Hello from Weegieland

If it’s Sunday, it must be Glasgow.  Thankfully, it’s bright and sunny, and free of the humidity or rain that the city often throws up.

I’m sitting in Offshore, a nice wee cafe in the west end that is not as busy as it can be.  I’d be in iCafe just along the road (on the rare occasions I frequent such places here) but it’s seemingly closed due to fire damage.

I arrived earlier on today and am spending an hour or so here before St Silas’s evening service doing some writing and just enjoying chilling out.

Dentist’s tomorrow and then home by the evening.  Thereafter, there’ll be no travels – work or pleasure – for the best part of a fortnight.

Hurrah.

The rest of the Shetland photos

I’ve been enjoying a quiet Saturday so far, so have been pressing on with uploading photos from the rest of the Shetland trip.

It was so nice, after so many visits of rarely seeing more than the college, the airport and Lerwick town centre, to be able to get to pretty much most bits of the mainland and to a number of the smaller isles.

Shetland is such a diverse, beautiful and surprisingly large place.  With the weather as amazing as it was, and company in the form of my fiancee Nicole, it will definitely rank as one of the best holidays I’ve had.

I can’t be bothered doing much of a blow-by-blow account of the rest of the trip, but on many of the photos I have uploaded I’ve put a bit more background information and provided links where I can.  So you’re best just browsing today’s uploads, or the trip’s set as a whole.

Some highlights, however, include beautiful beaches such as Bannamin or St Ninian’s, the northernmost island of Unst, and the utterly charming and compelling Fetlar.

Shetland – like much of the rest of Scotland, I suppose – can always be a bit of a lottery in terms of transport and sightseeing due to the unpredictable weather, and the enjoyment of this trip was significantly boosted by what people told us had been the best sunshine in years.

However, seeing as it’s an amazing place in all weathers, it’s a trip worth taking and I can’t wait to go back some time – to see some place again, and perhaps make it to other parts I didn’t make it to this time…

Karma

Yesterday was a long day in Dundee.

The length of the day was not helped by the fact that my train from Inverness to Perth was delayed significantly, firstly before departure due to a late arrival, and secondly at Kingussie due to points failure.  Being couped up longer than necessary on such a hot day didn’t help the bout of hayfever I’ve been suffering, and so I spent most of the journey sneezing and blowing my nose.  As did many other people – perhaps the rumours of a swine flu increase are true…

Anyway, while I was standing in the vestibule of the carriage just as we approached Perth, where I would be changing for Dundee, I noticed a guy near me in the vestibule moving his bags to the door in the next carriage and repeatedly shouting “for f**k’s sake”.  He was exhibiting some rather odd behaviour that would suggest to a layman like me that he had some serious mental health difficulties.

It turned out it was my sneezing he was moving from – he said something about germs and called me a “filthy c**t”.  Much as my sneezing was probably unpleasant, his confrontational tone and language was uncalled for, and I told him so.  “F**k off”, came the response. Clearly he has issues with basic social situations – so quite what someone like that is doing being allowed to travel alone on trains, I’ve no idea.

When we arrived, the change in Perth was a bit of a hairy one – due to the delays, I’d already missed one connection and simply couldn’t afford to miss the second Dundee train, otherwise I would miss my meeting.  I had about a minute to get from platform 4 to platform 2, and after a mad sprint I made it in the nick of time.

As I sat down in my seat, the doors closed and the train pulled slowly away, guess who came running down the steps just a few seconds too late?  Yep, got it in one: the sweary mentalist himself.

I promise I tried not to smirk to myself, but I am afraid I failed.

As I believe Confucius put it: “karma’s a bitch, huh?”

Mullets in the post, and more from Shetland

Alright, own up – who sent me a copy of “Fishing – The Mythical Mullet With Mike Ladle And Steve Pitts“?

It arrived in the post while I was away, with no note in the envelope and nothing on the outside other than a London postmark and handwriting I don’t recognise.  Whoever it is, though, knows my full address.

It’s not the first time I’ve been sent unsolicited mullet paraphernalia.  In the past, I’ve been the recipient of a mullet t-shirt and no less than three sets of “Mullet Power” top trumps.

More than being an irritation, it’s more fundamentally a waste as it all ends up getting chucked out anyway – and I don’t think that’s ungrateful, because there’s nothing wrong with not wanting something you never asked for in the first place.

