I’ve booked another two train journeys today. I’m on holiday from work next week but the two following weeks will see me spend the majority of my time on one train or another as I travel around the country giving training courses or presentations.

I don’t mind the train. It’s so much less hassle than flying these days. You are virtually down to your boxer shorts with the contents of your laptop bag scattered all over the security desk being swabbed before you get through to the departure lounge. Quite irritating.

Two of my journeys are overnight sleeper trains. Regular readers will know the love/hate relationship I have with the caledonian sleeper. The love aspect is the convenience. Spending a night away from home when you have a young child is not ideal and the sleeper allows me to avoid that inconvenience by still being able to go home, spend some time with the family and then head out of Waverley at midnight, using the dead time to travel and sleep at the same time. This is preferable to being away from 4pm in the evening, flying to London and then tubing it to the hotel.

On the flip side though, it’s no privilege to pay £152 for a ridiculously narrow single bed in a room which resembles a cell on a prison ship in the 1970’s. Quite often the tap doesn’t work, so you can’t even have a wash in the morning and you spend the whole night waking up with every jolt and clank on the line.

Never mind, I’ve got a week of no work to help me get used to the idea.

In other news, I received a letter yesterday from the Scottish Book Trust, telling me that the short story which I submitted to the ‘Days Like This’ project had been selected by the judging panel to appear in a book of the same name to be published early next year.

Enclosed in the envelope was a contract (in duplicate) which stated that I would be paid £10 and receive a free copy of the book. I had to sign the contract to state that I was handing over sole publication rights to the Scottish Book Trust and that I understood that I was not eligible for further royalties from sales of the book.

I’m quite chuffed really. I submitted the story for a laugh really on the basis that I was really getting into writing as a result of this blog. It will be good to see my story in print.

Have a good weekend.

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It’s all a bit of a storm in a teacup really. I find the BNP’s views abhorrent, but at the same time I have always been committed to the democratic process. You can’t have a democracy comprising solely of parties which you approve of. That’s not what democracy is all about. You have to rely on the fact that the vast majority of the public will see them for what they are and not vote for them and the clowns will lose their deposit.

The most interesting thing from the coverage so far is the sheer terror in the BNP ranks at being named on the internet. Surely if they believe in their cause and ideals as much as they claim to then they will have no reason to be ashamed. It’s bizarre to discover that it’s quite the opposite. We have racist bigots who are happy to be racist bigots as long as old Doris and George next door, the local newsagent or their employer doesn’t find out.

I’ve seen the list. It make singularly unimpressive reading. A list of names in alphabetical order with some of the entries expanded by having the members specialist skills listed next to their names (presumably where they could be of use to the BNP). Half of the members on the list have annotations such as “did not renew” or “will not be renewing in 2007″ which gives the impression that the BNP don’t have as many active members as they would like you to think they have.

As a news item, it’s all very dull really.

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I’m quite tired today anyway. A lack of sleep at the weekend (or more specifically a lot of getting up early) has resulted in me feeling the pace. Unfortunately, I am one of those people who gets a second wind around 10pm, stays up late and then the following morning the cycle continues.

Note to self: Must try harder.

Last night, I upgraded this site to Wordpress 2.6.3 but I am sorely tempted to move it over to the Beta version of Wordpress 2.7. It looks very cool and more like a content management system, which will be great for the Spartans and Spartans Academy sites which I also run.

I would be interested in hearing from anyone who is currently using 2.7. Is it all it’s cracked up to be?

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Last week we watched all of the ‘My Family at War’ series on the BBC where celebrities traced their ancestors involvement in the First World War - mostly grandparents and great grandparents. After watching the programmes, we started talking about my Great Grandad, who apparently fought in the First World War at the battle of the Somme. By all accounts, he was gassed and then taken prisoner.

For a lot of people, their great grandfather is merely a historical figure who they have never met. In my case, he died when I was 20, so I had a long enough time to get to know him, so he’s not just some old dated photograph in a box.

Long life runs in my family it seems, there is a photo taken of me when I was born, with me, my Mum, my Grandad, my Great Grandmother and my Great Great Grandmother (who was around 99 at that stage). Five generations. Doing the sums now, my Grandad was 53 years old in the photo and still had his Grandmother alive. Astonishing.

