Hurrah ...

... the recession's over! A magic number (which nobody except the statisticians actually understands) has gone positive (+ 0.01%), so we're back to normal apparently. Whew, my life feels transformed already.

I'd intended to write at some length about the above, but my dinner intervened. It was, for the second time in twelve months, a Haggis! Complete with tatties 'n' neeps - well, carrots, actually, not having any neeps in stock, also not being quite sure what a neep is: some kind of Scottish turnip? Anyway, like the man said, Sonsie! (I know I was two days late, but I did make up for this by having the wee dram, or four, two days early courtesy of Paul and his Glenmorangie last Saturday.)

Curiously, as one who loves and admires most things Scottish, apart from a couple of exceptions I've never really visited the country. The first, which doesn't really count, was numerous business trips to bleak finance-industry business parks outside Edinburgh, called things like 'South Gyle'. The other visit was to stay with friends in Glasgow in about 1995. They lent us their spare car, an ancient Allegro or somesuch. We drove northwest, skirting Loch Lomond (amazing how quickly you get out of the city into country, but that's because it's surrounded by mountains and lochs, which you can't build on); then across the pass called 'Rest and be thankful', to the top of Loch Fyne and so down to Inveraray, our destination.

I know it's tame compared to other places, but this had a bit of that frontier-town atmosphere I've always been drawn to. Big sky, wind, coiled ropes on the quayside, a sense of far-off, different places out there over the water. We had fish and chips in a heaving pub (the lights went out halfway through, normal apparently), then back to the car. I put the key in the door and turned it, and it snapped off in the lock.