Impromptu walking

The walking group I go away with got caught out by the first of the snow this year. And it was snow of a level that we don't normally see in late November. What was supposed to be a trip to the Trossachs (I've not done Ben Venue in ages) had to be hastily rearranged. We are equal to this challenge though, and the coach took us to Hillend, from where we walked along the end of the Pentlands. Snow was still falling heavily, and our walk parallel to the Edinburgh bypass felt more like the Cairngorms. Somebody knew a way onto the Water of Leith at Colinton, so we continued into town. I've done most of this before, but it looked totally different in the snow. And I've not been since Anthony Gormley's sculptures were put in.

They look cool in the snow. I'm sure the intention was that the pieces would undergo various alterations. And they have inspired a number of other more jokey tributes.

Bird watching again

I saw what I'm pretty sure was a waxwing today from the office window. It was foraging in an oak tree just opposite me. Assuming I'm right, the RSPB site says it's a fairly rare sighting. The name totally foxed me until I found out that it refers to the red patches on the wing that look like sealing wax.

Coffee and cardamon

I seem to have got very domesticated recently. Last night I was baking a cake that required ground cardamon, and the best way I could find of doing this was to use my wee coffee grinder. The cake turned out nice (thanks to Dan Lepard) and the coffee that I ground and drank afterwards tasted fantastic.

It's so hard to be original though. It turns out I have stumbled across a version of Arabic gahwa.

Browsers

I heard today at work that our IT department is continuing their relentless drive into the future by rolling out ....... IE 7! A quick surf reveals that this is exactly 4 years on from its release. Amazingly enough, we have been on IE 6 up to now. A lot of Web sites no longer support this, either putting up a message to this effect, or just giving you a crap version in Latin.

I wonder if they will ever replace our back-to-the-80s email system?

Another one down

I was telling my work colleagues today about my mouse problem and they (both women) were rather grossed out (particularly about the blood-on-the-floor detail). On examining a trap tonight I found I had another kill. This one had also bled on the floor. Are my traps particularly gruesome?

Must stop blogging about this, you'll think I'm obsessed with killing small animals.

All day permanent red

I can provide an update to my mouse problem. I bought a couple of traps and, on the advice of various people, baited them with Bounty bar. In time, the bait fell off and then disappeared. I re-baited and waited. A couple of nights ago, I heard a click and some scuffling. I was sleepy and forgot about it until this morning, when under the sprung trap I discovered a dead mouse stuck to the floor with dried blood.

Bounty is a fatal taste in this house, my little friend.

Death Ray

I was pleased today to see my childhood vision of the future coming one step closer today. A laser system for shooting down aircraft has been demonstrated. A lot of my reading as a teenager was of books where people were torn apart by ravening death rays, so this is way overdue. Death rays existed before the laser, of course (the Martians in War of the Worlds had them), but that invention did give a focus to hopes of futuristic death. A pity then that the main uses of the laser turned out to be stuff like survey equipment and playing CDs.

I notice that the artist's representation can't resist the cliche of a brightly coloured beam linking the laser to its target. To be fair though, the conscientious BBC journalist did note that this is rubbish.

I bet the range is, and will remain, rather short. You just can't get round that inverse square law.

Coastal walk

Thought I'd post-blog this.

Last month, I went on a nice (though damp) coastal walk from Cockburnspath to Dunbar.

The main attraction near the start was Dunglass Collegiate church, looking enigmatic in the warm July drizzle. To us now, it seems an odd use of land and resources. Is praying for your soul worth that much? The middle ages thought so.

Later, we passed Torness power station. This is a lot more interesting than it sounds, as its builders have fallen over themselves in an effort to be cuddly and inoffensive and give you information boards to look at. The sea defenses use piles of specially cast "knucklebones", which give the whole thing a futuristic air. I could see it as part of an episode of Blake's 7.

My companions didn't seem interested when I mentioned this. Different generation, I suppose.

