle at one point. I was in the doldrums and supplies were running low – Water, water everywhere; Nor any drop to drink – well apart from being on a large inland water reservoir – unfortunately TimTams were at an all time low so it was time to paddle to shore.

There were no albatrosses but there was a military helicopter that flew very low over the reservoir and the RAF Tornadoes were always on display over the Lammermuir hills.

With several hundred geocaches around our postcode we set off to nab a few more goodies – first a clamber up Peniel Heugh and to the Waterloo Monument. Fighting our way through clouds of flies (exercising our arms more than our legs at times) we reached the top to get rained on – great view from the top with a rainbow and diffused rainbow patterns over the Cheviots and hte forests around were originally set out in the pattern of the battalions at Waterloo (although reforesting has rather destroyed the original aim). Found the cache finally (the GPS was essential for this one) and headed down into one of the battalion forests to tramp to the Barons Folly on the next hill.

The Barons Folly was where a local Baron was supposed to have built his trysting house for his mistresses – now it is left to the pigeons to tryst judging by the amount of guano on the floor. We marched through nettles and in pouring rain to find that the dark (and probably dry) forest way was blocked by a barbed wire fence and ended up heading for the old roman road of Deer Street through the side of a wheat field – we were soaked to the skin.

Only remedy for a good soaking was a good Indian curry – so stopped off in Jedburgh at the ‘Sunrise’ restaurant where, after a long wait, my patience was rewarded with a superb spinach pancake to munch in the car and a delicious vindaloo at home. Food is cooked to order and an interesting menu (including Tandoori Duck) will guarantee a return visit.

The next day was still non-flyable so more geocaching in Peebles this time – to Neidpath castle and a lovely walk along the Tweed to the Neidpath Viaduct which took us over the river and into a very dark railway tunnel – using Stuarts mobile phone light we made our way gingerly along the pitch dark, gravelled floor decorated with empty beer cans. It took ages and in the middle where the tunnel bends around there is total darkness with either entrance invisible. It doesn’t help doing this just after seeing Creep (London Underground horror) and The Descent (caving horror). The exit is lovely albeit boggy and we made our way back to Peebles along the Tweed Walk.

We finished hte day with the standing stones at Lyne Station, a fish supper at Big Ebs in Peebles (superb) and a delicious icecream at Caldwells in Innerleithen (our second that day… Innerleithen is just full of people illegaly parked and eating icecream).

That is most of the Scottish Borders geocaches done now – although there are oodles in Northumberland and especially around the Cheviots.

Kelso has been hit by a plague of 2CVs, five thousand of them – the world 2CV festival has landed rather like the canisters in HG Wells ‘War Of The Worlds’ – first you see a few of them and are intrigued by the different looking beings and then when they are everywhere the danger is apparent and it is too late – travelling in convoys on ‘raids’ and ignoring most of the driving laws (apart from speeding for obvious reasons).

They are supposed to be contributing 1.4 million to the Kelso economy – which I think breaks down to mainly petrol and oil – speaking to traders in general who have spent more on advertising and preparing for a deluge of ex-hippies (and not so ex hippies) and teachers on all sides of the roads, with very little return. Wetherspoons had a beer and food tent and they had their own currency ‘The Kelso’ which was traded in large volumes for beer (also in large volumes).

They certainly chose the week with the worst rainfall in the whole year and I don’t envy their position camping in this cold and wet weather – although it can be argued that people do not visit Scotland for the sunshine. Kelso residnets kindly offered shelter to those with young families and in all the 2CVers seemed to have a whale of a time.

Still one of them visited our geocache at Lempitlaw and left a pink model 2CV (shortly exchanged for a white stress cat toy by ramblers from Galashiels).

A fine summer night and with Kelso full of drunks for the Civic Week it was time to test out geocaching.com – geocaching is the sport where someone puts a set of goodies and a notebook and pen into a tupperware container with the latitude and longitude stored on a web site for others to find it – and swap out a gift for something you bring.

GPS is not pinpoint accurate otherwise intercontinental missiles constructed by schoolchildren from googling ‘ICBM for the DIY enthusiast’ would be a danger – so they are accurate to within a few metres…

We decided to play it difficult by going by the latitude/longitude details of the geocache and not by making a waypoint and seeing the map, which would have been too easy. As a result we ended up driving over the Catcleugh dam, parking in a layby with a very smelly toilet and navigating to what we thought was a deserted wood. We found a hole with a spade and started to dig – thinking that this was an especially difficult geocache – whilst Stuart was digging and excitedly reporting that he had hit something, I checked the GPS to find that we were at least 2 minutes east of the reported location and several seconds north. It then turned out on closer examination that we were actually in someones back garden – so sheepishly made our escape along the A68 back to the smelly toilet and the car and drove to the next likely spot.

