Miscellany 1

My heart started to beat faster and my breathing became shallow and rapid. My hands became clammy and trembled slightly. Could it be? Was I dreaming? I looked again. Yes it was true - three people had read my Blog and they had posted comments! One of them even posted a damn fine funny joke. I will "tak a wee dram" (or two or three...) this evening in celebration.
Note to myself: Remain humble, don't let the fame and fortune go to your head, remember your old friends as you embark on this new life. Well...no fck that ... just give me the book deal and let me retire to somewhere sunny.
I will be back shortly with some further stuff on Scotland but meantime I have to go as I have appointments with my Cardiologist and my lawyer.

The sheep lovers guide - part 1

A priest from the city was driving to his new parish in a small town in Ayrshire. As he drove into the town he saw a young man chasing a sheep down the street. The young man caught the sheep and began having sex with it right in the middle of the street. The priest was really shaken by this and decided he needed to have a whisky to settle his nerves. So he found a nearby bar. As he went up to get served he noticed an old man in the corner jackin off!
This really upset him and he said to the barman "Look, I'm Father McGlumph the new priest for this town. The first thing I see when I arrive is a young man chasing a sheep down the street, catching it, and having sex with it! Then I come in here for a wee whisky because I'm so shocked and I see an old man in the corner jackin off! How do you explain it?"The barman cocks his head, looks serious and says,"Well, ye cannae expect a man his age to catch a sheep now can ye?"

Old Jock the Amazing Scotsman

A man came to a small town where a circus was in process. A sign read: "Don't miss Jock The Amazing Scotsman." The man bought a ticket and went in. There, on centre stage, was a table with three walnuts on it. Standing next to it was an old Scotsman. Suddenly the old man lifted his kilt, whipped out his huge member and smashed all three walnuts with three mighty swings! Old Jock was carried off on the shoulders of the crowd to a roar of applause.
Ten years later the salesman visited the same little town and saw a faded sign for the same circus and the same sign "Don't Miss Jock The Amazing Scotsman". He couldn't believe old Jock was still alive and doing his act! He bought a ticket. This time instead of walnuts, three coconuts were placed on the table. The Scotsman came forward suddenly lifted his kilt and smashed the coconuts with three swings of his amazing member. The crowd roared with applause!
Flabbergasted, the salesman asked to meet him after the show. "You're incredible!" he told the Scotsman. "But tell me - you're older now, why switch from walnuts to coconuts?"
Well," said old Jock, "Me eyes are nae whit they used to be!"

Golf and the Scot

Two Scots golfers were just about to putt on the 18th green next to a road, when a funeral procession passed by. Tam, one of the golfers, interrupted his putting and respectfully took off his hat. His pal said "That was really gentlemanly of you - paying respects like that". To which Tam replied "It was the least I could do. She was my wife for 25 years..."

Scotlands poet suffers Rising Damp

Apparently the Burns Cottage Museum has been suffering from rising damp.
The museum houses priceless manuscripts and letters from Rabbie Burns - the Scottish Bard.
Rising damp has caused structural damage to the century-old building which adjoins Burn’s birthplace in Ayrshire.
A valuable Burns artefact had to be moved out of the museum for restoration because of the condition.
Its a shame for the Rabbie it really is. However most of us in Scotland usually suffer more from falling damp than rising damp.

Scottish Weather - lesson 3

Lesson three is something of a recap lesson because we covered a lot of material in the first two lessons. In summary Scottish weather can be categorised into the following categories;
1) Water. Otherwise known as Wet. In a number of types - Mist, fog, drizzle, sheet rain. With no wind and accompanied by temperature in the range mildly cold through very cold to freezing.
2) Wind. (Of the climatic type not the personal type or farts). Wind comes in a range of strengths from windy through gale and storm to hurricane. Each of these strengths associated with any one of three temperature variations as in category 1.
3) Windy water. In the variants lashing down or driving rain. Again each in three temperature variants as above.
4) Watery Wind. Sometimes difficult to distinguish from category 3. Also associated with the three main temperature variants.

In the next lesson I want to say a little more about sunshine. You will not encounter this often in Scotland as explained in lesson one. Sunshine, technically speaking is supposed to be associated with the conditions warm and dry. Such conditions are not encountered in Scotland. However you may hear such phrases as "last year I saw the sun" or "the sun is shining behind that raincloud". This shows that Scots do in fact sometimes actually observe the sun directly or, more usually, indirectly. This almost never qualifies as actual sunshine however as it is never accompanied by the conditions warm and dry. When the sun is observed it is often in mid-winter in dry but freezing conditions shortly before blizzards. This is know technically to Scottish weather forecasters as "a nice day for a walk".
There are reports of sunshine in Scotland but these are usually made by friends when one has returned from holiday abroad. The conversation would go something like this;
"Did you have a nice holiday?"
"Yea, we were steamin all the time."
"What was the weather like?"
"Not bad, it was only mildly cold, a bit windy, and it only pished down about half the time. What was the weather like here in Scotland?"
"Oh it was sunshine for the whole two weeks but its back to normal now."

