Just realised I haven’t blogged about my jaunt up Ben Lomond last year. Well I did but a couple of short paragraphs doesn’t really cover it. It was a crazy day after all.

It started with the seven of us planning the trip and gradually realising the weather was going to possibly scupper all our plans. Alex ended up pulling out due to a case of the lurgy and one of Willie’s mates gave up as well. In all honesty we possibly should have as well with hind sight.

I guess the first sign that the day wasn’t going to go we the way we planned appeared when we started driving up the east bank of Loch Lomond. Forget the rain we encountered on the way up there. It was definitely the fallen trees on the road that gave the biggest hint.

The rain held off as we got our gear together but thanks to a few errors in the layout of the roads and land *cough* I couldn’t read my map */cough* it took us five minutes which included a walk up a forest road that went nowhere near the summit before we realised we had to head back to the car park to find the real path.

The initial going was good. The weather was a bit crap though. One minute it rained the next it stopped but the wind just didn’t let up. We would get completely soaked by the rain and then by the time it stopped and started again we would have been blown dry. As we started to reach about a third of the way up we really started to struggle with the wind. It gets a little steep at this point and as the hillside is completely exposed once you get pass the tree line at the beginning it started to take it’s toll. Mark decided he just couldn’t go any further. I don’t know if it was the wind or just his body telling him that despite the energy drinks he was stupid to go any further but he was the first to head back and with hindsight I think that’s when we all should have turned back.

The wind didn’t let up at all throughout the climb and in fact just got worse. I read the weather reports when we got back and for most of the climb the wind was gusting at up to 50 miles per hour. Dave and Stoo were determined to at least make it to the half way point which to there credit they did. There is a well about halfway up on the map which they made it passed before they turned back. I don’t know why but I stood for a few minutes shouting to Dave to make sure he knew what to do if something was to happen to them on the way down. I guess it was because although we all had radios with us the mobile phone reception up there is sporadic at best and almost all the survival and first aid gear was either in my own bag or Willie’s ruck sack.

So we pressed on. At times the wind would just hit us constantly for a few minutes and we’d just stand there leaning into it hoping for it to let up long enough for us to walk another couple of hundred yards before the next gust. It was round about this point that we started to meet a few other climbers as they caught up with us. We’d only seen one other person on the hill up until then and he had shot ahead with his dog and you could see his outline as he made a break for the summit. They all seemed nuts if truth be told. We stopped for a quick rest just as it starts to get really steep and rocky just before you turn back around and start the last leg up to the summit. Willie stopped for a breather and I carried on to see how far I could get before I stopped for a bite to eat to let him catch up.

That’s when I bumped into they guy with the dog again. He was on his way back down after reaching the summit and said it was insane up there. As I found out later it was gusting at up to 90 miles an hour up there. He waited until the wind died down before running between rocks and then holding on until the wind died down again. He almost lost his dog three times thanks to the wind apparently. I pushed on and got to within what I thought at the time was about 400 yards from the summit but after looking again at the map it was probably twice that I turned back. It was just stupid to carry on. I took my last picture looking out over the lochs behind the mountain and the camera’s battery died. It’s was definitely a sign.

It turned out Willie had actually decided just to wait where he had stopped hoping that I’d turn back as well. I eventually made it back down to him and just like when I climbed Ben Nevis there was a spring in my step on the way back down. Where we struggled to walk up the damn hill we were almost running down the thing. The worst bit was still to come however.

When we reached the bottom we found out that the hotel was without power. A tree had been blown over and took out both the power and phone lines. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem except all the way back down the hill all we could think about was a nice warm meal and a pint of beer. The kitchen was shut and the beer pumps wouldn’t work without power. We were stuck with warm bottled beer or cans of soft drinks and a scone.

We will be back to do it again when the weather gets better and there are plans afoot to hit The Cobbler in March in preparation. Fingers crossed the weather works out for us next time!

