…passing by

Just a quick blog, in between getting home from Skye and leaving at stupid o’clock tomorrow morning for two days’ work in Edinburgh and Dundee.

Photos from the weekend here, incidentally.

Then on Friday I am in Aberdeen for work, and the next day I head away overnight to see more relatives.

Temptingly, I discovered the other day that Ulrich Schnauss is supporting Maps at King Tut’s in Glasgow on Friday and I would love to go. I am a huge fan of Ulrich Schnauss, as I may have blogged once or twice before, and I know he rarely plays in Scotland. I know little of Maps, but Justin heartily recommended them to me a while back, and I like what I am hearing on their MySpace page as I write this.

However, Justin can’t make it as he is busy moving house, and it would be a tight overnight trip and an early morning back on Saturday. So I suppose the sensible thing to do in amongst all my travels this week would be to just stay at home. And in any case, it’s never fun going to gigs by yourself.

Unless… anyone cares to join me?

Zipping about

I learned this evening about this exciting adventure being undertaken by friends of friends.

Cape Wrath to Cape Hope, overland. Wow. Sounds like an amazing trip, and part of me wishes I was doing something like that.

But part of me is also rather glad it’s them doing it and not me.

That’s probably because I am feeling the effects of not having been in one place for more than five minutes these past few weeks – I’m tired, grumpy and suffering from a bad cold. And this coming weekend is the third out of five in a row that I am away: tomorrow I head to Skye for a few days to visit family.

The day after I return, I am off to Edinburgh at the crack of dawn for work, and this past week has seen me in Lewis, Skye and of course Cornwall. Not that I mind – a job that involves travel around the north of Scotland and beyond is fantastic. And in any case, four of the five weekends away are for pleasure, so I suppose I’ve brought my bad cold on myself.

But a more worrying symptom of travelling about the place such a lot for work and fun is that I do get a bit jaded about it all sometimes, especially big adventures like the mullet thing.

Talking of which, the big mullet news right now is that I am off to New Zealand in January, to bag the four mullets that can be found in the land of rugby, sheep and people who can’t pronounce their vowels properly. Just last night I was clarifying the locations on a map, and hopefully will be booking my flights in the next week or so. I’ll be spending about three weeks out there, with new year in Brisbane en route.

While I am happy on one level to be going – there are a few friends to look up and New Zealand has been pretty much at the top of my travel wish list for many years – I am also struggling to get truly excited. I spend so much time on trains, planes and buses that right now I’d be quite tempted by the prospect of spending three weeks just sleeping.

However, I am sure my opinion will change very soon as I book the flights and start planning.

And once November comes and I get a couple of quiet weekends at home under my belt, I am sure I’ll be bored again…

Facebook: the first day

Well, after barely twenty-four hours on Facebook, I have acquired over 75 friends, and discovered the existence of a “Where is Simon?” group.

Somewhat creepily, it has thirty-seven members.  Well, thirty-eight now I’ve joined.

Facebook on trial

Thanks to everyone who commented about Facebook on my recent post.

I’ve been thinking about it all quite a bit, having more conversations with Facebook users (Faceheads?), and even getting a few “guided tours” of peoples’ Facebook pages to see how it all works.

And the more I hear about it, the more I am intrigued. While I still think it has the great potential to be a waste of time, I’ve found many arguments very persuasive. As Kieran implies, it’s a great way to see who knows who, and how people know each other – and as I have blogged before, I am fascinated by “small world” moments and the theory of “six degrees of separation” and Facebook appears to be a great playground for exploring it.

I certainly maintain significant cynicism about it, and still think it’s a great way to stalk someone, even with good privacy settings, but perhaps it’s time I stopped criticising from the sidelines. Rob persuasively argues that I should at least try it before condemning it.

And as the saying goes, “try everything once, except incest and Morris dancing.” *

Therefore I am going to give Facebook a try until perhaps the end of the year, and will no doubt blog about my experiences of it here.

So here goes. Who wants to be my friend?

* Who exactly said this? Google is somewhat ambiguous.

Cornwall

It was a nice weekend in Cornwall.

From what I saw, it was an intriguing mix of the best bits of English seasideness (quaint old towns, pleasant countryside, good beer, clean beaches), the Celtic tinge of Cornish language, culture and history, and a positively Mediterranean climate, and well worth another visit.

Only a few of my photos were any good, so here’s some of them.

All sorts of everything

I had a nice trip to Skye today.  No photos I’m afraid.

And what’s even worse news, is that tonight is the last night that Anita Anand is on the late slot on Five Live.  I am listening now as I write this.

The 10pm til 1am slot is when I am most likely to listen to the station, and is normally an off-beat look at the day’s events with some fantastic topics of conversation and great listener contributions.  Anita Anand – and her predecessor in the slot, Matthew Bannister – are probably two of the most wonderfully funny people on the radio, and would definitely be on the guest list for my ideal dinner party.

End of an era etc.

Another thing on my mind of late has been football.  Rangers, Celtic and even Aberdeen have had good results in Europe this week, all on the back of Scotland’s magnificent performances at international level in the Euro 2008 qualifiers.  Thank goodness Scottish football has a bit of confidence and positivity about it these days.  Possibly connected to the fact we now have an SNP government?

All of that, however, pails into insignificance at the frankly bizarre news that Dick Campbell has been sacked as manager of the mighty Ross County for not playing the right style of football – despite the fact he’s taken them to the top of division 2 as he was employed to do.  Strange and disappointing goings-on.

Tomorrow, I fly to Gatwick and then drive to Cornwall.  It’s Keri’s stag do, and a posse from Scotland, including Donald, are going down.  Never been to Cornwall, so it should be fun.

Just as long as the hire car from Gatwick isn’t an automatic.  When I got into my hire car this morning before heading to Skye, I had to phone up my office to get a telephone tutorial on how to drive automatics.

And finally, I’ve been reading everyone’s comments on the great Facebook debate with much interest.  I’ll be reporting back my conclusions soon.

Phew.  That was all a bit Justinesque, and probably more random topics than I’ve ever crammed into a single blog post.

Around the edges

Today I was in Orkney for work. Tomorrow I am in Skye.

Then to continue the theme of visiting places at the edge of Britain, I head to London on Friday.

Well, actually Cornwall for the weekend, but I fly into London. More on that adventure later.

In the meantime, here’s some photos from Orkney. It was nice to be back there for the first time in a couple of years.  I’d go into more detail but frankly it’s been a long day, I’m tired and have a busy day tomorrow.

More soon.