Sometimes I can feel such a fraud. I’ve been feeling that way a few times recently when involved in conversations to younger friends about the future, university and job choices and the like. The simple fact is that I never planned anything of that sort myself at the time, hardly even thought about it. When I was at school I knew that I wanted to go to university and I wanted to study something biology related. But that was because I wanted to be David Attenborough – or at least David Bellamy. I’d always been interested in the natural world but ‘Life on Earth’ suckered me completely and there was no going back after that.

 But I never gave much thought about what and where to study until I was sat down by the Deputy Head and realised that my school actually expected me to have some idea of what I wanted to do.

‘So, are you applying to Oxford or Cambridge?’ He asked.

It was that kind of school. It was not so much are you going to apply to Oxford or Cambridge, but which one. Needless to say, since no one in my close family left school with A-levels never mind being at College, I had no idea.

‘Oxford then,’ was the advice,’ Brasenose college is a good one,’ said the teacher who had been educated at, yes, you’ve guessed it, Brasenose College, Oxford.

Actually like many hopefuls wanting to study Zoology at Oxford I applied to New College as a first choice, because that was where Richard Dawkins was the tutor and needless to say fame attracts. I was nowhere good enough to get the place but I was lucky enough – like a lot of my peers – to get hoovered up by another college. Good old Brasenose. Luckily for me, I liked the course and three happy years later I was again in the ‘what do you do now?’ scenario.

And again, I hadn’t the faintest. I did not feel like devoting at least another three years to academic research (although the experience of a disastrous final year project cannot have helped with that view), but what do you actually do with a zoology degree? I could tell my ctenophores from my cnidarians and knew that a walrus penis bone could be used as an offensive weapon (think truncheon) but outside of the specialist area I was not sure that any of that was going to be particularly helpful (incidentally I have been dogged with this all my life – as far as I am concerned I have no transferable skills. Basically when civilisation breaks down I’m in deep trouble as human ballast). So I had a fit of ant-creativity and half-heartedly went for a PGCE, and was somewhat taken aback when I got the place. So it seemed set. A career of teaching beckoned. Well, I reasoned, if I wore a light blue shirt and slacks every day I could pretend I was Sir David and perhaps inspire some teenagers who had more of a vision to go and do their stuff.

 But…That is not what happened in the end. I do not even know why I started poking around corporate recruitment brochures. But there in the black and white, next to the pictures of young men and women in white coats posing with forced grins (those never change) the discipline ‘zoology’ was listed under suitable qualifications for a job in Regulatory Affairs at Procter & Gamble. So I applied, and after a whirlwind of interviews they gave me the job I am still doing. I apologetically turned down the PGCE; on reflection, that would have been a disaster. I was nowhere near confident enough at the time to handle a class of kids, not really sure I would be up to it even now.

 So I never planned any of it. It just seemed to happen to me.

So why do I feel qualified to talk to teenagers about the future?

 I think I am there for the people who don’t know. To remind them that it is OK not have everything planned out to the smallest detail and for those that are that driven to remind them that they need to be agile too, as life throws things at you need to react to and standing around ineffectually like a stranded commuter whose normal train has been cancelled is not going to help. People these days seem paranoid about making a false start but life is not about certainties and every decision should be the best you can make at the time; if it turns out not to be ideal, there are ways of changing things until they do fit. Rarely is it easy, but the possibilities are legion. If I can give anything, it would be to get encourage young people to take a leap off the cliff into the waters where their heart directs them to go and not to be afraid of the future but to prepare for it as best they can. The water is deep and there are sharks and other threats, but there are friendly dolphins too, and the water feels so good once you are in. 

You know I have a yet another confession to make – it is becoming addictive I think. Anyway, one of my many and varied faults I can bear terrible grudges. Worse, they tend to be ones generated absolutely over the silliest of things such as undirected and throwaway remarks someone has made or simple things done or not done. These little weapons of hurt just have that unerring ability that just stab me in the area I am most sensitive at that particular point in time. The metaphorical knife is not just sharp, but also one where the blade of the knife is usually serrated with horrific barbs and dipped in mental poison that prevents the wounds from ever healing entirely. Even when I know I’m just collateral damage. Intentional attacks are easier to bear.
 
