…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 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)

Adventures

After enjoying a relatively sedate week off at home, there is no rest for the sanctimonious because more travels loom on the horizon.

I was in sunny Dundee yesterday, and am spending this coming weekend in Aberdeen.  Next week, I am working in Perth and Aberdeen, followed by my first weekend at home in Inverness for ages.

The following week sees two days’ work in Shetland, which I am turning into a long weekend for which Nicole will be joining me.  I am really looking forward to the chance to see much more than what I squeeze into my work trips normally.  It will be the height of the summer, so plenty daylight to get out and do stuff, take photos and go exploring.

Meanwhile, the great Explosions in the Sky dilemma has been resolved – I have plumped for the Sheffield gig.  September should be quite a cultured month, then, what with Explosions in the Sky, Coldplay and Dave Gorman.  Next  thing you know, I’ll be listening to Picasso and quoting Beethoven.  Or something.

Phone stuff

My phone is working again, thankfully.  I have, however, lost various recent numbers from it, for reasons I can’t be bothered explaining – so if you gave me your mobile number in the last year or two, perhaps you’d be so good as to text me, telling me who you are.

Unless you’d be glad for the chance to be shot of me, of course.

My new temporary phone will only be with me a matter of weeks, however, because the new iPhone is coming – and seeing as how my contract is up, it’s a perfect time to defect.

In other news, I had a nice weekend in Ballater, rounding off an interesting and refreshing week off.  I even spent a morning in the town of my birth, Dingwall, for reasons I’ll divulge in the next few weeks.

Here’s a couple of photos I’ve taken over the past few days.  I took plenty more but few were any good.

Tomorrow, work sees me heading off to Dundee.  Wave if you see me.

Broken mobile

Annoyingly, the screen on my mobile broke earlier today.

The phone still works, I just can’t see what I am doing and therefore am unable to make calls from my address book or send or receive texts.  I can, however, receive calls, check voicemail and dial numbers (hoping I press the right buttons in doing so).

So if you don’t get a reply to any text you send me, that’s why.

Never fear, though – thanks to a cheap second-hand handset, I’ll be up and running again on Monday, albeit without some numbers stored only on my old handset.  More on which later.

Meanwhile, I am off to Nicole’s for the weekend.  Wave if you see me.

European elections

The UK goes to the polls tomorrow – much of England for council elections, and all of us for the European Parliament elections, with much of the rest of the European Union to follow on Sunday.

It should prove to be an exciting and potentially seismic day.  The Labour government in Westminster seems to be lurching from crisis to crisis, with Gordon Brown seeming so out of control of events that I am almost tempted to feel sorry for him.  Almost, until I remind myself of his record since becoming Prime Minister and before that as Tony Blair’s Chancellor.

Labour are predicted by some to come fourth – can you believe that? – after the Tories, LibDems and UKIP, with minor parties predicted to make gains too.  While I am all for a diversity of political views among our elected representatives, the flip side of the current discontent is that the far-right BNP are expected to make another breakthrough.  Although given that turnout is forecast to be very low, I believe that any BNP success will be as much down to those who stay at home on polling day as those who vote for them.  To paraphrase the famous saying, all that requires for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.

In terms of the Scottish dimension to the election, it’s not going to be a remarkable result, I don’t think – the six seats will almost certainly be split two each for Labour and the SNP, and one each for the Tories and LibDems, with the only doubt being over whether Labour keep their second seat.

Oh, and incidentally, Scotland’s total of six seats in the European Parliament (with a population of 5 million people) compares pathetically with shares of other similarly-sized countries: Finland (5.3m), Denmark (5.5m) and Slovakia (5.3m) have 13; and Ireland (4.4m) and Lithuania (3.3m) have 12.  Cyprus (0.8m), Estonia (1.3m) and Luxembourg (0.5m), meanwhile, boast the same number of seats as Scotland.

The difference?  Unlike Scotland, those countries are independent, of course.  No prizes for guessing where my vote will be going tomorrow.

In other news, it’s more or less the middle of my week off, and yesterday’s glorious sunshine has been replaced by grey skies again, which has been a good incentive to stay inside and write.  Tonight, I am off to the cinema for the first time in ages – to see the latest installment in the Terminator series, Terminator: Salvation.  Should be good.

The end of season 5

Last weekend I reached the end of season 5 of Lost, and what a finale.

The season has been wonderful, and very fast-paced.  The action has helped answer a lot of questions and bring us a lot closer to the secrets of the island, and although the ending looks like it could resolve things, there’s a whole season still to come, and so presumably a few more twists and turns are yet to straighten themselves.

It’s been difficult keeping up with the series, and because I get the episodes whenever Justin is able to post them to me, I haven’t always been able to hop on to the invaluable Lostpedia without it being spoiler-filled by the next episodes.  So I’ve been spending the last week catching up with it, reminding myself of facts, reading back stories, and brushing up on the theories behind what might be happening.

Has the nuclear detonation undone the crash?  Would that be a rubbish anti-climax, or the most “happily-ever-after” we could hope for?  And although we know something of what Jacob’s done, who precisely is he?  And what told us that his nemesis took on the form of Locke?  I completely didn’t get that bit.

Ah well, only eight months or so until season 6 begins.

In other news, I was in Ballater this weekend, and took a few photos.

I am also now enjoying the start of my week off, and aiming to get lots of writing done… just as the sun comes out…