Lake District In the Sun!

The Lake District is so handy to get to from Glasgow - only 2 and a bit hours - and there are well equipped hostels everywhere so you can walk out the door to a choice of walks. I met up with my friend Rachel there for a weekend of walking.

The first walking day was Saturday - it started off dry. The mountains had lots of snow on them and they looked impreesive with lots of character, rising up over the valleys. We could make out a couple of famous ridges on Scarfell as we climbed a much smaller hill called Place Fell across the valley (or dale). It was a steep pull up, and it got very windy as my sitting matt took off the instant I stood up sadly not to be found (by me). Views from the top were all right, a bit overcast. Judging by the football highlights currently showing on the telly from Satuday afternoon England was entirely wet and Patterdale will rarely be the dryest there. The drying room was to be very full that evening. We had about 3 miles to walk back by the lake and they did drag by as the rain penetrated even into waterproof boots.

The rain carried on that night and even the next morning. We set off nevertheless to attempt a relatively low-level circular route not too far from Keswick. The weather was kind as it started to dry up while driving there and it generally improved throughtout the day until it was sunny! I love the way the big glacial bouler was left on its side.

On Monday we went high! Great Gable via Green Gable was our challenge. The weather was great with blue skies and only a little white clouds and we set off only wearing a base layer. The mountain height was 801 metres , not that far short of a Scottish Munro height and it was to be as easily as hard a climb as many of them. We were feeling fitter than on Saturday and though the going was a bit of a scramble it was just within our limits. A lovely hanging valley was lovely to walk by in the sun as we continued to gain height. Next a drop to windy pass and a real scramble to get back up to the height we were at and then to the summit which over a mix of wet snow and bare rock was a slippery walk and the air was a windy cold by now. At the top the views really were excellant. We were centrally placed in the Lake District and could see out to the sea on one side and most of the major mountains were visible. A was memorial set in the rock was unusual and I don't think you would find anything similar in Scotland. Wild places should be be kept that way (which is why I like to take a stone out of every cairn I pass). An old couple were impressed with the path we went down by (giving us a circular route) the last time they were there it was scree but nowadays it is a fantastic stone walkway, probably something to do with the war memorial. The weather was now a bit dull, but we were lucky as the best weather of the entire weekend we'd had was at the highest point.

As for hostel life..... great facilities. Hostels used to be a sub-culture - these days a quiet corner can be runied by the loudest Geordie family on the planet playing cards. As for the chap who had the tickly throat in the bunk above me and kept me awake all night - he inspired me to remember a word from my childhood that is a Scots word - gipe (hard g).

All in all a great weekend.

Looks like rain

One of the most completely annoying irritanting and useless developments is the scrolling text on tv. Its true. Maybe everyone involved in TV gets used to reading autocues by somehow training a part of their brain to cope with the dizzying vertigo that afflicts me whenever I try. I really am desperate to read them but they just go so slow - I try to look once, wait a couple of seconds and look again but I can't keep up with it. Maybe woman who can do it with their now famous multi-tasking superpowers. I would like to see an experiment that tested whether or not they do possess such quantum thought processes.

Talking of scientific experiments I was amazed at the way people can be manipulated as demonstrated on Horizon (science TV programme). Interviewers could be made to give a positive assessment of someone simply by casually giving them a warm glass to hold for a moment while travelling in a lift to the interview - and vice-verca with a cold receptacle (not sure if it was a tea mug or not) delivering a consistent negative impact. What are we all about?

One of my customers today was clearly very ill yet she is still going to go into work tomorrow and do her shift then a sleep-over probably followed by another shift. Something wrong is afoot with our priorities. Is it trying for one upmanship. Or are some folk frightened of being accused of not doing their bit. It is a national paranoia that is probably linkied with the sicknote culture, but they are two sides of the same coin.

Commercial interests seem to be the new god. When something happens to make the news it is filtered through a 'what will it do for the econonmy' seive to see if there is a spin that can be added to it that will make us wonder if it makes us a little comfier economically or send us rushing to our bank to withdraw our money (which was 100% guranteed by the government anyway in many cases in the recent banking 'crises' we had). I suppose economies have always to some extent been based on some sort of mutual trust and expectation but it seems to be the more we are worried about the economy then the more likely even a little jitter will do just what we were frightened of in the first place. The worries are almost self-fulfilling.