I find it so easy to be wounded in this way that I am amazed I have any friends left.
 
So I was wondering why it is that you can know people for many years, when inevitably you will upset each other, and then still want to see them without out punching their nose for that time ten years ago they unconsciously said something that really hurt you.
Where I came out was to shake my head in wonder again about the mystery that are our relationships with others and the slight sadness I feel when the relations between two people are pigeonholed into something far too simplistic.
 Every one of us is a unique creation of our genetics and our experiences and when we meet someone we start on a relationship – of any sort – with another person that too is going to be quite unique as a result.
 It might be a very short relationship, someone you just met at a mutual friend’s party and had a thirty minute chat with, but it is still a relationship and potentially an important one – that 30 minutes perhaps gave you a piece of information that will later be crucial in some way (‘Yes, he said, ‘the way to tell the difference between these two snakes, one harmless and one deadly poisonous is simply…’)
Some relationships will be more obviously major ones, like a significant other (if you find one), your close family or that best friend who knows all the things the family and the significant other don’t know about you – but each relationship itself is a mixture of two life stems entwining together to a lesser or greater extent. Sometimes that entwining strengthens both stems, and sometimes the friction between them causes one or both to fray. The result is the relationships where that entwining is more mutual and there is less friction are the ones that sustain us. Often the stems start thin and weak and if too much friction occurs too quickly the relationship will break – or one stem will strangle the other, like a kind of emotional parasite. But if the entwining is strong and mutually supporting, a little bit of conflict is not going to destroy it – even if, in a grudge lover like me, it might never be forgotten, scars are not always negative things – open sores are the problem.
The most upset I have been recently is when I upset someone I care about. I did not mean to, but that does not remove the damage I did or my annoyance with myself for being thoughtless. I should try and be better than that, because although I will fail to live up to the standard in my head – again and again – with a bit of effort I can fail a bit less, or maybe less disastrously. Relationships are the most beautiful things in my life, from the Lovely Wife to some simply awesome friendships I am very privileged to have. They have taught me so much, allowed me to experience regularly ample hope and joy and even the relationships that – for whatever reason are no longer there to help me manage this mess of contradictions that I normally feel my life looks like have been fundamental in shaping how my life has gone so far. Up to a point, I feel I owe people the benefit of the doubt and my compassion and forgiveness, and just hope the people closest to me feel the same way towards my transgressions.

What is it about small children and cartwheels?
 Just come off a lovely weekend with friends that included this year’s Folk by the Oak day festival in the grounds of Hatfield House here in Hertfordshire. Despite several days’ worth of doom laden weather forecasts in the end it was a gloriously sunny day and a very relaxing way of spending ten hours entrenched in a canvas chair eating a picnic and sipping beer while being serenaded various forms of English folk – from the wafting of The Unthanks to the bouncy folk rock of (the soon to be no more) Bellowhead. I even managed to learn a new folk concept this weekend, in the form of ‘diddling’. Somewhat intrigued and after a few childish giggles I have since discovered that to get together with some like-minded people and have a bit of a diddle is also to do some ‘tune singing’ where you warble along to what would normally be a piece of dancing music turning it into a vocal piece (albeit with lyrics of the ‘diddly diddly dum’ variety). Based on the ladies that form the band Lady Maisery this is one of those things that sounds a terrible idea and probably often is but can also be surprisingly appealing.
Anyway, cartwheels. One of the other things about Folk by the Oak is that it is very family friendly and there are always lots of young children running about and getting increasingly wild as the day drags on and they do that thing children sometimes do the combat tiredness – i.e. go hyper. In particular, the amount of impromptu gymnastics that seems to go on increases over the course of the day, with varying degrees of proficiency (depending I guess on how much gymnastics they normally did). It’s hilarious and quite impressive – I struggled with a forward roll at that age – I find there is a lot of amusement to be had in seeing children play physically with so little concern for life, limb or dignity. You get it wrong and then end up in an unseemly heap all you do is get up and do it again and again until you get it right. And then you do it again. Possibly again… Repeat until called off by parents. There is something both sweet and indomitable about it. Any kind of equivalent adult activity would result in shamefully slinking away from your failure and giving up or at least furtive looks to see if anyone was watching before you try again. But when you are a child, it seems to be just that bit easier to have a go.
I think it is such a shame that so many of us lose that freedom as we get older. It is like skipping. No one skips beyond the age of about the age of 6. Yet it is delightful to watch as it just cries energy, delight and carefreeness. I tried slipping a bit of skipping along into a run the other day and started giggling as I bounced along the road. Then I saw an incoming car and stopped quickly and went back to pounding the tarmac more conventionally. But for a few seconds it was like being a small child again (I will confess that the other thing that can do this is skinny dipping, but that’s kind of off topic) and it is a good feeling to tap back into. When I eventually reach the inevitable status of benevolent world dictatorship I think near the top of the list I will insist everyone who is physically able should do a quick 10 second skip at a convenient moment for the therapeutic benefits. If they want to add cartwheels or the odd handstand up against a wall then that is perfectly fine, but only the skipping is mandatory. It will not create world peace, but I pretty certain the smile quotient will go up just a little bit.

