Rude awakenings.

 

Well, that's it then. I woke up at 6.27 with the dreaded 'Nil by mouth' sign over the bed. Pah.

 

As if that wasn't bad enough I was almost immediately asked if I wanted to go and have a shower now. I say asked but there didn't appear to be much choice or room for manouevre. Okay then, a shower..."make sure you don't use any highly perfumed soaps or deodorant or at least make sure it's all thoroughly washed off." Eh? What's this in aid of? Is it so the surgeon can smell nothing but your fear?

 

Yes, thanks, I am alright in the shower...just trying to rid myself of the Ylang Ylang, Sandalwood and Jojoba...

Good...occasionally very poor.

 

That could well be a metaphor for life couldn't it? Nothing so profound, alas: simply part of the visibility outlook on the Shipping Forecast.

 

In his excellent book on the subject, Charlie Connelly  notes that there are few things in life quite so reassuring...particularly when one is tucked up at home late at night and not actually out there in Viking, Fastnet or Fitzroy braving those "cyclonics". It's equally comforting when one is trying to drift off in a noisy hospital, wondering why a single starched sheet is the order of the day.

 

As for the weather stations on the forecast? I reckon you'd have to go a long way to beat Machrahanish Automatic as a name for a local Sunday league team... 

 

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Fasting from midnight calls for drastic measures...

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Brrr...14below in deepest Nairnshire. I think those scary stalactite type icicles are the type apocraphylly(sp?) used in detective stories to commit the so-called 'perfect murder' whereby the victim is stabbed with an icicle which then melts leaving no evidence of the heinous crime. (adopts villianous laugh)"Mwuah ha ha!"

Jones the Steam...a made guy?

I Twittered (Tweeted? Twat?) last night about Ivor the Engine and Tony Soprano...I feel I should explain.

Late on last night, in light of the usual round of sod all on the telly of a Saturday evening, we sat down to watch the next episode of The Sopranos which we had as part of our latest shipment from Sofa Cinema. Imagine our surprise - and subsequent delight - to find that instead of Tony and co. backed by the soundtrack of the Alabama 3, we had our daughter's Ivor the Engine compilation in the DVD player! No difference at all...

The images - and sounds - conjured up are just fantastic. You really have to get into character but I can just about hear Jones the Steam telling Dai Station in his broadest Welsh accent "Hey, forgeddaboutit, I just whacked some guy..." or, perhaps better yet, Tony Soprano in full New Jersey-Italian saying, "It wasn't a very big or a very important railway but it was all there was..."


Ba da boom, ba da bing...isn't it?

Library Thing

Well, that's quite exciting. I've just been signing up for a scheme called Library Thing which allows one to catalogue (or catalog since the site seems to be US based!) one's books. There's also a lovely wee widget feature which I'll fiddle about with later and include somewhere on this blog.

As I was trying to add in one of my books (McCarthy's Bar, of course) the search also brought up a book whose introduction is written by Pete McCarthy and which I also happen to own and enjoy. So I clicked on that to be my first "add." As a site [LibraryThing] with hundreds of thousands of users worldwide, I was excited to find that no-one else had the book in their list.

Always nice to be a pioneer!

Distinctly below par...

This story from the BBC's Highlands and Islands news caught my ear...

A golfer was so pleased with winning a card allowing him to play for the US Professional Tour he did not notice he was speeding, an Inverness court heard.

The punchline? You've guessed it - he's been banned from driving for six months. That'll make hitting the greens that wee bit trickier I should imagine...