A little serious today I suppose.

I'm off to the Lake Disrict for some walking in the rain tomorrow - I wonder if I can get some wipers fitted to my glasses in time.

Peace out.....

Its the little things in a day that make it sweet

A fairly dull day can still have some interesting moments.

At the petrol station I was distracted from the actual price of the fill-up when the counter stopped dead on £50.00 at first go.

I was eating my breakfast and listening to a Fairport Convention cd - it was a bit like an aural impossiblity I was hearing. Which now that I think about it, it could be theoretically possible since just like a drawing on two-dimensional paper is a representation of a three-dimensional object (and can be an impossibility if you try to do actually make it as in picture here) so is stereo sound through two speakers a representation of a three-dimensional space with sounds coming from all sorts of directions. The music I was hearing seemed quite certainly to be coming from inside my head! Or maybe more the back of it. Yikes I'm going mad. One of the ways high-end stereos get analsyed for how good they are is the soundstage which is something to do with being able to percive the positioning of the different sources of the music like the drummer being at the rear back for example. Not sure where that puts my stereo though.

Saw the first bee of the Spring today just after the snow showers. Not sure how wierd that is but it doesn't seem right to me. He must have been hungry after his winter hibernation, or whatever bees do to see out the absence of nectar time. Or maybe he was an egg in a hive. I could google it but maybe later.....

Peace-out.

The windy hills of Glen Luss

I had a wee walk in the hills today overlooking Luss. The weather was sunny with some snow and hail showers in between. The windchill was the worst aspect though - I needed to put on a balaclava at the top facing into the wind.

One of the things I love about hillwalking is the change in conditions between the bottom and top of a hill like today. It wasn't exactly warm at the bottom mind you but at the top it was probably minus 20 with the wind blowing, my face was feeling quite uncomfortable until I put on a 'windstopper' fleece balaclava. I met a family at the top who were definitely not happy with the conditions and seemed a little out of their depth even though they had hillwalking gear on. There were a few tourists with trainers on nearer the foot of the hill. I was quite glad in a way to see them as I wonder what people are thinking when they drive out to Luss and wander about having a look in a tat shop or two, then head home again. It just doesn't sound very fulfilling to me.

There was a little wildlife, the meadow pippits were singing away halfway up the hill in the snow showers. The two mile walk back passed several houses and I think that most of them feed the local birds and there were a lot of them around those houses. I'd like to learn how to recognise their calls, they are so small and flighty they are hard to see, though I did spot a Great Tit. There was lots of frogspawn too, its a shame to see so much of their efforts drying up in bad spots but their strategy must work! Didn't see any primroses in the woods, too early yet.

The picture at the top shows the famous Cobbler mountain (you can just about make out the big overhang) on the left and the Arrochar Alps behind it. I've never climbed to the top of the Cobbler, waiting for a very untouristy day but its on the to do list. The pic below is the big whaleback ridge of the hill I climbed looking back towards Glasgow.

Tea-pot Temptations

I have to say that it was great to be at Celtic Park to see Aberdeen finally...... finally..... fiiiiiiinnnnnalllllly, get a winning result. I've been to so many ritual thrashings, or games where we played pretty good but still got beaten by 5 or 7 goal margins (not sure which is worst). But the hangover of trepadation from those times gently diminished throughtout the match as our opponents cutting edge was dulled by a combination of our efforts and lack of Celtic's usual gallusness. Great game to be at and I really felt a proud Aberdonian 'standing free' with 1800 others.



My latest and greatest tea drinking vessel. The top half is a teapot with a cup in the bottom. Great for an earl grey that you can keep hot with a regular top up. A great tea drinking experience. Not bad for £4 from my usual shop. Still more to show!