Feeling in a serious mood – considering what is going on at my work at the moment being light hearted is perhaps indicated but difficult to come by. So probably better to concentrate on positive rather than on fluff.
I never had a mentor as a child. I am not even sure who my God parents were, plus we were a very small family and my parents did not socialise much or have people round, so I never really formed any relationships with other adults of any depth.
 Looking at this in retrospect this was unfortunate. As the first member of the family to be going to university, with all good intentions my parents did not have the experience to prepare me and it was a bit of a leap into the unknown. I think if I had had someone who had experienced that life to advise me I could certainly have used my first year more effectively and been a lot more confident than the flapping around I actually did. Come to think of it, there are any number of questions and concerns I could have offloaded on a trusted adult which I would never have asked my parents, even if I though they may have had the answer. I think many parents do not realise that no matter how much they love their children, and that love is reciprocated, that there are just some things you do not talk to your parents about. You can probably come up with your own examples of topic areas. Plus, no matter how world savvy your parents are they – as you later learn – are not actually the perfect omniscient super beings that you first take them to be. They do not know everything and the different perspective someone else with experience can bring does not undermine parental advice but provides important perspective that can put it in context and make it more useful.
 I wish I had a mentor as a teenager. I’ve had the pleasure and responsibility, with the Lovely Wife of having that role with a number of young people. According to them, it has been of great use. Well, they are the experts, so I assume it has been and they are not just being nice. What mentoring a young person means always looks a bit different (something which I had to learn the hard way of frustration). In the end, these are relationships and like all relationships it is formed by the individuals involved. In some cases contact is regular, and in depth – long chats over coffee putting the world to rights, or at least exploring it. Sometimes it is a brief text every few months checking that all is well. Knowing that someone out there is on your side is maybe all that is needed for some individuals. Sometimes the relationship will last a few months, sometimes they might morph into friendships that can last lifetimes as you get a shift away from the teacher and pupil dynamic to two adults who can share how their lives are going. As time has gone in it is interesting to me how much support I have had back when things were perhaps not going great in my life.
How does this happen? You cannot manufacture it, or at least that is very hard to do. I have been in a number of schemes that tried to do this but in the end it is never really satisfactory. There has to be some kind of mutual respect and you have to like each other. God parents do provide a good opportunity but too often they are not chosen with the child in mind, rather a way to perhaps show to friends and family of the parents how important that person is to them, rather than picking someone they are fairly certain will take the role seriously and engage with the child from the start (and is able too – with all the best intentions, you still need to see someone to establish any kind of strong link, although I am surprised and slightly scared at how some people can seem to get to know people very quickly over a virtual platform, so what does an old man like me know?). Extended family may also throw up someone that just clicks with the young person and can establish the trust needed with the child – and of course with the parents as these relationships can go badly wrong too. But my plea is never underestimate the young person. These days they are incredibly well informed and independent compared to the past and can judge pretty quickly when something feels useful and safe. It is not for everyone perhaps, but when it works it can be a springboard into adult life that both should be able to look back on fondly.
  Bird Update: By the way, if anyone actually reads these regularly, I can report that we believe the Great Tits fledged successfully sometime on Thursday 9th July. Either that or something ate them, but the timing would have been right and sometimes you have to be positive about the universe!

