The plans for Australia are coming along well. Through Global Freeloaders I have found myself some accommodation with some lovely people, plus several offers of beer, barbecues, and photos of assymetrical mullets from the other good freeloading folk of Sydney. It's made me really look forward to visiting the place.
Talking of Australia, I was delighted to hear recently that Peter Moore, the Australian travel writer, is going to be visiting the Ottakar's store in Inverness. I do urge anyone in the Inverness area to go see him on the 20th of June. He's a very funny and wryly observant writer. I was less delighted to discover that he is doing so just after my departure down under.
There is so much to do before leaving for the land of Steve Irvine and Mel Gibson, and I have many weekends taken up between now and then, unfortunately. This one coming should be good fun, though – I am off to Glasgow for a friend's birthday. It's a black tie ceilidh in the Glasgow University Union, a magnificent old building near the heart of the university. Being an Aberdeen University graduate, I should slag the place rotten, but Glasgow University's old campus, bits of it over 500 years old, is absolutely beautiful, and (like Aberdeen) a great testament to Scotland's ancient university tradition.
Aberdeen's still better though.
I'm looking forward to the ceilidh. My friend, whose birthday it is, is a joinee and various members of the cult are coming north from as far away as London. It's going to be a great laugh – not only to witness the whole "joinees en masse, meet my normal friends" thing (which is normally quite overwhelming, mostly for the normal friends), but also to see all the English people attempt to ceilidh dance. Always entertainment.
