Page 18 - Blog

Scotland is a wondrous and strange place. I’ve just watched a video of wild pigs and wild boar mixes roaming the Great Glen in the Highlands. They are pretty frightening. There are herds of feral pigs roaming the area and out of control. They have been blamed for sheep killings and as they feed much more heavily than other beasts, they are ruining the grazing for other animals. There are calls for...

Flower of Scotland

O flower of Scotland
When will we see
Your like again,

In a salute to the brave Scots who defeated the Norse invaders  the thistle that was adopted as the national flower and symbol of Scotland and now we bring you a brilliant offer the Thistle design single Flower of Scotland - Gin and Tonic Copa Glass with a great 60% off offer. It comes in a lovely gold blocked gift box and...

It’s becoming harder and harder to distinguish fakes from the authentic and with the news that a web site will allow you to create songs in the style of, say Amy Winehouse and Artificial Intelligence that is able to make incredible pictures from fresh air and not a lot else, it’s hard to know what’s real. There was a detectorist in Herefordshire who planted five Crusader coins in a field that would...

Easy Oat Bread

Now I’ve extolled the breakfast of champions that is porridge, now I’d like to introduce you to the wonder of Oat Bread. It’s very good for you, unlike ordinary white bread which is very bad, and even better for you than wholemeal bread and sourdough bread. This is a simple bake, almost foolproof, that anyone can do. And as you can freeze it happily you can use the oven for a couple...

News just out that will alarm Scottish mothers everywhere; Porridge Oats may be classified as junk food. By jings that seems to be at the best a bit mad, at the worst totally cracked. Now we all know that eating the wrong food in the wrong amounts is one of the biggest problems facing the nation, but we are also in a cost of living crisis and porridge is just cracking value for money.  

Because my...

I am a great fan of the feel good Apple +  TV show Ted Lasso, which if you haven’t seen it I thoroughly recommend. Ted is the most optimistic person ever, in fact he is almost pathologically so. His smile is always pasted on and his cookie cooking is sublime. The premise for the show is that Lasso, a second rate American Football coach from the US Midwest, is brought in to manage an English Premier...

Now that Mother’s day is round the corner, it’s on the 10^th March this year, have you thought about buying your mum or woman in your life a lovely bunch of blooms, or bouquet of flowers? Well if you want to be a thoughtful giver pause a moment to think where those lovely blooms come from and does it matter? And of course the answer is yes. We don’t live in a climate where you can grow flowers at this...

It’s pretty warm just now, but I’ve caught the weather forecast for the end of the week and next and it’s less rosy and more ferocious, so passengers on the so called “Polar Express” will be looking out their thermals, hats, gloves, scarves and packing extra togs for the journey.  The West Highland Line between Oban and Glasgow has gained honorary membership of the Arctic Circle as the temperatures...

Well that’s Saint Valentine’s Day in the rear view mirror and now there’s a gap in the heady gift buying schedule of us mere mortals. So I thought I should have a look at the way the world is turning and take a gander at Artificial Intelligence.  Usually I take the photographs for this blog myself, as I don’t want to pay copyright charges, but this time I used generative A I to produce some pictures...

I know of several hotels where walking into the lobby can induce a feeling of tartan induced vertigo as everything is covered, including the reception desk, in Scottish plaid AKA tartan. It’s been around a long time, the first mention of tartan was in 1538, but now there are thought to be around 7,000 unique tartans in the world and even former US President Obama and Hello Kitty have their own tartan...