Wolf Spiders

Walking through cereal crops pulling out Wild Oats, it is amazing how much insect activity you come across.   Lots of insects means lots of birds, and that is why in general I refuse to use  insecticides.
One of the star performers is a spider that binds several heads of cereal crop together and places a large white egg [...]

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Wild Oats

A pleasant job at this very much pre-harvest time of year is walking through the crop fields pulling out Wild Oats, or ‘Rogueing’ – literally, ‘pulling out the rogues’.
Wild Oats look a bit like normal oats, except they are more a wavy oat than a (cultivated) straight up oat.    The grains also have long hairs [...]

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Flooding

When Perth flooded last, people whose houses were damaged were out of them for 6 months while their homes were dried out and put back together.     So my thoughts are with the huge number of people who have had to leave their houses in the flooded areas of England – they face long haul to [...]

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Reading to Children

Both our children were read to every night at bedtime.
Being selfish about this, I have to admit really looking forward to this part of the day.    From early books like the Hungry Catepillar, through Dr Seuss, and eventually progressing on to Narnia (all 7 books), Little House books (7, I think), Moonimtroll (several books, which [...]

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Harry Potter

What a publishing event! – stores and bookshops open at midnight with crowds of people buying the last Harry Potter book.    Quite unprecedented I think.
 It is easy to be cynical, but you have to hand it to JK Rowling that through these books she has changed the face of children’s literature (and big children’s literature).    Children [...]

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Places I Really Cannot Read.

I like reading, and try to read a bit every night before I go to sleep.    It is quiet and peaceful and you get time to concentrate.
Which brings me to admire people who can seemingly read in all sorts of busy situations.    I saw people in a queue to a museum reading books the other [...]

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Luggage

Our lost luggage finally arrived here today – that’s over three days late, but at least it got here in the end.    Everything in the suitcases was damp – except our dirty clothes which were in a poly bag.   We did see what we thought was our luggage sitting outside in torrential rain in Paris [...]

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Country folk visit the City

Living in deepest darkest Perthshire, we like to visit cities on holiday, so we rented an apartment in Paris for a week.   Nice and central with the big attractions within walking distance.  
Actually, the less obvious things to do and see were as enjoyable and much less crowded than the main things.    And although we visited [...]

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Alan Johnston

Awoke as usual to the Today Program on Radio 4.   
Just occasionally you hear something that makes you want to punch the air in delight.
What a great start to the day.   Listen to the interview.

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Glasgow Airport Terrorist Attack

Well, we now know exactly why the airport authorities have been getting increasingly jumpy over the past year about traffic having access to the main building.    And why they built those bollards in front of it.   Like the two London bombing attempts, it could have so easily been so much worse.
Whether or not this particular [...]

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