There is a post-script to my post below about the Western Isles and it is about the people. There is an inner strength and a lack of fear about them that is both fascinating and difficult to pin down. I suppose it is born out of generations whose main preoccupation was staying alive. We were walking in a small village and came across some stray chickens. Being keen chicken fans and having spent ten year's keeping the little dears, we investigated further and discovered a little lad of about 8 or so who seemed intent on rounding them up. "Would you like to stroke one of them?" he asked us. With that, he picked on up and gave it a cuddle.
The mantle of anonymity is something that cyberspace must come to terms with. I am quite shocked at the excess it encourages, usually along the lines of some pretty disgusting comments. I don't suppose I am the only one who is shocked by the rotten core of our fellow humans who seem to think that it is ok to threaten violence and scatter obscenities.
I have been blogging for almost a decade and I can say that I have tried to ensure that I have the courage of my comments. I cannot think of any post where I was not prepared to back it up with facts or in person. Sure, I have expressed my opinions, and often forcefully. I have also said things that, upon reflection, were best left unsaid, but I was lucky because I was a trained journalist and the habit of fact-checking and a nod to the libel laws, not to mention a distaste for verbal abuse have helped me to do what I do without hurting people. Oddly enough, one of my favourite blogs was The Devil's Kitchen. It no longer exists now, but it was probably the swearyist blog in the Universe, full of vitriol, piss and vinegar. But it made a kind of point in a way which never offended me or anybody reasonably thick skin. The point of it was to vent spleen in a very targeted and clever way. It never descended to nihilism. Its author probably got tired of it, but also, as I recall, realised that he was too well known in real life and had to either tone it down or pack it in. He was not really the personification of the Devil, more a kind of Malcolm Tucker, a modern Thersites. He is missed.
Gibralter interests me. It is one of those issues which always brings out people who pick a point in time, any point in time, and try to justify their arguments by claiming that that point in time is the one by which the current problem should be viewed. The flaws are obvious; perhaps we should claim compensation from the Roman Empire because they scarred our landscape with unwanted building projects that we now have to maintain at tax-payer's expense. I would shut up about it if I got a Lamborghini Aventador and a villa in Capri by way of reparations.
We have been told recently to get used to decades of blistering heat-wave summers. The blistering heat wave summer up here lasted under two weeks and the thermometer never went above 25c. I can barely get out to mow the lawn between showers.
Nigel Farage, feared by the bad, loved by the good..(Oh sorry, that's Robin Hood). He is the man with a pint and a fag. Cameron and Eggy Milliband have a lot to learn from him. After all, who of the three can you most identify as an actual human?
Album of the week: Bakerloo, the eponymous. An often overlooked piece that came out on Harvest at the tail-end of the Sixties. This Worried Feeling is a Blues gem.
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