I’m finding that Twitter is stealing most of my good material from the blog these days. Whereas before I’d store up all the foolery which I saw around me then blurt it out in one fell swoop, the combination of an iPhone and Twitter allows me to post about it that very second. Like I did when I somewhat disturbingly walked through an old gentleman’s fart cloud in Grays of George Street this afternoon. It’s closing down you know. Grays that it. Where will old men buy dimmer switches and have a sly fart then?

We are off on holiday next week. Our first real extended break as a family of four. Bloody hell. Seems odd to say that really. Four. Two times more than the two we started as. We are off first of all to stay in a ‘yurt’ (a Mongolian style tent) just outside York for four nights then on to the Lake District for a week. We’ve rented a cottage there. It has no washing machine. This lack of Hotpoint may not prove to be one of our better decisions but we’ll see how it goes.

We’ve got the first flat on the market (not the one we live in) and our flat is currently getting the finishing touches applied to it. Hopefully we can get them both sold quickly and purchase somewhere with a garden and not up three flights of stairs. Don’t get me wrong, I love living in town but it’s getting to the point where the nippers need a garden and a small slabbed yard isn’t cutting it.

Back to the blog and it’s not only Twitter which has resulted in me being a bit short on observations lately. I just don’t seem to meet the loonies I used to on my walk to work in the morning. Except one that is. The guy, who looks a bit like Charles I who walks to the top of Broughton Street every morning, looks around the corner and then turns on his heel, bolting back up Queen Street. I’d love to know his story.

I’ll endeavour to find out shall I?

Until later. Peace etc etc

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Anyway, in honour of such creative downtime, I’ve decided to use this post as a ‘delurking day’ kind of post. I pour my thoughts out regularly into this blog but know next to nothing about most of my readers. In the spirit of information sharing, if you read this blog regularly then please leave a comment on this post to let me know.

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Over the last few weeks, it’s started to dawn on me that he isn’t actually heading anywhere. He’s not checking the bus times or looking at his watch. In the course of the last few weeks, I’ve also realised that at some point or other, every bus service which stops at this bus stop has passed him by without him making a move to get on the bus.

I suspect he is going nowhere. Just killing time in the bus shelter watching the world go by. Perhaps he wants to stay a part of the working world for a little longer. I don’t know whether to admire him or feel sorry for him.

In other news, it appears that archeologists have recovered 18 medieval bodies from the big holeright outside our front door. I knew they had been busy but 18 bodies? Our street is giving up it’s dead like Dennis Nilsen’s drains. The photo in this post was taken by my wife and shows a skull and some bones which made an appearance about two weeks ago.

Read the full story courtesy of the BBC here.

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Saturday was spent with some very good friends at the soft play area at Ratho indoor climbing centre. Two hyper boys, one soft play area and two ageing, unfit Dads was always going to be a recipe for pain. And it was for me. When I woke up Sunday morning, I felt like I had been working out at the gym.

The soft play area was great fun. Having a kid is a fantastic excuse to be the loony you could never acceptably be in any other environment. We found ourselves sliding down helter skelter like slides, squeezing between two huge padded rollers (similar to passing through a mangle) and crawling through fibreglass tunnels suspended about 15 feet off the ground. All good stuff.

Let’s face it though. On more than one occassion I found myself in a place where a 37 year old, 14 stone man was not supposed to be. Plain and simple.

Magic.

My brain hurts today. I was travelling back into town today, trying to read my book and all I could hear in the background was a bunch of students from Stevenson College discussing their sex lives (or more to the point, lack thereof). Even more annoyingly, on my way out to my appointment, I couldn’t concentrate on my book because the worlds fattest man had decided to sit next to me, squash me into the bus window face first and spread the majority of his broadsheet newspaper across my personal space.

No wonder my brain is buzzing.

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Four hours of sleep was all I got last night as the tram workers decided to drop off a squad of workies and their associated tools and materials at 6am, stirring the young lad from his sleep and as a result waking us all up from that point onwards. I’m starting to wonder if it will ever end. They are never done digging up bits of Leith and to be honest, it’s starting to rankle.

On the subject of digging up things, I couldn’t help but notice that there is a bloody great hole at the edge of Princes Mall (or the Waverley Market for those of us over a certain age – by the way, does anyone actually shop there any more?). When I say a bloody great hole that’s exactly what I mean. It’s like a huge shaft into the bowels of the earth, with concrete walls. I half expect some Jules Verne style tunneling machine to come plowing out of it like some mechanical cross between a mole and a corkscrew. Possibly with Doug McClure at the helm.

Remember Doug McClure? The guy was never done finding lost civilisations full of savages and Pterodactyls. He always seemed to wear a white crew neck jumper as well. One of the savages was guaranteed to be totally shaggable, a real Raquel Welch sort, and would help Doug escape (sometimes if he was lucky he would get his leg over as well).