A recent unexpected purchase (I really need to stop going into discount booksellers, it is not good for the bank balance or for already straining book shelves) has given me a better insight of one of the passions of my childhood – the rock band Queen. This will not be much of a surprise to close friends or anyone who came to my 40th birthday and my mercifully brief flirtation with seventies glam rock outfits. They were one of the few bands that while active managed to cross generations by employing a range of styles within an overall branding based on rock and quality. It is now a bit of cliché, but if you ever need proof of just how good they were, the twenty minute set at Live Aid in 1985 pretty much tells you all you need to know as they definitely steal the show. The joke in Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens that any tape left in the car long enough turns into ‘Best of Queen’ is worryingly true considering that the first Greatest Hits album is the best-selling album of all time. I have no doubt that if Freddie Mercury had not died in 1991 the band would still be producing quality albums. But it all came to an end before I could enjoy Queen at their best – i.e. live.
 In fact they had retired from live performing in 1986, so I really never had a chance to go to a Queen gig. I love live music; the Lovely Wife and I try to go to several gigs a year, and while it is not planned as such the eclectic selection of music is part of the fun. I think it is a real blessing to have wide music tastes although once again it gives me problems in the wallet and storage space department (while I will download the odd song there is something reassuringly solid about having a physical copy). We try to catch people on the way up if possible, if only to keep the budget down, or people we really like but are not in the mainstream (the wonderful Duke Special, for example, is a must to catch if he is over from Northern Ireland). This year we have managed to fit in the Duke (twice), Train, Of Monsters and Men, Midge Ure, Dorset folk duo Ninebarrow (in a tiny venue in Poole) and The Who (with 70+ thousand others in Hyde Park). But I‘ve never really managed to catch the iconic acts from my childhood. Queen, Dire Straits, Genesis – all were no more before I was potentially able to go to a gig (or at least have a shot at affording it). Actually, this is not quite true I did see Genesis play, but only supporting the so-so ‘Calling all Stations’ post Collins so I am not sure I really count that. I do not feel hard done by. Just a little sad not to round off my relationship with music I like by adding the live experience. There are risks involved of course. The band can turn out to be rubbish or in a bad mood on the night – a terrible Midge Ure gig we went to over ten years ago where he was in a terrible mood and rude to the audience (there were extenuating circumstances, but even so) meant I never went to another gig until recently, when he was back to his usual likeable self that I had experienced at many other gigs prior to a bad night at Shepherds Bush. And Midnight Oil were interesting, the only band I have ever seen who seemed to actively be antagonistic to their audience (mostly ex pat Australians). But I have been lucky that there are very few gigs I have been too that were a waste of money, at worse some have been just a little disappointing. But some have been ridiculously good fun, and not always who you would expect. When we go to see Scouting for Girls or The Feeling, we expect it to be a good night and the music is infectious and they are enthusiastic live performers. Back in the mid-1990s soap actress Nathalie Imbruglia had a massive album ‘Left of the Middle’ that I adored – rather nervously I booked to see her at The Forum in Kentish Town. She was spot on and full of energy, although had to come to an end as once you’ve done your whole album and your entire collection of B sides you do not really have anywhere to go! That taught me not to jump to conclusions, and I’m still drawing up the list of who we can see next.

Having birds in your pipe certainly starts to make you think about them a bit more.

When we were away on holiday the house must have seemed a particularly quiet and peaceful place, and I guess it was at least in the evenings without my incessant need to have the radio on. Maybe it is because I’m an extrovert by nature, but unlike the Lovely Wife I find it hard to concentrate in complete silence and need and like having something burbling along in the background. More likely, it is because I grew up in a house where either or both the TV were on at the same time from early in the morning to late at night – it was not a quiet house an as in many cases our childhood experience define our own unique brand of what normal actually is. Anyway, should you ever be passing our house and no noise can be heard we are either out or the Lovely Wife is beavering away on without her noisy husband to distract her.

