Monthly Archives: March 2016

Just When the Journey Got Better

Not a Tunnel of Love

If you use Glasgow's Queen Street Station you may have to allow more time for your journey. Well the Fourth Bridge is open, they had to find a new way to stun and annoy Scottish commuters. Major tunnel renovation will mean that there are five months of the delays. A high-level tunnel used by Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Stirling services is now shut...

Clocks Go Forward-Sleep Less

A Case of the Missing Hour

Hi just in case you forgot at 1am on Easter Sunday, the clocks will move forward by one hour, marking the start of British Summer Time. So you lose an hour’s sleep! Great! It happens every year, the clocks are put forward an hour on the last Sunday in March, and then put back an hour on the last Sunday in October. So this year summer time will...

Ben Nevis Has Grown

Hugh Grant Not Involved

Shock If you remember the terrible Hugh Grant film about the Welsh hills, The Englishman Who Went up a Hill but Came down a Mountain, you’ll be pleased to hear that Mr Grant had nothing to do with the new upgrading of the mountain that is Ben Nevis. The highest mountain in Britain has grown over the last 65 years. Well done Big Man!

Ordinance Surveyed

Those...

Oh Dear Teenagers Are Unhappy

Survey of Young Grizzlers

It seems our young people are miserable when compared to the rest of the world. And if you are a parent, aunt or uncle then you will have been exposed to their teenage angst. If your only experience of ‘yoof’ is Harry Enfield and Kathy Burke in Kevin and Perry Go Large then you have escaped lightly.

It Takes a Worried Kid

British teenagers worry...

Kevin the Donkey

In Need of Love

One of the highlights of my holiday last year was the walks along the river Aude in Carcassonne last year. We would walk from the Rue Pont Vieux all along the river bank and then keeping the river on the left walk several kilometres with the sun burnishing our brows, or occasionally the wind whipping the rain against our waterproofs, being from Northern climes we always...

Pheasant on the Track

Passengers Grouse

A train in Aberdeenshire was derailed from its schedule by a pheasant caught under the wheels. The game bird was hit by the five fifty-four Inverness to Aberdeen service and was brought to a standstill between Huntly and Insch near Kennethmont. The incident left the passengers stranded and they had to be taken off the train by first a ladder and then a train...

Easter Isn’t Far Away – Mother’s day in Our Rear View Mirror. Phew!

Giant Rabbit off to North Ayrshire

Well we’ve made it through Mother’s day and Easter is looming ahead. I am not sure I can live with the excitement. Especially as today it is absolutely freezing and the daffodils are blowing wildly in the wind. So what I need to take my mind off it is a story about a giant rabbit called Atlas, presumably...

No  to Extended Sunday Trading Think Again!

Sunday Preserved on the One Hand and Freed on the Other

As Scotland’s MPs prepare to vote down the Westminster bill on extending Sunday trading we can safely have our cake and eat it here at James Pirie. It’s a truly Marie Antoinette state of affairs. We don’t only say have your cake and eat it we say eat off super luxurious Spode plates, as they are on...

Baby Blues and Pinks

Celebrate a New Arrival in Style

If you haven’t yet been introduced to the joys of Eurosport broadcasting then you aren’t a fully clued up Murray brothers fan. Because I was watching the round of the Davis cup on that channel , GB against Japan when the Braveheart Scottish brothers once more came up trumps to seal a quarterfinal against the dreaded Serbians, in Belgrade.

Oh No...

 Is this the way to Amarillo? No - Lost Scottish Village Pops up Again

Not Lost Just Mislaid - Medieval Village Found Once More

 When the white heat of modern technology came to Scotland in the 1960s and 1970s it wasn’t without cost and amongst the stuff we lost was a medieval village from a thousand years ago. It wasn’t on any A-Z mark you, but Cadzow as well as being a cracking score in Scrabble...