Anyway, the BBC site showed us how to search for service records and off we went. Unfortunately there were an unbelieveable number of John Renwick’s in that part of the world at that time. In an attempt to narrow it down, we decided to search the Scottish archives for old birth certificates, death certificates and census entries in an attempt to ascertain if he had any middle names etc.

What we uncovered was mesmerising. It’s hard to believe you can go online and view the actual original documents. We ended up tracing the family back 6 generations. We’ve been onto Ancestry.co.uk and started to build an interactive family tree.

Since then, we’ve traced back other branches of my family, particularly on my mothers side. Great fun and at times surprising. The aim is to create a family tree for both sides of our family with Sam as the end point. It won’t be lack of enthusiasm which stops us. If anything, lack of records might be our main barrier.

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This weekend should be fairly relaxed. With the exception of the football for a couple of hours on Saturday, nothing much is really planned or decided. A visit to my grannie will form part of Sunday most likely but other than that it’s a relaxathon.

I’ve a busy week next week and then we’ve got a week’s holiday. All in all, not bad.

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Read the story on the BBC News web site

I remember a few years ago when fire gripped the old town and the fire brigade fought all night and into the next day to stop the fire reaching the Royal Mile, where it would have spread uncontrollably through the old medieval buildings. It seems that greed and bungs to certain people may finally manage what the fire failed to do and put paid to Edinburgh’s world heritage status.

One thing confuses the hell out of me though. How can any proposed replacement for St James Centre be any worse than the current building. It’s a concrete and metal eyesore, resplendent with it’s “Bridge to nowhere”.

Get it knocked.

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This happened to me in Glasgow the other night. I was on my way up Sauchiehall Street to the ABC to see Marillion when splat (or more accurately ‘rustle’) the bag landed at my feet. Turning to look into the shop, I saw a selection of guilty looking wee neds. Immediately, I knew what had happened. I used to work in a shop after school when I was a teenager and I’d seen this trick before.

Basically, what happens is that one of the wee scrotes distracts the shopkeeper whilst another quickly whips an item of produce out of the door to be collected upon exit. Usually, it’s done in a single, swift motion.

Needless to say, I was onto the wee shites in an instant.

“Did one of you lads drop this?” I asked innocently. Much shuffling of feet followed. “Thought not” I said, tossing the packet of butterkist back to the shopkeeper, for whom the penny had just dropped.

Myself and my two compatriots were followed up Sauchiehall Street with jeers and cries of “We’re going to do you ya grass man”, but with no real attempt to catch up with us.

Come back when you are big enough and brave enough boys.

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Part of the delay in getting from the train station to the house was the huge melee which ensued when the queue at the taxi rank split into two different queues, running different directions. Abuse was hurled and at one stage a taxi driver got out and ‘footed the arse’ of a pissed teenager who was shouting abuse at taxi passengers (on the basis that there were a few empty seats in their cab, so why couldn’t they accommodate him and his mates). Needless to say, I ended up getting drawn into the argument along with the 30 other queueing punters.

Alter Bridge were excellent, although the sound quality left a bit to be desired. Support band “Hot Leg” were bloody awful though. Justin Hawkins seems to still think that The Darkness was more than a novelty and has tried to resurrect it with his new band. To be fair, kick the yodelling vocalist into touch and they are a fair to mediocre 80’s hair metal band. Inoffensive.

Marillion play the ABC in Glasgow on Sunday. I was toying with the idea of taking the car, but the sheer bloody hassle of finding parking in Glasgow, not to mention the one way system means I’ll probably take the train. I’m nostalgic for the days when all the bands came to Edinburgh. Now we don’t have a venue worth playing and I’m always having to get the train through which is a pain in the arse.

We’ve got a castle though. 1-0 Edinburgh.

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My facebook page has been falling down with photos of pissed up adults dressed up as vampires, skeletons and zombies all week. I preferred the days when wee bairns came round your house, sang “Baa Baa Black Sheep”, you gave them 50p and they naffed off to annoy your neighbours. Now the wee bastards will firebomb your house if you give them anything short of an iPod. In my day, it was all monkey nuts and apples, a bit of “dooking” and you were done.

And yer dad didnae dress up as Freddie Krueger either. “Halloween’s for bairns” son he would say. And quite rightly so.

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