Well, this oasis of quiet seems to have encouraged a pair of Great Tits to nest in the ventilation pipe from our upstairs bathroom. When we got back from holiday the first thing I noticed was the high pitched cheeping – then, as I stood bemused under the pipe, I noticed I was being stared at by a pair of adult Tits, each with a caterpillar in their beak. This staring was very much in the vein of ‘for goodness sake get out of the way so we can feed the hungry little buggers’ and I duly made myself scarce.

Since then we have been careful to not get in the way too much. The poor hassled parents have enough on their plates as it is feeding however many chicks they have in there; unfortunately we will probably never know that unless we by some coincidence happen to be around when and if they fledge. But the parents are certainly working hard, bringing in a collection of grubs and spiders for the hungry, insistent charges. I approximate 10 to 12 feeds an hour, which is not bad for two small birds.

I suspect that this is a second brood, as it seems quite late in the season. As nothing has ever tried and to nest here before, it seems reasonable to speculate that they had lost the previous brood and have given a different site a go; so far so good with the second attempt (although how we are going to clear out the pipe when they are finished is not a question I like contemplating – it’s a bit high for comfort.

The main problem – if you can call it that, as at the moment the feathered family is of no inconvenience to us at all – is that now they are effectively nesting in our house they are now ‘our’ Great Tits and we start worrying about them. The Lovely Wife was unhappy when she saw one the resident magpies sitting on the pipe looking down into it – but the chicks are very much still there and alive (well they make noise and are still being fed) so our view is that the predatory bird cannot actually reach the chicks (incidentally, we are pretty certain the magpies themselves have seen their nest predated this year by the local dominant pair of crows – the ones I am having the battle of wits with over the fat balls (update: so far the locking plastic garden ties are working, but I am not claiming victory over my sleek and black avian adversary quite yet) – so I do feel a little bit of sympathy for the larger bird.

Predation aside, there are plenty of other things to worry about. What happens if there is some heavy rain? Will the fledglings be able to fly up out of the pipe? (Common sense says yes, as the Lovely Wife pointed out the depth the nest has been placed is probably not far from the jump they would have to make to exist a nest box). What if that first flight results in the fledgling falling through our bathroom window? (This is circumstantially possible I believe when considering the relative locations of the pipe and the window.) Basically I am applying my usual approach of creative worry to something I should not be worrying about at all and I should just enjoying having an unexpected little drama a few feet from my tooth brush.

However, I do wonder what they must think of the noisy neighbours who moved in next to their peaceful nest hole a couple of weeks ago. I’m waiting for the annoyed pecking at the window to get me to turn the radio off so the kids can sleep…

I hate it when things don’t go to plan. Well, when they do not go to my plan, anyway. Sometimes people will tell you (very sensibly, I guess) not to worry about the things you cannot control and concentrate on the things you do have influence over.

I do not disagree, however this does not help with the things that I think are under my control but turn out not to be. That is when it gets frustrating.

The Lovely Wife has commented before on my inability to take changes of plan well. I cope with them of course we all have to – but rarely with good grace. No, I have to grump my way through it usually, and unfortunately whoever is close by may well end up as collateral damage from the black mood that has no doubt descended. Trains that are mysteriously cancelled (especially late at night when I am never at my best anyway), work trips cancelled at the last minute, the shop has run out of my favourite beverage – the opportunities for change rage are endless. The problem really for me is not even some sense of disappointment as to missing whatever it is – I refer back to ‘business trip’ which is hardly something at I would look forward to (unless it was to, say, Bermuda – unfortunately it is usually Brussels) but a problem with mind-set. So if I am convinced I am getting the twenty past eleven train home and find it is cancelled – so thirty minutes of boredom on the platform and later than expected to bed just feels… Wrong. The inconvenience is minor but it can put me into a downward spiral that I need to get myself out of pretty damn fast if the situation is to be saved.