After finding ourselves at the side of the reservoir with no clues we then turned on mapping to find out that it was actually on the other side of the reservoir and raced around as we were losing the chance to both find the geocache and dine. A forestry track and a short walk led to the exact GPS reading – success – well sort of, remember GPS is not pinpoint accurate to foil those pesky missile building kids. Fifteen minutes of scurrying around fairy dells, falling into ditches and wondering if this was really a serial killers web that we had fallen into, whilst rereading an unhelpful encrypted clue with a ‘click here to decrypt’ tantalisingly unavailable on the printout – Stuart braved the slug infested logs and rocks to find the magical black bag and the geocache treasures.

We swapped a nice yellow duck, which we attached to our GPS, with an ‘Only Fools and Horses’ DVD and added our names to the guest list and congratulated ourselves on our quest. No holy grail but a yellow duck was an acceptable compromise.

We raced back to find all the restaurants enroute closed (in the height of tourist season they cater for anorexics in the Scottish Borders). We made it back to Kelso and the Waggon Inn for a welcome drink and fodder and drove back avoiding the Civic week drunks.

We then planted our own Lempitlaw geocache, and then headed off to a geocache with a ‘Travel Bug’ in it – an item that wanted to move around and had a goal.

The nearest geocache to us with this was at Harbottle Castle, near Rothbury, in a castle moat inbetween various military danger areas (we almost got knocked off the orad by a racing military ambulance). Alasdair and Stuart vied to be the first geofinder whilst we examined the poetry on a standing stone. Ali ran up the steep grass walls of the moat with a geocache treasure – we went through the goodies and selected the one eyed Mike (Monsters Inc) with a ‘Travel Bug’ dogtag on him – he wanted to be in Paris – didn’t we all.

We dined in the Cross Keys pub in Thrupton, which was very busy for a Wednesday evening, but attractively served and delicious fare including the two eyed Mike’s Nile Perch which was superb – watched over by a fairy in the terraced garden.

The next couple of caches were near Tweed Horizons at the Temple of the Muses – deep in a nettle field – my legs are still stinging as I type. The cache even had a bottle of sparkly wine in it – since Ali’s watch had been trashed in the washing machine he seized the Simpsons watch as if fate had led him there! We also caught a lovely light over the Eildons from Scott’s View and from the Wallace Statue. Secondly the lovely Greenknowe Tower outside Gordon with the cache hidden inside.

Our first virtual cache was at Sodden Flodden with a side trip to the wonderfully bizarre “Cement Menagerie” and the default and totally delicious luncheon in the Blue Bell Inn at Cornhill.

I signed up to the naked art installation – a seminal event at the Baltic Gallery by Spencer Tunick.

The first attempt failed – no reply from the web site and telephone answering machines – eventually I got a human on Sunday morning at 7:30am – the installation had already taken place at 3am. Groan. I thought that I was to remain fully clothed all day.

However, I received an email when I returned from swimming – there was going to be a special 2nd installation recorded live on BBC3 – that evening. We raced up to Edinburgh, yes in the opposite direction – to see a souterrain and then rattled down the A1 to Newcastle with Stuart at the wheel and his L-plates leaving us loads of room as cars avoided us.

Everyone met in the glass walled ‘Pitcher and Piano’ bar opposite the Millenium bridge. I met Adrian, an architect, who had been at the 3am installaiton which lasted about 4 hours longer than they were told and included stepping into vomit and chips after a Saturday night in Newcastle, and then rained on for good measure. A couple of girls in the bar showed me their bruises from earlier this morning – what had I signed up to?

It was a sociable evening in the bar and I met the lovely Tilly who knew one of our vacation students, Ross Horne, at Oxford Uni. Spencer kept giving briefings in the bar and then as the sunset went, it was time to get outside and get naked. There was around 250 people.

We had a clothed rehearsal and met the people sharing our bridge space. With a burst of applause as we all dropped our trousers at the side of the river and packed our clothes into our red carrier bags then we moved swiftly onto the Milennium bridge past the groin height BBC3 cameras. I ended up in the centre of the bridge jammed between a blue haired busty beauty and a gal with a star tattoo at the base of her spine.

We had to stand arms length from each other, we had to close our eyes as Spencer screamed at us on his megaphone – we then had to lie down on the gravel path which was sore and then stand up and wave like some demented Jane Fonda workout. At one point we all slapped our own buttocks to release the gravel from our backsides.

And it was over – time to get dressed, say farewell to naked companions and head to the bar to celebrate. There was a naked busker on the Quayside “I’m busking in the nude, busking in the nude” who got quickly moved on by the constabulary.