Perhaps some future walker will find this piece of land use as inexplicable as a collegiate church.

Midsummer

In a rare burst of social life, I went to a party last night, and quite enjoyed it. I walked back through Marchmont and Grange at about 3am. It wasn't really dark, more a kind of blue dusk, with blackbirds tuning up in the gardens.

Today has been an exercise in staying one step ahead of dehydration. And I can't get rid of the smell of tobacco smoke.

Sighting

I saw my first iPad today, produced a little self-consciously by somebody on the 47 bus.

Timber

Like the middle-aged bloke I am, I enjoyed buying some wood (sorry, timber) this morning. There's a builder's merchant conveniently round the corner, so I bore my 4.2 metres of 33x69 mm dressed timber home by hand. It's hard to explain to a non-bloke why such a transaction is so satisfying. Despite never being a tradesman, early training with my dad means that I can just about hold my own in conversations about tools and timber sizes. I even sympathised with the salesman when he told me about his awkward previous customer.

Dirt under the nails again

I'd like to record my first tiny bit of gardening after about a six year gap. The tenement I stay in has a nicely-kept communal garden where I have negotiated planting rights. This has coincided with unseasonably warm weather. The heat made it feel like I was back in my garden in Ipswich in the warm muggy south.

Election night

First an update on my personal election postbag. More materials have been arriving, including various of those newsletters that pretend very unconvincingly to be newspapers, but of course just have stories about Party X and how great they are. Is anybody actually swayed by this kind of stuff? The ruse is so worn out that I doubt it. More convincingly, I received a letter with a handwritten address from the Lib Dems. The contents looked handwritten but was actually printed/photocopied (not quite sure). But anyway, somebody was trying hard, and some family member/intern probably got the job of writing out lots of addresses. Oh, and I just got an almost identical one from the Tories. Sorry guys, but saying "Me too" doesn't cut it.

I have a polling station across the road, but it's not my polling station. Some odd boundary-drawing means that I had to walk up to Sciennes and vote in the school there. As a kid in Glasgow my primary school was used for elections, so that an early memory was going to vote with mum and seeing familiar classrooms with the desks pushed back and plywood partitions in front of the sandbox. Today was much the same really. I lingered in the corridor for a moment to admire children's work based on Matisse's The Snail (erudite or what?).

If any readers aren't familiar with a British General Election, what happens is this. You enter a large room, usually a school classroom. It is almost empty. Sitting at various desks in it are a selection of pensioners and students earning beer money. They are always very polite. You read a list of streets to see which desk to go to, then hand over your polling card, have your name checked off a list by one of the polite people, and get a voting slip. You then retire into one of the plywood shacks and place an X in the position of your choice using a pencil on the end of a bit of string. It only remains to slide the folded paper in the slot of a black-painted metal box and you have voted. You may then optionally view children's art on your way out, nodding to the various political hangers-on who congregate round the entrance for some reason.

Other countries have vote rigging, violent demonstrations, and people being prevented from voting. Gives you a cosy feeling, doesn't it?

Unlike some, I will not be staying up for the first results, as it's pointless. I'll find out quick enough in the morning.

Nautical

I finally got to Trinity House in Leith on Saturday. It's the old story: if it's on your doorstep you don't make the effort. It's a lovely interior filled with maritime stuff, including harpoons, sextants, ship models and a totally mad painting of Vasco da Gama rounding the Cape of Good Hope.

You have to turn up at the right time though. On my first attempt I must have missed the slot. It was a nice day though, so I walked down to Ocean Terminal, where the tricolour was flying. The Latouche-Tréville of the French Navy was in, with a support ship whose number I didn't note.

Volcano news

I must admit that I feel a tiny tingle of, well, almost pleasure about the Icelandic volcano business. It demonstrates that we don't run the planet, we just live here. Although after the winter we've had we arguably don't need the demonstration.