Actually, that is a where the Lovely Wife has learned how to manage me. I need space for a few minutes – and maybe a little rant against the unfairness of the universe as that sometimes helps and she is happy to oblige, having seen the signs coming a mile off (sometimes it is an advantage to be easy to read and I’m dreadful at poker anyway). Very occasionally a piece of percussive abuse against an unfortunate nearby inanimate object (always regretted, don’t try it at home). But if I have my little bit of moaning space, I come through it pretty quick.

Because in reality most situations, after a little thought as the throbbing pain where you have kicked the door frame is hopefully ebbing away, split into two types. Some fall under the ‘actually it doesn’t matter’ category – there is another train and you probably would have frittered away that half an hour and not gotten extra sleep about it anyway. But then there is the second type, where it becomes opportunity – if only for adventure. So it was the last train? What do you do now?

When I was in Japan many years ago my (well in my head at least if not in reality) girlfriend of the time and I made a foolish assault on Mt Fuji out of season. The rest of the year the mountain has that lovely snow frosting but in the climbing season thousands descend to climb to the top. We, in our foolishness and arrogance thought we would have a go in July. So we got the bus half way up and on our own struck out for the top. Sometime later above the clouds, when we had reached the snow line and felt terrible – Fuji-san is high enough to give you altitude sickness and we totally unprepared for that as much as the snow – so with only a few hundred metres to go we reluctantly went back to the ‘tourist town’ happy we had at least had a go at climbing what is an achingly beautiful mountain.

Back at the bust stop and formerly bustling shops, everyone had gone. No people. No bus down the 10 + miles of road to the base of the mountain. Just two Australian girls who had come prepared and were going to climb in the evening and get the bus back in the morning.

I had a moment, best described as weary despair, tinged with panic. Lady friend of the times was not much help and we were looking at being trapped for the night on an increasingly cold mountain with only a vending machine for overly sweet tinned milk tea for company.

It took me about ten minutes to pull myself together. After all, I did have a map (albeit entirely in Japanese). Looking at it in the fading light there looked as though there was a trail down through the woods that was half that of the road, if only we could find it. We found something that looked like the start of the trail and began a nervous descent. Luckily we did not know that these woods have a reputation for being a favourite place for people to hang themselves, but we had the happier experience of finding artificial cut steps and realised we had the right path. A couple of hours later, having emerged out of the darkness to find a Shinto shrine and a road we threw ourselves on the mercy of the Japanese equivalent of a Little Chef and were able to get the amused staff to arrange a taxi to our hotel and warm baths and futons.

The point of mentioning this is that the memories from that day are now important and largely positive. It never went the way of our plans, but once we got through the initial shock it turned into an unforgettable adventure. We were lucky to find the beginning of the trail certainly, but I’m a great believer with the view the harder you work at something the luckier you tend to get. What I need to persuade myself more often is that there is always a way of turning a change of plan to my advantage – I just wish I could do away with the grumpy transition process.

The Lovely Wife has been a trooper this last week of holiday. Not only has she had to put up with a growing nationalist tendency in me – I now wear my Northumbria flag badge with pride – but she has had to cope with infinite patience as I waffle on about childhood holidays and how wonderful they were. In addition she has had to cope with the fact that everyone from the region I call home over a certain age believes that anyone is fair game for a chat, and such a conversation is of highly indeterminate length (although never, ever short). Luckily, while my level of patience is something akin to the time it takes my family and friends to eat their way through a cheese board (with or without port) the Lovely Wife has all the patience a middle child has to install into her.