Tags: Ben Lomond, Dave Hogg, hills, Mark, outdoors, rain, Scotland, Stoo, walking, weather, Willie, wind

Ever since I first met my wife she’s had certain ideas about how her life works and how things will hopefully go in the future. Thankfully a lot of those ideas of hers are very similar to mine.

photo credit: foxypar4

Our friends call us hippies but I think the only tie dyed item of clothing we have is a kids t-shirt we were given as a present. We recycle as much as we can, my wife both knits as well as dyes her own wool and we try and get a crop of home grown vegetables in every year even when we don’t have a garden. One of our dreams is to be self sufficient and another is to move to the countryside into a nice house with a bit of land and start up a small holding. Initially the plan for the move was to a different country but I’m gradually bringing my wife around to the idea of staying within Scotland. It’s too nice a country and the population is that small that once you leave the central belt you sometimes have to travel miles to find a neighbour!

This blog will hopefully chart how we got from A to B with all the troubles in between.

Tags: hippies, introduction, Scotland

Originally published at The Apochrypha. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve been looking back through the stats for this blog over the last week and its the same few pages that keep getting hit.About 90% of them are being stumbled but I keep getting hits from Google about Tom Weir.

It’s strange that the man who helped kickstart my love of my homeland, aside from my English granddad, when I was a young boy keeps coming back. Whats even stranger is that if you search on Google for him my site is nowhere near the top of the list.

Anyway for those that don’t have a clue who he is Tom Weir was a Scottish climber, author, photographer and broadcaster who’s Weir’s Way made him a household name throughout the 70’s and 80’s in Scotland. I could go on for ages about his accomplishments but a few people have done it far better than I could. His wooly hat and plus fours were almost like a trademark for him and its the first thing most people think of when you mention his name, even before his TV shows.

To end this post I’ll leave you with a song by Aberfeldy

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Tags: Google, Scotland, Tom Weir

Originally published at The Apochrypha. Please leave any comments there.

I have spent the last 20 years trying to track down a song I heard one night andwithout even trying today I found it.

I used to be a member of the Claremont Rambling Club when I was about ten or eleven with my Granddad and we’d go away every fortnight walking in the hills of Scotland with 30 other like minded individual. Once a year though we would go away for a long weekend somewhere and ovenight at a hostel somewhere and go hiking every day.

One year we went to Loch Insh and stayed there and with the only entertainment there being a Space Invaders machine or a pool table that nobody would play on we were left to entertain ourselves. This basically meant everyone had to do a ‘turn’. This usually consisted of someone starting a song and everyone joining in as the alcohol flowed. I escaped as I was only ten at the time but one of the woman started singing a song thats stuck with me ever since. I’d catch myself singing the chorus at night when stacking the shelves in Safeway or whilst walking home drunk to my hotel in Tenerife. But noone could tell me who sung it or indeed any of the verses as they’d never heard it before.

Then today I randomly searched on Youtube for some Scottish music and guess what popped up in the search? Red Yo-Yo by Matt McGinn. My search was over! I can’t stop singing it to myself now!

No tag for this post.

Tags: Claremont Rambling Club, Matt McGinn, Safeway, Scotland, youtube

Originally published at The Apochrypha. Please leave any comments there.

What is this weather like? Aparently theres been a strange depession sitting over Scotland for the last week and it’s causing no end of problems. It started with the snow last week and on Monday there was a place in Edinburgh where on one side of the building you had the normal everyday wet carpark and on the other side you had 6-7 inches of snow with a very definate border between them. I’ve sat looking out the office windows today and depending what side of the building you look out of you get different weather. On one side we had sunshine, on the opposite side we had heavy horizontal rain and at the far end of the office the wind was that bad the snow that was falling there was actually going up rather than down.