On a more serious note I saw this blurb about a book by R T Kendall on forgiveness this week:


The act of Total Forgiveness may be the hardest thing we are ever called to do...'Total forgiveness is as spectacular as any miracle. We are talking about a feat greater than climbing Mount Everest. It means the highest watermark in anyone's spiritual pilgrimage. And yet it is within reach of any of us.' This book, possibly R T Kendall's most important work to date, explains what God calls for as 'total forgiveness'. No sin or action is unforgivable, says R T, and we are called to keep no record of wrongs, to refuse to punish those who have hurt us, to show mercy and to avoid any form of bitterness. A radical message for a divided world.


I was blown away reading that for the first time, still am.



I was in Waterstones yesterday. I have been buying my books online for so long now it was actually a novelty to be in a bookshop. I was browsing the art section but so many of them had cellophane on them which took a little of the hands-on feel of things. Its still a great way to look and see what interests among the books you while having a coffee.

I was captivated a little by the programme Lost before getting fed up of it. I was reading a book about interpreting it. I'm not so sure about my negative judgement of it. Maybe it is a very serious bit of tv worthy of a little more attention than say Desparate Housewives! I also picked up on the Led Zeppelin unauthorised biography Hammer of the Gods, interesting to see how they recorded their first album live in the studio and how delighted they were at the time about how good it sounded. I often prefer the sound of first albums from bands probably none more than Led Zep though I think they did a pretty decent job of never getting too studioy in their efforts. I played it again this morning and it sounds as good as ever though it doesn't seem to be much of a seller on amazon which is a pity.

While working for a friend who used to be a chef I was looking at his college cook book called Practical Cookery. It gives the basic recipe for just about everything but not dumbed down. The latest version is probably a lesson in iteslf in how to improve a textbook without losing the essence. I hardly ever find anything new to make despite having the Jamie Oliver books and the big Delia Smith one too - they just seem to lose me somewhere. I think I need a book that gives more of an overview - for example it explains a little about tofu and how it can take on flavours quite easily. But it covers the whole spectrum of food and every recipe has a nutrient content analysis.

Back in the something

I'm so easily open to 'suggestion' - in Scrubs when Molly/Heather Graham was talking to her food, crazy as that was she was talking to it as FOOD - then tonight eating my yummy Hagan Danz Belguim Chocolate flavour ice-cream, I think it was something to do with how blown away by the taste, I drifted off as I was looking at all the tiny little chocolate bits floating in the liquid bit at the end - thinking how lovely they were and just how many there were - then I came to and realised 'oh how sad I'm going to have to eat you' - and then I did.

This is my newest mug - I think its my biggest and cheeriest ever - and its black and white stripey keeping up that theme too - see earlier posts - check out tk-max for their mugs - talking of tips I want to air a couple. Lately I seem to be dropping stuff or things are getting snagged in other things and one of the worst was pees falling out of the bag taking them out of the freezer, however thanks to J I have solved this issue by using clothes pegs to keep them shut and my life is all the better for it! The other tip is if you need to soak your dishes in the sink, put a tray over the top to keep the heat in and you are less likely to need to run more hot water when you get round to washing them!

Funny how small random things can lead to bigger things. I took a slight wrong turn today, then trying to take the next road through it looked quite narrow so I took the next one. An old chap had fallen in the grass - the upshot of it all being an ambulance was called and he was taken to hospital to be checked out. He was conscious but not really with it, maybe I imagined it but you could sense his shock and lostness. It was kind of nice to be taking care of someone, albeit for only a few moments. It was also one of those classic bloke moments, me and the other tradesman were both thinking 'is this what I've got to look forward to in old age' in a Still Game vein - he said it first though. I hope the old guy is fine. It didn't look like he would be living independently for much longer though.

Finally got over chest infection - almost seven weeks that took. So I'm ready to resume my blog as well as life - as I know it anyway. I've started tutoring again, an hour or two a week anyway.

I watched a crakin film Monday night - Venus - Peter O Tool having an extended flirtation with his friends niece 50 years his junior - full of quirkiness and good humour but with plenty of sadness thrown in - and differing sorts of redemption in the end. A very British film. It could have been the red wine too that made it so good. I could have watched it again straight afterwards.

Better go and do an hour of maths.