On spring hauing come? Mar. 18

Morning all and welcome to Sunday. First of all a wee reminder that the clocks went forward last night, bound to be someone who forgot, It's certainly looking more spring like up here on the wee hill but being that we're here in the Heilans that means sweet fruity apples. Blizzards and hailstorms are still a distinct possibilty. Discovered yesterday I'd lost my 'ootside' reading glasses, is that not terrible. Trying to read labels with whatever I'm reading held at arms length and my head cocked to one side making like a not so cute pointer (The dog that is, not that thing teachers used to use to emphasise something on the blackboard and occasionally on your knuckles.). Don't laugh I'm pretty sure some of you have done the same thing and if you haven't you will do in the future. As a result we're heading for the bustling metropolis tomorrow so hopefully someone might have handed them in. We've been buddies for years, these glasses and I. Anyway we hope you all have a pleasant rest of the day. Maybe a wee wander round the Bught throwing bread for the ducks, and a shottie on the swings for the weans and the dads. Alternatively a wee bit hillwalking might suit some of you. But remember Tesco trainers, khaki shorts and a pakamac won't hack it. Lastly you could do what I'm doing. Just stay indoors, mess around on the computer and listen to a bit of country music. The country music bit's not obligitary. Cheers all...

On the Joys of Spring. Apr. 18

Afternoon ladies and gents, As always we hope you're all full of the joys of spring this sunny Sunday.
If you aren't, then get to Tesco or Asda and get some. Morrisons and the Co-op do stock them but they're value packs only. So at best they are the mildly cheerfuls of spring and that's not what you want at all. They're kept on the top shelves above the Cornflakes and Crunchy Nuts. If you're wondering why they should be kept there, it's simple. They're sun-kissed cereals of course. Where else in a supermarket would you expect to find the joys, other than close to something that has been grown with help from the sun? But do remember you will have to climb the shelves to reach the joys. Unless you've had the foresight to bring a ladder. Ideally a telescopic one, as it's easier to hide under your jumper.
At some point in your ascent and attracted by the sounds of squashed sugar puffs and massacred muesli. The supermarket security guard is likely to spot you clambering over the wheaties in your attempt to get the joys. This of course gives him cause to shout "W'AT THE FECK ARE YOU DOIN' UP THERR?", in a loud beligerent manner. You, of course, being of a more refined nature will answer. Why, I'm looking for the joys of spring Mr Security Person sir. He responds with typical authoritative disbelief, "are you 'avin me on" says he, "not at all" says you. "I have it from the most impeccable source". "What source?" says he. "Why a wise'ish Auld Eejit on Facebook" you respond. This is just too much for the security officer, who's just a simple soul, and his head explodes to reveal a beautiful bunch of golden daffodils. A further clue, should it be needed, that you are indeed in the right place to locate the Joys.
So there you go, if you're not full of the joys then do something about it. There are Tescos and Asdas everywhere. As is evidenced by the security boys final reaction not everyone has the wherewithal to accept that the joys of spring can be found above the cereal shelves in supermarkets, but don't let that dissuade you. You keep climbing to find your own joys of spring. It is your right and no-one, not a jobsworth security officer, or any other supermarket employee has the right to thwart you. Just you keep working your way up them shelves to reach your goal.
And when the wee men in white arrive to drag you off to somewhere safe and secure. you keep shouting at them.... "THEY'RE THERE I TELL YOU, I KNOW THE JOYS OF SPRING ARE UP THERE. YOU HAVE TO LET ME GET TO THEM, HE SAID IT'S MY RIGHT TO BE FULL OF THEM.........."
Please do bear in mind, if you believe this little bit of waffle, I've got a bridge over in Ballachulish to sell you...
Corrieshalloch to Loch Broome

Looking down from Corrieshalloch to Loch Broom.