And whats with the wind? I thought we’d got off lightly with our wheeliebin lying in our neighbours front garden this morning and it seems we we didnt just get off lightly we got off almost scot-free! Our neighbour had her brand new brick wall blown down and the building site next to our office looks more like a demolition site. One of my colleagues noticed a bubbling this morning after a window had blown open during the night and thought it was just the rainwater bubbling on the radiator and didnt think that for that to happen the radiator must be literally boiling. About an hour after that one of the bosses passed comment on a burning smell beside the printer and could hear crackling. It turns out thatwater had came from somewhere and got under our floating floors and the electrics all around there were sparking. Needless to say about 10 fuses were blown by the time the technition turned up to check it out and we’ve had to turn off the power on half our section by the looks of things. Luckily the office is quite today so theres plenty of room for people to hotdesk.

As for damage elsewhere it seems half of The Eastern on Duke Street in Glasgow has fell down and plenty off roofs have blew off in the city centre. At least one of the huge trees on Glasgow Green has been uprooted and numerous walls have been blown down. I didn’t think it was that bad last night until I seen teh damage this morning. I’ll need to check my roof when I get home which suggests a 3.30pm finish so there will still be daylight to see by :S

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Tags: demolition site, Duke Street, Glasgow, Scotland

Originally published at The Apochrypha. Please leave any comments there.

I did this a while ago but never officially tagged anyone and as I’ve been tagged by Simple-Mindz I thought I’d do it again but properly this time.

• So anyway here are the rules:
  Link to the person that tagged you.
  Post the rules on your blog.
  Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
  Tag six random people and the end of your post-link to their blogs.

  Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
  Let the fun begin!

1. I passed Standard Grade General Science in P5 but never recieved a certificate for it. The P7 teacher in my school’s husband was shocked at the ‘new’ Standard Grade exams in the first year they were run at my local schools. He was convinced his first years could pass the exam and so ran them through the paper at the end of term and got a pass rate of 60-odd%. The P7 teacher in my school did the same thing with her pupils and I think they averaged out at about 50-odd%. My P5 teacher was convinced I’d be able to do it as well and came away with a 71% pass!

2. I managed to fail 1st year at Uni because my adviser couldnt tell the difference between Exploring the Cosmos in the Arts Dept and Astronomy in the Science Dept. Being self-taught Standard Grade and Higher biology and chemistry at the same time as studying Astronomy is one sure fire way of frying your brain quickly when all I wanted to do was look at pretty pictures of nebula. I think my best end of term exam result was 13%. The pass rate was so low they actually had to lower the level you needed to get to sit the final exam as they would have had only three people sitting the final exam otherwise.

3. I studying a martial art that we named Harry Karate after our instructor. He was a nutjob that hated his old instructor so decided to branch out himself and teach but mix in a little boxing. What mostly happend was he beat up kids for 3 hours a night twice a week. Was great fun seeing him getting slaughtered at the first (and last) competition we went to.

4. I was captain of my primary school football team and in my last game for the team almost ended Rangers and Scotland captain Barry Ferguson’s career before it started. We played his schools 7-aside team in the group stages of a competition in Strathclyde park and I managed to put him 6 foot in the air and he landed badly. His brother Derek, who also played for Rangers, was their manager and wasnt best pleased with me.

5. I have a rock that I like to go to and think things through when I have problems. Your surrounded by mountains that have been there for almost longer than Ican get my head around so any problems I ever have mean nothing compared to what they have seen. The problem is the location though as its 14 miles from the nearest bus stop down a glen near Glen Coe.

6. If I’m quiet its because i

Tags: Barry Ferguson, boxing, football, Glen Coe, Harry Karate, Scotland, Strathclyde park

Originally published at The Apochrypha. Please leave any comments there.

We were very close to not going on this holiday. Between the stresses of the house and straining bank accounts from Christmas and the upcoming wedding it was a close run thing.

Thursday
I’d managed to get a half day to help finish the packing as we’d only finally decided to go that morning. Once Finn got home from school we headed straight to the airport. I’d never flown from Prestwick before and to be honest its certainly not my favorite airport in the world. Largely forgettable and the closest I’ve ever gotten to finding an airport that looks like the one I flew out of Moscow from. It is a barn. Anyway on the way there the wind and rain were terrible and we actually thought we’d either be delayed for hours while it calmed down or the flight would be canceled. In the end though it went ahead but the turbulence was horrendous and the landing was the worst I’d ever experienced.