Stuart got a friend to tape the BBC3 programme and received the text message back – I can’t believe what I am taping – are you in Newcastle? We borrowed the tape (which she didn’t want back…) and it was an interesting programme with one naked shot of me but dangly bits hidden by the blue haired gal in front.

All in all a fantastic experience and a jolly nice set of people to spend an evening with. And we get a signed print and get to see the exhibition at the Baltic in January…

Mow and Mowhaugh are places up the Bowmont Valley, outside Yetholm, and places that used to exist as towns and no longer do – leaving in Mowhaugh a set of ramshackle farm buildings at the side of Mow Law and at Mow some tombstones lying in nettles.

It has taken us three attempts to find the place – the first time we ended up along ‘The Street’ near Hownam, the second up Mow Law and dislodging a stone which rolled down through the roulette wheel like iron age ring to fly out and hit one of the buildings. It certainly didn’t gather any moss but a lot of momentum.

A flight over the Borders later that day saw us attempt to see Mow from the air – but rotor from the complex Cheviot hills made us turn back.

We finally made it by Stuart driving the All Road over a ford and Mike in shorts being attacked by nettles and thistles to see the tombstones. I ended up walking over a Ford to see if I could see remains of a church in the river but ended up with a fine stick to help me back over the ford from a lovely tree at the side of the river.

Tim Tam Slamming is not an olympic sport yet – it consists of biting the diagonal ends off a TimTam biscuit (an Australian version of our Penguin biscuits) and sucking up tea, coffee, milk and honey, ovaltine or whatever happens to be in the cup or mug at the time. The biscuit gets soggy (reverse dunking) and has to be shovelled into the mouth within seconds before there is a catastrophic structural failure of the biscuit – and a mess over the desk. Your hands end up covered in milk chocolate in any event – which is not necessarily a bad thing.

With my remaining disease being gout it was down to eating loads of cherries and drinking nothing but water. Well gout and a pulled abdominal muscle – done after reading a New Scientist article about people thinking about exercise getting fitter – so I thought about situps and managed to pull a muscle – perhaps I should have thought about a warm up first?

Struggled back to gutbusting and swimming (and swapping disease notes and symptoms in the steam room) and started to walk off a splendid lunch in the Wheatsheaf at Swinton – first Hume Castle, then Edin’s Hall Broch near Abbey St Bathans (we planned to dine at the nice riverside restaurant which was sadly closed when we got back all sweaty in the hot hot day) and finally up to Duns Law (ok we drove most of the way up) and a fabulous view over the Borders (especially if you turn your back on the leaking Scottish Water pumping station) – the stone marked on the map commemorates the Covenantors and is way overgrown – although there were iron age settlements on top of the hill.

As another solution to avoiding long term gout medicine (Allopurinol) I decided to turn to God and became ordaned in the Universal Life Church – officially Reverend Michael Forsyth although I cannot do funerals or weddings in Ohio, Missouri or New York. Not too sure about the legal status in the UK either – perhaps I can perform a marriage ceremony for the sheep and cattle – I would have to buy the wedding kit though with leather bound bible (I guess my faux leather Koran won’t work) although I must check if it includes a slaughtering ritual for the lambs as well as the funeral side. They didn’t even mind me listing this tome as my favourite book

Finally my bullock castration movie has made it onto Google Videos – although it doesn’t appear to be categorised under Children’s Documentaries as I asked. 39 seconds long and you have to install the Google Video player first.

Feeling better so it is back to Sadistic Jim and GutBusters, with us looking like demented Thunderbird puppets in the water and planning ghost walks around Kelso out of the pool.

Illness struck and Mike has a combination (from the symptoms) of Typhoid Fever and TB, with a touch of gout thrown in for good measure (uric acid levels elevated by a combination of the Lithuanian binge and lack of food).

In addition to losing one stone in weight from lack of food due to stomach pains and diahorrea and an alcohol free period (cannot face the stuff now) I managed to top the lot by fainting on the toilet (whilst reading the Economist about the decline in livestock in our rural vision) – having done this before (reading Virginia Woolf) I wanted to avoid biting through my upper mouth as I did before – so grabbed a towel before heading for the floor.

I woke up feeling groggy and wondering where I was and on looking in the mirror was bleeding from a graze near my left eye. Coincidentally when ordering my new glasses the optician had said that the Lithuanian emergency set, which I had cheaply purchased after having my expensive rimless ones nicked in Vilnius, wouldn’t be allowed in this country as they have a thick edge which could cause damage in an accident – caveat emptor. The glasses were also twisted so it was back to my prescription pair of sunglasses and the odd looks from people when it was raining.