On Covid Confusion May 20

Afternoon y'all. Well we're drawing to the end of yet another Monday in the life of a Covid19 avoider. Today has been one long stretch of rivetting adventures. Woke up, got toast and marmalade, with a side-order of two jack russells grudging me every morsel, then dressed, with a bitty help from She Who Must etc. Thereafter a trip into Dingwall for a wee trek round Tesco's one-way system, I've come to the conclusion Dingwall shoppers can't handle a one-way system, mind you I wasn't much better. Left instead of right, right instead of straight ahead, up instead of down etc. etc. etc. At one point I was in great danger of disappearing into my own tube of smarties. Then a toddle over the road for a wee trundle round Lidl, where they don't have a one-way system, but they do do nice tomato juice. Back to the van, home and back to bed. Now we're watching some episodes of Last of the Summer Wine to be followed by Midsomer and maybe a wee shottie on the PS3 later. And that's it till next Monday when I get to do it all again. See what I mean, excitement in a Tesco bag for life, or what?. Have a good one folks...

On avoiding covid Mar. 20

Good afternoon all and welcome to another weekend avoiding our new found friends Mr and Mrs Corona and all the little Coronas. A bitty forward these Corona bug'ers. They'll come visit you without an invitation and not only that they'll bring their relatives too. Uncle Cedric and Aunt Camelia Corona are known to regularly entertain their hosts with some of their favourite melodies. Classic hits like.... Sneeze Up Mother Brown, If Snot for you, Everybody Nose, Achoocaracha and other such germs, sorry... gems. My best advice if they turn up at your door. Don't let the feck'rs in. Have a germ free one folks.

On Sticking Things up my nose. Jun. 21

Morning y'all, hopefully you've all survived your wild and wicked weekend. What no wild, or wicked? Ach well me neither. Heading west today but I'll stick a couple of pics up in the meantime. Got to do a rapid covid test too, as we're going to the Hebrides. It's bad enough when the nurses do it, now I've got to do it myself. Ferk'n joy! I seem to remember as a child, being told not to stick things up my nose now they're encouraging me to do so. Ces't la vie and that's life...

On getting through a week. Apr. 21

Well burger me, it seems it's Friday again. We've no sooner got one by with, when another comes sauntering over the horizon. But of course Fridays don't saunter do they.... and neither does any other day. You can of course saunter through a Friday, meander through a Monday, or even toddle through a Tuesday. Not to mention weave through a Wednesday or trip lightly through a Thursday. Me personally, I tend to waffle through a whole week. You may also be wondering what the point is of this particular waffle. Well let me tell you.... there isn't any point. that's why it's called a waffle. And no! you can't put fried eggs on my waffles. That would just be silly and we all know I never do anything silly. Don't we?

Castle Maol

Eilean Donan Castle

On Covid and Wrestling Jul. 20

Hello and welcome to one and all. Have you missed me.... Nah..! didn't think so.

You'll be pleased (I hope) to hear I am actually on the mend. We think the anti-biotics were having a wee scrap with some of the other chemicals they feed me. Thus delaying progress until the anti-bi's were out of my system. Hey ho what can you do? It seems we've done it.

Unfortunately! She Who Must etc.... has put me on lockdown till at least Friday. Which is fine as it means I can attend the giant haggis wrestling tournament on Ben Klibreck after all. Unfortunately none of you can come watch as due to Covid restrictions the whole event has to be held behind closed doors. Also no cameras or videos are permitted in the arena as haggis generally, are very wary of such things. I do hope to improve on last years silver position. Beaten to the gold by local champion Hamish the Hairy. Some at the event thought I should have taken the gold, but the judges didn't see Hamish's illegal right hand twist to the rear of my nappy. Caused a few tears that did.... and not only from my supporters.

A couple of days ago my chances of taking part this year were teetering markedly in the direction of, Nae chance, He hisnae a hope and Yer pullin' my chain. But I believe the Haggis Gods have intervened. Don't tell the Haggis about this as they don't really approve of divine intervention on behalf of humans. Personally...! I would hazard a guess, the Haggis Gods are involved in some betting shenanigans.

Right....! Enough of this nonsense. Wish me luck for the weekend. I may or may not let you know the result. Those of you who know me are well aware of my tendency towards shyness and introvertedness when things don't go well...