Yet again I was using an airport I’ve never been in before. I usually fly into Heathrow and get the Heathrow Express right into Paddington so I know my way about the Circle Line and getting to and from Victoria. Getting the train from Stanstead to Liverpool Street totally threw my bearings. Thankfully where we were going was on the Central Line anyway so it was actually quite simple. Kirsty’s brother Simon was kind enough to let us stay at his flat while he was in Barcalona for the weekend so financially we could actually enjoy ourselves. Simon met us at the station and led us round to his flat we’re we took over his bedroom. Both Nairn and Erica were beyond tired though and so screamed for at least an hour. It couldn’t have been good for Simon or his flatmate but at least they were in a different room.

Friday
We hadn’t actually worked out what we were going to do during the weekend other than to say what we’d like to do in general. We got up that morning though and decided to hit Hamleys first and start off as we meant to finish and let the kids enjoy this weekend as much as we hoped to. We managed to navigate from the flat to Leytonstone Tube Station very easily which was actually a sign of things to come. Being fifteen minutes by train outside of the centre of London sounds great until you realise that it can take another 30 minutes at least to get from one side of the centre to the other and even more if it involves changing trains. Anyway we got off at Oxford Circus and sauntered round to Hamleys. It was mobbed. We managed around the top 3 floors but had to leave after Findlay spent a while playing with a remote control car and bike. It was just to claustrophobic but the boys were loving it though.

We then headed down the Victoria Line and got off at Victoria Street Station to head up past my work and onto Buckingham Palace. I took everyone along Victoria Street until we found Westminster Cathedral. WE wandered around there for a wee while before I dragged them up Palace Street past my work whilst confusing my mate who was in the office by asking him where I could get a bottle of juice from. Buckingham Palace isn’t really much to see. Unless you catch the changing of the guard I can’t quite work out why such large crowds would come and see it. Anyway we walked up past a park and down to the riverside. I’ve seen the London Eye from a distance before but even although its ‘only’ 135m high you just don’t quite get how high it is until your standing underneath it. We’d had a choice to make earlier about whether to go up during the day or go up after the sun had set. Thankfully we went up when it was dark and the whole of London was lit up. It made it look more like a toy town from the very top than the grey mass it really is that you see during the day. We managed to get back to the flat for about 8pm going past Tesco on the way. There is a Christian charity shop on Leytonstone High Road that has some of the most amazing furniture and we clocked this amazing dolls house in the window but on closer inspection it was actually a birdcage!

Saturday
It rained. And rained. And rained. It was also bloody freezing. Did I mention it was a bit wet? I don’t know wether it was stupidity or sheer brilliance but we headed to Camden Market that morning. I really must look more into the tube stations though before we do things like that. Trying to carry an occupied pram up and down the 96 step ‘emergency’ stairwell because its the only way in and out is just sheer lunacy at the best of times but when you’ve got a train full of folk around you as well it just gets silly. We made it though. And this is where we discover the one thing that annoys the hell out of me about London. Unless your at a huge supermarket or a tube station there are no speed bank machines anywhere! We walked the full length of Camden looking for one until we hit Morrisons and ended up in there for a cup of hot chocolate. Thankfully the boost of heat brightened up our day so we went back around the markets for another look. Vonnie was a bit disappointed that we only spied one ‘fake’ celebrity in the form of Peaches Geldof but in a town of 5 million people what are your chances? We came to the conclusion that we could actually live in Camden but I can’t stand the commuting

After that we headed over to Covent Garden for some more markets and shops. It looked lovely but my god you get some amount of pretentious folk down there. I was also in what has to be the worst laid out shop on the planet. Lush in Covent Garden really needs some traffic lights and a one way system put in. I’m not joking when I say there is barely enough room for one person to move in an aisle never mind a shop full with bags of shopping!