I don’t know why people send such stuff to me.  My mission is, after all, to visit every place in the world with the word “mullet” in its name.  Not collect every form of mullet tat available.

That would be just silly now, wouldn’t it?

In other news, I uploaded another batch of photos from Shetland today – these ones from around Lerwick.

One of my favourite towns at the best of times, Lerwick was on sparkling form when we were there.  It basked in gorgeous, cloudless sunshine, Shetland flags flying from poles and buildings across town and beyond, and locals and tourists alike making the most of the fun laid on by the Flavour of Shetland festival on the Victoria Pier.

Forming part of the midsummer Johnsmas Foy, the festival brought the centre of town to life throughout the day and into the evening (I’d say night, but that far north, night barely arrives in midsummer).

The highlight of the festival for me was sampling some of the wonderful beers from the Valhalla Brewery, the northerly brewery in Britain. It’s based in Unst, Shetland’s (and Scotland’s, and Britain’s) most northerly inhabited island

More on Unst later, though, when I get round to those photos.

Waiting

Greetings from near Pitlochry where I am trying out the WordPress application on my iPhone en route back from Edinburgh.

I feel should be doing something to celebrate this advancement in blogging technology, but there’s not a lot you can do on a hot, packed train with a dog sitting on your feet and a screaming kid opposite.

Ah well, not long until I get home and meet Niall, who is back from his rig and passing through Inverness for the night.

To pass the time before I get back to some work, here’s a wee anecdote I copied and pasted earlier.

While delayed for a couple of hours before going to Shetland, Nicole and I were sitting in a cafe at Aberdeen airport when we noticed a bit of a ruckus going on near us. A group of young guys were being accosted by various passengers and even airport staff who were keen to get autographs and photos.

Their attire, demeanour and the way they’d spontaneously start shaking their limbs to some silent rhythm, as if they were epileptics on dope, suggested to me they were dancers or rap artists of some sort. With their unnecessarily dark sunglasses, dreadlocks and self-confident swaggers, I wondered if it was perhaps even a support group for blind Rastafarians on the hip replacement waiting list.

Nicole and I had no idea what the fuss was about until they were all shepherded away by some officials, and as they moved past us I noticed they had badges on them which said “Britain’s Got Talent on Tour”.

Even though neither of us have a TV we are sadly not impervious to the dirge that is Britain’s Got Talent, and I vaguely recall that a Gordon Brown lookalike lost out in the final to a spoilt brat and a gang of street dancers.

This must have been them, I figured. What were they called? Diversity, or So Solid Juniors, or ^R-Selvz or something like that.

Good on them, though, and I hope their fifteen minutes are fun while they last until they break up and enter a lives of drugs and crime. Or, more likely, insurance or accountancy.

Needless to say, they didn’t recognise me.

Not that they let on, anyway.

…and off again

On Monday morning next week, I have a dentist’s appointment.

In Glasgow.

It’s a source of minor irritation (and a reflection of Weegieland’s poor health) that I could easily find an NHS dentist when I moved there, but have never managed to do so up here.  Being away from internet access the last few days has meant I’ve missed out on the cheap train tickets too, and I suppose I am paying a lot more to get to my appointment than I would pay in fees if I went private here in Inverness.

Am I cutting off my nose to spite my face by refusing to go private?  The principled political animal in me says no, and it will be nice to be able to see friends and visit St Silas on the Sunday night.  But it is a long way to go just to get poked in the mouth and no doubt it is a dilemma I will return to in the future.  Maybe you have views on this which I can chew over (couldn’t resist the pun!).

In other news, I’ve uploaded the first batch of photos from the Shetland trip.  They’re mostly of Sumburgh Head, where Nicole and I visited as soon as we’d landed at the airport which is, like Sumburgh Head itself, right at the southern tip of Shetland’s mainland.

It’s a major bird-spotting location, and as we wandered through the slightly eerie abandoned lighthouse and went puffin-spotting, we did so alongside some hardcore birders who had massive cameras and very birdwatcher woolly hats on.

I know they’re probably birder chic, but the hats were quite unnecessary – the weather was stunning, a theme which would dominate the rest of the trip.

I’ll post more photos and an accompanying blurb later on in the week.  For now, I need to get to bed – back to work tomorrow, and a long day trip to Edinburgh.

