Thursday 29 September, 2005

Things I've seen over the last few days:

1. a huge banner stretched across Academy Street advertising a "Recruitment and Career's Fair". Grrr. Normally I am a liberal, but when it comes to apostrophe crimes, I'm an evil, vicious, twisted Nazi.
2. the arse-end of numerous lorries and caravans while driving up to Thurso for work on a beautiful sunny morning, along the scenic but windy and twisty A9.
3. the stark, dramatic beauty of the windfarm just south of Thurso. How anyone can call these surreal yet majestic towers of motion a blight on the highlands' scenery is beyond me. I must remember to take photos next time I go up.
4. a rainbow over Ben Wyvis, as seen from the Friar's bridge in the centre of Inverness today. Not just any old rainbow, but a funny sort of blurry, soft-focus one hanging, curtain-like, from a cloud a little above the horizon… almost like it was raining paint.
5. lots of tourists learning how to ceilidh dance in Blackfriars, a pub in town where our prayer group decamped to after meeting last night.
6. the nights fair drawing in.

Other than that, it's busy at work, and that's my news for now.

Oh no, one last thing. The other day I was introduced to someone, and due to some confusion they asked if I was from Lewis. "No," I replied. "If I was from Lewis, I'd still be there."

I don't often say really funny things, so felt I would proudly share that one with you. I laughed, at least.

Monday 26 September, 2005

I’ve just got back from watching Wolf Creek, an Australian film, at the cinema. I’m still a bit shaken.

It’s about three backpackers who head off into a remote part of the Australian outback, and I guess you could slot it on the same shelf as The Blair Witch Project or Open Water – chilling and disturbing in a subtle, unassuming way.

Without giving away much of what happens, it’s a very typically Australian film, with rich colours, wide open shots, and great scenery. It moves at a pace which is slow and careful without dragging, and the dialogue, camera work and soundtrack is almost subliminal. However, it’s not exactly a film you’ll see being used by the Australian tourist authorities.

So part of me is glad my Australian trip this year was before, not after, watching this film; and yet another part of me is desperate to pack up and jet off to the land of vast, vast expanses and beauty. The whole idea that a country can be so big that older settlements might have existed, abandoned, for decades without anyone knowing, is so strange. Coming from Scotland, even though it is claimed to be home to one of Europe’s last wildernesses, the idea of a country that can be that unquantifiably huge is just… amazing.

And no, the wilderness I mean is the Highlands, not Dundee on a Saturday night.

Tuesday 20 September, 2005

This being what I call the "silly season" at work, I have been doing a fair bit of travelling around. As you might have seen from the update on my pictures section, I've been in Kirkwall and Aberdeen. Both lovely places, with great vibes and fresh sea air. I keep telling myself I am going to do a holiday in Orkney one day, and see more than just Kirkwall town centre, the college and the airport.

Although Kirkwall itself is lovely, with stunning medieval and Victorian architecture and a breathtaking 12th century cathedral, you cannot go anywhere in the rest of Orkney without tripping over some famous 10,000 year-old archaeological remain. However, I've not found anything like a Mulletsgard, Mulletsay or Mullet Voe there yet, so I guess it will have to wait. Until about 2010 at this rate.

Thursday is Stornoway, on the Isle of Lewis, which reminds me of a book sitting on my "to read" pile – The Stornoway Way by Kevin MacNeil. I met Kevin first at the writing weekend I won a place on when I entered the whole mullet malarky into Ideas Factory's Write Away travel-writing competition (on which Kevin was a judge/tutor), and he gave me some good advice and encouragement. Then I randomly bumped into him in Inverness this weekend past, and he told me he's doing a reading tour around the west coast, with a reading in Inverness later this year. I will have to make sure I make it to that.