We finished the night off with the Transport Museum. I didn’t think it was as good as the one in Glasgow but then it only deals with London transport rather than any and all forms. No row upon row of old cars but plenty of buses and trains. The kids loved it though which it why we were there.

Sunday
We were up early so that we could meet Despina and her family for a jaunt around the Science Museum. Lovely people and Findlay got on great with Josh. I don’t know how we managed it but we managed to spend about 5-6 hours in there and it flew past! Nairn did a bunk at one point though from one of the kids areas and almost made it to the lifts but we caught him just in time. On the way out we were surprised to find a piper so Vonnie had to get him playing Flower of Scotland and Scotland the Brave! We went for dinner in a wee Italian restaurant around the corner which was nice. The pasta was a bit weird but still nice despite that. I don’t actually remember much after that as I think I dozed off on the tube back to Leytonstone.

Monday
How there wasn’t any bloodshed I really do not know. We headed back round to Hamley’s to pick up a few things and then jumped the train back out to Stanstead. We decided that rather than rushing about with the kids and possibly being late for the flights we’d get there early and try and relax. Between all the carrying of prams, bags and very little sleep from the night before I was a walking wreck and how Vonnie didn’t snap and stab me at several points I really do not know. Anyway we made it onto the plane only for Erica to scream the entire flight and Nairn to act up. If he wasn’t headbutting Findlay for his toys he was trying to open the lifejackets under the seats. We did win a free flight out of it though so its not all bad. We will be using that for a night/weekend away for us and ntothe kids though as I don’t think we could handle that again until the kids are a wee bit older.

No tag for this post.

Tags: bank, Buckingham Palace, Camden, christmas, Covent Garden, Glasgow, Italian restaurant, Leytonstone High Road, Leytonstone Tube Station, Liverpool Street, London, Moscow, Palace Street, remote control car, Science Museum, Scotland, Simon, speed bank machines, Tesco, Transport Museum, Victoria Street, Victoria Street Station, Westminster Cathedral

Originally published at The Apochrypha. Please leave any comments there.

I think I was about 15. I know I was in 3rd or 4th year and the more I think about it I think it was 3rd year. I’d been in school that morning and everything was fine. For once I didn’t have a problem in my English class and I’m sure we’d had PE that morning. I went home for lunch as normal and while I was waiting on my lunch going ping in the microwave and Scott arriving with his mates the phone rang. It was my dad wanting to know if my mum had called. He said my Grandad had died that morning. The only other thing I remember from that phone call was my dad asking if I was OK. I must have been OK enough to convince him though as I ended up back at school. I can’t even tell you if Scott ever came home that lunchtime. I sat in a daze during French which didn’t phase Mrs Hughes as it was my worst subject anyway. I can’t even tell you what the last period was. I say it was Geography if you were to push me for an answer but that would be a guess to be honest. He was gone and I couldn’t get that thought out of my head.

Talk to anyone that has known me well enough and they’ll know that my Grandad was my closest relative outside of my immediate family. Some have said I hero-worshiped him. I wouldn’t go that far but being so close to him and him being the only member of my family that I remember dying sort of puts him on a pedestal. My Gran died when I was 6 months old so I never really new her. He taught me how to swim and took me away almost every summer with my cousins youth hosteling around Scotland. We joined the Claremont Rambling Club when I was 10 and traveled all over Scotland with them every fortnight. It was only when his body started hurting to much that we gave that up but he stilled looked after my brother and I every summer while my parents worked. As a parent he had raised 9 kids, 4 of his own, 4 fostered and 1 adopted and was working his way through his grandkids as well. I could go on and on about him and his involvement with the labour party and the CND but this is about my memory of him and not about his life in general.

Then he started going downhill. I found it really hard to see him that way. He, to me at least, quickly went from being able to look after himself to having to sell up his house and move into sheltered accommodation where he spent most of his time not able to get about under his own steam or without help.When he went into hospital Scott and I managed up twice to see him I think. I really didn’t want to see him like that but I understood why I had to go. My mum said afterwards that he seemed to have an extra wee spark of life in him when we were there even although he had trouble remembering who we were at times.