It also exposes the odd biases of the media. You could summarise the news on this in very few words, but that doesn't stop them spending lots of time on the story as it's judged to be important. Well it is, but maybe you could report more about what's happening in Iceland, rather than get more reactions from stranded travelers. I mean, what do you think they're going to add?

Mull

I spent the Easter weekend in Mull, which is becoming one of my favourite areas of Scotland. My first visits were as a child in 1971 and 1972 (it was the only holiday location that we ever repeated). I can't honestly say that I remember anything about this, although family legend records that I wouldn't let go of my teddy on the ferry, and that only stale bread was available when we got to the island.

We apparently went to Duart castle on that visit, meeting the clan chief. It felt like time for a return visit. Duart has a fantastically romantic location, perhaps only equalled by Eilan Donan castle. And Easter Friday saw perfect weather, with a spectacular view over Loch Linnhe to the mountains of Lochaber.

Inside it was chilly as the immense walls don't warm up until later in the summer. Apparently it's then quite cosy until January. There's also a nice account inside of a Cromwellian shipwreck that's just off the shore.

I walked to Lochbuie on Saturday in the drizzle. Mull's only stone circle there. You reach it by following some white-painted stones across a soggy field.

I had been watching The Stones of Blood recently and on seeing deep indentations in the field, though that an Ogri was on the move. But it was just a cow. It's a pity there are so many rhododendrons around the circle. If it was clearer, you might be able to see why it was placed here.

Lochbuie also has Moy Castle, a cracking 15th century tower house. The scaffolding seems to have been up for a while with no obvious sign of work. I hope somebody gets around to finishing this work off.

I got back to Pennyghael, where I was staying, by walking up Glen Byre (named because it's square and boxy?) in worsening weather.

Sunday was a clearer day, revealing that more snow had covered the higher peaks the day before. I set out to walk to Carsaig along a forestry track that was pointed out to me. Forest changed to moorland and then to the modest summit of Cruach Inagairt, which turned out to have a superb view.

Then it was down to the shore and along the coast to Carsaig. For some reason I didn't blog about Carsaig when I was there last year, but it is a gorgeous place which I can't really do justice to here. Pausing only to sneer at the people who were getting out of cars and putting on clean new walking boots, I walked through the grounds of the house and up the moorland road. Ben More said hello again.

A letter from Ian

I've got the set now. Another personnally addressed letter, this one from Scottish Labour.

More misery

What awful dreich weather. I had been meaning to blog about how the last trace of snow had just about disappeared from the Lammermuirs, making my view totally snow-free for the first time since about December. Then comes today's weather, taking us back to shivery midwinter. All day at work we looked out on to slanting lines of sleet. The bits of the Pentlands that were visible were blanketed with snow again. I actually find it worse than proper winter weather. I like it crisp and cold, but temperatures around freezing feel colder than those below.

We've had strong winds all evening and lots of sleet. A small drip has appeared in the corner of my living room. Argh! that's all I need. But now it has started snowing properly and the drip has stopped. So that's something.

Networking

I've just gone wireless, and it's quite a relief. Since shortly after moving into my flat, I've had ten metres of Ethernet cable snaking through my hall in order to connect my Mac with the modem. It's always been so, but my old flat had a more centrally located phone socket, so the cable was shorter and not much in the way. Here, either I have my Mac in the kitchen, or its out with the masonry drill, or I get a wireless router. I got a wireless router.

When you enable Airport connections, you can see whatever networks are in your area. There's quite a lot round here. It makes me very aware of the verticality of living in a tenement. Maybe "Monkeymouse" is some of the people I see tapping at lit windows across the back green.

In the eight months or so that I lived with the Ethernet cable I've got used to stepping over it at several key points. It feels odd now that I don't have to. And I can shut the living room door now.

A letter from Neil

I have just got another personal letter, this time from the Conservative candidate for Edinburgh South. If you missed the comments on my previous post on the subject, this is clearly because Edinburgh South is a key marginal with the incumbent about to step down. Actually it wouldn't surprise me if the Torys took it.