I’m back

I got back from Shetland earlier this afternoon, after six absolutely roasting hot days.  The weather was fantastic, the food and beer wonderful, and we had a great time exploring, beach-combing, island-hopping, catching up with friends and randomly bumping into others.

While away, though, my old phone contract expired and my new one (the iPhone) started, but it’s only now that I have been able to get my iPhone online and properly activated, meaning I was out of contact for a few days.

Lots more about Shetland to follow…

Two more bloody mullets

I know have two more mullets to add to the list.

An American named Jonathan emailed me a few weeks ago saying he lives on Mullet Creek, in the Indian River Lagoon in east central Florida.  In trying to track it down on Google Maps, I inadvertently discovered another Mullet Creek in Florida, this time on the site of what seems to be a massive military airbase in Okaloosa County in far north-western Florida.

That takes the number of Floridan mullets to five, and if you check my mullet map you’ll see I’ve added the two new ones here and here.  It also brings back an equillibrium – fourteen down and fourteen to go, so once more I am precisely halfway through.

Although I could have done without the new additions, and Jonathan has yet to get back to be me with more information about the Indian River Lagoon mullet, I’m glad the two I have uncovered are not too far from other ones and therefore don’t seem to present any major new logistical difficulties or trips to entirely different corners of the world.

Of course, I am no further to figuring out where, how and when the next leg of the mission might manifest itself.  There has, however, has been an interesting development recently regarding the mission, but I’ll keep that under my hat for another few weeks and will blog all about it as soon as I can.

Finally, while I’ve been able to update my map, I’ve very frustratingly failed to update the mullet page of my website.  My problems with iWeb and ClassicFTP that I blogged about some time back are continuing to dog me, and to be honest I don’t think I will stick with them for long.  I’m trying to find out about website hosting with WordPress (on which this blog resides) but am struggling to make sense of their hosting and design instruction pages.

Anyone who knows how my website would work on WordPress is more than welcome to offer some wise words of wisdom.

Enough of the mullets for now – I have an early start tomorrow as I’m working in Edinburgh, and then on Wednesday I’m off to Shetland for work, and Nicole is coming with me to make a nice long weekend of it.

I’ll take some photos, no doubt…

Things I have and haven’t done

One thing I have done this weekend is get my iPhone. It’s really quite a wonderful piece of kit – phone, iPod, camera, video recorder, web browser and loads more all in one wee handheld thingamyjig.  Excellent.

One thing I haven’t done this weekend, despite the moderate appeal of seeing Delirious? before they quit, is go to the big evangelism event that’s been going on in Inverness this weekend, egotistically called the Luis Palau festival.  I am slightly alarmed at the hype that has accompanied this event in the past few months, as if one man can turn the world upside down and save the sinners all by himself, and as if Jesus himself isn’t actually the focus.  Moreover, are Inverness’s churches really that rubbish that we need some long-feted demi-god to come and rescue us?  And even if they are, is one man saying some stuff over one weekend the solution?

I’ll stop now before I go on another rant.  And anyway, it’s time to leave for church…

Cloudshine

I got back from a lovely weekend in Aberdeen yesterday, staying with Nicole in Swish Towers, helping Mark and Claire move, and enjoying the warm sunshine.

Well, I say “sunshine”: it wasn’t.  The sky was rarely blue, with a thick cloud cover basking Aberdeen in a light grey, dusty aura that perfectly suited the city and through which the sun failed to burn.  Yet, strangely, it didn’t rain a drop, remaining very bright and very warm.  So more cloudshine than sunshine, I suppose, if I can be excused for inventing a word.

Over the weekend I also saw Star Trek (very good but not quite excellent), got introduced to The Field (definitely excellent), took a couple of photos (less than excellent), and ate a lot of food (always excellent).

Today, I was working in Perth, but – the joys of long, summer days – got back early enough to make the most of the roasting hot late afternoon and take an amble through the Ness Islands (photos here).

A few other random things to draw your attention to before I go:

• a fascinating article on BBC News about the logistical mountain that is the creation of English football fixture schedules
• one of the most outstanding pictures I’ve seen of Aberdeen on Flickr
• I am now in possession of my PAC number, and it’s four days and counting until I get an iPhone
• I am in Aberdeen the next couple of days, and need to be up before 6.30am tomorrow for the second morning in a row.  I expect your sympathy
• This book is very good.  I finished it the other week and frankly am unlikely to get round to a proper review (but the author’s previous book is outstanding and also well worth reading)