Back to Princes street though, I’m dying to know what the story is with the big hole. Answers on a postcard. First prize of a trip to Nigeria’s “Slavery and the Jackson Five” theme park.

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According to today’s Sunday Mail, young Alfred may not necessarily be the father of the baby girl after all. Turns out that Chantelle (Alfie’s girlfriend) has been kissing (and more) about half the boys in the school, which has led to a bit of a muddle as to who exactly is, The Daddy.

Poor old Alfie. He “only did it once” by his own admission. Now he seems to be in the frame for the CSA claiming half of his pocket money every week. He’s in the paper today saying that he’s off for a DNA test to prove he’s the father. I’m suspecting he’s secretly hoping it will come back negative and he can go back to doing normal teenage stuff like playing football or hanging around outside chip shops.

The poor little sod only looks about 8 years old as it is. I suspect that this is half of the press appeal of him being the father. Turns out now that he might not be. Of course, it wouldn’t be like The Sun to let the truth get in the way of a good story.

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All over the UK though, blokes are saying quietly to themselves – “Fair play to you son. I couldn’t even get a sniff of action when I was 13″.

Funniest thing to come out of the story is the outrage in parliament, where politicians are questioning whether the sex education in this country is working. Well, I’ve got news for them. It is. They had sex and then they had a baby.

Of course, if he’d dropped his trousers and tried to stick it in her ear then that would have been different. That definitely would have been evidence that sex education standards were dropping.

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1. There used to be such a thing as white dog shit. You don’t see it so much now but in the 70′s and 80′s it was a common occurrence. There was a certain aura about white dog shit which kids of today won’t be able to appreciate. As a result, I want my son (and our new arrival in July) to know of this extinct species of toly. I later discovered (through the wondrous pages of FHM) that the decline in white dog shit is directly related to the decline in the tradition of giving dogs a bone to chew. Apparently it was the calcium that turned the shit white as opposed to our long held belief that it had just dried out in the high noon sun of Scotland.
2. If you park your car in a street where there are pubs, the law of averages dictates that eventually some drunk will piss on your car door handle. I’ve seen it done. Sometimes deliberate, sometimes not. Some of the boyos I’ve seen pissing on motors are so drunk that they wouldn’t know whether they were urinating against a BMW or the Berlin Wall. It happens people. Think about that the next time you open your car door.
3. It’s not clever to hurdle picnic tables. A lesson which I personally learned the hard way (see yesterdays post). Smashing your leg to smithereens is not particularly enjoyable. Neither is the 2 weeks in hospital which results from such endeavours. I still get twinges in the really cold weather which is actually quite cool because I actually have a pain which falls into the general category of ‘gyp’.
4. Swans can break your arm. A timeless classic. No childhood is complete without this complete load of twaddle being drummed into any child. A rite of passage which drums in a lifelong respect and fear of one of the most beautiful creatures in the animal kingdom. I would feel that my children’s childhood would not be complete without this.
5. You will never ever meet anyone who had their arm broken by a swan. Directly related to 4 above. You could trawl the ends of the earth for your whole life. Like Grasshopper in ‘Kung fu’ and never meet anyone who had suffered a broken arm at the hands (wings?) of a swan.

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That got me to thinking. That type of pissed, warped creativity seemed exclusively Scottish to me. On the back of that, I’ve decided to put together a list of some of my favourite things about being Scottish. The list is in no particular order and is not exhaustive.