But closer to the present, I really should stop faffing online and tidy the flat. I have a couple of freeloaders coming to stay tomorrow, so must get things straightened for their arrival. They're Belgians, so I expect they'll be up for a pint or two…

Sunday 18 September, 2005

I've just read an article on BBC news online about a study which claims that Scotland is the most violent country in the developed world. First top of the heart disease league table, and now this… fa's like us, eh?

Tuesday 13 September, 2005

I've just been browsing the league tables in the SPL and first division, and reminding myself that I really must get round to a Ross County match at some point this season. They're my adopted team since I moved to Inverness, as Dingwall is where I was born and is only 20 minutes away. Plus, I have lots of friends who are from there, and they'd never have forgiven me if I had become an Caley Thistle supporter. Moving close to Dingwall was a good excuse to stop supporting Rangers, my old team, but I've only made it to a couple of County matches or so a season.

Anyway, things are looking good, because County are at the top of the first division right now, and it looks like they might actually start breaking out of their perpetual mediocrity. Also, the SPL is dead interesting – thanks to the Romanov revolution, Hearts are clear at the top, the first team to give the Old Firm a run for their money in years. Rangers and Celtic dropping points is actually making football interesting in Scotland for once. I don't care what Old Firm fans think, the competition is a breath of fresh air. I'm not particularly anti-Old Firm (apart from the fact that many of their fans are vicious, sectarian excusers for terrorism) but it would be great to see Hearts keeping up their momentum and making Scottish football interesting all year round. I am not a massively avid football fan, but what Hearts are doing is really making me take interest – I wonder how much this is true for passive fans across the country.

It used to be the case that by Christmas all Scottish teams would be knocked out Europe and the Old Firm would be several lengths ahead of the rest of the pack in the SPL. But this season, it really looks like football will be interesting again.

Monday 12 September, 2005

Two weekends ago was – for once – a quiet one spent at home in Inverness, while this weekend past was spent in Aberdeen catching up on all my old university friends and getting my fix of Thain's pie shop. Coincidentally, when I was there, each city was holding Doors Open Day – an annual event whereby places such as public institutions, famous buildings, or important organisations (though not pie shops) fling open their doors for a day and let people come in and find out what they are like inside.

In Inverness I enjoyed a good wander around the Town House. Just like it is impossible to talk here about the town of Nairn without someone chipping in that it is the fastest town in Scotland (just say it like a car speeding past), it is similarly impossible to mention the historic home of Highland Council (and Inverness-shire County Council before it) without being told that it is the only place outside Downing Street to have hosted a meeting of the British Cabinet. It was in the early 1920s, I think, when some sort of outbreak of trouble in Ireland (some things never change) kicked off in the middle of Prime Minister David Lloyd-George's shooting holiday on his highland estate. Given that this was the pre-Easyjet era, DLG decided against trekking back to London for an emergency Cabinet meeting, and instead summoned his colleagues to the highlands.

A boring story, frankly, but when you're a citizen of Inverness you're grateful for any claims to fame. Such as the fact that the Proclaimers were discovered in Inverness, in a fantastic wee place called the Market Bar – a pub described on one website I found as "better than going to the bingo on the mushrooms". But I digress. The Town House was a very interesting place to visit, full of all the parochial paraphernalia you expect from such a place, including grand staircases, gifts from twin towns, and large portraits of old men with beards.

In Aberdeen, I went round St Nicholas Kirk – a lovely old church right in the heart of the city centre, whose graveyard is a popular place to sit in the sun at lunchtimes. The church is a fascinating place, with lots of little nooks and crannies and different halls and places of worship that look like they've been added on over time. It was built hunners of years ago and the discovery of various archaeological stuff under the floorboards has rendered half of the building unusable. I climbed up to the very, very, very top of the tower, up steps, staircases and eventually ladders which got narrower and narrower as I went, with floors that alarmingly got shakier and shakier too. The view was stunning from the top but I didn't hang around to capture the view long as I suffer terribly from vertigo and I'd forgotten my camera.

So that was Doors Open Day. I wonder if they have a similar event on the east shore of Loch Ness called Dores Open Day.