At work I figured I could fix the bent glasses so sitting on my aeron chair I twisted the frame and the lens promptly fell out on the floor. Instinctively I wheeled the chair back to see where it had gone and could hear a ‘crunch’ and the lens had been shattered into 5 pieces. So sunglasses for a few days until the optician kindly fitted a new lens so I don’t get so many funnny looks on dull days now and can read late into the night again.

So back to the doctor for blood tests (8), stool samples (2) and prostate exams (twice just to make sure) – and no-one seems to be ruling out my theory of bubonic plague. Gout has hit hard so several vinegar baths later I ruled out alternative treatment and ignoring the health warnings in the press I swallowed Ibuprofen until the pain eventually went away and I could hobble around.

Now on Colchicine for a quick fix for the pain of acute gout which is back with a vengeance – but taking cherries and drinking gallons of water as a definitive cure for gout as opposed to long term medicine.

Stu and his pal Bobby were looking a bit pasty having been through marathon Messenger chats, so it was time to be good parents and drag them somewhere dangerous. It was too wet for the lead mine so on recommendation from the swimming pool steam room we chose the Grey Mare’s Tail waterfall near Moffat, named after the Rabbie Burns Tam O’Shanter poem and every website about it mentioned danger and fatality – the perfect Sunday jaunt.
It took ages to get there a combination of distance and a plague of wee scooters who were around jamming the Border roads at 25mph.

The waterfall is a lengthy 200 feet drop, from its hanging valley in the glacier riven selkirk to moffat valley. We were fortified by lunch and beer (hey it was a dangerous path we needed courage) at Tibbie Shiels Inn, where on photographing the picturesque St Mary’s Loch I found the rocking jetty I was on was not as attached as it could be to the land. Lunch was enlivened by the family at the next table who were playing with Mummy’s handcuffs and managed to get the younger son locked with hands behind his back in pain, and the waitress who on bringing the plates asked ‘God?’ – I said yes but it turned out to be ‘Cod’ she was asking for, funnily enough I was having that anyway – a fishy tale if ever I heard one, and I won’t dwell on my Spotted Dick.

We took the waterfall path that was supposed to give the best view but it was stopped by a large danger sign and dire warnings (Abandon Hope All Ye who leap this barrier) so we took what I assumed was the tourist path which seemed to be full of people from Motherwell and asylum seeking children who were plainly rethinking their relocation as they were being dragged up the very steep path by exasperated adults who seemed to know quite how far it was still to go. Bobby and Stu demonstrated their fitness level by slumping down every 100 yards and I slumped down with them just so they didn’t feel left out…

The waterfall is best seen from the bottom – so climbing up is completely pointless as the view does not improve – but you do get to see the loch at the top (after trudging a couple of kilometres along a well maintained and springy but rocky path). The surprise comes that you turn a corner and the loch is just there – it is such an anticlimax after the huge waterfall drop – the loch stumbles into the stream with undue care and attention. Still on the way back you have gravity on your side and the stream turns into a torrent and then free falls down the 200 foot cliff.

We rewarded ourselves with pasties and espresso in Moffat and a jar of Moffat Toffee (which is misdescribed as it is really a sour filled boiled sweet) to keep us going to Dumfries where we found the Twelve Apostles stone circle at Holywood. The stones were protected by a herd of beligerent cattle who played “What’s The Time Mister Wolf?” with us – gathering together menacingly and then stopping dead when we turned.

The aviation museum was closed otherwise we could have seen the remains of the Spitfire found in the loch that I read about whilst waiting in the Doctors surgery earlier this week for my combination of lower colon blockage prodding and prostate check – just curl up into the foetal position with your trousers down – this might be uncomfortable – is understatment an essential part of the Hippocratic Oath?

Eskdalemuir has an interpretation board about their stones – the Loupin Stanes and Girdle Stanes. The Loupin ones were protected by a bog between the EU funded stile and the large stone entrance to the circle, but overlooked by splendid carved green hills. However the Girdle Stanes are quite magical with spooky Hawthorn trees festooned with ribbon offerings – I grabbed a twisted hawthorn branch for my wand with with a Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo wandered around the faerie grotto. Part of the stone circle is now in the middle of the river but this circle did have a magical feel and the twisted trees lent an edge of mystery and magic to the space.

Eskdalemuir is also home to a Tibetan Monastery which looks a bit like BuddhaLand – with statues and stupa and a 2 star tourist rating (they need to have trouser presses and kettles in the rooms to get higher). It is also home to road signs warning of Weak Verges, Red Squirrel crossings and Beware of Peacocks.