Then he died. There’s been a lot said in the past about what happened at that point. My mum was down as the person to be notified should anything happen as she worked across the road from the hospital and could literally be there in minutes. Somehow though my uncle Raymond, one of the fostered members of the family, was there before her and had contacted everyone. I think my mum got there before he died but I can’t say for sure. I know I found out at the time but as I said I wasn’t really concentrating that afternoon or the days after it. To make matters worse for my memory I can’t bring myself to actually ask my mum about any of it. I don’t know if its to stop my mum feeling down because of my asking her to remember about it or whether I just don’t want to remember myself. I can’t actually tell you the date he died. Something in me tells me it was the 14th of April but again I have no way of knowing for sure. I think we have a copy of the death notice from the paper somewhere in my parents house but its an awkward thing to ask for.

The day of the funeral came and its about the only thing I have any fixed memories from. In fact I can still see it in my head as clear as the day it happened. As the only blood family left living in East Kilbride, I think that was why at any rate as one of his foster daughters still lives here as well with her family, the funeral procession started off at our house. I woke up and came downstairs to find half my extended family already here. They’d been going through some of his possessions to find his will etc when they found a letter he had wrote to the family. I really want a copy of it but I haven’t a clue who has one as I’ve never seen one in the house since that day. There were a lot of things in there that we sort of knew anyway but he never confirmed them to anyone. He joined the communist party during WW2 in order to get a job so that he could support his family at that time, I’ve no idea though how he wasn’t conscripted, and he had a lady friend in his later years. We knew all about Betty and she was a lovely lady but my Grandad didn’t want to take the chance that he’d hurt any of his kids feelings by telling them he’d found someone else. He kept nipping away for weekends with the CND or the OAP’s and it turns out half of them were actually with Betty going down to London for the weekend or whatever. The thing that stood out for me was that one of the lat lines of the letter was my Grandad asking us not to cry for him. He’d had a hard few years and was at rest which could only be a good thing.

We arrived at the crematorium early as we were in the first car after the hearse and so we got to see all the people arriving. To this day I’ve not seen a funeral procession that strange looking. At the front end you had the big black cars for the family followed by your usual every day friends of the family. In amongst all this though there were the die hard CND supporter with the colourful cars and back windows full of ban the bomb stickers. Then at the end there were a couple of motorcades. That was the weird bit. I knew my grandad was involved in politics over his years to but to see the provosts old and new of East Kilbride and Glasgow turn up and a few labour folk as well including Adam Ingram it was surreal for me to say the least. I sat throughout the service with one thought in my head, ‘I must not cry’, but could see folk around me bursting into tears. I think it was because they were crying that I managed to make it through without doing it myself because I was young and stubborn enough to insist that at least one person made it through without shedding a tear of grief. My uncle David was supposed to be the one at the front telling people about my Grandads life but he couldn’t. He tried but my Uncle Mike had to take his place.

I still don’t feel as though I’ve really said goodbye to my Grandad. The ceremony didn’t mean anything to me and in his last few days I never seen him at the hospital either. Every time I go camping the thought of him is always there and when I was on the march in Glasgow against the invasion of Iraq I couldn’t help looking back down the hill to George Square, seeing all the people out that day and thinking of him.

I promise the next one won’t quite be so down

No tag for this post.

Tags: Adam Ingram, Claremont Rambling Club, CND, communist party, David was, George Square, Glasgow, Iraq, Labour party, London, Microwave, Raymond, Scotland

Just thought I’d also stick in a wee entry about The Day I Snapped as well.