Interlude - The great Wind Farm Conspiracy -1

Before we continue with our lessons on Scottish Weather I thought I would share with you some thoughts on what I call The Great WindFarm Conspiracy.
This scandal has recieved little public exposure and I think it is time that the truth was more widely publicised. There has been much talk about Climate change and the need to reduce CO2 emmissions and here in great britain and in Scotland one of the developments that the Government proposes to meet this challenge is the development of large numbers of wind "farms".
We have some of these wind turbines near us. Personally I don't mind the look of them. However all is not what it seems with these wind farms. "They" tell us that these wind farms use the wind to generate electricity but you should not believe this. There is a massive conspiracy going on and its time the truth came out.
The truth is that these windfarms don't use the wind - they generate wind!!!!
Havn't you noticed that the faster the turbine blades spin the windier it gets? This country seems to have got a lot windier since they started building these wind farms and we now know why. The government has secretly gone into the wind generation business. This is part of a massive conspiracy with the North American military/techno/industrial interests. Having stolen all the Iraqi oil they need to use it for something or we would be up to our necks in cheap oil. So what do they do with all that surplus oil? They need to burn it off. It is being secretly burnt of in the power stations and used to generate electricity which is then fed through to these massive wind farms were it drives these wind turbines. The wind turbines then generate wind which dispurses harmlessly (so they think).
They must think we are stupid if they think we wont figure this scam!

Scottish Weather - Lesson two.

Well this is getting very technical so I hope you have all been studying hard because I will be asking questions later.
Ok so we have basically covered the major points of water and wind. There is a lot more to it but we'll come back to that at a future lesson.

Just now I want to introduce a third factor - temperature. Most of you will have heard that well known Scottish expression - Its bloody freezin. Actually this is the anglicised version. No true Scot would actually use the word bloody in this context. To do so they would risk being taken for a real sassenach. The true Scot would say I'm fuckin freezin. However even this is not strictly true. there is an unwritten rule in Scotland that one must never - ever - admit to being affected by the temerature. It is acceptable of course to admit to being affected by water, so, for example "help I'm fuckin droonin" (excuse me sir but I appear to be drowning) is perfectly acceptable. Equally one can admit to having been affected by wind either of the personal or climactic kind. So for example statements of the form "Fuck me, d'ye smell that yin?" or " Oor dad wiz blown awa" will often be heard. So if you do hear someone say I'm fuckin freezin then you should suspect that their ancestors may not be wholly Scottish. It is interesting to compare Scottish usage in this respect with Geordie custom (people from Newcastle). In Newcastle it is customary for young ladies to wear less clothes at night the colder the weather gets and to do so without complaint.

To return to our third factor then. Temperature. This comes in three basic variants. Mildly cold, very cold and freezin. (remember never to admit personally to being freezin).
Each of the combinations that we discussed in Lesson One can be found in each of the three of these temperature variants. So for example we may have mildly cold windy water or freezin windy water.
As you can begin to see the variation in the Scottish climate is endless. More of this in the next lesson when I also hope to begin to look at aspects of Scottish culture.

Scottish weather - Lesson one.

The weather today? Damp. Well actually it's a little more than damp today I would say its verging more towards wet. I should explain the Scottish climate to those poor people among you who are not fortunate enough to live in this place we call Scotland.
The Scottish climate consists basically of two main things. The first of these is water. It is very important to have a good grasp of all things watery if you want to understand Scotland. I'll explain more of this later. The second important thing is Wind. Wind comes in two forms - personal wind otherwise known as farts and climactic wind. In these early posts we will restrict ourselves to considering the climactic kind. Usually in Scotland these two things - wind and water - are found together in combination but they can also happen independently. So as you may guess we can have a number of possible permutations;

1) Water on its own. This comes in a number of forms; Mist, fog, drizzle, shit rain (sorry excuse my spelling that should be sheet rain.)

2)Wind on its own. This also comes in a number of varieties; windy, gale, storm, and hurricane.

3) Windy water. This combination occurs when the water component is more important than the windy component. So the rain may be lashing down , or we may have driving rain. Windy water may also be used as description of the weather on Scottish beaches. (more on this later)

4) Watery wind. This combination occurs when the predominant factor is wind but with some water. This is frequently hard to distinguish from combination 3. Why? because one minute it will be pishing down then a minute later it may be driving rain then still later it may be fucking pouring down.

I should, for the sake of accuracy, point out that there is technically a fifth combination. This combination - no water, no wind - is I understand technically known as sunshine. We have heard rumours of such a climatic condition and indeed I have friends who claim to have experienced this however I am not inclined to believe them. Personally I believe that this is one of those theoretical constructs that sounds good on paper when the equations are worked out but which is never really encountered in real life. However if any reader has encountered this condition in Scotland we would be interested to hear from you.
More later.