FREEDOM!!!!

Oh sweet Illuvatar, could you at least hold your kilt down against the breeze!

I had to tie weights to my sporran Orwell. It was awful. Even so I can tell you a 165mph gust up the khyber pass certainly wakens you up.

Well just when things were calming down the wind is back with a venegance.
This is the seafront near my work from earlier today. So if I mysteriously disappear from here without a word, I'm in the sea.



Obviously this makes things a bit tricky for the ferries, which only leaves the land route left through the mountain pass of The Rest and be Thankful (we don't muck about with names you know).



Unfortunately the main road, you can see it here;



is under a considerable amount of rubble from landslides, so effctively we are completely cut off- even emergency helicopters are grounded in these winds. And thanks to Thatcherism the closest hospital with facilities for dealing with more than a stubbed toe are, yup, on the other side of the water. So a bad night to have a serious accident on!

Bit of a fallout over a comment by mathew Wright on his tv show over a murdered lad from the island of Lewis in Scotland. I think people would have let it lie if his apology hadn't be as gruding as it was. Not good enough mate. If I were him I'd avoid the Western Isles, forever- they have long memories out there.

If he'd shut up after the first sentence or two it would have been alright, but he just had to keep going, didn't he?

I agree, there would have been no problem. People would have accepted that and moved on, but he didn't know when to stop.

Changing the subject slightly, seeing those photos of Scotland reminds me that once when I lived in Newcastle, I went to a New Years Hogmanay party in Loch Lomond, it was in a castle by the lake, it was bitterly cold and these er strange folk had decided to make it a medieval banquet, with straw bails to sit on and we ate out of trenchers. The man of the hoose was monosyllabic and comunicated in grunts and wore huge antlers on his head with a broad sword over his knees. dogs and kids rolled in the straw under the tables, I was probably hallucinating but I am sure we saw the aurora boriwhatsit, well yes I defo hallucinated, because they brought an owl in and started feeding it frozen mice from the fridge, did I tell you it was bloody freezing?

Thats sounds like Hogmanay to me. I fail to see what you found so unusual.

Maybe it was the Antler Head wot did it!

That all depends wot the Antler Head did!

Well the human in the Antler head just kind of glowered and looked Lairdly and faintly sinister and scared the bejaezus out of me. But then I was ver ver drunk.

Wouldn't worry. Probably one of the faerie folk- thats west coast for 'from Edinburgh'.

yeah he did look a big fairy in that tartan posing pouch, but his sword was enormous so I kept schtum.

I've been reading about the Scottish Enlightment! A subject I recommend! (Particularly to Americans as the Scottish Enlighment was to bear large on the Founding of America) There are some excellent books on the suject but actually for an overview of it wiki isn't an awful place to start.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Enlightenment

Comes with the usual wiki caveat to double check sources, but seems to be pretty accurate but not without gaps, for example it leaves out entirely the development of crabbit mathmatics!)

"Sharing the humanist and rationalist outlook of the European Enlightenment of the same time period, the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment asserted the fundamental importance of human reason combined with a rejection of any authority which could not be justified by reason. They held to an optimistic belief in the ability of man to effect changes for the better in society and nature, guided only by reason. It was this latter feature which gave the Scottish Enlightenment its special flavour, distinguishing it from its continental European counterpart. In Scotland, the Enlightenment was characterised by a thoroughgoing empiricism and practicality where the chief virtues were held to be improvement, virtue and practical benefit for both the individual and society as a whole."- damn right!

Petty said: "...the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment..."

What? Down the poob?

Pettytyrant101 wrote:In Scotland, the Enlightenment was characterised by a thoroughgoing empiricism and practicality where the chief virtues were held to be improvement, virtue and practical benefit for both the individual and society as a whole.

Oh my. Something terrible must have happened between then and now.

Oh, so it was the Scots who discovered commonsense? Well, I never...

Common sense? have you been to Glasgow come Hogmanay? I pity the poor sod who has to climb all the statues to remove the traffic cones placed at a jaunty angle on their heads. that and the pools of vomit in unexpected places. I have seen people scale the side of churches and do a Quasimodo moon while quoting Rabbie Burns, common sense Nil, creative use of the human bottom 10.

I meant, "common sense" of the Scottish variety.

wHooooooooooooooooooohoooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!

There goes Petty, stop swinging off that statue, and put some knickers on man.

........ ........... Petty Tyrant!

whaaheyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! whaaaaaaayhhhhooooooooooooooooooooooo"

Oh gawd....

your bottom is yellow Petty, I would drink more water if I was you.