We travelled back thorugh Bobby’s old homeland around Bowhill and down the ettrick valley to the bridge where I once hung siphoning petrol from a land rover into a leaky juice bottle to fill my empty MG. We all dined late in the Buccleuch Arms where I was presented with the worst and certainly most solid Yorkshire pudding ever – but since we had been on a standing stone odyssey it was fitting.

With Ali packed off to the Alps we had to fill the vacuum left behind with the lack of continuous stream of chat and bustle. The initial plan was to uncover the Lost City of the Shearers at Hownam, this was thwarted by a lengthy trail to the Heatherhope Dam, which used to supply Kelso with its water from the reservoir behind it. Feral goats kept a watchful eye on Kim, Mike, Stu and Cara as we plodded along the interminably long private road, having abandoned the AllRoad at the sign.

On innocently asking the depth of the reservoir I was given a convincing ‘20 feet deep’ and a scientific explanation of using the hills and the refractive index of the water to work out the depth, when the sceptical gene kicked in (alerted by smirking) and I looked around and spied the depth marker on the dam side.

We were going to be late for lunch so a trawl back past the golf cart filled with dead furry animals in the back, past the barking dogs and the squaking peacocks in cages and raced along the road to Jedburgh (leaving the Lost City still not found). Jedburgh was in the middle of an unfortunate combination of music festival and hurricane. We watched the musicians sheltering in their tent playing gamely on and disappeared into Simply Scottish for lunch (acceptable fare tempered by bad service) and on our return the tent had gone but the musicians were still playing – the audience had visibly aged though as the music segued from rock pop to folk.

So now fortified by duck it was time to visit the Unconformity – Huttons first glimpse into modern geology and very hidden in Jedburgh at Inchbonny. Not as impressive as Siccar Point, which he discovered a year later, but an acceptable attractive walk along the river and proximate to the icecream shop – where with faux american accent my enquiries about the ‘Lock Ness Monster’ (hey it was a large glass of red wine at lunch) was met with a bit too much seriousness from gullible Yorkshire tourists.

My meeting was at ten so with it being a sunny day I tramped around the streets to their offices, avoiding drunks and the revenge seeking mafia gangs (particularly those that looked like they had broken noses),
where I promptly tripped over the entrance step to arrive sprawled on the reception floor. So far so good.

I met with a nice Lithuanian chap with an unpronouncable name who I shall refer to as Leon (the pig ear farmer) and during coffee had a demo of their attempt to control the entire internet industry in Lithuania through the subtle method of online chess.

Business over it was time to relax by packing bags, checking out and wandering the streets in search of a bag to put a very large wooden car transporter in. Jackie, for the aforementioned transporter was indeed hers, saw a perfect bag and picked it up and with professional haggling stance was trying to establish a starting point when through impressive miming it was established that he bag was actually the shopkeepers personal one.

We stopped for pizza with dried enchilada chillis where Siegfreid went to the loo and was accosted by an obese old lady and her partisan husband who were knocking on his door and turning the lights on and off in an attempt to oust him from his toilet. We set off for the airport under construction and left for Prague for a connection to Edinburgh, since there were hours before the connecting flight we decided to wander around Prague and kindly dumped our handbaggage on the members of the part who were too weakened by the week to join us.

As we were journeying into Prague crushed in our taxi minibus a voice innocently asked “will we need boarding cards to get back in?”. Yes, someone had left theirs in their luggage – but not a lot we could do now so we decided to ignore her concerns and focused on that beer in the Prague square.

We were dropped off at the castle and spent a marvellous walk all the way down to the Astronomical Clock in time for its six o’oclock show and retired for a beer and being scots a plate of chips each – class always shows.

Wavell Magor (MBE) tried to negotiate with some scary looking mafia taxi drivers but we headed down from the square and got into a minibus with a postcard of naked women in the front. On the way we saw a rainbow cloud and a solar powered car park.

Of course getting back in wasn’t as easy as we had thought – especially when Jackie chose the stern looking eastern german shot putter as the passport woman – when refused she joined us, who in an unexpected and generous display of solidarity refused to go through passport too – so she let her through and we followed on in triumph to join the milling crowds of stag weekenders arriving.

Whilst waiting for the plane which was delayed we were sitting in the glass area of hte terminal building – watched the plane come in and then watched as an engineer walked out onto the wing followed shortly after byt he pilot. The engineer then started washing the rear of the wing and was down on his hands and knees (hopefully not just praying). The pilot came out again to spot a worried set of passengers watching through the window and disappeared inside and the flight was announced ready.

I got back home late laden with honey liquer and lithuanian chocolate and a ten Lita Lithuanian note with a picture of the “Lituanica” monoplane which crashed on its transatlantic flight with the two pilots looking as bent as a 10 Lita note, which the British Embassy girl told us was popular in Vilnius gay bars.

