I’ve had some very bad experiences of this country over the last few days. Firstly, and most importantly it is clear to me that living in the Highlands we are third class citizens of UK. I lost my passport and now have had to wait in for three days for my new one to be […]

We have acquired a seagull which has been coming down to the feeding area of late. A few years ago when I was on holiday in Shetland, I made friends with a seagull which very quickly became quite tame and used to come down to us and take digestive biscuits (it didn’t like Ryvitas though). […]

It is just as well we are not very concerned about having a bowling green smooth lawn, as over the last week or so, creatures unknown have started digging it up at the front of the house near the pool. The badgers used to do this when we first moved in – but since we […]

I just spent another two hours with these apples. I made a large apple sauce cake, a pie and a large pan of puree which will become apple sauce. I was sort of hoping this would see the end of them, but there are still hundreds on the tree. I might just need to give […]

The summer flowers being over I bought some winter pansies and some little alpines for Schrodi’s garden. Blow me but having planted the pansies, they had all totally vanished within two days. I’ve no idea whether this was squirrels, birds or the four red deer which have been in the garden recently. Anyway, when the […]

We (myself R and J) were driving back from Glasgow last night about 10pm in our 8 month old (very expensive) BMW. We came off the Rest and got about a mile down the road to the village. All of a sudden the engine cut off, luckily when we were next to a passing place. […]

I had to laugh at this a bit. I’ve been on the Northern Belle a couple of times with my Mum at Christmas, but £225 (this is the reduced price) to travel between Dumbarton and some unspecified destination on the West Highland line is a bit steep even for me. The Northern Belle train is […]

Our 16 year old cat has just had one vole and two mice. The latter were half consumed. All three brought into the utility room within the last hour. Poor little creatures.

So funny to see a Badger and a Fox peacefully grazing on the nuts together. I would have thought that two top predators would have hated each other. Actually badgers seem to be pretty laid back creatures as they have been driven off by Tora a few times. Sadly I don’t suppose the poor wee […]

R and I are off for a visit to the Lake District in a few weeks time. We will be climbing Scafell Pike and a couple of other peaks and visiting some of the places I knew well as a child. This was our house between Egremont and Whitehaven taken from Google as it was […]