So Will and I have made it to Scotland, but things didn’t get off to the best of starts. As we left my place to go get the RV (100 miles away in Hull) we got pulled over by a traffic cop. Will was at the wheel of his Audi TT and had just joined the highway not more than about 3 miles from my house when I noticed he was, as ever, driving wickedly fast. I commented to him that he just doesn’t drive slowly anywhere and he laughed while replying that was true. Then I asked how fast he was actually going. “110 miles per hour” he responded, just as he spotted the traffic cop coming up behind with his blue flashing lights on. – Busted!

Fortunately the cop decided to give Will a break and called the speeding “under 100mph” which means that will gets a £60 fine and three penalty points on his license. A lucky escape by all accounts.

The RV is fun though after a couple of weeks of glorious weather it hasn’t stopped raining since we left my place. Last night we stayed close to a place called Amble on the East coast. I’ve never slept in an RV before so the whole experience was fun. Of course it was still raining this morning, and as I write this it is still raining now. But both Will and I are determined that whatever the weather we’ll have fun.

So far today we drove up toward Scotland, stopping (in England) on Holy Island in Northumberland. There was a castle and a priory to walk around, and of course that meant we got completely soaked! Now we’re camped out in a little town called North Berwick just south of Edinburgh, sat in a parking lot on some random wifi internet connection checking email and stuff. What geeks we are!

Not that I need it, or even particularly want it, but this week my mate Will and I are heading out once again to Scotland for a weeks vacation. This time however, we’re going to do so in a motorhome!

Will booked time off work ages ago and had long been looking forward to this little week away. I, on the other hand, had completely forgotten about it! In fact as we set off for Scotland tomorrow I will have only been back from America for two weeks, hardly enough time to get back into the routine of things.

The motorhome idea was something of a late one. But those of you who have visited the UK will appreciate just how expensive it is to do anything here, the idea of touring around in a motorhome is supposed to keep the costs down. On reflection though, given that gas in Scotland will be over $10 a gallon, I doubt we’ll save much if anything.

The original plan was to buy some old junker camper van, but the availability of cheap camper vans is very thin on the ground because of the world cup next month. They are selling like hot cakes to groups of ‘lads’ going to Germany to watch the England games. We were only going to buy it for a short time and then simply sell it on our return. The rental motorhome is costing £425 ($802) and we’re having to drive to the East coast to pick it up so we’ll probably drive up the east coast of Scotland then around to the west and down again before swinging back east to drop it off next Sunday (22nd).

A lot is going in in my life at the moment, and I’ll be honest when I say that I am not really that excited about going away to Scotland. Like I say, I’ve only just come back from America and I feel like I am taking liberties having another week off only two weeks after having time off. But I’m pretty sure it’ll be fun though. Maybe this is just what I need?

A beautiful and haunting short film. Most of us see these things of course and don’t feel compelled to change the way we live our lives. Sad really.

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On thin ice

We’ve been having some beautiful weather of late, the kind that leads me to dream up a reason to leave my office and drive somewhere and go for a walk. Yesterday I decided to head out for a little afternoon walk in the countryside just down the road from where I live.

I wandered on paths through the woods as a gentle breeze blew through trees that sounded like they were applauding my decision to escape the confines of my office. Eventually, I came to a small field of long green grass decorated with daisies and dandelions. I found a spot to sit and watched the clouds as they silently rolled by overhead.

For some reason the scene took me right back to when I was an innocent 17-year-old boy walking in the fields with my girlfriend looking to lose the innocence that we ironically seem to yearn for in later years. We would ride our bikes out to that field then walk through the long grass and wildflowers to ‘our tree’. Sometimes we would lie in the grass and point out shapes and forms in the clouds as they rolled by, and other times clouds were the last things on our minds.

As complicated as we both thought our lives were back then, they weren’t complicated at all. We didn’t really have a care a world as we basked in the evening summer sun, forever was a long time, and we had all the time in the world, or so we thought. Our ‘love’ eventually faded like the warmth of that summer of 1988, and the tree that provided us with shade on those long warm summer evenings will probably outlive us both.

I sat there for a while just enjoying the warmth of the sun and those memories of innocent days. Eventually made my way back to my car and as I approached it I smiled and thought to myself thinking ‘now that’s progress.’ In 1988 it was a shiny mountain bike that took me to those long grass fields and I wished then for an open-top sports car. Today I have the open-top sports car, and here I was wishing just for a moment to have that shiny mountain bike once more.

I started the engine, checked my phone, then pulled away leaving a cloud of dust and 1988 behind me. Now that’s progress.

I was spammed the other day by someone wanting a job. Nothing too strange there, I get a lot of such emails, many of which I know are spam. But this particular one took an amusingly different stance.

The email apparently came from the Hungarian address of one Calin Ana who for some reason decided to attach a picture of a woman looking sultry to the top of the email. It would seem that ‘Calin’ felt that ‘her’ chances of getting a job were better if she looked shaggable, and thus was attached the picture in which the girl does indeed rate high on the shagability factor. But alas confusion is abound.

‘Ms Ana’ for some reason placed the name Rodica Bentan at the top of the email. Who is Rodica Benton? Plus the email actually came from an address of one Fehér Trans, who a quick Google reveals is a male from Hungary who is looking for programming jobs. Of course alarm bells ring not just because this is spam but because the mention of ‘Trans’ now makes me look at the picture of our friend ‘Calin’ and wonder if Feher is maybe a switch hitter?

The email, like all the others, was quickly deleted. Ms Ana, Mr Trans and Rodica Benton are all out of luck again.

It’s just past 5:30. It’s been a long night and I haven’t yet gone to bed yet. But as I walked up to my bedroom which is in the attic I looked out of the skylight window and saw six planes drawing vanishing white lines in the dawn sky. All six planes were headed in the same direction, slowly making their way to some other place far from here. I just stood there and watched them in the silence of my bedroom and the stillness of a dawn as the sun rose over the distant clouds in the east.

It’ll be a great day when I get there. A beautiful day I’m sure.