I had a business meeting that day and figured that it was unlikely I would find them never mind deliver any form of coherent conversation so emailed to move it into the next day.

Of course I couldn’t actually see much but fortunately had prescription sunglasses and managed to wander out and find an optitian – strangely enough not far where my original pair were nicked! I then had to go through some miming to explain to the optitians who could not speak English why a guy on a cloudy and rainy day was wandering into their store in sunglasses with a swollen nose. They used the sunglasses to take the prescription and wrote down a time for them to be ready which seemed to be after they had closed (I foxed them by turning up early and getting them). Whilst waiting I took the chance to wander around and find the Frank Zappa statue before retiring to the hotel for a rest.

Dinner that evening was going to be special – the ambassador and the British Embassy girls were going to join us. We walked to the restaurant and found a lengthy queue outside which we naturally avoided and went to the head gesticulating and shouting “Ambassadore, we are dining with your ambassador” followed by “with this meal he is spoiling us” by less reverential members of the team. It was noticed that several people in the queue left in disgust with us seemingly avoiding queuing (whereas in reality we were not dining in their smelly part – but had our own private cellar – lined with wolf and bear skins – which you reach past the large tree growing through the building and past a pool of what looked like sharks but we were reliably informed that they were dogfish.

I wasn’t feeling best well and Fiona beside me had still not eaten anything at all and had steeled herself to attend the dinner, when we were presented with a dish of chicken stomachs it took a great deal of will power not to be unwell over the table – however Siegfreid had ordered the pigs ear and we were glad we were at the other end of hte table. Siegfreid’s dish came on a huge platter and consisted of various dishes including the large blob of pigs ear which he was tearing into with gusto and which took several hours of continuous eating to finish.

Lithuania has a pagan ancestry and the poppy-seed cake was excellent. I decided it might be a trifle unwise to risk a night out on the town so we settled into pagan honey liquers back at the hotel and went to bed reasonably early to be fresh for my meeting the next day.

With only an innovation round table meeting scheduled for today it was time to run around Vilnius at high speed being a tourist. This started around 7:30am walking around the churches, the cathedral and circum-navigating through the labyrinth of streets around the University. A highlight was the Gate Of Dawn which has an icon of which there is a copy in the Basilica of St Peter in Rome, yes a copy this is the original. It is so revered that people cross themselves and pray within streets of it and approaching it – to actually get to it you have to go on your knees filing up in a line up a worn staircase into a room with the icon and rows of nuns and tearful old ladies on their knees who believe it to have miracle-working power.

I walked to the British Embassy and managed to recruit a dog who walked with me along the river, before I disappeared into the treasure that is the Church of St Peter and St Paul – the baroque interior is breathtakingly beautiful and light catches the crosses and golden stars and moon held by white cherubs. With a chandelier in the shape of a ship and white statues with no eyes I was hard pressed to leave that place.

After the riveting innovation meeting, at one point I had fallen asleep but my snoring had alerted our team leader who promptly kicked me in the shin, so I was ready to walk back over the Gediminas hill to the tower and see the delightful view over the city. I took the cable car back down to the archaeological museum with splendid neolithic exhibits and walked up the main shopping street near the cathedral to the KGB building.

The KGB museum of the Genocide of the Lithuanian People – is a grim reminder of what the Soviet Union did to the partisans they caught. A tour with walkman narrated by a former inmate takes you through cells where prisoners were locked in darkened rooms, forced to stand on a metal disc with the floor filled with water (which froze) and the comfy cell which is padded to deaden the sound of severe beatings. There is also a chilling death cell where many bodies were excavated. This was somewhat enlivened by being mixed in with a group of schoolgirls who kept opening cells to find me in them in a sort of worrying game of hide and seek in a KGB torture cell.

Leaving the museum the day was dark and wearing only a shirt and trousers from the earlier meeting I ended up running thorugh streets filled with wet people for forty minutes before reaching the hotel entirely bedraggled and worried about my core body temperature – solved by a warm shower and a glass of honey liquer (made to a 6th century recipe).

We all went out to a splendid restaurant where our German colleague decided to don a metal helmet with spikes coming out of it and swinging a large sword around the room – he was christened Siegfreid immediately. Fortunately he only drinks Fanta (a Nazi created drink as Coca Cola was not shipped to Germany during the war) and he wasn’t wading through the cellar contents at the same rate we were. Fortunately the frilly dresses were better secured to the wall otherwise the evening was destined for a cross dressing experience which would certainly be caught on peoples cameras.

The gents toilet had a strange man in the middle of the room chanting.