This week we were up in the North East, near the village (small town?) of Rothbury, in an old mill with a working (overshot, you see I have learned some things) waterwheel beloved of the owner (he was giving it a good moss scraping treatment as we were leaving). For many years as a child the annual holiday was a caravan at Bamburgh on the coast and this area is one of my favourite places as a result. Bamburgh in particular is my personal example of the classic English village. It has a green, nice pubs, an old and interesting church (poor St Aidan, everyone talks about St Cuthbert, his protégé but he gets his shrine in the church here and no one ever visits it), the beach is just a stone’s throw away and of course it is towered over by its castle (albeit mostly Victorian restoration, it sure looks the part). It has an interesting and relevant museum (to Grace Darling, Victorian lifeboat heroine) which is well worth a visit. To top it all as we drove into the village laden with fish and chips they were playing cricket on the ground at the base of the crag on which the castle sits. Picture postcard does not come close (incidentally, even as a child there was a feeling that there was some kind of arrangement in this area between Bamburgh and nearby Seahouses. The latter gets to be pretty while the other is, well, not exactly ugly but has the useful shops, the seaside tat and lots of good fish and chip shops. Or put it another way, you can buy good fish and chips and they’ll still be warm as you eat them in a much nicer place.)

For me that place is Stag rock. It is called officially something else but it is a bit rock with a stag painted in white on it so that is good enough for me. No one seems to know who painted the stag in the first place (clearly someone repaints it every so often). Certainly it was well known locally forty years ago. There is a small lighthouse above it and while that of course is now automated I suspect that when it was manned the keeps got bored. I don’t care why, I still love the place as it has not changed in the last thirty years since I was last there on a childhood holiday; the rock pools are still as full of interesting marine life awaiting to be abused by a curious eight year old (even if in the progress of which he gets so sunburnt that he has blisters for the rest of the week. Oops) and the eider ducks still bring their ducklings right into shore, as we discovered to our delight as we munched through the local delicacy trying to avoid sand being an unwelcome addition to the salt (and in my case vinegar) as condiment. When you love a place so much it seems hard it can get better, but some places just keep giving. Cherish yours.

Absence last week is justified by being in a lovely part of Scotland – Kintyre – in an old lodge house where the only real social networking possible is in feeding the particularly cheeky male chaffinch outside the kitchen window (endlessly amusing). Specifically we were staying in a Landmark Trust property, one of several on the Saddell Estate. I’m a huge fan of Landmarks and will probably obsess about them some time in the future, but a couple of things are a bit different about this little area of land an coast, the beach looking over to the mountains of the Isle of Arran. The temporary one is that it hosts a fifth of Anthony Gormley’s artwork ‘Land’ which celebrates 50 years of the Trust. This is a life sized man of iron made of polygonal shapes staring out to sea on the shoreline. The other four statues do much the same – three also on the shore, in locations in Suffolk, Lundy (off the Devon coast) and Dorset, while the final one looks in contemplation into a canal in Warwickshire. We both like it a lot and think it unobtrusive and thoughtful. But we don’t live here; the old lady we chatted to in Campbeltown was not at all sure about it (although she did insist she did insist that she did ‘like the Angel of the North’) and I ‘made her day’ when I informed her that it would only be there for a year – after that they are sold for charity. Sometimes something even relatively small can be a problem if it changes a place you are very fond of.

The other notorious connection for the beach at Saddell is physically not visible on site, but impossible to erase; it was where the video to ‘Mull of Kintyre’ was shot. The McCartneys had come to love the Kintyre peninsula over a period of years– Paul to get away from it all (it takes some effort to get there) and Linda for her photography. You would think that being associated with one of the best-selling – but let’s admit it, corny – songs of the seventies would bring some level of embarrassment but the opposite is the case. Only Mary Queen of Scots and Bonnie Prince Charlie seem to be above this Wings’ single in the desperate attempt to provide some link for pilgrimage. The best is in Campbeltown where there is a Linda McCartney memorial garden in which sits a (rather nice I think) life sized bronze of the champion of vegetarianism and animal welfare, holding a lamb, much as I recall she did in Top of the Pops performances. It is quite sweet, although I have to say she would not be impressed by the amount of meat and fish consumed locally; looking at the wildness of the terrain and the lack of arable land I think she might have been reminded that sometimes you can choose what you eat, and sometimes you have to eat what is available. But when it comes to animal welfare, I think you should understand where what you eat comes from and how it has treated and what that does to the taste in your mouth. But like your reaction to art, ethics of eating is a personal matter and perhaps at best an open minded discussion over a nice whisky (of which this area has many).