On forgetfulness. Feb. 18

Afternoon folks. Hope you're all fit and looking forward to the weekend. If you're working the weekend you have my sympathies. I have to own up to having a couple of senior moments this morning. It wasn't a bad morning so decided Tore for a bit of photogging would be fine. Maggie gets me dressed and suitably togged for the cold. I grab the cameras, mobile and headset. Right I'm ready and raring to go. Going out the door herself asks. Have I got everything? Of course says I. She drops me at Bogroy and heads for Sneckie. I trundle to my usual spot and start to get sorted. Wait a minute, there's something missing. My 1200D has a 28-90mm lens instead of it's usual 70-300mm. I think ach I'll manage with the lenses I've got, the 750D has an 18-55mm, but should have the 28-90. Along comes a wagon I get the camera up and pointed in the right direction. CLICK! nothing.... No ferk'n card in the 1200, left it in the PC. So I take the card from the 750 and stick it in. Next wagon comes along, camera up again. CLICK! in it goes, but it's not right, the suns killing the pic. Yep you guessed it, no lens hood. At this point I proceed to call myself every kind of eejit under the sun and call herself to pick me up on her way home. Moral of the story? When your other half asks if you've got everything. Make sure you have...

On WEEKENDS aGAIN. Feb. 18

Morning all from us up here on the wee hill. The weekend is upon us yet again. Isn't it amazing how weekends come round so regularly. You have five days at work, rest, play, or whatever and bang!! it's the weekend again, then another five days and so on and so forth. It's just so repetitive. There's a good word for a Saturday morning "so". Something else about weekends that you may not realise is, we pretty much do the same things every time they come round. I know there are exceptions. The weans birthday, your granny's golden wedding anniversary and suchlike, but overall it's the same routine every Saturday and Sunday. We shop, we visit the grandparents, we have a wee dram or three on a Saturday night, sometimes into early Sunday morning. Resulting in our waking up sometime after mid-day on the Sunday with a head like a soggy biscuit. So folks the message from this bit of twaddle is. Do something different some weekends to make them more memorable. Curl yourself into a ball and roll down Ben Nevis. Bungee jump off the Cromarty Bridge, I know it's not very high but at the very least you'll get wet pretty quick. Morris Dance naked round Flora Macdonalds statue and watch her cry real tears. Stuff like that would change your weekends, make them exciting, make some people smile, make even more howl with laughter and finally, make wee men in grey vans come and take you away...
Kessock Bridge

Kessock Bridge

On too warm weather. Jul. 18

Morning all you sunbaked friends and visitors to this my own wee page. Well another roaster of a day up here on the wee hill. I haven't been this colour since I stopped sailing in cargo boaties across the Pacific and to other places where way too much sun is the norm. TBH I think himself up there with the sun lamp's taking the wee wee now. I mean a country full of brown Scots just isn't right. We're supposed to be a race of pallid white with a hint of blue. We can't survive long without rain. It's in our DNA for crying out. "Taps Aff" weather should only last a week or ten days at the most. It's the short period in the year we commonly refer to as 'summer'.
As for the skimpy dressers the sunshine brings out. Some of you are surely having a laugh. In all honesty you need to have a wee swatch at yourselves in the mirror before you go out. Or ideally ask a sensible friend how you look. Cos there's a few should really be covering up a bitty more than they do. Being a sensible'ish 60 year old I wouldn't inflict my body on others while in my own garden let alone on the world at large, but it seems some of you don't feel it necessary to cover up parts of yourselves only a lover or extremely close friend should see. Let me tell you, the view from the rear at wheelchair height can sometimes be most unpleasant indeed. Waffle over... 