We retired to the relaxing hotel bar for more honey liquer and wine before everyone retiured and I went wandering around the empty streets again – happening upon a student night club where I seem to recall pole dancing at one point. On leaving the club I was wandering back to the hotel with no taxis in sight and was approached by two men who looked somewhat like the russian mafia people one is always keen to avoid. It was fairly obvious that their intent was to rob or kill me so I took flight as best I could. The problem was manifold – one I was not entirely sober, two they were larger and probably fitter than me, three I was running down the main street in Vilnius with absolutely no one around to help and four between me and the hotel was a great deal of park on one side and narrow and dark streets on the other.

Fortunately there were a row of taxis one of which I dived into the back of, the driver was asleep but pretty much woke up when the two mafioso decided to follow me in and a pitched fistfight followed. I managed to kick one in the nose possibly breaking it and was punching the other when he punched me in the nose and grabbed my glasses – the taxi sped off and we reached the hotel whereupon we got the police. The police were more concerned about the reports they would have to do and the minimal chance of recovering my spectacles and left me bleeding into a hotel towel.

I went through my things and couldn’t find one card which may have been in an outside pocket so took the chance to cancel it just in case (I found it the next day stuffed in my arabic copy of the Koran for safe keeping but cut it up as it was now useless – for the elimination of doubt and prevention of riots it was the card I cut up and not the Koran). And of course called home waking Kim up at 3am UK time – really more because the credit card people said that it would effect a whole set of cards and because I felt it shouldn’t just be me suffering at that time of the morning.

Late to bed, early to rise – makes a man very tired – 3:30am and leaving around four to drive to Edinburgh for a very early flight to Prague and hence to Vilnius, in southern Lithuania. Turning on Radio 4 in the car there is a voice saying “…and now from Vilnius” – and a short piece about the problems of Lithuania having joined the EU now finding that there was an economic migration of sex workers to the UK. For a population that had already been severely culled by various invading nations they don’t want to lose anyone – never mind their sex workers.

We arrived, rather than landed, at Prague and shortly after it was back on an uneventful flight to Vilnius – apart from one of our expeditionary force feeling queazy (which turned into full scale vomiting and an inability to eat anything during the entire trip).

Booked into the splendid Shakespeare hotel – I was in the Hemingway Suite which was filled with animal skulls, pictures of Hemingway, books and a rifle hanging from the horns of a dead something. There was even a minibar – which was the least you could expect in the Hemingway suite.

Just time to change into the kilt and then it was off to the British Embassy for a presentation where I managed to insult the ambassador (Colin) by pointing out the correlation between his arrival in Lithuania and a population exodus. Following this was a reception which had the bad combination of a very attractive waitress serving free wine who you really just couldn’t say ‘no’ to. We met more Scots there (although I was the only kilted one) so it was looking like a Scottish invasion.

A bulging set of taxis ferried us to a restaurant where we ate and drank the night away (actually after the cabbage soup it was more farting the night away) before I retired to the Water World strip club – which was somewhat disappointing in not being as Wet and Wild as advertised with the noticeable absence of the swimming pool. Wandering back through deserted streets it was amazing to think that this was a capital city – no one around at all – it was a ghost town and no-one around to hassle you whilst wandering amidst the wonderful architecture and starry night (the next evening I would find out the downside of this).

When your next door neighbour offers to fertilise your field it is difficult to refuse. Being ever helpful I was out to separate the herdable and inquisitive Highland cow from the tractor leaving the sheep to fend for themselves.

David, the tractor fellow, looked at my position in relation to the tractor and with an experienced eye said ‘You might want to stand back a bit as it comes out at quite a rate’. I hadn’t realised his talent for understatement as I took a couple of paces back.

He started firing fertiliser pellets and the yelp of the highland cow in the ‘next field’ warned me that perhaps ‘back a bit’ might extend to sheltering behind something, preferably very far away – this proved difficult in an open field and I was hit in the chest a few milliseconds later with several hundred pellets of hard fertiliser. Quite how the sheep managed to avoid all of this is a mystery that they seem to be keeping to themselves.

On the bright side at least it wasn’t slurry.

Another day listening to nothing but the Casshern Soundtrack and looking wistfully at pictures of Shiina Ringo whilst listening to ‘Stem Daimyou Asobi Hen’ over and over again.

Being the time of the year for Earthshine Stuart, Kim and I trooped outside on a crystal clear evening to see the crescent moon – this turned into a crimson red crescent over the course of the evening whilst in the darkness we listened to the sheep chewing and Flora picking the lock of the wooden enclosure with her horns.