You guys know I’ve liked them for a while, I think the first time I seen them they were supporting Biffy Clyro at King Tuts many years ago when Rab dragged me along to see Biffy. Then not long after it we all went to see The Vandals on that ill fated night of Ned Violence. I still laugh about the guys that gave the sob story of how theyd been mugged and lost their ticket only for the band to tell the crowd about this whilst Mark’s standing there with freshly placed staples/stitches in his skull and rab with his cheeck still bleeding from the fight not an hour beforehand. Anyway…as we left that gig that night we seen the advert beside the front door for a band looking for a new bass player. We joking told Rab to go for it despite him barely knowning how to play bass at the time. Little did I know that my friend Thomas would end up getting the gig.

I’ve lost count of the number of gigs I’ve been to see them at…its safe to say that I’ve seen them play more than any other band but thats purely down to the big names only coming round once a year if we’re lucky and TDIS’s ‘knack’ of getting support for any of the bigger bands that came to these shores over the period of a year or two. In fact they ended up supporting The Offspring at the SECC not that long ago thanks to the support act pulling out.

Over the last year I’ve got to know the drummer Craig a bit better and it’s meant we’ve got free tickets to a few gigs and theres a rivalry there on the bowling alley like the West of Scotland has rarely seen. But noone goes there anymore.

Anyway I’ve struggling to get a hold of any recorded work by them for ages after being stuck with thier original recordings from all those years ago. Then…just as Craig says TDIS might be playing their last ever gig thanks to thier guitarist going off to foreign lands…they record a live CD. Craig very kindly offered to make copies for folk and this morning a copy of the live gig as well as their demos from 2000-2004 landed on my desk at work. Bet you can’t guess whats gong in the CD player at lunchtime!

Tags: bowling, Ned Violence, Scotland

I had the weirdest dream last night. Well not really but it had some cool and some freaky things in it.

Basically Firefight Scotland fell on its arse and noone could step up and either buy it out or fill the void it left behind. I think the guys from the Fort actually laughed and rubbed their hands together as they were the only real alternative near central Scotland for us all to go to (CQB Scotland didnt exist in the dream).

This meant that during the height of summer Bobz Squad and a few stragglers heading up to Aviemore for a camping trip for the weekend. Somehow we got invited up to the Lonach Highland Games despite them not being held until late August. We were at Kirsten Pantgirls families place when Billy Connolly andd his celebrity mates came along behing the highlander on their wee walk to get a few drams on the way to the games. Seems we got talking to Robin Williams, Eddie Izzard and Ray Mears (wtf was he doing there?) and told them of our airsofting plight. Robin asked if we knew of anywhere that would be perfect for playing and I piped up that there was a place in Glen Etive that was perfect for it but it was on land owned by Ian Flemings trust or whatever it is. Ray piped up that he knew them and sent some smoke signals up from a nearby campfire (he did actually do this in the dream…Glen Etive is on the other side of the country from Strathdon…) and then said it was all sorted. He’d bankroll the initial costs if we could let him and his celebrity mates play for free the next day.

We headed back down to Aviemore to sleep that night but stopped off at an arcade to play a new game that came out that had been raved about all over the computer magazines. Your normal point a pink gun at teh screen time crisis kind of thing but it was based in a room rather than in an arcade box and the graphics were fully 3d and lifesize. Stoo got ate by a zombie in the game and we never seen him again :S

Next day we headed down to Glen Etive to start the site and get a few practice games going. When we got there it had already been set up with a dedicated safezone and toilets etc. The game area included the farmhouse and its outbuildings right along to the boat shed and the jetty at the end of the road. The terrain was perfect and the ‘beach’ and banks of the river made it feel like a completely different kind of site. Somehow the celebities turned up and morphed into crazy US box office commando clones with lots of airsoft gear. Its one thing to have Ernie sneak up on you but its completely different when Eddie Izzard slots you with a sniper rifle from extreme range…waves at you and then Ray Mears stands up from behind a twig 4 yards in front and smiles an evil smile :S

Tags: Billy Connolly, Eddie Izzard, For Us All, Glen Etive, Kirsten Pantgirls, Ray Mears, Robin Williams, Scotland, United States