On inhaling creme eggs. Mar. 21

Greets folks. I trust you've all gotten to Friday, hale and hearty and free from purveyors of misery, officious eejits and general feckwits. You have....... That's just fine and dandy. Me? Well we've been through the wars again. Self inflicted to some extent tho'. Wednesday evening we were tucking into a creme-egg when we manage to cough, splutter and generally get a bit of it down the wrong way. A common occurrence you might think. An event to make you smile at my predicament even..... I would think so too, as a rule. Anyway we seemed to settle down after some cold juice and a Solero. Heartily recommended on such occasions. That was it as far as I was concerned. We had a bit of pain down the left side which made for a rough night. but we weren't overly concerned.
Anyway yesterday dawns, finding me still a bitty out of sorts. The morning rolls on with the out of sorts getting gradually more unsorted. Think of one of a handful of chips dropped by some drunk heading home from the chippy on a driech Saturday night. Lying there on the cold, wet pavement hoping nobody steps on it and your kind of in the ballpark. Eventually I decide to check my blood oxygen levels. So it's finger in the thingy and let the display settle down. Sats are 93/94%, pretty much par for me, but my heart rate is fluctuating between 94 and 117 bpm and I'm thinking. Feck! that's not right.... In capital letters I might add. And that's me not long had the pills that keep my ticker as laid back as a sloth wasted on weed.
Anyhoo, we phone the doc and I'm told, dial 999. To cut what has become a long story short. We get carted up the up the road to A&E, courtesy of a very nice ambulance crew. The usual tests are done, the bpm got to 150+ at one point, but no evidence of any new damage to thon poor little organ that does it's very best to keep me posting here on FB. I know you'll agree that's always a good thing.
It turns out the creme-egg event managed to aggravate and inflame the area round my little purple pal. causing it to charge off like a smurf on speed. I'm told he should return more and more to normal as the inflammation dies down. So there you go, excitement personified or what?
The moral of the story....? Don't inhale cream eggs. Stay safe y'all...

On being in the wrong day. Jan. 21

Feasgar math y'all. Doesn't time fly..... only seems a week since last Friday. I say y'all, but there maybe one or three of you who have lost an hour or six, or even worse, find yourselves on a different day altogether. Anyway... should you be one of these unfortunates there is a solution to your problem. Hands up who saw that coming. The solution is very simple really. What you do is place yourself outside your front door and face left or right, it doesn't really matter which. Then proceed to run round your house as fast as your wee legs can carry you. Ten times clockwise, then ten times anti-clockwise, or vice-versa depending on what direction you were facing when you started. The bigger your house, the farther you've have to run, is of course, an unfortunate truth. So living in a wee bothy is preferable to living in a mansion. You keep this running, both ways, up until you finally meet yourself coming from the opposite direction, thus allowing your two separated selves to merge in the right place and time. Obviously the further away you are from the correct point in time the longer it's going to take for your clockwise self and your anti-clockwise self to meet and merge. So don't despair if it takes a bitty longer than you expect, perseverance is the answer. There is also a quicker way to achieve time correction in as much as you have to run both ways at once. But that's a wee bitty more difficult. Stay safe y'all...

Woolly coo

On being hale, hearty, or both. Jan. 18

Morning ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the day before tomorrow and of course the day after yesterday. As always we hope you're all hale and hearty or at the ver' least hale or hearty. Actually I just looked up the meaning of hale so I have to settle for hearty, which is reasonably accurate description of my good self. I suppose I could be neither which would make me a miserable auld eejit. But I don't think even those people who don't like me would call me miserable. Yes folks I have to admit there are probably people out there who don't like me. Yes I know! my flabber was gasted as well. Me I love everybody. In fact if I had been born in the 60s it's very likely I would have been a flower child. Unfortunately I was born in the 50's so I'm not sure what kind of child I was. Nuclear maybe? but I don't glow in the dark. Maybe I should create a range of mugs with "50s Children Don't Glow in the Dark" stencilled on them in a variety of flourescent colours. Just to dispel the myth that they do. Who is it creates all these hurtful rumours anyway?

On mellow harshing and what to look for. Dec. 23

Morning folks, I trust all is well in your own orbits and all your ducks, geese, swans are in a neat little row this fine Monday AM. Excellent! that's what we like to hear. But remember thon elephant... It likes nothing better than to drop out of it's cherry tree and attach itself to your line of ducks, geese etc. Creating disharmony, disgruntlement and more than a little dischuffedness in your tidy little row. Also be on the lookout for those with an untidy row of elephants. These pachyderms are generally to be found in an ver' untidy line attached to jobsworths, feckwits and know-it-alls. Much unloved people who should be avoided if at all possible. As they are prone to harshing your mellow very soon after making first contact. So consider yourselves informed...