Earthshine was written about by Leonardo Da Vinci

In the morning we had found one of our original ghost carp dead at the bottom of the pond – no trauma or obvious signs of disease – although the carp slime looked particularly green and slimy.

Fuelled with double espresso at the Sunday market from the man from Holy Island – it was the day to take granny around standing stone sites – the five of us kim, stu, ali, mad and me (with cara in tow) clambered around goatscrag, rambled around roughting linn waterfall (and climbed to the top of it) and the cup and ring stones there – lunched at lowick and then the five stones at duddo – we reached duddo with 55555 on the mileometer of the car, the five of us walked to the stones and returned and the time was 15:55. Time to buy a lottery ticket with fives in it…

we got back to find that another lamb was born (4 now) with bats swooping around my bat detector (I think it attacts them). Ali was musing about milking horses which turns out not to be so daft after all and asked how oysters reproduce which had us stumped until we found this page and being inspired headed off to the Mussel Inn in Glasgow the next day to down scallops and mussels and return via the Huly Hill stone circle beside the Newbridge Roundabout.

A cold (or more probably flu) was matched with Lemsip and Espresso then challenged with an Irish stew made with Guinness followed with Irish Coffee with Jamiesons all made by an Irishman, beaten to submission by the Legendary Alnwick Rum and hot milk – and was buried under a miniature chicken and chilean red.

Holiday Monday so we tried to go out for lunch – the Teviot Water Gardens were the first choice, and turned out to be everyone elses first choice so there was a 45 minute window before we could even get seated. So we foolishly abandoned that and headed into Kelso to the Waggon Inn.

They have a bizarre idea there of not taking your order until it is your turn – they deal with each table in turn and then surprise the chef with what everyone is having one at a time. At least the food was varied and tasty (black pudding tempura and chicken stuffed with haggis) although Ali’s baguette turned out to be an inedible cabiatta.

May Day – Rabbits Rabbits (or White Rabbits depending on your position), started with a swim and an espresso at the market – buzzing we then romped over a field to visit the James Thompson obelisk – Thompson wrote the words for Rule Brittania and ‘The Seasons’ poem (the first English language poem based on Nature, which figures as the centre of a celebrated copyright legal case that made the House of Lords and set in place perpetual copyright rules; Haydn wrote The Seasons after the poem)

Cycle down (or rather up) the College Valley – slow and steady with a strong wind against us – and constant change of bikes between Brompton folding bike, Orange Titanium T2 and a Raleigh mountain bike between various children an enthusiastic mother and a puffing father. We reached the monument for the crashed planes around the Cheviots in World War II (quo fas et gloria ducunt: Where duty and glory lead) – I assume the latin inscription ending with DU-CUNT were the last words, normally it is the germanic OH-SHIT.

We ended up with a superb downward cycle at great speed on the Brompton when I hit the hairpin (there is a theme here) and skidded round (just) and ended up with a burst tyre – commuters aren’t supposed to do that speed I guess. So a humiliating walk back to the car past the gauntlet of jolly self-satisfied walkers coming off the hill we walked last week. Fixing a back wheel puncture on a Brompton is not easy

No Photos as it looked like a total downpour so the camera was left at home, but here is a link to a map of what can be done on a College Valley cycle ride – on a less windy day.

Flight around East Lothian for an hour – around Tantallon and Gifford and an attempt to find the standing stone around Trapain Law. Revcounter not working and strobes interfere with radio – otherwise uneventful flight.

Various Scottish Microlight entries arrived looking for golf courses – including one who asked if East Fortune runway had a fence in the middle and then tried to land on the museum runway, and an entrant whose plane wouldn’t start again and took a good 40 minutes to get going. Well done for entering though – I was far too scared with too little experience!

Dinner at the Goblin Ha’ at Gifford – superb duck breasts and superb barmaid breasts – possibly larger than my wife (Natasha) – but that is apparently out to the jury at the mo.

A Genesis tribute band – The Musical Box – playing in Newcastle City Hall. Great concert and everyone dressed in their seventies gear (nothing like a genesis tribute concert to make you feel young).

Happy Hour in Newcastle is a confusing affair – “are you drinking inside or outside — that lager is not included in the buy one get one free Happy Hour Special and neither is the vodka but the cointreau is because we don’t have any pernod but then I need to check about the Lemonade and that will be 22 pounds please” – I can see why they call it Happy Hour…

And now twins – baby rams this time with daddy ram beating them up at various opportunities and a complete set of shepherds and stockmen and wives and neighbours coming to make sure all is well – these are the best looked after lambs around!

Their testicles were somewhat too small to be ‘ringed’ (that is applying a rubber ring to cut off circulation until they fall off) – they have made friends with the other lamb and are roaming around in a youth group.