1. Deep fried food. Take cheap ingredients, coat them in batter and then fry them. Smother in chippy sauce (optional), salt and vinegar. Shite would taste nice when prepared thus. I have still to actually find a chippy which sells the now mythical deep fried Mars Bar. Despite this lack of deep fried confectionery country wide, it seems that some people think that this is one of Scotland’s main culinary achievements.
2. Pish. The word ‘Pish’ is so much better than any other word in the English language. It can be used to indicated disbelief (“Pish!” as in “You are talking”)  or to indicate that something is of poor quality (“That was pish”). A very flexible, and completely Scottish word.
3. Ally McLeod. The famous photo of the former Scotland manager sitting on the bench in Argentina with his head in his hands is synonymous with the disaster which was the 1978 World Cup campaign. The great joke of the late 1970′s was that Mickey Mouse had an Ally McLeod wristwatch. He was a national clown at the time but when he died there was a outpouring of warmth towards the man. Scotland in the late 70′s was pish (see 2 above). Declining industry, strikes all the time and the Bay City Rollers. When Ally and the Scotland Squad were piped out of Hampden, there was a resurgence in national belief. Unfortunately, an absolutely disastrous campaign resulted in such a dip in national confidence that when a referendum was held for Scottish devolution in 1979, the country voted against it. Never mind though, we had Archie Gemmell’s goal to take us through the hard times (see 4 below).
4. Archie Gemmell’s goal against Holland. A Scottish icon. As defining a moment in our history as Bannockburn? Not far off it in modern terms. I’d never tire of watching it. All those silky Dutch ‘total’ footballers and a wee bald guy, 4 foot tall with his hands in the air, taking it past three of them and then slotting it past the goalkeeper. One of the finest World Cup goals of all time AND converted into a dance routine. Magic.
5. Drinking. A national pastime. “Take a drink”. Get “pished”. Possibly only the Irish are in the same league as us. I’m not talking about binge drinking. I’m talking about lose your house, wife and kids, piss your pants and forget your own name kind of drinking. Not necessarily something to be proud of but part of the heritage. It remember leaving the house on a Monday morning once and passing a wee skinny old boy walking home, dark stain around the crotch and the Sunday Mail and half a dozen rolls under his arm. Like a wee Scottish Andy Capp. I could imagine the wife polishing the rolling pin.
6. Fighting. The natural partner of 5 above. Usually starts with a “Who ur you looking at ya cant” and finishes with a liberal sprinkling of “Moan then”. Somebody might get “tumblered”. Thrilling stuff. Makes jakey drinking more than just a downward spiral. Allows for significant adrenalin highs.
7. Neds. Love them or loathe them, they are Scottish comedy gold. The making of many a good episode of “Chewing the fat” and “Still Game”. Brainless, unskilled, manual labourers who are highly proficient in 5 and 6 above.
8. The English Civil War. That one threw you. I’m currently reading a book on the English Civil War. Apparently the sparks of the wars were started by the Scots. 400 years ago we were exactly the same seditious, awkward fuckers that we are now. Got to love consistency. Apparently Charles I tried to impose a new prayer book on us. We said “naw”, possibly with an added “ya bass” on the end or a “ya bass yer majesty” if he was lucky. Scotland. Being a pain in England’s arse since the middle ages.
9. The theory that we invented everything. Everyone knows that Scots invented the television and the telephone. We also discovered anaesthesia and penicillin. Those are undisputable facts. Not bad for a rocky little outcrop in the North Atlantic. Even better, we refuse to let anyone forget it. We are never done going on about it. And rightly so. The majority of Scottish history has been full of strife, struggle and presbyterian dourness. Let’s focus on the positives.
10. Tattie Scones. Need I elaborate?

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It’s funny how life is. You spend your whole young life trying to get out of a place and then as you get older you realise just how great that place was all along.

When people ask me where I am from, I say Edinburgh. It’s easier. And more impressive I suppose. Edinburgh is one of Europe’s most beautiful cities. I’m proud to live here. I’m proud my son has Edinburgh as his place of birth on his birth certificate. It’s a great place to come from.

Except, whilst Sam comes from there, I don’t really. I was brought up in the county of East Lothian.

I was driving down to Gullane last night to visit my Grandmother. Pitch black on the coast road to Gullane. I love that coast road. In the winter (as it was last night), it’s fucking miserable. No mistake. Pitch black and hazardous. All twisty and windy, with you running the risk of driving into the sea at every turn. If you could see the sea then that would be a start, but in the winter, the sea, the sky and the road merge into one big depressing blackness. It’s the sort of place you’d expect to see Jason from Friday the 13th step out of the gorse bushes with a carving knife, before bouncing up and over your windscreen and roof. Of course, if you reversed back, the body would be gone. And then you’d be fucked.

In the summer though, not only the coast road but the whole of East Lothian is an amazing place. As I’ve become older and wiser I can see it’s immense charms. More importantly, I can see how happy a childhood I actually had there. Endless beaches and rocks interspersed with ruined castles and mysterious islands, one of which (Fidra) was the inspiration for Treasure Island.

East Lothian is also overrun with second world war defences, mostly in the form of concrete anti invasion tank traps. I can just picture Hitler and his cronies at the Berghof discussing the invasion of Britain and deciding to ignore the south coast in the first instance and settle on establishing a beach-head at Aberlady Bayright enough !!. These tank defences still came in hand though as in later years they became one big crumbling playground for East Lothian kids and I spent many a happy hour clambering from one block to another.

In my youth, I cycled it’s roads, walked it’s beaches and had nine types of shit kicked out of me by neds (or their forerunners) in it’s parks and amusement arcades. As an adult I’ve done all of the same, but without the kickings.

I guess what I’m saying is that maybe I live in Edinburgh, but I don’t come from there when it comes down to it (as much as I’ve told myself I did over the years). I may not live in East Lothian any more, but as I get older I appreciate it more and more. I may not even live there again, but I know what made me.

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