On ups & downs. Dec. 23

Evening folkses, how are we all? You are, ach well can't complain I suppose. Things kind of get like that this time of year. But as you all know, there's an upside to most things, just as there's a down side to just as many things. So in all honesty, so to speak and to coin a phrase life is meant to have ups and downs.

Even Humpty Dumpty and the Grand old Duke of York had up/down issues. So there's absolutely no reason for folks to get too concerned. Deal with your own, and if you can, help others with theirs. Have you figured out what I'm waffling on about yet? No....! That's okay... I'm not so sure I know either....... Right! I'm so pleased to get that off my chest and please accept my humblest for burdening your good selves with it. Whatever it was...

On a town with no charity. May 17

Morning folks. Well we got the new chariot on Saturday and came back up the road yesterday but I'm grounded until at least tomorrow. She can be a hard woman my dearly beloved.
Anyway we managed to find the only town in Scotland without a charity shop. Imagine that! Stewarton is so posh it doesn't have a charity shop. Not only that they have a Sainsburys! We didn't stay long, got worried we might not meet the towns obvious high standards.
Once again the sun has been removed from my skies. In fact the only yellow thing I've seen today was a Burdens wagon passing the bedroom window delivering to the Tulloch site. On that note I think that's enough waffle from me have a good one folks...

On high standard waffle? Nov. 17.

Morning folks, it's a fine looking day here on Uibhist a Tuath, but according to herself it's ferk'n cold. I haven't actually been outside so I can't, in all honesty, verify the statement. I could say it looks cold primarily because it doesn't look warm and the local sheep are all wearing Arran jumpers. But you couldn't actually base any outing on my interpretation of the current temperature. You could dress the kids up in the finest long woolly scarves, balaclavas and mittens. Then send them out to play. Only to have them come in again, five minutes later, complaining of being roasting. Then you'd be inclined to blame me for your having roasting kids. But! You have to remember I only said it looks cold, not that it was cold. So your throwing the kids out wrapped up like eskimos would have been based on erroneous information. Not only that, you knew it was erroneous (nice word for a Sunday) so it turns out you would have only yourself to blame for sending the kids out, with only their little noses sticking out through holes in their balaclavas, based on dodgy information from an auld eejit who hadn't actually been outside. So wasn't qualified to say. Now that folks, is waffle of the highest standard. Happy Sunday y'all...

Portmahomack, Easter Ross

On knowing where you are. Oct. 18

Afternoon all. Here's hoping you're all here, there, or elsewhere and happy to be so. But always remember elsewhere is not the place to be if everybody's here or there. By the same token being here or there when everyone else is elsewhere isn't good either. Obviously you could be here or there, but once again if you're here and everybody else is there or elsewhere. Being here is definitely not the place to be. The same goes for being there when all your friends are here or elsewhere. Should you want to be alone. you can do that here, there, or elsewhere too. But always make sure nobody else is here if you want to be here, there if you want to be there, or elsewhere should you wish to be elsewhere. So have a very good afternoon and here's hoping you know where you are now...

On sad days. Oct. 17.

Morning folks it appears the weekend is upon us once again and the sun is shining, upon the Muir at least. Didn't care much for todays celebratory events. It is Be Bald and Free Day, but I figured the follicly challenged get enough stick without me adding my tuppence worth. It's also Ride Your Motorcycle Day, but that just makes me sad, because I can't do that anymore. Aah them wer't days. Sun shining, me on my ZZR 1100 giving it big licks, lass on the back. flies between the teeth, Audi and BMW drivers thinking they're the fastest thing since Jackie Stewart and me having to show them they're not, suicidal pheasants, ferkin' wasp down the neck of my leathers, pi**ing rain, soaking wet, visor steaming up, buses and taxis trying to put you on your erse. Aaah good times?