Today we went into Naples. I have been here before and have never been too sure about how I feel about this city. It is indubitably a very vibrant and sometimes beautiful place, but it is rather scruffy (definitely not Swiss Chocolate Box territory) and the traffic is something awful. We went on the Naples […]

The next day by way of a gentle introduction to public transport we went to Pompeii. For some reason the train was mobbed and we only managed to squash ourselves on with difficulty. I think the previous train must have been cancelled as none of the others we took subsequent to this were anything like […]

My friend J and I are off to Italy for a week. Last year we went to Rome in September and it was rather oppressively hot. So this year we went in October and it was considerably cooler and more pleasant. On our way out we went to see the Jacobite exhibition at the Museum […]

This rather reminds me of an old joke. A native American goes to his shaman and asks him how he names the members of the tribe. He answers “Well my son, I look out from my wigwam in the morning and if I see a bird flying overhead I will name the child “Eagle Soaring” […]

My mum has an extensive collection of animals of various sorts and I have recently started buying her some “Charlie Bears” (although they are not all bears as you can see from the photo). There are several hundred different ones of these so I think if she gets them all she will need to move […]

This was the sun over Lochgoilhead the other day – apparently Hurricane Ophelia had blown up a load of dust from the Sahara desert which caused the effect. It rather reminds me of the ominous line from the poem “a livid sky on London and they knew the end was near”.

I made a very fancy dinner for my parents, R and J We started with a layered seafood cocktail. Then we had boeuf bourguignon with creamy potato mushroom nests, roast potatoes and ratatouille. We finished off with apple pie a la Donich tree because frankly I have to get some more of the apples disposed […]

I made a couple of pies yesterday. The one on the left looks a bit misshapen, but it was actually a very delicious cheese, potato and onion which R and I had for our supper last night. The one on the right is another one made with our endless apples which I will give to […]

A few weeks ago I went for a walk up Coilessan Glen along the route of the Cowal Way. I am not a fussy person with regard to getting my feet wet (let’s hope not as I am going to climb Mont Blanc next year) but it was really almost impassible even wearing full on […]

I thought our poor little fox had been driven off by the fact that all the nuts had been eaten by badgers by 9pm every evening at the moment – but last night he was back and had a close encounter with one of the badgers. Click the picture to see the video The badger […]