My mother says she has a friend who converted her Range Rover to run on vegetable oil.
The twelve Scottish people I have spoken to so far are rather bemused that all those world leaders descended on Gleneagles in our own wee (but influential) Scotland.
Edinburgh is getting more crowded by the minute. It’s nearly festival time when the mimes and comedians come out in there droves. However the locals say the town is busier year round. It used to be (in the old days when I was growing up here) that you’d see at least five people you knew while shopping on Princes Street, and now it’s nary a one.
I have massive jet lag.
Samuel Clemens’ comment about the weather in San Francisco is even more apropos of the weather in Scotland in the summer.
There are a lot of sheep.
I believe it was Rudyard Kipling who wrote “daughter I am in my mother’s house, mistress in my own”, which brings me back to the vegetable oil. A flinging down of the gauntlet if ever there was one. My mother, ever since I have moved to America, has taken up a new line of banter with me. Now it’s “your president, your gas guzzling American cars, your foreign policy, you Americans!”
I’m going to go back and convert my car to run on peanut oil. It will be a more gourmet way to go.
Scottish history is I’m afraid, not a happy story, although its nice to visit the ruins nowadays. There are so many castles and tower houses, forts and broughs (iron age forts), because everyone was intent on murder and usurping. They needed a lot of fortification to prevent family visits from ending in carnage. So many princes ended their days in an untimely fashion, leaving babes in arms on the throne, and nobles and regents battling for the power.
Mary Queen of Scots visited many of these castles during her long imprisonment, and it is quite stirring and awesome to stand in those places, and feel her, (and other’s) ghostly presence, and to think about their rather ghastly lives.
It is impossible to get into the Edinburgh military tattoo, unless you book a year in advance. I don’t know any person from Edinburgh who has been there in the last ten years. The last time I went, I must have been about nine. It was cold and raining, but we had been all bundled by our mother so we didn’t care. The castle was all floodlit, and the hundreds of pipers in their kilts came marching row on row through the castle gates into the vast courtyard, until the whole place was full of men in skirts. I think it was one of the most glorious sights I’ve ever seen. And I always shed a tear when I hear a good piper.
I have tasted haggis for the first time since school dinners. It actually tasted very good. Very different from the enforced school haggis neeps and tatties, which was a trial, I can tell you. It is important when eating haggis, not to think about what it’s made of. (If you don’t know what haggis neeps and tatties are, attend a Burn’s night supper).
As I write this I see in the papers that a local and beloved Scottish politician, Robin Cook has passed away. He was foreign minister for a time, and then became leader of the House of Commons, but resigned from that post in protest against the Iraq war.
He was admired and respected by his opponents, and loved by his constituents and colleagues and friends. The papers are full of tributes. It is very sad.
And that’s my news from Scotland.
P.S. Nobody is talking about Karl Rove.